Chapter 49:

Ace finished his last rep and went to have a shower, while in there, he thought of things he had to watch out for in his opponents. Today was the day of the match between streamers, and while it could not be streamed individually, as only the organisation that made this happen would stream, it would still be quite fun.

For this match, they would be playing on their own computers, however, there had already been talks of hosting an even bigger match in an arena. This, of course, would be done at the same time as the new updates were released and the pro circuit began. Ace, in fact, had already been informed that due to his age, he would not be able to participate in the tournament, but that they would be honoured to give him a VIP pass that would open all doors at the convention.

Ace understood that his age put them in quite a pickle, he had only been streaming for a few months but his growth had been spectacular, his age had not been released to the public - not yet anyways, but the company had already been informed that he was under the prerequisite age to participate in any events that were played in a stage, he would have to be at least 16 for that to happen - and even then there could be problems.

The pickle they had was that if his growth kept constant, he would be one of the players with the biggest following in about 3 to 4 months. Of course, he did not dedicate his stream to only playing R6, but it was still at least 90% of it. They could profit a lot off his name, but if he could not play, they would not really be able to put his name anywhere, which may cause a decrease in the revenue created.

Luckily, Ace did not have to worry about such things, unluckily, Ace had to worry about other problems, such as the fact that the game would start in 30 minutes, and the server was malfunctioning.

They would play in a custom game server created by the organisation themselves, however, as of now, most of the players were victims of bugs and connection failures, if the game did not work in the next 20 minutes, it would spell disaster for everyone involved - except the streamers of course.

This could mean the game's popularity and potential pro-league interested investors could pull back from negotiations. This match was meant to be the thing that began to get people seriously interested in playing the game professionally, and as of now, the servers were just not complying.

As all players finally logged into the game, there was an almost audible relaxation in the atmosphere of the casters and the people in charge. The viewers, of course, had no idea what could have just happened, but the casters most certainly did, and being told that it was all finally going as expected caused them to relax quite a bit.

This game would have actual bans, every team would ban one defender and one attacker. As they progressed, Ace became happier, the opponent's team, Team Red had banned Blitz and Castle, and they had banned Thatcher and Kapkan.

The game started, they would be playing in Kafe, which meant that roamers would be important, but anchors were key. Ace would play roamer and fragger. He would just focus on the kills. They were playing defender side first, so Ace selected Pulse and locked in with the submachine gun as his primary gun, and the C4 as his secondary gadget.

As they loaded into the game, Ace reinforced the required walls and then went to the top floor where he hid out from the sight of the drones. He had been fast enough that he had not been spotted, and the enemy now had to contend with an unknown roamer. Nevertheless, their Mute had been effective, and his placement good enough that they had caught 4 cameras, and while the enemy team knew where they were, they had not been able to get close enough to the bombs that they would be displayed on the map.

It was not too much of an advantage however, as they all knew the maps by heart, and the sites were already recorded into their minds, fireplace and mining room.

Ace simply walked around the top floor with his sensor, attempting to locate any enemies running about on the roof. If they wanted to come from the skylights, he would see them. Nevertheless, after almost 30 seconds of looking around, he had not found anyone, therefore, he went to a spot that was located just above the entrance to the two main windows they could come from, one led to some stairs, and the other led to the mining room directly. There was already one anchor protecting the staircase, he had also made a small hole in the wall from where he could see if any attackers were coming into the mining room.

Ace kept his scanner on there for a few seconds, but then heard footsteps behind him. He swapped to his primary gun and turned around, crouching behind some furniture, waiting to see if anyone would come. And indeed, they did, he heard the footsteps get closer, finally, he saw the barrel of a gun poking out of the frame of a door and waited for the head of the attacker to finally show. As it did, Ace shot at it and killed him, but he stayed still in the same place, there could be more, and indeed, there was, this time, the attacker, a Thermite, peeked the room properly, however, Ace was prone on the floor with his gadget out, observing where the enemy was, as he saw the body move, he swapped to his secondary weapon, a pistol, and crouched up.

He saw and enemy, surprised by the sudden appearance of Ace, he tried to aim down his sight, but by the time he was done, Ace had already let out 5 bullets into the torso of the enemy, killing him as well. Then, Ace got an idea, there was a reason why Kapkan and pulse were very good in this map, and that was due to the fact that most of the motif and decor was red, so lights such as Kepkan's traps or a C4 usually went by undetected.

Ace threw a C4 at the small cabinet in front of the entrance to the room, then he went to an adjacent one, and hiding behind some furniture, he used his scanner to see if any other enemies would come in.

He did not see them, but he heard the frag grenade that was thrown, and how it exploded, it would have at least damaged severely anyone in the room, except Ace was not in the room anymore. He kept the scanner steady, and as he saw the pulse of someone going down the hallway, he triggered the C4.

Surprisingly for Ace, however, he did not get 1 kill, he got two. He had only spotted the heartbeat of one, but there was also another standing beside him, so he was not in range yet. Nevertheless, as he triggered the C4, he was also killed in the blast. And with that, Ace had killed four guys and made his name stand out amongst all the famous players he was with.

There was now one enemy remaining, and he was killed when found going down the stairs by the other roamer in his team. It had been a perfect round, with no deaths on their part but a perfect wipe on the opponent's.

Ace was not looking in chat, but if he had, he would have noticed the "1"s, "2"s, "3"s and "4"s that were typed by zealous fans, his fame was spreading, and while at first, it had only been a few thousand, now, over half the chat was on the joke, and ready for whenever Ace got another streak of kills like that one. Modders had given up on banning the users since technically, they were at most typing the number thrice, which was not considered as spam. However, the effect caused by thousands upon thousands of people doing so, definitely drowned out any other messages people wished to type.

As they finished the round, his teammates shouted out, it was a mixture of voices since there were a total of 3 males and 2 females in the team, counting Ace obviously. They had all been playing games for a while and had pre-established fanbases before the game even came out. They were veterans, and had done this before, however, they saw Ace as a pet project, they all thought he was kind and polite, unlike other streamers they had met up on the various conventions they had attended, and while they all knew each other, they had no idea of how Ace looked, this meant that they had been looking to the Conventions that would be happening in about a month, as they would finally get a chance to meet 'The Ace'.

He was quickly growing a fanbase, and as they all cheered him on, Ace realised how much he really owed them. They had all been cool with playing with someone that was not as famous as they were, and they had given him numerous tips: from how to remain sane after countless hours of streaming, to how to grow a fanbase that he could interact with and have fun playing games with.

Ace decided that he would help them, they were all good people and he informed his lawyers that if any of them got into any problems, to help them deal with it as needed. He owed them immensely for the support they had shown, and Ace would protect his friends in any way he could, which for him, was quite a lot.