Lulu Wants a Carry
Lulu's latest chaos wasn't ordinary chaos.
What do I mean by that?
It's simple, really.
Among Fantasy Live's first- and second-generation members, the strongest gamers were Aris of the first gen and Elia of the second.
Both of them were universally recognized as top-tier players.
Because of that, a debate had taken root among VTuber fans—more precisely, among Fantasy Live fans.
Who was better at games: Aris or Elia?
The argument was basically meaningless, since the two would have to face each other directly to settle it.
Even ranking comparisons didn't help much. In the titles they both played, their ranks sat at roughly the same level, and outside of those their libraries barely overlapped.
Aris leaned heavily into competitive games, while Elia spent more time on single-player package titles.
Their fields of play just didn't quite line up.
There was still some back-and-forth over the overlapping games, but without a head-to-head matchup there was no way to know for sure.
Just as that debate was starting to fade, a new one emerged that fans of both Aris and Elia were dying to answer.
The question: just how well could someone carry Lulu, Fantasy Live's universally acknowledged weakest physical player?
Lulu's skill level was the kind that tied Aris's hands and feet together.
Even when Aris went full try-hard, carrying her was only barely possible.
So if Aris and Elia teamed up, could they actually carry someone like that?
The answer still hadn't come in.
Plenty of people thought a carry was possible, but almost no one was confident enough to call it guaranteed.
That was how apocalyptic Lulu's skill really was.
Maybe that was why.
"Hey… Elia."
"Yes, senior!"
"…Run while I'm giving you the chance. This place is hell."
"Huh?"
Aris was trying to save at least one person by recommending that Elia flee.
From this point on, if the three of them played together, Elia and Aris would have to run a three-man squad.
Three people against four-person squads.
Aris could often handle that on her own, but the moment the enemy side had even one player on her level, things got ugly.
Knowing that, Aris urged Elia to escape.
…Personally, I think she might have been a little annoyed at Lulu for ramming this collab through on her own. On top of that, the fact that she couldn't have a solo collab with Lulu might have irked her.
After all, Lulu was Fantasy Live's biggest star and the face of the agency.
Collabing with Lulu meant a viewer boost for whoever shared the stream with her.
She might have wanted that all to herself. If I were Aris, I'd feel the same way.
Of course…
"Aww, senior! I want to play too~ Wouldn't it be fun if we carried her together? Senior Lulu is reeeally bad, you know."
"Hey, Elia."
"Hmm hmm… She's right."
"Aris, you too…!"
Elia casually brushed off Aris's attack. She even built rapport with Aris and flipped it into a joint assault on Lulu.
Excellent play, Elia.
It felt like just yesterday she was a simple Lulu copycat, and already she'd grown this much.
Is this Lulu Army happy? This Lulu Army slash Eldongbu is overjoyed?
Since things had come to this, I pulled up all three of their screens so I could properly enjoy it.
The ones I needed to lock timelines for were, of course, Elia and Lulu.
Aris's feed would be side material; the main event would be those two.
One as a Lulu clipper, the other as Eldongbu.
Anyway, Elia lightly rejected Aris's suggestion and insisted the three of them play together. Since Lulu wanted the same thing, she nodded right away.
Outnumbered, Aris had no choice but to join in…
And just like that, the legendary VTuber squad known as AruEl—or EluA—was born.
The three of them jumped straight into a game.
Now that they'd decided to do it, they needed to squeeze in as many matches as possible to farm more stream moments.
They headed into the lobby and soon boarded the plane.
"Where should we drop?"
"Camp! Let's go Camp!"
"Elia, ignore her."
"Yes~ Since Senior Lulu is with us, how about some scat farming?"
"Sounds good~"
Scat farming—short for scattered farming—meant looting the little buildings dotted across the map instead of a major POI.
Dropping into a hot zone and locking down all the loot was fine, but if you ran into an enemy squad the early game got exhausting.
Early on, combat power was low, so numbers usually won, and in close-quarters urban fights a shotgun could delete you regardless of skill.
"Aaaah~ I wanna go Camp~ Camp~!"
Lulu didn't care about any of that and switched into full "It's Lulu's!" chaos mode, determined to stir the pot.
The different reactions to her were entertaining in their own right.
"Lulu, quiet?"
"Pffft, Senior's so cute~"
Aris looking faintly irritated, Elia finding Lulu adorable no matter what.
That was a picture all by itself.
I kept watching while logging timestamps, and before I knew it all three had jumped from the plane.
Destination: the little buildings, of course. They'd settled on scat farming.
"Boring."
Lulu immediately slapped a "boring" on it, and right on cue Aris reined her in.
"Lulu?"
"Hm?"
"If we aren't around, can you survive on your own?"
"…If we're in the same building, you can keep me alive, right?"
"If we get surrounded or the whole building gets blown up, we all die."
"But we'd still be together…!"
"If you get cracked, we all die."
"Uuuugh…"
Faced with Aris's relentless, irrefutable barrage, Lulu switched her model expression to a full pout.
Moments like this really showed how sharp Lua's streaming sense was.
Changing her face that fast gave viewers another comedy beat.
Once they'd landed at the buildings, the three dove straight into looting.
Lulu, true to form, was leisurely inspecting every single item, while the other two ripped through gear at top speed.
In the time it took Lulu to clear one small house, the other two had finished two large buildings and started dividing tasks on their own.
"Elia, can you look after Lulu for a bit? I'll go grab that car."
"Yes, senior. Be careful. Senior Lulu, how's your loot?"
"Hm? I've got stuff like this."
The guns Lulu had picked up were the classic newbie-friendly SMG and a sniper that newbies also loved—both extremely forgiving weapons.
"Senior Lulu, nice loot choices~"
"Hehe~ This is my level!"
"Attachments?"
"Just scopes on both!"
"Then take these and these."
Elia handed Lulu a couple of attachments and took the lead.
"Senior Aris will be bringing the car, so let's move toward her."
"Can't we just wait here?"
"We could, but if we head that way too, the travel distance gets shorter."
"Ahhh~ Got it!"
Elia was herding Lulu around like a little sister, and thanks to her detailed callouts Lulu seemed to be playing without a single thought in her head.
But then Lulu's brainy moment hit.
"…Guys, let's go over there."
She dropped a ping on a building on the map, and what she said next was downright chilling.
"Three teams dropped before we did. Probably two teams here and one team there. Or maybe all three went to that zone. Either way, no matter how many landed where, if we head this direction we'll have to push through them. The place I pinged is safer."
Aris and Elia both looked a little impressed at Lulu's quick, precise briefing.
"Ooooh~"
"Senior Lulu~ Ooooooh~"
"Hehe, this is nothing!"
Lulu grinned shamelessly, but there was a huge trap in there.
"Lulu, you know this is a small map, right?"
"Yep!"
"…They could've gone farther somewhere else?"
"Ah?"
In an instant Lulu swapped her model expression.
To something that looked faintly dumb—drooling, blinking slowly.
"Puhahahahaha!"
"Lulu's a fake smarty."
"Ugh…! I just forgot, okay…!"
Lulu was throwing an adorable tantrum, and the viewers were smiling fondly—or teasingly—at her.
I was one of them.
Side note: Lua had almost certainly calculated all of this when she gave that order.
There was no way Lua—Im Lua—would actually forget something like that in her calculations.
And if she really had forgotten…
…That would be cute in its own way. Quietly so.
Of course that couldn't be it.
She'd said it knowing exactly how this would play out. Definitely.