Proof
After Malphite's heartwarming teleport, the laning phase settled into something manageable.
The precarious balance that had defined the early lane finally stabilized once jungle and top started intervening. Akali refused to give up a solo-kill angle, and I returned the favor in kind. Having drawn first blood, I should have been pressing that advantage harder, making her pay for every inch of the lane — but against Showdown's Akali, that was a fantasy bordering on the impossible.
Still, I held the lane priority for now, which meant I'd be faster to any rotate. The moment greed cost me that priority, though, every objective fight would tilt against us. Picture a Dragon fight opening up and Showdown's Akali arriving first instead of me. Just imagining it made my knees go weak. So I kept shoving, harder and harder, making sure Akali never had a window to leave the lane.
Thanks to our Jerk putting in work, bot lane opened up and we snagged the Dragon.
Of course, the other side wasn't just sitting around either. Malphite — who'd burned his teleport saving Jerk — was getting absolutely worked by the enemy Ornn. And then Amumu, fresh off killing the Herald, summoned it and started setting up a dive.
Malphite was in a no-win situation. I'd been shoving the wave from the moment the Herald died, already on my way top. By the time I was almost there, the Herald was ramming the tower. Malphite tried everything to hold on, but Amumu and Ornn's ultimate combo cleaned him up. If his ult had been up, he might have survived until I arrived — but it was on cooldown. Still, his desperate last stand left Amumu low enough that the tower forced him to back off.
Naturally, I was waiting right there. A few autos woven between abilities, and Amumu was done. I tried to chase Ornn for the follow-up, but Akali was coming up the map, so I had to let it go.
I snuck glances at chat on the way back to lane. Every time a particular comment caught my eye, something in me felt... satisfied. I couldn't understand why I was like this, and I didn't want to. Annoying stuff — especially streaming — was the last thing I needed.
I dragged my eyes back to the game. In the brief moment I'd looked away, a fight had broken out bot. Jerk, reliable as ever, popped the enemy ADC and support. I flipped my camera back to mid the second that play resolved.
I'd just gotten back to lane after the top-side backup. The bot fight would wrap up any second now anyway. That was the assumption I operated on as I shoved the wave, pinning Akali to mid.
But Akali abandoned the minions entirely and sprinted bot without hesitation. By the time I registered that the fight was dragging on, I was biting down hard on my lip.
I never should've looked at chat...!
I should have predicted that the freshly respawned Amumu would set up a counter-gank. I should have tracked that Malphite and Ornn both had teleport up. Instead I'd been distracted by chat, missed the critical read, and blown the rotate timing.
Akali cleaned up three of my teammates. I farmed tower gold under the weight of my invisible allies' stares.
...The fact that the tower gold still tasted good even now told me everything. I really was a Leori player down to the bone.
With Akali sitting on three kills, I needed to lock in from this point forward. No — past locking in. I needed to throw everything I had at this game. Solo queue and pro play might be different animals, but a pro's raw skill was the real deal. More than anything, I was ashamed of myself for getting baited by chat and botching a basic decision.
At least taking the first tower banked me a solid chunk of gold. I recalled and dropped the full stack on Guinsoo's Rageblade and Immortal Shieldbow in one go. Two completed items at the fifteen-minute mark — there was no more reason to play the lane against Akali.
The moment mid's first tower fell, our bot first tower got pushed in right after.
IlilIililI (Yone) is on the way
I pinged that I was heading bot. If our ADC Vayne was going to scale safely, she needed to be sent to mid, where a tower was still standing. Nothing was more dangerous than an underleveled ADC farming a towerless lane. The risk of playing without a first tower was something I could shoulder alone — I was the one who'd been vacuuming up all the gold anyway.
The second I rotated down, Akali followed me bot. She clearly understood exactly why you swap lanes and what you gain from it. Well — this wasn't some random Challenger. This was Showdown, a Worlds champion. Not knowing something as basic as Leori fundamentals would've been the real surprise.
But this was solo queue, not a league match, and at least for now I was the one who'd come out of lane ahead. On top of that, the current item patch left Akali without a clean first-item spike. Everything she built felt awkward; nothing gave her real power. Yone, on the other hand, was one of the poster champions for Guinsoo's — an item so broken it barely made sense. Smoke screen, flashy outplay, whatever Akali threw at me — if the fight went the distance, I won. And she knew it.
