Coming out of the game was always an odd experience. While one’s body stayed exactly the same, losing the enhancements, the ever-present notices, and, most especially, other people’s voices constantly communicating suddenly made the user feel small and alone until they warmed back up to real life.

Or at least, it did for Nathaniel. Though it didn’t quite manage to fully calm him down.

“Fucking people, dude,” he swore, then leaned back in the half-pod that was Granduon’s VR apparatus. “Can they get any dumber?”

“Probably not,” his sister, Jade, responded. “Given that trying to get anyone to listen to either of us is apparently an exercise in getting our time wasted.”

She was faster out of her pod than he was, as always, and already offering him a hand to get out when he opened his eyes again. He took it quickly, pulling himself up without the annoyance of using the internal handles of the pod.

A quick nod of acknowledgment was all it took for her to turn and head for the door. He noticed her dark brown hair frizzing slightly from the static of the pod, stopping midway to the kitchen to grab the brush she had for that and tossing it to her when he made it in to see her staring at the list of contents on the fridge’s screen. She caught it without even turning to face him, the started in on her hair, backing up slightly to let him see the screen.

“Do you have any offers?” he asked, reading. Nothing on the list particularly stood out to him, so he just selected a few of the things to make fajitas and raised an eyebrow at his sister

Her face made the same motions it usually did when he asked that question, and he pretended not to notice she was lying when she spoke again. “Nope, nothing. Lots of exploratory, just nobody willing to take me on.” Without verbally responding to his tapping on the door, she moved a couple of the things around, then opened up their parents’ schedule.

Nobody was willing to take him on just to get her, he internally translated. Dad would be home, but mom was still working, not that that was surprising. Nathaniel had told his sister that she should just take an offer if she got it, whether they’d be willing to take him on or not, but she’d stubbornly insisted that, while she was almost perfectly suited to filling a canopy ranger or support role on basically any team, she was going to hold on to the requirement that they take him on as the support.

Which, given the fact that he played a caster support setup, wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

“I hate to say it, but mom not being home is the only reason we have enough.”

Jade made a so-so motion with her right hand, setting a timer with the other, the hairbrush hanging off her pinky. “She knew that, though. Set the list last week.”

“Yeah, but it’s still disappointing. You want to stove?”

“Nah.”

“’Kay. Insights on last game?” he asked, calculating what he’d be doing before the timer would go off and he’d need to start cooking.

“Meta-snobs don’t listen to caster supports, and a high ‘intelligence’ score doesn’t mean that someone isn’t a dumbass,” Jade replied offhandedly, and Nathaniel glared at her. He knew it wasn’t particularly threatening, but she deserved to know his feelings on the matter. Besides, the game didn’t even have an intelligence score, even if some people did treat “Calculation” that way.

“Yeah, what else though?”

This time, she was slower to respond. “We need to get better at convincing the carries that when either of us are making a prediction about where they are, we’re not just guessing randomly, even when we can’t see them. You need to learn to tell your laner what for, get them to listen somehow. I need to stop trusting north and mid to follow their opponents, or at least start verifying before I do. You?”

Jade had basically echoed his thoughts on the matter, but her saying it out loud had given him the time to expand on it. “Don’t know if I need to ‘give them what for’ or just get better at convincing them I know what I’m doing. As far as you trusting mid and north…” he paused, more trying to think of a way to say what he wanted to without sounding like a jerk than what the actual concept was. “I can manage that if you poke me about it.”

Jade narrowed her eyes. “That’ll add something to your list. You sure?”

He nodded. “I’ve got to put that one-eighty to work somehow, and based on the last week or so I can say that a fourth ward-orb isn’t the way to go. They start finding them.”

Specifically, he was referring to his “Concentration” score, the game’s way of measuring how well one could maintain a number of different thought processes or narrow down on a single one through conflicting information. Given that one hundred and eighty was double the average, his 177 was the largest contributor to his level 6 rating. He’d also noticed that it seemed to be a fairly good indicator of someone’s ability to notice a pattern, even if interpreting that pattern fell slightly more on calculation.

Which was why it annoyed him so much that the south-lane carries he was supposed to be supporting often insisted that their generally slightly-higher-than-his calculation scores would give them some kind of superpower that would allow them to be a better shotcaller than he was. Last game, specifically, he’d called out where the enemy team would be within the mists that covered most of the map, but the woman he was supporting had instantly decided to talk over him, very confidently and annoyingly saying that the enemy team couldn’t have gotten there yet, and that the mist diver as well as the north and mid laners should set up for a trap and wait in that exact location for the enemy to show up.

Even more annoyingly, they’d listened. When they got there, they didn’t even get much of a chance to speak before they’d been killed, setting them on a two-minute-long respawn timer. Then, given the enemy’s two ability carry team– even if one had technically been the midlaner and an off-ability carry– quickly tore through both the Air Spirit and the Dragon to recruit the Worm.

Given that both Nathaniel and the surviving carry dealt almost exclusively magical damage, and that Jade was only balanced between physical and magical, not a physical specialist, the Worm’s magical resistance combined with the full six members of the enemy bearing down on the three of them had completely lost the game a full ten in-game minutes before the final base was destroyed.

Of course, the woman who had made the terrible call blamed it on everyone else and tried to surrender, but he’d looked at the three who had died and saw their willingness to ride out the full loss, muting her complaints and doing what they could to possibly turn the game around.

He did respect the fact that she hadn’t once friendly-fired after that, though. Not everyone managed to do that.

Jade sighed. “That’s pretty reasonable. I’ve only got three and I already wonder how you keep them hidden so well.”

Nathaniel grinned. “I mean, two of them are usually hidden in trees. It’s not like people take that much care to learn where they can slip orbs into the bark. Reduces their field of vision too much.” With the second sentence, he put his hands up next to his face, imitating blinders.

His sister just rolled her eyes. “Someday, someone’s going to call you out on that and start breaking them. Then what?”

“Then I hide them under rocks. I’ve got a few places I’ve been planning to use…”