On The Other Side

Miranda backed first and spent all her gold on one item, the component Pirate's Mark. No boots to help her movement. No damage items. No sustain items. Only Pirates Mark which increased her maximum health slightly and granted her her win condition because he wasn't playing aggressively enough.

The moment she saw the item bought, Kelly burst into silent cackles slapping at her thigh. She was well versed and smart enough to see where this was going. Mr. Benson appeared flummoxed even after Miranda specially showed him the item tooltip.

X Marks The Spot. When activated the item left an X on the ground where the user was standing. Exactly five seconds later the user would be teleported to the X no matter where they were. Unless they were crowd controlled, but that didn't matter since Gunslingers had no hard crowd control abilities. Besides, he wouldn't have the chance to use one at the relevant time.

The trap was laid. After the Gunslinger appeared in lane Miranda had her Telekineticist back all the way up to the very base of her Pillar before activating the mark and running forwards. five seconds. More than enough time to catch up to the Gunslinger. It took ten seconds to run Pillar to Pillar but she didn't need to run that far and void walk was equivalent to about three seconds running.

The plan was simple. Point and click Levitate. Even if he purged it he would still be held in place for a split second. This meant the instant Void Walk past the minion wave and Force of Will fired upwards would hit him. No matter whether he was on the ground or anywhere in the air the Force of Will would fire from where she was standing and hit his avatar model. Then he would be pulled to where she was standing on the X.

A smile crossed Miranda's face when she saw the telltale silver cocoon meaning that he had activated his Purge. From there everything was smooth sailing. Just as planned she launched the Force of Will before X Marks The Spot teleported her back. Just as planned he appeared under her Pillar and drew its aggro. Just as planned she hit him with Turnabout immediately after he used his own Void Walk. Just as planned he took shot after shot from the Pillar.

[You have slain Memelord420 (Gunslinger)]

Just as planned.

Someone hit Miranda in the back. That was not as planned. She almost went face first into her keyboard.

"What a f*cking cheeser."

Justin's angry shout caused the room to go silent. Mr. Henderson stood up and glared at him.

"Watch your language or it'll be detention for you."

"Sorry." Justin didn't sound sorry in the slightest.

From that moment on, Miranda was a celebrity in the room and she didn't like it one bit. People were constantly coming up to her to solicit lessons and advice or fawn over her "op" skill. For her part she would patiently help the ones asking for actual advice and could be taught while straight up ignoring the fans or ones that just wanted her to carry them. That earned Miranda the ire of a lot of people but most of them got the gist. She wanted to be left alone.

The only person she actively partied up with was Kelly. At first Kelly was one of the worst of the noobs, but her game knowledge was super solid, better even than Miranda's sometimes. Her decision making speed was downright terrible. She was fantastic at figuring out what people were going or trying to do, but could never make up her mind what they or she should be doing.

"Why don't you play Gambler?"

"Hm?"

"You say it's your favorite class but I've never seen you play it."

"I don't want to be harassed."

"I don't understand what's so bad about the class."

"Do you know how it works?"

"It's luck based right?"

"Sort of. You have 7 different hotbars. On each hotbar you can choose 3 basic abilities and 1 ultimate ability from any class. You start with one and every 3 seconds it switches to a hotbar at random which may t be the one you're already on."

"Wow. That sounds completely busted. How do you level up all the abilities?"

"By slot. Abilities cooldowns and levels are based on slot. So if I used my first ability for example, when the hotbar swaps I won't be able to use the ability in that slot because it will still be on cooldown."

"My head hurts just thinking about it."

"It gets even more complicated than that. For any hotbar you can only have a maximum of 1 movement ability and 1 healing or shielding ability."

"Just how complicated is this damn class?!"

"Practically rocket science. That's why I love it. It's also why everyone hates it. Combat math is downright impossible, especially in the early game."

"Is that why your reaction speed is so good?"

"Otherwise I wouldn't be able to hit the right abilities before they swapped."

"... Also, what are you building right now?"

"What?"

"You know you're jungle, right? Why don't you have a Whirling Axe?"

"Who said my game plan was to farm the jungle?"

"Then what are you farming?"

"Enemy heroes."

"..." Kelly opened the scoreboard and looked at Miranda's avatar. Right now they were still pretty early in the game. No Pillars had fallen yet. Not many kills had happened yet. For the most part people were passively farming and getting ready for plays to start happening when people got their ultimates.

Miranda was playing Channeler in the jungle. Channeler jungle was rarely seen, it was too squishy and had a hard time clearing. The Channeler class was quite strong but all of its abilities required a long casting time prime for interruption.

Every jungler did the same thing. Finish the first jungle item which would give substantial bonuses for farming the jungle and then a second jungle item for clearing camps faster.

But Miranda didn't build that way. Instead she only had a jungle component which granted her increased gold for when she cleared the camp and attack speed. Instead of completing the jungle item she bought a refillable potion which had three charges and refilled whenever she went back to base.

Not only was Miranda not behind in farm, but she was actually a little bit ahead. Kelly frowned at the jungle component, potion, and Amplifier in Miranda's item slots. She didn't even have boots or anything meaning she wouldn't be able to farm camps as fast or get around the map when she didn't have her ult.

Whatever, she probably had a plan. Kelly shrugged and concentrated on last hitting the enemy minions. She was playing as a Sharpshooter, her favorite carry class. The Telekineticist acting as her support was quite bad and had already died once for free. Now they insisted on standing so far back that they couldn't help. She needed a plan to get ahead somehow, but Kelly couldn't think of anything.

The screen shone brightly as a beam of light opened up from the sky and struck like lightning. It crashed down exactly on the enemy carry, an Archer. This could only be Miranda's ultimate, the Channeler's Arrival From The Heavens. Kelly was about to shout at Miranda in frustration demanding to know why she was initiating when neither she nor the support were in position and didn't communicate ahead of time but the shout died in her throat.

[An enemy has been slain.]

As the beam winked out of existence Miranda casually wandered back into the jungle leaving everyone else in the lane frozen staring at where an instant ago there had been an almost three quarters health Archer.