South lane was not going well.

Oh, objectively, it was going fine.

Better than should be expected, even, when they were notably lower-ranked than their opponents.

That didn’t mean he was happy with it.

Jessica had been right about them being recognized, and Emma had been even more right than she’d thought about the carry listening.

They’d been able to keep from being held against the base for the entire game, and Jessica’s minion-killing was staying ahead of the other carry’s, but that was about all he could say in their favor.

Neither the support nor the carry had stepped out of line enough for him to do much more than annoy them with Void Strikes aimed in their general direction. He’d hit a few, and they were both more damaging than the other side’s carry’s Shadow Bolts and capable of a bit of general damage through his passive, the way that the darkness was clinging to the ground and targets that it hit was making him a bit uncomfortable.

Combined with the use of Darkness, an ability that darkened an area without dealing damage, and Shadow Step, he was fairly sure that it was either a passive that would build up for a burst of damage, or Shadow Arms, a mainline ability that caused residual darkness to be left with Dark-aligned abilities, then turning into partially-physical arms that dealt decent damage and attempted to grab onto and slow down nearby targets.

Worst-case, it was both, but with both him and Jessica having comparatively low Energy scores, the lane was adamantly refusing to move in either direction at better than a crawl. With that being the case, he was unlikely to actually find out until they fought.

Annoying.

At the very least, North was going well. As a whole, Jeremy was a bit of an odd case. Pretty new to the game, but his actual skill was top-notch, even if the decision-making wasn’t. Rayne had said something about them being in some sort of club, but when they started talking about it, it was fairly confusing. Some kind of HEMA derivative, as far as he could tell, but more generalized.

He’d been expecting results, but the fact that Jeremy managed the second kill with only Emma helping meant weird things for this game.

Jessica and he were going to lose their first base before the enemy team’s south side, and there wasn’t much they could do about it. Her build was good early in the game and extremely good late, but she paid for it heavily in the midgame.

One item in, she had significantly less actual scaling than basically all the other carries he’d seen. Both the bow and the powersuit were decent forces, but the combination was where the real power was.

Unfortunately, the enemy carry had access to the more linear scaling of Magic and Special Boost items, and might even grab one with a loadbearing effect for that little bit of extra power.

It wasn’t likely to be much, if loadbearing was involved, but it was still a possibility.

Better to focus on other lanes. “They’re going to be weaker northside than southside. Any report on how you’re doing, Quince?”

“Decent. They’re good, but they’re mostly area blasts that aren’t all that strong. Good for clear, good for taking out most mids over time, but with my pillars it’s more a matter of needing to hit pretty strongly.”

“Diver and support can manage that,” Jade cut in, “Though the rest of them’ll have a tough time of it.”

“Offense plays are pretty minimal right now,” Nathaniel said, “And they’re all built around Jeremy.”

“Uh… No offense, but I’ve like, barely gotten Rush. Going that and the parry attachment’s got me in a different place than usual.”

“It’s not about you directly, it’s–” Nathaniel started, before Quince cut him off.

“It’s a setup for Emma. Speed and toughness like that plus your passive lets her run through people.”

“Close,” Jade said. “You too. It’ll fix your pillars.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Quince said. “Thought it was players only.”

“The ability says allies and works on minions, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t,” Jeremy said. “Still, it’s not like I can just leave without trading something for it.”

This was probably going to be a difficult sell. Without leaping ahead early, the team they’d set up really only had one option.

Weathering the mid-game slump as best they could.

And with what they were up against, that wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Is your read here the same as mine, Nathan? Emma?” Jade asked, slightly hesitant.

“If that read involves you going mid, then yes.”

Emma’s response was a lot longer in coming, but did still show up. “I thought I’d be going mid.”

“It’s both of us, at different times. We can… well, we need Jessica and Nathan to be free…”

“A few minutes before we lose the base at this rate,” Jessica answered Jade, while giving him a complicated look, “But I’m not a big fan of retreat on that kind of scale.”

“Necessary. We need to force them into bigger fights and put team synergies to use…”

“We’re getting number-grindered right now,” Nathaniel jumped in. Jessica wasn’t likely to like this, but she’d probably admit it was necessary. “Not in mid, not in north, but south and canopy. It’s a solvable problem, but… well…”

“You don’t think I can win right now.”

She looked a little bit hurt by that, but he didn’t really have a response to it except to nod.

It was a full extra wave of minions later when she finally sighed. It didn’t seem like she was angry at anyone other than herself, at least. He wasn’t certain that that was a good thing going forward, but for now it kept the pressure off and the team working together.

“Fine. If that’s how we need to play it, that’s how we need to play it. Any buy changes?”

Probably something to talk about later. Probably with Emma there, but there was a chance that might backfire if he was reading their relationship wrong. And it didn’t help that they had the estrangement time…

Difficult situation all around, and unfortunately one he’d rather deal with than let play out.

“Not for you,” Jade said. “But we’re going to need to adjust Emma’s and my own…”