After the first year of compet.i.tive gaming for Legend's Rise, Leo Corporation added the functionality of Custom Lobbies, so that players could play against one another, film videos in a relaxed setting, or even just hang out with their friends within the game.

"Yeah," Li Ming was greeted by a sight for his eyes. If his costume would be described as striking and bold, Chie's costume would be better described as striking but elegant.

Her costume which was previously black and purple was now the same red, white, and gold as Li Ming's. However, the current outfit was less revealing than the original. After some though, Li Ming started to respect the Osaka Phoenixes a lot more.

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Currently, many teams would have their female players wear more revealing or provocative feelings to entice the fans. Generally, they would give their male players similar treatment if the male players were on tanks or other roles that would have muscular outfits.

However, Chie's outfit was more akin to a proper gunner. Despite the lack of revealing clothes, the actual costume still accented Chie's other features. Everything from the change from a skirt and blouse under a cape to a full blown cloaked suit seemed to make Chie's charms s.h.i.+ne even more.

Although Li Ming's costume was mostly white and gold, with less red, Chie's costume was mostly white and red, with less gold. The suit itself was slim fit, similar to a bartender's suit. However, unlike the traditional black bartender suit, Chie's was white with gold lining and b.u.t.tons.

However, it was slightly accented with dark red markings that looked akin to tribal tattoos. There were flame marking near the wrist and ankles, with a whole phoenix on the back of the suit. Although the phoenix was covered by the cloak, she still had a Phoenix pin on her chest, right above her heart. Looking closer, Li Ming could tell that the pin itself was actually a trinket.

Her gun had also changed from a more old school cla.s.sy style of the WA2000 to a more modern feeling M200, which had also been repainted to be mostly white and gold, with the same tribal tattoo style insignias present all over it.

"Well," Chie asked after giving a twirl, "How do I look?"

"Pretty stunning, to be honest." Li Ming answered immediately, "I like the look of your weapon and cape the most."

"Too bad your Swordmage wouldn't benefit too much from a cape, huh." Chie teased, "It would have definitely made you look a lot more like a general in battle instead of a regular foot soldier."

"Actually, I think I'm going to ask the team to change the cla.s.s t.i.tle from 'Swordmage' to 'Spellblade'." Li Ming chose to ignore the latter half of her statement, "It definitely fits me more since I'm not using a sword."

"Oh that makes sense..." Chie thought carefully. As she held her hand up to her chin to strike a thinking pose, Li Ming could only stare at how graceful her figure seemed to be in the new team outfit. All of a sudden, Ken's words came floating back to him: "Attractive people will look attractive no matter what they're doing."

"Oh well, since you're here already, why don't we have a little sparring match?" Chie prompted him.

"Eh?"

"You didn't think I'd drag you online just to compare outfits, did you?" She laughed, "Come on, let's have another match."

"Don't tell me when you said you wanted to compare outfits that this was what you really had in mind..."

"I'll tell you if you win!" She continued, "Okay, what map would you like to fight in?"

***

Li Ming silently sipped on his hot chocolate as he watched Chie grab her drink from the counter of a popular coffee shop. He had just played three matches against her.

"So, what do you think?" Chie asked, sitting back down. "Like the adjustments I made to my character?"

"I didn't expect you to have an offhand weapon," Li Ming lamented, "It really surprised me when you pulled out the hand gun.

As luck would have it, right before Li Ming would score the killing blow in the first round, Chie had whipped out a pistol that looked similar to the FN Five-Seven and blew a hole in The Dawn's head. Instead of firing a regular shot, the pistol shot a stun round to stun Li Ming for half a second, and in that half a second, Chie was able to mount a comeback using her rifle and [Tracer Shots] from her trinkets.

"I know right?" She laughed. "Still though, I didn't expect you to live so close to the team's headquarters."

"Yeah, I was surprised too. I thought you were still abroad. Then you suddenly invited me to grab hot coffee if I was near the team's offices. Thankfully, I'm only a 10 minute train ride away..."

