Archive of Our Own ^beta

You seemed to have an almost sadistic enthusiasm for tragic stories.

Discovering why an individual is so passionate about something is thrilling, particularly when it becomes the reason of life for them, and it is amusing to see different people struggle with all their heart to sustain that something in their lives.

Tragic stories have the wonderful ability to make the viewer empathize with one or more characters, thus making them and their choices understandable and in some cases even justifiable; making you passionate about their stories, cheering because their dreams and desires come true, always hoping for a "second chance" following a failure.

When you can relate to a character - be it their determination, their approach to life, their manner of thinking - it amplifies the bond you feel with them.

That is why it is devastating when your beloved sees his dream shatter right before his eyes without any possibility of salvation.

It’s hard for this to happen to the protagonists; of course there must be failures, otherwise the story would be boring, uninspiring and stagnant, but you can’t tear his dream ; you can get close, but not totally, otherwise history would lose part of its bite.

The coo protagonists are already a little more at risk: they are the supports of the protagonist and rather often become the favorites of the public, but their total failure or even their departure is useful for the growth of the protagonist; despite criticism the public would understand and perhaps accept that theirs was a necessary sacrifice.

It is the protagonist of which we follow the events, no matter how much the events may be more interesting or exciting.

It depends on the author.

It is the author who chooses which of his characters is more or less worthy of the public’s attention and of having his story told.

The author chooses to tell a story that can be defined as "The Protagonist"

If a "Supporting Role" is liked so much maybe the author will deign his audience a side-story with him as a protagonist; the luckiest can even get their personal story.

Very rarely have you been passionate about the events of the protagonists or the others: you understand the stories and appreciate some, but you can not empathize with them.

Tragic stories arouse your absolute interest, and there is nothing more tragic, as a spectator, to see a character and already know what his fate will be.

Your favorites are never worthy of much attention: they are secondary characters, expendable for the purposes of the plot, whose dream will probably never see the light, with a potential absolutely wasted.

How tragic is it for someone to know that they have theoretically absurd potential and that they will never be exploited how much and how they should?

This is the principle that pushed you into this crazy project: in a fictional world, characters with tragic stories are always ready to improve, pushed into disadvantaged situations and evolve. In the real world, a tragic story only serves to justify an individual’s inability to improve as much as he could, given his potential.

This was what you thought as you watched those pathetic "unpolished lump of talent", as Ego called them, as they were being tested.

To you, they were a mixture of pathetic, pitiful and tragic lives, not yet aware of their situation. But you knew it, you chose it. Ego may have classified them according to his parameters, but the person who gave him his 300 diamonds in the ruft was you; you and Ego agreed on some positions, but disagreed completely on others. It was normal, your rating parameters are not the same and this varies some ranking positions.

Jinpachi Ego has that ability to push a situation to happen the way he wants, and you still lack that ability.

When they told you how fucked up the BlueLock system was, you laughed: Ego didn’t have your sadistic passion for tragic stories, but to come up with something like BlueLock, you had to be a sadist with a very twisted mind.

And maybe you were even more twisted for thinking about how this was your ideal place.

This project emanated a sadistic passion for football, and you could not help but appreciate it.

You were chewing on a berry lollipop when the first ones eliminated from the project came out : they were all filthy pathetic. The most pathetic of all was Kira, who kept whispering something incomprehensible, probably something about being the "jewel of Japanese football" or some shit like that.

Frustrating.

Probably the lowest point of his football career, a point from which he could only get up and improve and he decided to lock himself in an illusion. The "Protagonist" look was definitely wasted on him; not that the "Supporting Role" was a better one.

No. Kira had shown himself immediately as a marginal character: he might have had the appearance and the minimum of ability that is expected from a protagonist embryo, but he didn't have the necessary character or willpower; above all, he didn't have that goal that forces you to test yourself, typical of a protagonist

It had been obvious since his little show at the Project Presentation, but his ineptitude was even more obvious during the Tag game and in his stupid post-elimination speech. God. Someone like that did not even deserve to attempt the Wild Card, someone who did not want to understand the purpose of BlueLock would not survive long in that football that Ego was destroying and reassembling, it is a simple law of survival and only those who adapt can hope to get ahead.

If the existences of most "lumps of talent" were pitiful and pathetic, yours was certainly a comical one as you roamed the halls of BlueLock 5. Ego hadn't banished you from the dreary four walls that made up your room, but he had advised you in his gentle, caring way, like sandpaper or fingernails on a chalkboard, to take a map with you because if you got lost he certainly wouldn't come looking for you: you were a big girl whose sense of direction had to be at least decent. Definitely comfortable words when the walls and doors of the facility were fucking identical.

