You really think I'll fall for that...
a second time?!
He blew the hit confirm?
No. He didn't make a mistake.
He was led into it.
A Critical Art punish!
Ending on a screwup. What a letdown.
I thought Cafeore was rock solid at confirming with crouching MK.
You can lab all you want, but you'll never have perfect execution.
Even the best make more mistakes when the competition gets fierce.
It was a pressure cooker.
And who'd expect a walk-in when one hit would finish it?
And in that moment,
Cafeore must've remembered getting hit with a walk-in throw in the previous game.
Gekido took the fight onto his opponent's turf with a crouching MK showdown,
then decided to crush him head-on.
There's no way I can possibly win this match.
I'm guaranteed to lose.
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What should I be looking to get out of a match I know I'll lose?
I wonder what my goal in this tournament should be.
It's the same thing Teya-senpai was talking about.
I acted like such a know-it-all.
Even if I lose...
no, because I'm going to lose, I wanna take something away from it.
Something I can build on.
Um, Aya-san?
What should I do?
I'm getting kind of really freaked out here.
Huh?
Weren't you literally just bragging about being "good with stress"?
I thought I was!
You're as bad with stress as they come.
Do you even know anything about Cafeore, your next opponent?
You don't seem like you'd be interested in the pros.
I've never heard of him.
The only pro I know about is Gekido.
So what are you stressing about?
I don't know the first thing about him,
but the title "pro gamer" is seriously freaking me out.
Well, I'll give you points for honesty, if nothing else.
Me, I really idolized Gekido, you know?
He made such a huge impression on me, I end up saying his name with no honorific.
Sounds like the Ichiro Effect.
No one calls it that.
I watched him as a grade school SF4 fan on an account my parents made for me.
Gekido was already a legendary player back then.
I'm sure you're excited, then.
You get to play a match against your idol.
Behind that poker face, you must be like a grade schooler before a field trip.
How would the old me have felt
if she'd gotten the chance to play against the Gekido?
That's obvious.
Well, what do you know?
You're shaking, too.
You're right.
Mio?
Huh. Guess I can't parry shivers with shivers.
Of course not.
You know, shaking with nerves isn't all that bad, actually.
No?
You'll be fine, Mio.
Remember when you threw up 'cause you hated studying for exams?
You were shaking 50 times worse then.
I don't think that comes off as dramatic as you're trying to make it.
I tried to get by on vibes and kind of dropped the combo.
Is it me, or is the crowd wicked dense right here?
It's like a sauna.
Everybody wants to watch Gekido play.
Huh? He's up against a girl.
I'm gonna get his autograph after the match.
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A girl who plays fighting games... They actually exist? It's gotta be hard to play with all these people around lol Probably picked it up from her boyfriend I give her... a 78! lol Streamers probably got her into it, if anything I feel like a ton of girls popped up with SF6 She's young. 10,000,000,000 points Isn't it just that the player base grew? We still need all the female players we can get, so I hope she sticks with it I wanna play a gangster offline, too Looks like she might be in high school Personally, I'm not into chicks with that kind of glare She's hot lol Count me in lmao Ceci-kyun, zoom in on the girl Chat is full of barbarians, as usual I hear no one uses "JK" for "high-school girl" anymore Did you get the girl's permission to film her? Honestly, there are way worse chats out there Well, this match is over. I'll go take a bath
Okay, chat. It's starting.
Off to a quiet start.
Chat
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Did you get the girl's permission to film her?
Honestly, there are way worse chats out there
Ceci-kyun, what's the Chun-Li vs Cammy matchup like?
{\an1\bord0\shad0\b1\fs20\fscx92\fay-0.035\fax0.07\c&HDBD9DD&\frz2.7\pos(100,184)\clip(m 440 133 l 440.5 168.5 106 203 78.5 154)}Ceci-kyun, what's the Chun-Li vs Cammy matchup like?
No raw moves out the gate +20
It's obvious Gekido's gonna win. Boring
High-school Cammy... I'm getting turned on
I don't like Cammy. tbh, I don't like girl players
Good question.
Both characters walk fast,
but Chun-Li and Cammy mains always argue over who has the slight edge.
Kobushi Waiting Room Stream
Viewers
Chat
Seeing a woman sit next to my boy Gekido is making me lose my mind
Chun-Li's strong. Scratch that. Gekido's strong
No shit, Sherlock
I'd like to eat a combo from a cute high-school girl just once in my life
I'm stronger and cuter
lololol
Than which one? lol
lmao
Chun-Li's light punch was pretty good against Cammy's normals,
and it had a high return if you landed a counter hit,
but the patch gave that light punch a bigger hurtbox.
