The Terror Of Team Battles

If you were asked which Vtuber agency was the biggest, our Gem Production had become famous enough to be one of the names that came up, and by now we had a large roster of Vtubers, each expanding the range of their activities in ways suited to their own particular style.

And if someone asked me to name a popular type of stream featuring one of the top talents in our Gem Pro lineup, my answer would have been streams of 『OFA』, the globally popular team-based survival FPS.

This popular game placed equal importance on strategy, teamwork, weapon selection, and individual skill, and it was also the kind of game where having one superstar player alone was rarely enough to win.

That was why, whenever someone pulled off an incredible play and secured a victory on stream, the comments went wild and clips of it racked up views.

The thing was, though, this game was played in teams of four.

And that four-person team format had actually become a bit of a problem within our agency.

First, when people thought of 『OFA』 players at Gem Pro, the following members came to mind.

The first was the face of Gem Production, the elf character Ephir Lunette.

She was skilled enough to be invited to volunteer-run tournaments that could practically be called semi-pro events, and her ability stood head and shoulders above the rest of Gem Pro’s players.

Next was second-generation talent Rion Shishika, who played a lion beastwoman character.

Like Effie, she had poured a great deal of time into FPS games, and despite her brisk, no-nonsense personality, she hated losing. Whenever she streamed solo, desk slams—smacking the desk out of frustration—were practically part of the package.

In terms of pure ability, she was somewhere around the upper-middle range, but she possessed the kind of strength that only came from extensive experience.

The other one was fourth-generation talent Snow Setsuma, who played a snow woman.

She was a little low-key—or perhaps just very much at her own pace—and wasn’t especially talkative for a streamer, but she regularly did marathon endurance gaming streams. Unlike Rion, she was a mentally tough girl who could die over and over and still keep quietly playing at her own pace.

Her skill level was about the same as Rion’s, but because her performance could be inconsistent, there were times when she would suddenly die with surprising ease.

Those three were known as Gem Pro’s FPS powerhouses, but we could never seem to find a fourth member.

We had occasionally brought along beginners, but because they ended up holding the others back, some of them found it difficult to keep participating. Others had their spirits broken by thoughtless comments from viewers and couldn’t bring themselves to keep trying afterward.

From my position as the person responsible for protecting the girls in our agency—Taki Yuzuriha—I wanted to tell anyone who had complaints to shut up and leave.

Really, I completely agreed with that line of Rinne-chan’s: “Only the people who want to watch need to watch. If you’ve got a problem with it, leave quietly.”

I wouldn’t deny that genuinely helpful feedback existed, but complaints sent in by people pretending to be harsh critics when they were really just being obnoxious were infuriating.

Having the motivation of one of our precious talents crushed by some viewer’s momentary whim(comment) was, frankly, nothing but a nuisance.

In any case, because of circumstances like those, Gem Pro had only ever been able to participate in 『OFA』 with its three regular members plus a guest.

So while the streams were popular, we couldn’t quite turn them into a regular staple. It had always been a difficult situation, and part of me had more or less accepted that there was nothing we could do about it.

I never expected it to become an actual problem—or rather, an issue that we would have to solve….

The cause was the PDF file currently displayed on the computer in front of me.

“…This is a problem….”

“Senpai, is that…?”

“Yeah. It’s that proposal the president went and accepted.”

“…Ah, that one….”

It was the participation guide for a proposal from another agency that the president had apparently accepted that morning: the 『OFA VtuberCUP』.

In the Vtuber industry, relations between agencies tended to be fairly peaceful, and things rarely developed into the sort of picture-perfect rivalries you might imagine.

One reason was that we lived in an age of diversity.

Each agency developed its own distinctive strengths, and they weren’t necessarily heading in the same direction to begin with.

Another reason was that, unlike actresses or idols in the television industry, we weren’t fighting over a limited number of seats within a limited amount of broadcast airtime.

In short, there simply wasn’t much need for us to clash.

Back when I had been around my sister, I had seen the darker side of the entertainment industry, and the fierce competition over those limited positions had been incredible.

Granted, my sister herself had been so carefree that she never noticed that sort of malice at all—and even when it reached her, it didn’t bother her—so people eventually stopped trying to harass her anyway.

In any case, that was why it wasn’t unusual in the Vtuber industry for talents from different agencies to participate together in projects or tournaments.

…It wasn’t unusual, but….

“Why did it have to be 『OFA』…? This is going to get ugly. It’s definitely going to get ugly….”

A tournament meant we needed practice, and that meant coordinating schedules for practice sessions. That much couldn’t be helped.

