The semifinals of the Awesome Tournament had begun.

First up, it was supposed to be Max Rakuyama and Mariy Suzuka.

Sadly, Mariy had stubbed her toe walking into the arena and they had to postpone the match until later in the day.

So instead it was Misty Shibata versus Gary Suzuki.

Misty Shibata was, as popular as she was in the school, very dumb and not smart at all. She was in fact one of the dumbest, least intelligent people to have ever entered the Magic High School and many teachers wondered in private how such an occurrence could ever possibly have taken place that a girl like her would have actually been able to apply and register and sign up and then come and attend classes and receive grades, let alone make it to the semi-finals of the Amazing Tournament. The reason mystified the teachers, the students, and even me, the narrator. But she had somehow done it through sheer luck and circumstance and it was quite

Gary and Misty stood facing each other and staring contently in that anime way.

"Time for the cool next match of the tournament," said the announcer who was simultaneously chugging on coffee while speaking in a feat that some would consider impressive but most would hardly remark on, "because there are just so many cool things that are gonna happen today. We were supposed to have Max and Mairy which is dangerously close to the title of a certain 2009 Australian stop-motion animated film which was acclaimed but did not gain any Academy Awards nominations likely due to the very competitive nature of awards for animated films in the year 2009-Mary and Max-but tragically Max and Mariy had to postpone their match on account of a certain Mariy stubbing her toe which probably really hurt to the point that I yelled out 'gee whiz, that's gotta hurt' the moment I heard about it myself, although luckily we have a replacement in Gary and Misty who were going to fight after Max and Mariy but are now going to fight before her instead, something we should all be pretty thankful for since we all came to the arena to watch teenagers fight each other to gain the approvals of their peers or families or teachers or some other figure they desperately seek acceptance with due to our extremely non-individualistic culture which relies so heavily on group dynamics and keeping a low self-esteem except when validated by those around us. I miss my wife."

The match had begun

Max and Misty continued to stare at each other.

Then, finally, Misty took one step forward and smirked devilishly.

"I bet it will be this time," she said. "I'm finally going to win. Definitely I'll win better than last time, that's for sure."

"What?" Gary was so confused that he had to ask her what she meant.

Then, suddenly, Misty rocketed forward with all the prose detail that you craved in a fight scene, and then did some cool attacks. Like, holy crap it was awesome.

Unfortunately for Misty, Gary dodged every single one of them without even moving. He just flashstepped around her.

"You can't win a tournament being that poor at fighting," Gary said. "I'm the Irregular, after all."

"Irregular my ass!" Misty shouted. "I know my multiplication tables!"

She tried to do a furious kick, but Gary caught her ankle-

And then took ahold of her-

And body slammed her into submission.

The match was over almost immediately.

After everything was called, Gary was declared the winner and Misty was helped to her feet.

But the latter woman was not satisfied. In fact, she was quite indignant.

"Ugh, this sucks! This is like the fifth time I've done this shitty match, and I'm not getting any better. At least, that's what the counter says. I sort of don't... Ugh."

"What are you even talking about?"

"Mwahahahaha!" Misty appearified some sort of disc-like object on her wrist and laughed maniacally. "You never knew, but I am a Time Lord! One of the rarest magic classes out there!"

"I've never heard of such a thing," Gary said.

"That's because every time any Time Lord reveals their secret, they just reverse time and reset everything. Just like an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of tablets can eventually win a game of Fortnite, I can eventually win this entire tournament through sheer quantum luck alone."

"Fortnite... Why don't you play that, instead?" Gary asked. "It seems more up your alley with your extreme weakness."

"Don't you dare insult Fortnite," Misty said. "I'll never forgive you."

"No need to forgive me. I won't apologize.

"I'm gonna reset this timeline and beat your ass next time! Probably!"

"If you were going to defeat me, you would have done it already," Gary said.

"See you in the past, sucker!"

She activated the device. Time reset to the beginning of the match.