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| | | | Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 Coordinator of Chaos Moderator | OP  Coordinator of Chaos Moderator Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 | .
Season 26 Final Round!!: PWC
The air conditioning has been out since Tuesday, and nobody’s calling maintenance because nobody wants to be the one who gets stuck with the bill. Jimmy has stripped down to a tank top that’s seen better decades, and Selaim has resorted to fanning herself with a cardboard fan she swiped from a funeral home—the one with a picture of Jesus on it, because apparently that was the only one left.
“Can we talk about the fact that Baron’s only ten points back?” Jimmy says, mopping his forehead with a paper towel that’s been used three times already. “Ten. Points. In a heat wave. In July. He’s going to cook us all alive and then serve us on a platter.”
Selaim waves the Jesus-fan with mechanical vigor. “He’s the reigning champion, Jimmy. That’s literally his job description. The real question is why the Boss is only four points behind. That’s fishy. That’s a man who knows where the bodies are buried.”
“Probably because he buried them,” Jimmy mutters. He flops backward into a swivel chair, which complains with a shriek of metal. “But forget Baron. Forget the Boss. Mina’s sitting on top of the pile with a bunny for a sidekick. How is that even allowed?”
Selaim fans faster. The cardboard edge flaps against her wrist. “Dash isn’t a sidekick, Jimmy. Dash is a strategic asset. That bunny has charmed more voters than the Boss has ever bribed, and that’s saying something. Have you seen the fan art? People are knitting him sweaters.”
“People are knitting him sweaters,” Jimmy repeats flatly. He stares at the ceiling, where a brown water stain has begun to look, alarmingly, like a map of the underworld. “I just don’t get it. She’s sweet, she’s got a rabbit, and somehow she’s beating Aqua by four points. Aqua. The man who’s won six times.”
“Former six-time champion,” Selaim corrects, with the particular smugness of someone who has been keeping a spreadsheet. “The minions aren’t what they used to be. I heard the third battalion defected to Mina’s campaign last week.”
Jimmy sits up so fast the chair nearly topples. “They did what?”
“Defected. To Mina. Apparently Dash offered them carrots.”
“Carrots.” Jimmy’s voice goes thin and high. “Carrots. Aqua’s been training those minions since the dawn of time, and they swap sides for—what—root vegetables?”
“Organic root vegetables,” Selaim adds, as if this makes all the difference. She folds the fan, taps it against her palm thoughtfully. Still Jimmy—Aqua’s four points back. Aqua. Six-time champion. Lord of the Minions. The man has minions, Jimmy. Actual minions. The yellow kind. The kind that show up at your door at three in the morning with clipboards and matching uniforms.”
Jimmy holds up a finger. “I’ve met those minions. They’re terrifying. One of them asked me for my social security number and I just—gave it to him. I don’t know why. He had a very persuasive voice.”
“That’s the point. Aqua doesn’t campaign. Aqua deploys. He’s got a system. He’s got infrastructure. He’s got minions filing paperwork in triplicate. Mina’s got a bunny and a smile. Four points is nothing. Four points is a rounding error in Aqua’s world.”
“Yeah, but—” Jimmy scratches his chin, which is slick with sweat. “Weez.”
The name lands between them like a dropped ice cube.
Selaim stops fanning. “Weez.”
Jimmy gives her a look that could curdle milk. He peels himself out of the chair, pads over to the water cooler—which is empty, because of course it is—and kicks it gently, which accomplishes nothing. “What about Weez? Sixteen points back. That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
Selaim unfolds the fan again. Jesus gazes serenely from the cardboard as she waves him back and forth. “Sixteen points is a lot. But Weez has pulled off worse. Four-time champion, moderator privileges—he’s got resources the others don’t. And she’s patient. Patient people are terrifying.”
Selaim pauses, lowers the fan. “But you know who I really feel bad for?”
“Who?”
“Maiden.”
Jimmy’s expression shifts from thoughtful to something more complicated—a wince, maybe, or the ghost of a wince, half-buried under the sweat and the heat. “Oh. Maiden.”
“Four points back,” Selaim says, and the way she says it is different from how she’d said it about Aqua. Not impressed. Pitying. “Tied with the Boss. Tied with Aqua. And nobody’s talking about her.”
Jimmy opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. Then he laughs—a short, sharp bark that has no humor in it at all. “Selaim. Selaim. You know Maiden doesn’t have a submission for this round.”
