by stuchiu

In order to convince you to sit through an entirely PvP group, we've allowed stuchiu to write an entirely fictional story about the group. If you can make yourself believe that this story is real for three hours, you just might find yourself able to get through Group C.

Everything was going great for SK Telecom T1. Seven of their players had made it to Code S, and five of them reached the round of sixteen. Despite a blip against KT in the Proleague R1 playoffs, they seemed on course to brute force a top finish in Proleague with their stacked roster. Even Fantasy was beginning to regain his old form as one of T1's mainstays, and the cursed legacy of the SKT Zergs was coming to an end thanks to soO and Soulkey.

But then, tragedy struck.

At first, it seemed like there had simply been a minor inconvenience. GSL's decision to change to a random draw format for the Ro16 saw three of SKT's players in Classic, PartinG, and Rain all thrown into the same group with Squirtle. Though team-kills are always a sad affair, it appeared that SKT would simply shrug off the elimination of one of their players while the other two went through.

After all, how could Squirtle stand up to the others? All three were championship candidates in the tournament. Classic was a rising Protoss star, one without a big individual tournament result but very highly rated by all of his peers. Rain was the first KeSPA player to become a champion, and had been one of the most consistently great players for the last year. And of course, PartinG was the Soul Toss, ready to run a train over anyone with his impeccable micro in PvP.

Squirtle? He was a washed up has been, lucky to ride the wave of Protoss dominance into an unlikely Ro16 appearance in Code S. But Squirtle had a plan. A plan that would turn SKT's little inconvenience into an all-out disaster.

It only took one simple step to set things into motion: Squirtle offered his old Startale buddy PartinG some secret practice games so they could advance out of the group together. PartinG reluctantly accepted, having had considerable trouble finding players to practice with outside of his team. Once the practice started, all Squirtle had to do quietly leak the fact that they had practiced together.

The news inevitably reached the ears of Rain and Classic, who quickly grew paranoid as they wondered if Parting still had more ST in him than SKT. Without confronting PartinG at first, Classic asked Rain to practice with him so so they could punish PartinG for his collusion. However, Rain only grew more angered at Classic's suggestion, calling Classic a dishonorable mercenary who was no better than PartinG.

Eventually, it all came to a boil as the three Protosses confronted each other face to face in a cataclymic arguments. A sobbing Paralyze tried to calm everyone down with the offer of a compromise where he would practice with all three of them, but was quickly laughed out of the room.

Head coach iloveoov tried to solve the situation by getting the three to forget PvP and focus on practicing against Zerg for the upcoming Proleague matches instead, but it was too late. All three players had been become obsessed with winning their PvPs against each other and proving once and for all who the best SKT player was. As collateral damage, Soulkey was left to practice on his own and get eliminated by two Protosses in the GSL, losing his record streak of quarterfinal appearances.

Even worse was the PL match against Jin Air. Parting lost his PvP to sOs as he had been to busy preparing for Rain and Classic. Rain and Classic were too absorbed thinking about Parting’s game against sOs to focus for their matches and lost to Cure and Rogue. The SKT team house atmosphere had been ruined for good.

Just as planned.


Now all that's left for Squirtle to finish the job and eliminate the SKT Protosses in tonight's Code S group.