Ceremony

Crack.

"Got the Echo."

"Whoa... what was that just now?"

"Exactly three shots. Not one more. That's chilling."

At a glance, Echo's E looked almost illegal. The Stun Bot, though, had a fatal flaw.

"Hard to say. Feels like it might be good and bad at the same time."

The flaw was simple. One bullet, and the Stun Bot was gone.

If you only meant to use it for information, that hardly mattered. Even destroyed, it still confirmed someone was there. But the more I looked at it, the less it seemed built for info at all. It was specialized for something else—for propping up an entry the way I just had, and tilting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the duel in our favor.

Being able to recast it was a real advantage. On pure utility, I could score it high. The problem was still that paper-thin body, dead to a single shot. A flash would at least wrench your whole screen around. A Stun Bot only dragged your aim upward.

"I thought it looked good, though. If a Stun Bot comes flying in, you have to back off or aim up, right?"

"Hm? That's just—couldn't you break the Stun Bot and put your crosshair right back on them? That barely even counts as an effect..."

I wasn't showing off. It was simply true. For a world-class FPS pro, a correction like that was a piece of cake. At an international event, where the best Project A players on earth were gathered in one place, being unable to do it would be the strange part.

"R-really?"

"I think that's only possible because it's you, Eunha..."

Well. At an amateur level, the conversation was a little different.

"Ahem. Omen, could you smoke Main? I'll take CT. You two, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠head to Market."

The bomb was down, and it was three against three. Depending on how the fights broke, we could still win this.

"Okay."

"You got it."

It was only the pistol round, the first of the half, so there was no reason to hoard guns. We blacked out Main with Omen's smoke—the angle most likely to jam a retake onto B—and set up slowly.

"One... two... three... now!"

A thin electronic chirp, then a crack. I tossed the Stun Bot onto B, and a bullet killed it at once.

The scrap of time they spent destroying it was more than enough for me.

Enough time, that is, to kill them.

"Nice."

"That's how it's supposed to look. A second ago you were just out of your mind, Eunha."

Was that really all it was?

"Ahaha..."

Thinking about it, almost everyone here was a Project A broadcaster. Top of the ladder, maybe, but streamers all the same. Expecting world-class pro mechanics out of them was ridiculous. The seat I was sitting in had bent the way I thought.

The roar punched straight through my headset. Count the broadcast delay, and they were probably seeing the moment I used the Stun Bot to drop Phoenix. In a real match I would have had earbuds under the cans, every outside sound sealed away. This was only an event match.

Sitting in this chair again, I remembered.

Now... I felt like I almost understood.

But so what.

All of it was already gone.

"That's Eunha's third!"

"That makes it three against two! And that play through CT earlier is coming back to haunt them!"

"Of all people—of all places—he runs into Eunha there! BS must be cursing heaven!"

In a breath, a three-on-five had collapsed into a three-on-two, and every bit of it was Eunha alone. Her team eased into B. Someone was already outside the read they had made.

Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

Crack.

"Zzangdol!"

"No—Eunha's team completely lost their angles!"

Angles. Project A was first person, and one player could only see so much. The corners that had to be checked were more than any single person could hold, so each teammate took one, and a formation without gaps was the barest of basics. Just now, Eunha had been watching the right lane of B. One of the other two should have had the left lane, and the last of them Main. Both of them were staring down the left. Zzangdol walked out of Main and erased them for nothing.

Eunha answered fast enough to take him down. She paid for it anyway.

"Eunha has almost nothing left. One hit and she's dead!"

"Chamber, on the other hand, is still healthy. This is brutal for her."

Chamber knew where she was, and he had the health to use it. Eunha didn't know where he was, and her own health was nearly gone. Under all of that, she didn't rush the site. She started the interact instead, buying back the Stun Bot so she could throw it again.

"She's picking the Stun Bot back up."

"She has to. Walk in without it and one tag kills her."

If Chamber had been in Main, or already on B, that choice could have killed her. She reset the cooldown cleanly all the same. Interact with the bot and let someone peek you, and you died without ever getting to fight back.

She moved anyway. Not because she failed to see the danger, but because she had already called where Chamber was. If he had been in Main, there was no reason not to trade the instant Omen died. The same was true if he had been on B itself. Omen was dead, and Chamber still hadn't peeked—so he was either in B Backsite, or he wasn't on B at all. No chance he was still off on a lurk, trolling, after Jett and Echo were already dead. That put him in B Backsite.

And so, with so little health that a single bullet would kill her, she forced the pickup. The Stun Bot could eat that first shot in her place.

"Eunha's walking onto B. Slow."

"She has to lead with the Stun Bot. However fast her reactions are, that health gap is too wide to brute-force."

She took the site one careful step at a time, and just as the desk had said, the Stun Bot came out.

"Stun Bot!"

She threw it straight onto B.

Beep... beep...

Nothing. A Stun Bot that didn't react meant nobody was on B—more precisely, nobody inside its vision. The enemy was deeper. Backsite. That much was certain.

"She'll have read Backsite by now. From here it's an angle fight!"

The bot never triggering gave her a rough fix on Chamber. The bot's audio gave Chamber a rough fix on her. Both of them still had two angles to clear. Backsite opened on the left and on the right.

Whoever saw the other first would win it. A coin flip. The initiative, though, belonged to Chamber. Eunha had to defuse. He could wait for the sound of it and still be on time.

She had one card left. More precisely, the new agent under her hands did.

Echo's Q: Wingman. Send the drone the way she was looking, let it hunt, and if it found someone, have it chase them down and land a concuss. The skill had another trick buried in it. It could plant the bomb, or defuse it, in the player's place.

"Wingman!"

"Every side of Echo, and it's only round one. Rioat has to be delighted."

The initiative flipped. Chamber had to kill her, or stop the Wingman on the defuse. Every second he waited made it worse for him. In the end he peeked, because he had to.

Crack.

Of course the duel was hers.

"Ace! From the very first game, Eunha manufactures an ace and takes the pistol round!"

"Ordinarily the attackers should own the initiative in a spot like this. One Wingman, and she stole it completely—then closed it clean. A perfect play."

An ace, from the opening game of the show match.

The arena roared it with them, Great Eunha over and over, and the camera inside the booth found her.

And Eunha—

"Wow. That's modeled on Spax's ceremony, isn't it?"

"There's a reason she's such a popular streamer. The showmanship is ridiculous!"

She rose from her chair, winked, and touched a brief kiss to her wireless mouse.