Chapter 369: Officially Fucked
In the middle of the court, the ten players stood still, their jerseys thrown at their feet, Blacklist’s black and silver gleaming under the lights. Hector froze, staring at the scene with wide eyes.
He didn’t move for several seconds. He stared at it like he was waiting for it to change, to go back to normal. But the jerseys stayed there, on the ground, and nobody was going to pick them up.
On the court, the coach stood there with his mouth open. His notebook slipped out of his hands and hit the floor, and he didn’t even try to catch it. Two other staff members looked at each other, completely lost, not a single word between them.
Farther away, in her hospital room, Monique was watching the same scene on the wall screen across from her bed. She sat up suddenly, eyes wide.
"No," she said. "No, that’s not possible."
She grabbed the remote and turned the volume up, like that would somehow make the picture more real.
In the stands, it took everyone a few seconds to actually process it. First the murmurs, people leaning toward each other.
"Wait, what is that," someone asked. "That’s Blacklist’s jersey, right?"
"Seriously? They’re joining Blacklist?"
The murmur quickly turned into shouting, laughing, people standing up and pulling out their phones to film.
"So it was true!" someone yelled from farther off. "The leak, it wasn’t fake!"
The old rumors about the buyout, about the accusations thrown around a few weeks earlier, all came rushing back into everyone’s head at once. Nobody dared say it with total certainty yet, but the excitement was building fast, the whole arena tipping into loud, joyful chaos.
The ten players stayed still at center court, a proud smile shared between them, savoring every second of the mess they’d just set off.
The hallway leading to the mixed zone was already packed with journalists and influencers, mics out, cameras up, everyone shoving to grab even a scrap of reaction. When the girls finally came out, still in their Blacklist uniforms, sweat not even dry yet, a wall of questions hit them all at once.
"Is it true?" a reporter shouted, shoving his mic toward Rei. "Are you really joining Blacklist?"
"Are you confirming the accusations against Apex?"
"Does Victoria Graves know about this?"
Rei moved through the crowd with an almost regal calm, an amused smile on her lips, deliberately ignoring the loudest questions, letting the suspense drag out a little longer. Aiko walked right behind her, arms crossed, looking extremely pleased with herself. Kai and Hina kept trading glances, clearly having a blast with the whole circus.
"Are you confirming it or not?" a young influencer pressed, his camera shaking a bit from how worked up he was.
"We’re not confirming anything right now," Aiko answered, a corner of her mouth curling up, clearly toying with everyone’s impatience.
Rei spotted, in the middle of the crush, a reporter from one of the biggest sports outlets in the Underground, mic already out, completely overwhelmed by the number of questions flying around him.
She walked up and took the mic out of his hands.
"Quiet, please," she said, her voice carrying naturally through the noise, something in her tone that demanded attention without her needing to raise it at all. "I have an announcement to make."
The silence dropped almost instantly, every camera swinging toward her.
Rei let the silence sit for a moment, clearly savoring it, before letting a confident smile spread across her face.
"It’s exactly what you think it is," she said simply. "Baby-Boom is officially joining Blacklist."
Total chaos. Reporters shoving, shouting new questions on top of each other, influencers already filming their own live reactions for their followers.
"Since when has this been negotiated?!"
"Does this mean you’re leaving Apex Records completely?!"
"Is it official, is it signed?!"
Rei just handed the mic back to the reporter, still a little stunned, one last mischievous smile on her face, then kept walking through the crowd without answering anything else. Her teammates followed in the same amused silence, deliberately leaving the whole mess behind them.
#underground-breakball-chat
@MamaMia
WAIT WHAT. BABY BOOM JUST TOOK OFF THEIR JERSEYS AND THERE’S BLACKLIST UNDERNEATH ???? 😭😭😭😭
@LanaEvoli
JUST SAW THE VIDEO I CAN’T BREATHE
@FapNations
wait what does this mean for their music? are they not doing concerts under apex anymore??
@AnalMusume
honestly idc about their music just give me jaz + nia + alicia + the 10 baby boom girls on the same roster, blacklist is literally going to steamroll the whole league
@JinzoDeservedIt
THE LEAK WAS REAL. THE LEAK WAS REAL THE WHOLE TIME. waiting on the official press conference like i’m not doing anything else tonight
@DaddyOil
just picture it, nash + jaz + the 10 baby boom girls + nia + alicia on the same roster. that’s not a team anymore that’s a cheat code
@VictoriaSimp
Lucky bastard...
In a dimly lit bar in Sector 8, Vargas stared at his phone, mouth hanging open, a warm forgotten beer in front of him. He scrubbed back through the video a second time, then a third, looking for some angle that would make the scene less real.
"No way," he muttered, leaning closer to the screen. "No way, no way."
