𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻

It was day two of Ego's plan to eradicate everyone in Blue Lock's will to live. You were in the trenches.

Also known as the hallways. Surprise, surprise!

You'd just escaped the gym, for now, and you were on the way to the bathroom to undo your binder for a few minutes. You should have some sort of award for making it this far without breaking your ribs, honestly.

You heard the sound of footsteps gaining proximity behind you, and when you turned around, you couldn't help but roll your eyes.

"Will you please, for the love of god, stop following me into the bathroom?"

Bachira shrugged and cracked a smile, "We'll see, but you said you'd explain yourself yesterday. I can't wait any longer."

"Right..." you both started walking back toward the restroom, and you stepped into one of the stalls and closed the door, "Now that you know, do you realize it's even weirder you decided to come into the bathroom with me?"

"It's not like that!" he whined, "This just seems to be the only place we can ever talk."

You sighed from behind the door and pulled up your shirt, undoing the binder before letting it fall back down. Leaning against the wall, you decided to start your ominous origin story for Bachira, "Anyway, I guess you're right. Now's as good a time as any."

"Okay, okay. Right so, why are you here?"

"Why does it feel like you're interviewing me..." you muttered. "Uh, because I'm a striker. Ego wanted to use me for the whole Blue Lock shtick, more or less."

You heard him start to tap his foot against the tiles, "So, that means you've got to be pretty good, right?"

"Yeah, I'm on the women's U-20 team."

"What!? Aren't you like my age?" he yelled.

"Uh-huh."

"How come I haven't heard of you before, then?"

You took a pause to breath deeply, enjoying it while you could, before you started again, "You probably have, I don't really know how many of you keep up with women's football. But, 'Kazuma Kenji' is not my real name, obviously. Do you know who [Surname][Name] is?"

"Ohhhhh!" he gasped, "I have heard that name before. I don't think I ever saw the face attached to it, though."

You grit your teeth in irritation, "Thanks, dipshit."

"Sorry, sorry! I didn't mean it like that!" he laughed nervously, "Anyways...I still can't call you your name though, right?"

"Yeah. Feel honored enough to have all this confidential information yet?"

He stopped the tapping for a moment, you had to say the incessant noise had grown annoying, "I have one more question."

"Spit it out."

"Why do you always sneak into the bathroom, like right now? Is that just a girl thing?"

You briefly wondered how you didn't have a migraine by this point, "I have to wear a binder on my chest to keep up this whole act, it restricts my ribs a shit ton. I take it off in here so I can get some relief for a while."

"I was wondering why your stamina was so bad for a professional!"

"..."

"I-"

"You have three seconds to get the fuck out."

You had never felt worse in your entire life.

You'd woken up before the lights had turned on, so, in conclusion, it was way too fucking early. Especially with how absolutely obliterated every muscle in your body felt. Like you got run over by three consecutive trucks, and thrown into a garbage compacter.

It was all Ego's fault. Everything is always Ego's fault.

While you were laying down, you felt like your eyes would fall through the back of your head by how heavy with exhaustion they felt.

There wasn't much more time for your wallowing before Ego's voice sounded through the room. Top Ten Worst Ways to Start Your Day.

He informed everyone that the first selection had concluded in all the stratums and to change into our uniforms. After you spent time getting up and cracking each of your overworked joints with an unsettling 'pop!', you changed in the bathroom and joined the rest of the soon-to-be-disbanded Team Z.

You all entered a pentagonal room with freakishly tall walls, filled with players from the other teams. They all had as deep and depressing of eye-bags as your team did. Which surprised you, honestly. Weren't they supposed to be living lavish?

Ego's face popped into one of the screens on the wall, and he wasted no time to begin his lecture. He explained that his entire ranking set-up was absolute bull. He never even told you about that. Did he really consider you staff or did he just like fucking with you? Probably the latter, who were you kidding?

More blabbering, more blabbering. The second selection had five stages. Noted. What the stages were? Lost in processing.

"Enter the gate to the second selection individually."

Some tall dude broke out from the crowd and headed for the net of balls. You eyes doubled in size as soon as you recognized who it was. Itoshi-fucking-Rin. God, will Ego ever learn to tell you things? How are you ever supposed to explain to Rin why you're here? That is, if he actually notices you. Or cares at all.

You watched, still in shock, as he picked up two balls and kicked them each so they connected midair. If you weren't so panicked, you'd roll your eyes at how unnecessarily boastful he's being.

Someone nudged your arm, and you turned to your side to face Bachira.

"Can you do that?"

You scoffed, "Shut up. Yes." You'd never tried to do something pointless like that, but sometimes you have to stay on the 'confidence is key' bullshit.

"Do it," he urged.

"No." You shrugged him away from you and walked into the Second Selection after Rin, in hopes to get him alone to warn him to not ask questions for now.

Down the hallway, instead of being met with Rin on the other side of the door, there was a room. An empty room, at that. The walls were made up of hundreds of tiles, ones you assumed Ego could probably control.

You cursed how right you were, because it was only seconds before one on your left flipped up to reveal a cannon of sorts.

Yup. Definitely a cannon. It shot a football toward you that you caught it with your feet. A hologram spawned in front of you, readied in a goal-keeper's stance.

It was hard to determine the difference between what goes on in Blue Lock and a fever dream, at this point.

Ah. You finally grasped what the fuck was going on when an illusionary goal grew behind the 'goal-keeper' as well. A timer set above the goal. You had 90 minutes to get 100 goals passed this keeper.

No problemo.

Okay, there was sort of a small problem.

It wasn't scoring the goals themselves. No, it was, you guessed it, the god-forsaken binder you were wearing. You'd just hit 37 goals in before you folded down with your hands clutched on your knees.

Your wheezes even pained your own ears, and you felt beads of sweat glide down the slope of your nose to fall off the tip into the grass. Can I ever catch a break?

Nope. That, and you'd been trying to recover for the past five minutes and neither your breathing nor bpm had regulated. You were really fucked. Only 60 minutes left to get the rest of the goals. It wouldn't have been a big deal, usually. But nothing is ever 'usual' anymore.

Every three goals or so, you had to pause for a bit to make sure you didn't cut off your air-flow. The fact the simulation got gradually harder as it went on did not help in the slightest. This was the definition of dangerous, but it's not like there was anything you could do about it.

Finally. Teetering on the brink of collapse, you reached the hellish quota and wasted no time in dragging yourself down the hall to the second stage. You never thought you'd see the the day you would be happen to be in a hallway in Blue Lock.

As soon as you opened the door, you scanned the room for Rin. Your eyes locked onto him, standing blankly against one of the walls. You set forth your path to him, not paying attention to anything else in the room.

"Rin."

He turned to the direction of your voice with his usual glare, although as soon as it registered you, it seemed to flicked with slight confusion, "[Name-]?"

You slapped your hand over his mouth, "Shhh!"

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