It’s impossible to put into words how dense and packed Hudson County is. How dense and packed is it?
It’s denser than any mother from a playground joke.
It throws off the density for the entire state. However, their community college was like a criminally neglected area of concern. We had very little to go off for our intelligence gathering. There was a roster on the website, but we drew up blanks. None of them had any web presence, so this might be amateur hour, or we might be eviscerated.
Their record was not great though. They had won about as many matches as any other team in the league, which put them in the position that they would need to win this one to stay competitive. It wasn’t like we wanted to slay, but we came to fight. I had hoped that they came to fight as well.
Their faculty was a biology professor, which struck me as odd. He was a bit on the older side, but he was sharp. We had a call early in the week and I was sure that he had gotten away with murder in terms of asking his family for help to set up his computer over the years.
Professor Hunter was a man who looked like he should have retired while Reagan was President. But he was as sharp as a tack. Perhaps it was his unflappable courage in the face of adversity.
At least, he sounded like that on our call.
“Professor Andrew, are you sure you want to have this at the beer garden? It seems very...”
“It’s an offsite, but the county board approved it. We have precious little space available. It’s right by the light rail as well, which was a big selling point. The kids can drink afterwards if they’re of age,” he said. “The first round is on me, by the way.”
“I’m just questioning why we’re having it there instead of say any other venue, but at least I’ll be able to get some bratwurst,” I said.
“It’s Oktoberfest. The kids all agreed that we would do home games there. They have a good back room. If they get too rowdy, the hospital is right there as well.”
“IT sounds like you have everything under control.”
“The company that’s doing the computer setup has a good working relationship with the beer garden. They regularly host competitions.”
That was the point that I was going to have to walk back and exam later. I hadn’t thought about the social lubricant of having beer there. I wasn’t really going to go all out and drinking. I did want to have some German food.
“Well alright. We’ll be seeing you then,” I said. We had off for Indigenous people’s day so I just wanted to iron this out.
“Thanks for checking in, Professor Thomas. We’ll be seeing you.”
Having Monday off was great. Having to call the man who took forever to reply to email helped. I related the information to the team, and I was immediately told that I would be the designated driver.
Kelly: Absolutely not. Only two of you are of age. Murph can’t even smoke.
Murphy: But Professor! What if we shut them down?
Kelly: If they shut us down, we drive home in silence. If we shut them down, then brats are on me.
Racquel: Brat summer has turned into brat fall.
Rachel: It’s Octoberfest. Isn’t it going to be packed?
Kelly: All the reason to do your best.
Rachel: Are we wearing costumes?
Racquel: CAN WE WEAR COSTUMES?
Rachel: Did we just become best friends?
Esther: LMAO you fuckers.
Bob: So, I’m hearing bratwurst.
I kind of tuned it out after that up for a bit. I might love my girls, but they were ridiculous. They could definitely egg each other on. I was so glad that Rachel had joined the team. It was the bit of spice that made it work.
My first day of class, we went straight up to train the same way we’d planned and before I knew it; we were there at Hudson County. I will not say that I stopped them from drinking. What I’m going to say is that the other team was slightly older than us and they all had a beer. I don’t think it was going to affect their play at all. I just thought they were having a good time. No matter what we’re doing. It made sense for them to come by early and set up.
Thankfully, we had our third-party company, making sure that nothing efficient was going on.
When I met Professor Hunter, he looked like he was about to sell an advertisement for boner pills. I’m not kidding. The guy looked ancient. He was spry and young mentally, but outside of that he was really getting into character. He had dressed up for the occasion. He had clearly enjoyed this spot more than once. Unfortunately for me, he had also opened a tab at the bar. Worse, he was wearing lederhosen.
I say unfortunately, but what I really mean is it was a great time for me to contemplate having the plan of drinking when I was done. After all, someone responsible had to drive these kids home, and I had met these kids. See, in Trinidad, there were no such problems with the age of drinking and things like that. If your parents wanted you to drink, you could drink.
Now that much just might be my mother, who had decided early on that. If I got more socially lubricated than I might have more children so that she could phone over them instead of me. This may not be a universal experience.
