Divine Celebrity 137 (Patreon)

“Come at me, little boy,” I said as I stood between the hulking player and the hoop, taking a simple yet perverse pleasure from referring to him as little. 

Accepting the ball implied that he was the worse player, but he was already too angry to notice that fact. He rushed forward, intent on running me over to dunk. A good idea to show his superiority. 

Unfortunately for him, even discounting all the benefits of my Traits, that was the worst choice he could have done. I was a football player, and if there was one thing I was not unfamiliar with, it was bodily contact. 

I cut his path and straightened my stance … and he literally bounced off me. “Tacking drills, fun,” I said, not bothering to lower the volume of my chuckle while he stumbled back.

To his credit, he managed to hold the ball. I could have rushed to take the ball off him, but I was more interested in the Intent flow. I could feel a second domain being activated … 

Athletics.

The sense of activation I received wasn’t as intense as the one I was feeling from Lust, but unlike Lust, it was rising faster. 

An unexpected benefit, almost enough to make me let it slide when my opponent rushed toward me once more, this time trying to fake to the left of me before making a sharp turn. 

Unfortunately for him, almost mercy was the same as no mercy. I acted like I had taken the bait, and he rose for an easy dunk … but I turned just at that point, and slapped the ball off his hands. “Nice attempt, little boy,” I said with a chuckle, not even making the attempt to pick the ball as it went out of bounds. 

“You’re pushing your luck,” he growled, and I just chuckled, not even bothering to answer even as one of his teammates passed the ball back to him. 

This time, I saw him preparing for a mid-range shot, and rushed forward. “Enough warm-up, right,” I said as I started defending him, making him impossible to make a shot. He tried to fake me twice, and the second, I acted like I had swallowed it, earning a hurried shot attempt. 

Another block, though this time, I followed the ball. Two blocks, back-to-back, were enough to show just how hopeless his attack attempts were, and while the boosts to the Intent flow were nice, it was hardly enough to stretch the game too much and fake competitiveness. 

“Not a bad warm-up, right coach,” I said as I dribbled the ball, chuckling as I stood a step behind the three-point line, waiting to see if he was going to defend me. 

He did not, so I rushed forward, copying his earlier attempt at a layup, but unlike his, my fake step was wildly successful, forcing him to overcommit to the left. He tried to recover, but as I rushed forward, my momentum destroyed his hasty defense. 

My rush was hard to deal with even when he was perfectly balanced, let alone caught flatfooted. And, just like that, I dunked over him while he stumbled back. 

A picturesque scene. 

I glanced at Kim, who had set up at a distance. She gave me a thumbs up, showing she was happy with the pose, followed by another gesture asking for me to repeat it. 

I rushed twice more, bullying him with my agility. Of course, I was nowhere near the limit of what I could really do with my Divine Traits, just keeping myself below my earlier limits. 

I knew that I was already in the sight of at least two groups that were aware of the divine matters, and I didn’t want to alert them with my sudden improvement. 

Admittedly, even revealing this much was a sacrifice, and if I was convinced that my enemies were limited to a few organizations, I would have played my cards much closer to my chest. 

But, I still remembered the cursed fires that had been burning the house my guide had forced me to visit. Combine that with the pattern of incidents I had managed to infer from my web searches — starting from two years ago, and getting more frequent each month — the faster I gathered the intent, the better. 

Even if I had to reveal some secrets in the process. 

I was betting that a, due to their inability to harvest Intent on a wide scale, the other groups would treat my actions less as a determined effort, and more as a thoughtless rush to get rich after getting a semblance of power. 

As my mind drifted, I continued playing. After three more dunks, the coach made a gesture, and my opponent focused on defending only the hoop, waiting for me to walk forward. 

They must have decided I couldn’t shoot. A realization that I could disabuse them … but why waste the opportunity. First, I rushed toward the basket once more, this time ‘barely’ achieving a lucky layup against his focused defense. 

“We shouldn’t waste much time like this, coach,” I declared arrogantly. “Why don’t you send two more players so that I can show just how terrible your players are,” I declared, this time letting a hint of Taunt infect my voice. 

“As you wish!” the coach growled, and gestured two players to join the game.  One of them was a pivot, nearing seven feet, and another six-nine player, even burlier than the unlucky guy I had been torturing. 

“Oh, coach, you’re nasty,” I said with a chuckle, watching as they covered the perimeter aggressively. It was clear that he wanted to make it impossible for me to rush inside. Looking at the angry faces of the players — justifiable considering I had been humiliating their teammate for the last few minutes — if I rushed forward, the tackles I would receive wouldn’t be much weaker than the football field. 

And, as much as I wanted to do that, I had a simpler plan to handle that. With a smile on my face, I pulled behind the three-point line, and let a gentle shot fly. 

“Another point for me,” I declared smugly as I looked at the coach. They passed me the ball, and I bounced it a couple of times, waiting for them to approach. One of them did, but a little dribble between his legs was all I needed to leave him behind, and while he scrambled to catch me, I took another three-point shoot. 

“You can shoot threes as well,” the coach said, his face getting even more purple. Ordinarily, regardless of the circumstances, a coach should be satisfied by discovering a genius player in his school, but his reaction didn’t surprise me too much. 

After all, there was a reason Coach Juana asked me to target him. He wasn’t like Coach Spencer, but that didn’t mean it was any better. Coach Spencer had run his part of the team as a frat house, as he was rich enough not to care about anything. 

The old man I was facing didn’t share the same richness, so he was reputed to make some shady dealings to distribute his scholarship spots and other irregularities. 

“Of course. It’s simple compared to throwing a sixty-yard pass while four men are rushing to kill me,” I said, underrating the difficulty. It was not a fair statement, but I didn’t care about fairness. 

“Let’s see how good is your handle, then,” he said, and made quick changes, replacing his new additions with point guards, dedicated to defending me at the perimeter. 

“Good, you want me to humiliate the whole team together,” I said as I bounced the ball happily despite the double team, moving among them. I could have rushed through them to break past them using my physical advantage, but that wasn’t as fun. 

Instead, I moved between them, the ball dancing between my legs — and occasionally theirs — as I gave them a quick but harsh lesson about handling. “And, time for a three-pointer,” I declared suddenly as I jumped. They raised their hands, trying to contest, but they jumped late, and the ball didn’t even touch their fingers. 

It was a perfect shot. 

Too bad someone wanted to act like a jerk. My unlucky opponent — no doubt triggered by his girlfriend cheering happily for me — rose up and slapped the ball before it could go in. It was an obvious goaltending attempt, but I didn’t let it bother me as I moved and grabbed the ball. 

I had much better ways of finishing the game than a boring argument about rules. 

“That’s how you guys want to play?” I said with a chuckle. “Let’s play,” I said as I rushed forward. I slipped through one of the point guards with a little dribbling trick, while slamming the other with my shoulder and pushing him away. 

The unlucky power forward tried to cut my path, but before he could do so, I threw the ball, letting it bounce off the board. For a moment, it treated my throw as a poor hurried shot, which was a big mistake. 

He couldn’t prevent it from going in either way, but at least, he could have avoided it turning into a poster dunk, flying back as our bodies collided, while I stayed hanging at the board. 

At a distance, I could see Kim immortalizing it through her camera, and the Intent flow was already getting more intense — with a corresponding strengthening of the Domain echo from Athletics. 

I had a feeling that Megan would be very happy with her marketing campaign… 

And, hopefully, I would finally have some spending money.