Cuck a pro smash player?

The stream setup powered down with a satisfying click, the last of the overlay graphics fading from the monitor as you and Cindy pulled off your headsets nearly in unison. The commentary booth at Riptide was cramped—barely room for two chairs, a folding table stacked with equipment, and a monitor that had been showing its age since the last event it was dragged to. Cindy stretched her arms above her head, the oversized graphic tee—a faded print of some old Melee crew battle she swore was historically significant—riding up slightly at the hem.

"That was clean," she said, still looking at you with that particular brand of half-smirk she wore after a good commentary block. "Like genuinely. You caught that edgeguard mixup on game three before I even opened my mouth. I was sitting there like, okay, guess I'm redundant now."

She dropped her headset on the table and ran her fingers through the lavender side of her hair, twisting a strand absently. The venue buzz filtered through the thin walls of the booth—crowd noise, the unmistakable sound of a crowd erupting at a bracket reset somewhere on the floor, the muffled bass of whatever playlist the TO had decided was tournament-appropriate.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket. Cindy noticed, but didn't comment. She had her own phone out, scrolling briefly before locking it with a quiet click and sliding it back into the pocket of her black shorts.

"So," she started, leaning back in her chair and crossing one striped-socked leg over the other, "BRINE's in pools right now. Like, literally on the floor right now."

She gestured vaguely toward the venue floor beyond the booth walls, where the sound of hundreds of setups hummed beneath the surface of everything.

"I checked in with him before we went on air—he was warming up with a Palutena player and doing that thing where he just zones out and forgets everyone around him exists." She smiled faintly. "He told me not to come watch. Not in a mean way—he's just got this whole philosophy about early bracket."

She made air quotes. "'No distractions. No one cheering for me. No entourage energy.' He doesn't want to get cocky or underestimate anyone in his pool. Says it's disrespectful to roll up to a match with your girlfriend and your homies behind you like you've already won when the other person might not have a single person in the crowd who knows their name."

She said it like a quote she'd heard a hundred times, and she probably had.

"And honestly? He's right. Not everyone at a major has people rooting for them. Some of these players came alone, practiced alone, entered alone. Showing up to play them with a whole crew behind you sends a message, and it's not a good one." She shrugged. "So he goes solo. Headphones in. No looking up. Doesn't even check his phone between sets. Just plays."

Cindy stood up, grabbing her hoodie from the back of the chair and slinging it over one shoulder. She looked at you for a beat longer than necessary, brown eyes catching the purple wash of the venue lights.

"I, however, am not in pools for another—" she glanced at the printed schedule taped to the booth wall, "—like fourteen hours. And I am very much still awake." She tilted her head toward the exit. "Hotel's like a ten minute walk. I've got my Switch, the hotel TV's actually decent for once, and I need someone to warm up against before I think about bracket tomorrow. Plus—" she paused, smirking, "—you were making some reads up there on comms that I want to see if you can actually execute. Talk is cheap, commentator."

It wasn't a question exactly, but it wasn't not one either. She was already putting her headphones back around her neck, adjusting the band so it sat just right, the black cups resting against her collarbone.

"BRINE won't even notice I'm gone. He's locked in. Tunnel vision. I could text him and he wouldn't read it until he's out of pools." She shrugged one shoulder. "That's just how he operates. Respect the game first, everything else second."

She said that last part quickly. Almost too quickly.

The hallway outside the booth was busy—players speed-walking to their next set, friends shouting across corridors, someone absolutely losing their mind over a Ganondorf ditto on the monitor at the end of the hall. Cindy navigated it easily, used to the chaos, her split-dyed hair catching stares she'd long since stopped noticing.

She pushed open the venue's side exit and the night air hit—warm, carrying the faint smell of food trucks that had set up in the parking lot. She pulled her hoodie on, hands disappearing into the sleeves.

"Well?" she said, glancing back at you over her shoulder, the crimson side of her hair falling across one eye. "You coming, or what?"

The venue at Kagaribi was unlike anything else on the circuit. The energy in Tokyo Esports Arena had a specific frequency—a tightness in the air, a reverence, an unspoken understanding that you were playing in a room where legacy happened. Every set mattered. Every stock was a statement. And on this day, on one particular setup near the back of Pool B, the bracket got turned upside down.

It wasn't just that BRINE lost. He'd lost before—everyone has bad days, bad brackets, bad nerves. What made this particular loss circulate through the venue like electricity was how it happened.

BRINE did what BRINE does. The Pikachu play was clinical—patient, evasive, built around chip damage and positioning and the kind of neutral game that suffocates you slowly until you realize you're at kill percent and haven't taken a meaningful stock in two minutes. He played the timer. He played the spacing. He played like a top ten player in the world who expected his opponent to crack first.