Selaim’s fan goes still. “What?”
“Maiden. She’s the dealer. She’s running the round. She literally can’t enter her own game. That’s in the charter. Section twelve, subsection—” He waves his hand vaguely. “Somewhere around the part where Phelan tried to rig the draw last season.”
Selaim’s face goes through several expressions in rapid succession—confusion, dawning comprehension, something that might be horror. “But—the standings. She’s four points back. She’s tied with—”
“She’s tied with Aqua and the Boss on paper, but she’s got nothing in the pot for this round. Zero. Zip. Nada.” Jimmy flops back into the chair, which groans beneath him. “The standings don’t reflect that because the standings are cumulative. But when the points drop from this round, she’s going to tumble. Hard. Like, off-a-cliff hard.”
Selaim sets the Jesus-fan down on the desk with a carefulness that feels almost reverent. “Does she know?”
Jimmy gives her a look that says of course she knows. “She’s the dealer, Selaim. She knows the rules better than anyone. That’s the whole point. She tied last round.” He pauses, picks at a thread on his tank top. “She miscalculated. Mina’s too far ahead, and Aqua’s too close behind. Four points was a cushion three rounds ago. Now it’s a death sentence.”
“So she’s—”
“Effectively eliminated from contention unless something catastrophic happens to the top three.” Jimmy says it flatly, the way you’d announce a funeral. “Two-time champion. Former champion. And she’s going to finish this season with nothing because she bet on being the house.”
Selaim picks the fan back up. She doesn’t wave it. She just holds it, staring at Jesus’s serene, cardboard face as if he might have an answer. “That’s brutal.”
“That’s ACRO,” Jimmy says. He pulls himself upright, wipes his forehead again with the paper towel, which has now reached a level of saturation that borders on the structural. “But hey—at least she’s not Phelan. Phelan got a restraining order and a ban from the set.”
Selaim makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “Right.” She unfolds the fan, gives it a half-hearted flap. “Do you think the Boss rigged it? Tied himself with her on purpose so she’d look competitive?”
Jimmy considers this. The water stain on the ceiling stares back at him, its underworld map now looking, if he squints, like a rabbit. A very specific rabbit. “I don’t think so,” he says slowly. “But you want to know what I do think is fishy?”
Selaim angles the fan toward him. “Enlighten me.”
“Aqua dealt last round.”
The words land, and Selaim’s hand freezes mid-flap. Jesus wobbles on the cardboard. “Aqua dealt?”
“Dealt. Ran the game. Posted the results. The whole nine yards.” Jimmy leans forward, elbows on his knees, and the chair creaks a warning he ignores. “And you know what happened? Someone—I won’t say who—tried to slip in a vote after the deadline. After Aqua had already tallied and posted. A last-minute hail mary, the kind of thing that could swing a round if it counted.”
Selaim’s eyes narrow. “And?”
“And Miales ruled it invalid.” Jimmy snaps his fingers. “Just like that. Technicality. Vote posted after the results were posted, so it doesn’t count. Dead on arrival. No appeal, no review, no nothing.”
“Who was the vote for?”
Jimmy’s mouth twists. “Miales.”
The fan drops an inch. Selaim’s expression goes very, very still—the kind of still that precedes either an explosion or a very long silence. “A vote for Miales,” she repeats, each word measured. “After the deadline. Posted by—who?”
“Gryphon.” Jimmy drums his fingers on his knee. “But here’s the thing, Selaim. Aqua dealt. Aqua posted. And Aqua’s four points behind Mina. And then someone tries to put another vote, and the Boss—the same Boss who’s also four points behind—rules it out on a technicality.”
Selaim sets the fan down flat on the desk. Jesus stares up at the ceiling, serene and unbothered, which feels like a personal insult given the circumstances. “You’re telling me the Boss disqualified a vote that would have made him the dealer for the round?”
“I’m telling you the Boss disqualified a vote that would have helped the Maiden,” Jimmy leans back, and the chair makes a sound like a dying animal. “Convenient, isn’t it?”
Selaim is quiet for a long moment. The air conditioning, or rather the absence of it, presses down on them like a hot, wet blanket. Somewhere in the studio, a light flickers—a fluorescent bulb giving up the ghost.
“That’s—” Selaim starts.
