Platform Exhibition, Day One: Youngest and Oldest vs. Pravengers

"Man... who even gets their ult in two rounds?"

"Seriously, if I ever had to face Eunha as an enemy, I don't even want to imagine it. Ugh..."

"Yeah. I'll give you that."

Two kills in the first round, four in the second, and one ultimate orb off B Main. Seven points. My ultimate was live. Two rounds — that was all it had taken before I could actually use it.

"They've got no answer for Yoru at all right now, Eunha. We can keep this up, right?"

Yoru was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the pick we'd brought for Pravengers, a team that folded the moment a round stopped being standard. If the mind games that agent lives on didn't land, he fell well short of tournament-tier duelists like Jett or Raze. It didn't matter. Against Pravengers, Yoru was working even better than we'd hoped.

"Yeah."

Nebula was right. Pravengers was flailing at the kit and answering none of it — the teleport mind games, the flanks off Gatecrash, all of it. Only two rounds had passed, and both of them had already shown exactly what Yoru could do.

We led 2–0 into the third. This one would be a bonus: reuse the guns from last round. They had eco'd, so they would almost certainly full-buy, Phantoms and Outlaw Rifles in hand. On raw firepower the team would be outgunned. I wouldn't. I'd bought a rifle last round, so my gun wasn't really giving anything up. Which meant there was no reason I couldn't play it exactly the way I had before.

"Even if we lose it, let's at least drop their guns. Fighting!"

"Fighting!"

I gave up B Main and held the same angle as last round — a spot that, if they hit A instead, let me teleport and make the hit ugly. A hawk came whistling off B Main. Ground's Guiding Light. I spun my view before it burst, slipped the flash, and called it.

"Ground's B Main. Don't know the rest."

Guiding Light isn't only a flash. If it catches someone, the caster knows. A blind and an info tool in the same throw. The moment it popped, the enemy Omen sent Paranoia straight at me. Tucked into a tight angle, I had nowhere to go.

"Omen burned Paranoia too. They're hitting B!"

"Can you get off it?"

The instant the blind connected, I heard Raze coming in on a Blast Pack. Stay, and I was dead. I punched through the black of Paranoia and got out on the teleport anyway.

"Hah... I thought I was dead."

"Nice. Clean out. They didn't spend anything else, right?"

"Raze Blast Pack, one Ground hawk, Omen Paranoia. That's everything I saw."

"They still don't have Hookah. I'll hold Hookah on a Shorty, so Eunha, teleport off Fountain like before and we look at the retake. Everyone else, don't walk onto site. Keep the fight as short as you can."

"Okay."

"You got it!"

"Eunha, this looks dangerous!"

"She slipped it on the teleport. Like that, Pravengers can't chase a Yoru through a teleport either."

"So they've basically taken B, though missing Hookah hurts. Faking the plant on B and snapping to A on a teleport is an option too."

Pravengers had spent utility to take B Main, but Hookah — one of the important pieces of B — was still untouched. Even so, they looked committed to planting there. Omen's smoke shut the angle from Hookah onto site, and they started laying the bomb.

"They're not rotating. They're just going. And Hookah's simply smoked off."

"Bomb down on B. Outgunned like this, the retake looks genuinely ugly for Youngest and Oldest."

"Honestly, I'm not sure they even need to force it. It's a bonus, and the bomb is already down. They can just catch whoever tries to leave."

"If they really are retaking, everyone but Eunha is on Spectres and the heavier SMGs. Spectres shred up close, so they'll want to walk it in off Pola's Fault Line."

Breach's E, Fault Line. A long shockwave fired the way you're facing. Anyone it hits — ally or enemy — is Dazed: sight and hearing torn up, rate of fire gutted, scopes unusable. Powerful crowd control, the kind that can collapse sound play and fighting power at once, and awkward for exactly that reason. Your own team can eat it too.

From Youngest and Oldest's side, forcing in looked worse than giving the round away and catching bodies as they ran out of the bomb's radius.

"Brimstone smoke is down. I think they're actually going for it!"

They chose the killing ground anyway.

"Pravengers has already burned most of their utility. Pola's Fault Line is the key!"

Every eye was on how that Fault Line would be used. Then, through a brief pocket of silence, Yoru's voice cut in.

