“Fifty bucks says the first ability we see is an element bolt,” Jessica said, walking alongside the minions on the way to the south lane. Four of them were visibly mechanical, all hard angles and metal, with arms that were guns in two cases and swords in the others. The other four minions made some similar noises, but appeared more like a scarecrow stuffed with straw on a metal skeleton. They all had guns built into only one of their arms, with a sword shape for the other.

While the strawmen had the ability to move slightly faster, when used in conjunction with mechs they instead fell in step with them, between the hardier melee mechs and more damaging ranged ones.

“Sucker bet,” her support said, “It’s not exactly likely to be anything else. If you actually want to bet on something, you’d have to take elements.”

She laughed at that. It wasn’t impossible the enemy carry would open with something else, but it wasn’t likely. The element bolts were usually considered the top of the line for basic carry spells, their half-second cooldown and single-digit energy costs forming the backbone of carry strategies.

“I’ll take that if you will,” she said.

“Thirty on the W’s and Fire.”

That made her raise an eyebrow and look at him. Fire was the most common, but water, wood, and wind certainly weren’t the next most likely.

“Picking first like that, I would have expected fire, dark, wind, and earth. Maybe in that order.”

He shrugged and gave her a half-smile. “I mean, I’m a support caster. If I weren’t up for a fair challenge, what would I even be doing? You going to link me?”

She tried not to be embarrassed that she’d forgotten to use the ability that she’d been so happy to have access to.

It wasn’t as though Sniper’s Link took all that much concentration, really.

It took thirty– just enough that supports at this level, with one-fifty to one-sixty concentration, couldn’t maintain three wards at fifteen each and the link while staying above the one-hundred most people needed to correctly move between sight- and sense-lines.

“Oh, yeah! Let me just…”

She put her right hand’s index and middle finger against the back of his neck, activating the ability, and had to stop moving for a moment as the second viewpoint came up in her mind, like a camera that she was always aware of her relative position to.

Her support didn’t even stop walking.

That took her a moment to figure out, as the nausea started to build from her inability to adjust for a while. She didn’t want to give up, but when he turned around in the middle of a step, swinging the viewpoint while continuing to move away, she finally admitted defeat.

“Hey, stop for a sec?”

He stopped. “Oh! Sorry. Forgot you wouldn’t have done this much.”

“Mhmm.” Once he was stopped, it didn’t take five seconds to reconcile the two viewpoints and start moving again, jogging to catch up with the minions.

“Never had someone just keep walking through that, dude. How?”

He didn’t answer for a while, and she almost moved on to asking something else when he spoke up.

“I think it’s just the relative to capacity, but it might just be a learned thing? My sister doesn’t need to stop while warding either, and she’s at one-sixty-six. Personally, I just completely ignore the feed until the relative position settles in, and then close my eyes for a second to match up the angles.”

Jessica tried not to stare. She was partially successful.

“Do you know which quiver you primarily pull from?” he asked, after a bit. He would know she was staring, given that as much as she could see through his eyes, he could do the same with hers.

The question took her a moment to figure out, intentionally falling into the automatic mode she used during fights for just a short while to let her hand naturally jump to a quiver.

After a few repeats, she had her answer.

“Top one. Why?”

“Alchemic Infusion doesn’t have a duration. You can hit an arrow in the bottom one with Metal every once in a while to keep your energy from capping.”

That comment felt like it short-circuited her brain for a second.

Fire would destroy the other arrows after a while.

Water would slowly lose cohesion, then fling a wave somewhere.

Wind would eventually blow up.

Earth would mostly be fine, but she couldn’t predict the angle she’d want the pillar at effectively.

Wood would grow outwards, clogging the quiver.

Light and Dark would both phase through the quiver, destroying it in the process.

Metal would just… sit there. Unused. A bit heavier, yes, but the shield-penetrating effect wouldn’t do anything to it, physically.

“Son of a bitch,” she cursed, under her breath, starting that infusion on one of the arrows. “You’re right.”

He just nodded. “Didn’t want to tell you how to play your own build, but you weren’t doing it…”

Jessica sighed. “Don’t worry about it. I barely play carry, and I usually hate it because I can’t even use one of my abilities.”

“Two, I bet,” he commented with a smirk. “And why did you even make the build if you didn’t want to play carry?”

She rolled her eyes. “Two, sure. If I’m using my ult, I’d say something’s gone wrong anyways. Plus, it’s not like I had my assassin build first and then made this one. The game suggested this passive and I just went along with it– look where that got me.”

The ult wasn’t a bad ability, per se, but it did require all of her teammates to be dead.

“Depends,” he said, “I can see a few scenarios where feeding the enemy a kill might save a game.”

Once again, she turned to stare at him.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“If you and I were the only survivors of a fight while they have four or more, I’d be trying to get myself killed, you serious? Plus, I sure as hell want to see how you do with that ult.”

She didn’t have the time to question that, though, because the minion waves had just crashed into each other in the center of the lane.

The game had begun.