Cammy wants to get in with a Strike.
How well can Chun-Li ward her off with Kikoshos and Thrusts?
That's the question.
"What should I try to get out of a match I'll lose?"
I wouldn't even have had to think about that back then.
"The other player is good" was more than enough reason to play them.
She baited an anti-air?
When you go up against a tough opponent, don't get discouraged.
Get fired up.
The girl got the first hit.
I'm surprised.
She jumped over the projectile, then landed right in his face with a Strike.
When Chun-Li's anti-air whiffed, she punished it for a knockdown.
She cut it so close that she managed to fool even Gekido-san.
If she hadn't had the reach of Chun-Li's anti-air
and her own hurtbox down pat, she couldn't have pulled that off.
And her oki is a throw. Nothing fancy.
Not a choice that will yield big damage,
but it's good for feeling out her opponent's defenses.
Throw lands
Blocking or attacking
Throw doesn't land
Teching out of the throw
Jumping to avoid the throw
Backdashing to avoid the throw
In other words, she's going on the offensive,
but not getting desperate and reckless because she's up against a pro.
And above all, there's the look on her face.
That's not the look of someone who thinks she'll lose.
I don't know who this high school girl is,
but she seriously thinks she can beat Gekido.
This oughta be good.
What kind of idiot worries about losing before they even try?
I did that on reaction!
You 100% did that by accident.
You're dead meat.
A casual match?
Oh, of course.
The first pools are over, and setups are slowly opening up.
Um, excuse me—
What a coincidence. How were your matches?
My pool starts in about 40 minutes.
So I was wandering around the hall. What about you?
I have a little longer to wait.
I got into the winners' group from my second pool in only two matches.
She makes it sound easy, but she got out of two pools without losing once.
I knew you were incredible.
It's always been that way, hasn't it?
School, piano, video games... You're good at everything.
And you always help me with the parts I struggle with.
Even though we're in the same school, I almost never get to talk to you.
I...
Good point.
It has been a while. Let's talk.
On the screen.
What's the matter, Tamaki?
Sit.
What a Cammy.
She jumped in close again.
Well played.
Gekido-san got baited with a Strike landing in front of him once,
so he switched from reacting with anti-airs
to a perfectly placed Swift Thrust, which has a hitbox that goes high.
But she let fly with a crouching MK like she was waiting for it.
Yup, this is gonna get clipped.
"Gekido vs Mysterious High School Girl."
I wanted to stream Cafeore-san's match, too,
but if I'm getting footage this good, I made the right call.
Talk about mismatched looks.
It looks photoshopped.
What a pain in the ass.
Fighting games are getting a lot of buzz from the lame-ass esports craze,
and now we've got trend-chasing chicks showing up to majors.
I'm here to fight.
There you go, about to assume this kid can't play.
That she's some damn tourist chasing the latest big thing.
I'll teach you to get cocky!
Um, are you all right?
Maybe you should see a doctor.
Nah, I'm good.
It doesn't matter who I'm up against.
I ended up in the losers' bracket,
but I gotta swim my way outta this pool to take another bite outta that jackass.
Man or woman...
I'll wreck you equally hard.
That figures.
So you're my opponent, Alice aka Little Miss Bratty?
Hey! What'd you just call me?
I look forward to our match.
So you're "Inuyu"?
Get bodied.
Bodied
Beaten so badly that there's obviously no contest.
Okay. Begin playing as soon as you're ready.
She i-framed through with a Quick Dash Shoryu!
It breezed right past that first projectile!
Bratty little girls...
get put in their place.
What incredible pressure.
I'm going in to land a hit.
I'll take one step forward and clip her with the tip of my crouching MK.
Just one step. One nudge of the stick.
Yet I'm terrified to do it.
Calm down.
Remember what you've practiced with everyone.
Confirming Saihasho with crouching medium kick.
Knowing when you'll counter hit.
Let's have all the fun we can tomorrow, Tamateya.
Push the buttons with feeling.
Hit confirm with feeling.
Go on the offensive with feeling.
Whiff punish with feeling.
With feeling?
I'm in the corner?
All that labbing, all those matches, all that work on my neutral,
all those new things I learned to do,
all that practice with them, and I still...
Don't tell me...
you haven't made any progress at all?
I'll only ask you this one more time.
Why are you still playing fighting games?
So that...
you and I...
What?
I used to love playing with you.
We saw the same things, got angry at the same things,
and always laughed at the same time.
I'm still playing fighting games to play with the you from back then!
What was that?
Were you even trying to win?
Sis...
