When he’d died, it had given the enemy team the maximum credit count from a single kill, worth more than any one of the three they’d gotten from that fight.

That didn’t stop him from grinning like an idiot as he respawned.

He’d thought that it was enough to just get that for both of them dying, pushing them back enough to buy time while equalizing the credit differential.

Instead, Jessica had gone the extra mile, managing to pick up the support who’d been coming to help, as well– somehow managing to take down the other player with less than thirty percent of her shields going in.

Four for one was beyond his wildest hopes for it, actually. Especially once he factored in that they’d pulled the Callout from the diver. The ability didn’t have anywhere near the longer cooldowns on most ultimates, but taking it there had probably bought them about twenty minutes where it was unusable.

In the process, though, they’d somehow lost the Dragon and two bases.

He was tempted to be annoyed with his midlaner, but that wasn’t productive. The enemy northlaner was becoming a serious problem.

Originally, he’d thought that they’d have enough time to scale up Jessica to the point where they just couldn’t compete, that plan was no longer feasible.

At first that’s what he thought she looked so unhappy about when he respawned, in the middle of her buying what appeared to be a physical projector– an important component in “carrying” more ammunition, even if using it would preclude the use of her infusion ability on some of her shots.

She quickly dispelled that idea.

“Sorry about letting you die there. I didn’t think that we’d win without–”

He cut her off, incredulous. “I was expecting both of us to go down for that. Take all three with us, sure, but still both of us.”

Her eye twitched to look at him again, so he went on. “And you came out of that with the support, too! It went so much better than I thought because of you. No apologies for being awesome, yeah?”

She just looked shocked at that. A bit like Jade would, really. Was that a feature of people in general or just ones he liked?

It only took thinking one game back to convince him it was the latter. Not even that, really, when he considered how he’d been preparing himself from the first moment of this game for her to suddenly turn out to be an egotistical jerk.

He felt a little bad about making that assumption, now.

Not that bad, given that it had been the more likely outcome, but still a bit.

Having completed his purchases while dead, he indicated that they should head towards the middle lane, reconnecting with his wards.

It wasn’t terribly important to have them still, given that they’d be unlikely to see those areas soon, but he didn’t plan on deactivating them until he needed that concentration unreserved for something.

He did give her time, but she was still being quiet when they got into the lane, so he spoke up.

“Hey, can you relink us? The death cancelled it but that ability’s real useful.”

“Mhmm.” She tapped the back of his head again, this time much more quickly than last time, and he paused to give her the time to adjust to the dual-perspective. He did need to blink a few times, separating out the perspectives again, but given the constant need for supports to do this, he wasn’t particularly disabled by the influx of visual information, instead mostly tuning it out.

It was a bit harder with that connection than with wards, given that the latter category was mostly completely ignorable except when they detected motion, but not that much harder.

Probably.

For him or Jade, at least.

He actually wouldn’t know, given his propensity for annoying other supports with obstinance and the fact that, because he only had one ability set, only tagged as a support, he never got autofilled into any other role.

Not that he would have been, anyways, as a support.

Honestly, he wasn’t entirely comfortable with her sudden quietude compared to earlier, but he wasn’t much of a conversationalist, either.

He didn’t think she disliked him, but he also couldn’t quite tell what else it could be.

Instead, Nathaniel pushed that thought to the back of his head, focusing more completely on analyzing a way out of the mess that was quickly developing around them.

There weren’t a lot of options that were good, honestly. The north laner’s combination of fast movement, tankiness, and ramping damage made for a deadly ball that he couldn’t even effectively maneuver around.

The only saving graces of the whole situation were that Jessica was wildly ahead of the enemy carry and that the north laner would have difficulty syncing into the rest of his team. With several of them needing to move around normally, the rising water in and around the area that their most powerful member was fighting in would be as difficult to use and navigate as it was for his own team.

Even better, there was a note of anti-synergy between the carry and bruiser, in this case. Any area that the more powerful member managed to take would be temporarily basically impossible for the carry to operate in, meaning that they’d likely have to split the sides of the fight to be effective.

Finally, while Jessica was just taking out the minion wave with the projection arrows, he tried to explain his plan.

“…and if we fight as six, they don’t really have a choice but to split the carry off into a side lane, and I think we can win with that advantage, even if just barely.”

“I… Are you sure? I think they could just… five and one with the strong member solo-pushing. Puts us in a much worse position.” Jessica responded, hesitantly.

Nathaniel had to take a moment to close his eyes.

The thought hadn’t occurred to him, actually.

They could totally afford to trade that way, delaying Jessica long enough to split up and push faster from the side.

“You’re right.”

Was there a way to fix that, though? A fight between Jessica and the bruiser could very easily go either way, and most other combinations they had wouldn’t push fast enough to be a threat. They had five bases left, three in north lane, two in midlane. His team had three in south lane, but more pushing power and better synergy.

He could see the resources they had, and a way to win. All it needed was for the other team to wildly overestimate themselves, or underestimate his allies.

Technically something he could help convince them of, especially given his penultimate was coming up win two minutes, but…

New plan, then. And nobody’s going to like it. Not even me.