There was a certain smell when you got into a convention. The smell of humans packed together and happily talking and moving around. There was also... That other thing.

Apparently they scheduled all their sports games at night, which meant that we were competing for attention. That was fine, I was using competing for attention against kids cell phones. You just had to make it worth their while. After last week's victory we would probably be showing up in force. I can't say for certain, but I had a good feeling.

After arriving, I had a brief stop at the ladies room and then we all went over the same set of rules that I had been privy to for weeks. By this time I had heard the rules brief as many times as I had heard that little speech at the start of a flight. I wondered several times during it if there would be such a briefing for our cruise.

Then we were back in it, one of several games being played inside of a basketball gym that had to be breaking fire code. It was ingenious. They put all of their home e-sports game that week on Thursday. Maybe it was the pending election results, or maybe it was something in the air.

Things were tense. I'd need to tell you how most New Jersey voted, but let's just say that of the people in tenants. A lot of them were disappointed with results. Or at least they were disappointed with the initial results. As California had decided to take as long as possible to get the full results out. You'd think that things would get out faster. I was pissed.

I tried not to let it affect me. There wasn't much that one bad election could do. What was 4 years under one president or another when presidents mostly did nothing? It's not like the queen died. Beyonce was still alive and kicking. So long as we had her, we had hope.

It was just one of those things that dragged you down when you really should have thought about how you went across the other team. I didn't know if the other team felt the same way as I did, but I was damn sure Happy that I wasn't the one playing that week. Oh to be a blissful child. Unaware of the machinations of adults that just had nothing going on besides nepotism.

We had another standard band around where most of the good players that our guys showed off during their own YouTube clips were taken out of contention. That was fine, I had asked them to showcase characters that they weren't that hot on using an actual matches just to see if a little bit of bad intelligence would lead to a good outcome. In this case I was trying to took them into banning the avatars that we weren't going to use. Anyway. In this way, the other team would throw away their picks and potentially ban some of their favorites. It wasn't going to work 100%. Nothing we ever did ever worked 100%. But this one had a good chance of making them avoid our second pics.

Fortunately for Esther, she got the exact one she won in the first Game. They would not make that mistake again. Jungling as the mouse druid Avatar Freya, g first cleared out our jungle before 3 minutes were up and then she cleared out their jungle. Mobs inside of the Jungle responds at about a minute. This meant that at most, the jungler could clear the jungle once on both sides of the mid lane and then return to base and then go back out. What she does was just brazenly walk over to the opponent's jungle and just start getting their potential Jungle mobs.

The Skylanders had a jungle, but I hadn't seen them pop out. They had picked an off meta jungle character that was good. Good, a few cycles back. Every season or so. They mix small slight adjustments to the characters. The build of the game had been going strong for a while, so rather than issue big patches, they issued small patches to update character stats. This was to try to even the playing field so that it wasn't dominated by stronger players trying to pay to win. Yes, you could technically buy more characters, but free to play. Players could eventually unlock them all and most of the money was spent on customizing your skins.

By minute 6:00, Esther was baiting the mid laner into retreating. Every time that she passed through a jungle. I was so proud of her. Her avatar would pop in, the mid. Laner would freak out and run the opposite direction of her or towards the river. Whichever way was safer.

It was like she'd become the Boogeyman and they were whispering stories about her popping up to steal their dreams. That was until minute 7 when she killed the jungle. Something was happening and their jungle was AFK for just about 5 seconds talking to one of the guys next door. Esther, seizing the finding him trying to kill mobs in their Forest, took the opportunity to lock him down and put the hurt on him. He started running away. Unfortunately, the mid laner realized what she was doing and Bob and his Infinite wisdom decided that this was a time to unleash an Ice arrow. Bob had the Ice arrow just right, haven't just achieved the ultimate level 6 skill.

Bob's hit stopped her Target in its tracks. Esther got 3 seconds where she unleashed her ultimate and we had our first kill of the game. It was unexpected and I could see the look in their eyes. The Skylanders I'll look surprised by this. Heck I was surprised, this wasn't the thing that I told Esther to do. The strategy was set to farm. We hadn't fully moved into the second round. But sure enough, the group strategy will still set the farm, but it looked like Esther had just disobeyed. I checked her character sheet and lo and behold, her match rating was nine, and her strategy was set to attack.

