The beauty of a perfect machine is that it requires no emotion to operate. It simply executes the math.
In the Spanish Segunda División, Leo was conducting a masterpiece.
CD Castellón was playing Real Zaragoza. It was the 70th minute. Leo had barely broken a sweat. The cyan-blue grid of The Architect's Domain had laid out the entire match before the referee even blew the starting whistle.
Leo received the ball under pressure. He didn't panic. He knew Mateo was exactly four steps to his left. He knew Lukas had drifted two meters behind the Zaragoza center-back.
Leo simply flicked the ball with the outside of his boot. Mateo received it, surged forward on his River aura, and drove a low cross into the box.
Lukas didn't even blink. Thwack. 2-0 Castellón.
The Castellón fans sang Leo's name. The manager clapped politely from the sideline. It was clinical. It was flawless.
But as Leo jogged back to the center circle, he felt a strange, hollow sensation in his chest. He looked at Lukas, the German sniper who never smiled. He looked at the Zaragoza defenders, whose spirits were completely broken.
It's too quiet, Leo thought, adjusting his captain's armband. There is no friction here. We are just running simulations on grass.
After the match, sitting in the pristine, quiet Castellón locker room, Leo pulled out his phone. He opened an English sports app.
Blackburn Rovers 1 - 3 West Ham United. (FULL TIME)
Goalscorers: Rio (14')
Leo clicked on the video highlight.
It was another masterpiece from Rio. Surrounded by three West Ham defenders, Rio had used the Zero-State Strike, snapping his leg with terrifying, biomechanical efficiency to rocket a knuckleball into the top corner.
But then Leo watched the rest of the highlights. He watched Blackburn's defense fall apart. He watched Davies, the giant center-back, completely mistime a jump, allowing a West Ham striker a free header. He watched the Blackburn players arguing with each other on the pitch, their shoulders slumped, their collective Will shattered into a million pieces.
Leo locked his phone. The screen went black.
"A king without an army isn't a king," Leo whispered to the empty locker room. "He's just a target."
Three days later. Lancashire, England.
The Blackburn Rovers training ground was practically a ghost town. The torrential rain had turned the pitches into swamps, but that wasn't why it was quiet. It was quiet because nobody was speaking.
Rio stood on the edge of Pitch 2, a bag of footballs at his feet.
Fifty yards away, the rest of the first team was running passing drills. Davies avoided looking in Rio's direction. Briggs was going through the motions with his head down. The manager stood on the sideline under an umbrella, looking like a man walking to his own execution.
They were dead last in the Premier League. Eight points deep in the relegation zone.
Rio didn't care. He kicked a ball up, juggling it idly on his right knee.
He was entirely isolated. The local media had painted him as the tragic hero, the lone genius trapped on a sinking ship. The national media was crueler, whispering that his arrogance was destroying the locker room.
Let them whisper, Rio thought, dropping the ball and violently smashing it into the empty training net. I don't need friends. I need to win.
"Striking a ball angry ruins your biomechanics, kid."
Rio froze. The voice hadn't come from the pitch. It had come from the sideline.
Standing under a sleek, black umbrella was a man wearing a perfectly tailored Italian suit that had no business being anywhere near the mud of Lancashire. He looked to be in his late forties, with silver hair and a sharp, predatory smile.
Rio jogged over to the fence, his eyes narrowed. "Training is closed to the public. Who are you?"
"I'm not the public," the man said smoothly, handing Rio a thick, waterproof business card through the chain-link fence. "My name is Elias. I'm a sports agent."
Rio looked at the card. It didn't have a massive agency logo on it. Just a name and a number. That meant he was top-tier. The kind of agent who didn't need to advertise because his client list spoke for itself.
"I already have an agent," Rio said flatly, tossing the card back through the fence.
Elias caught it effortlessly. "No, you have a babysitter who negotiated you a three-thousand-pound-a-week academy contract while you are currently the second-highest scorer in the English Premier League. You are being robbed, Machine."
Rio tensed at the nickname.
"I watch every game," Elias continued, stepping closer to the fence. The predatory smile vanished, replaced by cold, calculating business. "Your Zero-State technique is beautiful. It is terrifying. You have evolved past this club. But look at them."
Elias pointed his umbrella toward the Blackburn players jogging in the distance.
"They are already dead. They accepted relegation weeks ago. They are dragging you down into the Championship mud with them."
"I pulled them out of the mud once," Rio growled, the dark smoke of his Will flaring briefly around his shoulders. "I can do it again."
"No, you can't," Elias said softly, leaning against the wet metal of the fence. "Football is an eleven-man game. You can score a hundred goals, but if your defense concedes a hundred and one, you still lose. The January transfer window opens in exactly five weeks."
Rio stared at the man. The reality of the situation hung heavily in the freezing rain.
"Blackburn will never sell me," Rio said. "I'm the only thing keeping the fans from burning down the stadium."
"Every club has a price, Rio. Especially a club that knows it's getting relegated and needs the money to survive the drop." Elias slipped the card back into his tailored pocket. "There are three clubs in the top six of the Premier League who are desperate for a lethal number nine. They have the pieces. They just need the weapon."
Elias turned to walk away toward the parking lot, but stopped and looked back over his shoulder.
"You don't belong in a scrapyard, kid. Call me when you get tired of losing."