Somehow, even with the complete lack of expectations generated by Nathaniel’s set being something he’d never even heard of, he still managed to be surprised.

Specifically, when the guy had come into the lane on what appeared to be a translucent, rectangular, floating board, with six floating semitranslucent swords hanging around him, then stepped off without looking at his footing while those same swords moved independently to wipe out the remains of his minion wave before spinning back to float around him again, any idea for what he was dealing with completely fled.

He didn’t trust the way Nathaniel stood there, seemingly out in the open and face impassive.

Was he setting up for Jeremy to come gank him, payback for Emma’s strike earlier? Was Nathaniel just bad at midlane, not really aware of the dangers? Or was he being psyched out and Nathaniel had nothing at all but the protection of being inscrutably off?

The gank seemed difficult to pull off, at least, so Quince decided that a few long-range test shots were in order, using the single-shot mode afforded by the specialist weapon he used.

It was lower damage per second than any of the other options afforded by the weapon, but it also had the longest effective range, letting him stay out of any true threat from a gank. All he had to do was shoot from range, being mindful of the possibility that they could be baiting him into something. Jessica would want to maintain her control over the lane’s flow, so she wouldn’t have sent someone who would just sit back and take it.

Three shots, spaced to be nearly impossible to avoid all of them without revealing something about the set currently in use.

Or, they would have been, if Nathaniel hadn’t somehow already been moving by the time the trigger was pulled.

Somehow, he’d slipped that board back under his feet, launching into the air after he’d decided to fire but before he could adjust his aim.

Lucky.

That was a weakness, though, and he didn’t seem to have any control over his momentum other than that afforded by the board, so he had to follow the arc the board had set him on while it caught up.

Simple enough, and those copies of the weapons clustered around him wouldn’t offer any protection against–

Nathaniel went left when he should have gone down, holding on to two of the weapon copies like the world’s sharpest pull-up bar.

The board was under his feet again, and both side’s minions were meeting in the middle.

A change of tactics, then.

Quince flipped the mode of his gun over, focusing his fire on the minions when he heard it.

“Alright, my shields are down and I need to retreat to the constructor,” Jade said.

“Wait, what?” Quince asked. He didn’t interrupt his firing to question that, but he didn’t adjust his strategy when Nathaniel landed behind his minions and brought those swords to bear against his own minions, either.

“Jeremy chased me off. He can’t get up onto the bridges without help or a ladder until later, but Nathan’s got more than one way to get him up here. And, more than that, I can’t kill him without getting the drop on him, which I can’t do right now.”

“I thought you were set up as a ranger! How can you do that if you can’t kill a tank?”

She laughed at him. “I can kill ranger tanks, because their movement abilities are longer-cooldown and distance, and they usually can’t parry a knife-throw out of the freaking air. I’ve knocked him off the bridges twice, but both times he’s gotten himself back on. We’re both out of shields, but he can kill me and I can’t really kill him without getting help or getting lucky.”

“I’ll be back on the field soon if you want to make that shot.” Emma said. “I’m passing the gates now.”

Quince considered that for a moment, then groaned. “No, that means Jessica is, too. I need you to hold for me, because Nathaniel is better at clearing than I expected.”

He felt like he was missing something, but he couldn’t tell what it was, exactly…

Until, at least, he saw Nathaniel sitting down on that board, floating around like he was sitting on a magic bench, with his shields nearly untouched and regenerating.

“Fuck. How many bridges are you going to lose, Jade?”

He could hear the grin in her voice. “Two, probably. I’m a lot faster than most rangers, and I have to do the full travel, but knocking out those minions puts Nathan’s key on CD enough to stem the bleeding.”

The last pieces of the play fell into place for him, and Quince felt like cursing a lot worse than he had been.

It wasn’t an absolute certainty, but from the way Jade had been talking he fully expected Jeremy to, for whatever reason, be fully able to stay on the field, even with his missing shield.

“I’ve seen the swords, planes, and moving them. What are Nathaniel’s other abilities?”

“He can teleport to the creations and empower them.”

Jessica’s lane presence hadn’t been the threat. It had been the bait, and he’d bit. Jade had been playing coy with Nathaniel’s abilities before the game, but he was now almost certain that she would have told him some of them if he’d thought to ask after she would have seen them, like it was a blind game.

He knew he could over-focus on his own game to the exclusion of the others on his team, but this was further– and, now that he was thinking about it, rather effective– proof of that. Had Jessica been chosen to deliver that message, among multiple options, or was she just the alternate mid player that they had?

He supposed it didn’t matter, as he changed places with Emma and used the base to initiate his teleport back to the constructor.

Intentionally induced weakness or not, he needed to do his best to capitalize on it to have any chance of dragging this game back in his favor. Which meant sitting back and matching Jessica was no longer an option.

His build wasn’t really designed for it, but it looked like his best option was going to be aggressing. Difficult, but… with the right item buys? Not impossible.