“It’s so good to meet you, Professor Thomas,” he said. “You’re looking really well.”
I kind of blushed.
Some old white men didn’t always get me going, but he was a genuine guy, and I had no stakes here. Honestly, the best that could happen was that I could recruit one of his students for a future franchise.
I didn’t see that happening, but it might be in the cards. After all, we might fight each other now, but if there was a New Jersey team? I would take anybody. If I could pay people's real salaries? Real competitive salaries, I will take them in.
“Thanks for having us here, Professor Hunter,” I said. “I’m so glad that you decided to host us at this unusual venue. Especially given the current situation.”
“I understand that the election’s coming up and it’s weighing heavily on a lot of our minds, he said. Just know that I’m an ally.”
I gave him a look. Did he think I was gay? Or was this a race thing?
He clearly had gotten this look before. He shrunk back. His skin was very mottled, and sun worn. The man enjoyed his time off.
“I’m just saying that I support you.”
“Professor Hunter,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re on about, but whatever that is, I would like 400 mg of it.”
“Heck. I’ll give you a gram.”
I could see his visible relaxing into understanding that he was not about to get murdered for saying the wrong thing. I wonder how many non-sequiturs he dropped over the years that had gone wrong. Honestly, concerning the man worked in Hudson County, he should have gotten used to this. Seeing a big girl with freckles and curly hair should not have been something that he was not used to.
“We’ve heard about your exploits,” he said. “Some of my students were watching your twitch streams, and I got to say we’re excited to play against you.”
“I hope my guys give you guys a good reason for coming out here, then. I would hate for us to just unceremoniously sweep you off your feet.”
“We’ll give you a challenge. Just know that our team is more fundamentals focused,” he said. “Some of them need to study more. A lot more.” He pointedly looked over at a group of students in Hudson County colors sitting on a long table. Two of them had beer steins that were half full. It was not even.
“Yeah, I think you need to talk to him about that,” I said. “The real world is not like Jersey City.”
“I mean, it is like Jersey said a little. Gentrifying in some places, getting better slowly over time,” he said. “Having a place called Hoboken next to it. It where the rent is ridiculous and costs a million dollars to buy something.”
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“Those are all normal things,” I said. “But you got to expand your bubble a little. Just because you got the path train and can easily get to midtown doesn’t mean that these kids are going to have it easy.”
“We’ve all got to do our best to get the kids through this new world,” he said. “Now, speaking of which, did you hear about this new bratwurst with onions they’ve got? They called it a jerk bratwurst, which honestly makes me laugh a little. It’s like they decided they wanted to make jerk chicken, but then they…”
I was already at the counter before we had finished the sentence. He joined me a second later, laughing.
“Professor?”
“I want to see what the German restaurant does with the flavors of the Caribbean, I said. Now where’s our ref?”
I placed my order.
“Ah, that would be the guy who is on his second there,” he said.
He directed my attention to a man in the corner who was surrounded by what had to be all his gym bros. Honestly, it looked like they were all on the same stack.
I mean, look if aesthetics are your thing, that’s fine. I didn’t really want somebody who looked like they could be carved up into steaks, but that’s a place where your mileage can vary. Other women might like that. Chances are, though, that if you went to the gym like that all the time, you were only going to attract other men.
“That’s a referee?” I asked.
“That’s our referee. Apparently, it’s not against the rules for them to quote unquote to have a drink or two. Based on his size, he can handle it.”
“Based on his size, he should be working as a lumberjack,” I said.
“He told me to come talk when we got together.”
The person behind the counter handed me a buzzer. I accepted it and then we made a beeline for the referee.
“Mr. Taylor, I’ve brought Professor Thomas here.”
“Are you both ready for the pre brief?” he asked.
“Let’s get it on,” I said.
It was one of those mandatory things. No pushing, no shoving, and no drinking, at least for the students. All the normal stuff.
We got set up in the event hall.
The ban round was a lightning affair.
