The Immortal Promotion
Today. The day a week of work was finally supposed to bear fruit.
Seven days ago, even through the collab with Geonmo, my rank was still Master 1. After my father formally gave me permission to stream, I queued ranked like I'd lost my mind.
Master 3—the highest tier inside Master. That was six days of results. Master 3, ninety-one points. Nine more, and the number would be enough to reach Immortal.
Immortal. One of Project A's ranks, and the one sitting directly beneath Chaser, the highest rank there is.
Most of the streamers on Kwitch who wore a skilled-player title were Immortal or above. Among the women, Cash was the only one who had ever gotten there.
Once I started high school, my hours on stream would shrink whether I liked it or not. I wanted Immortal before that happened—wanted my name up among the skilled streamers, and my recognition up with it.
Judging by the titles on the community front page, the plan to raise my profile had already worked.
A few of them clearly didn't think much of me. No need to dwell on that. The world isn't obligated to like you.
I hadn't even had the warm-up song on for a full minute—the usual wait while the audience filtered in—and 975 people were already here.
My usual concurrent sat somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred, so this was unusual. The Immortal promotion, most likely. A special occasion will do that.
I watched the count surge like a tide and thought, Today's going to be a mess.
The moment the crowd swelled, chat started to muddy. A few of the people everyone calls trolls showed up.
If the thousand to fifteen hundred who usually sat in were my fans, then most of this flood were nothing but spectators. Among women streamers, only Cash had ever reached Immortal. Today the name Eunha might be added to that list, and they had come to watch whether it happened.
But trolls like that were cut down by the moderators—the ones we called the Silver Blades.
I'd prepared for exactly this. Days ago I'd picked a handful of mods from the people who had watched the longest, and the most often.
Thanks to the mods, chat managed to find its old shape again.
It was the biggest audience I'd ever had on stream, and I wasn't particularly nervous. Back when I was a pro, tens of thousands filling a big arena to watch in person was nothing unusual.
I had been nervous for the collab with Geonmo, but that was an exception—afraid I'd slip because of the past. Barring a case that strange, I had no reason to be nervous at all.
"Ah—ah. Hello, everyone!"
The trolls muddying the water were still in there, but suing Cries had apparently made me famous enough that they wouldn't cross the line.
"Whew, that's a lot of deletions. Looks like people came from all over to watch the promo. Don't get yourselves kicked for stirring the pot—if you're here, just watch and go."
They were trying, in their own way, to disrupt the broadcast. But I had the Silver Blades, didn't I?
Not everyone pouring in was a troll. Some of them, like the person who'd just donated, had honestly come to see me for the first time. If I wanted the channel to grow, I had to turn newcomers like that into regulars.
"Yeah, that's right. Nine points exactly, and I'm in Immortal."
I switched the broadcast at once—from a black screen with nothing but chat on it, over to Project A, up and running.
Three thousand people were in the channel. I couldn't keep milking the warm-up.
What they wanted was the Immortal promotion, and the result of it. Meeting that want—that was the whole job of being a streamer.
"All right, starting the Immortal promotion right now!"
The words ended, and my hand hit the start button.
The match popped in under a minute.
"Hmm. Haven."
Haven—a map with three sites where the attackers can plant, A, B, and C. The first map I ever played as the streamer Eunha.
Back then, as I remembered it, the viewer count was zero. Three thousand people watching now felt strangely unreal.
I wanted to carve it into them—the name Eunha, the streamer, both syllables of it—so it wouldn't come off.
I hadn't even looked at the comp. I instalocked Jett on the spot.
"You didn't know? Jett was my most-played."
Thinking about it, I really didn't have a memory of playing Jett on stream. Not once, not since the day I lost to Lord and retired like I was running. And honestly, the bigger reason was that Jett was so popular I rarely even got the chance to pick her.
"I'll show you."
Clearly enough that the bus accusations, the luck talk, and the haters wouldn't have a single rebuttal left. If anyone doubted my skill, showing them was enough.
Jett is rated the most mobile agent in Project A. Her E, Tailwind, throws her forward, sideways, or back in an instant. Her Q, Updraft, puts her on structures and second floors a normal jump will never reach.
In Project A, a single bullet slows you brutally, so once you're tagged, escaping is close to impossible. Jett can still leave. Tailwind will take her out of a fight. That overwhelming mobility, and that ability to simply not be there anymore, is one of the reasons she's the most loved duelist in the game.
Pistol round, the round that opens the game. I bought the 450-credit Frenzy and spent the remaining 350 on skills. A Frenzy is vicious up close, and it suits a Jett who's been handed the entry—the first body through the door. Three hundred and fifty credits also buys Updraft and her C, Cloudburst, which is why most Jetts would rather have a Frenzy on attack round one.
Our Fade suggested a rush onto B, and the whole team went along with it. The enemy sentinel was Chamber—not an agent like Cypher or Killjoy, who can choke an entry and buy time.
Buy time ended. The round started. We walked, slow, toward B, so they wouldn't hear us, swinging out toward the mid door in case someone was already waiting in front of the site.
Omen's smoke shut A Link and C Link—A Connection and C Connection, by the labels printed on the map.
I went into B with his Paranoia.
Jett's C, Cloudburst. A sphere flies the way you aim it, and the moment it touches floor or wall, smoke blooms there. It lasts four and a half seconds—short enough that you don't use it the way other controllers do, to stall a push or cut an angle.
It burst open with a rush of white.
Mostly you lay it down ahead of time on the exact spot you'll Tailwind into, so whoever is already on site can't properly hit you. I threw the smoke early, chained Updraft into Tailwind, and came up on the structure in the center of B.
Gunfire cracked through the smoke. Being inside it doesn't mean every bullet misses. My health dropped to forty-five.
Chamber was caught in our Fade's Haunt, thrown to match my entry. I was inside the smoke, but Haunt had already told me where he was, so the kill came easy. He couldn't pin my position. He had to watch the Jett hiding in the smoke and the attackers still coming in behind her, both at once, and a split focus is a focus that fails.
We cleared Chamber and planted on B at once.
It was an open plant, visible from B Window, so I could have left the site. I didn't. My gun was a Frenzy, and a Frenzy is miserable at range. The Chamber I'd just killed had bought a Headhunter, so he'd been holding nothing but a pistol.
"I'll just play it like a man."
Forty-five health left. The best play was obvious—hide on B, cut at least one player on the retake, and die. I didn't take it. I moved for A Link, A Connection on the map, to meet whoever was coming over from A.
Raze flinched at the sudden peek. I didn't stop walking. I shot on the move.
A running shot. Guns like the Frenzy and the Spectre don't always need a full brake—if the distance has already closed, you can keep moving and still hit. One bullet from Raze dropped me to fifteen. I dumped the Frenzy and reached for the Ghost he'd left on the ground.
White flared in front of me.
"Whoa—damn, that scared me."
Sova was just there. He nearly killed me. But the second kill had brought Tailwind back, and I'd already had it primed, so the dash took me out.
I got the Ghost, at least. Now I really could have backed off and hidden on site. I peeked again instead.
From Sova's side of it, a Jett on fifteen health—dead if a single bullet so much as grazed her—had just swung out. He didn't even need the head. A body shot would do. A walking corpse had dared him. He'd be thinking it. Why is she out here? What's she so confident about?
But I was sure I could put the bullet in his head faster than he could, and cleaner. Confidence that I could win even from a spot far worse than his. A reckless peek, standing entirely on that.
Someone had once said that FPS is confidence. I was one of the people who agreed with that—completely.