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“While we’re on the topic, I have to tell you something.” I took a deep breath and squeezed her hand back. “Lauren and I officially decided—I’m retiring from professional NLA. I would be risking permanent damage to my hand and I don’t think I want to take the risk.”
“I understand. It must be a tough decision to have to make. Competitive NLA has been your life.” Her warm brown eyes searched my own. “Have you thought about doing anything besides streaming?”
“Not yet. I need some time to settle back in.”
She kissed me and for the first time I could hold her face with both of my hands, I could lift her up and put her in my lap, hold her waist with one hand and run my other one through her hair. I didn’t want to admit to myself how close I was to shedding a tear—from joy—at that moment. I couldn’t believe that just holding her the way I wanted made me this happy.
“I know you’re going to figure it out,” she whispered when she broke off the kiss, her eyes still closed. “And if you need someone, to lend an ear or for anything at all.” She looked up at me. “Know I’m here.”
“I know,” I said, though my throat felt like it was closing up.
I brushed back a strand of hair behind her ear and tried to memorize the features of her face: the deep wrinkle between her brows that appeared when she furrowed them or scrunched up her nose, the curve of her lips when she was suppressing a smile, the exact shade of brown of her irises and the slight crookedness of her nose.
She looked down, shying away from my eyes, but I lifted her chin up again and captured her lips once more.
“I’m sorry, sometimes I struggle not to stare,” I whispered into her lips. “You’re so pretty, baby.”
She exhaled a giggle and leaned into my chest, finding a comfortable position. “What are we going to do about the challenge? I don’t know why I haven’t been able to play against any of the Challengers for three days now. I’ve played at home, on stream, even in the middle of the night. It’s like all of them have taken a vacation or something.”
I knew what was happening behind the scenes. I alluded to it on stream the other day, but Emma shut it down immediately. The lowest fifty Challengers had been deliberately avoiding playing ranked games all week, making it impossible for Emma to rank up. I had to stop myself from grinding my teeth as I felt a surge of anger rise. I wanted to do something about this but I didn’t want to tell her.
The players were blocking her, just as they had blocked others in the past. It wasn't the first time this has happened and it brought back memories of a few years ago when MalfRage came to play in the NA league and had to rank up a new account. He had gotten signed to a team here and had to get to Challenger in order to compete. The lowest fifty Challengers at the time didn’t play for two weeks in order to block him. They lost him the spot on the team. I couldn’t believe that was happening again.
Sure, Lauren and I have been on top of most of everything else but we can’t really control the other players. We can delete comments, ban people, and Lauren has even taken over some of Emma’s social media stuff in order to not expose her to the full extent of the toxicity, but this was the latest thing and it was the peak of disrespect.
“I’m sure it will resolve soon,” I lied.
She nodded. “Yeah, I hope it does. I am way above the MMR threshold now.”
I slipped my phone from my pocket and opened my chat with Ryan, and told him about the situation, making sure Emma wouldn’t accidentally see what I was typing. Ryan then looped Dan in and the three of us put our heads together and tried to figure out if we knew any of the guys that were blocking her.
Dan recognized one of them and contacted him. He was able to find out that it was indeed an organized block. Taking the screenshots of the conversation from Dan, I emailed them to Lauren so she could contact the NLA community managers and start spreading it around so those players could get punished for this like the Challengers that blocked Dan were.
But before I knew it, the evening had set in and it was time for us to start the second to last stream of the challenge.
“Em. One thing before we go live,” I said as we sat behind the desk. “Would you want to play a game with me on stream today? Proper duo bot lane, you and me? I want to see how bad I’ve gotten from being benched for a month.”
Emma raised an eyebrow, a small smile tugging at her lips. “You want me to be to blame if you are rusty, huh?”
I shrugged, trying to suppress a smug smile of my own. “It won’t be ranked.”
She laughed. “Alright, but don’t get mad when I carry you.”
I challenged her confidence. “We'll see about that.”
This is what I was protecting, the spark in her eyes when a challenge presented itself and her passion for the game. I knew she could probably take the toxicity, she had stuck it out for three years in this game as a woman after all, but if I could take it away why wouldn’t I?
Emma pressed the ‘go live’ button and I watched the red number of viewers climb as we were engaging in small talk about how tomorrow was the end of the challenge that had started all of this.
Then I lifted my right hand and showed the chat that the brace was off. “I’m finally free and all healed up. To celebrate, me and Emma have something planned for the end of today’s stream.”
Emma leaned closer to me. “The surprise is that MnstrX will be playing duo bot with me for the last game of the stream.”
The chat exploded with messages.
Zadast
Finally, the duo we’ve been waiting for!
