A New Ability
"Xeros! She's locked in Xeros. The champion who first tied these two BJs together! Then maybe Hani is on... ah, too bad, it's not Noktan. It's Enni. AP mages, and they're about to slam into each other!"
I'd more or less expected Mia to bring out Xeros. Lula, Soraga, Yomi, Molgana, Namin, Threshi, Karman, Xeros—that was the core of her pool, and every one of them was a little awkward to take into a straight one-on-one. If I'd been a mid laner, I would have had Fyzn ready, the classic counter. Unfortunately, I'd never played Fyzn. And trying to answer her with a jungler—Jargan, Evil Queen, Kindret, Noktan—looked hopeless unless Mia handed me a serious mistake.
So I chose Enni. An AP nuker whose single burst was as vicious as it got. People liked to say Xeros had the edge, because the gap in skill range was enormous, but that was only true in the early levels. The moment level 6 arrived and the ultimate came online, Xeros—unless she was holding Cleanse or Barrier—would be standing on the line between this life and the next under Enni's ultimate, Ignite, Q, and W strung into one combo. Chip her health a little beforehand, and there wouldn't even be a gap to dodge through. The combo would simply kill her.
"Items are the same for both: a Doran Ring and two potions. Mia has taken Comet in her runes, and Hani is on Electrocute. Yeah, if you're fishing for a one-shot on Enni, Electrocute is the call."
Our intentions were out in the open. For summoners, I had Ignite and Flash. Mia had Barrier and Flash.
Barrier, of course. That's a shame.
On a wet-paper champion like Xeros, Barrier was a perfect fit. This wasn't going to be as easy as I'd hoped. I put my head down and focused on the game.
"Mia skilled W at level one. Looks like she wants every scrap of poke she can get, but Hani isn't backing down either. She doesn't dodge. She walks up, eats the skill, and answers with Q—and she weaves an auto in on that long attack range. Factor in the Comet rune, and the trade comes out about even."
Because I'd gone Electrocute, the lesser runes let me take Taste of Blood and Ravenous Hunter, so I healed a little even while we traded. Mia noticed. She stopped reaching with W and started fishing only with long-range Q, looking for one-sided poke.
Then we both hit level three. Enni had cast four spells, and a round ring drew itself around her.
"Enni's passive is up. Four spells, and the next one that lands stuns. Nasty passive. Xeros is going to feel that."
It was a mind game. The instant Enni's passive was ready, Xeros gave a little ground and tried to shove the wave fast, forcing me to spend spells on minions just to clean up a lane I was losing. Do that, and the passive would be wasted on a minion.
Same as last time.
I thought of the first game, the one we'd fought tooth and nail. We'd been even the whole way, and in the end Mia had choked on her own mana. Xeros's passive did restore mana on auto attacks, but mage champions lived with a chronic mana drought until a parchment item came online. Enni was a little different. Her Q: if the target died, she got all the mana back and the cooldown dropped by half. Minions I couldn't safely take, I simply let go. I kept W sealed, and I used E—the shield and the burst of movement speed—only when it looked like I couldn't dodge a Xeros spell. Under that plan, the CS slowly tipped toward Xeros. The mana still in the tank, though, was smiling at Enni.
CS? That number only means something if you stack a hundred of them and hit the win condition, or if you recall and turn them into items. I never planned on going back in the first place.
Mia's mana was scraping the bottom, and she started looking for the one recall the rules allowed her. I couldn't let it happen. I spent the W I'd been saving and shoved the wave hard. Mia hesitated. Recall now, and something like two waves would crash straight into her tower, and the CS lead she'd opened would shrink. A pity for her. I'd managed Enni's mana well enough, but Xeros's poke had dragged my health under half, and my experience sat at about the middle of level five. One more wave, a few extra minions, and I'd hit six. Land roughly two spells in that window, and the math said the ultimate could finish it.
"Looks like they both want to force it. How's this going to end?"
On the face of it, Xeros had the advantage. She'd hit six a little sooner, and she still had about two-thirds of her health. But Enni had a real one-shot. The wave cleared. We watched each other for an opening. Xeros's Q connected again, and Enni's health dropped to a quarter or so. Then, at last, level six.
Xeros's W came down once more—Eye of Ruin. Enni slipped it by a hair. It didn't matter. The spell had been thrown to make space, and once that space was there, Mia didn't hesitate. She ulted.
"Good choice. The wave's shoved. Kill her with the ult and that's best; if not, you just recall. You've got the range advantage, so it's a strong option. No risk. Only upside!"
Xeros's ultimate, squeezed out of the last of her mana. With the health Enni had left, two hits out of three would kill her outright. Mia would read the dodges and land them. That was the idea. Enni chose the opposite. She popped E, picked up speed, and charged. In the same breath the tower cleared the minions around her and pushed her to level six. Her health ticked up a little. Now all three shots had to land.