“Suspect?” Jimmy offers.
“I was going to say ‘textbook,’ but sure, suspect works.” She picks up the fan again, not to wave it but to grip it like a weapon.
.
| | | | | Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 Coordinator of Chaos Moderator | | OP Coordinator of Chaos Moderator Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 | The band is on break, sprawled across folding chairs in various states of heatstroke, and the drum kit has developed a mysterious warp from being parked too close to a window. Phelan, exiled from the production booth but apparently not from the premises entirely, has set up a lemonade stand in the parking lot and is charging exorbitant rates.
The air in the chamber crackled with the electric hum of anticipation, the kind that settles into the bones and makes the teeth ache. Jimmy straightened his lapels and stepped to the center of the dais, the overhead lights catching the gold thread in his waistcoat.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and his voice carried the particular warmth of a man who had presided over enough final rounds to know exactly what the weight of the moment required. “The standings are set. The margins are thin. And the hour, my friends, has arrived.”
Beside him, Selaim adjusted her spectacles and consulted the tablet cradled in her palm. “Maiden has informed us that the entries for the Final Round will be posted within the hour. 60 minutes.” She held up a single finger, as though the number required physical demonstration. “The contenders have been notified. The judges have taken their seats. The archives have been opened.”
Jimmy clasped his hands behind his back and rocked onto his heels. “For those of you who’ve joined us late—and shame on you, truly—the Final Round operates under the old rules. Each leader submits a single entry. No revisions. No extensions. No mercy.” He paused, letting the word hang in the air like a blade. “The entry that Maiden posts will be the entry that stands. And the points—” he smiled, thin and sharp, “—the points will be absolute.”
A murmur rippled through the gallery. Near the front row, a woman in a wide-brimmed hat leaned forward and whispered something to her companion, who nodded gravely.
Selaim tapped the tablet twice. “We’ve received confirmation from all six leaders. Mina, Aqua, Baron, Weez, and Miales—all have signaled their readiness.” She glanced up. “The entries are being compiled as we speak. Maiden’s server is warming up. The timestamp will be visible to all, and the timestamp, as always, is the final arbiter of order.”
Jimmy raised his hand, and the chamber fell silent. Not gradually, but all at once, the way a room goes quiet when something important is about to happen.
“The Final Round,” he said, “begins now.”
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| | | | | Joined: Jul 2023 Posts: 278 Likes: 6 Member | | Member Joined: Jul 2023 Posts: 278 Likes: 6 | Let the voting begin!
1. Poorly Worded Choices (throughout season 26)
2. Piracy without Charity - that well known accounting firm
3. Pure Whimsical Chaos (Otters are adorable, aren't they?)
4. Pigeons With Confidence (Poop wherever they want!)
5. Please Wear Clothes (Some bodies are not meant to be seen!)
6. Perfect With Chocolate (Anything, Everything, Always)
7. Prolific Watermelon Consumer (I *love* summer fruits!)
8. Procrastinating Work Constantly (My character has priorities.)
9. Professional Workplace Chaos (We're still unhinged, we just do it business casual)
10. Personality Watchers Consolidate (we Muggles have to protect ourselves)
11. Princesses Won't Chase (After crownless frogs) | | | | | Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 Coordinator of Chaos Moderator | | OP Coordinator of Chaos Moderator Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 |
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| | | | | Joined: Apr 2002 Posts: 23,567 Likes: 3 Moderator | | Moderator Joined: Apr 2002 Posts: 23,567 Likes: 3 | I'll take 6,3,5