That's how you meet Meguru Bachira for the first time.

His was a tragic existence, the kind you always liked, the kind that got better by the second, but could rot into oblivion at the slightest misstep. You had been fully aware of what you were doing when you had presented his profile to Ego; someone like Bachira was an essential part of the project, especially when he would find someone to complement him. Having him and Isagi on the same team had proved to be the right choice, at least in the early stages.

You tried to get back to your room from one of the physical studios in Building 5.

He wandered through the building in his childlike way, looking for something, if his look into each room was a hint.

When he saw you, he smiled in a frankly adorable way and approached you. He bounced around and peppered you with questions that you chose to ignore because you didn't have the strength to carry on a conversation with someone as talkative as Bachira. He seemed neither offended nor annoyed by your attitude, almost pleased. You had arrived at Team Z's practice field when Bachira disappeared for a few minutes, only to reappear beside you with a ball.

"You have to give it back when you're done. You can't take the ball to the dormitory."

That was what you had told him when you parted ways.

Unlike Ego, you weren't interested in being a cloister nun locked in her room, so it wasn't at all strange for you to wander around the different buildings of the Bluelock. Ego had given you free access to all the facilities that the Best Striker wannabes had access to, although you frequented them when they were less crowded. Sometimes you happened to watch a training session or a match in person, rather than on the monitors.

The air in those moments was much more exhilarating than when you watched them play from the monitors. You didn't know if you were a nuisance, though you were pretty sure that some of the boys didn't notice you at all, considering how caught up they were in the moment.

Bachira is definitely not one of them: every time he sees you, he greets you and hugs you like he's known you all his life; he's definitely a very affectionate guy, and you don't mind it as much as you should. A few times he has forced you to help him with his practice; he hasn't physically forced you, he just does this adorable pout that makes it impossible for you to say no. At first you were limited to providing him with balls, then you started to give him little suggestions to improve, and finally you found yourself enjoying his presence and talking to him.

Bachira is the one who pushes you out of your "shadow zone".

"Your monster wants more," is what he tells you one night in the monitor room a few days before the game with Team Y, while you are doing some analysis.

"Did your monster tell you that?" you ask him, pulling his grubby hands away from your notes on the players; ego would have killed you otherwise.

"He wants to get out of the cage you keep him in," at least that's what you can tell by the half-asleep grumbling of the boy who is now sleeping soundly on your shoulder.

In your own life you have never seen yourself as a "main character", you don't have the ability to radiate a light of your own, but you have always been able to bring out the "main character", the light, present in other people, and you are satisfied with that.

This makes you one of those wretched existences that you so despise; perhaps you despise them because you recognize yourself as such.

You do not even glow with reflected light, and you have never felt the need to imitate anyone in order to feel like someone else. The ability to make the most of an individual's potential and make him or her someone has always made you aware of your own abilities. Even if no one knew that a nobody had become a somebody because of you.

You are a non-reflective surface that has never tried to attract light to itself, preferring to study the light of others from afar.

Perhaps this is why Ego took you as his protégé: you were as obsessed as he was with creating something spectacular out of those "tragic stories" you enjoy so much, but your skills have yet to be honed if you wish to do this as a profession.

Otherwise, yours would have been a wasted talent. And there is nothing Ego hates more than to see what he sees as talent being wasted

In retrospect, staying in your "shadow zone" didn't seem so bad, and it certainly didn't make you feel that even the way you breathed was a problem.

You ate your breakfast, but you could feel people staring at you. You felt like some kind of freak, you didn't understand why, and it bothered you. It had been a week since the start of the BlueLock project, there was no way the pathetic existences had really forgotten what a girl looked like.

You would have liked to have breakfast with Bachira, he was the only one of the "lumps of talent" you had a relationship with, but bi-colored bangs were nowhere to be seen, and you had work to do, so you couldn't wait for him forever, and if you had the chance, you would have gladly escaped the tense air you felt around you in the cafeteria.

You know who Seishirou Nagi is. He is a potential tragic existence as well as one of the geniuses in the draft.

He is one of the few players you have more or less interacted with. He had requested his cell phone, and you hadn't had too much trouble getting it to him at the dorm, since you had to go through there anyway. You were more than sure that the team was practicing, but this was Seishirou - Hassle Man - Nagi you were dealing with, and so you shouldn't have been surprised to find the boy sleeping all askew in his bed in the dorm. You had given him your cell phone and left. But that had been a one-sided interaction, the boy was asleep, so you didn't understand why he was staring at you as if you had offended him badly.

