A Backup Player's Pride

The spotlights waved over the stage. The light illuminated for a short moment two sets of seven high-end gaming setups, one in blue, the other one in red.

"And here comes the red team!" The announcer shouted in his microphone. Even though he used all the power of his voice and the speakers were turned on full power, you nearly couldn't hear him because the audience was creating an immense spectacle.

"Josh! Josh! Josh!" or "Alex! Alex! Alex!" was everything you could hear.

Josh and Alex were the Team Leaders and best players of there respective teams. Josh was part of team blue, Ocean Atlantic, and Alex of red, Magma Asia.

The first person of Team Magma Asia went on stage. The spotlight illuminated him and the announcer shouted his name in the microphone for only the shortest of moments managing to overpower the noise the audience was creating.

Following him, 5 more people were announced. When the seventh person, the team's captain, Alex, came on stage, the audience went even wilder.

All seven of them stood lined up in the center of the stage. A gigantic column of light turning everything besides them completely dark.

Otherwise, the audience would have noticed that there weren't seven people but eight. The eights person kept himself away from the light and that had a reason. He wasn't an official part of the team. He was only the backup!

Every team had a backup player. They were mostly long-forgotten heroes of their teams. The public interest in them was minimal and most people didn't even know they existed. The reason for this was pretty simple. Every team wanted public attention to focus on the main players. This would increase their market value. More market value meant more profit for the team.

Nevertheless, the name of team Magma Asia's backup was Dave. Unlike the other backups, he was never part of the main team. He turned 21 this year and he had this job since he was 14.

The reason for this was as simple as disturbing.

He wasn't good looking enough! His looks weren't bad, don't misunderstand that, but every team wanted players with a high market value and so more often the performance of the players was less important than their good looks.

It wasn't helpful that Dave preferred wearing old jeans combined with hoodies. Sometimes he even decorated these involuntarily with cheese cream, that dripped off his nachos.

You could say about Dave's style whatever you wanted but he loved the game and he was the person training the hardest in team magma. Unfortunately, his team never noticed any of his efforts.

While the rest of the team went to take their seats, he went over to the side, took place on an old chair, placed his old laptop on one leg and the mouse on the other. After pulling the hood over his head and putting his headphone in his ear, he lay back in his chair and waited.

And that was already everything he was supposed to do for the rest of the evening. Never during his last seven years as a backup, he had to step up and play at the pro scene. Even during training sessions he always had to train solo since the rest of the team didn't see a need for him.

The medical care system and technology became in recent years so good that catching a cold or getting ill in any other way was only a part of the distant past. This made it extremely unlikely that the backup player had to get on stage.

"Siighh!!" Inaudible for anyone but himself Dave breathed out through closed teeth. The championship final today was his last chance to play as a pro gamer. After this final, his team management decided to kick him out. They had many reasons for this step. As always the main point was money and the second point was age.

Since he never had to play the management lost their will to pay a professional backup player, further complicating it was the point that he, with 21 years of age, was over his zenith as a gamer. At least that was what they thought.

"Why can't just one of them trip and break his arm?" was everything going through Dave's mind right now. It wasn't that he hated his teammates or anything but this was his very last chance to play as a pro.

While Dave was setting up Team Ocean Atlantic had already entered the stage and took place at their respective gaming setups.

"Please, quiet down. SHHHHHH!!!" The announcer tried to calm down the audience. And slowly the stadium turned silent.

"Okay everyone let us continue with the champion draw."

Every player had to pick a champion. The name of the game was Apocalyptic League of Champions or in short ALC. ALC was a game of the MOBA genre.

After everyone picked their champions the system would pick a random map from a pool of 999 different maps with different attributes.

In ALC not only every map had an attribute but every champion had one as well. Some maps and champs had even more than one.

These were extremely important because depending on the compatibility of map and champ, the player could get an immense stat boost. Furthermore, there was the problem that some abilities were only usable if the champ had access to his attribute.

All in all, you could say that some matches were already decided through the champion pick.

Both teams took turns picking their champions.

Dave's team decided on a strategy of taking champs of the forest, undead and dark attributes. Like this, they hoped to cover each other's weaknesses. In contrast, the other team knew that they were ability-wise inferior and decided on a huge gamble. They picked seven champs of the fire element.

Like this, if by any chance a fire attribute map got picked, they would have won the game before it even started. The fact that their enemies didn't even pick a single water champion would make their win even easier.

"And now since both teams have picked their champions, let us see which map is going to await us!" the moderator said with his loud attention-demanding voice.

The floor of the stage which was itself a big screen started showing pictures of different maps. Jumping from one picture to the other every person was holding their breaths. Fully knowing that the winner of this year's world championships could already be decided at this very moment. The speed of the switching pictures turned slower every time.

Then it nearly halted.

The screen showed the forest plateau map. Then another switch and the map now on screen was the death desert.

"Yeah, way to go!" The captain of Dave's Team screamed. After all, this way, they would have the advantage in attributes since they had picked 2 undead champs beforehand. But then after nearly five seconds, while he was still rejoicing, the picture on the screen changed one last time.

The map changed to Volcano Island.

Silence.

You could have heard a needle falling right now.

Volcano Island was a fire attribute map. Of course, since it was an island it was surrounded by water, but all the fights would be held within the island and not at the water attributed shore.

Team Magma Asia was deadly silent. They knew what this meant. Since they didn't even have a water champion their chances of winning were zero.

A ruckus broke out. Ocean Atlantics fans were screaming with full power. They knew that their team had this world championship won before the fight even started.

Meanwhile, Magma Asia's fans left their heads hanging. They came here for a good fight, always knowing that their team was to most likely win this year. Nevertheless, through sheer luck, this situation came up.

"Fucking Hell, I am out of this guys. They cheated!", Brian shouted. Brian was team Magma Asia's damage dealer. He was always easy to infuriate and quite short-tempered.

The manager of the team came up and tried to calm him down, but without any success. He ran off.

"Buuuuuhhhhh!!!" The audience was furious. Team magma's fans knew that they most likely lost this time but they expected their team to fight until the bitter end. They paid a horrendous sum of money for the tickets and some of them flew even thousands of miles just to come here.

Not knowing what do to in this situation the manager quickly gesticulated his team to follow him from the stage. And thus Team Magma Asia ran off only forgetting one person on the stage. Dave!

He was still sitting on his chair outside of the light column, not knowing what to do exactly. This was supposed to be his last chance to join the pro scene. It couldn't be that his gaming carrier was going to end like this. His pride didn't allow this and so he stood up, went over to the moderator and took the microphone from his stiff hand.

"I will fight! I am team Magma Asia's official backup player and I demand the right to fight instead of my team!" He pulled his hood from his head and stood with back straight selfconfident on stage. He couldn't think of a time in his entire life, when he was as nervous as right now in this very moment. His heart was bursting.

The audience turned deathly silent.