"We're not actually doing this, are we?"
"Why not? There's no way they're prepared for this strat."
"This feels like less of a strat, and more of an int."
"Then at least we go out in style!"
"More like become the laughingstock of the game at large. I'd rather not lose my shot at my dream over a meme…"
"Oh, ye's of little faith! We got this; we've planned for this. See, we even got one of the better maps for this; fortune favors our boldness, I say!"
"Off to the theatrics already eh, Yaldy?"
"Please… don't call him that while we're on stage. Who knows if they've switched to player mic feeds…"
"Ok, focus guys: draft's starting."
"If nothing else, at least Admiral is focused."
"You kidding? This is round five! Win here, we achieve our dreams. Lose here, and we're done! Everyone should be focused!"
"I blame Jess for losing last round still…"
"Hey, we agreed to not use our real names in any form while on stage! And what do you mean, my fault?! You're the one who mis-microed their units!"
"Zhao Yun and Ramses are banned. Do we care?"
"Nope; stick to the plan."
"What are we banning here then, Yaldabaoth?"
"They get fist pick; banned Zhao Yun means we have to ban Lancelot in return. Ramses is a dead ban on their part, so whatever we don't want that blunts early game aggression as well. Might as well try to squeeze the Vanguard pool…"
"Achilles ban ok then?"
"That works."
"…Well, there goes Herc…"
"Champion first pick from them, huh. Seems they really don't want to give up any info."
"That, or they're now trying to figure out what Vanguards fit their strategy for this map."
"I mean, Herc fits basically any team comp, so for a blind pick, he's probably one of the best ones they could go for…"
"What are we taking? Only thirty-two seconds left guys…"
"I'm just leaving this to Yaldy; not like his orders are what's fucked us for two of these rounds."
"Damnit girl, if you're gonna flirt with the man, get a private voice room!"
"Well, fuck you too!"
"Caesar and Alexander."
"Wait, we're really- Ok, sure, why not draft two commanders right off the bat…"
"We need both of them for this do work anyways, and it's not like they're going to ban out the end surprise."
"True enough… I just don't want to even try guessing at what the casters are saying."
"They must be having a right laugh, the fuckwits…"
"Careful, guys; shit's recorded."
"Right… sorry…"
"There's the Conquest ban in response; they really think we're betting round five of the finals on WWF?"
"Good; means another dead ban by them. Now for our ban… Need them off Hannibal; I'm fucked otherwise. We can get rid of that now."
"...Anyone else feel a more pressing ban is required?"
"If Yaldabaoth think's that's best-"
"Forget I asked! Ban it."
"Right, so now they take… Mordred and Shingen. Man, that's going to be a bitch of a midgame push to deal with… Those two on one half the map, Herc on the other..."
"It's fine; just means we need to lock this shit down. We already knew this was going to be us playing for the late game, so before he gets banned out, grab Leonidas here."
"Got it."
"Well, least we have an anchor against Shingen."
"Or Herc, if desperate… Really though, that's not ideal. How do we want to deal with Herc?"
"You fine with playing Orion, Admiral?"
"Against Herc you mean? Yeah, I can handle Herc with Orion."
"Great; Orion here on four."
"Man, our draft and bans must look retarded."
"I mean… this is retarded."
"Why are you giggling at that?"
"We're the dream team with the meme team comp, and we're about to kick out a pro team with this shit! You gotta admit it's funny."
"…You know? Fair."
"Ugh…"
"Just let em have fun Admiral; so long as they calm down in the loading screen."
"But like, could you all at least give off the illusion of trying to help out Yaldabaoth here!"
"Ah, it's fine! Draft phase was always really just me from the start, no? With a bit of help coordinating things from you."
"…Can't have it be like that forever though…"
"Oh, hush now, Admiral; not like we're forgetting to hover a pick. Even if we run the clock each pick and ban round, we're not going to DQ from that."
"They added Gilgamesh and Vladdy Daddy."
"Blegh! Gross! Don't call Vlad the Impaler Vladdy Daddy ever again!"
"You both do know it's Dracula, not actually Vlad the Impaler, right?"
"Same thing!"
"Yes, but also no, actually."
"Shut up and get back to focusing on the draft Yaldabaoth."
"Two Vanguards, Champion, Commander and even a Wild Card… Meanwhile we have one, but really two, Champions and three, but really two, Commanders."
"Why did they make Leonidas a commander anyways? Man plays like a Champion. Hell, he doesn't even have stratagems; only gambits!"
"Historically more accurate than whatever fantasy Spartan nonsense you're thinking of."
"Lame!"
"We need at least one Vanguard, I say. One more besides, well, you know…"
"What for? We're not going for any early game aggression."
