That Prim Little Bastard
"But isn't Nebula on the first page of the leaderboard? Why am I matching with him?"
In the past I remembered, Nebula had definitely been up on the first page of the rankings. No matter how high my MMR sat, I shouldn't have been pairing with a Chaser from the very top of the ladder.
A kind viewer cleared the question up for me on the spot.
"Oh."
Thinking about it, every time I'd crossed Nebula had been back in the Asia-server days. Korea's level had climbed a long way, but at the very top the Asia server was still the sharper one. Most of the people dreaming of going pro—or already there—never migrated to Korea for a higher level of play. They stayed on Asia, and Nebula had been one of them.
If he'd moved to the Korea server around the same time I had, the two of us landing in the same lobby wasn't impossible at all. However large the player base grew, the headcount at the highest tier was always small, so running into last game's teammate again, or meeting them as an enemy, was common enough.
Snake, Omen, and Sova. Knowing Nebula's habits, he liked agents that could pull enemy information for certain—Fade, Sova, or else Ground.
"Nebula's the Sova, right?"
"Okay. Lucky I've got at least one teammate I can trust."
With Nebula on the team, I could relax. A real team game might have been another story, but in a rank game like this he wasn't a worry at all.
Ice Room. The map was built around an excavation site on Bennett Island in the Sakha Republic, a Russian autonomous republic, and nearly every approach had a first floor and a second. The elevation was brutal and the lanes ran long and open, so fights at range came up constantly. That made it a kind map for the Operator, which was why Chamber and Jett—agents who could actually use one—were close to mandatory, and why Killjoy showed up just as often, carrying Lockdown, an ultimate that was absolute when it came to shoving people off a site or stalling a retake.
Our comp was Jett, Snake, Omen, Sova, and Killjoy. The only utility that could actually help a Jett entry was Sova's recon and Omen's Paranoia, so on attack a fairly heavy load had landed on my shoulders. I didn't mind. In Project A, skill could overturn a disadvantage like that whenever you wanted.
The pistol round opened on attack. Instead of the Ghost—the balanced sidearm that covers most distances—I bought the Frenzy, four hundred and fifty credits of explosive close-range fire. Ice Room forced long fights, but we had two smokers in Omen and Snake, and I figured that was enough to close inside the Frenzy's useful range and turn it into a brawl. What I had left was three hundred and fifty, and I spent it on my C, the smoke burst, and my Q, Updraft. Eight hundred credits in all. Every credit a pistol round gives you, spent without holding back.
"Want to hit an A rush?" said Sova.
No reason to turn Nebula's call down. My gun was a Frenzy, built for a fight up close, so hunting the wide-open B site—where the map would force a long duel—was worse than simply taking A.
"We've got Omen, so I'll throw a fake curtain on B," said Snake.
With two smokes on the team, Snake set his E, the toxic screen, down on B ahead of time. Their side might look at that curtain and fall into the mind game—are they hitting B?—and even if they didn't, a failed A hit still left us a screen already waiting for a B execute. Nothing to lose. On top of that he dropped his Q, the poison smoke, on the only path the defense could use to check whether we were taking Tube, planting the idea that mid was on the table too.
"Hold for about five seconds, then we go," said Sova.
We'd been ready to crash A the instant the round started, but one line from Sova pulled us back.
"Must be for ZERO/point."
KAY/O's E, ZERO/point, was a knife-shaped projectile. Anything it struck laid a Suppressed status on every enemy inside sixteen meters, sealing their skills for eight seconds—and it told you how many it had caught, so it doubled as information.
A thin whistle, then a crack. Inside the five seconds Nebula had warned us about, KAY/O's ZERO/point came knifing into our A Main, and because every one of us had already backed off, not a single player ate the suppress.
"Well, more or less. Honestly, even if it tags a couple of people, it just can't tag me."