6. Perfect With Chocolate (Anything, Everything, Always)
3. Pure Whimsical Chaos (Otters are adorable, aren't they?)
5. Please Wear Clothes (Some bodies are not meant to be seen!) | | | | | Joined: May 2002 Posts: 3,326 Likes: 5 Teddy Bear Protector Member | | Teddy Bear Protector Member Joined: May 2002 Posts: 3,326 Likes: 5 | Tedted wants to know why nobody feels sorry for me
MousieHuggz !!! (tm)
--Mackey | | | | | Joined: May 2002 Posts: 3,326 Likes: 5 Teddy Bear Protector Member | | Teddy Bear Protector Member Joined: May 2002 Posts: 3,326 Likes: 5 | 7 covered in 6 is great, until the 4 get it
MousieHuggz !!! (tm)
--Mackey | | | | | Joined: Apr 2016 Posts: 6,814 Likes: 12 Member | | Member Joined: Apr 2016 Posts: 6,814 Likes: 12 | | | | | | Joined: May 2000 Posts: 84,335 Likes: 121 Wizop Administrator | | Wizop Administrator Joined: May 2000 Posts: 84,335 Likes: 121 | 1 9 6 please  | | | | | Joined: May 2014 Posts: 6,215 Likes: 7 Confusingly Confused Moderator | | Confusingly Confused Moderator Joined: May 2014 Posts: 6,215 Likes: 7 | | | | | | Joined: Nov 2004 Posts: 14,675 Likes: 39 Maris Imperium Moderator |  Maris Imperium Moderator Joined: Nov 2004 Posts: 14,675 Likes: 39 | | | | | | Joined: Jun 2002 Posts: 11,172 Likes: 4 Administrator | | Administrator Joined: Jun 2002 Posts: 11,172 Likes: 4 | | | | | | Joined: Nov 2023 Posts: 191 Likes: 2 Member | | Member Joined: Nov 2023 Posts: 191 Likes: 2 | | | | | | Joined: May 2023 Posts: 121 Member | | Member Joined: May 2023 Posts: 121 | | | | | | Joined: May 2010 Posts: 18,871 Likes: 40 Mayhem Inc. Moderator | | Mayhem Inc. Moderator Joined: May 2010 Posts: 18,871 Likes: 40 |
Jinkies!
| | | | | Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 Coordinator of Chaos Moderator | | OP Coordinator of Chaos Moderator Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 | Selaim’s tablet chirped—a sound like a small, distressed bird—and she looked down, and her expression did something complicated. Jimmy, mid-rock onto his heels, caught it out of the corner of his eye and froze.
“Hold that thought,” Selaim said, and her voice had gone a half-octave higher than usual, which meant something was very wrong or very interesting, and in ACRO those were often the same thing.
Jimmy lowered his hand. The silence he’d summoned curdled into uncertainty.
Selaim read the message again. Then a third time, her lips moving slightly. She looked up, and the overhead lights caught the lenses of her spectacles and turned them into two small, white moons.
“Maiden has extended the voting window,” she announced, and the words came out flat, almost clinical, as though she were reading a diagnosis. “Twenty-four additional hours. The deadline is now—” she tapped the tablet, did the math silently, “—tomorrow at this same hour.”
The murmur that rippled through the gallery this time was not a murmur. It was a sound—a collective intake of breath followed by a low, spreading rumble of voices colliding. Near the front row, the woman in the wide-brimmed hat sat back so hard her chair squeaked against the floor.
Jimmy’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “She can’t do that,” he said, and it came out less like a statement and more like a question directed at the universe, which had clearly stopped playing by the rules.
“She’s the dealer,” Selaim said. She set the tablet down on the dais with the careful deliberateness of someone setting down a live grenade. “Section twelve, subsection—”
“Don’t quote the charter at me, Selaim, I know the charter.” Jimmy ran a hand through his hair, which was already standing at attention from the heat and the stress. “She’s the dealer. She set the deadline. She posted the entries. The timestamp is the timestamp. That’s the whole—that’s the entire system. You can’t just—extend. That’s not a thing.”
“She’s citing subsection four, paragraph—” Selaim squinted at the tablet. “—the dealer may, at their sole discretion, extend any deadline by up to twenty-four hours if they determine that external circumstances have compromised the integrity of the voting process.”
Jimmy stared at her. “What external circumstances?”
Selaim read further. Her eyebrows climbed. “She says the air conditioning is out.”
The silence that followed was absolute, and somehow hotter than the silence that had preceded it.
“The air conditioning,” Jimmy repeated.
“The air conditioning. She’s arguing that the heat wave constitutes an external circumstance that has—and I’m quoting directly here—‘compromised the cognitive function of the electorate to a degree that renders the current voting window inadequate for a fair contest.’” Selaim looked up from the tablet. Her expression was caught somewhere between awe and something that looked dangerously like admiration. “She’s invoking the cognitive-function clause. Nobody’s invoked the cognitive-function clause since Phelan tried to claim his cat was a registered voter.”
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| | | | | Joined: May 2000 Posts: 84,335 Likes: 121 Wizop Administrator | | Wizop Administrator Joined: May 2000 Posts: 84,335 Likes: 121 | Miales, you are a funny guy.. in a good way!  | | | | | Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 Coordinator of Chaos Moderator | | OP Coordinator of Chaos Moderator Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 | .
