Mischievous Function

A few hours later...

"In the end...it turns out I've won."

"OH, COME ON!" Balloon yelled as Stapy only laughed gleefully and leaned forward on the arcade cabinet. He flung his hands up in frustration and complained, "Gunslinger literally just got into Mash a few weeks ago! How are you already this good with him?!"

Stapy shook his head with a chuckle as he and Balloon hurried through the battle results screen. "You think I'm good with Gunslinger, you should see Foldy with Digital Jester. She only came out a few days ago and Foldy's already trounced me several times with her."

"Digital Jester? Wait, they actually made her into a Mash fighter?"

"Yeah, somehow. But, hey, she is fun as heck to play, so there's that."

Foldy peeked her head around the corner of the arcade cabinet and looked around. "Who summoned me?"

"Oh, hey, Foldy," Stapy waved. "I was just showing Balloon where the Mash cabinet was down here."

"Oh, nice." Foldy walked up behind the two of them, looked at the character select screen, and crossed her arms with an intrigued nod. "So, you play Mash often, Balloon?"

Balloon made a so-so gesture with one hand as he picked his character with the other. "Eh...casually."

Foldy nodded and watched him think for a bit before he settled on one of the newer characters. Her eyes widened and she pointed at the screen. "You play that character before?"

"Only a couple of times," he responded. "But he looks pretty cool, and I've heard that he's pretty powerful."

"Not in the wrong hands, he's not," Foldy warned. "Murder Drone has a pretty high skill ceiling, but also a pretty high skill floor. You're not careful, you're gonna get shot out of the air a lot more than you'd like, especially since Stapy's playing Gunslinger. And despite Murder Drone's larger hitbox, he still takes the knockback of a smaller character, so it will hurt if you get hit too much. Oh, and don't use your specials too much, because if Stapy can dodge them, you're gonna be left super vulnerable. And believe me, if I know Stapy, he can dodge them."

"I..." Balloon's eyes were wide in amazement. "...wh...didn't Murder Drone literally just come out yesterday?"

Foldy shrugged and gave him a smug grin. "Stapy probably told you how good I was at this game."

"I bet he wasn't kidding," Balloon said with an impressed nod as he stepped away from the cabinet and gestured to the controls. "I wanna watch you play now."

"You sure?"

"Helium yeah! Stapy's been stomping me, so I wanna see him actually try to win."

As Foldy smirked and stepped up to the controls, Stapy winced and tsk-tsked to himself. "Uh-oh..." he muttered to himself with a grin, but nevertheless chose the stage and started the battle. The two of them got ready as the loading screen disappeared after a few seconds, revealing the stage and the characters teleporting onto it. Soon, the mashing commenced.

——————————

Two minutes later...

"Let's do that again! I love doing anything!"

"Damn it!" Stapy laughed as Foldy took a proud step away from the cabinet and raised her hands up in silent, smug victory. "I forgot Murder Drone could charge his neutral special!"

"What can I say?" she grinned. "MD vs. GS isn't really a good matchup for Gunslinger, anyway. He's slow and focuses a lot on powerful attacks, but a good Murder Drone player can just dodge all of that and chip you down. Not to mention he's got pretty terrible recovery, which isn't good when Murder Drone has so much mid-air power and control that it puts Johnny Swallowguy mains to shame."