“What?”

In the face of Daniel’s pure confusion, Bill and his friend burst into laughter. Mrs. Garcia returned with his small salad, but he couldn’t take his attention off of their mockery.

“He probably don't even have electricity at home!” Bill’s friend cackled.

“Where’d you blow in from, kid? Flavortown?” Bill howled, smacking the table.

“That’s enough,” Mrs. Garcia said. “It’s strange, though. Everyone knows what Fights are. Do you have amnesia, Daniel?”

Daniel stabbed at his salad, tasting the creamy ranch and the crunchy croutons alongside the mouthful of lettuce. They wouldn’t believe him if he said he still thought this was all a dream — even he was starting to doubt that this was a dream. Was he sent to another world? He shook his head. That sounded even more unbelievable.

“No, I’m just…uh…from somewhere distant,” he finally said. “We don’t have…all this.”

“Are you sure? I thought it was popular everywhere.” Mrs. Garcia folded her arms.

“Not where I’m from.”

“Where are you from then, kid?” Bill called out. “I’m still betting on Flavortown.”

Daniel shook his head, scoffing. “No, sir, I’m from…Boslo…vania. Yeah. Boslovania.”

Bill furrowed his eyebrow. “I haven’t seen that on any map.”

“Of course. You couldn’t navigate your way out of a ripped paper bag,” Bill’s friend said.

Bill smacked his shoulder. “Just pick another fight, man. I still got more money to bet!”

“Fine, fine.”

With a remote, Bill’s friend scrolled through channels. Daniel noticed the particular names. Hydrogen VS. MOON. Gigabyte VS. Glory. A-Train VS. Ash Disco. Were these the Fighters they were talking about? Bill said they weren’t watching a fighting game or anything, but the names were so eccentric, he would’ve been fooled. Did they really spend their time watching and betting on real fighting game-like fights?

Bill’s friend stopped on Ren VS. Minato. The screen changed to show two men standing on a bridge, both dressed in Karate uniforms, with the bars at the top showing their names. Ren was on the left, a blonde-haired man with a red gi, while Minato on the opposite side wore a clean white gi.

Daniel blinked at the screen, cocking his head. The general setup looked eerily similar to a fighting game he’d play at home, before rage quitting within half an hour.

Bill scoffed. “They look boring. Why’d you pick this one?”

“Could you turn the TV up, please?”

Daniel looked for the source of the voice, laying eyes on the young girl that came down the stairs. His heart skipped a beat. Carmen! He couldn’t not recognize the face he liked since eighth grade — he was hyping himself up to ask her out today if it wasn’t for this mess. Everything about her round face was the same, even down to the freckle below her right eye. But, he’d never seen Carmen wear glasses in his entire life, nor did she ever walk while clutching a book to her chest. Carmen hated being seen as a nerd. She hid her true interests, but this Carmen was like a completely different person.

Clearly, she was. She didn’t even glance at him.

Bill turned up the TV at her request. “You care about this fight, Carmen?”

Carmen nodded. “Ren and Minato look unassuming and they’re both Shotos, but they were trained at the same school by the same master. They even have the same moveset. Their fights always end in a draw, but Minato went on a training retreat for a year, and he’s ready to take his lifelong rival down. The stakes are why they both agreed to only have one round.”

Bill nodded. “Oh! This’ll be a good fight. I’m betting Minato’s gonna win this one.”

His friend scoffed. “Are you kidding? She said they always tie. This one’s gonna be no different.”

“Are you betting on it?”

Meanwhile, Daniel stared with knit eyebrows. “Um…C-Carmen?”

Carmen tilted her head, acknowledging him with steady eye contact.

Daniel cleared his throat, hoping his cheeks were still brown instead of blushing red. “I’m not from here. What’s a Shoto?”

“It’s the archetype for Fighters whose build and movesets are well-rounded. They’re good at adapting and using whatever strategy they need to, but their biggest weakness is usually their lack of a defined strength.”

The confusion on his face must've been obvious enough.

Carmen continued. “Like, you know how Zoners are good at range? Or how Rushdowns are good at speed and fighting up close?”

“Uh…no.”

Mrs. Garcia chuckled. “Honey, our patron here’s a foreigner. He didn’t even know what a Fighter was.”

