The game was still going.
Both sides were playing fiercely, and the tension on the field was thick.
Then it was the blue team's turn to pitch.
The blue team pitcher gripped the white baseball tightly, veins bulging in his arm as he hurled it with all his strength.
A white blur arced through the air and hurtled toward the red team.
The red team batter swung his bat.
Bang!
A terrifying crash exploded across the field.
The spectators were left staring in shock.
The moment the bat connected with the blue team's pitch, the red team batter's bat actually exploded on impact.
The entire wooden bat shattered to pieces.
The baseball, knocked back with terrifying momentum, slammed into a distant streetlamp.
The fragile lamp instantly burst apart, spraying shattered glass everywhere.
"That's way too much..." Gwen said, her mouth hanging open.
Grandpa Max shook his head. "That's definitely not the kind of strength a human should have."
"Maybe they weren't human to begin with," Lucian said thoughtfully.
If he remembered right, those guys were supposed to be robots in disguise.
The game continued as normal.
The blue team knocked another ball back.
Just as the red team pitcher was about to catch it, his vision suddenly blurred.
The baseball, which should have landed right in his hand, twisted strangely and slipped out of his reach.
Bang!
The red team missed the catch.
"That's weird. The Gentlemen actually made a mistake?" Gwen said, puzzled.
"Cuz? Where'd he go?"
Gwen looked at the now-empty seat and realized Lucian was gone too.
The seats on both sides were empty as well.
At that moment, a blue cat sat at the very top of the stands, watching the game below with great interest.
XLR8 could see it clearly. Whenever the players on both sides got into the thick of it, there was always an uninvited guest interfering with the match.
Fasttrack!
Ordinary people might not have been able to see Fasttrack, but XLR8 could see him perfectly clearly.
Even if his initial burst of speed was a little slower than Fasttrack's, once he really got moving, he could easily overtake him.
So XLR8's reaction speed was nothing to scoff at either.
With Fasttrack helping out, there was no suspense left in the match.
The Cannons won the first round!
When the game paused, Fasttrack reverted to normal and changed back into Ben.
"That felt awesome!" Ben felt like he could finally breathe easy again.
Not only had they beaten the Gentlemen, he had also managed to mess with JT and Cash in the process.
Two birds with one stone!
"Hey, JT, did you see that last ball clearly?"
"I was just about to catch it, so why did it suddenly go off course?"
"Can baseballs curve like that?"
Just then, Cash and JT walked out and headed toward a thick patch of woods.
What are they doing? Sneaking off into the woods? Ben wondered, then followed after them.
But before he had gone more than a couple of steps, Cash and JT stopped.
A group of boys in dark red baseball uniforms emerged from all over the woods, expressionless as they surrounded Cash and JT.
"What do you want?" Cash clenched his teeth. He could already tell they were here for trouble.
"Come with us," said the Gentlemen's captain.
"No way!" Cash refused immediately. "Get lost, you losers!"
As he spoke, Cash shoved one of the red team players aside and tried to leave.
He was knocked flat with a single punch and passed out on the spot.
"Ah! Cash!" JT panicked completely, nervously looking around. "What the hell do you want?"
The red team gave no answer.
Another punch knocked JT unconscious too.
Hidden in the shadows, Ben saw the whole thing.
"Oh man, this is seriously creepy." Ben's heart pounded wildly.
"Forget it, I'd better go check it out."
Ben might hate Cash and JT, but they did not deserve to die. If something really happened to them, he would feel awful about it.
Standing by and doing nothing was not Ben Tennyson's style.
Whoosh.
A cold, eerie gust of wind followed behind Ben.
But Ben did not notice a thing. Hiding in the grass, he slowly crept forward.
...
The Gentlemen took Cash and JT to a remote warehouse.
It was surrounded by mountains on all sides, thick with trees, and rarely visited by anyone.
One by one, the entire Gentlemen team entered the dim warehouse and shut the iron door behind them.
At the very instant the door closed, Ben flashed forward and slipped inside unnoticed.
Then he hid behind a wooden crate.
At that moment, the Gentlemen tied Cash and JT to two steel plates.
A tall middle-aged man in a dark red coach's uniform and baseball cap slowly stepped out of the shadows.
"That's the Gentlemen's coach..." Ben recognized him immediately.
The Gentlemen's coach walked up to Cash and let out a cold snort.
"I don't know how they won, but that doesn't matter anymore. These two will soon become our moles." A sneer curled at the coach's lips.
As he spoke, the floor behind him sank down, and a metal frame rose up from below.
Bound to the frame were two blue humanoid bodies.
One fat, one thin.
Whether it was their clothes or their builds, they looked exactly like JT and Cash.
The only difference was that they had no heads.
One of the red team members pulled out a scanner, and a crimson light swept repeatedly across Cash and JT's faces.
Then the data was transmitted into the two humanoid bodies.
In an instant, heads grew out of the bodies, vivid and lifelike, until they became exact copies of Cash and JT.
Right at that moment, Cash woke up and screamed at the sight before him.
"Ah! What kind of monsters are you?!"
JT woke up too.
The two of them were terrified, staring at the people who looked just like them, as well as the expressionless Gentlemen surrounding them.
Their hearts felt like they were about to leap out of their chests.
The coach chuckled. "These two are useless now."
"Take them out."
The moment the red team members heard that, they immediately started toward Cash.
Ben, hiding in the shadows, could not stay put any longer.
Thump.
A flash of eerie green light burst out, and Ben transformed directly into Diamondhead before charging out.
"Stop, you bunch of losers!" Diamondhead stood there in all his imposing glory and shouted, "If you've got the guts, come at me!"
Every member of the red team shuddered.
In the blink of an eye, they transformed into terrifying robots!
Their skin was cold and metallic, their eyes glowed red, their hands turned into sharp scythes, and their feet were like ice skates, carving deep grooves across the floor.
And not only that, the coach mutated as well.
He also turned into a cold killing machine.
He was just much larger than the others.
"Come on!" Diamondhead braced himself for battle.
"Diamondhead, take Cash and the others and go~" A light, drifting voice sounded behind him.
Diamondhead turned around and saw Ghostfreak.
So Cuz had been protecting him from the shadows the whole time.
"But I want to stay and deal with these freaks." Diamondhead did not really want to leave.
"Take Cash and JT and go," Ghostfreak repeated, his purple eyes fixed on him. "I'm about to use my trump card..."