While CalTwelve had realized early on this time that Quince was a much larger threat than he had initially appeared, it wasn’t enough, even with their three- and four- person ganks, to notably set him back.

Not so much because he would have been fine with that on his own, but because with Doug going silent on directing her, she was free to show up and help him deal with them, dragging Jonah along when their midlaner came with.

She was really annoyed with having been right, though.

Jacob was moving around as normal, supporting the team to the best of his ability, but she had noticed early on that Doug would be an issue, and he was stubbornly remaining so in spite of all the reasons not to do so.

Aside from basing, he had essentially not bothered to leave south lane at all, instead choosing to put everything into silently walking down the same lane over and over with no real purpose.

Still, she’d seen him rage-split before, and was currently building to make up for that difference.

Leeching Shield and another Garland of Terminus, this time keyed not to increasing the power of her shields directly but instead a mirror effect that caused her losing shields to be reflected to nearby enemies.

Combined with the aggressive costing of her abilities, it was close enough to a carry’s damage output with just enough survivability to not die. Most of the time. Jacob’s Selfless Swap had still pulled her out of the fire more than once, this game.

Not that even that had been completely enough to close out the game, but Quince’s damage and the disruption that Greg and Jonah could bring to the table were. She’d noted the time that it took Nova and Serenity to rotate back from shutting down Doug elsewhere, taking advantage of that to set up the staggered snowball that had finally closed it out.

They should have all retreated together, but instead she and Quince dealt enough damage to two or three of them, who then retreated, leaving other team members without the support they needed to prevent the same thing from happening just before the first group got back…

It was a fragile balance, but setting CalTwelve on the back foot for the entire game paid off there, keeping them from thinking up the counter in time. While it wasn’t a difficult thing to see per se, it had to be noticed, first, and the members of the team needed to give up material for a very small amount of time, so players who weren’t used to being on the slowly losing side weren’t always the quick to notice.

With two games under their belt, the best of three was over.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

She’d expected another huge Doug speech, or maybe him to yell at someone, but instead he just looked angry, glaring at each of them in turn.

“Nice job team. Same stuff tomorrow.” There wasn’t any passion in the words, but his glare got stronger when he looked at her and Quince, flicking between then a couple of times.

He left.

Nobody else was much slower. Jacob immediately took off after him, probably to try to talk him out of whatever was in his head, and Greg and Jonah just kind of wandered out after them, leaving her and Quince the only two in the room.

“Never before,” he said, “has winning so completely felt so damn empty. Oh, sure, five vee six that he set up by being an obstinate prick, get an obviously sarcastic ‘Nice job team.’ Great.”

“He’s just not used to not being a big part of any win.”

“Please don’t make his excuses for him.”

She bit the corner of her lip on the inside. More arguments had been building themselves in her mind, but Quince was kind of right. He hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true, and Doug had reacted badly.

She wasn’t happy with being used as the tool in that argument, though.

“Couldn’t you have used something else to tell him off? You out-damaged him that game overall, too, and you knew it.”

Quince waffled for a few seconds, starting a few times on different sounds before he settled on something. “I could have, probably, but he wouldn’t have cared because it was only by a bit, and he could explain that away by saying I had an easier matchup than him or something.”

She wanted to argue with that, but it sounded fairly realistic. She decided to move on, instead.

“I still don’t want you to do that again, but okay. We’re… probably going to lose tomorrow.”

Quince snorted. “Almost guaranteed. We could pseudocarry these games, but I looked into the others between the games.”

“Oh. Still, sorry about that. I know you wanted to get scouted by a better team.”

He laughed, quietly. “Much as we aren’t likely to win, we did put on a hell of a show. The better teams around are going to be seeing that anyways.”

“You did it as a northlaner, though,” Emma said. Quince had told her about his designs on mid, but while the two roles had some things in common, they were seen as fairly different roles.

He just shrugged, though. “I put on an early-game show. If they decide that that’s more important in their north than their mid, that’s their prerogative. Plus, I’m better at mid anyways.”

With that said, the two of them went their separate ways, Quince heading out a different door than her.

It was almost noon when she left the area, after spending an hour watching the highlights of the games that had been going on on the other side before heading in to the nearby sandwich shop to pick up lunch before heading back to the venue.

It was just standard Lick (she knew they’d publicly rebranded as the “Cutters,” but she was also more than aware that they used the name Lick internally) tactics of beating down their opponents with bigger numbers, though, so she wasn’t paying as much attention as she should have been.

Which came into strong focus when a girl slipped into the seat across from her. Black hair, green eyes, probably an Arrows player from the way she looked and the fact she was here, and with an expression that felt like she’d already been found out.

Emma wasn’t sure what, exactly, about her had been “found out,” but that didn’t help with the panicky feeling in her chest.

“Hey, you’re Emma, right? Jade. I watched your games today.”