It was a good thing that Quince had this game well in hand, because if he hadn’t things might have been going very poorly.

Early on, after his double kill in north lane, she’d managed to get to south in time to bail out Jonah, turning what would have been an enemy kill and her own team being forced out of lane into both sides needing to base and reset.

Honestly, it should have been fine, but after Jonah had mis-aimed his movement ability and lost sixty percent of his shield strength in the fall, it was about as good of an outcome as they could have expected.

Doug and Jacob should have left him to die, actually, but she wasn’t going to bring that up in the post-game meeting unless someone else did.

And they were on track to the post-game now. Quince had gotten Tethys’ Oar, the less-effective-in-melee and ability speed-and-efficiency counterpart to Poseidon’s Trident, the water ability strength and size option. While the latter could also be upgraded to boost earth abilities, allowing Quince to double-dip in his use of mud, he’d instead opted for the Soul of the Hungering Mire, a ring that boosted the strength of primarily water, earth, and plant-based abilities while the user was in direct or through-affected-abilities contact with them, getting stronger each time damage was dealt to a target and resetting when the user dealt them damage in an unaffected manner or after thirty seconds, whichever came first.

Combined with her own Spatial Flux, heavily upgraded shield, Chronojump Recharger, and Garland of Terminus, which empowered barriers, the two of them were essentially untouchable for the enemy team when their carry wasn’t there. Even that was conditional, though, because Nova was the only player who could effectively counter Quince’s takeover of areas and when Liam, the other side’s Ranger, wasn’t there, she was free to leave Quince to handle himself, diving into the middle of the enemy team to damage them and disrupt their formation.

It wasn’t exactly ideal that it meant she was mostly spending her time just guarding Quince until the end of the game, but it was looking like that was what she was going to do.

She had to specifically ignore the fact that Doug was following along, specifically taking all the kills that Quince’s, as well as her own, damage-over-time abilities were lining up. Honestly, it was a good thing that the game was basically wrapped up, because those shrinking advantages would have given the other team a chance to come back.

They did wrap it up, though, with one final teamfight around the south gate. There wasn’t as much earth around there for Quince to use, but it had turned out to be mostly a formality. With Jacob running defense for the more vulnerable members of her team and Jonah locking down the opposing carry, she had been free to jump straight into the back line and use her ultimate offensively.

It wasn’t a fact that she made much effort to advertise, but Tormented Space’s ability to freeze an area in place for six seconds, even if abilities that needed to travel to hit also couldn’t reach anyone within and would be destroyed for the duration, was enough for her to take off about seventy percent of a squishier target’s shields by boosting her shield capacity through her passive and activating Spatial Flux.

It cost her most of her energy capacity and was essentially suicidal due to leaving her with somewhat compromised shielding and very compromised positioning if she didn’t have followup, but she had followup.

The panic the tactic that they hadn’t seen before had invoked probably would have been enough to win even if Quince hadn’t been fed. The fact that he was, and the Doug had enough items to be threatening as well, turned it into a slaughter.

‘Allied Hexakill.’

“And did you see that! I got all six of ‘em! Like shooting fish in a barrel.” Doug said, his hands moving quickly as he talked. “You get me kills like that again and we’ll sweep through these losers in nothing flat.”

She saw the disgusted look on Quince’s face as her own eyebrows furrowed slightly. Doug wasn’t entirely wrong, but he had not been the deciding factor in that last fight. Still, it wasn’t worth pissing Doug off about, and she tried to signal as much before Quince could start talking.

He either wasn’t paying attention to her or didn’t care, though, because when he spoke it was with a quiet sort of anger that he’d seen him trying to push down before.

“You take credit for her or my accomplishments like that again, and I don’t give a fuck if we’re at a tournament, I’m pulling out.”

Doug froze, the smile on his face hanging in place for a moment before it changed. “Excuse me?”

“I said, you claim credit for shit Emma or I do again, and I’m leaving, fuck the team.” Quince said. “This is supposed to be prep time for next game, and I don’t want to have that withdrawal on my record– but I will do it.”

Doug rounded on him, his hands calming down. “Again, excuse me? Maybe I’m missing something, but I got those kills, and I’m the carry. You know, the damage dealer? The one who turns Emma’s admittedly decent ultimate into actual kills.”

Quince glared at him. “Theoretically. But you know something? We’re in a review room, and Arrows keeps a running tally on how much damage any player does for a time period. Do you want to isolate that fight?”

Doug blinked, then sneered, “I don’t think I need a northlaner pretending to be a midlaner telling me how to do my job.”

“Take it from a midlaner pretending to be a northlaner, then. You took a bunch of kills and turned an enormous lead into a moderate one. In the last fight, you dealt maybe twenty percent of the damage, all at once, near the end.”

Doug’s smile turned predatory. “Oh? Really. You think so. I think that you’re feeding me a fucking line. How about I pull up those numbers, if you’re so proud of them?”

“Me? Proud? Nah. But you’re not pulling up shit. Greg’ll do it.”

“You think you can order my team around?”

“No, I think I can get someone to do it who won’t skew the time period to make himself look better.”

“Don’t trust yourself, then?” Doug asked, smirking angrily.

Quince had apparently calmed down, though, because he just tapped his fingers against the simulated table while Greg was fiddling with his menu. “I trust myself fine. But you don’t trust me not to do the same thing in reverse, so I thought I’d save us the time.”

Greg cut in. “I’ve got it. Haven’t looked at the numbers yet.”

Quince spoke before Doug could. “None of us had pen, so give us the pre-reduction numbers.”

“Makes sense to me,” Jonah said, “We did get all six, so we definitely had to go through the tank HP.”

“Got it,” Greg said, then threw the damage ranking window onto the table.

Emma

45533

Quince

11652

Doug

9654

Greg

3677

Jonah

3653

Jacob

251

Jacob was the first to speak. “Christ on a stick, really?”

Greg wasn’t long after him. “I knew she did more than Doug, but fuuuuuuuuck.”

“How..?” Jonah asked, then shook his head. “Man, we should have been going over these before. Emma does a lot more than I thought.”

All the attention made her want to crawl up in the corner a bit, but she managed to keep it to just blushing and looking down. “Six targets, and their tank survived my Shardbomb, which is about half of that number. That’s… the absolute maximum damage I can put out without hitting more people with the bomb. After that, it’s about a hundred per second per target until the Chronojump comes back up thirty seconds later. And all that’s after I was getting fed that whole game, even if it was mostly assists…”

After her explanation the room was silent for a bit. The three who had spoken all looked a bit like they didn’t want to accept the explanation, but none of them got around to voicing it before Doug cut in again.

“You set me up.”

Quince looked smug. “Yep.”

“Most of both of your damage went into tanks.”

“Like Jonah said, we took out all six. Someone had to do that damage.”

After two false starts, Doug got around to saying something. “Fuck it. Fine. Next game, same plan, but if you want the bitch to help you in north, be my damn guest.”

Quince smiled, even more smug than before, but didn’t say anything.