My mind World with the idea that perhaps he was strong enough to just toss aside my strategic pics. Was he going to get a option now to buy a better mind control one that made them listen to me?

It felt like a Pokémon game where I was supposed to get badges in order to advance. I had advanced. The patch. Hadn't given me anything for a while. Maybe was waiting for the finals. I banked about 1,000 points for later just to see what was going to pop up. Either. Either the patch wanted me to win more or the patch wanted me to prove something or again, I might have been in mentally ill.

And still again it could have been a combination of all those things. Yes doctor, I'm a grown ass woman who has a some that tells me how well people are playing in a specific online game that I frequent. Yes doctor, it looks like the rules are driven from a game that I used to play. That has since disappeared from my memory. Yes doctor looks like the game actually does exist and that perhaps this is a confabulation of reality and maybe I hit myself on the head and maybe this is all a dream but all the same, could you order an MRI?

I had a feeling that wouldn't go over well and that I might be in a straight jacket for a while. As I weigh the pros and cons of my own feelings in the wake of a terrible election, I realize that I still had to go on my cruise. I could have a menty b later of course.

I had plans. Maybe after Thanksgiving. Actually. No maybe after grades were due. Actually. No maybe after the cruise. Maybe during the cruise?

It was one of those things that was hard to really pin down. At one point in time did I think that this was actually a problem and not just have fun with it. I resolved to just have fun for that day. If Esther was breaking past something inside of the patch, then obviously I was not going to push it. Maybe I'd find somebody else with the same affliction and then we could work together to crush the opposition and rule the worlds.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Having their jungle down left them vulnerable for a few minutes. Once again, Esther picked their jungle clean but this time the mid laner was trying to track her down and get revenge. Not only did he not got revenge, that was a time that Murph came and joined the center lane and destroyed the center Tower . It was a good use of Murph. It's actually moving to a spot where he could help and all of a sudden they were down one tower and one gank where two minutes ago it was even.

At very high level play, you can often see these little things. Things snowball. If they kept this up, this would snowball. But right now, it was just an opening shot and getting a tower didn't even get that much. It just meant that now their mid laner had less distance to travel from Base but they also had less protection. By this time, there was almost a minion swarm brewing in mid lane.

Usually minions cap at a group of around ten. But because Murph had Joe's in a support that had a lot of healing, a lot of them had survived way longer than they should have, nearly twice that. When the jungle was back alive, he went straight to the mid lane to defend the second tower. Ed, that was his second mistake of the game. As the mid laner was Still chasing Esther around and the jungle decided to try to defend the mid lane, their formation broke. We were hitting the team fight at minute ten.

Esther Ladd their mid laner down the river in the center of the map, towards Raquel. Murph were fighting off their jungle in the mid lane halfway into the enemy territory. And then, we couldn't see the top or bottom laners.

I set the strategy to defense. I just need to check the opponent strategy to know that they were going into the attack Formation. I could see everyone stiffing and straighten up on my Team.

It was go time. Really, this shouldn't have happened but oh well. At the same time, Murph and Bob fought Four of the Skylanders while Rachel, Esther and Raquel had their way with the mid laner. It was a three-on-one versus a two on four. Unfortunately, it looked like the mid laner that my ladies were chasing did not want to actually go anywhere rest of the team fight. It was like he was lowering them away.

" Esther, disengage and take the girls to the team fight. He's trying to draw you guys away so they can get Bob and Murph."

" Oh I got to save the boys again huh"

" You know it girl," I said.

I could see them immediately. Change direction. As soon as the Skylander mid laner went around the corner, the girls all juked backwards.

Meanwhile, Murph and Bob had been leapfrogging backwards, trying to draw attention of the four lovely opponents that were now about face the full wrath of the Bulldogs.

Is a certain feeling you get when everything just kind of falls into place. I'm only to bet that the Skylanders manager felt that when they arranged this little goose chase. When my girls stop chasing their geese though, I could see his face and let's just say he was not pleased. I feel like and let me be clear. It's no problem for me if someone yells at an athlete, but I feel like the yelling that just sparked out of that man Just was a little bit too much. After all, this was a friendly game and it wasn't like they were on the precipice of winning or not. It was the first 12 minutes of a three-game match.

