Chapter Text
“Um.. Hi, everyone. I’m PegasusKnight1 and this is my first Emblem Clash stream.“ Cordelia stammered through a quick introduction. Cordelia felt silly, introducing herself to no one, but she figured it was important to make a good first impression. “The new season is out, so I figure it’s a good time to see what’s new.” A shameless copy of how _XAlt_ introduced his stream yesterday, Cordelia thought to herself.
Navigating the game’s menu, Cordelia entered a game. The lobby filled up quickly, and in no time at all her character was falling out of the sky, alongside 99 others. Cordelia’s eyes flicked to the view counter. It was still at zero.
She had no time to think on it, as her character hit the ground. Cordelia scrambled, looking for a weapon before everything good was taken. She’d started in an awful spot with little loot, less cover, and far too many people competing for what was there. Ducking into an open warehouse, Cordelia found a vulnerary, and not much else.
“Great…” Cordelia muttered, taking her loot and leaving, only to run into another player sliding around with an SMG. Her little health potion couldn’t stand up to the onslaught of bullets, and soon the killfeed sprang to life.
- StarfallSword |RAIJINTO|> PegasusKnight1
Not even two minutes into the game, and Cordelia had already lost. Not only that, she’d been the first player eliminated.
“Okay, that was… not good. But I’m sure we can do better in the next game.” Cordelia said to her audience of zero. She made a smile that looked more forced than she’d like to admit, before queuing into another game. There was nowhere to go but up.
----
As it turned out, going up was much easier said than done.
Two hours of streaming later, and Cordelia hadn’t even placed in the top 50. Most of her games ended with her being eliminated around 80. _XAlt_ made it look so easy, and while he was entertaining his audience all the while too. Cordelia hadn’t had anyone watch her stream, save for a single person who had beaten her in a particularly embarrassing way, before showing up in her stream chat to leave a single comment.
“Skill issue.”
Two little words, and yet they encapsulated Cordelia’s budding streaming career so succinctly. She couldn’t play well, she couldn’t attract people to her stream, and even if she could, she couldn’t keep them there.
Sighing, she ended the stream. Cordelia got up, walking through her little apartment towards the kitchen. She pulled out some leftovers from last night out of the fridge and put them in the microwave. The hum of the machine filled the kitchen as Cordelia idly watched the meal slowly rotate, still numb from her awful performance.
Taking the heated food back to her room, Cordelia sat in silence and checked her email inbox.
Nothing but rejections. Again.
Another sigh forced its way out of her lips. She opened a new tab to a job board, and applied for anything she could until it was dark.
----
Cordelia couldn’t sleep.
Every time she closed her eyes, she just kept thinking about her stream. She’d tried, and she’d failed for what felt like the first time. All through college, Cordelia had excelled. She’d nailed every single test, essay, and exam without any trouble. She’d joined the track and field team for a year and did great there too. She’d kept going on where most would break under the pressure, all thanks to Sumia’s support. The same support she’d shown when she’d floated the idea of streaming to Cordelia.
Would Sumia want her to give up? Maybe if things really didn’t go well, but definitely not after just one stream! But the spark of enthusiasm in Cordelia died as she realized one thing. She had no clue what she was doing. She wasn’t good at Emblem Clash at all. But she was good at learning. Cordelia bolted out of bed, rummaging through her closet until she found an empty notebook, before grabbing her phone and scrolling through FEHtv.
Emblem Clash, by virtue of being the most popular game currently on the market, had quite a lot of people making videos on it online. At least one of those could teach her what she needed to know. She entered “how to get good at emblem clash” into the search bar, and clicked the first video.
“HEY WHAT’S UP MY JABRONIS! TODAY I’M GONNA TEACH YOU HOW TO TOTALLY CRUSH NOOBS AT EMBLEM CLASH! BUT FIRST A WORD FROM TODAY’S SPONSOR-” A man with far too much energy shouted over fast paced electronic music. Cordelia instantly hit the back button. Whatever advice he could give would be lost in the cacophonous editing.
She scrolled through the search results, this time a little more carefully. Most of the videos were more of the same, with highly distracting editing over basic gameplay tips that even Cordelia had figured out. It had taken her the better part of an hour until she finally found a halfway decent tutorial presented in a much calmer manner.
“Now, most people would think a better gun would mean you win more fights, but that’s not true. Positioning is a key factor in fights. If you can, try launching attacks from above. Most people don’t look up, so hiding in the trees is a great way to score some easy hits.” The voiceover said, over footage of a character launching ambushes to great success.
“Movement’s also a big part of the game. There’s plenty of advanced movement techniques that professional players use like animation cancelled jump slides, bunnyhopping, and blast bouncing, but for beginners, I’d suggest you just keep moving. A target in motion is harder to hit than someone standing still.” This time the footage showed the narrator’s character dodging and weaving through bullets.
“However, if you really want to win then the best piece of advice I can give you is to pick your fights. You only need one kill to win a match of Emblem Clash. It’s perfectly okay to back out of a fight when it isn’t going your way.”
