Things were not going well.

Fifteen minutes ago, she wouldn’t have thought she could come to that conclusion, but there was little else for her to believe at this point. She and Nathaniel were ahead in lane, and had managed to exert control over both the Worm and the Air Spirit, but even though they’d taken two of south lane’s bases, the other lanes weren’t doing so hot.

It was almost a direct mirror across the map, actually. Midlane was missing a tower on both sides, and north lane was missing two bases on their side.

It wasn’t quite a mirror, of course- Kurt was doing slightly better than his opponent, and the enemy north lane had dealt more damage to the allied base than she and Nathaniel had to the third in their own lane, but the general closeness had her worried.

And, unfortunately, the way they’d gotten to that point was also significantly worrying.

While the enemy diver and ranger had, after a time, stopped bothering to try pushing back in their lane, their own teammates had not come to the same conclusion.

Diane had repeatedly died to the enemy north laner, feeding him enough kills that his income had to be very close to her own.

She could already see her support struggling to come up with a way to make their presence more known. For the last few minutes, they’d been poaching monsters from the opposing diver’s side in an attempt to draw a fight to them, but the entire team had basically retreated to avoid them.

The opposing support had even changed from an escort of the carry to a wanderer on the north side of the map, while the carry was basically sitting under his base’s turret and casting just enough to block a push.

And while she’d upgraded the base powersuit to the powersuit slash full-length-dress that upgraded movement skills, and the bow to nearly the final form it would take, she still had a limited capacity to carry physical arrows.

The all-black, floor-length dress was still ridiculous. Men who took the upgrade got a full tuxedo, too– which was equally ridiculous. “Death’s Courtier” was a ridiculous name, as well. Couldn’t it have been at least a maxi dress?

Who had even come up with the thing? It increased the user’s strength by a flat number, while upgrading their agility by a percentage, while using less power than almost all of the fully upgraded powersuits.

It wasn’t armored like some others, but it reduced incoming damage significantly, while granting movement skills double distance and reduced visibility– all in addition to a level four stealth capability.

Which basically meant that it was, by all accounts and any admission, the perfect item for her. Primarily built for assassin types, it was true, but her specific build took advantage of those capabilities so well that she couldn’t justify passing it up.

No matter how many times suddenly appearing in it made her blush.

She was a professional, damn it.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Or had been, at least.

… it was a good thing that it didn’t make her wear heels, too. The ground was mostly dirt and grass–

“I think we need to really do something,” her support said, crashing into her train of thought. Which was strange, because being on the losing end of a game, particularly in cases where she wasn’t the primary cause of it, usually made it go so far off the rails that any attempt at finding it would need to go searching through miles of–

“Hey Jessica, how do you feel about doing something really stupid?”

He was grinning, but trying to hide it, a tiny wrinkle in his bottom lip. She could see his eyes trend north-westernly from where they were, but she couldn’t quite tell what that meant yet.

“How stupid are we talking?”

“That depends on how quickly you think we can kill the Worm and Air Spirit.”

Jessica took a moment to figure that one out.

“You think we can sneak them?”

“‘Sneak’ is a strong word. Let’s just say that I have a strong belief that we can force a fight in mid that their northlaner can’t get to.” She could see his eyes flick strangely on that last statement. She could already see the plan he was talking about, but that flicker, which she could only confirm by their still-shared vision, told her there was more to it.

“What else?”

He recoiled at that, somehow surprised, but quickly recovered.

“I… I’m pretty sure that he’ll pull back off to take Dragon while we’re in the middle of the fight to prevent us from gaining control. Not a hundred percent on that, though, or even seventy, really.”

She didn’t even bother to consider. He’d had her at “something stupid”, not that she’d be telling him that.

An instant retreat wasn’t quite possible, but they were easily able to fake another incursion into the mists, pulling back to their allied base for only a few seconds to allow her to buy arrows, infusing what arrows she could along the way.

She almost would have preferred if someone had shown up while they were in the middle of killing the Worm.

It wasn’t the easiest kill in the world, what with its ability to cause sand-traps to appear underneath the feet of whoever it was fighting before flopping down and burying someone under its multiple-elephant bulk, but having two teleports was coming in to save them.

That wouldn’t exactly save them from any of the Dragon’s attacks, but that was the tradeoff that the different bosses made.

If she didn’t have the ability to do light and dark infusions, for example, she would be almost unable to damage the Wind Spirit at all– and as things stood, she’d need to take it down quickly if she wanted to avoid her shields being completely torn to shreds.

The rapid-fire, weak wind blades wouldn’t do much to her personally, to be honest, but it would very quickly destroy even her upgraded shields and leave her dependent on the resilience of the powersuit.

Which wasn’t a good thing, especially when the enemy had a temperature-user.

Her mind was still mostly elsewhere by the time they’d taken the Worm down, triggering the game-wide announcement that they’d done so, and she was expecting Nathaniel to instantly create the teleport with his penultimate when he turned to her, instead.

“Hey uh. I don’t really want to push too hard on you, but I’m going to need you to start paying attention again?”

That last phrase sounded like a question, but she was still struck by it. A little insulting maybe, but she was off on another tangent.

When was the last time someone had­–

“You’re going off again. Center yourself on a tree, me, anything. We don’t need you to pay attention for a long time, just from after we get through the portal to the fight after that.”

Strangely, she did feel her focus narrowing in, not to him exactly, but the area around them. They were standing in the darker part of the mists outside the Worm’s usual nesting place, and she couldn’t see much beyond the immediate area. The bright greens of the canopy and simulated light above them filtering down suddenly struck her as an actually very pretty detail.

“This fight first, and then the game, yeah?” Nathaniel said, opening a portal. She knew from his sight that it came out most of the way to the wind spirit, just far enough away that they’d pass by an enemy ward-orb on the way.

“Yeah. Fight first, then the game.” Jessica took a deep breath, then stepped towards the portal, things coming into even sharper relief around her. “And we’re winning this game.”