"Huh? Dimensional Drift?! Eunha, you're using that too?!"

Yoru's ultimate. On cast he puts on the mask: untargetable, drastically faster, invisible to the enemy. He can still use abilities, but he cannot shoot. Step too close and a blue shimmer rolls across the enemy's UI, telling them he is right there. A powerful tool, and a fussy one.

"So Youngest and Oldest is gambling too?"

A seven-point ultimate, spent on a round they were likely to lose. A round they could afford to lose. To the casters, it looked like nothing but Eunha getting greedy and wasting something precious.

"Positions checked under Dimensional Drift. Fault Line comes off the call, right?"

Cloaked, Yoru walked onto site and marked the players inside B one by one. They knew it. They knew the ultimate was up and that she was reading ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them. Even so, a cloaked Yoru can only throw a flash or pull a clone. Drop the cloak and she can shoot, but the uncloak is loud — far too loud to pop in the middle of them without paying for it.

Eunha didn't feel any of that weight.

"She's dropping it here?!"

Flash and uncloak, both at once, in the heart of them. Pravengers had been watching for the blind, and several of them didn't eat it. Everyone watching expected the Yoru who had uncloaked so recklessly to die for nothing.

What came with it was Nebula's Guiding Light, the same cover that had shown up on the pistol, and Pola's Fault Line slammed into the angles the flash never reached. Before they could properly see Yoru, let alone shoot her, the cloak had finished tearing off.

"She just walked in and ran straight through them!"

"They got Eunha — but watch how the trade comes out!"

Two kills as the cloak dropped, and in the same breath the defense flooding in from Main, from Hookah, from CT. B site was a slaughterhouse.

"Jonghyeon! A double kill!"

When the chaos settled, Pravengers had Chamber and Raze still standing. Youngest and Oldest had Ground, and only Ground. A 2v1 — and already a grievous loss for Pravengers.

"Every trade hurts them worse! It already hurts. Three rifles on the ground!"

"And don't relax yet. Who's left is Youngest and Oldest's last wall. The famous Nebula."

"Nebula! That leaves Jonghyeon alone?!"

Jonghyeon and Nebula, one ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠against one. A duel between the shot-callers. Elbow, the L-shaped lane, sat between them, and the mind game stretched. Every second that passed favored Jonghyeon, so Nebula was the one who had to step up — and he did it with Guiding Light.

He peeked with the hawk he had just thrown. He was inside the flash's reach himself, and it caught him — but the burst was behind his back.

Jonghyeon, square in front of the hawk, ate the full blind. Nebula got away with half of one. A short burst, and it was over.

"A flash peek! And the Raze goes down too!"

The instant the blind cleared, he killed her. The last one standing.

"Time! Do we have time?!"

Ground sprinted for the bomb. All five of Pravengers were already dead, every rifle gone, but if they could just steal the round, the payout would still buy rifles and light shields. The clock was not on their side.

"Zero-point-seven seconds! It actually gets defused!"

"Yoru's entry and the cover from Nebula and Pola at the same time was unreal. That looked prepared."

"Agreed. That was a set play, and it means Eunha's bold ultimate actually paid off. It's 3–0, and the half is already coming apart."

"Not just the money and the rounds. I'd expect serious damage to Pravengers' mental as well. They'll have to pull themselves together somehow and get ready for the next one."

In the end, the result of the match never changed.

The half closed 12–0. Pravengers didn't take a single round before the sides swapped. They did steal the pistol and the buy round after it, dragging the score to 12–2 and threatening to turn the mood — then lost the next to a side that had come back with rifles. The map ended 13–2.

A more brutal score than the scrims.

"Dominant. From Pravengers' side, they brought a double-controller shell — Omen and Snake — specifically to keep Eunha's Operator in check... and it didn't do much, did it?"

"Well, she never even picked the Operator up. All match, Eunha committed to the kind of play that makes Yoru so good at scrambling people, and Pravengers walked right into it."

"Youngest and Oldest showed a completely different look from the scrims, that's for sure. Pravengers will be disappointed to drop the opener, but this was a match everyone expected to be difficult. They need to gather themselves and get ready for their third match today, against KKT."

"That's right. NPT and Kwitch have only played their first matches. We'll take a short break and come back with match two — AFS versus KKT."