Was she a fan, then? It wasn’t unheard of for small-time players to develop fans, but it certainly wasn’t anything she’d ever dealt with. She couldn’t be a team manager or she’d be talking to Doug, and she was entirely too young to be a recruiter for another team, not that that was likely either given the fairly limited nature of an event like this’s reach. It was weird that she was picked out outside the venue, especially given the fact that her face wouldn’t be as recognizable with the mask on and the changed version of it in-game, but it was also still in public so she wasn’t too worried about being picked off the street or anything.

She should probably respond, though. Jade had been waiting patiently for a dew seconds while she thought that over.

“Yeah, I am. That’s… nice to hear, I suppose. What can I do for you?”

Jade seemed to smile uncomfortably for a second. “Well, I have some inside information.”

“What kind of inside information?”

“I hear there might be… some friction. In your team, I mean. And that that friction might cause specifically you or your north laner to leave.”

Okay, that was weird. This was probably a recruitment meeting of some kind, though she couldn’t even begin to guess at which team would allow what looked like a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl to handle its recruitment. The weird part, though, is that it wasn’t exactly something that was public knowledge, even if last game had shown something was off. She could see Quince telling someone that, and she’d told Jess some of it, but still…

“I don’t know where you heard that. And he’s more of a mid laner being pushed into north than an actual north laner.”

Jade reacted to that, though fairly subtly. “Hmm. Good to know, regarding him, and I might reach out to him as well if that’s the case. But, as I think you know by now, I’m mostly here to ask about you. Selicae isn’t exactly a hugely professional team, obviously, though you do occasionally get sponsorships and local prize money.

“I can’t say that, as far as it goes, my team would be too much better in that regard; we’ve got a more comprehensive sponsorship offer, but it’s conditional.”

“You’re not exactly selling this very hard,” Emma said.

Jade smiled, leaning in slightly over the table. “That’s on purpose, you know.” She leaned back, tapping the table in front of her. “Really, there’s three reasons that you’d want to be on my team. First: we’ve got fairly competitive members so far, and we’re working to have good synergies across the board, as well as team members who are dedicated to ability exploration and development, playing in irregular styles.

“Second, we’re aiming for Nationals, and our sponsor seems to believe that with our coach and myself at the helm, we’ve got even odds of making it.”

She paused then, seemingly weighing between options, before laying her hand flat on the table. “And, while I might say something else to someone else, for you I think this is more important. I, as well as one of the other players on my team, are fairly dedicated to keeping our environment non-toxic. I could say, and the people who put the offer forward would want me to say, that it would be balanced against how useful they were to the team, and how bad they were being, but if I’m being honest…”

Another pause, another lean in, though not as much as before. “I’d cut someone who was causing even fairly minor bad feelings pretty early, and if they were bad actors? Gone. And I’d block ‘em, too. Keeping that kind of negativity in your life can feel like it’s worth it, or isn’t that bad… But it wears on you, and the people around you, too. You’ve got to burn that kind of influence before they get too close, before they entrench themselves and become your new normal.

“If you don’t see it happening, they can burrow in and seem like something you can’t give up. So, me? I’m gonna throw ‘em out, if they show up.”

The words were good, though more aggressive than she’d heard similar things said before. It made her uncomfortable, actually, with the way Jade’s gaze seemed to be tracking her thoughts until she looked away.

So, she was here to pull her onto some new team, then. And one that was missing at least two members, too, though they had a coach of some variety.

It could be basically anyone, and Jade hadn’t elaborated.

She didn’t need her to, though. “So, what. You’d kick out anyone trying to manipulate your team members? Are you sure you’re really the one to be judging on that?”

Jade didn’t get annoyed like she’d expected when she’d made the accusation. Instead, she smiled, eerily assured, and put one of her hands over the other. “Manipulation? Not inherently, no. Manipulation gets a bad rap, but it’s a tool. Can be bad, maybe even usually is, but it’s not necessarily so. A parent can manipulate a kid into eating their greens, a friend can manipulate a friend into getting therapy, a public outcry can manipulate a company into making donations or changing a bad policy. Inherently immoral methods exist, but ‘manipulation’ isn’t one of them.”

Emma glared for a moment. She didn’t really have it in her to make too much of a fuss, but she still had to at least make an attempt.

“I think it’s best if you leave.”

“Sure.” Jade said, lifting her hands to reveal a phone number on a notecard and standing up. “You call or text that, I’ll be on the other end. If you don’t want it, be sure to hand it on to that friend of yours. Oh! And if you decide to trash it and later regret that, go ahead and talk to Jess. She’s got it.”

With an annoyingly jaunty, three-fingered wave, she spun and walked away, leaving Emma to finish her lunch alone.