Vorpal 138 – Harbor Kings 87.

Numbers that did more than end a game; they carved a wound into the arena's bones.

The locker room smelled of sweat, spilled blood, and a silence that felt like a physical weight thick, oppressive, the kind that made lungs ache. It wasn't the hush of peace. It was the hush of something broken and refusing to make noise.

Jamal "Jet" Robinson sat at the far end of the bench, shoulders hunched, head buried in both hands. Jet had always been speed and swagger, an uncatchable blur that defined him. Tonight the blur had found a wall. Ethan Albarado had not run him down; he had contained him quietly, relentlessly until Jet's speed was only motion with nowhere to go.

"Why… why couldn't I shake him?" he asked the air, voice thin and ragged.

No answer came.

Dante Morales, Harbor's sniper, slumped by his locker. His shooting sleeve hung limp; sweat tracked from his chin to the worn fabric of his jersey. He had fired shot after shot looking for rhythm, for the sweet connection that always found the net. Lucas Graves had copied him mirror-smooth, killshot perfect and with every echoing swish Dante's confidence felt hollowed out.

"Every shot was supposed to be mine," he said, voice small. "He… he stole my fire."

Malik "Spin" Carter sat with his palms open on his knees, staring as if his hands belonged to someone else. His game had always been a kind of dance unpredictable, beautiful. Against Lucas and Vorpal's controlled chaos, those dances looked rehearsed. Tricks exposed, awe evaporated.

Terrence "Brick" Douglas folded inward, elbows on knees, face buried in his massive hands. The wall, the anchor he had been trained to be immovable. But Brandon Young met him with quiet brute force, matching position for position until Brick felt the foundation give.

"I was supposed to be the anchor," he thought. "But I went down with the ship."

Skyline DeShawn Rivers loomed like a skyscraper even in defeat. Ethan's Kobe fadeaway had slipped past him like a whisper; Lucas's old-school layups bent timing and expectation. Even Ryan Taylor's baiting smirk had drawn Skyline into fouls. He inhaled shallowly, whispering the single word that had already spread through the room like a contagion.

"Monsters… monsters… monsters…"

Coach Sora Nakamura stood before them, clipboard dangling at her side, her eyes softer than usual but not indulgent. The words she wanted scolding, wrath, a blasting that would snap them upright didn't come. This wasn't a room of kids who'd made mistakes; these were young men, hollowed.

"You lost tonight," she said, voice level but carrying hard edges. "Not because you weren't talented. You lost because you were exposed. Vorpal didn't merely beat you, they found every seam and pulled it open."

Silence.

Sora stepped closer; her voice sharpened. "That pain you feel? It isn't destruction unless you let it be. You can carry it, forge from it. Or you can let it crush you. Your choice."

Jet lifted his head at last. His eyes were rimmed in red and bright with something like fury or grief maybe both.

"Coach… tell me we can beat them next time."

Sora's answer was blunt. "Not like this. Not as you are. If you want revenge, you break yourselves on purpose. Strip what you think you are, and build back sharper."

Her words landed like strikes. They stung but they were a line back from the edge.

Dante's hands curled; pride burned, stubborn as a coal. "He's not untouchable," he muttered. "If Lucas can copy me… then I'll become something he can't copy."

Malik's jaw set. "If they think my tricks are finished, then I'll invent a trick that can't be predicted."

Brick straightened, slow and deliberate. "If Brandon matched me, then I'll grow bigger than he can handle."

Skyline's breath evened. He lifted his chin. "Next time I'll fly higher. Higher than he expects."

Jet's old spark returned, coalescing into something harder. "Vorpal—Ethan—Lucas. You may have taken this game, but the Kings don't die here. We rise."

Coach Nakamura allowed a faint, dry smile. It had no warmth, but it had truth. They were broken cleanly, brutally but breakage could make edges. Harbor filed out, shadows long and heavy, and somewhere under their bruised pride a small, bitter seed of revenge took root.

The narrative moved from locker rooms to studio lights.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the host said on SportsCenter, face tight with disbelief, "that was not a loss. That was a dismantling. Vorpal 138 – Harbor Kings 87."

On the analyst couch, Marcus Vey handsome and blunt from a long career shook his head. "I've been in some blowouts. But this was surgical. Harbor didn't just lose; their spirit got ripped out. Jet stopped talking. Dante couldn't look at the rim. Skyline… man, he was bent over like he'd been robbed of air."

An analyst who loved numbers leaned in. "Harbor turned it over nineteen times. Vorpal scored forty-two off those turnovers. Harbor shot thirty-eight percent; Vorpal nearly sixty. That's not basketball. That's a crime scene."

Social feeds scrolled across the screen bite-sized verdicts.

