He was glad that the conversation with Jade didn’t go on much longer than that. It wasn’t like she was a bad person or anything, but she seemed to enjoy setting him up for mental whiplash.

Outside of that, she was fairly nice, and had even asked him if he wanted her to stop. He honestly didn’t have any problem with it, just wanted to be prepared the next time, so didn’t tell her to.

When she left, waving to the two of them left in the concrete box that made up Rayne’s desktop, the two of them sat in recovering silence for a moment.

“Did she really pick that up from just reading my abilities? That took me a couple hours of full-on testing to figure out how to use it.”

Rayne looked maybe even a little more spooked than he felt. “Yeah, she did. I genuinely did not tell her a single thing about you until you walked into the room.”

“Holy shit.”

“I know. She told me she was ‘better than most people, and my brother’ at figuring out ability sets, but…”

“She wasn’t lying about that…”

“But still…”

“How’d you even get wrapped up with her?” Jeremy asked. He had been aware of Rayne’s career, but they hadn’t exactly talked about her contract or back-end work. Frankly, he was more surprised to see that she wasn’t playing, herself, than to see her having found someone as odd as Jade.

She bit the inside of her cheek, then sighed. “You remember how I complained a few times about our ranger?”

“Yeah. Said he barely knew what he was doing and had to have everything explained.”

“She was one of the candidates I wanted to replace him, but…” she groaned, bouncing her forehead off of the table. “Fuck. I’m an idiot. Shoulda just pushed it.”

That confused him. “Some deep personal realization?”

“Nah. But Jade refused to accept if we didn’t give her brother a slot.”

That was strange, but knowing she was the ranger… “The support, right? I can see why you wouldn’t want to fight for that slot.”

She just groaned, putting her forehead on the table again. “Yeah, sure, makes sense, but we never even bothered to ask her for her opinion of why, just looked at him and said ‘no thanks.’”

“Assuming that’s what the groaning was about.”

“She also said she was ‘pretty good’ at predicting enemy movements and that her brother was ‘incredible’ at it.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Wait, didn’t she say she was ‘above average’ at the abilities? What the hell does ‘pretty good’ or ‘incredible’ mean?”

She pulled her head off the table, using the menu to put up a viewing screen on one of the walls. “Dunno. She gave me permissions on full-voice replay, so you wanna see?”

“I think I need to at this point.”

There weren’t a lot of external or quickly accessible ways to confirm that, though, so they eventually settled on one that was at least more commonly a predictor of being a good example of that: the boss steal.

It wasn’t a topline stat, of course, but the game kept track of any instance where one team dealt over sixty percent of the boss enemy’s health– but the other was credited with the kill, and the bonuses. It wasn’t the most common of occurrences, but times where it happened could swing games.

The viewpoints on the screen were a combination of a third-person, AI-controlled view of both Jade and her brother, apparently named Nathaniel, and views from where their wards were.

It was on fast-forward and he didn’t play support or south-lane, but even he could see some weirdness.

Three wards were down for Nathaniel, and two from Jade, basically from the moment they placed them on. Their play was impressive, though nothing super incredible… but he hadn’t seen a single one of either of their wards destroyed by enemy sweeps. He’d even seen some of them pass right over the wards, looking directly into the camera with anti-stealth vision modifiers glowing on their face, without even pausing.

The third time that happened, he had to speak up. “Okay, you want to explain that bullshit to me?”

“Not well known, exactly, but not really a hidden mechanic, either. You can see him teleport them, obviously, but if we zoom out…” Rayne tapped a button, pulling one of the camera screens out then adding a set of controls to it. The viewpoint pulled out of the front of the camera, then turned around.

The black orb was tucked snugly between two folds of bark, holding it in place physically where the orbs were usually free-floating pieces of equipment.

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. You look for something too specific…”

“And you miss the snake because you’re looking for a spider.”

“Pretty much.”

After that, she set the screens back and started playing it back some more. Every time someone stared at the ward-orbs without seeing them, Jeremy felt his indignance grow. Was it really that simple?

When one of them was found, he almost celebrated, but Rayne freezing the screens and reverting them to normal speed along with adding voice chat distracted him, instead.

“What’s that about?”

“Worm gets killed in two minutes.”

“They can’t see anyone. Isn’t that the one that gets stolen?”

“Yeah.”

From the screen, Nathaniel’s voice cut in. “They’re sweeping for Worm.”

Now, Jade, “They’ll pull it back to the edge of den and DPS it there.”

“Mid, Ranger, Carry?”

“Yup.”

“Two minutes then. ------, in a bit I’ll count down from ten. On zero, penult here.” Nathaniel said, pointing on a map. The carry’s name was blanked out for privacy reasons, apparently, but that was fine.

“Is that… it?” Jeremy asked, watching the two of them not even bothering to get closer to the location than the maximum range for the carry’s penultimate, which would just summon a large explosion.

They didn’t place any wards, check in on lanes, or even give any indication that they knew what was happening beyond Jade heading towards the Air Spirit, calling the midlaner with her. Another exchange between them about how to avoid a ward on the way.

A ward that would be in a position where she’d already destroyed one.

And moving the camera over there without the team vision lock confirmed that it was, in fact, there.

Nathaniel started talking again. “Okay. Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

“Are you sure about this?” the carry asked, skepticism obvious even through the distorted voice.

“Yes. Three, two, one, go.” Nathaniel said.

The carry didn’t go when he said go, glancing back and forth between him, his hands behind his back, and the ground they couldn’t see through for two seconds, then finally shrugging and using their penultimate.

The notification of the steal went off.

He glanced at Rayne, expecting to see her disappointed, but what he saw instead was a mixture of disgust and incredulity.

She rewound, manually putting the view behind Nathaniel, where they could see his hands.

“Eight,” he said, holding ten fingers out.

“Seven,” he continued, putting one down.

“You’re kidding me.” Rayne said quietly, staring as that continued, him putting the last two fingers down while the carry dithered.

This time, she let it go past the act itself.

“Ugh, you’re useless! If I’d done it when you said we would’ve just handed it over!”

“Oops.” Nathaniel said, blithely. “Won’t happen again.”

Jade and that midlaner took out the Air Spirit, securing the dragon for their team.

Jeremy coughed out a laugh. Was that all, then? Just a couple of psychics? He could handle that. Would appreciate it, even.

It had to be better to be on their side, at least.