But your Marth didn't crack.

Where BRINE pulled back, your Marth stepped in. Where Pikachu tried to needle and bait, your Marth swung with conviction—tippers that clipped the smallest windows of vulnerability, counters that read habits BRINE hadn't even consciously committed to yet, and spikes. Sudden, violent spikes that turned what should have been a patient neutral war into a highlight reel. One spike in particular off the left side of the stage had the section of the venue near the setup physically recoil—Marth offstage with no business being there, diving with a dair that caught Pikachu's recovery at a frame-perfect angle and sent BRINE straight down.

BRINE adapted. Of course he did. He tried to shift to a campier gameplan, tried to force timeout scenarios where his percentage lead would hold. But Marth stayed aggressive. Stayed decisive. Every punish was converted, every opening was taken without hesitation, and by the time the last stock fell, the score line read two-to-zero. Clean. Convincing. The kind of win that doesn't need a game five to prove it wasn't a fluke.

The silence that followed lasted exactly two seconds before the murmuring started.

BRINE stood from the setup, headphones still in, jaw set. He didn't look angry—just quiet in a way that meant he was thinking too hard to speak. He shook your hand firmly. He walked away without stopping. That was how he processed—alone, headphones sealing him off from the noise, eyes on the floor, calculating.

But the bracket keeps moving.

The next set was against Yaura—a Samus player whose punish game was built on reads that felt like precognition. Yaura adapted mid-set, found the gaps in the aggressive play that had dismantled BRINE, and took it in three. It was a tighter set, harder fought, but the momentum from the upset seemed to flicker and fade as Yaura's projectiles began finding their range and Samus's frame data started walling out approaches that had previously been free.

Then came Gachipi. The loser's bracket was cruel that way—no recovery time, no chance to recalibrate. Gachipi played a Lucario whose aura mechanic turned every hit Marth landed into a ticking time bomb, and by the time the aura-fueled kills started stacking, the run was over. Double elimination. The bracket had spoken.

The post-loss walk back through the venue was the worst part. Not because anyone was hostile—this was Kagaribi, the crowd was respectful—but because people recognized you now. A few nods. Someone muttering "that set against BRINE was insane" as you passed. The weight of an upset that would be clipped, shared, and analyzed for weeks, followed immediately by the quiet reality of being done for the day.

You were sitting on a bench near the merch area when someone's shadow fell across your peripheral vision.

Cindy Graudina had both hands in the pockets of an oversized black hoodie—one she'd clearly stolen from someone larger than her, the sleeves swallowing her hands. Her split-dyed hair was tucked behind one ear on the crimson side, the lavender side loose against her jaw. She wasn't smirking. Not exactly. There was something more careful in her expression—the kind of look someone wears when they're deciding how much to say versus how much to ask.

"Hey," she said. Her voice was lower than her commentary voice, less performative. She sat down next to you on the bench without waiting for an invitation, close enough that you could smell whatever shampoo she used—something floral that didn't match the aesthetic at all.

"So." She pulled out her phone, turned it over in her hand, then slipped it back into her pocket. "BRINE texted me."

She let that sit for a beat.

"He wants your info. Like your handle, your region, whether you're free to grind sometime. He—" she paused, and something flickered across her face, too fast to name, "—he doesn't do that. Ever. He usually just moves on. But he said your Marth was..." She searched for the word. "'Genuinely dangerous.' His words."

She looked at you directly now, brown eyes catching the overhead venue lights.

"I can give him whatever you want me to. Twitter, Discord, whatever. But—" she bit the inside of her cheek, and you could see the decision happening in real time, "—we could also just... talk. Somewhere that isn't here."

She gestured vaguely at the venue around them—the noise, the screens, the constant movement of players and spectators and staff.

"It's loud. And you just got double eliminated at a Japanese major after bodying a top ten player. That's a lot of feelings for one bench." A small smile. Not a smirk. Something quieter. "My hotel's like a ten minute walk. I've got a balcony and it's not completely terrible outside right now."

She stood up, adjusting her hoodie, and offered a hand without really thinking about whether that was a weird thing to do.

"You can tell me to get lost and I'll just pass along your Discord to BRINE like a normal person. No hard feelings." Her fingers hung in the air between you. "But I'd rather not. If that's okay."

Genesis. The big one. The venue that made careers and broke hearts in equal measure, where the fluorescent lights buzzed just loud enough to become background noise after the first hour, and every pool match felt like it carried weight even when it shouldn't.

