Tangent | Soukoku; AU [✔]

68 ➳ silver scrapes // h.x

bad news is that this team we're up against knows what the team's weakness is. the ada is actually known for that type of strategic thinking since they have the best analyst in all of japan. while they're not as big as other teams at the moment, the ada can still be considered an underrated team for that.

the good news, however, is that we might have a counterplan against them. we have not pulled the role swap yet, although i'm not sure if we pulled the card too early. oh well. in my opinion, it's best to show them some of the cards we have on hand now, and then just adjust and adapt to whatever may come. strategically speaking, this is the same concept that the ada uses in their games -- or at least in my own notes and observations anyway.

i didn't expect chuuya to agree to the role swap since he has been highly against it ever since. but then again, even if he didn't want to do it, we can probably live with it. unfortunately though, one-trick players like him can have their weaknesses exploited simply by getting rid of their most used champions; which is exactly the ada's idea now.

we got into a smooth start in game one. the only time that everyone has seen me in a carry role is that one time i used an adc as a support, but that hardly counts as playing the actual role of the adc. the ada's duo - i believe named DoppoPoetry and Light Snow - showed signs of struggle against me and chuuya. one reason is most likely because they have never seen the orange-haired man play in this role. on the bright side for us, this has exponentially helped us get ahead in the game to the point that game one lasted just 20 minutes.

for game two, the opposing team decided to ban the last support character that chuuya used during our role swap, followed by some other similar characters of that nature. it was as if the ada expected that these were chuuya's preferred game characters for the role swap. jesus, if that's the power of possessing edogawa ranpo then even coach mori and our own specialist ango doesn't stand much of a chance. we decided to go back to our normal roles again for game two but, as much as i hate to admit it, we lost that fair and square. none in the team fucked up, it was just a matter of champion difference and minor skill issue on our part.

the finals stand at 1-1 now, and we still have three more games to snatch that champion title to our side. so far in the game, i've learned that pro play is actually much harder than i anticipated. then again, i've only just been playing exclusively within regular league and never in pro. watching pros from an audience's perspective makes it seem like pro play is just the same as regular ones, minus the involvement in teams and the constant practice regimen.

oh well. we've made it this far. time to see how far the port mafia can stretch their limits in their first-ever finals tournament.

going on to game three, the ada decided to go back to their all-adc ban against chuuya. said guy sitting next to me let out a huge sigh that was heard by the entire team within the voice call, pinching the bridge of his nose to boot.

"are we going to do the role swap again?" chuuya asked in a rather contemplating manner. i can tell that he wasn't willing to do it again for the second time, hence the tone.

an idea struck to me. "well, i don't think we have to. do you have any other champions that you can play now?"

"one. although i haven't used it for a while now so i'm not super confident with it."

"just channel those days when you were spamming that shit then," kajii suggested, despite being worded poorly. "we're going to need as much confidence as we can get."

i let out a small laugh. "no no, it's fine. go play that champ then, nakahara. we can pull another surprise on them."

and thus i picked another carry champion to support chuuya with.

"damn it, not again!" tachihara laughed. i didn't comment any further and just went on ahead with the plan. my partner-in-lane refused to say anything too, but i'll assume that either he's having flashbacks or i get that he's placing his full trust on my ideas.

to which if it was the latter, then i'm glad. game three stretched unnecessarily long lasting the game around 45 minutes, but luckily we were able to punish the opposing for their attempts into making a sneaky play to end the game immediately. a stealthy idea by their mid laner, Moon_Tiger.

2-1 for us. we've got one more game to go to secure the champions title. but then again, life reminds us that life isn't so lucky for all of us. the ada somehow still forced us to go into another 2-2 tie, pushing us to one last game at game five.

the iconic silver scrapes will play for game five, of course. if i were to be honest, port mafia's performance now has been dead serious compared to our performance in the regular brackets. it was as if everyone was avoiding making some sort of fuck up that can cause us our early elimination. i'm not complaining, of course -- just fascinated from the fact that this team is actually capable to getting down to business if the situation calls for it.

and now onwards to game five: until the last game, the ada pushed their anti-chuuya agenda. so far, we have already showed them our role-swap card, as well as the double carry strat. i was thinking of going back to our vanilla card, but even i'm stumped whether it will work this time around. it was the final game and i would rather not fuck around if i were everyone else.

chuuya willingly suggested to do the double carry strategy again, but i can tell from his tone that he was still quite unsure of it. i told him that it wouldn't work for this game since the ada picked champions that will make our bot lane lives harder than it should be.

"just play that sixth best champ that you have," i assured everyone while scrolling through a list of supports that i can probably play to pair him with. "i'll adjust to your needs this time. don't sweat it too much, chuuya."

i heard everyone gasp through the voice comms as if they've seen a ghost pass by the screen. i looked to my left where i have a view of everyone in a straight line, and they were all directly looking at me, wide-eyed and all.

"w-what?"

akutagawa resisted the laugh, but kajii and tachihara bursted in hysteria. "oh dang, hayakawa, we didn't know you had such a silver tongue~"

and there was chuuya, frozen like a statue. i mean, i just said what i said to boost morale. i didn't think of anything else about it, but i guess i did say that i wasn't such a huge fan of calling chuuya by his first name.

i just let out a laughing sigh and had my fingers touch my forehead like a facepalm. i have a good feeling about this last game, and that's what matters to me.

now, on we go to game five.