He stayed like that for a long stretch, frozen, the noise of the bar around him fading into a dull hum.
At home, in his run-down apartment, Roam sat on the edge of his bed, phone trembling slightly in his hand. He watched the video once, twice, his eyebrows pulling tighter with every replay.
What’s the plan, exactly, he thought, a new cold settling into his chest. Saya, what the hell is the plan?!
Across town, in a packed bar, Drex stared at one of the wall screens, his beer stuck halfway to his lips, unable to either set it down or drink it.
"No way... this can’t... Bastards... This isn’t fair! Tell me this is a joke!" he said to nobody in particular, his voice a little too loud.
Nobody really answered, everyone around him too busy staring at the same screen.
In a small park lit by flickering streetlamps, the three former Blacklist NPCs sat on a bench, phones lit up, all three frozen in the same silence.
"This is a joke," one of them finally said.
"Doesn’t look like a joke," another answered, voice flat.
In a dark alley, Mac had stopped dead, back pressed against a damp wall, phone still lit in his shaking hand.
"No," he muttered, shaking his head. "No. NO! God damn it, NO!!!"
He said it again and again, like repeating it enough times would somehow make it true, slamming his open hand against the wall.
In his cramped apartment, Jinzo stood in the middle of his one room, phone held up in front of him, eyes locked wide on the screen, a nervous laugh slipping out every so often.
"That’s fake," he said out loud, to no one. "That’s completely fake, that’s edited, that’s—"
He kept scrubbing through the video over and over, hunting frantically for a flaw, some proof it had been faked, anything that would let him reject what he was seeing. It was impossible, no, not this. Not like this, not after everything. Nash’s dream couldn’t come true, wasn’t allowed to.
It had to be some edit someone sent him just to mess with him. Someone was going to step in, Hector was going to shut it all down, whatever it took, but this — this was just impossible.
"It’s impossible," he said again, his voice climbing. "Impossible. They can’t have done that. They CAN’T."
In the hallways leading to the locker rooms at Neon Nexus Arena, Hector walked fast, his advisor struggling to keep up, phone already pressed to his ear.
"Get a press conference set up within the hour," Hector ordered, furious. "This statement has zero legal grounds. It’s exactly like the leak, a manipulation with no proof behind it. We hold the contracts. We hold their rights. Nobody just gets to decide to leave an organization like that, in public, without a single valid signature. We’re taking this to court!"
"Yes, sir," the advisor answered, already typing on her phone.
Hector kept moving, heading straight for the locker room, determined to confront the players directly, to personally remind them exactly who they still belonged to.
A man in a dark suit stepped out in front of him suddenly, blocking his path, face tight.
"Sir," the agent said, voice urgent. "You need to look at the news. Now."
"I don’t have time," Hector shot back, trying to step around him. "I’m talking to the girls first."
"They’re not there anymore, sir," the agent said, sliding back into his path. "They never went back to the locker room. They’re already gone. But—" he hesitated for a second, "there’s something else in the news. Something you need to see right now."
Hector froze, a new feeling settling into his chest, a sense of dread he couldn’t quite name yet but that had been becoming way too familiar lately in this Underground.
Across town, in a large conference hall, a crowd of journalists had gathered in total scramble, called in less than an hour earlier by an official invitation sent straight from Blacklist’s new headquarters.
Victoria appeared on the stage, immaculate, her face perfectly calm despite the noise in the room. Behind her, an official document was displayed on a giant screen, several clearly visible signatures at the bottom of the page.
"Good evening, everyone," she began. "I’m here to officially confirm what you all saw tonight at Neon Nexus Arena."
She let a short silence settle, giving the journalists time to fire off their photos.
"Baby-Boom is officially joining Blacklist’s roster," she continued. "The contracts were signed several days ago, entirely within the law, with each player exercising her right to terminate under the terms provided by law."
An immediate uproar swept through the room, dozens of hands going up at once with questions.
Victoria raised a hand, and the room went quiet just like that.
"Every legal procedure has been followed, and we have the official documents to prove it," she said. "As of today, Kimura Rei, Tanaka Aiko, Sato Kai, Fuji Hina, Hayashi Miko, Ishikawa Yuna, Kobayashi Mai, Nakamura Hana, Watanabe Rumi, and Matsuda Chio are officially members of the Blacklist team."
A wave of excited murmurs ran through the room, journalists scribbling down every word.
In his car, Hector watched the live broadcast, his phone slipping out of his hand and hitting the floor without him really noticing, a dead silence settling in around him.
Farther off, on an outdoor training court, a little later that evening, Rain bounced a ball absently against the pavement, a faint smile on his face as he scrolled through the same news on his phone.
"There," he murmured. "Now, there’s no more weak point."