"Vorpal baptized them on national TV," one tweet read.

"Jet ain't the King no more," another blasted.

"Lucas Graves just announced himself," someone wrote. "Remember the name."

Fan forums burned. Calls to fire coaches, trade players, strip logos rage and heartbreak spiked the comments. Vorpal's fans, meanwhile, stitched memes of Ethan sketching plays on his palm and slapped on the hashtag #PalmProphet.

Dr. Callum Reeves, a sports historian on a late-night panel, spoke quieter, as if setting a marker in history. "This collapse will be studied. Teams build mystique. Vorpal just showed that mystique bleeds when you pressure them the right way. This is identity death."

Across the city, sports bars emptied early. A father in a Harbor jersey wiped a kid's face with a napkin and tried to answer a child's stunned question "Why didn't Jet fight?" with words that wouldn't feel like lies. Elsewhere, fury took a vocal shape—"This team folded," a fan spat into a camera. "Folded."

On the broadcast, the host folded his notes and looked straight into the lens. "Vorpal didn't just advance. They left a crater where a dynasty used to stand."

Under the city, in a room that smelled of old paper and colder intentions, people gathered like pieces on a board.

Light from a single barred window cut the table in a thin, accusing line. At its head sat the Bald Old Man skin like parchment, small, gold-flecked eyes. He tapped his finger on the wood the way you test for echoes.

"So Vorpal wins again.." he said. The sentence was small, but it had weight.

Ron, the man in the gray blazer, folded his hands like a surgeon, patience sharpening him into something dangerous. "Don't worry," he said. "I already have a plan."

Drew in the maroon suit laughed too loud for the space. "Finally some fun," he said. "Let them dance. We'll change the music."

Madame Vena precise, strategic tapped a stylus on a tablet. A grid of schedules and signatures glinted in the screen's light. "We don't need brute force," she said. "We need leverage. Pull sponsors, place temptations, seed a rumor. Destabilize them quietly."

Jerry, adjusting his glasses, smiled in a way that made the room colder. "Chaos seeded carefully," he purred. "Watch the cracks. Widen the ones worth widening."

Cloud the platinum-haired youth who once wore a mask sat at the edge, pale and taut with obsession. He traced the rim of a porcelain cup, voice low and certain. "Don't touch Ethan."

The room paused like a clock catching a breath. Ron's eyes sharpened, not in surprise but in calculation.

"We understand your loyalty," Ron said. "We also understand necessity. This is not annihilation. It's control."

Cloud's fingers flexed. "Control is fine so long as no one breaks what I value. Ethan stays untouched."

The Bald Old Man watched Cloud with a long, weighing look. "Loyalty is currency," he said slowly. "Spend it wisely." He inclined his head his smallest concession.

Madame Vena slid a thin dossier across to Ron. Its pages were a quiet map: training windows, sponsorship timelines, community events, record of public appearances. Small arrows pointed to pressure: allies whose support could be strained, donors who could be nudged, a media seed that could sprout doubt.

"We isolate them," she said. "Make their margins tight. Force them to be predictable."

Drew grinned like bad weather. "When they scramble, prod them. Plant a scandal here, a tempting contract there. Watch them fracture."

"Information is the new weapon," Jerry said. "We plant, we watch, we harvest. Make them think a hundred small things are happening then push the one that breaks them."

Cloud stood, folding the portrait he'd held back into his jacket like a relic. "I will guard what I must," he said. "You handle the rest."

Ron closed the dossier with a soft lid-click. "Surgical," he said. "No headlines that point back to us. No public violence. Strip them of advantage, turn friends into liabilities. When they step on the court again, they'll be running on empty."

The Bald Old Man's fingers drummed once against the table. "Proceed," he said. "Remember: chess is won by patience. Sometimes the king falls because the pawns simply stop moving."

A hush folded the room. Outside, Vorpal's lights still burned bright. Inside, the organization set gears in slow motion subtle, patient, precise. Vorpal wasn't an opponent anymore; they were a problem to be managed.

Cloud met Ron's eyes. "Do not make me regret my faith."

Ron's look curved almost into a smile. "We don't make enemies of allies," he said. "We use them."

And with that, the meeting dissolved into plans: leverage lists, whispered suggestions, and a single, chilling consensus Vorpal must be controlled, and the game would be won long before the next tip-off.

Harbor left the arena tonight with bruises that would not heal by next Tuesday. Vorpal left it with a new light on the horizon, and a target on its back one patiently drawn by people who knew how to wait.

In the crater of defeat, Harbor discovered an ugly, useful thing: not victory, not yet, but the shape of something that would call them back to the court. Revenge. Reinvention. A hunger.

Broken kings can be sharpened. The question was who would do the sharpening and at what cost.

To be continue

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