They decided to celebrate the first win with seafood.
It was the obvious choice. They were in Maine, the Tannenbaums were covering expenses, and after the pressure of travel, cameras, interviews, and Alex flattening two men in front of their home crowd, everyone wanted something warm, rich, and unapologetically expensive.
Emma, of course, already had a place in mind.
The restaurant sat near the harbor, all dark wood, wide windows, and brass lamps throwing warm amber light over polished tables. Outside, the late afternoon was gray-blue with the kind of cold that came from sea wind and old brick streets. Inside, it smelled like butter, toasted bread, lemon, char, and the briny sweetness of fresh shellfish. The walls were lined with old Maine maps, faded black-and-white fishing photos, and framed nets no one had touched in years.
It was the sort of place that looked refined enough for wealthy people but still honest enough that local fishermen could have eaten there once upon a time.
Team Nemean took over a long table near the center.
The staff recognized Emma first, then Alex, then the rest of the team, and after a few frantic glances between themselves, decided all at once that they were either about to host a legendary sports dinner or survive a natural disaster with table manners.
The food started arriving quickly.
Lobster rolls, split-top buns browned in butter until the edges crisped, piled with chilled lobster meat dressed just enough to shine. Bowls of clam chowder thick enough to count as serious comfort. Whole steamed lobsters gleaming red beneath pools of drawn butter. Platters of oysters on crushed ice. Grilled scallops with browned edges and sweet centers. Crab cakes, fries, fried haddock, corn on the cob, and enough lemon wedges to brighten the whole coast.
Rico got a lobster roll first and bit into it with so much enthusiasm the raccoon seemed to glow.
He chewed.
Chewed again.
Then declared, "Moletato bun would be better."
Phong did not even look up from buttering a piece of bread.
"I'm not making those in case you're asking."
"Lazy farmer."
Nyx, perched with the dignified attention of a cat tasting civilization, liked the seafood immediately. She took to the scallops with clear approval and treated the lobster like something she might consider respecting.
Bruno, after one attempt at chowder and a suspicious look at the oysters, leaned toward Phong and said, "Need meatier food. Steak."
Emma, hearing that, said dryly, "You are at one of the best seafood restaurants in Maine."
Bruno held the line with the conviction of a barbarian in dog form. "Still need steak."
Little Fireball made the whole thing worse.
Or better, depending on whether one found theft by tiny phoenix amusing.
The chick hopped from shoulder to shoulder and pecked exactly one bite of lobster from every roll within reach, as if tax collection were her birthright. Nobody managed to stop her in time, partly because she was fast and partly because the outrage of being robbed by a fluffy bird did not fully land until after the theft.
Alexei watched her with shining eyes, like every rude little act only deepened his belief in her greatness.
Phong, meanwhile, had gone quiet in that specific way Alex recognized immediately.
He was planning.
She watched him cut into his food, chew once, then drift half a world away in his own head.
"You're thinking again."
Phong looked up, caught, and tried for innocence.
"No."
Alex answered by feeding him a bite of her blueberry pie before he could continue.
The pie was warm, the filling dark and sweet and sharp all at once, the crust buttery enough to remind him that surface food still had some advantages over dungeon cooking.
He sighed around the bite and surrendered.
"I was thinking about planting water spinach," he admitted. "And rice. Maybe coffee too."
That got attention from both Emma and Rico instantly.
"Coffee," Rico repeated like a believer hearing prophecy.
Phong nodded once toward the harbor beyond the windows.
"With Camp Orthrus and the lake alliances controlling the whole shoreline of Baratok now, water crops make more sense than before."
Emma leaned back, thoughtful now.
"Rice would be huge."
"Rice is always huge," Phong said.
Joanne pointed her fork at him. "You say that like a nationalist."
"I say that like a Vietnamese person."
That shut her up.
Phong went on.
"Water spinach should be possible. Rice too, if I can get the soil right and the irrigation stable." He paused, then added in a lower voice, "Coffee would be more difficult."
Rico clutched his chest as if witnessing tragic romance.
"Farmer must believe."
Long would have said something similar, Phong thought.
The mood stayed warm.
The first real ease they had gotten on the surface in a while.
Around them, the restaurant gradually realized who exactly had walked in.
Locals kept glancing over. A few looked amused. A few looked irritated. A few kept watching Alex with the sort of wounded civic pride only sports could generate.
She had just handed Maine's home team their asses.
That bought a person a complicated kind of local fame.
Some of the booing was soft enough to be almost polite. One older man at the bar lifted his beer at Dominic and said, "We'll get you next time." A woman near the back muttered something about New York teams being unbearable now. But it never tipped into real hostility.
The match had been brutal, but Alex had also done something strange in victory. She had preserved the remaining brothers for their next game. The locals did not love her for it.
Yet they respected it.
Then a little girl—eight, maybe nine—marched right over to their table clutching a menu and a marker.
She stopped in front of Alex.
"Can I have your autograph?"
The whole table went silent for one wonderful second.
Then the whistling started.
