She’d initially intended for Jessica to lead in to something slightly different, maybe a discussion about how they were going to be trying to speak about and to Emma going forward, and for them to walk over to her.

Instead, now she was stuck in making the preliminary offer to this guy.

He wasn’t a bad player, per se, but the impression he’d left…

It wasn’t enough for her to really have that formed of an opinion, and nobody she trusted was vouching this time. He was probably an alright fit, at least, and a midlane player that they could trust to get along well with another of their players, as this interaction between him and Jess was showing.

More than that, though, was what she was trying to determine– how he’d fit into the style of the team so far.

His diver set was easier, at least, being a fairly simple air caster with all the elements she’d expect. Moderate ability to scale with items, a bit of CC, a bit of damage, a way to outrun the mist monsters, and a bit of survivability in the form of Turbulence, which she was once again reminded was an utterly broken ability.

Ten seconds every thirty, reducing with cooldown reduction, of near-invulnerability to projectiles.

If it didn’t interfere with allied projectiles as well, she might genuinely question whether Granduon’s supposed AI was even running.

So that one was simple; he would be acting as an initiator and midline disruptor with an impactful but non-swingy ultimate set.

More complicated was the midlane set, otherwise known as the reason she was autopiloting the conversation they were having even with everything else going on. It seemed at first like a bunch of abilities thrown together, but the actual impression she was getting was a little bit more complicated than that. Mostly, it seemed to focus on setup, a combination of setting traps for the enemy team and empowering zones for himself that would let him function as a physical-style, though not actually physical, carry within them.

It was perhaps the strangest method of managing it that she’d seen, and Jade was mostly annoyed because of how well it seemed to slot into everything else on her team.

Specifically, the enormous early-to-mid-game vulnerability. Scaling was all well and good, but when it came at the expense of most of their builds to actually interact with the enemy team until two items in unless they got well and truly ahead before the first buy meant that they’d be playing form the back foot in seventy-to-ninety percent of the games they were in.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

And if they were pushing into him, they’d need a lot more power than he would.

Good. Annoying.

Her attention being split as it was, it took her longer than she would have liked to admit to to notice the rattling of the door that Quince had come out of that preceded some other guy stepping out of it.

He was a bit taller than her, short blond hair in one of stupid overly-masc fade or crew cuts that she could never tell apart. Selicae’s carry, then.

Jade had been hoping that he would completely ignore them in the attempt to reclaim some of his battered ego, but she’d somehow managed to drift just barely out of conversation with Quince and Jessica and he was apparently the other kind.

He was stomping straight towards her.

Well, stomping might be a little bit unfair. He was only kind of making a huge amount of noise, and he wasn’t nearly as flat-footed as that word tended to imply.

He looked very angry. The other teammates filing out of the room could probably have added to his intimidation factor, and were probably meant as such, too, by the way they spread out slightly, but not a single one of them looked like they were on-board for this. Doug, though, appeared to think that they were all behind him and being tough or whatever.

She wasn’t impressed, but she made sure to look worried instead of bored.

“You’re the one who told Emma all that bullshit, aren’t you? You happy now that she’s fucked the team up?”

Complicated question, though he probably didn’t know it. She’d gone into it as an accident, but given everything that had happened she still preferred that to leaving him to do his own thing. Even then, though…

“No clue how you figured it out, but not really, no. It was kinda just an accident. Oops.”

It was probably the wrong thing to say, especially in the dull tone of voice she used, and she knew it would just rile him up more.

If the option had existed, she would have done it twice. The color on his face was interesting to watch, though. Very bright and patterned in a way she didn’t usually get to see from this close up.

“Are you kidding me? You’re standing by those two and you think you can just, what? Pass under my radar? You’ve fucking told Emma some lies, and you’d better tell me what they are so I can fix her before she goes off and hurts herself.”

Jade’s eyebrow crept up slightly, though she was fairly sure she kept it under control enough that he didn’t notice.

So he was that type. Interesting that he was so bad at it, but he would be off of his game. Too much pushback, and his control had never really been that strong to begin with.

Or, at least, after Jess had left. The “family” type never really had a fallback if a “member” of their group got out on their own if that’s all they were relying on. Maybe he should have tried religion or something.

“I don’t think that she’s going to hurt herself over me using the wrong tense for something, ‘cause that’s the only lie I told her.”

That set him back, luckily.

Or it would have been lucky if his eyes hadn’t wandered in that moment and caught on something behind her.

When she turned, she had to fight the urge to cringe.

Emma and Nathan, walking back towards them. Nathan seemed to whisper something to her, and she said something short back, but they didn’t look like they noticed what was going on.

Shit.