You had done nothing wrong, yet you felt like the worst criminal in existence. This continued even at lunch, and you felt increasingly embarrassed.

You had decided to observe their training in person that day - so you couldn't boycott yourself by running away at the last minute. You had sat with your back against the wall, using your legs to support your notes; you had been so engrossed that you had almost missed the moment when the training had ended.

You looked around in confusion; you had seen Nagi practicing, but now you couldn't see him anywhere.

"He went to the changing room at least forty minutes ago," Mikage Reo had dropped down next to you and stared at you.

He had a tragic story that you couldn't wait to hear: those chosen for the BlueLock project put their football careers on the line, knowing that they could be the reason someone else's dream was shattered. Reo Mikage has excellent potential and is already using it decently, but his relationship with Nagi on the field is a dangerous double-edged sword, and in a place like BlueLock, where only the best will survive, his relationship with Nagi can only drag him into mediocrity. You would have been sorry to see him eliminated. Mikage had been one of your favorites since you made the list of candidates, but if his dream was to become the best soccer player in Japan, he should have gotten rid of his dependence on Nagi

In terms of talent and ability, Nagi is far superior to him, but Mikage makes better use of his.

According to your criteria, of course.

Those two were the first in their building for a reason, which was the ability to score a goal and how it was scored.

"I wondered if I had offended him in some way," because for you that was the only explanation for his dirty looks.

"It must have been something if it got my Nagi's attention."

That evening you had been so engrossed in your work that you had almost forgotten to eat. You were convinced that the cafeteria would be deserted, but you found yourself listening to the exchange between Kunigami and Isagi.

They are interesting people, you decide.

In the morning, the stares that landed on you in the cafeteria were the least of your worries: in the afternoon, the meeting between Team Y and Team Z would take place and you wanted to attend it in person, which meant that later, you would have to catch up on work and it was best to relieve the burden right away.

In Team Y, there is a somewhat pathetic existence with great potential, and you wanted to see how he would play against a team with an element similar to him.

Isagi Yoichi had aroused your frustrated interest. He cannot be defined as a tragic existence, but rather as an annoying and frustrating one.

He is the only one who realizes the strategy of Team Y, although much later than he could have, considering his analytical abilities. How he didn't realize sooner how problematic Team Z's strategy was in so many ways is both surprising and annoying. His approach seemed to have some thought behind them, but the execution was decidedly botched due to his poor physical skills, but luck was disgustingly on his side.

Isagi had what Ego was looking for: He didn't excel in skill, talent or ability but he had the hunger not only to survive but to win.

This was something that would definitely take him further in the Blue Lock.

Despite Team Z winning, however, Niko was superior when it came to using his Weapon: you weren't worried about him in the least: this defeat had left its mark on him and now he would do anything to survive and get his revenge.

Niko was now a slightly less pathetic being than before.

That evening, you also left a first aid kit and a tray of food at the door of the Z dormitory.

You met Chigiri Hyoma on the night of their first victory.

Watching matches live was wonderful, but it forced you to catch other matches at ungodly hours, wasting more time than if you had watched them on monitors.

The monitor rooms that Ego had provided for the players were, in your opinion, more comfortable than Ego's monitor room; except for Bachira, who used this room more to spend time with you than for its intended purpose, it didn't seem like many people spent their time here. So you didn't expect anyone to come through.

On paper, Chigiri Hyoma was a very good player, and you knew that he had earned the nickname of "Phenomenon", but ever since he had arrived at BlueLock, he hadn't seemed very enthusiastic to you, and you hadn't seen anything phenomenal in him yet.

This was an unfortunate situation for him.

When he entered, he nodded at you and then sat down on the floor. You had colonized the table with your notes and you kept on sending the recordings back and forth in order to note down details that you would never have noticed otherwise. When you reached Isagi's goal, you saw Chigiri's eyes light up: Was it a mixture of jealousy and nostalgia? You weren't sure.

"Is it a good gol?" You asked him, looking up slightly from what you were doing.

"One of those that keeps you awake at night."

Oh. So that was the problem.

"You could have scored it if you wanted to", you were on a delicate path.

"Isagi and I do not have the same weapon.

"But if you wanted to, you could have scored", you didn't know if he wasn't yelling at you out of politeness or not "You were chosen because of your skills, but if you don't want to put the effort, then get lost. No one is forcing you to stay, and I'm sure the rejected will be happy to know there's a spot available".

