Chapter 61: Day One Results, and... (Just Chatting)
"They still haven't cleared Hookah," Nebula called. "If the C4 goes down on B, I'll hold Hookah with a Shorty. Eunha, teleport off Fountain like before and we'll look at the retake. Everyone else, don't walk onto site. Keep the gap as short as you can."
"Okay."
"Yesss!"
I took the teleport to Fountain just as Nebula had ordered, then set up for the retake with the rest of the team.
"They planted B," Oldboy said. "Wouldn't it be better to just give them the round and pick off whoever tries to leave?"
He was pushing back on Nebula's call. Being IGL didn't mean the rest of us had to follow him blind.
"That's fair," Nebula answered. "But if they just walk B Main, they can hop the teleporter and get out. Better to go in now and catch them."
An IGL only lays the long trunk. The smaller branches that fork off it are something all five of us grow, talking them out together.
"What do you want to do? I've still got one E."
Yoru's E, Gatecrash, can be bought once more in the shop, for two uses in total. I'd just spent one, so exactly one was left.
"Hang on," Nebula said. "We practiced that Bind B retake, right? Let's run that."
It was a B-site retake we'd drilled a few times while practicing Bind. Brimstone's smoke cut the angles, Raze took the entry on a double Blast Pack alongside Skye's hawk, and Breach's Aftershock covered whatever the hawk couldn't reach. Except—
"But that was the one you practiced, Eunha," Oldboy said. "I'm not sure I can pull it off..."
The first body through might as well have been stepping into a kill box, so it had always been me—fastest reactions, best up close.
Oldboy had never drilled the tactic, though, and realistically his reaction time would come out behind most of the team across from us...
"No. We run it exactly as practiced. Eunha goes in. Pop the ult here."
"Ult?"
Yoru's ultimate. Dimensional Drift. He wanted me to use it now?
"You ult in and show us where they are," Nebula said. "Then we run the tactic as-is—Ground's hawk, Breach's Fault Line, all of it. The rest of us have to hit right behind you."
"Okay."
"Flash timing?"
"Throw your flash as you come out of the ult. I'll line it up."
"Got it."
It was a dangerous plan. If Nebula missed the timing, I could be the one eating the flash, and even if it connected, losing the fight would mean we'd burned a precious ultimate for nothing. In practice the whole thing hung on my fighting alone—what Spax would call an "Eunha, just do it" strat.
"Smokes going down."
Brimstone's smoke settled over B, and I set a finger on X.
"Going."
Screw it. It'll work out somehow.
"Good work, everyone."
"We played way better than the scrims," Oldboy said. "Do we actually have a shot at the title...?"
"Ah, hyung, that's a flag."
"So what? I bet Eunha and Nebula can clear a flag, too."
Victory congratulations warmed the Kwitch roster's Discord.
A chime. Another chime. Coach Spax came in, and so did our sixth man, Extra, until all of Youngest and Oldest were finally in the channel.
"Good work, all of you. You really played well—especially you, Eunha."
"Ahaha..."
The Spax I knew was stingy with praise, and here he was lifting me up like that. My Yoru had been in a class of its own. It wasn't the thirty-kill sweep from scrims, but I'd worn the other team down for the entire game. They'd tried every trick they could think of to deal with the agent, and it hadn't mattered. The match ended with them dragged around by me from the first round to the last.
"More importantly, are you all right? You looked rough near the end."
"I was thinking the same thing."
Sharp.
Nebula had played with me enough that he might notice. How had Spax?
"Ah—achoo! Ugh... honestly, the sneezing started up again halfway through the game..."
Afraid a sneeze would step on my teammates' sound, I'd switched my mic to push-to-talk.
I'd set the mic that was actually linked to the broadcast to push-to-talk, so the viewers hadn't known either.
"Weren't you all better?"
"What? Eunha, you okay?"
"Yeah. I'm pretty much over it."
I wasn't. The cold still hadn't broken, which was why I was being as careful as I could. Ice cream had become impossible to find anywhere in the house, and no matter how hot the night got, I slept with layers on. All-nighters were off the table to begin with. I had to manage my condition around the tournament schedule, so I couldn't have played through the night even if I'd wanted to.
"Hmm. We've got two matches tomorrow. You sure you'll be all right?"
"Come on, I'll be fine. Scrims were no problem, so this should be too."
