Choosing Teammates

"Tournament?"

"Yeah, everyone in the school has to participate." Miranda sighed glumly at Kelly's proclamation. Then she perked up.

"This'll be fun! Kelly, join my team!"

"Okay… who are you and what have you done with Miranda?" Normally Miranda wouldn't be excited for something like this. In casual and ranked game modes it was fine because the matchmaking would place them against people they were evenly matched with. Admittedly Miranda was still a clear cut above they people they played even after a week. Most of that time was spent grinding games against bots or alternative arcade style game modes to gain credits fast so she hadn't actually played many matchmade games. But in this tournament they would be playing against the other people from their school the vast majority of whom where new players.

"Do you care about winning?"

"What? I mean I want to win." Kelly gave Miranda a puzzled look.

Miranda's face fell. "Drat. I wanted to pull out the wacky and nonsensical builds and strategies."

"Oh. Well as long as you're still trying to win."

"So you're fine with that?"

"I guess."

"Sweet! Ha ha!" Miranda's eyes gleamed. "This is going to be so much fun!"

Kelly shrank back a little bit in fear.

To have a full team they needed five players. Miranda and Kelly were two which meant they needed three more.

"I don't know many skilled players," remarked Kelly. "Do you know any?"

"Nope," confessed Miranda with not a care in the world. "That doesn't matter. I don't care about who we pick as long as we get along well and they at least try."

"Oh, ok."

They passed a pair of girls both seemingly of Asian descent with pale skin and black hair one with glasses and a headband. "Have you heard about team Godmode?" the one with glasses asked her companion.

Sensing juicy gossip, Kelly dragged Miranda back over to them and interrupted their conversation.

"What's team Godmode?"

"The best players in the school are gathering into teams," explained Glasses. "Apparently the top five are in a team called Godmode. I heard they even have a diamond player."

"Impressive," commented Miranda. In CAR there were 13 ranks each divided into three tiers except the top rank which held the top 100 players in the region and the bottom rank which was reserved as a punishment rank. The ranks were Hell, Wood, Plastic, Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Elite, Master, Grandmaster, and God. Each rank held a progressively smaller number of players with the average player being somewhere in bronze or silver.

"Yup. I'm pretty good but I'm still only in gold."

"Pretty good?" Her companion rolled her eyes. "Emily you crush our opponents half the time. You destroy them. I'd say that's better than pretty good."

"If I was good we'd beat them all the time May. Though now that I think about it half the time we lose it's because we get troll teammates who build off-meta sh*t."

Miranda and Kelly shared a significant look.

"And here I was thinking that they might make decent teammates," sighed Kelly as they resumed their walk down the hall. The sounds of people chatting, running, and practicing sounded from open doors they passed.

Finally they arrived at their room and took their seats as Mr. Benson strode in, glanced over the room to see if anyone was missing and then shut the door.

"Listen up folks! Is there anyone that doesn't have a team yet?" Several people raised their hands. "Which teams have open space? Someone from the team raise the number of people they currently have."

Kelly raised three fingers in the air.

"It's not how many people we need, it's how many people we have." Miranda murmured to her.

"Oh, right." Kelly changed her fingers to two.

Mr. Benson seemed to be struggling with something before throwing his hands in the air. "I'll just give you guys 5 minutes to get everything sorted out. If you already have a team, come up to register."

"You guys needed three people, right?" Miranda looked over to find a tallish skinny boy with oversized glasses calling at her from the other side of the room. His name was Archie and was one of the ones that came most frequently to her to ask for actual advice. She had a good impression of him as an earnest, good-natured, fun-loving guy even if he did have a tendency to be a bit absentminded.

"Yeah! What's up?"

"Mind if we join you?"

"How many you got?"

"Three."

"Oh, perfect."

"Sweet. Yo, Jacob!"

"What?" A boy with spikyish hair yelled back looking up from his conversation with a goth girl.

"Get Rina over here. I got us a team."