"Stop talking like you know me" Fuck, you had pissed him off, but you couldn't stop, it was stronger than you. "I'm the one who chose your tragic existence, so I guess I do know you. I know you, your abilities, your weapon. It pisses me off to think that I was wrong. Make up your mind quickly if you want to be a disgusting, pathetic existence any longer." You gathered your things and left, but soon after, Chigiri had to face another confrontation.

"You could have told me it was the lemon tea," you said as you placed a glass of the aforementioned lemon tea on the table in front of a half-asleep Nagi, but you turned to Mikage.

"It would have been boring otherwise," the little shit even had the nerve to smile at you.

"I thought I had insulted the prodigy here, but it was really funny, I guess." You had gone through all the documents you had on the albino to understand what you could have done wrong to him, and the answer had left you stunned: he was damn stupid.

For breakfast, you happened to have lemon tea, which you later discovered was the child prodigy's favorite beverage. That damned spoiled child would rather stare at you as if you'd killed the hamster he didn't have than come and ask for that damned you because it was probably a nuisance.

You were having lunch with the Team V trio when you noticed Kuon talking to the Wanima twins; it wasn't forbidden, but it was strange. You knew they didn't know each other, but their teams were going to play that afternoon, and it was suspicious.

You arrived shortly after Kuon's third goal, but replaying the key moments you saw while the teams were in the locker room, you noticed that Team W looked decidedly subdued.

When it became clear that Kuon had betrayed the team, you were more annoyed than surprised: You knew that the guys involved in the project would have to do whatever it took, but in your naivety you took it for granted that they would play clean; for someone who had to cheat to survive, the stay at BlueLock would be short and even harder than it already was.

Only those who level up can advance, you cannot think of passing level 3 while at level 1.

Kuon's speech had made you sick: he hadn't understood the meaning of BlueLock at all.

To the boy's great misfortune and humiliation, the match had ended in a draw, but you still had a few apologies to make.

You were seriously frustrated, and Anri was sure that whoever had made you nervous should have watched his back very carefully. You were making a rather violent comment on a player's file; you wanted "the sub existence to have as much difficulty as possible in finding a football job after he was eliminated", the sub existence had been very disappointing to you.

His "ego" is an insult to the project and its participants, such a distorted ego will never have the success it seeks, and to think that you saw something in this downgraded being that turned out to be completely different than you predicted would only increase your anger at yourself.

It didn't matter how much Ego told you that such beings would fall and that you couldn't predict everything correctly.

"If you don't eat them, they will be thrown away, Zantestu."

You were already quite nervous when you arrived at the dinner table, but the sight of Kuon's suggestion of his previous tactic to Team V had increased your sourness. Fortunately, "Dumbtestu" had prevented your rice from landing in Kuon's face, that would have been a waste as well. Then the Isagi arrived, followed by Team Z, ready to declare war on Team V. To instigate an enemy to kill before a battle is what you might call a lack of survival spirit or utter recklessness, but apparently it didn't seem to scare Team Z in the least.

You were grateful that the trio had left so you didn't have to intervene.

You found yourself at the Z-team table with Bachira next to you, trying to feed you, though you weren't sure how it happened.

While the rest of the team was probably wondering who you were, you felt like a freak again.

"I owe you an apology," you looked at Chigiri, who was looking back and forth between you and his fried vegetables, "I shouldn't have provoked you… you played well. I knew you weren't a pathetic existence."

The match between Team V and Team Z was without a doubt the best match in all of BlueLock. You had seen what could be considered Bachira's best selfish moment yet; his play had thrilled you: this is what happens when a tragic existence evolves. Even the evolution of Chigiri's and Kunigami's weapons had satisfied you, you were almost proud that these tragic existences used the potential you had seen in them. The awakenings of Nagi and Isagi had also been something exciting; they were two different awakenings, but fundamental for their path. Nagi's had happened more on an emotional level, he had let his desire to win shine through, how fierce he could be when he committed himself to something and this had emphasized his already excellent abilities even more. Isagi had undergone a technical awakening, he understood what his formula was and how to make the most of it and once he improved his skills, he would be a nightmare on the field.

Despite all these monsters, none of them were the best player on the field. No, the best player of the match was that hothead Raichi; you didn't care that Ego might not see it the same way, but for you, Raichi's presence had allowed Team Z to win: he had marked Reo throughout the match, he had prevented Zantetsu's goal, and he had saved the ball that Isagi had scored on. The strength, not only of the body but also of the will that this boy possesses, is second to none.

They were all here as strikers, but there was no denying that some of them seemed perfectly suited for other roles as well.

Not that you would ever say it out loud, most of the pathetic existences would have yelled at you, and you didn't want to go deaf for hurting their fragile crystal ego.

You had more important things to deal with.