“And we’re live in three! Two!” Sven’s hand signs one, and then his fist mimes coming down like a hammer.

Ragna is ready, but the countdown is appreciated anyway. Altera is ready, and doesn’t seem to even notice the countdown; posture perfect, face totally composed, she’s been ready for the stream to start for the last thirty seconds.

Her voice is smooth and controlled, too; Ragna knows that that won’t last past their scripted introduction, but the effect of her affect of perfection is undeniable. “Viewers and listeners, welcome.”

“Yeah, hi, everyone!” Ragna doesn’t try to match her fellow streamer’s style. Where Altera is calm and formal, she’s easy and casual. Where Altera sits with her back ramrod-straight, turned slightly to face the camera with her right hand on her thigh and her left hand lightly resting on the very thin sliver of couch between them, Ragna lounges with her legs up, propped up one hand with the other dangling loosely. Their hair reflects their different personalities, too; Altera’s perfectly styled platinum blonde contrasts with Ragna’s messy mix of dark blue, purple, and teal.

Neither of them is wearing a wig, and they’ve both done enough makeup tutorials and hair care guides that every one of their subscribers knows it; but where Altera sees that as just one more aspect of her job and handles it with her trademarked composed, aloof grace, Ragna alternates between seething at the necessity and luxuriating in the attention and adulation.

“Now, folks, you might’a noticed a few changes from our usual streams.”

“Perhaps the fact that we are, in fact, performing together.”

“Nah, it’s gotta be the digs.” Ragna waves a hand, indicating their surroundings. Instead of the intimacy that both of their streaming setups try to intimate, the space they’re sitting in is airy and open, with floor-to-ceiling windows and gaming paraphernalia that draws the eye away from them.

Well, potentially draws the eye away from them. Realistically, neither Ragna nor Altera nor any of the people acting—both usually and unusually—as their support staff have any concerns of that today, if ever.

“In fact, all of these changes, including our attire, arise from the source of our collaboration.”

“Folks, this is a sponsored stream.” Ragna cuts in with more seriousness than usual. “I wanna get that out there before anyone gets any other ideas, but here’s the kicker: every penny of the sponsor money is going to the folks who are hosting us. Say it with me, today is a charity stream for…”

She catches Altera’s eye, and that’s all the coordination they need to be in unison. “Bragi!” They give it a pause, and Altera takes the thread of conversation. “Bragi is a branch of Excellent Pastimes Articulated Swiftly, and every dollar we raise during this stream goes to charity.”

“One last thing before we start. I wanna thank the fellow streamers who are working it with us today. Princess Aura, who makes us look absolutely tiny on Insta, Tiktok, and Twitch alike; Sven, my baby, who’s taken and you can’t have him; Eric, who some of you folks might know from Bloodborne streaming; and Rory, who’s a piece of shit. Eric, how’s Elden Ring?”

There’s a muffled laugh and a much less muffled string of curses from off to the side, and Ragna’s smile gleams with a vicious edge even as Altera’s stiffens at the impropriety. “It’s pretty great! Faux pas, though.”

“Aw, come on. You’re the blood and Bloodborne guy, Elden Ring is, like, topical.”

“You know what’s topical? These outfits. I mean, damn, right?”

“Yours is quite appropriate.” Altera’s voice is matter-of-fact, as though the segue weren’t the least bit forced. “Practical. Leather jackets are a classic of men’s fashion, and your pants have pockets.”

“I have a fedora, honey.” Eric’s face twists wryly. “It’s not appropriate for anyone who isn’t an incel.”

“Oh! I’d wondered what kind of hat Rory wears.” Ragna gives it a beat, then snickers, her innocent face shattering. “Sike! Rory fucks.” She pretends to ignore the yell of you’re goddamn right I do that is probably audible on stream, grinning. “Anyway, we’ve got more staff than just Sven. We even have a combined intro, from my boy and Altera’s, that’ll give credit to all of ‘em and kick the show off proper. But first!”

“Some of you have asked what game we will be playing. In all honesty, until this morning, neither Ragna nor myself knew, nor knew quite how we would be attired.” That’s almost entirely a lie; they’d signed off on the designs and most of the pieces had been measured, fitted, and tweaked until everything covered what it should cover and flowed properly. “We will endeavor to provide a show of skill nonetheless; we are grateful to Bragi and to the developers Valkyria Heart for the opportunity, and for the costumes.”

They twirl, one and then the other, and go into a selection of poses. Their eyes are on the camera, but they both see Sven’s hand signs. They work with him as he focuses first on Ragna, in skin-tight leather with wings of red and black, boots tight up to the upper calf and then nothing until her short-shorts but bare skin that’s highlighted by the straps running across her thighs to hold the daggers; and then he’s on to Altera, with white angel wings and silvered armor over a black top that emphasizes her chest, knee-length stockings made to look like greaves, and a skirt so short it barely deserves the name.

Coverage-wise, while the outfits are more risque and sexualized than their usual, it’s not by a large enough margin to throw them off, and they play it off in their own styles; Altera by turns innocent, shy, or distracted by Ragna, and Ragna in return brazen and flirty and distracted by Altera. Their chemistry, their mutual attraction, seems genuine enough, but Ragna’s eyes occasionally fail to linger on Altera’s chest in favor of tracing the soft lines of Sven’s jaw and the firmness of his muscles.