If our girls were going to participate as competitors while carrying Gem Pro’s name, I knew they would train seriously as representatives of the agency, and of course they would want to finish with a good result and smiles on their faces.

If anything, as someone on the management side, I was happy that they would approach it with that kind of attitude.

It meant they cared about the agency and took pride in being part of it.

But 『OFA』 was, for better or worse, a team game.

And that was the problem….

The usual three were fine.

Those three could support each other even if one of them made a mistake, and their viewers would accept it.

But if a newly added fourth member caused some kind of disaster, there was no guarantee the audiences of those three would forgive her.

We had actually had girls whose mental health took a bit of a hit because of 『OFA』 streams before, so every other one of our talents would probably turn the offer down.

Sure enough, when I posted in our general 『Connect』 server asking for someone to fill the single remaining slot for the 『OFA VtuberCUP』, none of the girls who would normally jump at an opportunity like this showed the slightest interest.

Aside from those three, even the reactions to the chat message were completely silent…!

Of course they wereーー!

“Having one more girl from our own agency participate really is impossible. If they ended up becoming so awkward that they had to walk on eggshells around each other in future streams, repairing those relationships would take far too long.”

“Huh? Oh, so we’re allowed to invite someone from outside the agency?”

“Yes, we are. Some agencies don’t have many members, after all. But apparently you’re only allowed one outsider per team.”

“That makes sense. If you’re supposed to be carrying your agency’s banner but half the team is outsiders, it’d start looking like an outside team instead. Ah, then we can just ask an outsider to be our fourth member too. Problem solved.”

“It’s not that simple.”

If we invited an outsider, she would need to be at least as good as Rion and Snow, or she risked getting torn apart by the audience.

But if we invited a well-known 『OFA』 streamer who was genuinely skilled, people might accuse us of getting carried—in other words, relying entirely on the outside player’s strength to scrape out wins—so that was out too.

Ideally, we needed someone who wasn’t well known, wasn’t overwhelmingly strong, and wouldn’t be crushed even if Gem Pro fans ended up disliking her after something went wrong… but it would have been awfully convenient if a person like that actually existed.

So the kind of person who could fill that final slot was extremely limited.

An already narrow gate had become even narrower….

After I explained all that to my junior, she suddenly seemed to remember something and picked up her smartphone.

“Senpai, Senpai.”

“Haah…. What?”

“So basically, for this tournament, you want someone who isn’t too strong, isn’t very well known, won’t get nervous even with Gem Pro viewers watching her, and has an insanely strong mentality that means she won’t be shaken at all even if something happens and people start attacking her, right?”

“…Do you really think someone that convenient exists?”

I turned toward my junior with a half-exasperated expression, only for her to thrust her smartphone toward me.

Displayed on the screen was an illustration of my niece Rinne-chan’s Vtuber persona, Verchera Merisis.

Her eyes had been edited to glow red, and huge, forceful letters across the video thumbnail read “DEMON LORD AIM.”

“…Uh, what’s this?”

“It’s a viral clip of your niece.”

“…What?”

Wait, what? I didn’t know about this.

“Your niece did her first-ever FPS and first 『OFA』 stream last night, and it’s blowing up like crazy. Well, anyone who watched that would be pretty shocked.”

“Wait, she was playing an FPS? She’s barely played games at all since she was little….”

Ever since she was young, Rinne-chan had tended to become completely absorbed in things she could do by herself.

But those things were usually piano, drawing, programming, and anything else except gaming, and because she was so talented, she improved at every one of them at an unbelievable pace.

Considering what she was like, I could imagine her becoming terrifyingly good if she ever got into games, but surely going viral on her very first attempt was still unlikely, right?

Thinking that, I watched the clip playing on the smartphone in my junior’s hand….

“…What?”

Wait, what was this? Cheating?

No, I couldn’t imagine that girl ever using something like that just to earn people’s approval.

“Senpai, Effie said she wanted to collab with your niece, right?”

“…She did.”

“And even with aim like this, she’s still technically a beginner, right?”

“…………Right.”

“So your niece isn’t too strong yet, isn’t especially well known, doesn’t seem like she’d get nervous even if Gem Pro viewers were watching her, and has the kind of ridiculously strong mentality where even if something happened and people attacked her, she wouldn’t be shaken at all… doesn’t she?”

…………Without saying a word, I sent Rinne-chan a message.

I’m sorry, Rinne-chan…!

I’ll have Effie and the others warn our troublesome fans not to complain, so please save your Yuzu-neesan…!