Honestly, the band round felt a little more like we were having fun at a party. Then we were actually playing out here. I felt for these guys. Babe. Come here so you can confessional game and this felt like they were gearing up for a friendly time at the senior center.
The all mail team, because of course they were all male, did not seem unified. In fact, if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that he’d have put these people together that same day and taught them to play the afternoon before we started. But they were all people that clearly had played before and they knew what they were about. They just weren’t nearly as good.
The match rating showed up as soon as it got into the band round and three of my guys had nines. All of their guys had sixes. So either the patch thought they weren’t going to be a problem or my guys were definitely in that realm where having trained so much paid off. I would bet it was all the training.
With Rachel on the team now, I was going to treat this one as another training session.
You see, there was one problem with this. If we did really well, then we would play only two games. If we did mediocre and the other team won one match, then we would get a third game. No one really cared that I was trying to get as many points as possible. If I tried to explain the patch to anybody, then people would probably look at me sideways.
My pocket buzzed halfway through and this time, it wasn’t my phone with the latest gossip. No, this came straight from the lady in lederhosen. My stuff was ready. We only had about 2 minutes and we were at the very first person on each team deciding their roles before I came back with my pretzel bun and bratwurst dinner.
I will not lie. They were far off the mark with their jerk chicken. They didn’t make the meat any less good. It was cooked well and clearly a lot of care had gone into the creation of the presentation. I would definitely come back here again. Maybe not next week, but next time I needed to stuff some sausage into my mouth, it would be on the top of my list.
Of course, that meant that I arrived back when the final selections were made. That meant that I could quickly put us into a farm mode for the beginning of the game. After that, it was less about me, more about the team doing the jobs with the efficiency that I come to know and love. Honestly, these guys that come together in such a beautiful way that it all of you cry. Maybe it was the onions. Definitely the onions were tier worthy. It didn’t have the spices that I had wanted, but there was always buying another round. I had it on good authority that another professor was going to buy the next round.
The first round of the game went around very similar to most of our other games. Their bottom lane and support threatened ours, but whenever able to pull, manages that Murph had. He was farming like he was trying to win the county fair. Raquel was doing the same thing. But she would also occasionally mess with the enemy. Her avatar was back and forth. If you saw a time lapse video of her, it would just be her go around in circles. While Murph stood in the center, holding back the tide of minions. Theirs was the first tower to fall, before minutes’ end. By that time, everyone had already gone back and got done with their first shop. All the goodies were now and play and when it was confident, I switched our strategy to offense.
That was when Esther threatened them even more. You see what happens after a while if you keep clearing the opponents at minions is that you get a bunch of your own minions behind you. Minions are superb at one thing and that is attacking heroes, other minions and towers. They’re okay attacking our dominions. What they do is focus on a cycle minion at once. If there’s a hero around from the opposite side, they’ll focus on that, but otherwise, it’s group mentality. I understand it from artificial intelligence. You got a code, the simplest thing possible, and if they all attacked, the minion would be the lowest health point, then that simplifies the computing power needed. What it also does is make it easy for you to see which ones are going to be next for you. The last hit. That’s the one that you need to do so you can get that money.
They were afraid. Esther had their models. As for our jungle, she consistently popped out at the right place at the wrong time for them. Honestly, she had even gone through their jungle twice and stolen their kills before going back to ours. It was like watching a master class in playing the game correctly.
She knew her work, and she was good at it.
But the only problem we had was at the end we. So at about minute 10, they had decided enough was enough and we’re going to obviously all vacate their lanes and try to find her. Except for the Middle Lane, they all converged on the Middle Lane. Esther just so happened to be buying stuff at the exact moment, and they got close to getting Bob out of Middle Lane for good.
Bob, being a smart player, got the heck out of Dodge and went back to the base just for fun.
I could see Rachel talking to Bob and then Bob talking to Esther and then they were in it. The four-person team that had tried to gank the mid lane or Esther, was now beset on three sides by the entirety of our team.. I checked the opponent's strategy, and it was set to attack. Kept ours in attack and at that point, it was a simple matter of checking that they were backing up while ours were still advancing.
