The Rising

ACT 1

"Let me remind you all, the score is 15:14, yet SunGoddess is left on her own to pull of 1v5 for the championship! Can she do it though?" The caster was basically shouting at this point. Leona "SunGoddess" Solari was left 1v5 after her team messed up A-site push. She knew that if she also would die, they'll have to fight in overtime, and she wasn't sure if they could hold on and win.

"She's flanking from behind, gets a shot and a kill on her first enemy, and there are four left." The audience was dead silent at this point. "What a headshot! She has three enemies left, but they already know where she is."

Hiding behind a box, Leona threw a flashbang to take away enemy vision. Then she peeked from behind it to get a clean shot piercing through heads of all three remaining enemies.

"SUNGODDESS! WHAT. WAS. THAT! Getting three headshots with one bullet! That was absolutely wonderful!" Leona couldn't believe her luck. She did it, she won it all! While sharing happiness with her teammates, she could hear the audience chant something, but it took her a bit to recognize what it was. But when she did, she was genuinely confused.

"Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!"

---------------------------------

"Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!"

Leona opened her eyes and recognized with a loud groan that it was only a dream. After all, she was only an unemployed, 21 year-old Spanish girl who dropped out from University and had no clue what to do with her life.

She got up, turning her alarm off, and went to her kitchen to prepare some coffee for herself. While waiting for water to boil, she glanced at the calendar and instantly froze. She almost forgot that today she is supposed to attend online tournament, and that the main prize was a place in her favorite Counter Strike team: Aspect Gaming.

She instantly looked at the clock

11:30 AM

She had only 30 minutes until the whole event started. She knew that she won't have time to do much before it starts. That's all thanks to her 7 y/o computer which takes around 10 minutes to launch.

You may ask, why even such a big e-sport team would look for a new player among random people? Well, the answer is that they lost faith in looking for a professionalist after those few weeks. Why would they look for a newcomer in the first place though? Well...

2 weeks earlier

Stockholm Major, Challengers Stage

Aspect Gaming (0 W - 2 L) vs SnoW (1 W - 1 L)

Aspect Gaming lost that match 0-2, getting destroyed on both maps, respectively 4:16 and 3:16, leading to an unexpected and disappointing departure from the Tournament in the first round, losing all 3 games they played. They were supposed to be the best team at that stage, but it turned out to be different.

After the match, team captain, Taric "Loveguard" Cole got almost assaulted for his terrible performance at the tournament by team's star, Diana "MoonVengeance" Lunari. That lead to Taric giving up playing professional CS to start coaching, ironically taking spot as head coach in Aspect Gaming, the team he played for.

It didn't matter at all though, what mattered to Leona, was that she could get a shot at professional CS, in her favorite team as well. She couldn't let herself screw this one up.

It was almost 12 PM, and Leona was already waiting on Discord for the moderator to explain the rules. There already was 50 other people on call, all muted to not destroy anyone's ears.

10 minutes later it was time, moderator already on call and everything explained and settled, she already was waiting for her opponent to add her as a friend. The rules were simple: 80 people split into 5 brackets, everyone 1v1ing (first to 9 rounds won) until there is 1 player left in each bracket.

Leona easily crushed her first opponent 9:0, and was left waiting for next one. Since she was first to finish and the break was supposed to last 15 minutes, she brushed her teeth and washed her hair, yet she still was waiting. After a while, she finally got her opponent and yet again, she destroyed them 9:0.

This time she wasn't waiting as long as earlier, but the opponent was seemingly and obviously stronger. After all, these were semi-finals so only 4 people from her bracket were left. Next opponent gave her more trouble, although she was still able to come out victorious 9:5. But in the finals, she went against one of the better players in the country. It was hard, but eventually she came through winning 9:7.

After finishing the game, one of the moderators DMed her to join voice call, where they were already waiting with the other brackets winners. They were told that they were supposed to be on call at 2 PM the following day.

Leona figured she can call it a day and relax a bit. After all Final game was pretty tense, so she decided to take a bath. While she waited for the bathtub to fill with water, she wondered how many people are there competing for the place in the team. She knew that 1. the competition was international and 2. very popular. Possibly 5 thousand or even more players were taking part in it.

While being lost in her thoughts, she began to strip from her clothes, but as she was about to go in, she stepped on her shirt, that was left on floor, and slipped on it, falling heads first into the tub. She was lucky enough to not hot herself to hard, but it was enough to cut her lip. After Leona managed to get out she took care of her wound

(A/N: Bold means that character speaks in their native language)

"Perfect Leona, just kill yourself and you'll never be able to play among your idols" she murmured, sighing.

The rest of the day turned out to be pretty uneventful, so at 11 PM, Leona went to sleep, again dreaming about winning Major championship and becoming the best player in the world.