It was, if anything, just outright freaky to watch.

According to the scoreboard, the teams were basically even in credits. According to the pre-game statistics, they were universally below the enemy team in stat totals. According to the meta, they should be losing all over due to an unbalanced team composition that couldn’t protect its carry.

And then the ratchet twisted one more notch in.

Emma and Jeremy charged in, sometimes supported by Jade, with Jessica and Nathaniel working an off-lane. The enemy team would retreat, usually extremely quickly, while he held a lane solo. Jade met with him, forcing the person or two to back off enough that they couldn’t push him, the growing power of the Spire boosts too much to contend with offensively.

Then Emma and Jeremy rolled into his lane, while he swapped over to the one they’d just vacated, throwing a cluster of spires up as soon as he made it there.

There was a bit of credit loss involved with the strategy, Emma unable to completely clear the mist monsters and Jade giving up some priority on the bridges, but he’d never seen such an effective freeze-out on a team’s ability to claw back ground, the bases going down nearly in order from outward to inward and making up the difference.

There had to be a reckoning soon, but it was… unclear at best how effective that was going to be. Almost as soon as they’d started in on this strategy, Jade and Nathaniel had constantly been asking for people to tell them if three or more opposing players showed up in a single lane.

Instead, they’d challenged him two versus one. Three times.

They’d earned a little bit of ground for that, each time.

Of course, it had also given him a kill two out of those three times, so it wasn’t the most advisable decision.

They’d gotten fairly close to the enemy base when the calls finally came. Jade and Nathaniel were in mid while Emma, Jade, and Jessica were on North side, and he was in South, when Jeremy called over the comms.

“We’ve got missing in North.”

“Mid is pulling back, support might get there fast. Thought it was warding. Quince, are you good?”

He almost laughed. All six members of the enemy team, coming to break his one lane. Was he good? What kind of question was that?

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I’ll start pulling back, but..”

“I’ve got a clone in South,” Jade cut in. “Nathan, teamfight guess?”

“Sixty-forty us.”

“I’m taking it. Nathan, Jess, run North. Emma, Jeremy, keep pushing till they get there, then penult in. I’m heading south while Quince… buy time. We’ll get there.”

Jessica was the next to speak. “Quince, mark a location when they get there and I can give you an artillery shot. Good luck.”

He was across from the Northlaner, but that didn’t tell him too much, and with a Starstrike player on the enemy team, knowing that he’d been in Northlane meant that he’d be dealing with the northlaner, ranger, carry, diver, and support. Mid might be a little bit longer, coming from northlane as they were, but it wouldn’t be by long.

He glanced up, and the shining red pre-glow of Starstrike gathering in the air and slowly growing confirmed it.

Five versus one, then.

Fine.

He marked the area exactly where he was standing.

Him looking up must have given the game away, because a notification of penultimate activation went off in his head as a cyclone started up around the northlaner immediately before she popped streamline, a hundred-something stacks on Eyewall turning the movement speed boost into something that seemed like a dash. The ranger shot out of the mists to his side, closely followed by the support physically running out.

“Fuck it. Get here quick.”

He activated the rifle’s ability to shift modes, turning it into a smaller, pistol-like weapon, and ran one hand along his bandolier. Each crystal he passed over dropped a spire seed on the ground nearby, growing far enough apart to cover the entire field in overlapping zones, and he took out a plasma sword from his belt, activating it then popping Plasma Tendril to turn it whiplike and allowing it to grow over time.

Go time.

He ulted.

A pillar sprung up behind him as he started firing with the pistol at the ranger, swinging the rapidly growing loop of plasma from the sword to block off the northlaner’s approach. It barely slowed her, the loop thrown up into the air by the wind, but the ranger started moving sideways to reduce the damage he could deal.

A quick dive to the side took him out of reach of a Wind Wall shoving downwards on him, and swinging the sword some more brought the blade into the way of the ranger, taking a couple of hits for him and reducing the damage from their laser rifle, but combined with the northlaner’s abilities and the Shadow Bolt that somehow wove its way through the chaos around them, he was down to half shields even with True Aegis shields shoring up their regeneration and the pillar giving him essentially unlimited power.

Two more swings with the plasma whip, still growing, forced the northlaner to move more slowly but also tapped the enemy support, allowing them Vengeant Teleport and forcing him to abandon the attack to dive out of the way again, just in time for the world to shake around him and a huge blast of fire and thrown earth to start petering out just in time to not totally kill his shields.

Starstrike had landed.

Swinging the plasma saber into the way helped deal damage, but it didn’t do anything about Meteor Step crashing into him.

And again.

And again, taking the shield out completely.

The fourth took him away, but the damage was already done. A Shadow Bolt was already on its way, hitting him in the chest with strong shove, and a second went to kill him, suddenly splattering on his shields as they shuddered back into existence.

Emma shot from right behind him towards the enemy team as a wave of arrows arced in from above and the ground moved.