It’s just today, then tomorrow, then an off day, and all that’s left at that point is playing in the tournament.

Quince hated needing to convince himself of something so simple.

But Doug reminded him entirely too much of his mom. Nobody was ever enough; never mind that he gotten perfect grades until college, never mind that his dad was actually trying to keep up with her…

No, it wasn’t good to think about that, especially when it just compounded his anger.

Especially after he’d tried talking to some of the other guys on the team about what was going on.

“Oh, he knows what he’s doing.”

“Well, it’s worked so far…”

“I don’t want to hurt his feelings…”

It just reminded him of his dad, constantly being weak for no reason.

Today’s practice had, objectively, gone fairly well. They’d won two of the games they’d played, and lost another in a way that was useful for learning. Specifically, it had been a huge highlighting of their Ranger/Mid weaknesses.

It wasn’t that they were terrible players, really, but that, like he’d realized on the first day, their inexperience with the roles that they were assigned to play was incredibly obvious.

It probably would have been better if they’d stuck to their old roles, having him fill in for the carry, but…

Well, Doug was the carry.

It felt like he liked the name more than the role.

He kept making uninformed observations and calls, and the others just went along with it, claiming he was “smarter” than them.

Maybe he was. Maybe he’d just beaten it into them so badly by this point that they didn’t bother to argue with him anymore. Quince couldn’t tell without having the ability to see into the past or getting Emma to talk to him, and she’d been surprisingly tight-lipped about basically everything.

She did at least tell him that she’d been talking with her friend, which was good to know. She was apparently on some new team or something, which was strange. While he’d been looking her up, it hadn’t been listed anywhere.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

So probably a new thing. Interesting, because it meant that some other team was taking physical carry players, but also probably something to watch out for. He’d followed her on Granduon’s players list after that, mostly so that he could see whenever she debuted with the new group.

Not that he told Emma that, though. She seemed to be having a strange enough time as it was.

She was a bit more talkative now that she was back in communication with Jess, but that seemed like it was a problem as much as it was a boon.

Specifically, she’d talked back to Doug when he’d told her to do something, telling him that it wasn’t the best thing for her to do at the moment.

And wow had that not gone over well.

They’d spent the next almost five minutes getting their ears blasted off by his constant yelling and shouting, explaining how he knew more about the game than she did and on and on.

It was a big part of the game they’d lost, actually, because the already suspect cooperation between Jonah and Greg had very quickly gotten worse.

For his own part, he was neither winning nor losing his own lane, so when southlane had taken a hit due to Doug’s distraction and gotten behind, The enemy team was able to take advantage of their own lack of coordination to tie up Jonah and Greg in midlane while the enemy ranger and diver had torn into south over and over again.

There wasn’t even much that he could have done, as far from the action as he was. While he could theoretically have gone down to mid to break them off or south to pitch in for the defense, either choice would have left northlane undefended in such a way as to set him behind in a way that would have been difficult to recover from.

Had he been playing his midlane or carry set…

It wasn’t worth getting disappointed over. He’d agreed to do it. One more day of dealing with them for three or more games with recaps, then it was going to be a tournament set.

He was tempted, beyond all reason, to just throw the first few games and get out.

But no. That wouldn’t do well for applying to other teams, so he’d be putting on as much of a show as he could.

He was glad that Emma was willing to listen to him rant about everything, afterwards. She’d even given him a lot of information that he hadn’t really been aware of, like where certain enemy players had been and the reasonings behind some of the decisions she’d made.

Diver was an interesting role, though he didn’t have much experience in it himself. Like Ranger, it had ways to fairly quickly get around the whole map, but unlike Ranger, it was a lot more dependent on the other players’ control of their own lanes and the Rangers’ control over the bridges.

Listening to Emma talk about the considerations that she had to make for destroyed bridges that she only knew about from her own, well-placed warding gave him a new appreciation for the truly good supports.

Not because it affected him much, but because she let slip a little bit of her own frustration with Doug.

Not that it was something large, but everyone had to start somewhere.

Still, being annoyed with him for the way he made Jakob change his ward placements to better supplement southlane specifically…

It was a start, at least.

He could work with a start.

And he’d be trying to drag her with him when he found a new team, so he definitely wanted a start.