It was going to be one of those days where everyone had their role to play and they all executed flawlessly. Before minute 12, we had our first gank. We took two of them down before the team fight ended. And even though my guys gave Chase, at a certain point, they cut losses and we were up to two kills to their zero.
It was a good place to start. Bob got one kill and Rachel got the other. Esther got an assistant. I had to sign an urge to call her a good girl and tell Charlie she did a great job. I squashed that down. I didn’t want to get any wrong idea.
“Rachel, Bob, keep it up,” I said. “Clearly, whatever you’re doing is working. Let’s see how long we can go with other killing one of us.” Now that they were all discombobulated, I reset our strategy to farming just for a little to see what would be.
Everyone got back to the lanes and began a slight push upwards. While they were out doing all this, the minions were kind of meeting in the middle and not getting anywhere. They just killed each other off one by one until another batch showed up.
Farming in round two when my opponent clearly had chosen the strategy defense meant that not only were we had monetarily from two kills, we were ahead monetarily overall even if you didn’t factor those kills in as we took the second tower about minute 14.
Esther helped Bob in the mid lane. Rachel, playing the top laner, loaded back in so they could get that one. And then they went for the dragon. Or they made the enemy. Think they’re going for Dragon. Around 15 minutes, the whole team got out of Lane, which should have been a big red flag for the enemy. It wasn’t. They moved away, getting closer and closer to Dragon while harassing the mid lane. The enemy’s jungle felt like a joke, but he was out there trying to slow us down. He had a raccoon that dropped poisonous mushrooms that if you ran over, they would explode and give you some poison effects for a while. Okay? And did I mention that these mushrooms the invisible after 2 seconds? It was a nasty way to die, but if you could see things that were invisible, you can easily detect it. Would those detection beacons? It became a lot simpler to figure out where those mushrooms were.
And so it was that they seeded the engines of the dragon with those mushrooms, causing Rachel to lose half her health. She almost went through but she had chosen a character that had life steal. Rather than a feint to attack the dragon, they just went straight through with it. Rachel starting the combat. She checked with everybody first and I saw her doing that. As a top laner, she sat all the way to the left of the five-man team. Murph, the supporter, was all the way to the right. So Esther, as the player in the middle, had to make sure that everyone wasn’t on board.
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Esther said. “Rachel, you’re down here half your health already.”
“We got to start it off,” Rachel said. “The guy dropped in something so that they’re going to come play with us.”
“You’re right, of course,” Esther said. Her avatar blocked Esther’s, and the dragon attacked her avatar.
It was one thing to know what the enemies did in the game. It was another thing to know instinctively how to get them to target you instead of your friend. All else I had to do was unleash a couple of attacks on it and her special. And then team fight number two began. From my position in Center, I can see as a smile flash across Rachel’s face. It disappeared just as quickly. Back to her resting snitch face.
Her avatar was fast, sending her ultimately immediately to where she thought the enemy was going to be. What’s my surprise, as she was playing the ice Archer, she got them frozen for 3 seconds. Rather than getting anyone that might put up a fight at that moment, she got one of their supports. And yes, I might have mentioned it before, but they were playing with two supports. One of them I picked jungle, but they were in the top lane more often than not. And when they weren’t there, they were rotating through the jungle and the mid lane. Esther might stick around for long enough to make sure that nothing was going on, but she kept it going and it was like life had taken out that slow down. She kept herself on the move and I was checking the map way more. Dan, anybody else on the team. Depending on the fact that I would see her clip to one spot so her avatars weren’t there. Then she would check the map. In the game, you could look anywhere on the map.
You just couldn’t see places where the fight was going on.
This lets you easily see if the top lane needed help. You can see their health and their status. For most characters. You can see their mana. Some characters didn’t use mana, but that was okay.
It took the other team a moment to realize that they were doing a four on three, as Dragon just got ganked. My only surprise was that they had last hit a dragon. Normally, I wouldn’t have expected to approach all five of my guys at one time. But they thought they had all five of theirs. Safe to say there was a lot going on.