Altera’s eyes never suffer from that same failure when it comes to Ragna’s exposed thighs.

Even after the show has gone into the intro, even after they’ve carefully put aside their weapons—they might not have sharp edges, but even the lighter saber is still a few pounds, and the partisan is heavier; and besides, Altera isn’t about to try playing in the gauntlets with the limited range of motion they offer—they don’t relax until Sven gives them the OK, and even then, they keep their game faces on for a couple of beats.

They’re professionals, after all.

.

When Altera plays, she wraps herself in stillness and calm. It’s artifice, of course; all of this is artifice, from her makeup to her hair to her mannerisms both physical and vocal. Everything she does, just as much as everything Ragna does, is calculated to foster a parasocial relationship between herself and her viewers, and she’s had months more than Ragna to work on that.

Nothing compared to Aura, the Princess Herself, but nobody compares to her.

Altera has bipolar disorder, according to one psychiatrist; hypomanic episodes, according to another. The telltales are still there despite every ounce of control she can exert, so she’s cultivated them into charming quirks and precise vulnerabilities. In a few months, maybe as long as a year, she expects that someone will put it all together and she’ll have an opportunity to have a touching moment of intimate confession, carefully curated and structured. Until then, she adapts to her circumstances; a more distant and quiet, strategic mindset when on the downswing, a vibrating energy underneath her iron self-control when she’s on the upswing.

Either way, when Altera plays, she plays to perfect herself. Every loss is on her own shoulders, for the mistakes she made and the opportunities she missed; every victory is imperfect, and a testament to how she should have won more cleanly. She wins game after game against streamers, developers, and QA testers, and she becomes a sublime vision of mobility and flexibility.

When Ragna plays, she pounds the table.

.

“VALKYRIE MODE!”

“Oh no, you fucking—”

“Wings, my beautiful wings!”

“How did you reverse into the liminal realm with no goddamn mana, what the hell?”

“And rose did the Valkyrie from the dawn / strong wings, stronger sword, everlasting!” Ragna roars the verse from her own character’s introductory cinematic, tossing her controller up into the air in the two seconds of her Ultimate’s animation. Her Valkyrie is floating at the top of the battle arena, wings out, ice flooding the world until the screen goes white and then the effect shatters, and the controller’s in her hands again. Full on mana, she wreathes herself in poison and a tornado of ice shards, and dives back into the mix, using her superior mobility to avoid Rory’s stronger strikes.

“Oh, for… you’re nothing without that mobility. What happens in a grapple, you little shit?”

“Strike, strike, the dodge and the weave; she leaves behind smoke, your widows grieve.” Ragna’s fingers circle the stick and she dances just outside of Rory’s reach, interrupting her opponent’s attempt to activate her grapple-dash with a flurry of weak ice attacks.

“Pin, that’s fin—no, fuck, you slippery cunt!”

“Ice falling softly, with everything still / snow covers the land, from forest to sill. Fuck your ass, eat your own sass, you might pass as a lass but you’re fucking last. Bitch.” Ragna flips Rory the finger as the latter fumes, her brawler a frozen corpse in the stillness of a blizzard. “You only beat Sven on a reversal in overtime, and he’s not even a contestant.”

“It’s great and all that you’re so into Valkyria Heart, Griffin, but if you’re gonna flyt, maybe don’t go for the slant-rhyme. It makes you look like a poser.” Rory moves to slam the controller down, visibly trembling in rage, but for all her posturing it touches the arm of the couch only genly; Altera almost nods minutely at her self-control and the way she’s delivering the spat. The defeated streamer turns back at the edge of the camera, visibly smirking, to stretch upwards. “And you’d sell it better if you and Altera weren’t both staring at my tits while you did.”

“Alright, alright!” Eric’s voice cuts across the sputtering. “Looks like Ragna wins. Again. We’ve got one more match. Now, I know none of you viewers are aware of this, because somehow this didn’t leak, but this game isn’t just a Versus game. Sure, you all know there’s a campaign mode, but guess what? It’s a cooperative campaign mode, because every boss fight—and that includes Boss Rush mode, folks!—has an ally, and a friend can jump in and play that ally.

“But that’s not all.” His smirk is audible in his voice, and he delivers the script as though they’re his own heart-words. On the screen, there’s now a split; two viewframes, one for each of Ragna and Altera, as they both take to the sky and back-wing for distance and height in preparation for whatever fight is coming up. “Frankly, the final boss of the second campaign is absolutely bullshit. And today, for the first reveal of the Captain, we have a guest star playing as that boss. And in order to give these two girls even the slightest fighting chance…”

It’s a montage of spawn sequences. A sphere of blood compresses and spins, revealing Eric’s character, posing on a frozen tide. A paladin slams into the ground in a three-point landing, shield already up as if to deflect attacks. Rory’s brawler somersaults into view, Ragna tracking across to keep her in-frame while Altera tracks the hulking man with the flame motifs and the giant sword.

And finally, with a flash of golden light, a man of titanic proportions in shining, golden armor steps out of the background and into center screen.

“He’s the Champion of Valkyria Heart. He’s the balance lead, and the esports manager. He’s the guy who every year picks up a game he’s never played before and by the end of the year wins a major tournament of it, just for fun. Ladies and gentlemen!” He drawls it out, ladieeeeees aaaaaaand gentlemen! “Gerard. Donnerschlag!”

And with a tense, vicious focus, the final battle of the event begins.