You might as well quit. You're not cut out for fighting games.
Sis...
Another whiff punish!
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He's getting punished way too much Gekido, say it ain't so He's getting punished forever This girl's good They mesh, in a bad way What? Gekido is evolving? If he loses, the internet won't let him live it down for at least five years That's a pretty aggro Cammy The female has hands! I'll be reposting this for the next 100 years, why? Is she starting to look smoking hot to anyone else, or is that just me? Nice going, high-school girl Real talk, though, her neutral is vicious lol Tragic news: Gekido bodied by schoolgirl lmfao (RIP) Did bro eat something weird this morning? Let's gooooo! Kiiill! lol ...legendary
My hands and body are heating up.
Time to shift it up a gear.
Hm, I know she's a speed character,
but you don't see many Cammys go in this aggressively.
That kind of pressure forces you to also attack to stay out of the corner.
And then she punishes those attacks.
But Gekido-san hasn't been twiddling his thumbs, either.
While staying on the defensive, he's gained a lot of information,
like how and when she attacks.
Soft and hard.
He adapts to his opponent and finally crushes them.
That's why Gekido-san consistently wins even first-to-two or three matches.
Gekido-san?
Ayaman
The Cafeore...
lost a game to some random hottie whose player name we don't even know!
Fighting-game player who saw the match in person Yoji Tanimoto (28)
Sure, I was shocked.
I do get the impression that more women have been getting into fighting games.
Still, there's, you know... a type, I guess you'd say?
Forget fighters. She looked like she wouldn't game, period. Well-brought-up, y'know?
Had a real classy aura.
How'd the match go? Well...
She started with fireballs.
Yeah, Hadokens.
And well...
She just kept them coming.
Gimme a break.
How many fireballs is she gonna throw?
At the time, everyone there thought the same thing, me included.
"Oh, this girl got this far on luck. Maybe she won by default."
Use fireballs to tempt the opponent to jump in, then nail 'em with a Shoryuken.
It's an old standby for zoners,
but if they jump right when the fireball comes out,
you can't even block, let alone anti-air.
Fundamentally, you ought to be scared to throw fireballs.
I don't see how you spam 'em without worrying, like she did.
Now you're starting to piss me off.
He jumped. Cafeore, I mean.
Like he was thinking, "Give it a rest. That's not as safe as you think."
And she stopped.
She'd been doing Hadokens at a steady rhythm, except for right then.
Check it out. Cafeore's in the corner.
He had her in the corner, and he crossed her up?
Did he mean to do that?
That was some play.
What Cafeore just did was a regular jump that only looked like a cross-up.
She turned it into a real cross-up by walking forward under it.
And by switching places with Cafeore, she managed to put him in the corner.
Her judgment in that situation was nothing short of superb.
Look at her go!
You've gotta be kidding.
Cafeore's gauge is getting chipped away.
Her anti-air's good, too,
but that girl's amazing at throwing projectiles.
There's no such thing as being "amazing at throwing projectiles."
I mean, you can learn from experience when people will jump,
or how much frame advantage you need to make a projectile safe.
But only throwing fireballs when your opponent won't jump?
If an ability like that exists, it'd have to be...
a sixth sense or an occult skill.
The life lead she's slowly built up with Hadokens
will vanish if she lets even one jump through.
I couldn't trust myself all the way.
She wasn't complaining to anyone in particular.
Her instincts, her sixth sense, told her a jump was coming,
but she let her reason override it. That's how it sounded.
I guess she's coming at SF6 from a completely different place than I am.
And that was the moment I realized it.
The oki landed.
A low Aerial Hundred Lightning Kicks...
into another knockdown!
Yikes.
He's looping oki into more oki.
The next one will kill—
The hell?
Yes, a reversal crouching medium kick.
I think she read that Cafeore was gonna fake an okizeme and back off.
In normal ranked matches,
it's always the players who seem brain-dead who catch you with that.
So they say a lot of people instinctively lose their cool the moment they see it.
They've both got their Super Gauges maxed out.
Looks like one super would kill either of them.
But the girl's down to the magic pixel, and her Drive Gauge is low.
Blocking in SF6 reduces your Drive Gauge.
If it hits zero, she'll take straight chip damage instead.
So if Cafeore makes her block a crouching MK or something,
he can chip her to death with a super and win.
Whatever your name is, kid, I'd say I made a hell of a good call
when I decided to take you seriously.
It's over.
I didn't do that.
Translation: William Varteresian Timing: Edgar Cruz Editing: SMR Quality Check: Geoff Mazzolini Translation Check: David Saylor
Young Ladies
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Illustration: Kangyaku