Street Fighter

They’re like curious cats running wild, or children with ADHD. These girls will not have the attention span for Magic. Unfortunately, you’ve put a little time into card games over the years. The same can’t really be said of you and fighters, but at least you aren’t a total stranger to Street Fighter. Looks like they’re playing the latest version of 5. You know your stuff, of course, but knowing things from listening to commentary when you watch Evo isn’t the same as being able to implement them.

“OK,” you say, getting their attention. At least you can keep them from breaking anything by showing them some punching and flashing lights for a few minutes. “Come on, guys.”

Intrigued, they watch you sign up and pay your entry.

“Can you win this?” Athena asks, watching you hand over your thirty bucks.

You laugh. “No. God, no. But I might not get eliminated in the first match if we’re lucky.”

“If you win, I’ll do things to you,” Yuki says, squeezing your shoulder.

“So will I,” Nancy adds.

“I wish,” you say, taking your number from the guy at the table who’s pretending not to listen to your lewd companions.

You’re one of the last to register, and you’re quickly called up to a console. You didn’t bring a stick, but you aren’t a stick player anyway. The CCL girls gather around you as you sit in a chair beside your opponent, and a big, intense-looking guy wearing a Goku tee. At least it’s something you recognize. You feel out of date. Everyone’s rocking My Hero shirts and Attack on Titan stuff. All these animes that came along after you stopped watching a lot of anime.

Anyway, you take a deep breath and pick up your pad.

“What’s going on over there?” Yuki asks.

“That’s the stream,” you tell her.

“It’s on TV?” Yuki asks.

Your opponent turns and looks at you. The timer’s ticking down on the character select screen.

“Pick her,” Nancy says excitedly, pointing at Karin.

“Um, no,” you reply, selecting Cammy.

“Oooohh,” the girls all burst out, crowding closer around you.

“Swimsuit, nice,” Nancy says.

Your opponent locks in Ryu. Great. But this guy isn’t Daigo, and you’ve never seen him on a stream before, so there’s at least a chance that he’s not a killer. This is just a weekly tournament. It’s not like any heavyweights are going to show up here.

You put your thumbs to work, playing an overly aggressive Cammy for the first round. He doesn’t handle it well. He turns it around and gets off some combos that require some timing and execution, showing that he is good at this game and possibly better than you—but he’s distracted. Maybe by your fan club.

He drops everything in round 2 and you trash him. It’s a decisive win.

The CCL girls react disproportionately, cheering and hugging you like you just won Capcom Cup. Nope. That was matchup one of a weekly. But you still enjoy it.

“Oh my gosh, you are so good,” Nancy gushes. You are not. The girl factor absolutely guard broke your opponent. That’s what happened here. If you’d been playing him online and he couldn’t see you or the girls, he’d have wiped the floor with you.

You don’t have that with the next guy. He’s a skinny guy that… well, he looks like you do when you aren’t out with CCL. He’s dressed casually, and not ashamed to wear his big glasses.

He is not bothered by spectators, and you lose your first round against his Urien, but that’s OK. You still have a chance here. You threw yourself into him just like you did last round with pure aggro, hoping that he’d be distracted by the ladies.

That’s OK. You can adapt to this. You can’t adapt as easily to feeling Nancy’s boobs against your neck as she excitedly rubs your shoulders, but you do your best.

You have exactly two things going for you: a top-tier character, and a reasonable grasp of sound fundamentals. You haven’t been using the fundamentals, but you do now.

It’s intense, but this guy is good. He doesn’t expect stupid, so you do a raw spiral arrow as he tries to dash up. He doesn’t recover from that, and you go to round three. There, you just end up lucky. He has you in the corner with low health, but you block like a sensible person until he does something unsafe, then cannon spike him. You’re lucky with your mixup; he burns his meter trying to wake up, and you win that two.

You’re a bit surprised as the girls flip out.

The guy soberly offers his hand, and you shake it. Maybe you should have tried attending a tournament sooner. Maybe you have a natural talent for fighters. No. It’s just a weekly. These are local casuals. It’s going to your head. It’s hard not to feel good about it, though, when you have three cheerleaders all over you.

You laugh as Yuki whispers dirty things in your ear, heading up to the stream setup. It’s not nearly finals yet, but you’re going to be onstream. Normally that would make you nervous, but you don’t care about the two thousand viewers or whatever, only CCL.

You sit down with your pad in your lap, glowing. This is turning out surprisingly fun. You know that your luck isn’t going to hold, but this is still an adventure, and you’ve gotten way farther than you expected.

“Oh god,” your opponent says as she sits down.

You look over and stare. “Colby?”

“I’m not even gonna ask,” she says, unwrapping the cord from her stick and leaning forward to plug it in.

“I thought you weren’t coming up until tomorrow,” you say.

“Well I did,” she grumbles, scowling at you.

There’s no time to talk further. You blink away your surprise and pick up your pad, selecting Cammy again. You don’t have a main, but there’s no reason to change now. Colby takes Chun.

The CCL girls aren’t allowed to huddle around your chair when you’re on the stream, but you can hear them behind you, being ridiculous. Even the commentators are talking about your cheer section, and a lot of people are staring at them.

But… CCL is not known for being subtle.

You and Colby have barely played fighters together. You did play a bit of the latest Guilty Gear together when it came out, but that was it. She’s way better than you are, though. You know that she’s put serious time into fighters in the past. You are outclassed.

But as the match begins, you find yourself landing hits. Unable to believe your luck, you hammer the offensive and take her down. You look over at her.

She’s red-faced and looking pissed.

Is she… freaking out? Because she’s up against you? She just beat two other people to be in this bracket. She’s not this much of a scrub. It must be you. She can’t concentrate.

The next round is beginning. Shit. She didn’t know that you were going to be here, and now you’ve messed her up.

Let Colby win?

Or show no mercy?