Something had happened to Selicae between last game and this one.

She’d like to think that it was the team adapting to what their strengths were against this particular opponent, it didn’t actually look like that much at all.

Unlike last game, where she’d been in south lane to the detriment of basically everyone involved, Selicae’s diver was now almost aggressively targeting mid and north to a degree that, had CalTwelve adapted, they would have been able to spin into an advantage for themselves.

Her damage was largely at fault there– she’d forgone the more defensive picks from last game to pick up a mix of bruiser and caster options.

Deadly, to the unprepared or unobservant, but not particularly stable or tough.

Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that they were getting crushed, she’d say that it wasn’t possible for CalTwelve to lose.

Which was why she’d told Nathaniel to change rooms, joining her instead of what he was already on. They’d both known that setting him on the other side was basically wasting time until after the first set of matches, but she hadn’t really expected to ask for the switch, either.

Unfortunately, that switch did come with the addition that he’d need to catch up some on the way over, spending probably ten to twenty minutes being behind even with the fact that he could watch playback on a higher speed.

Which was why he came in around the fifteen minute mark, when things in the game were beginning to shift into mid-game. While it wasn’t quite there, she expected Selicae’s North or CalTwelve’s south to knock out a base soon and start the changes.

What she didn’t expect from him walking into the room was the girl he was talking to. It wasn’t exactly strange for him to have somehow– probably either accidentally or without even realizing that he’d done it– talked someone into following him around for a bit, but the girl didn’t look like his usual type. She was visibly muscled in a way Jade wouldn’t have expected him to have approached, given his tendency to pick off stragglers and people on the outside, and talking way more animatedly than she’d have expected.

Actually, they both were.

He was up to something.

She didn’t know what, but that wasn’t going to stop her from making a good-faith effort to mess with him in return.

It was only proper.

She didn’t need to do much beyond standing up and walking a few steps, affixing an intentionally cramped-looking smile as she did.

“Really, Nathan, another one? I would have thought you’d be done soon.”

She only got one blink of him being off balance before she caught that look at the back of his eye that usually meant he was going to blow her cover of make her do it herself. “You’d think so, I know, but it’s only fair. I was, what, three days ago when you dragged home that guy. He was huge, but do you think he had any idea what he was getting into? It’s just not fair.”

A shake of her head, then, and an aggrieved face. “I know, I know, but I’m not so much concerned about home so much as I am your new… friend. It was just last week, and what was her name?”

He looked genuinely confused for a second. “Aspen or Viv? Or do you mean Jessica?”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Jade froze, then took a breath in and dropped the act. “Oh my god Nathan I was joking. What the fuck?”

He raised a hand, a finger extended, then curled it back in, shaking his head. “I don’t think of them the way you were implying, and you know it. This is Jessica by the way.”

The girl, who’d been watching on with an amused smile, moved her fingers in an approximation of a wave. “Now that we’ve met out here, you both should probably call me Jess. He told me in advance who we were going to see, so you’ll have to forgive the fact that you couldn’t throw me off. Got some twin sibs myself.”

Jade made a disgusted noise. “Of course. But you’ll have to forgive me for a second.” She rounded back on her twin, lowering her voice to a hiss. “Why the fuck did you have those names that ready?”

He looked mildly hurt, though she knew he was probably playing that up somewhat. “You said new friend, and I was talking to new people last week! What do you expect?”

“About what, this time?”

He paused for a moment. “I swear this isn’t a euphemism.”

She just glared at him.

“Art.”

“What do you know about art?”

He tried to suppress a smirk, but wasn’t nearly effective enough to hide it from her. “More than I did two weeks ago.”

“Fine. I’m still going to ask more later.”

“I know.”

“Can I just get you to look at this game please? I can see something’s off about third seed, but I don’t think I see what yet.”

He pointed at Jess with his thumb. “Better resource here than me, though I think I’ve got it.”

The target of that made a face. “I don’t feel quite right telling you guys because of how I know it, but he,” Jess pointed at her brother, somewhere between accusingly and amused, “took a guess five minutes into game two and pretty much got it.”

“He does that.”

“I’m torn between thinking that’s awesome and incredibly creepy, but on other stuff– north and carry slash team lead are arguing, diver’s caught in the middle. Better for us if she ends up siding with the new guy, because she’s good. Scary good. Seeing as this is our local…”

Jade thought about that for a minute. Jess had an inside track on that old team then, probably a member of it. Most likely either the team lead or the support, though it was possible it was the mid or diver.

“Nathan, you want to work your magic? Grab her as a puppy for a year or two?”

This time he actually looked mad. Much more than she’d expected actually.

She’d missed something.

“Okay, one, you know that that’s not how I do things. It happened once, by accident, and you know I hated it–”

“Not enough to actually tell her off.”

“Because she was in a bad place! Which brings me to two, which is fuck no and don’t joke about that because it’s possible to repeat that here–”

There it was. She hadn’t been serious about that at all, but he wasn’t going to care when it came to something like that. Good in general, and she much preferred his measured responses to people over him actually being the man-slut that their parents accused him of seriously and she joked about, but it also meant that there were a few related topics that were a guaranteed way to get a pissed-off rise out of him. She wasn’t exactly sure how he’d come to the conclusion that it was something that could be done, but she trusted it was at least mostly accurate.

“and three, building off that last one, is that even if I wanted to be a monster for some reason, I couldn’t… shouldn’t because she’s gay. Maybe couldn’t. Don’t know what her family’s like.”

That brought her up short. She knew he was good at that, often being able to call people fairly deeply in the closet or who weren’t sure themselves, but that wasn’t one of those. Nathan did many things, and one of them was hedging, when he was talking to someone he cared to tell the truth to and about anything he wasn’t absolutely certain of. The way he’d put that…

“How deep did you dig into her.” It was phrased as a question, but they both knew she wouldn’t be letting it go until he explained himself.

“Not far.”

“Then how–”

In the middle of the questioning Jade was trying to push, Jess turned to face him, her eyebrows drawn in slightly. “She’s not exactly publicly out.”

“I wasn’t being loud for a reason. Only reason I know is because of some of the talking with you I did. Didn’t know who you were talking about ‘til today. Gave it away when we were talking about the bracketing.”

Jade blew out a breath. “Nathan, have you ever tried not making a point out of figuring people out?”

He looked uncomfortable for a few seconds, then shrugged. “You know what the other option is.”

She did, unfortunately. It was probably better than that, at least.

“Because that plan is a non-starter,” she nodded at Nathan, “Do you have any actual ideas?”

She wasn’t expecting where the answer came from, because it wasn’t her brother. “Poaching.”