2023 Platform Exhibition Final: Youngest and Oldest vs. Sprout Patrol
"I'll check CT."
"Hey, Pillu. You don't even have to peek. Just wait."
A shot cracked.
"Ah."
"No way. How is her reaction that fast?"
Had she already known I was coming, or was she simply that quick? We'd already taken B site. For a retake, they had to come through Market, B Main, or CT, and CT was the likeliest of the three. I'd peeked first to steal the initiative.
They stole it from me instead.
I ground my teeth before I knew I was doing it. It had been a long time since I'd died that emptily, straight up. And to a girl. As a man, there was no way that didn't cut my pride.
Next time, I was going to—
"Pillu. You know you didn't have to force that, right?"
"No, just now I—"
"We have to win. Do what you're told."
"...Yes."
Any other day I would have scraped together an excuse. I didn't have one. I'd forced it, and I'd died. That was the truth. Worse, right now I was the villain of the piece. Sticking my neck out would buy me nothing.
I could see exactly where I stood just by looking at chat.
One death, and the viewers were already mocking me. Slip even a little and these people tore you down.
...This was actually pissing me off.
"...I'll do what I'm told."
Taking orders from someone worse than me stung more than I wanted to admit. Even so, the only way out of this shitty mess was to win the final. For now, all I could do was follow.
Omen's smoke—Zzangdol's—hid their backs from B Main and from the rear of B site. Pola walked for Market. Eunha and Zzangdol took CT.
Pola's ZERO/point was off cooldown. He threw it into Market and caught Ground hiding there. Ground's position was no longer a guess.
"Okay. There's one in Market."
"Pola, Flash/drive ready?"
Market's layout had the enemy more or less pinned. Pola meant to peek with the flash and tilt the duel his way.
"Huh? Ground peeked first?!"
Ground swung the other way and found Pola still holding the flash. Pola died without getting a shot off.
"Ground! Pola's down!"
"The heavens are smiling on Ground. Pola was going in with the flash, and they stole the timing completely!"
If Pola had been holding a gun, it might have gone the other way. In an FPS, though, swings like that happened all the time. The what-if meant nothing.
"Now Eunha and Zzangdol have to watch Market and B site at once. This is brutal."
They had to push through a crossfire. Eunha left Market to Zzangdol and walked slowly toward B.
"Ground looks like he's coming out."
Ground swung out of Market toward Eunha and Zzangdol.
Three shots, close together.
"Ground, triple kill!"
Zzangdol lost the duel to Ground, and Eunha died with him. If she had been the one watching Market she might have won it, but someone had to hold an eye on B, and more of the enemy were that way, so she had only been looking where she was supposed to. You couldn't really hang the lost fight on Zzangdol.
"Eunha was trusting Zzangdol, and she caught it in the back of the head!"
"And just like that, Sprout Patrol takes the first round!"
"Youngest and Oldest need to remember this. Sprout Patrol's rush is on a completely different level from everyone else's."
Through the exhibition and their scrims, Youngest and Oldest had won close to ninety percent of their pistol rounds. Set aside one second-half loss to KKT and it was a sweep. Now that record had another loss on it.
The rush had taken the pistol. On the second round, because we'd lost it, we eco'd and kept our money. I bought nothing but a Sheriff—eight hundred credits—and played the round out.
"Whoa. They're just walking straight in..." Oldboy said.
They rushed B again. Guiding Light, Scout, Curveball—we couldn't stop a team coming through all of that. They took the site just as cheaply and planted. We'd eco'd from the start, so there were no guns worth saving.
We stayed hidden, then threw ourselves into the detonating spike. No ultimate points for them. A little more money for us.
Peeker's advantage or not, limited routes still favored the side waiting on site. Holding an angle. Even so, holding didn't mean you won the fight.
"You can really feel the wall. Make eye contact and they just take your head..." Zzangdol said.
That was Project A. Skill could overturn every advantage the round tried to hand you.
"It's all right. We were ecoing anyway. Let's play the next one clean."
"Ha... I'm sorry, Nebula. I should have been covering that..."
"No. I was way too slow getting the smoke down on main..."
"Everyone's fine. Like Nebula said, that was an eco..."
"From this round on, let's play it calm."
We'd only given up two rounds, but the mood was bad, especially from Zzangdol and Oldboy. They weren't fighting. They'd just drawn in. Both of them were talking less than usual, and the play itself felt different—misses in the crosshair placement they'd drilled all through scrims, shots that didn't look right.
Or was I imagining it?