Carmen’s jaw fell. “How? You don’t know anything? What do you do all day?”

Mr. Garcia returned from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a paper towel. “Everyone doesn’t study them all day like you, you know.”

Carmen gasped and nodded shamefully. “That was rude of me. Sorry.”

“They’re starting!” Bill said, whooping in excitement.

On the screen, Ren and Minato stepped closer to each other. Minato tightened his headband. “This is the last time we’ll fight as equals, Ren.”

Ren laughed. “Are you that confident in yourself? Come on, then — let’s do this one round. Prove your training. I won’t hold back!”

At that moment, a referee appeared behind them, floating above the water, his skin and clothes all glowing blue. Ren and Minato entered identical fighting poses, and words appeared on the screen as the referee counted down.

“Single round! Ready? Fight!”

Ren and Minato kicked into action, crouching before lunging forward. Blue energy gathered in their palms, and their fireballs collided in the middle of the screen. They both leaped toward each other, and Ren’s kick clashed against Minato’s punch.

Daniel couldn’t believe his eyes. Out of context, this would look like any typical fighting game match. Ren let loose as Minato blocked his flurry of kicks and punches, and the moment he paused, he struck Ren with a low kick, beginning his own combo. The fact that it was all real blew his mind. That wasn’t a character programmed to be affected by hitstun; that was, apparently, a real person paralyzed and stunned after every attack. They weren’t players hitting buttons on a controller; Minato was really crouching and lunging forward to shoot a Fireball.

Their bars at the top of the screen steadily decreased as the minute-long match went on. Minato held a strong lead, but Ren struck him with an uppercut as soon as he tried to jump in and attack, opening him up for an aerial combo. A string of punches left Minato sprawling on the ground, his health an inch away from being empty.

As Minato scrambled to his feet, Ren landed and repeated his motion of crouching and lunging forward three times. The number next to the bar at the bottom left corner of the screen decreased from a one to a zero. Blue fire gathered in his palms, intensifying to a blazing red. He shot another fireball, but this one was bigger — more intense — and raged across the screen.

Minato recovered just in time. When he put his arms up to block, a blue field appeared in front of him. He emerged from the blaze unscathed while his rival was still in the motion of recovering from his powerful attack.

“Tornado Kick!” Minato shouted.

He kicked as he spun through the air, carried across the bridge in a flash by a strange and sudden wind. Three kicks reduced Ren’s health bar to a sliver of yellow and sent him flying away, all the way into a blue forcefield that kept him from flying off of the bridge.

“He got him with the EX-move! Hell yeah!” Bill cheered.

Bill’s friend laughed. “See! They’re so even, he’s reading him like a book. This is gonna be a draw.”

“No. Look at the terrain.” Carmen pointed at the screen. “Minato engaged Ren on a bridge like this on purpose. He has the high ground, and Ren can’t move side to side to escape him.”

“They can normally move side to side?” Daniel asked.

Carmen nodded. “They can move how they want, inside of the boundaries. For us, the camera adjusts to keep it like this.”

“There’s a cameraman?”

“No, it’s invisible.”

Daniel licked his lips, stifling another “What?” How could she say that like an invisible cameraman and a floating referee were normal?

The minute-long fight ticked down to the last ten seconds. Ren leaped into the air, aiming for another jump-in attack. Daniel waited for Minato’s uppercut to come — Ren saw it coming too and put up his block. But, the uppercut never came. As Ren landed and stood there blocking, Minato seized his arms and tossed him over the railing.

Ren plunged into the water.

“K.O.!” the referee shouted, droplets of water spitting on the camera.

Bill leaped from his stool in excitement, cheering loudly. “I told you! I told you! Gimme those fifty dollars!”

Bill’s friend angrily tossed the fifty-dollar bill at him. “Man, shut up. You didn’t even know who they were before she told you!”

It was only then that Daniel realized he wasn’t sitting on his stool anymore. The salad had disappeared from his plate. He got so absorbed in the fight that he wolfed down his salad and didn’t even realize himself jumping in excitement like Bill. Fights like these were on every channel?

If this was a dream, he came up with an awesome form of entertainment.