"What? What is it?" Tiana turned and asked in a confused tone seeing her three anxious friends.
"It's Kitty Princess. She...she can't come," Miss Devil said with pinched lips.
"What??" Tiana got up from her seat with a speechless look. "Nonsense. What do you mean she can't come? She has to participate in this tourney with us. Let me call her up!"
"No, don't. It's of no use," Shadow Cat stopped Tiana with a headshake.
Hell Cat added, "Apparently...she is in trouble with her family. They somehow found out that she was playing video games behind their backs and also spending on virtual stuff. You know, like the gun skins, costumes and so on. Apparently, her family didn't take well to the amount of money she spent on them even if she earned a lot through streaming."
"Shit...this can't be happening. We can't...we can't just sit and do nothing. Let's go to her home and drag her out. There is no way in hell we can just give this up. You all know right how much we worked hard together for this. The ESO Pro League is only a year away, and before that, we have to qualify for the nationals and win that too. How could we just sit simply and do nothing??" Tiana said as she anxiously tugged at her hair.
"This is our reality now, Snow Queen. And there are only ten more minutes before the tourney starts. We have to tell the coordinator about our situation," Miss Devil said in a taut tone.
"Tell him? And then what? Do we get automatically disqualified? Wait...that means we will lose the bet as well, fuck!" Tiana rubbed her temples, feeling a headache and frustration about the sudden turn of events.
Viktor pulled his brows together, seeing that the Wildcats were in trouble. He then spotted John glancing in Tiana's direction now and then and saw the subtle mocking smile on his face.
'This punk must have known something about this...no wonder he seemed so confident...well not that it really matters…' Viktor still was cool about the recent developments and decided to stay silent till he was sure that Tiana couldn't get through this on her own.
John was subtly keeping an eye on the Wildcats and smiled as he saw how anxious they were.
He couldn't help but think that today was his luckiest day, and he was finally going to have his sweet revenge.
He already got information from a friend of a friend who said that Kitty Princess wouldn't be showing up today. He asked for the informer's identity, but his friend seemed adamant in not telling him.
But he was reassured by the fact that the information was 100% true and that he had nothing to worry about.
John, at first, wasn't feeling too good about trusting this information. But after waiting for so many years for revenge, he couldn't think of a better time to challenge them, and so he took a gamble which seemed to have paid off beautifully.
"There are only two options now," Miss Devil said in a serious tone as she looked at Tiana and the others.
"We either drop out of this after getting disqualified…"
"No way!" Tiana immediately said in a burst of fit.
Miss Devil waved her hands, "Wait...our only other choice then is to play with a bot in our team."
"That's…That's useless. It's the same as playing with only four people in our team. You know how stupid the default bots are. They just go and rush at the start of the round and die. It would be a miracle if they listen to our radio commands," Tiana said with a frustrated sigh.
Miss Devil nodded as she sighed, "I know. But that's how it will have to be since now we have bet against the Beast Men. We don't have any other option, do we?"
"This is why I had a bad feeling when we placed that bet," Shadow cat mumbled.
"Hey, are you trying to put the blame on me now?" Tiana asked with a frown. She was already feeling frustrated and angry at the unfortunate turn of events, and Shadow Cat's words hit a sore spot since she also regretted placing the bet.
She knew she might have placed the bet after getting swept up by her temper, but now there was no going back.
Shadow Cat waved her hands frantically and said, "Of course, not. We are all in this together. I just felt uncomfortable with their conditions, that's all."
Tiana shook her head, but she already made up her mind not to follow through with the bet even if she lost since she wasn't afraid of losing her reputation. After all, she and the others were playing under masked identities. So it would be easy for them to just make another though that would mean they would have to rebuild their fanbase all over again.
But Tiana was confident in her and her team's skills. So other than taking a lot of time to build her fanbase all over, she didn't see any other disadvantages.
"Okay, let's play with a bot. To defeat a trash team, there is no need for five of us. Four is more than sufficient," Tiana said with a narrowed gaze as she looked at the Beast Men team with a glowering expression.
"A bot? This is a team game, Snow Queen. If we have a missing teammate, then it's no different than losing a limb. What about map control and retakes?" Hell Cat worriedly asked.
"We will just make up on the spot like usual, especially the times when we had to play with bots online," Tiana confidently said.
However, inwardly she knew Hell Cat was right and that not having one of their teammates was a serious disadvantage, especially when the other teams were no beginners. Otherwise, she wouldn't be this worried.
All of the teams here were veterans in their own way, and this tourney was to find the answer to the question of which team was the best among all.
"Did I make things worse?" Viktor asked in a worried tone.
Tiana looked at him and thinking back to how he persuaded her to accept the bet out of confidence in her skills, she didn't feel like blaming him at all. She also knew what happened was something no one could have predicted.
"No. I anyway wanted to accept that bet and teach that jerk a lesson. I, Snow Queen, have never let someone who dared to step over me let go that easily. I will make sure to rekt him again and again till he and his team surrenders," Tiana said with gritted teeth.
Since Tiana explained to him before, Viktor knew that the word 'rekt' was just slang for 'wrecked', and in multiplayer gaming, it meant she was going to make the Beast Men severely lose against her team.
*TING!*
Suddenly the sound of a bell was played throughout the cafe as an announcer stepped up on the stage, "Teams, please gather around. We are going to release the brackets."