"...Right. Still, keep on top of it. I brought a few notes from this match. Honestly, it was so one-sided there's barely anything to say, but—"
The air was a breath away from going heavy with the news that my cold still hadn't cleared.
"We've still got broadcast time to fill, so I'll force a little nitpicking."
He lightened it just enough.
"Pfft."
"Wait, is that allowed?"
"Zzangdol, did you just file an objection against an active pro?"
"Hyung, this isn't revenge for that team-name talk earlier, is it?"
"No way."
"I'm kidding. Honestly, everyone played so well today there's nothing to review... Let's just rest and watch the other matches."
"Good, good~ Ha. Thought Schori was about to come out. I got tense."
Schori—Spax's switch. Somebody had coined it after scrims, from the way he looked once feedback started.
"I'm good with that," Nebula said. "But Eunha, shouldn't you be resting?"
"Um... I..."
I didn't actually feel that bad. I also wasn't sure I needed to sit through the other teams' games. Mostly, I just wanted to go lie down.
"He's right. Eunha, head out and rest. We've got two matches back-to-back tomorrow."
Even the coach was saying it. Then it was fine, wasn't it?
"Okay. I'll head out first. Everyone worked hard."
"Good work."
"Yep, see you tomorrow."
"Bye-bye."
A chime.
I took them up on it and left the call, but I had no intention of ending the stream right away.
The aches had hit me last Monday, and between the exhibition's brutal schedule and the scrims booked without a break, I hadn't done a single Just Chatting broadcast since. Feedback had wrapped with nothing to review, and I'd even clocked out early. Tonight I wanted Just Chatting, even if it was short.
"So I'm only doing Just Chatting for thirty minutes, then I'm ending."
My viewers liked it more than the games, but I liked talking with them, too.
Chat roared. I'd said it before: about half the people who watched me preferred Just Chatting. The exhibition had brought in plenty of new viewers, so it wasn't exactly half anymore, but still.
"I haven't been able to, with exhibition prep and scrims and all of that. If a day ends this early, I should."
"Oh, thank you. We never ran it in scrims. I did it on the spot."
Hmm. I'd wanted to talk, but this was starting to feel like a post-match interview.
There was a limit to what viewers could know, so asking what they were curious about was still a kind of conversation. If I were a pro, dodging questions like that to keep a strat from leaking would be the smart play. I wasn't a pro, and there wasn't much to leak anyway. A question like that was fine to answer.
"Personally, I think of the Operator as a high-risk, high-return weapon."
A sniper with a long reach, able to drop someone with a single body shot. Expensive to match, though.
"Unless it's an agent who can survive a missed shot—Jett with Tailwind, or Chamber with Rendezvous—I don't really like taking it."
"You can, but Gatecrash has way too much startup. You'd die before the teleport even went off."
After that they asked about things they'd wondered during the NPT match. It felt like I was giving the Youngest and Oldest interview all by myself.
Somehow twenty minutes had already gone. If I kept taking questions there would be no end, so I pulled the shutter down.
"Okay, that's it! No more tournament questions."
"The roulette?"
The roulette was a bit I'd made with chat about a month ago. Viewers paid to spin a random machine, and I'd loaded it with everything from duds to horror games, as far as I remembered.
The odds had turned out way too generous, so I'd said I would change them, and then never had.
"But I'd still have to adjust the rates..."
Things had been so busy lately that I hadn't spared the roulette a thought.
"Ten thousand won, thank you. Hmm..."
I'd left it running for a whole hour once, and all that came up was singing, a few times. Ten minutes...
"Okay. But it's only ten minutes, all right?"
Half of me thought that on a rare Just Chatting day I ought to give them at least this much. The other half figured nothing would even hit. So I turned the roulette on for ten minutes and left the rates alone.
The wheel started spinning the instant it went live, as if it had been waiting for me to flip the switch.
A minute ago they'd been worried about my health and asking about the match. Where had those people gone? All that was left was this, packed to the brim with madness.
What was even going to come up? It was only ten minutes.
Last time it had been sing-a-song, over and over. I'd nearly lost my voice.
Oh—and singing would have been rough anyway. My throat still wasn't great. If sing-a-song came up, I'd just ask chat to let me off...
"Th-that's..."
"What?"
"What?"
"Whaaat?"
"WHAAAAAT?!"
This was impossible.