“PFFFTTTZZWKKWWZZTTTTT” the mic boom made a booming sound as it fell to the floor.

huh, maybe that’s why they call it a boom? I thought to myself. But that was fucking retarded.

As the streamers recovered the mic, D1 could be heard from the furthest corners of the venue… “WELCOME TO APEX 2018, THE LARGEST SMASH TOURNAMENT IN HISTORY!!!”. The chocolate commentator continued to hype up the oh-so-smelly crowd who were more than willing to yell with him.

“Wow.” They all thought. “That’s the guy from the Wombo Combo video.”

I watched as he hypnotized the audience into believing that Nintendo’s sponsorship was a good thing as he lit Project M propaganda ablaze to please the late GimR (he didn’t die, he was just late in the normal kind of late way).

“Yo, 4lyoko! Earth to 4lyokoooo!” I heard from behind me. I shook my head violently, coming out of GimR and D1’s blood sacrifice. It was my training partner, and the coolest guy ever, Axe.

“You’re going to miss your first set, man!” he said super cool-like like a cool guy would say it. “Come on homie, get your handwarmers in, you’ve got this!”. Axe was so cool and I smiled too wide when he called me homie as I was less cool than Axe but still pretty cool.

I was nervous but annoyed at the same time, in the way that you can feel two emotions at once. Not like happy-sad, those are opposites, and that’s stupid, but like two coexisting emotions, like scared and shaken only I was neither of those really. My first opponent was JizzaroFlame (name change circa 2017).

The annoyed part of my two emotions (see above paragraph) came from JizzaroFlame’s increasing loyalty to his YouPorn sponsors. He’s the highest-paid smasher by far, so the scene puts up with it, but he presents exactly 15 minutes of YouPorn content before every set. Normally, this is when Axe would be coaching me, because he’s cool, but this time around it was really okay porn.

The match was about to begin. “Good luck, Jizz!” I said to him, having been taught by Axe to be the coolest guy ever but still not as cool as him.

“EEEEEEZZZZZYYYYY MONAYYYYY” Jizzaro said vomiting all over my controller.

PICHU the game announcer called out. I was the first to discover “chu-cancelling” and apply it to high-level play. Because of this, I was relatively unbeatable. JizzaroFlame hardly lasted longer than the possibly 16 year-old girl in the video we just watched.

“4LYOKO, ADVANCES!” Division1 called out to the stream. He didn’t tell a joke but everyone laughed for some reason, he has that effect because he’s cool. Not as cool as Axe (nobody is, Axe is so cool) but he was still pretty cool himself. Axe was really really cool.

I slaughtered my way to through prepools (Smash became so large, prepools are now needed at majors before pools). THIS GAME’S WINNER IS…. PICHU echoed through the Apex venue. Soon after, I won pools, then fought my way up through the bracket.

All of the former Smash “Gods” were just playthings for me. Armada, Mango, PPMD, HungryBox, Mew2king, Leffen, and DavidTheBowserGuy were no match for me. What poor soul did I have to face in grand finals? It was none other than Fly Amanita, still the greatest Ice Climbers main in the world.

4LYOKO! 4LYOKO! 4LYOKO! the crowd cheered… it’d still be a few more years before they’d acquire a distaste for Pichu-players, as a glitch would be discovered that transforms Pichu into Sheik mid-game, and fuck Sheik players. No seriously. Fuck Sheik players. All of you reading this that play Sheik, YOUR MAIN IS TRASH AND REQUIRES NO TECH SKILL I’D RATHER PLAY A THOUSAND JIGGLYPUFFS THAN A SINGLE SHEIK.

“4Lyoko.” someone said calmly and cool-like behind me. From the sound of how cool they were, I deduced it must have been Axe. I was wrong, it was Axe and Eikelmann, but Eikelmann doesn’t say anything here and won’t ever be involved in this story so I’m just going to talk about what Axe said next. “I don’t think you should play him man, it’s dangerous.”

“But Axe, that makes no sense, you told me yourself at Evo that I was unbeatable and that no one could stop me. Why now, are you, my training partner, telling me that I can’t win? I’m very confused” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

“Listen man, you know what’s gonna happen if he wo-…”

“CALLING 4LYOKO and FLY AMANITA TO THE STAGE FOR GRAND FINALS!” D1 called out on the mic, rudely interrupting Axe who was cooler than he was (D1 was still cool).

Axe tried saying something next but I was too distracted by the screaming fans and the thought of the antelope’s role in that video JizzaroFlame made us all watch.

I sat down in my seat. It was warm and moist. Smash players rarely showered (smell-cancelling) so I was used to this. Fly Amanita sat down to my right.

“Hey, I’m a huge fan Fly, may the best smasher win!” Fly said to me.

I was really confused, but before I could figure it out the game had started. Pichu’s chu-cancelling was a great way to separate Nana and Popo, so the Ice Climbers were no real threat to me. I 4 stocked him for the first two games, and quickly had him down to his last stock.

“Well Fly, it looks like I’m about to win Apex 2018, but I just wanna say that you’re an amazing Ice Climbers player!” Fly said. I was really confused at this point, but whatever, I’m about to win.

Then… everything changed permanently… FOREVER

Fly got a grab while I was decoding his cryptic nonsensical caveman talk. Pummel… Pummel… Pummel… Pummel…. The whole audience watched as I was getting wobbled. Three people died instantly, the rest just gave up and went to watch Brawl grand finals (Smash 4 was no longer a competitive game, as DLC character “Shrek” was not allowed by Dreamworks to be streamed or broadcasted).

I sat there… getting wobbled…. unable to do anything… my game that I dedicated so much time to, the way that I met all my friends, my hobby, the thing that made me… well… ME… was…. fucking stupid…. I spent years studying and practicing and memeing pictures of Mew2King and I’m getting wobbled out of Grand Finals…… my life was a waste and he just kept lightly tapping the “A” button on his Wii Nunchuk…

**I fainted…. only to awake in an undetermined amount of years….**

“Doctor… Doctorrr….” I repeated I repeated. “Wh-what year is it?” my vision slowly coming back to me.

I looked up to see Shroomed wearing a bloody surgeon’s mask.

“The year is 20XX Minus One” he said. “That’s the title of this book.”