I wanted to say they were foolish but I didn't want to jinx it. After all, then me later showed no signs of returning to the fight.

Now let me paint you a picture about our setup here. There were large screens that showed what was going on. In front of us and above us, there was definitely screen to showing what the enemy is doing and what we were doing. I would probably rotate around like the referee's vision just so that the spectators could get a good view. Well watching and studying depending on how you looked at it.

This meant that, audience had a say. I heard the audience go and realized that something was up before it even happened. The five on four that we had the advantage of was finally joined by the mid laner, but it was just too late. Usually what you do in a team fight is you tried to call out the target you want to go for. In this case, I wanted to go for either the jungle or the support. Because they had all been through the band ramp.

Murph and Raquel were especially proud that they were able to lock that person down. Bob's ultimate had charged enough that he was able to get a shot off, but he missed. Freya had us done but it wasn't the same as Bob's freeze because the Avatar could still use skills. Honestly, those stun and hold skills were pretty clutch in team fights. Teams tended to move around like groups of bumblebees. They would go back and forth like toddlers on a on a soccer ball and the soccer ball was the main, two or three people that were fighting in the time. They would move away, then we would move away. And then the teams would then chase each other. At least that's how it usually went, when this guy got locked down, he got enveloped and we got our second gank.

Of course he was playing a Niko support, the strong hand that would have helped him. If the character had not been so slow. I checked briefly on screen and apparently the player hadn't even bought in Boots yet. That was a big oversight. So either the player had Respect and they would now or they just hadn't thought about it. Maybe they just gone straight into armor thinking that they could deal with that. But everyone needs to be fast especially the team fight.

Once the first guy was dead, it was five on four for real and their mid laner peeled out. He was unable or unwiilling to stick around so he can get ganked the same way that the jungle did.

And listen, I understand. I will not take it personally. You don't want to die in a video game. That's on you. But if you don't want to support your team, then that's on them to replace you. They could have defended this or they could have all withdrawn at the same time. What they did instead was let let the five on for become a five on three and then it kind of dissolved. They all ran back to their base, behind the safe lines of several towers and shields.

My team? They went straight for Dragon. Because fuck it. They were already assembled. They know that their enemy was going to take a minute to reassemble and they just felt like it.

Dragon was still a considerable distance for the enemy avatars to travel no matter what they did. The fact that they were all going to have to go back and heal for at least half a minute meant that they were going to spend a minute traveling at most to get back and try to disrupt dragon and that was if they could actually work together as a team.

They hadn't so far proved to me that they could work as a team. All that they approved was that they could work well individually. And not even the jungle can prove that.

His match rating had dropped to a three. I know. I checked.

The lowest match rating among my guys was a seven. And that was Bob, who had not felt good about the election at all. He also kind of felt like Bob was taking out some of his aggression. Honestly, I did not want to manage another white man's emotions, but if I was making me think that I do to give a referral to a counselor. That or put him in more games.

The difference in ability clearly spoke to our training methods working. Bob, now was as good as Esther had been when we started.

Raquel and Murph had their caps updated three times. I hadn't even expect that to be possible. Rachel, was a stud. Honestly I would love to put her out to farm and have her read some new baby gamers. I don't think she would be up for that but if I could split her and make two of her? You know that I would.

Maybe the patch would let that happen. Maybe if she took one of Rachel's eggs and merged it with one of Esther's eggs, I could have the super baby that I needed to with the next generation of DOTA. But that was all years away.

I didn't expected a resistance but their top and middle laner came down to try and deter us from getting dragon. They even hit it once before we destroyed it. But they were too little too late and my guys went back to their lanes and back to the farming strategy.

The skylanders put up defense on the strategy.

"Esther," I said. "Start calling out shots. Rachel, if you see good targets for the group, call those so we can put the pressure on them."

"Full court press,' Rachel said. "On it boss. Make them regret."

"Make them regret," Esther said in a sing song voice that kinda stuck with me.

I still wasn't sure if it was the patch approximating what they were actually doing when I saw that they had changed their strategy. I still had less of a grasp of what the actual patch was besides the things that it did.