Glancing at the minimap in the bottom corner of the screen, the situation couldn't be described as anything but dire. All of our barracks were reduced to ruins, and 'Mega-Creeps' were streaming into the base. It had been 20 minutes of what could only be described as trench warfare, during which we had dug in around our ancient, repelling attack after attack from our opponents. This analogy seemed even more fitting when you considered the tremendous number of mines Jade had placed around the base with her Techies play.

All four of us had already suggested to 'GG' out of the match multiple times, but Rachel had been incredibly adamant in her conviction that we could still bring it back somehow. Yet, I couldn't help but think that she had been the main reason we were stuck in this situation in the first place.

Rachel's mental state had been nothing short of a trash fire in this game, and so was her captaining. It only took three deaths, eight minutes, and two lost lanes for her to shut down. She was barely making calls, and the ones she did make were so full of doubt and hesitation that we could never commit in time. This had caused all of us to run around like headless chickens. It had never been more obvious how much we relied on her. Nonetheless, she was the captain. If she couldn't even keep a calm mind after a little losing streak, how were any of us supposed to carry this whole thing on our own?

"I'm down," Kelsey said with a defeated voice at the exact moment my own screen turned greyscale. I sighed loudly, hoping that the rest of the team would hear my disappointment. If Rachel wasn't going to do it, I guess it was up to me to captain the sinking ship.

A massive explosion appeared on all our screens; our opponents had finally destroyed the Dire Ancient, securing their victory. I pulled off my headset and looked over at the three faces of disappointment and exhaustion next to me. "Better luck next time? I guess they were just a little bit better than us. We just need to improve a little more, and next time we win this."

Jade, Lizzy, and Kelsey nodded in agreement, their spirits visibly lifted by my words of encouragement. Rachel, however, was having none of it.

"We sucked, ass" She said, not even making eye contact with any of us.

"Come on, we had some good plays," I reasoned with her in an attempt to pull her back from the abyss. Rachel was biting her lip, like she was trying to keep herself from saying something terrible, only for her resolve to falter seconds later as she decided to drop the bombshell right then and there. "I had some good plays, none of you did anything but feed."

She then slammed her palms down on the desk and got up from her chair, dashing out of the room while speaking under her breath. "fuck this."

Hearing those words, however, made something snap inside me. She was the one who organized all of this, and who had kept increasing the pressure on us to perform. But when shit hits the fan, she is allowed to be a toxic teammate since nobody is telling her what to do? I was done putting up with it. She might be the captain of the team, but if this is how she is going to be acting on LAN, this team is never going to work out.

I decided to follow her out of the room, completely ignoring Kelsey, who tried to stop me by calling my name. My ankle boots clicking on the plastic floor below accentuated my bold steps through the LAN café.

I eventually found Rachel standing on the sidewalk just outside the building. Joining her, I could feel my eyes burning as they tried to adapt to wildly different lighting conditions.

"Hey! What the heck was that?" I said to her sternly while blinking my eyes in rapid succession.

"Ugh… move along, Em. You're the last person I need right now," she responded in a very annoyed fashion. She couldn't even be bothered to look at me, choosing to keep her gaze pointed towards the ground instead.

"No! I'm not going to move along. You can't say shit like that to your teammates, especially if you are the captain. It's like you've turned into a completely different person these last few hours."

Rachel suddenly looked up and stared at me straight in the face. "Really? You? You are going to talk about ME coming across as a completely different person?"

A certain venom was present in her voice when speaking those last few words. A venom that had infiltrated my central nervous system and caused me to be completely paralyzed. While my body had gone into a stasis, my brain was stuck repeating a single question. Did she know? A question that would spawn a million more. Had she known about Jason all along? Had Riley accidentally let something slip? Was she going to kick me out of the team?

I leaned my body against the wall, trying to keep myself standing while being completely succumbed to anxiety. My heart was pounding deep in my chest when a third person suddenly appeared in front of me.

"Ladies, calm down. There is no need for verbal disagreements on this most blessed day," Arthur expressed to both of us with an overconfident sense of glee plastered across that perfect face of his.

It was almost like I could see the steam exiting Rachel's ears; Arthur's presence clearly brought her enraged emotional state to another level. "You two are both awful!" she yelled, pointing at me and Arthur, only to leave, stomping off once again. This time, however, I had no intention of following her.

"Still just as bad a loser as ever," Arthur said while raising his can of energy drink as if making a toast. He then looked over at me and raised his eyebrows. "You ok, Minnie? I hope big miss perfect didn't scold you that hard."

His Boston accent felt like a warm shower of comfort that cleaned off all the anxiety Rachel had just triggered inside of me. He almost sounded like a younger version of my dad with his voice.

I got back up on my feet and looked into the two green eyes that exuded a certain kind of confidence I had only ever felt from Rachel. Somehow this caused a tiny bit of my own confidence to recover as well.

"Emily, It's Emily, not Minnie," I corrected him while wagging my finger.

"Ah, Emily. Well… nice to meet you, Emily. I'm Arthur, but I'm sure you figured that out already. I've got to say, you guys held on a lot better than I expected. Too bad your teamwork and macro sucked, or you might have actually had a shot at winning."

I couldn't help but have a slight chuckle. Teamwork and macro... That was normally our specialty, if Rachel was actually making calls, that is. "Thanks. Just a shame that, like you just observed, our mental state wasn't quite that stable today."