I kept the split going, eyes glued to the minimap, when I caught something off about their movement. Bot and jungle should have been stacking top for the Herald about to respawn — but the enemy jungle and bot never showed topside at all.
Enemies invisible enough to raise the hair on my neck. And then Akali suddenly walking at me.
My gut screamed that their entire team was collapsing on me. I forced myself calm and read the board. Enemy Thresh was already showing in the tri-bush he'd set up earlier. Kai'Sa and Amumu were dropping in behind him toward bot.
Running wasn't an option. That left exactly one choice.
Fight. Fight like hell and at least take Akali with me.
I walked straight at her and took the duel. She tried to create space with her ult and E, but I kept closing the gap with a two-stack Q and my own ultimate, finishing her fast. The only reason it worked was because I'd committed to fighting instantly instead of running — but the gauntlet still left to clear was enormous, and my odds of walking out alive were basically zero.
First objective complete: trading with Akali. So I got greedy and went for Kai'Sa too. I focused everything on dodging Amumu's bandages and Thresh's hook, but the flay shoved me back and the Box slowed me to a crawl. Even so, I kept swinging at Kai'Sa. The second Amumu started his ult animation, I flashed toward Kai'Sa — pure reaction-speed limit. I slipped out of Amumu's ult range by a hair and died at the exact same moment as Kai'Sa.
Kai'Sa got the shutdown gold, sure — but taking two with me in a four-on-one? I'd more than paid for my bounty, and I knew it.
While they were busy deleting me, my team killed Ornn and summoned the Herald.
Top's second tower and the inhibitor tower melted in seconds. If I'd died without earning my gold back, the swing wouldn't have been nearly this big. I was carrying a bounty — die without a single kill and the enemy walks bot second tower for free. With the Herald up, Thresh and Akali would have recalled, and Amumu and Kai'Sa would have taken the respawned Dragon.
But I'd dragged Kai'Sa and Akali down with me, and the enemy got nothing. Amumu and Thresh had to recall to defend the inhibitor, the tempo flipped, and my team took the Dragon instead.
From there it was pure macro. We methodically dismantled towers and stretched the global gold lead. We locked down vision completely, stole jungle camps, and starved their scaling. The slow-strangle continued until enemy Thresh wandered into the jungle trying to light up a pitch-black minimap.
Thresh creeping into a bush with four of us waiting. A fly walking into a Venus flytrap. He went gray in seconds.
With a scaling Vayne, a fed Yone, and one enemy already deleted — that was a Baron angle. Fresh Baron was weak, we had vision, and the call was airtight.
We started the Baron burst. The enemy knew and dropped a ward from the top of the pit looking down. We cleared it and kept going.
They could still steal it...
Amumu was very much alive. A steal was absolutely on the table. So I fired my two-stack Q downward, launched myself out of the Baron pit, used E from fog to close on the river-bush hill, and flashed over the ridge — ultimate straight into all four enemies lined up in a row.
Yone's perfect four-man ult landed, and Malphite's Unstoppable Force crashed in right on top of it. Then Jerk's engage, then Lulu's ultimate knocking someone airborne — four separate knockups in sequence, with our Vayne free-hitting inside the pit through the entire chaos.
It was a CC chain of pure anarchy. A picture-perfect, scripted-looking teamfight.
We got the ace, abandoned the Baron, and marched top. Because only the inhibitor tower had fallen — not the inhibitor itself — a massive wave of our minions had stacked up. Four enemies dead for thirty seconds, and the only one home was the Thresh we'd sniped earlier.
Victory already settled in my chest, I glanced at chat.
Chat was on fire. Not just warm — scorching. Hotter than anything I'd ever seen in Curry's stream. Looking at a chat room that heated, something in my chest started to itch. A need to let something out rose up from somewhere deep.
We tore down the enemy twin towers. And finally, when the Nexus went down — the moment their Nexus shattered and VICTORY bloomed across the game screen — I opened my mouth.
"Carried. Easy."
I tossed it out flat, like it was nothing. But in the default black end screen looking back at me, I was smiling.