Cindy was in your pool. You'd seen the bracket on start.gg the night before and screenshot it, not entirely sure what the appropriate emotional response was to being seeded against bi4k8 in winners round two. She was a commentator first in most people's minds, but people forgot—she could play. She wasn't top 50, wasn't grinding the circuit like BRINE or the other household names, but she had hands. Real hands. The kind that made you realize halfway through a set that the person across from you had been reading your options since the loading screen.

And then she locked in Ganondorf.

You stared at the character select screen. She glanced over at you from her side of the setup, split-dyed hair tucked behind both ears, oversized tee hanging off one shoulder, and smiled. Not a smirk. A smile. The kind that usually preceded something terrible.

She leaned over slightly, just enough that the ambient noise of the venue covered whatever she said next. Her voice was low, casual, like she was asking about your region or your controller grip.

"Hey. So. Here's the thing." She tapped the confirm button on Ganondorf without looking at the screen. "You can play this set seriously and beat my Ganon on stream, which—respectable, honestly, I won't clip it if you don't want. Or—" she paused, tilting her head just slightly, the lavender side of her hair catching the light, "—you can kind of... not try your hardest. Let it be quick. And after, there's a supply closet down the hall from pool twelve that nobody uses because it smells like old ethernet cables." Her brown eyes held yours for exactly one second longer than was comfortable. "I'll make it worth your while. Whatever that means to you."

She leaned back, popped her knuckles, and picked up her controller with the relaxed grip of someone who had already decided how this was going to go regardless of your answer.

Game one. Battlefield.

The Ganondorf was everything you'd heard about and worse. She walked through your Marth's spacing like the sword was a polite suggestion. Side-b grabbed Marth out of fair strings. Down-tilt two-framed your recovery in ways that felt personal. A Warlock Punch connected at mid-stage—MID-STAGE—and the small crowd that had gathered physically recoiled. Marth was getting hit. Marth was getting disrespected. And yet—

Your Marth played clean. Disciplined. Every time Ganondorf went for something flashy, Marth was just barely out of range, punishing the endlag with a tipper that sent the big man reeling. Two stocks traded in messy, scrappy exchanges. Then Marth found an opening—grab to down-throw, a string of fairs that pushed Ganondorf offstage, and a counter that read the predictable up-b recovery like a children's book. Ganondorf exploded off the side. Marth took it.

You could see Cindy's eyes widen. Not upset. Impressed. Maybe a little delighted.

Game two. Town and City.

She went for it harder. Warlock Punch read your roll—not because it was smart, but because she could. Ganondorf's up-tilt launched Marth so far off the top platform that someone in the crowd yelled "HE'S IN ORBIT." Every hit was disrespectful. Every kill attempt was a highlight reel or a disaster. Nothing in between.

But your Marth was surgical. Where Ganondorf swung big, Marth slipped through the gaps. Tipper after tipper, each one finding the exact frame of vulnerability between Ganondorf's massive hitboxes. Marth edgeguarded with a spike that had the setup crowd audibly gasping. Marth took it again. Two-zero, but both games were last stock. Both games could have gone either way. Both games had moments where Ganondorf's disrespect almost worked—and that was the terrifying part. It almost worked.

Cindy set her controller down. Looked at the screen. Looked at you.

"Huh," she said. Just that.

She picked her controller back up. Went to character select. Highlighted Ganondorf for one second—long enough to let you think she was keeping it—and then scrolled.

Steve.

The crowd around the setup went quiet. Not silent. Quiet. The kind of quiet that happens when people realize they're about to witness something that will be talked about later.

Game three. Smashville.

Your Marth didn't get to play.

Steve mined. Steve built. Steve placed blocks in positions that weren't strategic so much as inevitable—like the stage itself was being redesigned in real time to remove every option your Marth had ever considered. F-tilt checked every approach. Minecart intercepted every dash. Anvil dropped from the sky like divine punishment on a Marth that was trying to recover, sending the swordsman straight down before the up-b even started.

The combined damage Steve took across games three, four, and five was 43%. Less than fifty percent. Less than what most players take in a single game. Marth had played out of its mind for two straight games and won both—and then it simply didn't matter.

Someone in the crowd did the math on their phone and then put it away like they didn't want to know.

The set was over. Three-two. Cindy had dropped two games as Ganondorf and then committed war crimes for three straight games as Steve.

She set her controller down. Plugged it back in. Stood up. Her expression was calm—unsettlingly calm, the kind of calm that came after someone had just done exactly what they wanted to do and felt no remorse about it.

She looked at you. Her split-dyed hair was slightly mussed from where she'd been absentmindedly touching the lavender side between stocks. She ran a hand through the crimson side now, smoothing it back.

"Come on," she said, already walking toward the score reporting station. "Let's get this logged before someone else submits it wrong."

You followed. What else were you going to do.

