Disclaimer:This fanfiction is set in an Alternate Universe (AU) timeline for the Barcha Bastard game was 2016. So Certain real-life and Blue Lock player ages, birth years, and career timelines have been adjusted or shifted to fit the narrative structure of this story.
Raphael didn't feel a trace of anger.
Standing in the dusty heat of the sunken concrete court, watching the chain-link net still violently vibrating from Bunny's volley, all he felt was an overwhelming, electrifying surge of joy.
He had come to Spain expecting to be an spectator, watching Messi, Noa, and Lavinho from high above in the stands. But here, in a sun-baked streetball cage hidden away in the alleyways of Barcelona, he had stumbled upon a true monster his own age.
A stray dog with teeth.
"Nice goal," Raphael murmured, wiping a trace of sweat from his forehead. His green eyes burned with a sharp, ravenous light. "Now it's my turn."
The ball was reset in the center of the pitch. Raphael took the kickoff, tapping it gently back to his teammate, a tall, gangly boy with cracked sneakers.
Raphael quickly realized that unlike Bunny's team, which relied heavily on Bunny's explosive individual brilliance to break through, his own side was composed of kids who played a classic Spanish style: short, ground-level, quick-touch passing.
Raphael adapted instantly.
He dropped slightly deeper, positioning himself at the vertex of a moving triangle between his two midfielders. When the ball was zipped to his feet, he didn't trap it dead. Instead, using a subtle orientated first touch with the outside of his right boot, he redirected the ball's momentum around an incoming defender while simultaneously opening his body to face the entire pitch.
Zip. Tap. Zip.
With two crisp, short passes, Raphael sliced through the opponent's high press. He moved like a conductor, pointing with his hand, dictating where his teammates should run, and delivering passes into space before the receivers even realized the space existed.
Then, Bunny arrived.
The older boy approached like a hunting shadow, his dark eyes locked onto the ball, his low center of gravity making him practically immune to basic feints.
Raphael tested him first with a sudden burst of acceleration, pushing the ball forward to race past him. But Bunny's explosive recovery speed was ridiculous; within two strides, he was side-by-side with Raphael, using his shoulder to leverage him off balance.
Raphael lacked the raw physical acceleration to simply outrun Bunny over short distances.
'Alright,' Raphael thought, his mind working at lightning speed. 'If I can't beat him with speed, I'll beat him with timing.'
On his next drive, Raphael approached Bunny again. This time, he didn't try to sprint. He slowed his pace down to a crawl, inviting Bunny to step in and tackle.
The moment Bunny extended his right leg to snatch the ball, Raphael initiated a high-speed drag-back flick.
He dragged the ball back with the sole of his right shoe, teasing Bunny's leg, and then, before his foot hit the floor, tapped the ball sharply behind his standing left leg with his heel, a classic L-turn.
Bunny adjusted with frightening speed, shifting his weight to block the exit route.
Expecting that exact reaction, Raphael didn't finish the turn. Instead, mid-motion, he used the inside of his left foot to tap the ball back forward, right through Bunny's overextended, open legs.
Nutmeg.
The metallic sound of the ball brushing against Bunny's frayed shoes echoed across the concrete. Raphael slipped past him on the outside, reclaimed the ball on the other side, and drove into the box.
Without taking an extra setup touch, he opened his hips, faking a powerful shot toward the top corner to make the goalkeeper commit early, then snapped his ankle at the last microsecond. A low, hard, laser-precise finesse shot curled around the keeper's outstretched fingers and kissed the inside of the far metal post before nestling in the net.
Goal.
Raphael turned around, a sharp, wild smirk on his face. Bunny stood motionless where he had been megged, staring down at his feet. Slowly, Bunny turned his head. His expression remained completely flat, his chest heaving with heavy breaths, but deep within his dark eyes, a faint, dangerous spark had ignited.
For the next twenty minutes, the concrete court turned into a war zone.
It ceased to be a simple pick-up game between neighborhood kids; it became a high-octane duel between two completely opposing philosophies of football.
Whenever Bunny had the ball, he was an uncontrollable force of nature. His dribbling was raw, unpredictable, and explosive. He used double step-overs, sharp body feints, and explosive wall-passes that capitalized on his sheer agility.
Raphael tried his best to contain him, reading his body language and closing down passing angles, but Bunny's raw physical balance allowed him to pull off absurd acrobatics, like a mid-air heel-flick over Raphael's head, to equalize the score.
Conversely, whenever Raphael took command, the tempo of the entire pitch altered.
At times, Raphael played like a wily general standing near the center circle, orchestrating the game with pinpoint, line-breaking passes that put his teammates in 1-on-1 situations. Other times, he played like a man possessed, embarking on solo runs where he used elasticos, roulette spins, and sharp cuts to dismantle the opposing defense single-handedly. If u cut off one option for him, he'd simply use the other.
Neither boy could completely stop the other.
As the score reached 4-4, the surrounding kids were screaming, hanging off the rusted chain-link fence in awe.
Bunny's breathing was ragged now, his lungs burning, his tattered shoes scuffed with white concrete dust. Yet, internally, his world had flipped upside down.
'Who is this kid?' Bunny thought, staring at Raphael, who was panting with a massive, thrilled grin on his face. 'He's younger than me... lighter than me... but he reads everything. And why is he smiling like that? How can someone enjoy this so much?'
For the first time in his grey, suffocating life, Bunny felt something hot and fierce pounding against his ribs. It wasn't exhaustion. It was fire.
