It wasn’t exactly the first time she’d felt that suffocating pressure all around, preventing her from doing much of anything at all.

That didn’t mean it felt any nicer to have it happening again.

She could feel the shots getting less accurate, arrows going off target by a dozen or so centimeters when usually it was under five at these ranges, and while that wasn’t meaningful yet, it would be later.

The items would help some, but while they could correct for bad aim, they couldn’t fix inconsistent aim. Particularly when those inconsistencies were in the release due to shakiness in her fingers.

Annoying, that Nathaniel had definitely noticed, and just done nothing. Did he think it didn’t matter yet? Was he choosing to let her continue fucking up with the plan to say something later? Did he not even care?

Last week, she would have said that first one without hesitation. Now…

Now, she didn’t know. It was hard to think that everything might have been fake, but the ability both him and Jade to become completely different people at the drop of a hat was uncomfortable.

The shield on the last enemy mech in the wave dropped.

She shot.

She missed.

Before the arrow had even reached its intended target, Nathaniel had teleported, launched his skill thorough the minion at a strange angle.

Or at least, it should have been strange angle, but the way that it pierced through and landed directly on the shields of the enemy carry as they stepped up to hit her for that miss told her everything she needed to know.

The Wood- and Earth-infusions that Nathaniel had somehow managed to mark in her vision mid-teleport and hours of practice had turned into a reflex finished as the support stepped forward to shield the carry.

Earth came first, hitting the protection ability the support activated and stopping without damage.

The same couldn’t be said for the pillar that came from behind, knocking her over and into the Wood-infused arrow that tied them down for a few seconds of shooting at the carry.

The expanded range of the shields once again proved helpful, turning even her current shitty aim into a string of hits, unfortunately traded with taking some of her own.

The shadows were worrying, but at least they’d forced a back. She couldn’t afford to chase while low on arrows, and the enemy carry couldn’t push in with the threat of Nathaniel getting in close or her using the damage boosting side of her passive instead.

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The noose constricted again.

She was talking before she even thought about it.

“Stop that.”

He paused, and she could see his vision drift off very slightly to the side, away from her. Just a bit too long for him to convincingly say that he didn’t know what she was talking about, and he probably knew that. Maybe it was even constructed, intentionally telling her in a way that made it seem like he didn’t want to admit to knowing. “Stop what?”

“Oh, don’t you fucking start with that. The fixing. The making my fuckups seem like they were intentional, that shit you literally just did.”

He didn’t look confused, but he didn’t look hurt, either, and some small part of her raged even harder at that realization.

It wasn’t as small of a part as she would have liked.

“Mm. On one level… that’s literally what I’m here to do, and it goes both ways. What you actually mean, though… If I don’t prep for it when you’re not doing well, I won’t be able to do anything if it happens. My own weakness.”

“Bullshit. I didn’t know that I would miss that until I’d already released, and you were just there, no hesitation or pause to figure it out or realize that you should do your plan. Just… teleport and hit, tell me exactly what to do.”

He blinked once, and while she might usually take that as a sign of surprise it seemed more like it was probably put there to appease her. Which just made her more mad. “It may surprise you to learn that I’ve had that particular reaction loaded since two waves ago, and frankly I expected to use it earlier.”

She scoffed. “Ooh! So I exceeded your expectations, then! Glad to see this whole team thing is working out, then!”

Something went weird about his vision, but it was gone before she managed to even interpret that blank, slightly bored look on his face. “That’s… true, I guess. The expectations thing. It’s not like we have a whole team to know if it’s working yet.”

The worst part of it was that every time he said something that seemed true, there was some other angle. It might have even been true, but she didn’t trust any of it, and that cut annoyingly wide holes in anything she started believing about him. “We’re doing fine.”

He whispered something she couldn’t make out, then shook his head. “Well enough. You’ll get the rest you need from passive flow if you wait ten seconds.”

Checking her credit count, he was probably right. It probably should have made it harder to be angry with, but the opposite seemed true, instead.

“How in the hell do you even know that, anyways? It’s ridiculous to keep track of all that shit.”

The groaning sound he made was at least something. “I don’t keep track of it. I memorized the income rates and just do math. The longer the game goes, the more inaccurate it’s gonna be.”

They’d reached the base by that point, and initiated the teleport back to the constructor.

“I thought you were about Concentration, not Calculation.”

She knew even as she said it that that was stupid. It wasn’t important, was ‘calling out’ nothing but pride, and not even really fair. She should have just shut up about it and let the comment pass. Failing that, he should have gotten annoyed with her for it, called out how pointless it was, maybe even told her off for all the sniping.

Instead, he rolled his eyes like she’d told a bad joke. “Oh, yeah. Let me just concentrate some mental math into existence, huh?”

More than anything, she was caught so flat-footed by the combination of wanting to scream at him and wanting to laugh that she didn’t even need to count out those ten seconds.