The bus to Northgate felt different this time.
The first journey had been a pilgrimage into the unknown. This one was a commute to a familiar battlefield.
The awe was gone, replaced by a low, professional tension that thrummed through the vehicle like a live wire.
Leo sat halfway back, his kit bag between his feet. He'd spent the morning running the kitchen drills until his mother had threatened to hide the ball. The ghost of Max Freeman's holographic press was etched into his muscle memory.
Up front, King sat alone, as always, gazing out at the passing cityscape. But today, his solitude felt different. It felt… expectant. A predator returning to a hunting ground he'd already marked.
In the seat across the aisle, Steve fidgeted with his phone. He glanced at Perez, who sat stiffly by the window, staring at his own reflection in the glass. Perez hadn't spoken since they'd boarded.
"Hey," Steve said, his voice cutting through the rumble of the engine. He leaned across the aisle. "Anyone else notice Perez has gone full mute again?"
A few heads turned. Frank, sitting in front of Perez, twisted in his seat. "Now that you mention it… yeah. You good, man?"
Perez didn't respond. He didn't even blink. He just kept staring, his jaw a tight knot.
Leo felt a cold trickle of unease. His Sideline Perspective was for reading games, not people. But even he could see it: this wasn't focus. This was a withdrawal.
"He's been like that all week," Frank muttered, turning back. "Sits beside me in Econs. Doesn't say a word. Just writes notes like he's carving them into stone."
Leo realized with a jolt that Frank was right. He'd been so buried in his own blueprint that he'd missed the cracks in the foundation of the team around him.
"Enough."
The word wasn't loud, but it carried the weight of a slammed door. Arkady stood at the front of the bus, having materialized from the driver's compartment. His pale eyes swept over them.
"Your teammate's function is to defend," Arkady said, his voice flat. "Not to entertain you with conversation. A wall does not need to speak. It only needs to stand." His gaze landed on Steve, then Frank, with chilling finality. "Worry about your own purpose. Freeman."
Max looked up. "Coach?"
"Did you work on your stamina? Or did you spend the week admiring your first goal?"
Max's easygoing grin vanished. "I worked, Coach. Ran every morning and evening."
"We'll see." Arkady's eyes flicked to Tyler Walter sitting quietly a few rows back. "Walter's warmed up and ready. He understands his role is to be ready, not to be celebrated." A barely perceptible glance at Leo. "The bench is not a seat of contemplation. It is a launch pad. Ensure you are fueled for ignition."
The message was clear. Max's spot was under review. And Leo's place on that "launch pad" was so precarious he might as well be clinging to the exterior hull.
The bus passed through Northgate's imposing gates. The opulence no longer inspired awe; it provoked a quiet, simmering resentment.
The perfect pitch, the gleaming facilities—they were a taunt. A reminder of the mountain of resources they lacked.
In the visiting locker room they changed in a silence thicker than before. The absence of Perez's voice was a vacuum that sucked the air from the room.
Arkady didn't give a speech. He turned to the whiteboard and drew three simple shapes.
"Freddy High. They are not Williams. They are not brutes. They are bureaucrats." He tapped the board. "3-4-3 on paper. In practice, it's a 5-2-3 when they lose the ball. Their system is rigid and predictable. Their strength is organization. Their weakness is imagination."
He drew arrows. "They funnel everything through the center. Their wing-backs are defensive fixtures, not attackers. The left one, #3, is strong. Fast. But he is a hammer. He sees every problem as a nail. He will commit fully to his first read. There is no second thought."
His marker circled an area in front of the Freddy High penalty box. "They condense here. They believe in a fortress. So," he looked at King, "do not siege the fortress. Poison the well. Pull them apart. Make their organization their cage."
He looked at each of them in turn. "You are not fighting men today. You are solving a puzzle. Do it efficiently."
──────
The whistle blew.
From the first second, Apex High moved with a chilling, drilled precision. The chaos of the Williams High match was gone. This was the machine Arkady had built, and it was purring once again.
King was the central processor. He didn't chase the game; he dictated its tempo. He dropped deep, received the ball from Frank, and turned. The entire Freddy High midfield line shifted toward him like iron filings to magnet.
In the 12th minute, he demonstrated the poison.
He received the ball thirty yards out, central. Two Freddy midfielders closed in. Instead of passing wide, he drifted right, drawing them.
At the last second, he used the outside of his boot to slide a pass between them, not to a teammate, but into empty space on the left flank where Thomas had already begun his sprint.
Thomas collected it in stride. The #3 left-back, the hammer Arkady mentioned, charged. Thomas didn't try to beat him. He cut inside once, drawing the defender in, then instantly played a low ball back across the edge of the box.
King had never stopped his run. He arrived like a ghost, meeting the pass perfectly, and with a single, elegant caress of his left foot, guided the ball inside the far post.
GOAL!!!
The Apex section, a small island of blue in a sea of Freddy yellow, erupted.
On the bleachers, Maya shot to her feet, a fierce, proud shout leaving her lips before she quickly sat back down, composing her face. Chloe nudged her, grinning.
On the bench, Leo watched through his lenses. [PATTERN CONFIRMED: DEFENSIVE SHIFT TOWARDS KING CREATES WING SPACE. EXPLOITATION RATE: 100%.]
The machine was working perfectly. And he was not a part of it yet.
Freddy High tried to respond, but their attacks were like neatly written memos—structured, logical, and easily filed away by Perez and the other center-back.
Perez himself was a silent monolith. He didn't shout, didn't organize. He simply appeared in the path of every through-ball, his tackles clean and brutal in their economy.
