It wasn’t often that someone managed to completely shatter his expectations. If it happened more than once a week, he usually started getting worried. But when that guy who was now leaning on Jade strangely, looking like her twin, had walked in, against all expectation, with Emma, he’d run into the first.

Then, he’d opened his mouth. It had sounded at first like a vapid idiot, making him reevaluate who Emma got along with fine.

But as he kept talking, the stumbling into all of Doug’s pain points like an overexcited puppy maliciously directed by an alien intelligence made him reevaluate again.

His next guess had been a confident, forward guy with the ability to play dumb extremely well, a minimal act to get the job done.

Instead, almost as soon as Doug and the remaining members of Selicae were out of sight, he’d deflated, looking more lost and pained than confident or successful.

It was uncomfortable, how much each of those acts had seemed real in the moment, and Quince didn’t particularly want to look into how he’d managed to do all of it so convincingly, or whether this new act was real or intended for their benefit.

On the other hand, Doug was gone. And horribly insulted to boot.

It was a good day.

“You’re the support, then?”

Jade turned to face him, although the new guy didn’t even appear to look.

“Sometimes he is, sometimes he’ll be the carry. We’ve got a bit of a strange plan for team comps.”

Jessica spoke up next. “I… really didn’t expect him to uh. Just leave. Without anyone going with him. I… suppose thanks are in order, and… sorry for not trusting you?”

Jade grimaced slightly before responding. “Thanks, maybe but not really. I… overreacted? Or at least, acted without thinking about it too much, because I was bothered by what you told me was going on with Emma and wanted to get to a fast solution.”

“I am here, you know,” Emma said. “But… as much as I would have preferred less… disruptive methods, you were at least trying something necessary, if not good.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I’m sorry about that, by the way. I was over the line.”

“Someone needed to do it. I hope you don’t mind a little bit of a grudge when I join your team. I know that it ended up a better solution, but my brain and my feelings disagree somewhat.”

“They do that.”

He had to say something to that. “I thought you were just going to be on your own. Didn’t you say you hated being manipulated like that?”

Emma made a strange face. “I did, and I do, but…” She glanced back at Jade, then the guy. “He’ll fight you on it, won’t he? If you start something.”

“It depends what I start,” Jade said, breezily. “But in general, yes. Much more quickly than he would with just a random person, too.”

“Plus, you coopted most of my support structure.”

Jade looked genuinely bothered by that. “I swear, that wasn’t intentional. If you’d prefer, I can… well, I can’t exactly step down, but I can try to get control handed over…”

“Don’t bother,” Emma said, instead. “Jess, how does the new team look?”

Jessica looked them over, turning somewhat slowly and finishing with a shake of her head. “I’ve got absolutely no idea.”

Emma grinned a sort of half-grin that he hadn’t seen out of her once, in the time he’d been with Selicae. Even outside of the team, she’d only really shown happiness fully or not at all.

Quince felt a wave of relief wash over him, like something was taken off of his back that he hadn’t even known he was carrying.

“Perfect. I do look forward to coming up with a northlane setup.”

Jade laughed slightly. “Not just any northlane setup, mind you. We want it to fit into out alternate strategies.”

After that, it was almost all a matter of wrapping up. He got the information he’d need from Jade, and she handed out her number to both him and Emma, getting theirs in return.

After dealing with Doug for as long as he had– never mind that the time was objectively fairly short– she was a nice change of pace, in some ways.

Other ways, she reminded him of Doug’s methods, just applied more carefully.

Jessica seemed interesting, at least, and just from seeing her move around in the limited venue that they had, he was already looking forward to seeing her in the game. He couldn’t put his finger on why exactly, but with his her being a physical carry, he was quite frankly fascinated to see how that played in actual games.

More of a question mark was the guy. He hadn’t really looked like what he’d expect from a support, but given what he’d heard so far that wasn’t entirely surprising. While he didn’t fit the more traditional image of a support, at this point him doing so would have been disappointing, if anything. Weird, that apparent twins were planning to play on the same team, but if they managed it…

Well, they might be able to make that seem like less of a disaster.

It was a bit disappointing that, even as they talked for a bit more, Jade never presented him the offer that she had to apparently every other member, letting them on the team without any sort of trial run, but it made sense.

Unlike everyone else, as far as he could tell, she hadn’t even seen him play his primary role. The fact that she was even giving him the opportunity to prove himself so quickly honestly seemed kind of irresponsible.

He planned to do everything in his power to reward that irresponsibility.

Frankly, it would hurt his pride to be anything less than the best choice she had available.