Two days later, the air conditioning was still out.
Jimmy had given up on the tank top entirely and was now operating in a state of undress that was technically legal but aesthetically questionable. Selaim had upgraded from the Jesus-fan to a battery-operated handheld unit that whirred with the desperate enthusiasm of something fighting a losing war against entropy.
The gallery had thinned. Phelan’s lemonade stand had run out of lemons and was now selling “atmospheric despair” for five dollars a cup.
Selaim’s tablet chirped. The small, distressed bird sound. She looked down, and her expression did something—not complicated this time, but sharp, clean, the expression of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment and had rehearsed their reaction in the mirror.
“She closed it,” Selaim said.
Jimmy, who had been attempting to cool himself by pressing his forehead against the metal leg of the desk, lifted his head. “Closed what?”
“The voting. Maiden just closed the voting.” Selaim set the tablet on the dais with that same careful deliberateness, like it might bite. “Forty-seven votes. All tallied. Timestamped. Certified. She’s posting the results in ten minutes.”
Jimmy peeled himself off the desk leg, leaving a perfect outline of his forehead in sweat. He stared at Selaim. Then at the tablet. Then back at Selaim.
“Hold on,” he said. “Hold on, hold on, hold on.” He held up both hands, palms out, as though physically stopping the conversation from proceeding. “Can we—can we pause for one second and talk about the fact that you’re the one getting all the updates?”
Selaim blinked. “What?”
“The updates. The chirps. The little bird sounds.” Jimmy pointed at the tablet. “Every time something happens—Maiden extends the deadline, Maiden closes the voting, the air conditioning is out, the air conditioning is still out—your tablet chirps. Your tablet. Not mine. Not the Boss’s. Not the big screen we spent twelve thousand credits installing last season.” He jabbed his finger harder. “Yours.”
Selaim looked down at the tablet. Then back up at Jimmy. The battery-operated fan whirred between them like a tiny, anxious witness.
“I’m the liaison,” she said, in a tone that suggested this should have been obvious.
“You’re the liaison,” Jimmy repeated. “Since when?”
“Since Tuesday. The Boss appointed me.” Selaim adjusted her spectacles with one finger. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“He did not tell me.” Jimmy’s voice had gone very quiet, which was worse than when it went loud. “He absolutely did not tell me. I’ve been standing here melting into the floorboards for four days, refreshing my email every thirty seconds, and you’re getting push notifications directly from Maiden’s server.”
Selaim opened her mouth, closed it. The fan whirred. Somewhere in the parking lot, Phelan could be heard shouting something about “atmospheric despair now half-off for loyal customers.”
“It’s not a big deal, Jimmy. It’s just—the Boss said someone needed to be the point of contact, and I volunteered, and—”
“You volunteered.” Jimmy pressed both hands flat against the desk and leaned forward. Sweat dripped off his nose and hit the wood with a small, accusatory sound. “You volunteered to be the liaison. The one person who gets real-time updates from the dealer. The one person who knows exactly when voting opens and closes and who’s submitted what and—” He stopped. His eyes narrowed. “Selaim.”
“What.”
“You knew.” Jimmy’s voice dropped to something barely above a whisper, the kind of whisper that carries further than a shout. “You knew she was going to extend. You knew the whole time. That’s why you weren’t panicking when she cited the cognitive-function clause. You weren’t surprised. You were waiting.”
Selaim held his gaze for exactly two seconds. Then the tablet chirped again—louder this time, insistent, the bird sound escalating into something that could only be described as agitated.
She looked down. Her lips moved as she read. Whatever was on the screen, it made her straighten her spine and set her jaw in a way that Jimmy recognized, and recognized with dread, as her showtime face.
“Results are up,” she said, and her voice had shed every ounce of the previous conversation like a snake shedding skin. Professional. Clear. Broadcast-ready. She picked up the tablet, turned it so the screen faced outward, and tapped twice.
The overhead lights dimmed on cue—some signal had been sent, some button pressed, and the studio responded with the mechanical obedience of a place that had been doing this for years. The big screen—the twelve-thousand-credit big screen—flickered to life behind the dais, and on it, in crisp white text against a deep blue background, the results materialized.
