Platform Exhibition, Day One: Youngest and Oldest vs. Pravengers
The pistol round that opens a game is worth two points once you count the buy round chained to it, and for that reason it is judged the most important round of all.
They took that pistol without a single death — an overwhelming win.
"Sheeee— nice!"
"Good good~ that's the stuff~"
The mood was still punching through the ceiling. Whatever they had carried out of scrims was holding.
"Nice. That was good, Eunha."
"Hoo. Thought I was dead for a second. Thanks."
Pravengers, NPT's representative side. In Spax's read they had no clear ace — all five played as a single unit, orthodox to the bone. Teams like that usually share one weakness: they do not handle unconventional play very well. Today, that was exactly where I meant to hit them.
The entry agent I had locked was Yoru, and in all of Project A, Yoru is the agent who can build the most unconventional play there is.
"I can play most of the entry agents."
The truth was, I had never once played Yoru in the pro scene. I had been on the receiving end of him plenty of times, though. They say the most efficient way to learn is to get hit by it yourself, and I could claim without blushing that I was the pro who had died to Yoru more than anyone. I knew exactly how to use him if I wanted the other guy furious. And the one who had done the killing was the man they called the best Yoru in the world, so the depth of that lesson hardly needed saying.
"Given how they are, they probably won't force, yeah? If we just fight calm, we win this for sure. Let's play it so we drop as few guns as possible."
"Okay."
Pravengers preferred the book. Even after losing the pistol, they would not reach for a force buy, that little gamble of purchasing guns no matter how thin the round. So their guns this round would be default pistols, or a Sheriff at the very outside. As long as we did not eat a Sheriff to the head, there was almost no way to lose the duel.
On a second round, when most teams buy a Spectre or a heavier SMG, I bought a Phantom without hesitation. Even if I died, I trusted the team to save the rifle somehow. Rifle, light shield, abilities — I set the round with all of it.
"I'll take B Main this round."
"Ah, okay."
I swapped with Zzangdol, who had held B Main the round before, and headed there myself. It was the best way to spend a Phantom, which covers close, mid, and long with the same easy superiority. I jiggle-peeked B Main and did not let the tension slip, ready if an enemy ability came flying in.
The lane into B was quiet, and still a kill log bloomed. They had gone A.
"A, A, A! All five of them are in Baths!"
Baths — the bathroom, and on the map legend, A Bath. They must have meant to spend the utility they had died too emptily to use last round, wipe whoever was in Baths with all five, take the guns, and manufacture a swing. But—
"Omen's Paranoia is out, and so is one of Ground's flashes. They're all in Baths right now."
Zzangdol had calmly killed the Raze who entered first, then gotten out. If the whole team was in the bathroom, my play was already decided.
"I'll cut them off from behind."
Still watching B Main, I set my E — Gatecrash — on the floor and threw myself into the teleporter right beside it.
Poof!
"Here they come! Can Zzangdol hold?!"
"Ah, this— Zzangdol is way too calm. He picks off only the Raze and doesn't give them an inch of chaos."
"From Pravengers' side, the idea was to use the Omen Paranoia they never got off last round, utility like that, and try an A-site rush. Zzangdol handled it, didn't he?"
Poof!
"Ah, Eunha just took the teleporter again!"
A one-way teleporter, entrance planted on B Main. Its exit was nowhere else but behind Pravengers, inside Baths. In front of them were Zzangdol's Brimstone and the rest of the enemy team still holding A. Behind them, Eunha's Yoru was waiting.
"If this keeps up, Pravengers are completely trapped, aren't they? Mice in a poison jar!"
"They have to punch a way out. If this continues, there's no answer."
It was, quite literally, besieged on all sides. Pravengers were on the back foot — the execute had failed, and the guns were thin. What they chose to do next—
"Ah, Pravengers are falling back!"
"That means they want the fight with Eunha's Yoru. Like they're saying, come out if you dare, right?"
Even a Yoru armed with a Phantom was still looking at four Pravengers. Among them was an agent on a Sheriff, and a Chamber with a Headhunter. Eat one of those to the head and she would die, and hand a rifle to the other side. All four had dropped all the way back to the teleporter's mouth. For a Pravengers that had flailed against Yoru the round before, it was a fast decision.
"Still, Pravengers reacted quickly. Even a Yoru who can escape on Gatecrash can't just stroll out of this."
