The Event Match
Thirty minutes before the event match, Rioat staff pressed a smartphone into each streamer's hand.
"What is this?"
"Open the gallery. There's a video on the new agent. Watching it once before the match should help."
"Ah..."
Fair enough. Sending them into a match with absolutely nothing would have been a bit much. This event was only ever an appetizer for the final, and on a larger scale it existed to promote the new agent. If they knew nothing about the agent, how were they supposed to promote anyone? Of course Rioat had to hand over some information.
"The video goes up on Rioat Korea's K-tube at 3 p.m. Until then, you must not leak anything about the new agent. Please be careful."
"Yes, yes."
What... was that?
If the warning not to leak anything sat on her a little too heavily, maybe she was only imagining it.
"Shall I step in?"
Driver Kwon must have thought the employee's tone had offended her, because he asked whether he ought to intervene. But—
"Ah, no, it's fine. Honestly, talking like that is normal..."
From Rioat's side, warning her was only natural. She had already leaked, once, that they were filming the Newbie Guide. She didn't have a comeback.
"Normal, you say?"
"It's nothing... More importantly, where are you planning to be while I'm playing? You can't come all the way into the arena with me, can you?"
Until now she had muscled him through doors by leaning on that imposing presence, but this was as far as it would go. He wasn't a streamer, a pro, or a Rioat staffer. There was no world in which Driver Kwon walked into the arena itself.
"Waiting in the green room is as far as they'll allow. Letting an outsider like me in this far was already a considerable courtesy. I can't force it any further."
So he had known he was forcing it.
Still, she realized he wasn't a completely rigid man. Sometimes he seemed like a robot who cared about nothing except her safety. Even so, having him beside her let her breathe. There wasn't a bodyguard anywhere as solid as Driver Kwon. At an international event she had once moved with overseas security, and one of him had felt more reassuring than dozens of them. There was nothing more to say.
"Besides, there are plenty of eyes in the arena, so nothing I'd worry about should happen. If something does, I'll come running. Don't worry too much."
"Ahaha. What could possibly happen? Anyway, thank you."
"People like me always have to assume the worst. More importantly, are you not going to watch the video? You said it was important..."
"Oh, right!"
She checked the clock. Twenty minutes until the event match. The video was five minutes, so she could skim it a few times.
She sat and watched the new agent carefully. Her one-line verdict on Echo was simple.
"Hmm... what is this one...?"
An extremely cryptic agent.
Inside the booth where the match would be played, she entered first as captain of the event team, and the rest of the players followed her in. The hollow room filled: five streamers, counting her, and two Rioat employees serving as referees.
"Whoa... looks like half the crowd outside is your fans, Eunha."
"Y-yeah..."
She knew better than anyone that she had a lot of fans. She had not expected this. These people had clearly come for the PCK final. Why was every single one of them chanting her name? She was grateful they liked her, but—
"Pfft—! Cough, cough!"
Th-they didn't need to cheer that hard, did they?
"Wow, you can hear it all the way in the booth..."
Esports booths were specially treated so the crowd couldn't feed outside information to the players. You usually couldn't hear a thing from out there. That voice was absurdly loud. And it wasn't only the volume. The lines themselves made her head spin.
She had gotten used to viewers shouting Great Eunha. She had never gotten used to I love you and marry me, no matter how many times she heard them. If a male fan had been the one yelling, it would have felt pretty uncomfortable. It was a woman, so she couldn't even say anything. She just had to take it. Every cheer like that heated her face before she noticed, and every time she decided to ignore it.
She had a bigger problem than that.
Which was...
"Ah, Eunha! I wanted to say hello in the waiting room... I'm a fan. Just one handshake, please!"
"Huh? Ah... sure."
Ugh... this is so awkward...!
The bigger problem was the awkwardness with her teammates. Oldboy, Zzangdol, all of them greeted her like they were already close. The trouble was that she didn't know most of them. She was pretty sure she had seen the faces once or twice on K-tube or Kwitch. She just couldn't remember.
"What map was it again? I think they told us, but it's not coming back."
"Ascent, probably? So who wants to play Echo?"
The event match was a single game. Only one of them would get to play the new agent. Everyone here was a streamer with a real audience, so that chance would be fiercely tempting. A little disappointing, maybe, but better to hand it to someone else.
"How about you, Eunha?"
"Wh-what?! Me?"
Why me, of all people...?
"You're the captain, and you've got the highest rank of any of us. Wouldn't you show how to use her the best?"
"I... but everyone else...?"
"I'm in too. The camera's probably going to live on Echo, so the broadcast looks better if it's you, right? Your clips pop up on stream sometimes, and... wow. My jaw just hits the floor."
"Th-that's, uh... thank you?"
"Then it's settled, Eunha plays her? I watched the video and I still don't know what kind of character this is."
"Same."
Somehow the whole thing had drifted toward her playing the new agent. Whatever. It was fine. Besides, honestly...
"Th-then I'll do it."
She had wanted to try, if she was being honest.
Ahaha...
Initiators usually split into two kinds. One, like Ground and Breach, helps allied entries get onto site. The other, like Sova and Fade, specializes in finding where the enemy is. Echo had only just been added, so there was no research at all on which role used her well. The streamers had to interpret her themselves.
Team Eunha had paired Sova with Echo and pointed her at helping their entries. Team BS had fielded Echo alone, in an info role meant to find the enemy.
Dadadada—
Team BS hadn't brought Sova, the agent built for hard info. With two entry agents on the roster, they set up the fast hit.
Beep-beep! Pop!
Pop!
The rush hit harder than Team Eunha had expected.
Project A's new agent, Echo, and Echo's E, Stun Bot. After the skill is used, a left click throws the bot in the direction you're facing. Every enemy in its line of sight eats a beam that locks down their vision. Hear only that and you might think it's a simple flash. Echo's Stun Bot has a sharper edge: anti-flash does nothing to it.
Killjoy had turned her camera out of habit. The Stun Bot did not care. It fired a blinding beam straight into her, and Jett was in at once to finish the kill. The defenders who should have covered Killjoy couldn't help at all, not with Phoenix's Curveball in their eyes.
For a team thrown together on the spot, Team BS's timing was nearly perfect. It wasn't only Jett. Every remaining teammate poured onto B.
Sova had trusted Killjoy and stayed inside B, and now Sova alone was besieged on all sides. At that rate Sova was dead, and trading even one would have been lucky. But—
BS never gave Sova an opening.
Two defenders deleted, the spike down. Ordinarily you could already call the round.
Usually, once the spike is planted, the attackers only have to stop the defuse. There is no need to go hunting the defense. Team BS didn't stop there. They were set to push all the way into CT, and it was only the two of them: Echo and Jett.
In Project A, use a skill and you either can't use it again, or you wait out a cooldown. Echo's kit had a stranger rule. Interact with E at the spot where the skill was used, and that skill can be reused exactly once.
Oldboy scooped up the Stun Bot he had used on B main and threw it again, toward CT.
Beep-beep.
Bang!
The bot lobbed into CT died to a single pathetic bullet. Echo's skills could be picked back up and reused. They could also be shot. It didn't matter. The Stun Bot had gone high, and breaking it meant lifting your crosshair. Whoever destroyed it had raised their aim to do it, and that aim had to be shaken. If both sides were evenly skilled, the shaken crosshair loses the duel. That was the whole point of Team BS's Stun Bot.
Bang!
Right. Only under the assumption that both sides were equal.