Def Player V1 V2 V3 | Du An Gr Mi Gy Mi We Aq Ba Mo Pl | Total
1 Dugan 2 5 6 | 2 1 3 3 1 | 10
2 Angr 9 1 3 | 3 2 2 | 7
3 Gryphon 4 6 11 | 1 3 3 2 1 3 | 13
4 Mina 3 2 1 | 3 1 2 | 6
5 Gypsy 1 9 6 | 2 2 1 | 5
6 Miales 3 5 10 | 1 2 1 3 2 2 1 | 12
7 Weez 6 3 5 | 3 | 3
8 Aqua 1 2 3 | 3 | 3
9 Baron 8 6 1 | 3 2 | 5
10 Mouse 7 6 4 | 1 | 1
11 Playful 3 4 6 | 1 | 1
Selaim didn’t read from the tablet. She didn’t need to. She’d already memorized the numbers, and the way she delivered them carried the weight of someone who understood that the numbers weren’t just numbers—they were seismic events in miniature, fault lines shifting beneath the feet of six people who had spent months building toward this exact moment.
“The Final Round results,” she announced, and her voice carried to the back of the gallery without effort, “are as follows.”
A pause. Not for drama—Jimmy could tell, because Selaim didn’t do drama for drama’s sake. She paused because she was double-checking the math in her head, the way she always did, the way that had made the Boss appoint her liaison in the first place.
“First place,” she said, and the word hung in the hot, still air like a bell being struck, “goes to Gryphon’s Definition for PWC. Thirteen points.”
Jimmy’s mouth fell open. The gallery erupted—not in cheers, not yet, but in that particular sound of collective recalibration, the sound of dozens of people simultaneously rewriting their mental spreadsheets. Near the front row, the woman in the wide-brimmed hat was scribbling furiously on a napkin.
“Second place,” Selaim continued, riding over the noise with the ease of someone who had been born for this, “Miales. Twelve points.”
The murmuring sharpened. Twelve points. He was behind by 4 points at the start. Jimmy could feel the arithmetic rearranging itself in real time—the standings, the margins, the whole precarious architecture of the season shifting under the weight of two numbers that had just rewritten everything.
"Where was Mina?" Jimmy asked nervously wiping his brow with his sodden tank top.
“Fifth place,” Selaim said, and Jimmy leaned forward without meaning to, his palms still flat on the desk, “with 6 points.”
Six points. Jimmy’s brain stuttered, caught on the number like a record needle hitting a scratch. Six. Mina had entered the final round with 170—a commanding lead, four points clear of Aqua, four points clear of the Boss. Six points would put her at—
“Wait,” Jimmy said, and his voice cut through the gallery noise with the raw, unprofessional urgency of a man who had forgotten he was on a dais. “Selaim. Selaim, hold on. Six points?”
Selaim didn’t look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, tracking the numbers as they populated the leaderboard in real time—a cascade of arithmetic that was, Jimmy realized with a sickening lurch, not going the way anyone had predicted.
“Mina,” Jimmy repeated, louder now, and the gallery went quiet because Jimmy didn’t raise his voice often, and when he did, people listened. “She had 170 going in. Six points puts her at 176. Aqua had 166, and if he got—what did he get?”
Selaim’s finger traced the screen. Her lips moved. “,” she said. “Aqua took eighth. Three points” She tapped something. Scrolled.
“Three,” Jimmy echoed. The number tasted wrong. “Three points. So Aqua finishes at 169. And the Boss—the Boss got twelve. He started at 166, so he finishes at—”
“178,” Selaim said, and the word came out like a stone dropped into still water.
The gallery made a sound—not a cheer, not a gasp, but something between the two, a collective exhalation that carried the weight of a season being inverted. Jimmy felt the math settle into place with the cold, geometric certainty of dominos falling.
“The Boss,” Jimmy said, and his voice had gone strange—hoarse, almost reverent, the voice of a man watching a building collapse in slow motion and finding it beautiful. “The Boss just overtook Mina. By two points. Two points.”
Selaim was already pulling up the full leaderboard on the big screen. The text scrolled, names and numbers locking into their final positions with the merciless finality of a guillotine blade:
![[Linked Image from dl.dropbox.com]](https://dl.dropbox.com/scl/fi/enyclptvifqcocay1z62p/Leaderboard26.png?rlkey=1thbh5o9xgvrb4tm879dt31n3&dl=1&ext=.png)
Jimmy stared at the screen. The numbers stared back. The water stain on the ceiling, that rabbit-shaped map of the underworld, seemed to mock him from above.
