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"Come on, brother."
"You too. All the best."
The first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals was about to begin.
During the pre-match handshake, Lance and Kevin De Bruyne greeted each other with what looked like a perfectly friendly exchange. In reality, Lance could feel very clearly that De Bruyne was putting everything he had into that handshake.
Hiss.
Save the strength for the match, man. Why are you squeezing so hard?
After the formalities were done, Lance shook out his aching right hand with a wince.
De Bruyne was serious. Fine. So was he.
Before stepping onto the field, Lance checked the system out of habit.
[System Upgrading... Please wait!]
Still?
Whatever it was upgrading to, it had better be worth the wait. If the payoff was underwhelming after all this time, it was getting a one-star review.
Lance grumbled quietly to himself.
With just his muscle memory improvements to draw on, he had been able to compete for the La Liga title. But in the Champions League, where the stakes were at their highest and he would be facing peak Barcelona in the semi-finals and potentially Real Madrid in the final, he was not entirely confident.
The higher the level, the less room for error. In La Liga, he could sometimes muscle through a situation, dribble past two or three defenders, and manufacture his own chances. But against peak Barcelona or Real Madrid in a knockout tie, those openings would be far rarer. One wrong touch, one moment of carelessness, and the ball would be gone, with a counter-attack on the way. Against sides of that quality, a counter-attack was rarely wasted.
The margin for error approached zero.
Lance needed the system to finish its update. A new template would mean a new character to fuse with, new skills to unlock, new tools to work with. And following the usual structure of three skill thresholds at 25%, 50%, and 75%[Fusion Value], he would need time to build that up. If the character arrived too late, it might not come into its own until the Euros.
"Forget it. Let's see if what I have now is enough to handle Manchester City."
The match was already here. He had to work with what he had.
Beep.
The referee's whistle sounded. Agüero tapped the ball forward, and the match was underway.
"Manchester City start off relatively cautiously. This is the first meeting between the two sides in this competition and neither knows the other particularly well at this level, so an early probing approach is understandable."
"Manchester City probe forward! Good, Yaya Touré... he's broken clear and keeps driving!"
Jian Jun could barely contain his excitement.
Having covered the Premier League for years, he knew Yaya Touré's qualities intimately. The tall, powerful figure was like a bulldozer, carrying the ball deep into the attacking third with a combination of sheer physicality and the silky footwork he had developed coming through La Masia at Barcelona.
The double pivot of Koke and Gabi simply could not stop him. He broke through alone.
"Stop him!!"
Yaya Touré shaped to shoot at the edge of the box and defender Giménez jumped across to block.
"Feint!!"
It was a dummy. Yaya Touré rolled the ball outside his foot to David Silva on the right instead.
Silva didn't control it. He clipped it first-time with his left foot into the penalty area.
"Agüero!"
"That shot just barely clips the side netting!!"
One minute in. Agüero's effort from inside the box had kissed the outside of the net.
The collective gasp from the Atlético Madrid end was audible.
Wasn't this supposed to be a cautious, probing start? Why were they immediately going for the throat?
Even Lance felt his heart lurch for a second. For a brief, horrible instant he had thought it was in.
Fortunately, the Manchester City manager was Pellegrini, not Guardiola. If Guardiola's side had scored that early, they would have calmly passed it around for the remaining eighty-nine minutes.
That near-miss served as a sharp wake-up call. The veteran Atlético fans in the away end were suddenly reminded of the days when Agüero had been their own striker.
"Not bad, right? We've got decent forwards too, you know."
De Bruyne jogged past Lance with a grin.
"Kevin."
"What?"
"You're talking more than usual."
They exchanged a brief look, and Lance noticed Agüero watching from nearby. The former Atlético man. The current Atlético man. Both nodded in quiet acknowledgement.
The Atlético fans had already started spinning the fantasy in the stands.
"Imagine if Lance and Agüero played together. Who in the world could stop them?"
"Which strike partnership could handle both of them?"
"Forget the past. We have Griezmann and Torres. The current trio is just fine!"
Griezmann, catching the look that passed between Lance and Agüero, felt a slight pang.
"Hey, Lance, are you two exchanging secret signals or something?"
"Of course not. It's just mutual respect between competitors."
"Oh, come on!"
Griezmann had no intention of playing second fiddle to Agüero.
Atlético quickly worked their way into an attacking position. Lance played the ball out to Griezmann on the left. The Frenchman was sharp, shifting gears to leave Zabaleta behind, then curling a fierce shot toward the top corner from the edge of the box.
It was a serious effort and the Etihad crowd nearly caught their breath.
Fortunately, the Manchester City goalkeeper held his nerve.
"Joe Hart, one hand, palms it out for a corner!! What a save!!"
"Atlético Madrid win the first corner of the match!"
"We expected both sides to take their time feeling each other out, but incredibly, less than two minutes in, there have already been multiple end-to-end transitions. The pace is extremely fast!"
On the touchline, Pellegrini watched with a quiet smile.
This was exactly what he had planned.
If Atlético Madrid settled into their usual structured shape, Manchester City might genuinely struggle to break them down. But in an open, fast-paced transition game, Manchester City were every bit as dangerous as Atlético. The idea was simple: drag the match into a Premier League rhythm and use the home side's familiarity with that pace to grind out the advantage.
It was working. Atlético were already being pulled into a higher tempo than they preferred.
"Corner taken! Godín!!!"
"The header was dangerous but clears the crossbar... wait, Manchester City are on the break!!"
Home advantage shows itself in many small ways. The noise of the crowd. The boos directed at the visiting team. And the ball boys, stationed at the edges of the field, ready to keep the game moving at every possible moment.
One of them reacted instantly as Godín's header went over. Before Atlético's defenders could track back from their positions, the ball boy had the ball straight into Joe Hart's hands.
Hart set it down quickly, ran up, and drove it long.
Torres was too slow to close him down. By the time he got near, the clearance was already at midfield.
"Sterling!!!"
Sterling was not tall, but his close control was exceptional. He brought the long ball down cleanly, shifted his body, and nutmegged Juanfran with a shimmy before the right-back knew what was happening.
Atlético's defensive shape was completely exposed. Sterling accelerated down the left flank with space opening ahead of him.
Oblak read the danger and came off his line, rushing out to narrow the angle and cut off the dribble. Sterling was ice-cold, faking the shot to send Oblak lunging, then hooking the ball around him and sprinting clear.
Open goal. He shaped to finish.
"It's over!!"
The Atlético Madrid fans watched the ball hurtle toward the net.
Clang.
The post.
Sterling's hurried finish had rattled the woodwork.
Before the away end could even begin to breathe again, a figure arrived at the rebound.
"De Bruyne, taps it into an open net!!"
"It's in!!"
"Four minutes in, Manchester City score first! 1-0!!"
Lance watched the goal go in and clicked his tongue.
"Is the Premier League really this fast?"