In the 28th minute, King struck again. A quick free-kick from Frank found Max, who drove at the heart of the defense before slipping a pass to King, who had spun his marker.
From a tight angle, he fired a shot that ricocheted off a defender's knee and wrong-footed the keeper.
2-0.
The first half was a clinic. Just before the whistle, a Freddy High striker broke through and slotted the ball past Miller.
The flag went up immediately. Offside. A sigh of relief, not panic, went through the Apex players.
As they trudged toward the tunnel, the Freddy High players looked frustrated, confused. They'd executed their system. It had been solved in thirty minutes.
In the locker room, the mood was professional, not jubilant. Arkady made one adjustment. "They will double-mark King now. Thomas, Freeman—the space is yours. Do not be decorative. Be decisive."
Then, seven minutes into the second half, disaster.
Thomas went for a ambitious volley, landed awkwardly on his planted leg, and crumpled to the turf with a sharp cry that cut through the stadium noise. He didn't get up.
The medical team rushed on. Leo's heart hammered against his ribs. This is it. Striker down. The sub striker goes in.
He stood up, instinctively beginning to unzip his training top. His eyes met Arkady's.
The coach's gaze was a scanning laser. It passed over Leo's eager face, his poised body, and moved down the bench. It stopped on Tyler Walter.
"Walter," Arkady said, his voice devoid of all emotion. "You're on. Right wing."
The words were a physical blow to Leo's diaphragm. The air left his lungs. He stood frozen, his hands on the zipper of a top he no longer needed to remove.
Tyler jumped up, gave a brisk nod, and ran onto the pitch without a single glance at Leo.
He hadn't just been passed over. He'd been invisible.
He sank back onto the bench, the cold plastic biting through his shorts. Steve gave him a sympathetic grimace. Leo didn't see it. He saw only the back of Tyler's #14 jersey merging with the flow of the game.
Unignorable constant? a vicious voice whispered in his mind. You're a forgotten variable.
The game resumed. The machine had lost a component, but Arkady had a spare. Tyler was solid, unspectacular, doing exactly what was asked: hold width, defend.
Then, in the 48th minute, Freddy High won a corner. The cross was a dangerous, swinging delivery. Miller, a green mountain of rage, charged off his line and punched it clear with a thunderous THWACK.
The ball fell to a Freddy midfielder on the edge of the box. He struck it first-time, a vicious, swerving shot. It seemed to have brushed Perez's hand, sending it out of play.
The Freddy players erupted, pointing at Perez. "HANDBALL!"
The referee blew his whistle, his hand going to his earpiece. VAR check.
Chaos erupted. Freddy players swarmed the ref. Apex players defended Perez. Frank got in the face of a shouting Freddy midfielder, shoving him back. Shoves were returned.
The referee waded into the scrum, blowing his whistle furiously, flashing yellow cards—two to Freddy, one to Frank for his part in the melee.
On the sidelines, Leo watched the chaos, but his mind had detached. The anger, the humiliation—it was fuel. He triggered the Sideline Perspective.
[ANALYZING CONFLICT ZONE… SCANNING FOR PATTERNS…]
His gaze wasn't on the arguing players. It was on the Freddy High left-back, #3. The hammer. He was standing away from the scrum, hands on hips, breathing heavily.
Even in the stoppage, he was positioned in a rigid defensive stance, his weight forward, eyes fixed on King as if expecting a quick counter.
Leo's mind flashed to the kitchen. To the holographic Max, always pressing, always committing. The system's analysis from Arkady's briefing surfaced: "He will commit fully to his first read. There is no second thought."
A plan, cold and clear, crystallized in his mind. It wasn't about his moment. It was about the machine's function. And right now, the machine's primary scoring weapon, Max Freeman, was being neutralized by that hammer.
The referee signaled he was going to the monitor on the sideline. The VAR check would take a minute.
Leo stood up and walked to the edge of the technical area. He caught Max's eye as the winger took a drink from a bottle, his face flushed with anger and adrenaline.
"Max," Leo said, his voice low but sharp.
Max jogged over, wiping his mouth. "What's up?"
"Their left-back. #3."
"Yeah? He's a beast. Quick."
"He's a algorithm with one response," Leo said, his words quick, clinical. "He sees a forward step, he commits to tackle. His recovery time is point-seven seconds. Too slow for a double change."
Max's eyes narrowed. "A double change?"
"La Croqueta. Inside to outside. But as you push past with your right, add a spin—left foot to right, pivot around him. He'll be planted. He can't adjust. The lane will open here." Leo pointed with a finger, tracing an imaginary path on the air between them. "Don't try to beat him for pace. Beat him for thought. He only has one."
Max stared at him for a second, the gears turning behind his eyes. He'd spent a week trying to outrun defenders in stamina drills. This was something else. This was a key to a lock.
He nodded slowly, a fierce grin spreading across his face. He grabbed Leo's shoulder, squeezing once. "Okay. Okay, I see it."
He turned and ran back onto the field, just as the referee emerged from behind the monitor.
The official marched to the center of the pitch, raised his hand, and made the universal TV signal—a square with his fingers. Then he waved his hands in a sweeping, negative motion.
"NO HANDBALL. FINAL DECISION: GOAL KICK."
The Apex High supporters roared in relief. The Freddy High players screamed in outrage, but the decision was made.
As the teams reset for the goal kick, Max Freeman looked across the pitch at the hulking #3. He didn't see a beast anymore.
He saw a puzzle. And Leo Reed had just handed him the solution.
Leo watched, his architect's mind calm amidst the storm, waiting to see if his first blueprint would hold.