“Crap,” he said, and the word came out soft, almost gentle. Selaim’s finger hovered over the tablet. She scrolled again, slower this time, and Jimmy watched her face do the thing it did when the numbers weren’t adding up to what she expected—a slight tightening around the eyes, a barely perceptible tilt of the head.
“Jimmy,” she said. Her voice had dropped to something quiet, almost private, despite the gallery still buzzing behind them. “The Boss won.”
“I can do math, Selaim.”
“No, I mean—” She turned the tablet toward him, and her finger tapped the top line. 178. Miales. “He won. He’s the champion. For the third time. He came in four points behind Mina, got twelve in the final round, and—” She stopped. Her mouth opened. Closed. Then she laughed—a short, sharp, incredulous sound that startled a seat-filler in the third row. “He won. The air conditioning is out, the minions defected, Phelan’s selling despair in the parking lot, and the Boss won by two points.”
Jimmy rubbed his face with both hands, smearing sweat across his cheeks. “Two points. Two. Points. After six months. After a heat wave. After—” He dropped his hands and looked at the screen again, at that cruel, elegant arithmetic. “He didn’t even submit until the last hour. I was watching his feed. He posted at eleven fifty-nine.”
“Classic Miales,” Selaim murmured, and there was something almost fond in it, buried under layers of exasperation. She straightened, adjusted her spectacles, and the liaison in her clicked back into place—spine straight, chin up, voice calibrated for the room. “Jimmy. We have to announce the rest.”
Jimmy blinked. “The rest?”
“The awards. Lightning in the Bottle. Best Average.” She was already scrolling, her finger moving with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been compiling the data since Tuesday, since the air conditioning died, since the lemonade stand opened for business. “The round winners are posted, but the season awards need to be read.”
Jimmy glanced at the gallery. The crowd had settled into that restless, post-revelation energy—half the people on their phones, half still doing napkin math, all of them waiting for the next thing. The band had drifted back to their instruments, the off-key trumpet player already warming up with something that sounded like a funeral dirge.
“Right,” Jimmy said. He pulled himself upright, straightened his—well, he wasn’t wearing anything that could be straightened, so he straightened his posture instead, squared his shoulders, and turned to face the room with the particular gravitas of a man who had just watched his season predictions collapse and was determined to look professional about it.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and the gallery quieted on instinct, because Jimmy’s voice had that quality—the one that said something important is coming, and you’ll want to hear it. “Before we wrap, we have two season awards to announce.”
Selaim stepped forward, tablet raised like a shield. “Lightning in the Bottle,” she read, and her voice carried the formal cadence of someone reading a royal decree. “Awarded to the contestant who achieved the highest single-round score of the season.” She paused, scrolled, and something in her expression shifted—a softening, almost, a recognition of genuine achievement. “This year’s Lightning in the Bottle goes to Aqua, for his performance in Round Twenty-One.”
The gallery rustled. Near the front row, the woman with the wide-brimmed hat set down her napkin and pressed her hands together in what might have been applause or prayer.
“Twenty-one points,” Selaim said, and the number landed in the hot, still air with the weight it deserved. “Twenty-one points in a single round. The highest score of the season, and the highest since Baron’s twenty-one in last season.” She glanced at the screen, where Aqua’s name had already populated the award slot, the number 21 glowing beside it like a small, defiant star. “Lord of the Minions, former six-time champion, and now the holder of this season’s single most explosive performance.”
Jimmy found himself nodding, despite everything—despite the heat, despite the minion defections, despite the fact that Aqua had just been dethroned from the top three by a margin so thin it barely existed. Twenty-one points. That was the kind of number that didn’t care about standings or strategy or air conditioning. That was lightning, caught and held, and Aqua had caught it.
“Best Average,” Selaim continued, scrolling again, and this time her eyebrows climbed—not in surprise, exactly, but in the particular way they did when the numbers confirmed something she’d suspected all along but hadn’t wanted to jinx by saying aloud. “Awarded to the contestant with the highest average points per round across the entire season.” She paused, and Jimmy could see her doing the calculation one final time in her head, the way she always did, double-checking the math against her own internal spreadsheet.
