In Search of a Duo
Three days had passed since the cam broadcast. The noisy weekend was behind me, and I'd raked in a tidy haul of points, but I was still starving. The Helper, who had been looking thoroughly fed up with me, came out with a rare proposal.
The joint broadcast you conducted last time produced quite a favorable effect. Might I suggest you attempt it once more? Should you achieve respectable results, I shall provide a reward.
"Oh!"
It wasn't a special mission, but another ordinary one had been added all the same. If a joint broadcast pulled in three thousand viewers or more, the reward was a hundred and fifty points.
I am absolutely doing this.
The clear conditions had climbed, and the payouts had improved along with them, but even then they were still hovering in the fifty-to-sixty range. A hundred and fifty points, though? That was not something I could sit on. I'd already been offered a collab last time, so I jumped straight onto Discord and requested a call with Mia.
"Want to duo Legend of League today?"
"Yeah. Sounds good!"
Ever since the Miracle joint broadcast, greetings had become routine, and we'd even traded the occasional bit of small talk, so there wasn't a trace of awkwardness left. When I asked if she felt like turning her own stream on, she said it was a hassle and told me to just turn mine on.
She wasn't finished. Since it was a joint broadcast, I was to put up a notice telling everyone to come to my channel—and I could keep every Water Balloon.
Mia, are you an angel who simply never got her wings?
At the news that I was duoing with Mia, the chat—which had been nothing but cam-room talk—went quiet for once. I tossed the viewers a quick hello and logged into Legend of League. Mia was already online, and she sent a game invite as if she'd been waiting.
"Unnie, what are we doing for lanes?"
"......"
"Huh? Can't you hear me?"
"Huh? Ah, no, I can hear you fine. Lanes, right. I'll go ADC."
Even now, the word unnie still sent a shiver through me at the oddest moments. But I could hardly tell Mia, I'm a guy, so don't call me unnie—call me oppa, so all I could do was shut up and take it.
We both locked in our lanes and hit start. Mia was Platinum 2 and I was Diamond 4, so I figured the game would land somewhere around Platinum 1.
"Ah, we got one."
The match popped faster than I'd expected, and luckily Mia came out support while I got marksman.
"We're red side. Nice. Let's play this well."
"Pick order's decent too."
Mia was third pick and I was fourth. At that spot, you could fairly say we had the luxury of seeing the enemy champions before we chose.
"Renekton's out. Don't know yet if it's top or mid."
"Probably top, right? They don't play him mid as much as they used to."
Blue team's first pick appeared: Renekton, forever boasting perfectly respectable stats. Then our own first and second picks chose. The jungler on first pick took Talon, and top, on second, hesitated a moment before settling on Sett.
"There's not a single game where you don't see Sett."
"Right? It's not just the win rate. The pick rate's ridiculous too. When are they ever going to nerf him?"
Blue team's third pick was Ashe, and the fourth was Blitzcrank. For Mia, who mostly played utility supports, the enemy support was a slightly uncomfortable matchup.
"It's our turn. What should we go?"
"Hmm......"
I already knew Mia's champion pool well enough from prepping for our one-on-one last time. I lined that up against the marksmen I could actually play, then weighed the whole thing against their Ashe and Blitzcrank.
"How about Morgana? I'll take Caitlyn."
"Oh! That's fine. Let's do it."
Morgana had Black Shield on her E, a spell that nullified incoming crowd control, which meant she countered Blitzcrank and most of the other hook champions besides. Her pairing with Caitlyn was excellent on top of that. Caitlyn's W, Yordle Snap Trap, chained off Morgana's Q root, and the two of them boasted a nasty little synergy.
"Elise and Zed. They really should've banned Zed. Mid isn't thinking."
"Yeah. We don't have enough hard CC. This is a comp where Zed gets to run completely wild."
"So that's why they left Zed up."
"People have been saying mid Irelia is a complete bully these days."
Both drafts were finished. Personally, it wasn't a composition where I could easily call which side was ahead. It looked like a matchup that would come down to how well each of us played our lanes.
"I'll cover the invade right away."
"Okay. I'll drop a ward in the bush."
A Blitzcrank on the enemy team meant the odds of an invade were better than fifty-fifty. Sure enough, the ward I'd planted caught their champions swarming in with Blitzcrank at the front.
"What should we do? I already put a point in Q, at least."
Minus Renekton, four of them had walked into our jungle. We, Sett included, had all five bodies on the defense. If it came to a fight, the setup was ours without question. I was just pinging to attack, and Morgana's Q was about to come out, when the Blitzcrank in front suddenly hesitated—then turned around with the rest of them and retreated without so much as a look back.
