Rise

Zhang Hongyi spoke through clenched teeth, “Welp. That was our top inhib. Great!” He turned his head to look at his Jungler who sat a few seats over and asked, “Tell me! What do we do now?”

“We defend bot,” Yu Ping said before Team Beijing’s Jungler could. He looked at his screen and grimaced. They got our top inhibitor. Super minions are going to spawn, so we can’t defend our Inner Tower. We’ll have to try and keep our base… He took a deep, long breath and ordered, “We’re too weak to defend our Inner Tower. Let’s try our best to defend our base. We’re going down fighting!”

Team Beijing’s Jungler looked at Yu Ping and smiled. He nodded and added, “What Yu Ping says. These are the Finals! Fuck giving up! Never surrender! And all that stuff. You know… Anyway, let’s just try and have a bit more fun playing this game while it lasts.”

Yu Ping snorted and shook his head. He said over the team’s voice chat, “Fun. Right.” He then looked over the edge of his screen at the crowd in the stadium and added, “We’re not going to keep playing for the fun of it. There’s nothing fun about this. But there are people sitting out there PAID to watch these Finals. For them… We gotta put on a show for them! Or as much of one as we can manage.”

The other four from Team Beijing all looked over their screens at the audience who were for the most part up on their feet, cheering. They knew Yu Ping was right. But it was difficult to keep playing and give the audience something to watch when they knew deep down that the series was already lost. When they knew that it was a single player was demolishing them. Instagibbing them, even.

FourEyesChan sat at the caster's desk and leaned towards his microphone. He said, “Team Beijing has no answer for Team Shanghai’s Midlaner! But it doesn’t look like they’re giving up quite yet! They’re sitting in their base, but they’re very clearly not giving up!”

Cherry was the co-caster. She sat next to FourEyesChan and followed up by saying, “We all know the rule of thumb: A game isn’t lost until two inhibitors have fallen. In 99 percent of games, that’s the point of no return.”

“Cherry here is right!” FourEyesChan said. He smiled and continued, “Team Shanghai might have the Yasuo-Lee combo. They might have Lissandra and Leona for insane crowd control. Heck, they even got Kalista who despite not having done anything worth mentioning is getting pretty damn strong!” He scrunched his eyebrows and mumbled, “I’m not sure what point I was trying to prove…”

Cherry giggled a bit uncomfortably and replied, “Me neither…”