"I'm glad you came out though. I wanted to compare notes with you since you were able to sweep me in the next two matches. How did you suddenly get so good?"

Li Ming could really only thank the old man, Kikyo, and the Tokyo Boars for the training that he was provided. Despite winning 2 matches and only losing 1, each match was exceptionally close. Li Ming was always held within 15% health of Chie in every match.

This time, her playstyle had completely evolved. Rather than using [On the Hunt] to gain more distance like before, Chie now used it in a similar fas.h.i.+on to Li Ming. She would play on the knife's edge between dodging and getting hit just to frustrate her opponents.

This wasn't the first time a gunner was played this way. One of the first gunner's in compet.i.tive play, Nidhogg, had dual wielded two UMP45s during his debut, and would constantly play just outside of the range of the enemy melee players. Despite playing a ranged character, he would act as a frontliner and as a secondary damage source.

However, after the meta had been slightly normalized, that style of gameplay was no longer viable. However, Chie had managed to make it work by adding [On the Hunt] at the expense of other Gunner ultimates. Nidhogg had used [Light of the Dawn], the gunner ultimate ability that would triple every bullet shot for a few seconds in exchange for a decrease in damage by 10%. Despite the damage decrease, [Light of the Dawn] was actually a net positive, as you would be dealing two extra shots at 90% damage, which resulted in an overall damage output of 270%. This resulted in his style being named 'Light Slinger'.

Chie on the other hand, utilized her two [Tracer Shots] for her damage follow up to activate [On the Hunt]. Despite the [Tracer Shots] doing only 25% damage, that was still an overall increase in damage by 50%. Chie also used her handgun as a backup weapon, just in case she needed to stun her enemies for a second so she can quickly reposition. With this new style, she was able to push Li Ming to go all out, and despite Li Ming's greatest efforts, he was never able to win with more than 15% of his health remaining.

Even when Li Ming could strike her, it was only a matter of time before she would activate her stealth to disappear once again.

"That current style of yours is truly annoying," Li Ming complained, "You always go invisible right before I get to unleash a proper combo on you."

"Doesn't that mean that you should stop getting hit?"

"..."

"Haha~! I'm joking." She teased, "I think I'm going to bring this style to the compet.i.tive stage. I think this would pair up with your style pretty well. If I trade out a [Crimson Bullets] trinket for [Enchant: Static], we might be able to get a pretty good stunlock going when we dive the enemies together."

"That's not a bad idea, actually." Li Ming thought about it, "I was thinking about changing my own [Crimson Bullets] to another more useful ability, since it doesn't seem that I'll need the 2-8% damage buff."

"That would be nice, maybe something that could boost your mobility?"

"That's a good idea huh..." Li Ming contemplated before a sudden realization came to him. "Wait, won't our style be too similar to the Tokyo Boars?"

"Huh?"

"We'll have us two diving in, no? Just like how the Tokyo Boars have Kou and Chika are both Samurai Berserkers."

"Hold on... We have Lasks on a Artillery Mage character, Conflux as a Heavy Knight swordsman build, and Collisio on his Paladin Guardian, aren't we fully capable of diving forwards?" She commented, "If we have you on your Spellblade, Conflux on the Heavy Knight, and me on my stealth gunner, can't we just dive forward and have Collisio guard Lasks?"

"Wouldn't it be cooler if we could incorporate a method to have both Collisio and Lasks diving forwards with us though?" Li Ming suggested, "Maybe if we could come up with some kind of strategy that could have all of us diving them at the same time, wouldn't we be able to play at a higher tempo than the Tokyo Boars?"

"Hmmm... Maybe we can bring this up with Coach Kimi? I really want to try the 'Dive forward' kind of style instead of the standard gunner style where you would just play safe and snipe from a distance." She replied, "Let's try it! If we can pull this off, we might even make it to the playoffs in the first season!"

"Playoffs?" Li Ming scoffed, "If we're going to do this right, shouldn't we just aim to win the world champions.h.i.+ps?"

Little did the two know, this was the moment where the t.i.tle of 'The Twin Wings of the Phoenix' was born.