Driven by an instinct he didn't fully understand, Bunny entered a state of sheer hyper-focus, a fleeting, instinctive taste of a higher power. He was beginning to approach the threshold of flow, not purposefully of course but due to how deep his immersion was in this game his natural instincts kicked in.
He intercepted a pass, executed a seamless roulette past two defenders, and charged directly at Raphael for the decisive final goal.
Raphael dropped low, his green eyes glowing. 'Come on! Let's finish this!'
They were three feet apart, both preparing to execute their final, absolute move..
CLANG!
A loud, metallic rattle shook the court as a heavy leather boot kicked the outer fence.
"Oi! Clear out!" an older group of teenagers, the neighborhood's older seventeen-year-old regulars, shouted as they strolled onto the pitch, carrying their own equipment. "Game's over, tiny kids! Our turn for the field!"
A collective groan echoed from the younger players, but no one dared argue with the bigger teenagers. The magic spell of the match was instantly broken.
Bunny stopped mid-stride, the ball settling under his foot. Losing his brief grasp of the flow state entirely. His heavy breathing was the only sound between him and Raphael as the other kids began scattering to collect their bags.
Bunny looked at the ball beneath his feet, then looked up at Raphael. His face returned to its usual distant, solemn state, but the venom in his eyes was entirely gone.
He kicked the ball gently toward Raphael. It rolled across the concrete and stopped right at Raphael's feet.
"Sorry," Bunny muttered softly, his voice low and scratchy from disuse. "For taking it earlier."
It was a strange, blunt apology, but coming from a kid who looked like he had never spoken to anyone in weeks, it carried genuine weight.
Raphael trapped the ball with a soft smile. "Don't worry about it. You gave me the best game I've had all year." He nudged the ball back toward Bunny with the toe of his shoe. "Keep it."
Bunny blinked, caught completely off guard. "What?"
"I'm leaving Spain tomorrow," Raphael explained, stretching his sore arms over his head. "I've got plenty of balls at home. Besides... a ball like that deserves to be played with by someone who can actually control it like you."
Bunny stared down at the crisp, official football resting at his feet, then back up at the green-eyed boy. "Why do you play?" Bunny asked quietly. "Why do you look like that when you're on the field?"
Raphael paused, then grinned, wide, sharp, and brimming with unshakeable confidence. "Because I'm going to become the greatest in the world. I'm going to crush every league, win every trophy, and sit at the very top. There's nothing more fun than that, except for the process, and meeting players like you."
Bunny stared at him for a long moment. A tiny, almost imperceptible shift touched the corner of his lips not quite a smile, but a spark of life.
"You're crazy," Bunny said quietly. " But if you want to be the greatest... you'll have to beat me first."
Raphael laughed out loud, a clear, ringing sound. "Deal! Your name was Bunny right?"
"Yeah, my name is Bunny Iglesias" the boy replied simply.
"I'm Raphael Dos Santos" he said, turning to walk toward the exit. Raphael looked back over his shoulder one last time. "Don't forget that name, Bunny. We're going to meet again on the world stage."
Bunny didn't answer with words. He just rested his foot on the ball, watching Raphael walk away, the grey world around him feeling just a little bit brighter.
Three Months Later, Milan, Italy
The cool autumn wind swept through the immaculate, razor-trimmed grass of the AC Milan Youth Academy training grounds.
Eight-year-old Raphael stood near the sidelines in a sleek, red-and-black training kit, lacing up his boots. Beside him stood Oscar, holding a digital tablet.
What Raphael hadn't realized on that sunny afternoon in Barcelona was that Oscar had eventually tracked him down to the street court and had quietly recorded the entire 5-v-5 battle between Raphael and Bunny from behind the fence.
Oscar had taken that raw, chaotic streetball footage, combined it with videos of Raphael's rigorous technical drills in Brazil, and sent it directly to a few high-level contacts he maintained from his professional career.
Among them was the Head of Youth Scouting for AC Milan, who previously worked for Chelsea.
The scout, a sharp-eyed Italian man named Marco, walked over to Oscar, holding a clip-board and shaking his head in mild disbelief as he glanced at his screen.
"The kid in the hoodie from the Barcelona video... who was he?" Marco asked in fluent English.
"Just another prospect from the streets of Barça," Oscar replied with a faint smile. "I tried to find him again the next day to help him out, but he'd vanished back into the city. Though... I doubt he'll stay hidden for long. A talent like that always gets noticed eventually."
"Indeed," Marco agreed, turning his sharp gaze toward Raphael, who was currently standing on the pitch, casually juggling a ball with incredible, effortless precision, switching from heel to shoulder to temple without letting it drop an inch.
"And your boy... the way he manipulated space in those street games, adapting his passing to fit total strangers in seconds... it's absurd for an eight-year-old."
Marco explained with a helpless chuckle.
He eventually stepped forward, blowing a sharp whistle that echoed across the facility.
"Alright, Raphael dos Santos!" Marco called out. "Your trial begins now! Show us if that genius of yours works on an official pitch!"
Raphael let the ball drop softly onto his boot, trapping it dead. He looked out over the vast, beautiful pitch of AC Milan, his heart pounding with fierce, unstoppable excitement.
Spain was in the past. The lesson of Messi, the rivalry with Bunny, the tactical wisdom of his father, it was all condensed inside his chest, fueling his ego.
"Let's get started," Raphael whispered, a sharp, dangerous smirk spreading across his face as he stepped onto the grass