"Because otherwise this is going to be so boring…"
"You knew this was going to be about an hour long match the moment we agreed that this would be the clutch, game five strat. Now, grab War here."
"We do have our two bans first here now. What don't we want to see from this position?"
"Hmmm… I say Famine has to go; Death can stay and we're fine. In fact, I want them to pick Death; funnel them into an all or nothing aggro comp. As for ban number two… Zhuge Liang. Last thing I want is any stall occurring on our big push."
"We're leaving Guo Jia up then, just so you know…"
"It's fine; this map has only a couple of small rivers, and we're not doing the final push from above anyways."
"I'm just worried they'll try to break through with a five man push on one riverside right off the start; we have no Vanguard that's good at trying to interrupt the flood grand stratagem."
"Yes, but we have War and Orion who combo beautifully on defense. Combine that with Leonidas, and they can't really do much with Guo Jia in that sense. Even if it's only used as a diversion, Alexander can quickly plug a gap with Companion Cav, right?"
"Ok, y'know what? Maybe this draft we got isn't cancerous yet."
"I'd think not; that comes with our final two picks."
"Welp, they're confused, evidently. They banned Guo Jia themselves."
"And Enkidu. Man, they really are lost..."
"Well, they're taking Death here; safe to say they want to end this early."
"Meaning they'll take Zhou Yu as the strategist probably."
"Oh definitely. Question now is what do we want? Obviously, we want the Minotaur here, but what else?"
"Let's see here… War, Orion, Leonidas, Caesar, Alexander, Minotaur… Anyone down to play Hector here and just be the biggest shit possible?"
"Oh, I'm so down for Hector here! Gimme, gimme, gimme!"
"Right, Hector on six then. Minotaur on seven."
"Yep, we've funneled them into a full aggro comp. Zhou Yu and… Admiral Yi? What the fuck?"
"Actually… that's a good pick. I admit I didn't think of that…"
"That going to be a problem Yaldabaoth?"
"Not as much as it would have been had they actually gone for flooding via Guo Jia, but even then Admiral Yi can still bombard some key defensive locations. Thinking, thinking…"
"…Well, at least they weren't expecting to pick Admiral Yi themselves, it seems..."
"Ok, I think I got it. Use start positioning four at the beginning; I'll monitor and adjust depending on where Admiral Yi sends in his fleet."
"You're going to do that? Not me?"
"Nah; don't think we can afford to go basically six versus eight here. Also, you need to switch the scorpios with archers; you have no good place to set them up with Yi on the map."
"…I hate managing arches, but fine…"
"Yes, but think about it; we manage to hold on till I get everything set up, and this will be an easy win; they have no way to hold a counter push with so much dedicated to aggression like this."
"If we can hold… Main camp will be basically empty; if even one of them breaks though…"
"Oh, stop fretting already. We got this!"
"Speaking of getting this, ten seconds left on the clock by the way."
"Shit! …Sorry, that was my bad!"
"…Man, you can hear the crowd even through these pods."
"Well, not surprising; we've legit given Yaldabaoth a character than has never seen a competitive match win due to being absolute dogshit in legit every pro player's hands. I'm sure the audience is expecting this to devolve into a glorious shit show."
"You'd have thought that the Minotaur pick would have given it away though."
"I mean, not really. Minotaur was actually designed to be a good Vanguard character; he was designed as a Wild Card gimmick like Vladdy Da- …I mean, like Dracula. Except Dracula is actually borderline broken."
"I was gonna say, need me to kick your ass before the game?"
"Nope, I remembered. …Party pooper…"
"What was that?!"
"It's official now though. This has to be the most cancerous draft in the history of any match ever played. We're going to be called the biggest inters and trolls in the history of this game."
"Only if we lose, man. Only if we lose."
"And we won't lose here, right guys?"
"Yes, but now actually focus. Game starts in fifteen, and voice switches to character proximity. Whatever you do, don't say a word to the enemy."
"Obviously…"
"You know… you really could learn how to lighten up a bit, Admiral."
"Geez, you know it's bad when even Yaldabaoth is saying to lighten up before a match…"
"Five… four… three…"
"To the first step of Royal Mile!"
"Two…"
"To the first step towards our destiny!"
"Oh, drop the thea-"
I woke with a start to the sound of my phone's alarm ringing out in the darkness. Reflexively, I shut it off before I even started thinking. This wasn't my bed. Where was- Oh, right. Johnathan's place. Couch. Staying the nights here from now on…
Now that I was actually awake, in a sense, I sat up and let my eyes adjust. Didn't need to check the time on my phone; alarm was always set to go off at six in the morning if I didn't manually set a different time. Remembering last night… Right, Saber came in, hello Liu Bei, bit of talking, accidental cutting or whatever on my neck, or maybe not accidental; man did look and sound pissed. Shame, I really do like Liu Bei and the heroes of Shu…
Got up, left, felt tired after dealing with Saber; unusually so. Saber didn't feel like leaving, so couldn't crash in my new 'office' so to speak. Actually… should put a sign up marking it or something; if nothing else, it'll tick off Sortiara a little, I bet.
