Very quickly after Nathaniel had suggested that he and she went to the north lane while everyone else went to the middle lane, making a set of very reasonable arguments about how that would delay the game for long enough to do something, Jessica knew something was up.

He hadn’t struck her as the sit-back-and-wait type to begin with, even if this sort of two-four-zero setup seemed to point towards that.

Still, it had seemed to convince the others who hadn’t been dealing with him all game, so she kept her reservations to herself.

Until the others were out of earshot, at least.

“Okay, but what’s the real plan?”

He gave her some sort of incredulous half-smile. “What do you mean? Is what I said not enough of a plan for you?”

She had to roll her eyes at that. Even in the half-hour they’d been in the game, she knew that that was a lie– or at least, not the truth. “It’d be fine enough for me, but it’s not the plan I’d expect from you.”

He clicked his tongue at that. “I still have a ward between our first and second south-lane bases.”

That one took longer to understand, but when they arrived in lanes and she took a few shots at the minions, she saw the enemy north-laner start to back off and figured it out.

She started infusing a couple of arrows, though she left most of the physical ones in the quivers. A balance of push speed and fight preparedness, then, and he’d probably tell her if she misinterpreted.

With the additional credits she’d gotten since last time, she now had a pair of gloves which, when combined with the tech augmenting the bow, were enough to display the trajectory a released arrow would take, if she wanted it to.

It wasn’t exactly necessary for short to moderate range, or even, if she had time, long range, but it did have one major advantage– it cut out the calibration shots for both very long range and indirect shots.

Specifically, it let her do what she was doing now: fire a Reign of Arrows, wood-infused shot into the minion wave beyond the turn in the lane, holding them in place and allowing more time for her own minions’ shields to regenerate as they pushed further.

By the time they’d arrived at the enemy’s half-destroyed first base, they’d built up a wave of fifteen mechs.

It was more than enough to, with her help, take it down.

Next to her, Nathaniel made a noise that sounded like choked laughter.

“What is it?”

“We’re in the clear for my plan. Enemy support just tried to sweep the orb, couldn’t find it.”

She was still focused on taking out the enemy minions as they kept moving, but now her attention was being drawn a bit in two directions. How exactly had the enemy support missed it when Jessica had seen she’d already bought a high level of anti-stealth?

She must have made some sort of indication of that, because he started talking again.

“I mean, people get lazy. Ward-orbs are basically always in the open or light cover, just stealthed, right? And I throw a few of those out pretty consistently, so they think those are the ones I care about. But those are always cheap ones. The good ones are hidden in treebark and inside things and behind monster spawns…”

Question answered, she redirected her attention to the base. Purely off of what she could see, they’d take out the second base as the now on-the-other-side-of-the-map northlaner took out their first, but there were issues, as well.

If she wasn’t already aware of Nathaniel’s ability to teleport them basically anywhere on the map, there was no way she would have agreed to this plan. Beyond that, it was also generally the expectation that the carry would lose to the bruiser in a one versus one, and often a two versus one, so long as the support wasn’t able to stop them.

It was, assuming that they’d been playing something more standard, trading two bases for two, without major gain for either team– except that the enemy team was pushing their group of four with five, and all of the credits for taking out the bases were stacking further onto a single, already-ahead member.

Or at least, that’s what should have been happening.

Instead, with Nathaniel maintaining a Void Wall in front of the base turrets’ primary target as they’d destroyed them, they’d built up a large enough wave that it should be able to mostly destroy the third base, even without their help.

And the enemy support had missed the anchor that they’d be teleporting to, and while her support had been staying close, she didn’t need the babysitting that most carries got.

Her focus was being cooperative when he looked at her, drawing a question mark with the link’s ability to share visuals instead of asking her.

It looked a little strange in her own personal vision, but she responded in kind with a checkmark.

Two seconds later, a portal appeared next to them, and she started infusing four arrows as she stepped towards it.

It was time to hunt the big game.