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Violence rained down from the heavens like rain.

Fat, red streams of blood, broken by wind into droplets.

This was nothing new to true fans of Blaseball. Blood was well linked with the splort. Some would claim it was inexorably linked. But this was something different. To insinuate this was anything approaching normal would be a bald faced lie.

That day, Blaseball knew more than the blood of mortals or outsiders. It got it's first real taste of the blood of Gods.

98 losses is not feasible. The Crabs had players replaced, but that does not lead to 98 losses. What leads to 98 losses are Conditions. Ascension was not meant to be fair. After the farcical battle against the Shelled Ones, especially. The Crabs were thrust beyond their comfort, beyond their means, beyond anything that even estranged mortals could take.

Unable to commune with the comforting presence of their Great Mother in this place beyond her Domain, the Crabs slowly found each and every single loss weighing more and more upon them. The Carcinization did not advance. The newer players did not even form the holy growths. This was another small fire added to the out of control pyre.

As a team however, they soldiered on. They accepted the conditions. The accepted the mounting ridicule, and the jeers and the lack of blessings. They had been there before. Bottom of the League, Top of the most hated teams, Bottom of the vote. Because they were the Crabs. They knew what they had done, where they had come from, even if they didn't know where they were going to.

Cut off from their haters. Cut off from their fans. Cut off from their god. Cut off from former teammates and rivals. Unable to see Chiclawgo. Unable to soak in the Bay, they played. In the end, there was only ever one thing that could break the Crabs.

You know it. I know it. And They knew it.

A defiled effigy was the final straw. Hung from the stands, broken and made mockery of even as it was made to weakly struggle. The pitch came in only to find Kennedy Loser missing from the mound, halfway across the field. The other Crabs were only half a heartbeat behind. It was time. Endless complaints in the dugout, arguments about how much is too much, all absorbed and mitigated by Kennedy. To see him finally break free would have been a breath of fresh air, if not for the roiling anger inside of them all.

To this day in the ILB there has not been a event of violence spreading into the crowd. There are safeguards for that kind of thing. But here, now in the upper leagues, Silvaire's guns ring out. Chitin bites into the deific flesh of those gathered. The Crabs unleashed their deicidal wills, for in the ILB while the fans are Kings, here the fans were Gods. Cruel, vindictive Gods who had brought up a team simply to prove that they didn't belong. That they were out of place in the Big Leagues. It took an act of extreme disrespect for the Crabs to fall to the barbaric depths they had always been displayed as.

What hadn't been expected was the ferocity of the attack. No one expected mortals to be able to break free of the Umpires. No one expected them to climb the barriers, and even if they had, no one expected them to be able to actually harm a god, despite their reputation in the ILB.

But the Crabs have already killed one God. The Great Mother, in her last living gift, gave them their first taste of a God's flesh. And now, in the Big Leagues, they claim more and more until they are stated.

The Gods, seeing their failure to keep these unruly mortals contained, panicked. There was much they didn't know. Too much. It all had to be reconsidered, and so their first act was to contain the fury of these 'lesser' beings by caging them inside of something they should never be able to escape. The entire stadium was sealed inside of a black hole. Crabs, Gods, Umpires, and all. And then the Gods folded their hands and turned to the ILB, bringing it's Blessings that could create such monsters under attention.

In this way, Play was Halted for 10 long years. Upon Earth, players had time with their loved ones. They had time to live off of the diamond. They could be People instead of Players. A gift from the Crabs, however unintentional. For this though, they still remain locked inside of that void.

What will they look like when they emerge, we do not know. If they will emerge, we do not know. But we can hope that they resemble the players they once were when and if they do.