Intentional Throw (Project A)
"Hmm... attack first."
Ascent is what people call a defense map, a place where holding is supposed to be the easy side of the game. Starting on the attack—especially on Killjoy, the agent everyone treats as a defense specialist—did not feel like a first half worth celebrating.
Our comp made it worse. Two entries, and a default that wants you to spread across the whole map, bleed the enemy's utility dry, and only then walk into whichever site is soft. That kind of round is miserable to run with what we had locked. Lurking on my own would only put me behind the team's tempo, so on attack I was more or less sentenced to the pack whether I liked it or not.
If we were hitting fast anyway, the turret on my E was enough. I didn't need the alarmbot on Q eating space I would never use, so I spent the credits on a Sheriff and took the gunfight instead. Buy phase ended with exactly that: one Sheriff, and not a single ability.
Chat had questions about the Sheriff, and they weren't wrong to ask. A sentinel's kit is nothing but top-shelf utility. I had skipped it for a simpler reason: I couldn't see myself using any of it.
"If our entries are hitting that fast, an alarmbot isn't bringing back information that matters. I'd rather buy the better gun than throw the credits away."
I left the rest unsaid, because it would have started a fight. The bigger reason was that I didn't trust those two entries. If my other option was a default pistol and faith in that instalock duo, the Sheriff looked like the better bet.
"Is that... the right buy?"
Two Sheriffs, one on Jett and one on Yoru. Those two were the entries, the players who were supposed to be first onto site, which meant a flash or a smoke would have helped them far more than a pistol. Buying Sheriffs was a statement: they didn't need utility. They were going to break the site on aim alone. I did not, honestly, believe them.
The buy timer ticked down and died. We chose B. Jett and Yoru were already sprinting for it, as if standing still for even a second would have been a waste, and sure enough it was a rush. A rush of air—Jett was through on Tailwind and onto the site in a blink. They hadn't even put a smoke down yet.
"...Huh?"
What was that supposed to be?
Sova stopped playing and started typing. On a normal day I wouldn't have understood it. Today the round was so absurd that I understood him perfectly.
The killfeed said the Killjoy was on a Ghost. No light shields, then, which put her at 100 HP. A Sheriff does 55 to the body. One hit from each of them and she dies. Instead the two of them died back to back.
The part I couldn't make sense of was simpler than the deaths. Jett and Yoru had gone down without firing a single bullet. I was no longer sure they were playing the game at all.
I could follow Sova's temper, more or less. The round still wasn't over.
A shot. On B Main, in the exact pocket where Yoru and Jett had died, their Killjoy was still just standing there. I one-tapped her with the Sheriff.
That hadn't really been my reaction time. Their Killjoy had been standing there like she'd forgotten what a round was. She clearly hadn't expected Jett and Yoru to die that emptily, and she'd frozen in the open.
Only then did Sova seem to come back to himself, dropping recon onto the site.
With his smoke and the recon bolt covering me, I pushed onto site in a hurry. What was left was Back Site, the pocket behind B. The lane in is narrow and the space is tight, so a long-range Sheriff has no real reason to volunteer for it. The entries who were supposed to take that fight for me were already dead. I couldn't plant while pretending a danger zone like that didn't exist, so I took the risk.
Please. Please don't be in here—or be standing exactly where I'm looking.
A shot.
By some mercy, heaven sided with me.
"Whew..."
I had been clenched down to the last nerve, and the breath of relief came out before I could stop it.
That made it three against three. Omen stayed on B Main to watch for anyone rotating in behind us, and Sova and I held the site.
What they had left was a Jett, a KAY/O, and a Brimstone. The thing to fear was KAY/O's flash.
Two shots cracked off B Main. Omen caught their Brimstone. If he could have fallen off after that, it would have been perfect.
The round didn't give him the chance. Their Jett traded him.
Two against two again. Still a round we could win.
A pop—KAY/O's flash, tossed onto site. I was tucked inside Back Site, outside the bloom. Sova was not.
He ate the flash clean, and their Jett swung on the timing and killed him. From where I was, her angle didn't exist. I couldn't trade it, and the moment I stepped out of this pocket I would be open to half the site. Holding was the best I had.
One shot. Then a burst.
"Agh. This is annoying..."
I had been sitting in a slightly obvious spot, and they swung me from both angles at once. I got one of them. The other got me.
The mood, at least, was still intact. Even so.
"I really wish everyone would just use team voice..."
The Omen who died on B Main, the Sova who died to the flash—if either of them had said it out loud, the round might have ended somewhere else. In a shooter where the picture changes every second, a voice dropped straight into your ear is worth more than any briefing you have to stop and read.
...It wasn't my place to say it. I knew that.
"...If I turn my mic on, I pull way too much aggro."
I did have a defense. Since the showmatch, my name had climbed pretty high in the top of the ladder. Just yesterday I'd run into someone chanting Great Eunha, Great Eunha in the server. Hear that in your own ear and your focus falls apart. I wasn't using team voice myself, and I couldn't demand it from them alone, so I let the voice comms go.
"More importantly..."
"What is wrong with these people?"
Lose the pistol, and the next round is an eco. You save. Buying guns anyway only leaves you weaker, on average, than an enemy wrapped in shields, and if you lose that round too, the one after it is hopeless. Cleaner to hand one round over and come back on rifles, fully bought. Two steps back so you can take two steps forward. That is what an eco is.
Tier-one teams do it. Chaser lobbies, the very top of the ladder, do it. Bronze and Iron, the bottom of the ladder, do it. Lose the pistol and the next round is an eco, everywhere. These two had no interest in that at all.
So it wasn't just me and the stream. The rest of the team was already scolding the two entries for the buy.
They didn't sell. Jett and Yoru kept the Spectres through every protest, and the buy timer ran out before anyone could undo it.
"Haa... fine. It's fine..."
Watching them march out, stubborn, on no-armor Spectres put a slow pinch in the back of my skull. I decided to be generous about it. Maybe those two guns would make a mess the other team wasn't ready for. A force buy like this shows up in the pro scene every so often...
Two shots.
"No, this—!"
No. This was actually not okay.
No armor or not, you do not lose a two-on-one to someone holding a Sheriff. And again without firing a single shot?
Now I could be sure of it. These two were not seriously playing the game.
Intentional throwing. I had only ever heard about it. I hadn't expected to be the one on the receiving end.
But why? What could they possibly gain by throwing here, of all places?
The others had reached the same conclusion, and they half-quit the game on the spot. Fair enough. Project A is a game where every single player matters. Not one of them doing this, but two—you could drop three players from a world-class pro team into the lobby and still struggle to win.
"...Pests?"
It had been a long time since I'd heard that word. Pests.
Anyone who had only just started Project A—no, anyone who hadn't been around in the early days—probably wouldn't know what it meant. In an online game, the people who use bugs, cheats, and the rest of the illegal programs, or who take what isn't theirs through match-fixing and stolen accounts: we usually call that abusing. Project A players had their own name for it. Abusers were gnawing through the life of the game, so they called them pests.
"Ha... haha..."
I genuinely could not believe this.