Arthur gave off a slight smile. "I have seen land mines that handle pressure better than she did today. We've played loads together, but I have never seen her tilt to this degree."

Slowly, I managed to put together the pieces of the social puzzle that had presented itself in front of me. "I'm guessing the two of you used to..."

"Date? Yes, for like 3 years if you can believe it. If it wasn't for me, she probably never would have picked up Dota in the first place. We broke up 6 months ago, but I kind of knew it wasn't going to work out a year ago already."

Surprised by the fact this guy had been so eager in sharing his relationship history with a complete stranger, I decided to ask further. "And you knew it wasn't going to work out because..."

"She plays for the other team, of course," he said, shrugging in an exaggerated manner.

I furrowed my brow in confusion. "Huh? You broke up because she didn't want to play on your Dota team?"

Arthur laughed, making me feel slightly embarrassed. Had I said something weird? He then put his hand on my shoulder and looked at me while raising his eyebrows. "You didn't know? That girl is gayer than Megan Rapinoe in a post-game locker room."

I honestly wanted to facepalm myself right then and there; of course, that's what he is talking about. Get your mind out of the gutter, Emily. Showing off my embarrassment, I sighed through my nose while closing my eyes.

Arthur released his hand from my shoulder, and as I opened my eyes again, he casually stood leaned back against the wall. His button-up blouse definitely looked expensive, and the lack of creases in it indicated that it must have been properly ironed as well. It made him come across as someone with who tried to look professional. This was in stark contrast to his hoodie that was draping over the button-up, allowing him to also have an air of care-free coolness. Looking at his dark green eyes and well-groomed face, I noticed a slight hint of ginger in that dirty blonde hair laying down on top of his head.

"And Emily, what about you? The rest of Rachel's entourage I'm more than familiar with. But where do you enter the picture?" he suddenly said as his gaze focused itself back onto me.

I was slightly startled; my mind had been completely focused on analyzing his physical presence. For some obscure reason, it was embarrassment that entered my brain while I was fishing for a response to his question. Allowing my eyes to fall to the ground, I eventually managed to find an answer.

"Uhm... Quite simple actually. She put up a recruitment post on Reddit, and I responded to it. Tried out for the team. Now it's three months later, and she decided we needed to do a bootcamp to prepare for the LAN Lionesses Tournament. I'm not even from here; I'm from Shamesburry and only know the girls through the game," I explained to him.

He had been nodding along to me and eventually piped up. "Seems legit. I can see why they pulled you in. Your play was actually really good, and those arenas almost got you back in the game multiple times."

I could feel myself blush when he complimented me. On the one hand, it felt really good to be complimented, but I also felt incredibly awkward as I had no idea how to respond to all this. So in the end, all I could really do was keep my eyes on the ground and mumble, "Thank you."

When I found the courage to look up again, Arthur's eyes were now focused on his phone that he was holding in his left hand. His hand was big enough to grip the entire phone and type out a small message with that same hand. After typing the message, he put the phone back into one of the large pockets provided by that obsidian hoodie, and once again met my gaze.

He waved at me with two fingers while announcing, "My teammates are waiting for me, so I'm going to head back in. See you around, Eminnie," and gave me a slight wink. That sweet Boston accent of his making me feel all mushy in process.

"Yeah, good luck..." I said back awkwardly as he had already turned around, walking back inside the LAN café.

I think I stood there for a full minute after he left, just watching the cars go by on the busy downtown road. The sun had been warming up the darker areas of the pink and black jersey I was wearing, and looking at the logo on my left arm, I got reminded of the reason why I was out here in the first place: Rachel and her absolute meltdown after we lost that scrim.

The anxiety demon that represented my fear of being outed made itself known by implanting a melody of angst into my brain. That last thing Rachel had said, that I had been acting like a completely different person. I couldn't help but think that she was implying that she knew my secret. And if that was the case, I needed to find her right now. Rachel knowing about it was bad enough, but I couldn't have her mentally unstable ass blabbermouthing this sensitive information to the entire team.

Fueled by a primal need to survive, I stepped into the alley where I saw Rachel disappear, only to miss any kind of visual confirmation of her presence. My ears perked up, though, as I could vaguely hear her voice in the distance. I made my way into the alley, and her voice became clearer and clearer. I guessed she was probably around the corner on the other end of the alley, and her voice indicated that she was talking to somebody on the phone.

"Yeah, I messed up bad. I just totally blew up in front of them," I could hear Rachel say.

I slowed down my pace. If she was on the phone, she wasn't going to be running away any time soon. And the fact that she was clearly expressing remorse to whoever she was talking to also made me feel a lot better inside.

"If you could come down here, that would be great. We are not in the mood to be playing more. I can cancel the last scrims so we can have a nice dinner together before you two have to leave."

Wait? Was she talking to Riley? I guess that would make the most sense; they had been spending a lot of time together over the weekend. So it's not the weirdest thing for her to reach out to Riley when upset. Hell, how many times have I called on Riley every time I have been upset over the years.

"I think I’m going to miss you so much when you head back home."

Wow, they are at that stage already. I was about to go around the corner but decided to stop and eavesdrop for a second longer. They were clearly going fast if they had these kinds of conversations already, and I didn't want to suddenly start 3rd wheeling their heartfelt phone conversation.

“I know, I know. It’s just for a little bit and then we can see each other all the time and give this whole thing a proper college try. It’s funny, you could almost call it fate. That we meet each other only 2 weeks before you move to Battingham. Kind of crazy don’t you think?”