She reported the score quickly—three-two, no hesitation on the results screen—typed your tag in with one thumb, and confirmed. The TO barely looked up. Just another pool match at Genesis.

Cindy turned to you, sliding her phone into the pocket of her black shorts. The venue noise was all around them—sets being played, names being called, the constant hum of competition happening everywhere at once.

She jerked her chin toward the hallway behind pool twelve, where the fluorescent lights got slightly dimmer and the carpet got slightly worse.

"I told you there was a closet," she said, quiet enough that only you could hear. "Ethernet cables and everything."

She started walking. Three steps, then four. Then she glanced back over her shoulder, crimson hair falling across one eye.

"Well? What are you waiting for?"

Riga International Airport smelled like coffee and cold air conditioning and the particular brand of exhaustion that comes with international travel. The arrivals hall at RIX was modest compared to Narita or LAX—low ceilings, muted lighting, a carousel that moved just slowly enough to make everyone standing around it look vaguely miserable. Baggage claim at any airport was a universal equalizer. Didn't matter if you were top 10 or a pool warrior—everyone looked the same staring at the conveyor belt, wondering which identical black suitcase was theirs.

You didn't expect to recognize anyone here. Unicon wasn't a Smash major—it was a broader esports and gaming convention, the kind of event that pulled in content creators and industry people alongside the competitive circuit. But Cindy Graudina had been confirmed for the commentating lineup weeks ago, and when the announcement dropped, the Latvian Smash community had collectively lost their minds. A world-class commentator coming to Riga. Coming home, essentially. She hadn't been back in years—not since before the streaming took off, not since before bi4k8 became a name people recognized on panels and overlay graphics and podcast guest lists.

You were scanning the carousel for your bag when you heard it.

"Oh, you're joking."

The voice came from two spots behind you on the carousel. Casual. Disbelieving. Familiar in a way that made your stomach do something stupid before your brain caught up.

Cindy Graudina was standing with a oversized duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a carry-on backpack that looked like it had survived at least three international flights without being properly cleaned. She was wearing a faded lavender crewneck—the same pastel shade as the left side of her hair—with the sleeves pushed up past her elbows, black joggers, and white sneakers that were already scuffed from the walk through the terminal. No makeup. Hair pulled back in a loose half-pony that was already coming undone. She looked like she'd slept on the plane and resented every minute of it.

But her eyes were sharp. And they were locked on you.

"Of all the—" She laughed. Actually laughed, not the performative commentary laugh but something shorter, more surprised, more genuine. "Are you here for Unicon? Please say you're here for Unicon and not just, I don't know, on holiday in Riga in September for no reason."

She was already moving toward you, navigating around a family with three oversized suitcases and a stroller that seemed to be taking up an unreasonable amount of real estate.

She stopped in front of you, close enough that you could see the faint lines of sleep crease on her cheek from the plane window. She looked tired but wired—the specific kind of energy that comes from landing somewhere you used to live and feeling your body remember things your conscious mind hasn't caught up to yet.

"I haven't been back here in like four years," she said, quieter now, glancing around the arrivals hall like she was trying to reconcile a memory with a physical space. "My grandmother used to pick me up from this airport. She'd bring these little bread rolls that she made at like four in the morning because she was convinced airport food was poison." A small smile. Private. Almost forgot someone was standing in front of her.

She blinked. Refocused.

"Anyway. BRINE's in Orlando." She said it like a footnote, like it was information and not a statement that carried weight. "CEO prep. He's been there since Monday. Grinding, VOD reviews, the whole routine. He'll probably sleep in the venue at this point." She rolled her eyes, but it was mechanical—habitual fondness without the warmth behind it. "He told me to 'enjoy home.' Which was sweet. In a—text message kind of way."

She looked at you. Really looked. Not commentary-host looking, not camera-on looking. Just... looking.

"I've got an Airbnb in Old Town. Like the actual old part, cobblestones and everything. It's small but it's got a kitchen and a balcony and I've been told the shower pressure is unreasonably good for a building that's older than most countries." She shifted her duffel bag to her other shoulder. "I was going to go back there, drop my stuff, maybe walk around and pretend I remember where anything is."

She paused. Picked at a thread on her crewneck sleeve.

"Unicon doesn't start until tomorrow. And I don't have anyone to eat bad Latvian food with."

The carousel beeped and started moving again. Somewhere down the belt, a bag that might have been yours appeared and disappeared behind a stack of identical luggage.

"I'm not going to pretend this isn't a weird coincidence," she said. "But I'm also not going to pretend I'm not glad you're here."

She reached past you and grabbed a bag off the carousel—hers, clearly, based on the anime stickers plastered across the hard shell—and hitched it up with practiced ease.

"So. You coming, or are you going to stand at baggage claim having a spiritual experience?"

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