"Right. If that rifle gets handed over, this round can flip. Drawing their eyes a little and slipping out on Gatecrash looks like the best play."
"Though I do keep thinking — if it's Eunha, she might come out anyway. She plays so aggressively."
The viewers, and the casters calling a match between active pros in the top fraction of a percent, all thought Yoru would stay inside the teleporter. Pravengers thought the same. No matter how good you are, fighting the many by yourself in an FPS is a miserable job.
Clunk.
And Eunha laughed at every one of those expectations.
Poof!
"Ah—! She came out?!"
"Pravengers have to punish this!"
Yoru appeared with the same ambush she had used on the pistol. But Pravengers had already eaten that once. They snapped their eyes away and beat the flash. Yoru peeked the instant it popped — and every one of them anti-flashed clean. Their barrels were already on her head.
Bang. Bang. Crack.
They were sure of it. Catch the Yoru who kept toying with them, and take the gun. But—
Poof!
The Yoru that had stepped out this time was not real either.
"No way — it's a clone again!"
"Eunha already escaped on Gatecrash. Pravengers got completely baited!"
"Wow... Pravengers have to be furious. Whether she comes out of the teleporter or not, and whether the Yoru that comes out is a clone — she's stacking that mind game over and over, isn't she?"
More time burned on Yoru. Charging A from here would be suicide, so Pravengers swung their attack toward B. But Yoru was already waiting there.
"Eunha! Her position, right now—!"
Place Yoru's Gatecrash with a left click and it keeps traveling in that direction. The one that started on B Main ran on until it reached B Fountain, and Eunha went with it. From where she stood, she was looking straight down the attacker-side cave Pravengers were heading into.
"Ah, Pravengers are in chaos! They have no idea!"
To shave every second they could, Pravengers were sprinting with knives out.
"Ah...! Contact!!"
That was the price of letting their guard down. A merciless hail of bullets.
Brrrrat—
Youngest and Oldest Eunha (Yoru) ︻╦╤─ 💀 Pravengers Omen
Youngest and Oldest Eunha (Yoru) ︻╦╤─ 💀 Pravengers Ground
"Ah! One! Two! Three! Absolutely delicious kills!"
"Pravengers are completely ruined! They have to remember who they're playing — that Eunha! The most aggressive player in this exhibition!"
"Eunha takes the last Chamber too and closes it with a quadra!"
"Pravengers completely failed to predict where she was, didn't they?"
They had been trying to change the attack path. Worried the defense might already have pushed up A Short, they spent the extra time and took the safer attacker-side cave. Only Yoru had dug in deeper than that.
"Youngest and Oldest take the second round with another Flawless. Eunha's Yoru even quadra-kills on the B Main ultimate orb, and her ultimate is online."
"Still, this round was an eco, so you could say the real match starts next round. For Pravengers, what matters now is not getting shaken by that Yoru anymore!"
"Ah... fuck."
Pravengers had dropped two rounds in a row. They had lost the pistol and then saved their money on the next, so 0–2 was, in a sense, the natural result. Even so—
"Why is she here again!"
"Ah... this is actually fucked."
The mood on the team was not good.
"It's fine. We eco'd last round. From here, we just can't let Yoru drag us around."
Only two rounds had passed. There was still plenty of room to turn it, so Jonghyeon, the captain, settled them.
"Okay."
"He's right. We've got rifles now too."
He dragged the mood back from the edge of the abyss, barely, and then let out a sigh small enough that his teammates would not hear it. He had expected to be pushed. He had not expected it to look like this. The scrim against Kwitch had been one-sided, sure, but he had believed they could win the real match.
In that scrim, Kwitch — put kindly, reckless; put unkindly, simple and stupid — had solved the game the same way every time. Aggressive fights that hung off the double aces, Eunha and Nebula. Those two alone had swept his team with no answer at all. Take the pair away, and the rest of that roster honestly had not been much.
So they had prepared a plan to eat Eunha alive, the one who loved pushing up on defense, and that was what they had come here to do. And then it was Yoru. He had not seen that coming at all.
But Yoru has limits Jett does not. It is an awkward agent for the Operator she uses so often, and its carry should have a ceiling too. If they simply refused to get yanked around by the Yoru, then Eunha not playing Jett was actually the better outcome for them.
"If we don't let the Yoru shake us, we can win. Come on — let's go, one time!"
"Let's go!"