Teleporting through his penultimate was always a bit of a strange experience, but Nathaniel had done it probably hundreds of times at this point, so he didn’t even stumble when it dropped him out on the canopy-bridge behind Jessica, immediately shifting his vision to check if they could see any of the enemy team from their new position.

When his scan, wearing a set of glasses that could reveal up to level seven stealth that this point, turned nothing up, he nodded to his carry.

“Get to Air Spirit. I think we can take it before anyone gets here, just barely.”

She didn’t respond to that beyond a nod and starting to run towards the boss’s location.

She was fast.

Even as far as his teleport had taken them, it still required sight, even if remote sight was enough– which meant there was still a significant distance to go.

Jessica didn’t even bother to stay on the bridge paths all the time, though. Nor did his sister, but Jade usually managed it by using her abilities to launch herself midair.

To the contrary, his carry was instead managing it with the pure strength of the powersuit and her own skill. Instead, she had taken a single jump onto the bridge railing, then a second onto the tree branches and kept running.

Not every tree had the right connections, but she was able to get all the way to the Spirit before he’d gotten halfway there, even including the Blink he’d used to skip over the enemy-controlled bridge that had been locked in the down position.

She didn’t even wait for him to get close to start the process, looking down to show him the arrows as she infused three of them with dark-element, a fourth nocked but not infused.

That one went flying while he as still a bit out. Not far enough that he wouldn’t be able to teleport to her to help, but still quite a bit away. It cut into the Air Spirit’s side, and he heard it screech as it turned to face her, its wind barrier kicking up around it.

She was already moving, and he watched as its attacks, while still hitting, mostly only grazed her shields as she ran around it, firing off the arrows she held.

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Close enough to help, now, he threw Void Strike out, angling himself so that it went through the Air Spirit, but once it went through it passed near, but not into, her shields, restoring them slightly.

The passive ability that allowed for that was much more effective at physically healing and repairing things, but it was almost a universal constant in the game that if your shields were destabilized, you were one hit from death.

No real pain, luckily, but that didn’t change the dislike most people had for the experience.

With him casting the damaging ability ability on cooldown and Jessica using the defense-reducing dark element, the air spirit didn’t even take a full minute to take down.

And yet her shields were still cut by half, and his own by twenty percent– and even then, mostly because he’d been hiding behind Void Wall whenever he wasn’t actively trying to take a shot.

The enemy team had been even slower to react than he’d thought, though, and that was making him nervous. He could see three of them approaching now– the diver, the ranger, and the carry, specifically.

“Damian, I think it would be best if you could come up here and help us,” Nathaniel said into the team chat, evenly. He was holding Void Wall up to slightly increase the regeneration rate of both his and Jessica’s shields, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough to restore hers fully in the time they had. The enemy support was definitely on the north side, probably heading towards them to play cleanup, and while the mid laner wasn’t doing much in reality, she’d still drawn the attention of both Kurt and Damian.

Just the diver should have been enough, given what he’d seen from the woman so far, but Damian had been obstinately staying in the lane the whole game.

“Too tied up, dude. What do you expect me to do?”

Nathaniel expected him to stay in the lane, wasting his abilities on minions when he could be helping them win.

Not that he was going to say that.

Helen was dead, and Diane was currently poking at the enemy north laner, trying to prevent him from killing the dragon before a member of their team could claim it.

She’d fail, of course, but that hadn’t really been the point, anyways.

“You loaded up on metal?” he asked, quietly. Things were about to get very messy, very quickly.

No ults, probably, but they’d definitely see a penultimate or four.

“Fifteen,” she responded, this time not physically checking. “When do you want my penult?”

He thought about that for a second. Her penultimate was essentially a personal buff for her that would make her shooting much more effective, but would also incentivize her shooting much more slowly than she’d shown the ability to– cutting down to one shot per second.

“Round trip on one arrow up,” he eventually said. Firing once up, like she had before, would let them reset the fight after they got into it, which was much more in their favor than the enemy’s. “And use water.”

She nodded, then pulled eight arrows, holding four in the bow hand and four in her draw hand.

A few of them started to develop the telltale glimmers of her infusing them.

“What’s your energy at now, anyways?”

“Twenty once I’m done with this. After using Reign, about ten. First bit of the fight’ll be messy.”

“Yup. Ten, nine, eight…”