Mia flinched and, in a rush, fired the first arcane bombardment of the ultimate. It blasted empty ground. In that instant Enni was right on top of her. Certain she had the kill, Mia canceled the spell and burned Flash. Enni Flashed after her, and a great bear wreathed in roaring flame slammed into Xeros. A bear on fire. Ignite latched on. Hot—but it wasn't over. W superheated the air around them, and Q, living up to its name, shattered the Barrier Xeros had been holding so stubbornly. Then Electrocute fell on top of it all. A red bolt of lightning sheared away a fistful of health.
Dangerous. But there was no mana left to resist with. Mia mashed the right mouse button, trying to flee under the tower, and Enni stayed glued to her the whole way, fired the Q that had just come off cooldown, and followed with a long-range auto.
"Ah... that's it! What decided it, by a hair, was Enni's auto. A razor-thin margin! If she'd lived to walk away, this would have tilted toward Mia. The item gap would've opened, and Enni without Flash would have slowly withered and died."
Flash's cooldown was long, too. It wasn't empty lip service. If the fight had gone that way, the rest really would have played out the way Lac had called it. But that was a daydream now, something that could no longer happen. Reality lifted my hand as the winner—a 3–0 so complete, so overwhelming, that no one could argue with it.
Water Balloons burst. Fan-club joins trickled in after them. The chat was blazing. Under Lac's lead we heard Mia's thoughts on the match, then ran a modest little winner's interview. In the middle of all that, a 100-point mission cleared, and the smaller missions cleared with it. And because I'd won 3–0, there would be a bonus on top. A perfect day. Today, at least, I was the protagonist.
I had 100 points. Once the smaller missions were cleared and I added what I'd been saving, the total had somehow reached 205. The fan club had broken a hundred members, and the viewer count—only for a short while, but still—had touched four hundred. A genuine jackpot. And then the bonus I'd been hoping for. To my surprise, the System Helper offered me a choice.
Game Comprehension 2
Nimble Control 2
Wide Vision 2
Calm Focus 2
There were a few more options tied to game ability, but these four were the ones worth taking. Game Comprehension was exactly what it sounded like: a broader grasp of the game itself. Matchups between champions. How to roll a snowball faster and harder. People usually split it into mechanics and brains, and if I took this one, I figured the growth would land on the brain side. Next was Nimble Control. Literal again. My control would get better. Wide Vision seemed like the ability that suited a support best. A wide field of view was a real advantage, but there was something I wanted more, so I passed. Calm Focus, like vision, would have been nice to have. It wasn't the priority.
Nimble Control. Mechanics, in other words. Most people said the same thing: brains—your understanding of the game—you could earn if you worked hard enough, but mechanics you had to be born with. I agreed. Matchups you learned by running into them a few times. Wave control, objectives—the more you played, the more you got a feel for them, even if it was never perfect. Mechanics had no answer. No matter how hard I tried, the other player slipped my skills like it was nothing, and I ate theirs one way. What use was game knowledge then, or a wide field of view? It was just one-sided violence, born of a gap in raw individual ability. Unless another lane stepped in, or the teams weren't actually uneven, I spent the whole game feeling that gap and tasting a humiliation that sank into the bone.
So I chose Nimble Control 2. The 2 on the end was the same idea as a level. A level-2 ability usually ran about 150 points, and the match against Mia had been a serious jackpot.
How strong is a level-2 ability, anyway?
What I held now was Fatigue Recovery, bought for 30 points, and Nimble Control 2. Fatigue Recovery's effect was so slight that I logged into the game with a small knot of worry, and I didn't even turn the broadcast on. I wanted to test it immediately. Once I was in, Nimble Control 2 was better than I'd imagined. Skill combos came out far more naturally, and my movement chained together smooth. This was the kind of control I could only pull off in Legend of League on the day my condition was at its best. And I could show it every single time. Naturally, I started to wonder what level 3 would feel like.
"…"
A shame, but I'd drunk my fill of what a level-2 ability could do. At this level, Diamond didn't look like a strain.
While I'm at it, do I just become a gaming BJ outright?
If I kept raising the game-related abilities, it seemed possible to climb past Diamond—to Master, and higher than that. I'd pick up the rare image of a woman BJ who could actually play, and the broadcast would only get hotter.
No. What matters right now isn't my rank. The goal is to grow the broadcast as fast and as big as I can, and take in as many points as possible.
A lifetime of being hardstuck in Platinum, and I'd let the hunger to climb swallow me. Games were a huge slice of solo broadcasting, no question, but if I went only one direction, I'd stall eventually. The gaming BJs with any name at all didn't show up on visible-radio broadcasts for nothing. Viewers always wanted a fresh hit of stimulus. Being good at the game was fine. Only ever playing the game was a problem. A many-colored appeal, like a fairy pitta—that was the direction I had to aim for, and the one I had to walk.