Lisanna was quite unhappy. As a 14-year old in high school, she found her life to be normal. As a goddess in a human body, she found her life to be extraordinarily boring. Though being born in a relatively small and isolated community was advantageous as a baby, being in such a tiny community was terrible for her support level.
She and Kieran needed to move as quickly as possible in search of new supporters. Especially since there was a definite expiration date on their lives on Earth, if their support levels were so low they couldn't win against other Godly Pairs should they happen upon them, their entire lives on Earth would simply be a giant waste of time.
Godly Pairs are only able to spend 80 years on Earth. Once 80 years pass, both partners die "natural" deaths and are sent back to the heavens. Their win tally is kept, but only until the end of the current Ranking. This is usually the end for the Godly Pairs who only managed to get in through waiting patiently in the waitlist, but for an experienced goddess like Lisanna, getting in was much easier and the 80 year time limit was not such a huge obstacle.
She was good at choosing partners who were able to fill in the gaps left by her own weaknesses. Where she was cold, her partner would be warm. Where she was impatient, her partner would be calm.
Lisanna was capable and intelligent, which made her most suitable to be the "cunning" partner. In a Godly Pair, the most common and efficient pairing consists of a "cunning" partner and a "charismatic" partner. One to lure, one to trap, as the saying goes.
Thus, she found a "charismatic" partner. One of the reasons she chose Kieran was because he was well-liked and was very good at raising support levels. However, he was young and new, inexperienced in the face of his first Ranking.
Lisanna, though still considered a powerless and unknown goddess, was old enough and lucky enough to have been able to attend several Rankings before this one, during which she formed valuable connections. Those connections allowed her to bypass most of the gods and goddesses on the waitlist.
In her first Ranking, she got lucky and managed to get in the Ranking before 100 years had passed. She and her partner had been born in a large city. Both had been inexperienced and hadn't known how to effectively raise their support levels. Lisanna had been the better out of the two, studying hard and entering in competitions that could take her to events televised and broadcasted to millions. Her support level became higher due to the widening of her circle of influence.
However, even she stood no chance against the older, more experienced Godly Pair that had swept through the city on one of their routinely trips. That Pair had easily demolished the younger, more inexperienced Godly Pair, who were only teenagers at that time.
When she was forced back to the heavens, a god approached her and offered to partner with her. He told her that he had been watching her life from the Watch Cloud, an exclusive platform that allowed God's and goddesses with the right requirements to watch the Godly Pairs on Earth. He was interested in partnering with her because he believed she had great potential. Given enough resources and opportunities, she could succeed at gaining power and influence through the Ranking, he told her.
Clearly, her new partner was experienced enough to have the connections to allow her to get in quickly. Lisanna decided to re-enter the Ranking using her new partner's connections, starting a new successful life with him.
Her new partner had told her that what she had done in her previous life was good, so she decided to try again, using the same method. This time, though, she tried harder, so she could reach a larger audience and gain their admiration. Lisanna branched out in several different fields, using her previous life's experiences to help her successes in this one.
Her partner did the same, excelling in everything he tried with with ease. He had greater knowledge of the world and had more techniques to be used.
The two of them had been doing very well for themselves and had gained 14 wins. Lisanna was proud to be partnered with such a capable partner.
After one win was gained, a new Godly Pair would be spawned within an hour at some new location. Her partner was able to find the newly spawned babies with a 1/6 accuracy rate.
Out of their 14 wins, two were gained from baby Pairs.
As both were only in their late 30s at that time, Lisanna was sure that the two of them would be able to reach the goal of 50 wins before the Ranking ended.
However, neither of them were able to predict the strength of one of the baby Pairs that they had taken out.
The goddess in that Pair had connections and experiences as good as Lisanna's partner's.
After having been taken out, she had been closely following Lisanna and her partner through the Watch Cloud.
After that goddess had finished her observation of their patterns, she entered the Ranking when Lisanna and her partner were in their 48th year.
The vengeful goddess had chosen to become an actress, knowing that other Pairs couldn't sense that she was a goddess through the screen.
By the time her support levels had gotten higher that Lisanna's, Lisanna and her partner were 68. They had just gotten their 37th win. Lisanna's partner was planning their next move in their home city when the vengeful goddess struck.
Neither Lisanna nor her partner had been able to sense the approaching goddess. She had high support levels and was able to avoid detection using some old tricks and hidden methods, so Lisanna was unable to escape when she closed in on them.
That was when Lisanna was finally introduced to the most effective Godly Pair structure: a "real" partner and a "throwaway" partner. Her more experienced partner was the "real" partner, cunning and strong, meant to last and succeed.
Lisanna was the "throwaway" partner, meant to be a diversion in case of emergency; clueless, unneeded, and cannon fodder.
It was not commonly known, but in order for a Pair to succeed, only one partner needs to be successful. In the event that only one partner remains, if the remaining partner is able to gather the remaining number of wins by themselves, he/she is considered the lone winner, while their defeated partner gains nothing. This rule was not well-known, as it is rare for the support level gap betweenness partners to be so big that one survives while the other does not.
While Lisanna had been battling both the vengeful goddess and her "throwaway" partner, her own partner had slipped away. Once Lisanna was removed from Earth, she had barged into the Watch Cloud, throwing her partner's name around with such an intensely destructive aura that the poor guards on duty were frozen with shock and fear for a moment.
Lisanna had taken advantage of their shock to slip in to the Watch Cloud. Once there, she watched her still-fresh partner battle with the greatly weakened vengeful goddess, heart burning with anger and betrayal.