Didn't want to wander round the place; too risky. Saber doesn't seem to like me, which was fair, and Lancer was god knows where doing god knows what. He might not like me either, when I think about it; might just be better at hiding it. Also fair. Ultimately just found this couch and crashed out. Probably fell asleep around one thirty or so… meaning I slept for about four and a half hours; way more than I want to. Such a waste of valuable time…
…To say nothing of the dream…
"…Well, at least it was one of the better ones" I sigh with a slight grin on my face as I stand up.
I guess in a sense you could say I'm lucky like that. Never in big things, mind you; I got dealt blow after blow of bad luck on anything major, like my hands, or the team, or school, or family, and everything else along those lines. But in the little things? Finding coins in the vending machines return slots? Teacher being sick the one time of the year and it being the same day I procrastinated too much and didn't do my homework, thus shifting its due date back another day and giving me time to finish it? Getting one of the better dreams I could have gotten for my first dream in god knows how long? It was the little things like those where my luck always seemed to win out.
"What I wouldn't do to shift some of it though…" I laughed slightly, packing my phone back into my bag.
Considering it was, what? Sunday, I want to say… Yeah, doubt the kids would be up for a good long while still. I'd probably be out of here before then. Can't say that's a bad thing though. That said… it was still relatively dark out; probably still had another hour approximately to kill before I'd feel safe enough to step outside and make the walk home.
"Reset the drop timer, and whatever I have to the folder, if I even recorded anything…? Wait, I did; conversation with Rider…"
Damn, I was out of it right now… That dream really wouldn't just get itself out of my thoughts. Didn't help I could hear their voices so… clearly… My former teammates; former friends… Monsters, the lot of them. But I couldn't fault them for that; we were all monsters by nature, after all.
"…You know, that actually just hit me…" coming to a hard stop the moment I set foot into the kitchen. "Caster… Was the grail giving me you merely a coincidence…?"
…Oh well, not like pondering on that would actually bring about anything useful. Just an amusing thought, jogged by an unwanted dream about the good old days. Or rather, what passes as 'good' for days in my life.
As for why I was in the kitchen… Well, I was hungry. Not like I was going to raid their kitchen for their food, mind you. No, I just wanted the toaster.
"Mmmm… warm PopTarts…" I mumbled to myself as they popped back up from the toaster after a minute or two.
Shame my mouth tasted like shit on the inside, spoiling the taste of the PopTarts slightly. Problem with going to bed after drinking soda and not brushing your teeth; the taste when you woke up hours later was absolute ass. Would need to remember to brush my teeth when I got home too… And have a shower… Somewhere I the back of my mind, I just knew I'd probably end up forgetting one of those two things by the time I got home. Just hoped it wasn't the shower…
The sugar had been the main priority though, not the taste. At least in that regard, the PopTarts did the trick.
Hands feeling ok too, and back to their usual shakiness. Glad to see I didn't make everything worse by putting Johnathan in his place; damn straight he'll listen to me now when I speak about WotH!
"Right, now what to do…"
I suppose I should make that sign to put on the door of the study. See if Sortiara will pull it down before I return or not. Or maybe Saber would do that? At least, it probably won't be Johnathan or Lancer if it does end up disappearing, I don't think. Regardless, it'll be funny, so definitely doing that!
After that though… maybe it was best to do nothing and just… wait. Weird as it may sound, and feel, especially for me… I was no longer the sneakiest person around. Undoubtedly, at least one of the servants would be up and about now, if not both. Probably just sitting around in spirit form, keeping an eye on things. On me. Much as I would like to try and poke around for a catalyst, to see what Johnathan used for Saber and to actually nail down Lancer's identity, that would probably be suicide. Or at least a blackout and a lecturing…
"And to think I didn't even bother getting the Wi-Fi password…" I sighed, looking around for some tape in the kitchen. "Man, this will be such a waste of a good hour after I post the sign. Waste of almost four, if you count the excess sleeping…"
Author's Notes
Hope nobody found the dream sequence too hard to follow. I admit, this was my first attempt trying to get a conversation between eight different people portrayed. Not that you need to know everyone, of course; I was just trying to show off some team banter during the draft phase of the game. I promise I'll pick up the pace a bit for the next chapter, for those who found the last few posts boring!
As always, thanks for reading xD