"What?"
"They're just leaving?"
Missing the chance stung a little, but it was already time for the buff camps to spawn. I gave Talon a leash on blue and headed to lane.
"Let's hit level two first."
"Okay!"
Bracing for a Blitzcrank hook that might or might not come, I set up behind the minions and shoved for all I was worth. They were clearing hard too, but we snagged level two by a hair, and Mia—already stepping forward—fired her Q with perfect confidence.
"I hit it!"
"Okay!"
I dropped a Yordle Snap Trap under the rooted Blitzcrank. The instant Morgana's Q wore off, Caitlyn's W rooted him again, and a Q and a Headshot landed back to back. His health dropped to half in a blink. Startled, the enemy lane retreated all the way to their tower and started playing scared.
"Don't force the roots. Just chip their health a little at a time."
"Got it!"
I shoved the wave under their tower and started poking with Caitlyn's superior range, little taps, nothing greedy. Blitzcrank weaved this way and that, hunting for a hook angle, but we hid behind the minions to trade and then backed off without a second thought the moment the melees died and only the casters were left. All that dancing, and he ended up a dog that had chased a chicken—plenty of running, nothing in his mouth.
Then level three. Morgana's Black Shield came online, and our safety went up another notch. A jungle skirmish had broken out over the top scuttle, so we shoved even harder with an easy mind.
"I'll take a plate off the tower this wave."
"Okey!"
On the back of safely held vision, we chewed through plating gold and opened a CS lead.
"Talon's walking into their raptors. I think he's trusting Irelia way too much."
Mia kept an eye on the map between moments and briefed me on the top side. Talon had taken the top scuttle, come out a little ahead from the first skirmish, and then boldly dropped down to invade the enemy jungle outright. Irelia had burned too much health in the scuttle fight, based, and only just returned to lane to catch the wave, and Mia's ping went down: Zed was missing from mid.
That was when Blitzcrank started moving strangely.
"What? Where's he going?"
"I don't know."
He'd been sitting behind the tower, and then he simply left and vanished out of vision. A flustered Ashe fidgeted through every last-hit and ate focused harass for the privilege. Telling her to just back off and farm wasn't realistic—Caitlyn's auto range and the damage from Morgana's Comet rune were nothing to shrug off.
"Did he disconnect?"
"Maybe he felt a wall against me and gave up."
"That's a bit......"
"Ah, unnieee!"
The lane was ours, and the mood softened into something playful. The viewers were giggling right along with us.
The twist came right then.
"Huh?"
"T-Talon died."
After the raptors, Talon had greedily gone for the bottom scuttle as well, and Elise and Blitzcrank jumped him and killed him on the spot. Had there been vision over there? Elise had taken damage in the top scuttle fight and recalled straight home, so there shouldn't have been a ward. It was strange, but with Talon dead on the bottom side we chose to recall instead of forcing anything. Ashe's sliver of health was flickering right in front of me, and yet if Elise and Blitzcrank came straight down and hit us from behind, the game could slip away just like that.
"I'll drop a ward up top on the way."
"Yeah."
Morgana would come down the wide path toward mid and get her wards out. I'd get back to lane as I was and go right back to tormenting Ashe.
"......!"
In that instant a hook shot out from beyond the wall on our jungle side. I never saw it coming, so I couldn't Flash, and I was dragged straight over the wall. Elise's Cocoon was waiting there, and it bound me tight.
"Ack! What?"
Half my health vanished in a second. I Flashed back over the wall in a panic, but Elise used Rappel and came after me. I had no choice but to burn Heal as well and stumble in under the tower.
"Huh? What just happened?"
"I don't know either. That Blitzcrank is weird."
They'd killed Talon at the bottom scuttle, so I could understand the enemy jungler coming for the Gromp. Mia and I had recalled too, and there was enough time to take the camp and leave. But Talon was obviously going to path toward the wolves, and it was the kind of choice that could blow up completely if it went even slightly wrong—yet they hadn't even recalled home. They'd just sat there in a camp?
No. If Morgana had been with me instead of Talon, we could've killed them outright. And they're making a play like this?
It didn't sit right, but the game kept going. On the vision Morgana had secured, we overwhelmed Ashe and slowly pried the gap wider.
The strangeness didn't stop there. Every time Blitzcrank vanished from lane, disaster found Talon. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, Elise and Blitzcrank followed him like stalkers and put his life on the line.
"......!"
"You little shits!"
A whole bucket of Mia's cursing came pouring out, crisp and satisfying.