From their side of the map, one or two names on a ZERO/point wasn't proof that our whole team was stacked on A. If it caught the Jett—the point of the attack, the one who enters first—then that lane was probably the real hit. If it didn't, they couldn't tell whether the suppressed player was a lurk or the main group. So instead of entrying, I watched the map and waited for the knife to pop.
"Knife didn't tag anyone. No sound. We walk it in," said Killjoy.
From the defense's seat, B and mid were both wearing Snake's smoke, and on A we'd slipped the ZERO/point without giving them a scrap of information. They had to respect every lane at once. That was environment enough.
"Droning pipe. Omen, start the smokes. Jett, get ready to entry," said Sova.
"Yeah," said Omen.
Sova's C, the owl drone, checked pipe—A Pipe on the minimap—then the right angle, then the left. Omen's smoke shut A Screens and the rafters, cutting off the defense's nastiest positions.
"Pipe's clear. One on the left. Watch the fishing angle," said Sova.
What was left was my turn. The entry's turn.
A low thrum, then a rush of air. I popped my C, the smoke burst, on the container inside A site, then chained Q—Updraft—into E, Tailwind, and rode them up onto the box. Right with my entry, Sova's E, the recon arrow, stabbed down into the site. In a window like this his recon was the kind of utility that got shot the instant it landed, but the bolt skipped off the walls again and again before it stuck, and guessing exactly where it would bite was hard enough that the break came a beat late.
The Raze hiding on the left was lit up.
"Jett, Raze is right below you on the left," said Sova.
Gunfire stuttered across the site.
I had no intention of letting that Raze walk away. I dropped off the container and swapped to the Ghost he'd been holding. Sova's drone had already cleared the right angle, which left the fishing spot and A Rafters. Omen's smoke was already sitting on the rafters, so if I cleaned the fishing angle, the plant would come easy.
"Huh?"
A shock dart—Sova's Q—whistled into the fishing spot and spat electricity. Like the recon bolt, it could be made to skip off several walls, which was how you punished someone hiding behind one. It took real fluency to do it. Asking whether Nebula had that fluency on an initiator was a waste of breath.
KAY/O decided he couldn't eat the damage and had no choice but to abandon a good position for a bad one.
"Nice," said Sova.
KAY/O had sprinted into a dead end and caught the Ghost for it. I'd shot the body, not the head—thirty damage, nothing—and he died anyway. A shock dart hits for seventy-five, scaled by distance, and that one had been a direct hit on a KAY/O who was still tucked in cover. Literally.
"Buying a shock dart on a pistol round?"
Omen, coming in behind me, got the bomb down. All that remained was thirty-eight seconds of keeping the defense off the defuse. They could come from Heaven, Screens, or A Main—three paths, and Killjoy's turret was already watching A Main. That left Heaven and Screens.
"Recon's got twenty-four seconds. Don't peek. Just hide, and watch for Fade's Haunt," said Sova.
What they had left was Snake, Chamber, and Fade. Their Snake had already spent his screen on B, and the only piece of utility that could actually threaten us while we held the numbers was Fade's Haunt—the one skill that could pull hard information the way Sova's recon arrow did. I left Screens to Omen and Sova and watched the entrance that fed the second-floor rafters. Fade's head showed for an instant, and I didn't miss it.
"Got Fade."
From Fade's side of it, the plan had probably been a short peek, a Haunt, and then back into cover. If that was the idea, she should have mixed a jump into it. Against someone with pro-level reactions—and it didn't even have to be me—a peek that reckless was no different from setting out a funeral table and begging to be killed. Their one real hope, the Haunt, had been shut down before it ever left her hand.
"Nice," said Sova.
Nebula's answer was flatter than I'd expected. So this didn't even surprise him. Fair enough, if you were number one on the Asia server. That was a rank only a real monster ever touched. He'd hit the top and slid straight back down, of course, but having reached it even once still meant something.
"Good."
The goal for this game had been nothing but the win. Just now, another one got added. I wanted to hear that prim little bastard make a sound of admiration, just once.
We were headed to the same showmatch anyway. I ought to leave a good impression.