“Baron,” she said.
The name hung in the air for a beat. Then another.
“Nine-point-one-seven,” Selaim read, and the decimal places came out crisp, precise, the voice of someone who respected numbers the way other people respected scripture. “Nine-point-one-seven points per round, across twenty-three rounds, while reigning as the defending champion.” She looked up from the tablet, and there was something almost fierce in her expression—not directed at anyone, but at the sheer, stubborn arithmetic of it. “Thirteen points back in the standings, fifth place overall, and still the most consistent performer of the season.”
Jimmy let out a low whistle—involuntary, the kind of sound that escapes when admiration and disbelief collide. Nine-point-one-seven. He’d been tracking averages on a grease-stained napkin in his pocket since Round Ten, and he’d known Baron’s number was good, but seeing it confirmed, printed in clean white text on the big screen, was different. Different in the way that seeing a blueprint become a building is different.
“Consistent,” Jimmy murmured, and the word tasted like something he’d been chewing on all season. He looked at the leaderboard one more time—Miales at the top, Mina two points behind, Aqua nine points further down, and Baron sitting in fifth with the best average and nothing to show for it. The arithmetic didn’t lie. It just didn’t care.
He stepped forward, and the gallery went quiet again—that instinctive hush that settled when Jimmy moved to the center of the dais, the same way it did when a conductor raised a baton.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and his voice came out different than it had before. Flatter. The heat had done something to it—sanded off the edges, drained the showmanship. He wasn’t the ringmaster right now. He was just Jimmy, standing in a studio that smelled like sweat and lemonade and the faint, acrid ghost of a confetti cannon that had misfired two hours ago. “That concludes the season.”
Three words. He’d rehearsed a speech—something grand, something with cadence, something that would send the crowd out into the July heat feeling like they’d witnessed something epic. He’d written it on the back of a napkin, the same napkin he’d been using to track Baron’s average, and now the ink had run from the sweat and the words were illegible, just blue smudges on cheap paper.
He held up the napkin anyway. Looked at it. Let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
“I had a whole thing prepared,” he said, and the gallery made a sound—not laughter, exactly, but the warm, tired sound of people who understood. “Something about perseverance. Something about the margins. Something about how in ACRO, two points is the difference between a crown and a consolation prize.” He crumpled the napkin in his fist. “But it’s hot. The air conditioning is still out. And the Boss won. Again.”
He said it the way you’d say the sun rose. Not with excitement. Not with surprise. Just the flat, exhausted acknowledgment of a man who had watched this particular sunrise one too many times.
“Third championship,” Jimmy continued, and he ticked them off on his fingers, each one a small, weary punctuation mark.
He paused. The gallery waited. The off-key trumpet player, sensing a lull, began a tentative, mournful rendition of something that might have been “Auld Lang Syne” or might have been a cry for help.
Jimmy turned to the big screen one last time. “Until next season folks. Who knows what awaits.”
.
| | | | | Joined: May 2002 Posts: 3,326 Likes: 5 Teddy Bear Protector Member | | Teddy Bear Protector Member Joined: May 2002 Posts: 3,326 Likes: 5 | <tossing the red flag onto the field>
Now wait just a cotton-pickin minute. You said 47 votes. 47 is not divisible by 3. Somebody got cheated out of points. Am I going to have to send Tedted in to unmuddle this muddle????? All y'all had better hope not, bless your hearts.
MousieHuggz !!! (tm)
--Mackey | | | | | Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 Coordinator of Chaos Moderator | | OP Coordinator of Chaos Moderator Joined: Jan 2023 Posts: 10,718 Likes: 26 | Mouse do we even have 47 active players? Or has any of the characters on the teleplay actually voted? Like Phelan or his cat?
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| | | | | Joined: May 2014 Posts: 6,215 Likes: 7 Confusingly Confused Moderator | | Confusingly Confused Moderator Joined: May 2014 Posts: 6,215 Likes: 7 | Miales I am the proxy voter for the characters on the teleplay.
Please multiply my vote by the applicable number of characters. | | | | | Joined: Nov 2004 Posts: 14,675 Likes: 39 Maris Imperium Moderator | | Maris Imperium Moderator Joined: Nov 2004 Posts: 14,675 Likes: 39 | Congrats Miales on the win!
Congrats Baron on the highest average! | | |
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