Stupid.

He’d known it was stupid, going in.

She’d obviously been baiting him into accepting, and even baiting him into taking the primary players for the other two roles.

He wasn’t sure how, exactly, the other three would manage to fare against people who actually mained the roles they were in, but Jade obviously thought they could manage it.

She wasn’t saying anything now, of course, which was a bit annoying. She had at least told him what the enemy builds were– a midlane pseudocaster-slash-gunslinger assassin, a Concentration-carry filling in for a ranger using psychic creation, and a physical tank with decent mobility.

Not that any of that was useful information. His own and Emma’s ideas about what they were expecting from the other side seemed to be endlessly amusing to Jade, at least. She definitely knew what they were up against exactly, but it seemed like part of the test was going to be their ability to adapt to unexpected sets.

It was a reasonable thing to test.

That didn’t mean he didn’t absolutely hate it.

Without any of the information on what they’d be up against, he’d decided on a safe buy– his standard Moded Plasma Rifle, an extra crystal, and fairly basic shielding.

Not that he could really afford to change that up much, even if he could see a way to deal with them more easily.

When he reached the outer base about the same time as Jessica did, he opened the same way he always did.

Halfway across the lane from the base, he activated his third ability, planting a Crystalline Spire at the cost of three-quarters of the power capacity of the extra crystal.

In general, crystals were a fairly contentious choice to use. Over twice the power capacity of batteries for the same price and weight, they were able to keep a player out much longer.

In return, they couldn’t be recharged simply by getting near the constructor or shop. Instead, they required the user to pay more credits, essentially turning them into a power-for-cost tradeoff that went in the batteries’ favor after the second time back at the constructor.

Of course, his passive, Monarch in Crystal, let him recharge them just by being near, so that went completely out the window. It would only be a little over a minute before the extra crystal had fully recharged, which was the crux of his ability set.

Because once it was fully recharged, he’d throw down another spire, expanding the area of their damage reduction, physical boosts, and shield recharge boosts.

Watching Jessica’s side of the lane for her minions and listening for his own wasn’t the longest-lasting exercise, but it was enough to entertain him for the moments before they came into view– and he almost cursed out loud.

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For some indefinable reason, she’d set her side up four-four.

Which meant that, even if he did nothing at all to damage them, his own minions, set up five-two, would outpower hers, pushing in.

Usually a benefit, of course, but in this case? He’d need to cover almost the entire center of the lane in spires, which was both more expensive and more fragile than stacking them up around his base the way he typically did. On top of that, because he’d still need to farm, he would need to take those shots.

Annoying.

She won the first round. And by the way she smiled, standing in the minions without even aiming the gun she was holding until the shields of the frontliners were nearly gone, she knew it, too.

Without even using abilities, Jessica managed to time the damage so that her side was only pushed back about a third of the way to her base.

He had an idea of what her set did, at least, and had set up a more lane-central spire. When her allied minions had died, a small blue orb shot from them to orbit around Jessica. It didn’t seem to do anything on its own, and each one seemed to expire after a minute or so.

They would be conditional power, then.

Time for some probing.

Instead of sitting back the way he had with the first wave, Quince started taking a more active role in the fighting. Firing his weapon at the enemy side and causing the deaths to be closer together was dangerous, but he needed to test things out before they came into play for real.

At least, that was the plan. As soon as he’d paused to fire more than once at a single target, a ping against his shields warned him to the threat.

Too late, though. Jessica’s hands blurred as a series of shots spat out of the rifle, striking every one of his minions, his spire, and then him.

Then, each of those shots against anything other than him bounced, slamming into his shields before he could react.

It was a good thing he was in a spire’s area, because it still ripped off 30% of his shields.

“Shit!” Quince yelled, activating Flash Blast while ducking backwards, averting his eyes.

It wasn’t damage– Flash Blast would disable abilities that required aiming and otherwise act as a flashbang, but it didn’t deal damage unless he managed a direct hit with it, and, even then, only as much as firing his weapon normally would.

Chain Mark or something, plus Fan Fire and, if his eyes weren’t deceiving him because the shots had all come so quickly, either Focused Suppression or Crushing Focus. Not the cheapest energy cost, at forty-five or fifty in total, especially because if Emma’s information had been accurate that was half of her total.

But he couldn’t deny the effectiveness. If he hadn’t had the spire down, it would have taken over half of his shields, and another five-energy Fan Fire would have killed him. As it stood, another two would have taken him out, and that Flash Blast had saved his life.

Hiding amongst his minions, Quince had to admit that that was going to be the defining feature of this lane.

Chain Mark and Flash Blast had about the same cooldown. Jessica hitting him with Chain Mark meant he needed to Flash Blast, or he’d die. To hit Chain Mark, she needed to be able to predict that she’d hit him before she fired, and a miss or a hit on a minion instead of him would render it near-useless.

He felt like screaming.

This was a genuinely awful matchup. His usual strategy against someone with the ability to burst him like that was to start pushing and let them burn themselves out of energy on minions, but that wouldn’t work here. Jessica would be completely content to let him push into her, regenerating energy quickly because the expensive abilities were the single-target ones. If he had something that let him avoid or block Chain Mark, he might bait that to try to burn energy, but he didn’t yet.

On the upside, her Fan Fire did create one opening.

“Emma, if you can, gank soon. She’ll be pushed up for two waves.”

“Will do.”

He just hoped it would be enough.