Jake first.
Then Joanne.
Dominic laughed and said, "One match. That's all it took. Local little girl hero."
The girl glared at him for interrupting the important business of celebrity worship.
Alex, to her credit, handled it better than almost anything else that day. She took the menu, signed it carefully, and even softened enough to ask the girl her name.
When the child ran back to her parents glowing like she had been blessed by a saint, Phong made the mistake of speaking.
"You know," he said, "you could just put the vigilante persona back on."
Alex turned and gave him a long stare.
The sort of stare that informed him several possible futures had now become less favorable.
Phong wisely returned to eating.
A television mounted over the bar kept running league coverage in between local news and ad spots.
Every few minutes someone at their table would glance up, then another would follow, and before long half the group was eating while keeping one eye on the first day's national results.
Josh had won too.
The broadcast showed highlights from Brooklyn's Knights versus Alaska Yetis. Josh took the ring and did what Josh did best when the other side was not terrifying enough to bully him into submission—he dominated.
His near-zero-cooldown blink, combined with the brutality of a multiclass pugilist, was too much for most divers to solve cleanly in one-versus-one format. He stole a perfect three-point win by himself, and the commentators were already trying to frame it as a statement match to team Nemean and the rest of West Coast teams.
Phong watched the highlight reel without changing expression. Across the table, Alex's mouth had gone thin.
Then came Olen's result.
Golden Bridge Warriors had forfeited their first match.
Joanne almost sprayed her drink laughing.
Emma only said, "Predictable."
Phong did not laugh, but he did feel one quiet, mean satisfaction settle into place. Whatever Olen had wanted from the dungeon, the world had started getting ahead of him now. Floor 2 was no longer the stepping-stone it had once looked like to spoiled boys with backing.
Then Dominic had what Jake immediately called "a dangerous idea."
"We should check international results."
Jake stared. "Why is that dangerous."
Dominic spread his hands. "One: I'm Spanish in both heart and nationality. Two: I want to know how Vân is doing in the Asian league."
That was enough reason for everyone.
So the phones came out, streams were opened, and for a while Team Nemean turned from athletes into the most interested spectators in the room.
Europe went first.
There, Germany's strongest diver and one of Europe's Elite Four—Kaiser Jäger—had already claimed his first victory against Jeanne de Valois's team.
The footage was a mess of elegance and absurdity.
Jeanne looked as terrifying as ever, but Kaiser had revealed something new during the match. He possessed a copy of one of the Nine as well: liè.
The commentators could barely contain themselves while casting it.
With Liè, Kaiser could create a perfect copy of himself. Not an illusion. Nor a decoy. But a true combat duplicate with access to his skills, stats, and memory.
The replay showed the effect in brutal detail. One Kaiser became two, and the second fought with the same efficiency, the same pressure, the same impossible awareness as the original. The crowd in the European stream had lost its mind.
At Team Nemean's table, everyone understood the implications immediately.
"That," Emma said, "is why Jeanne was desperate."
Alex nodded once. "A replica of the Nine is already enough to distort a whole tier of competition."
Séline watched in thoughtful silence, likely comparing liè to dǒu and wondering how incomplete each copy truly was.
Then came Spain.
Dominic sat up straighter.
The best Spanish team had lost their opener to Romania's top team, led by Valentin Codreanu, another of Europe's Elite Four.
Dominic booed.
Janet patted his shoulder with the patience of a woman long used to sports loyalty.
The biggest shock, though, came from Asia.
Vân's team had lost the first round, but not with a fight.
With food poisoning.
The bald menace who could flirt with death, mock Yue Ting, and survive Jeanne de Valois had apparently lost his first match without ever stepping onto the ring because his stomach betrayed him. And his teammates chose to forfeit rather than field the round without him.
Maybe it was strategic, of course it was absurd.
And most importantly, it was on brand for the bald menace.
The whole table just stared.
Even Emma looked briefly unsure whether reality had stopped trying.
Jake was the first to recover.
"That is the most ridiculous way possible."
Joanne put a hand over her face. "He survived France and China only to lose to bad food."
Alex shook her head slowly. "That sounds exactly like something that would happen to him."
Phong, despite himself, laughed.
A real one.
Small, warm, tired.
The kind that only came when life stopped trying to be consistent and simply became too absurd not to accept.
The restaurant glowed warmer as evening deepened outside. Steam rose from chowder bowls. Butter hardened slowly in little metal dishes. The smell of sea salt, pie crust, fried fish, and coffee folded around their table until the whole place felt less like a public restaurant and more like a temporary harbor.
For a little while, they were not only a team with a plan, a hidden camp, a murder target, cosmic dread, and a league season ahead of them.
They were just people sharing food after a win.
People teasing each other.
People following results from all over the world and feeling, for once, not crushed by how large that world had become, but connected to it.
And in that restaurant in Maine, with lobster rolls, blueberry pie, league updates, and Rico loudly insisting the global future of cuisine still lacked caffeine-infused cheese, Team Nemean got to be happy without apology.