The coach stepped between them, producing a whistle from his pocket like he'd been waiting for this moment. "Game to twenty-one. Ones and twos. Five dribbles max per possession. Not make-it-take-it—even if you score, you go back on defense."
Lucifer nodded once. The rules didn't matter. The outcome was already written.
Elijah caught the inbound pass from his coach but immediately flipped it to Lucifer. "I challenged you. You get first ball."
Mistake number one.
The leather settled into Lucifer's palms. He squared up at the three-point line, Elijah crouched in defensive stance—textbook form, weight balanced, hands active. Good. Not good enough, but good.
Three jab steps. Right, left, right. Testing. Elijah didn't bite, didn't even shift his weight. Smart.
Lucifer exploded right, one dribble eating up the space. Elijah slid with him, body-to-body contact, using his height advantage to bump and redirect. Two dribbles. The pressure was real now, Elijah's chest against his shoulder, trying to force him baseline.
Three dribbles.
Lucifer planted his outside foot and spun, using Elijah's own momentum as a pivot point. The bigger boy's weight worked against him for a split second—just long enough. Four dribbles. The lane opened like a door. Five. The layup kissed off the backboard soft as a whisper.
"One-zero."
"You ain't bad for a middle schooler," Elijah said, that easy grin still in place.
Lucifer said nothing. Just handed the ball to the coach and backpedaled to the three-point line.
Elijah came at him harder this time, trying to use his size advantage immediately. A power dribble toward the elbow, shoulder dropped, looking to bulldoze through. But Lucifer was already there, chest to chest, feet planted outside the restricted area. The contact sent Elijah stumbling back a step, his rhythm broken. The shot that followed was all arm, no legs. It clanged off the back rim.
"My ball."
This time Lucifer didn't probe. Two dribbles to the wing, a quick crossover that sent Elijah sliding the wrong direction for half a second. The pull-up jumper was already leaving his hands before Elijah recovered.
Swish.
"Three-zero."
The gym's background chatter started dying. Players on the sideline stopped their conversations, drawn by the rhythm of the game—or rather, the lack of rhythm. This wasn't back-and-forth. This was systematic.
Elijah tried to post up on his next possession, backing Lucifer down with methodical bumps. One dribble. Two. Three. But every time he tried to turn, Lucifer was there, lower, stronger than his frame suggested. Four dribbles. Panic now. Five. The fadeaway was desperate, off-balance. It hit nothing but air.
"Five-zero," Lucifer said after his next score, a three-pointer that barely disturbed the net.
"Seven-zero." Another pull-up jumper, this time from the elbow.
"Nine-zero." A reverse layup that had Elijah spinning the wrong direction entirely.
At ten-zero, Elijah stopped talking. The smile was gone, replaced by something between confusion and anger. His teammates had formed a tight semicircle now, nobody saying anything, just watching.
The coach's eyes had narrowed to slits. "His fundamentals are perfect," he muttered to his assistant. "Footwork, balance… who the hell trained this kid?"
Elijah came out for his next possession like someone had lit him on fire. Hard dribble, crossover, between the legs, behind the back—the full repertoire. But Lucifer moved with him like a shadow, never reaching, never lunging, just there. Always there. The forced shot hit the side of the backboard.
"Twelve-zero."
"Fourteen-zero."
"Sixteen-zero."
The gym had gone church-quiet now. Even the balls on the other courts had stopped bouncing, everyone drawn to this execution disguised as a game.
Lucifer caught the inbound pass at sixteen-zero and did something different. He didn't move immediately. Just stood there, dribbling slow, rhythmic. Once. Twice. The sound echoed in the silence.
Elijah crouched lower, desperate now. His eyes tracked the ball with the intensity of prey watching a predator.
A slight hesitation move, just a hiccup in the dribble's rhythm. Elijah bit hard, lunging right.
The crossover that followed was violence without contact. The ball switched hands so fast it seemed to teleport. Elijah's momentum carried him one way while his feet tried to go another. Physics won. He went down hard, sneakers squeaking a discordant note as he hit the hardwood.
"OOUUUUU!"
The sound erupted from thirty throats simultaneously, that universal reaction to witnessing someone's ankles get sent to different zip codes.
Lucifer didn't look back. Didn't celebrate. Just took one more dribble and rose up for the jumper. The ball was already through the net before Elijah pushed himself back to his feet.
"Eighteen-zero."
Elijah's face had gone past red into something purple. Not from embarrassment—from exertion. From the impossibility of it. His internal monologue was written across his features: I can't even touch him. How can I not even touch him?
The next possession was almost gentle. Lucifer drove baseline, elevated just enough for the finger-roll. Elijah's contest was half-hearted, already defeated.
"Twenty-zero."
For the final point, Lucifer caught the ball at the logo—NBA range for grown men, stupid range for a fourteen-year-old. He didn't hesitate. The shot was up before Elijah could close the distance, rotation perfect, arc optimal.
The net snapped like a whip crack in the silence.
"Twenty-one."
Lucifer walked to the sideline without looking back, grabbed his water bottle from where Daphne was holding it, her eyes wide as dinner plates. The coach stood there with his clipboard hanging loose in one hand, mouth slightly open.
Behind him, one of Elijah's teammates whispered to another, the words carrying in the stunned quiet:
"Kid's not human."