Cordelia’s pen scratched along the page as she took notes. It seemed so simple, but Cordelia hadn’t really thought about the game this deeply before. She clicked the like button, and saved the video to a new playlist for future reference. It was a lot of information to take in, she could tell she’d be rewatching this video soon.
But for now, she needed to sleep. She’d need to rest if she wanted to do well.
----
The next morning, Cordelia woke up refreshed and energized. She hastily made breakfast, eating as she set her computer up for the next stream. She was under no illusions that a handful of tutorials would make her a master of Emblem Clash overnight, but she was confident that she could put her new knowledge to use.
She pressed the start stream button as she finished the last sip of her coffee. She joined a new game of Emblem Clash, the lobby taking a second to fill up this early in the morning. Cordelia waited, buzzing with anticipation. Finally, 100 players were gathered, and the game soon began.
Keeping the tutorial’s tips in mind, Cordelia’s character landed on the ground, and quickly she maneuvered into a nearby building. The loot wasn’t amazing, but so long as she kept moving and picked her fights, she could survive long enough to get something worthwhile.
The familiar white text of the killfeed popped up in the corner. Already people were getting wiped out. Just her luck, getting into a game full of aggressive players so soon. With any luck, they’d wipe each other out early. For now, she made her way to the marked circle on the map, getting there early before the acid rain forced everyone else into the circle.
But she wasn’t the only one with that idea. Another character was running to the center, shotgun in hand. They turned, raised their weapon, and fired. Cordelia had her character duck into a slide, firing her pistol at the other clasher. She never stopped moving, even if it made it next to impossible to aim. But enough of her shots landed to knock her competitor down. Quickly scanning the area around her, Cordelia approached and finished her rival off, before picking over their dropped inventory.
- PegasusKnight1 |SIEGLINDE|> CandyMan
The shotgun with a handful of shells, and not much else. Cordelia took the gun and ammo, if only because she’d used up every bullet she had during the fight. The rest of her trek to the middle of the map was thankfully uneventful. She doubted she had enough ammo for another fight.
Being one of the first people in the middle, Cordelia had her pick of the loot up until everyone else made it here. Which would be soon, given how fast Emblem Clash games typically went. Wasting no time, she entered a dilapidated store, finding a Gradivus among the wreckage. It was just a virtual machine gun, but Cordelia couldn’t help but smile when she picked it up. Her hands were shaking horribly from the mix of adrenaline and caffeine currently running through her veins. A gun like this was the perfect solution.
She heard scrambling from nearby. She wasn’t alone. Bringing Gradivus to bear, Cordelia left the storefront, running into the alley between the buildings., before quickly clambering up the fire escape to the rooftops. She calmed herself as best she could as she aimed at her new enemy, who hadn’t yet seen her. Her shuddering crosshair gradually stabilized, before promptly going wild as she held down the trigger. Gradivus had strong recoil, apparently. But not enough to knock Cordelia off target.
- PegasusKnight1 |GRADIVUS|> Wasserdrache
The massive drum clicked empty, forcing Cordelia into a lengthy reload animation. She whipped her mouse around, checking the area around her. If there was anyone else around, they had to have heard that. Gradivus was not a quiet weapon. Sure enough, a scattering of other players showed up to fight over the loot. Thankfully, they didn’t look up and immediately started fighting each other.
In moments, the killfeed had several new entries, leaving Cordelia and the one remaining player, currently looking over the look left behind. Cordelia’s character finally finished reloading Gradivus, a testament to both the weapon's glacial reload speed and just how fast fights went in Emblem clash. But what Gradivus lacked in speed, it more than made up for in other ways. Cordelia aimed the LMG at her target, and fired.
- PegasusKnight1 |GRADIVUS|> Peerless_Princess
The character with the gaudy pink skin dropped, leaving Cordelia with free reign to take the loot. Satisfied she’d outlived every other player in the area, Cordelia jumped off the roof and made her way to the loot. Standing in the middle of the road, she took her pick of what the many players had dropped.
A single pop in the distance, followed by the colour draining from her screen as the camera followed her character ragdolling, joining the other five bodies lying in the street.
- MrNobody |YEWFELLE|> PegasusKnight1
Cordelia huffed. A sniper she couldn’t even see had killed her. She’d forgotten one of the tutorial’s most important pieces of advice and paid dearly for it. A great game ruined in a single moment. Cordelia clicked her mouse, making her results pop up on screen.
Fifteenth out of one hundred, with three kills.
It wasn’t a win. By most measures, it wasn’t even good. But it was way better than Cordelia had ever done before.
“Well, I think that was a good game.” Cordelia said to no one in particular. To her surprise, a small handful of comments had popped up in her stream chat. Actual, genuine comments from real people.
LorenzHellmanGloucester: not bad for a noob lol
Whit3wingz: nice shot
Candyman: GG
Cordelia blinked. An audience. Small, still in the single digits. But an audience nonetheless. She took a second to collect herself, before putting on a friendly smile for the camera.
“Oh, um. Hello everyone.” Amazing introduction, Cordelia, she mentally chastised herself. She didn’t want to lose her audience as soon as she got it. So, she just did what came natural. “How about another game?”