A/N: HA! I said I would do it, and I DID! Finally!!! Sorry about the wait, and sorry about the fact that this chapter is sorta short, but I had trouble coming up with ideas....anyways, here ya go.
Scraping his fingers across his hair line, Dexter panted and stared at the tiny pools of sweat on his fingers. Had he really been using that much energy? How far were they into the game? His eyes found the scoreboard, drifting to the timer, too embarrassed to see the actual score, and widening when he saw the numbers. Five minutes. They were barely five minutes into playing and he was sweating like a pig.
That bastard Baer doesn’t even look the bit exhausted! Damn…monkey! Monkey was the only appropriate term for Tyler Baer at that particular moment. He jumped around like it was nothing, swiveling past Dexter and everyone else playing on his team as though it was second nature, and could practically block every shot they tried to make. God he was so….frustrated he could scream. That of course was out of the question, as much as he wanted to scream, his ego and reputation depended on him keeping his cool...however if this whole ‘being a monkey’ thing kept up those two things might just be thrown out the window.
Across the gym said monkey was smirking and giving his team mates pats on the back or high fives they clearly did not deserve. He was doing all the work, all those cronies were doing was standing around for show. Not that Dexter was really letting any of his teammates help him, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t done something. That is, excluding Ryker, who hadn’t been seen by him since the first whistle.
Ms. Waters must’ve noticed, because the next thing he knew the whistle was being blown for a timeout and his whole team gathered around the teacher. Taking a moment to glare over at Baer as he sauntered, sauntered, over to his bench, he quickly turned on his heel to head towards Ms. Waters. Grumbling out a couple of curse words he pushed right past the short red head, who had suddenly appeared, and faced the teacher.
There was a look of confusion and a little uneasiness as she struggled to say the right thing to them. “Okay, okay, first half of the first quarter, not going so well. I expected that, really I did,” She mumbled just loud enough for them to hear, but clearly just rambling on to herself. “Orion, I’m going to have you switch…” She looked at the players that had just come off the court, narrowing her eyes. “To Jason’s position, you’re ‘ability’ has always made you a good point guard.” Jason opened his mouth to argue, only to get snapped at. “No arguing. Jason, take a seat on the bench…Now.” Reluctantly he plopped down on the wooden slab, throwing a towel over his neck.
“Ranger, Hunter, switch with Ian and Trevor, I trust you two will know which positions to take, and lastly,” She turned to Dexter who’s eyes were practically glued to the scoreboard, lips pressed in a thin line as he not-so-quietly seethed in anger. She raised her hand, and slapped him as hard as she could.
“What the hell you crazy witch!” He screamed, stopping his moment of rage when he saw the look on her face. Very rarely did Ms. Waters get really mad, but as rare as that was, her getting disappointed was even rarer.
She stared at him, blank expression on her face. “Don’t look at that scoreboard. You know better than anyone on that court that the scoreboard is not something you even think about until the game is over. It only adds pressure that you don’t need.” She said seriously. Dexter had been slapped about this multiple times, by multiple different people, but it never really sunk in. Now that Ms. Waters had actually slapped him (considering every other time was mostly done by his fellow teammates) he realized just how serious it is to keep your eyes off the scoreboard.
Dexter nodded. She smiled slightly, turning to find Ryker standing in between Dexter and Orion, standing there quietly. “Ryker, this time I want you to follow Dexter around like a lost puppy, wherever he is, you are. Got it?” He nodded as soon as the whistle blew once more. “Alright, and one last thing,” They turned their heads to her as they began to walk out on the court. “Kick their asses,” Ms. Waters hissed, getting a thumbs up from Orion, a nod from Ryker, and a deadly determined look from the other three.
Repeating his actions from the beginning of the game, Dexter stepped up to Tyler in the middle of the court, watching as the blond dribbled the ball roughly on the court. “Ready? Or should we take another time-out so Dexy can stretch a little more?” Tyler said in a baby voice. Immediately Dexter lost his smirk, taking a moment to collect his thoughts before he really did blow up at the blond.
“And where did you learn that blondie?”
“It’s not that hard to come up with a nickname for someone like you, especially with the name Dexter.” He chuckled, dribbling the ball a little too close to Dexter. Barely keeping his eye on the ball Dexter hoped he didn’t move his arm to much, so that the ball would be out of his reach. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the ref begin to raise the whistle to his mouth, and grinned evilly.
“Well at least I don’t have a girl’s name.” This didn’t shock Tyler as much as Dexter would’ve hoped, however it was to be expected, considering he’d probably heard it before. But he wasn’t trying to shock him with that, in fact his mind was on a complete other objective.
Less than a second later the ref blew the whistle and before Tyler knew what hit him, Dexter had slammed his hand into the side of the ball, sending it flying to one side of the court. Losing all of his cocky expressions Tyler just stared at Dexter, wondering how something that obvious got away from him. Damn, he thought, watching as Dexter began to move towards the ball.
Now this was another surprise. Had he really just sent the ball in a random direction, not even knowing if one of his teammates was standing there? How stupid! He grew his grin once more, realizing that the whole plan was just to throw him off kilter.
“Two points, Ackerman!” Yelled one of the other refs, confirming the shot both aces never even knew had happened. Who had even caught the ball? Across the court, right under the basket, a satisfied Orion could be seen giving the one and only shadow a thumbs up. He…he actually got there in time to catch it! Dexter thought, never remembering seeing him off to where he’d hit the ball. Then again he could’ve been standing right in front of me at that moment and I wouldn’t even blinked.
Tyler narrowed his eyes, scanning the court to see that one of his teammates was making their way towards him. Swiveling the top of his body around he began running forwards, reaching his hands out slightly to have someone pass him the ball. Sure enough, they followed the orders of the coach, always pass Baer the ball (if he’s open), and threw the ball at him. The ball didn’t even make it halfway to him when a quick flash of red passed by his field of vision, and Dexter was already heading towards the basket again.
W-What? How are they suddenly beating us!? His eyes quickly found the shadow, seeing that he was quickly making his way towards Dexter, obviously under strict orders. So that’s how they’re doing it. He’s everywhere now. It was true, technically speaking, he wasn’t everywhere (of course), but to the players on the court, he was. By following the one player who’s purpose was to be everywhere on the court they basically gave Ryker a whole court to play his little passing game on, and a free pass at that.
The center is obviously the man you want to stop in a basketball game, especially someone like Dexter who constantly has the ball in his hands, so therefore Ryker would go even more unnoticed. He’d seen this ‘technique’ used before, back in middle school. He’d admit that it worked well, if you had the right man playing center. And there was not a bone in his body that didn’t believe that Dexter was nothing more than another useless, rage driven, basketball player with just exceptional strength. Nothing more. In fact, according to Tyler, Dexter wasn’t even a threat.
He was barely a blimp on the radar in his world.
R&R Please
VOUS LISEZ
FadeAway
Roman pour Adolescents"This year the teams are stronger, the players are better, and we're still the same. If we want to have even a remote chance of getting to the finals this year, then we need to make sure we are constantly training. And, as sad as it is, we need to r...