If I could feel it, there was no way Spax couldn't. And only two rounds had passed. Maybe their hands simply hadn't warmed up. I wasn't the coach. I couldn't call a timeout. For now, all I could do was trust Spax, and trust the two of them.
"All right. One cheer, then we go. Fighting!"
"Third round is underway, and Sprout Patrol looks like they're rushing again."
"Well, if you can't stop it, there's no reason not to. And unlike last round, this is a bonus. They don't need to save the guns."
On an ordinary second round, an AFS side that had bought guns was supposed to play slow and protect them. That was the correct play. AFS had chosen a rush instead—the attack most likely to drop those guns—and the result was flawless. Not a single death. They ended the round on the rush.
"This is interesting. Normally Youngest and Oldest defend with Jett—Eunha—and Omen—Zzangdol—on A site, KAY/O—Pola—on A Short, Sova—Nebula—watching mid, and Killjoy—Oldboy—on B. An A3-B2."
They checked A Main and B Main with Sova's recon bolt and KAY/O's ZERO/point, left B to Killjoy, who was built to stall an entry, and stacked the rest on A. Textbook Ascent.
"This round they sent KAY/O to B. Only Killjoy and Jett are watching A."
B had been broken twice in a row, so Youngest and Oldest pulled a body off A and spent it on B. Eunha and Nebula, the two pillars who won the team's fights, had to be split across sites, which locked Eunha to A. KAY/O still had to pull information with ZERO/point; take him out of the pool and the player left over was Omen. That left Jett alone on A Main, one of the primary lanes. Killjoy had been solo on B Main until now, too, but a sentinel holding a lane alone and a duelist doing it felt completely different.
"But this... Sprout Patrol looks like they're going A."
Maybe they'd read the numbers. Maybe it was only the simple thought that they'd rushed B twice, so this time they'd go A. Either way, Sprout Patrol was flooding toward A, not B.
"This looks really dangerous. Eunha's watching A Main alone right now!"
On the full buy they could least afford to drop, with their setup read, Youngest and Oldest were staring at the worst version of the round.
The instant it started, Sprout Patrol ran with their footsteps loud, same as the round before. Not toward the B site they'd just reinforced. Toward the A site they'd left thin.
Footsteps hammered the main.
"You heard that, right? Eunha, you have to fall off. All five are there!"
A flood of steps from A Main. Even a rough listen said three or more.
"This is a round Youngest and Oldest absolutely cannot lose guns on. Is she actually going to do this?"
The enemy was on a bonus. Youngest and Oldest had eco'd, then bought rifles: a full buy. They had to win while dropping as few guns as possible. If Eunha died here and lost hers, the hit would be severe. Every caster expected her to give a step and hold the site with Pola.
"Oh! She's going!"
Eunha peeked A Main instead.
Five enemies, in a single instant. Everyone assumed she would die for nothing.
Eunha was far too calm.
Where the viewers and the casters had only seen five enemies, she had read the state of all five. Jett—Pilluelo—was jiggle-peeking A Main in case someone swung out. Sova and Ground were on their abilities, helping the entry. Phoenix was holding his skill, lining up a Curveball for A Main. Omen was placing a smoke on site. Aside from Jett, none of them were holding a gun.
She killed the only one with a weapon first, the Jett slicing her angle. Next was Phoenix, the closest.
Phoenix had been holding Curveball, not a gun, and died without a fight. Eunha didn't stop there.
Ground had used his Q, Scout. Like Sova's Owl Drone, the skill let you steer something else—in his case a wolf—and while you did, your real body was exposed. So she didn't go for Ground.
She cleared Sova first, the one who had used his recon bolt and picked his gun back up.
"Eunha with three!"
Then she caught Ground while he was still on Scout.
Before Ground died, Scout charged her and landed Concuss. Omen, finished with the smoke, raised his gun to kill her. A sharp rush of air—and Eunha was gone on the Tailwind she had already primed.
"Eunha makes it four! Does she actually get out of this?"
One against five. Four dead, and Eunha out. All of it in three seconds.
"No, no, no, no—what is this?!"
"I was watching with my mouth open. What is that player?!"
It was the kind of moment that would have panicked almost anyone. She didn't panic. She erased the most dangerous enemy first, locked a priority, finished them one by one, and the instant the CC hit she refused to force it and ran.
The read and the reflexes, in the same instant she saw what they were holding. The calm, in a spot that had every right to shake. The aim, hunting nothing but the one thing that mattered: the head. Three seconds. That was the highlight.