The stadium, hundreds of millions forced to watch a crazy lady's magic act.

Waving about the human skull, The Third Gate reached into it in parody of the lottery and drew a scrap of paper.

She unfurled and read - it contained a nonsense title for her dagger-wrestling foe. “The Bender of Manifold Cutlery...hmm...bend the knives and sporks, he might, but he shall not bend our Golden Bars. So, what says The Gate?" She, The Third Gate, shook her head in denial. "‘Nay. He shall not enter!’” With a crumble and a toss, she drew another 'mystical' appellation. “The Pretzel Who Twists in The Dirt...hmm...a spoiled treat to The Many and to The Many’s delicacy, perhaps, but a delicacy for us, who hunger for our two planets’ tangling soils!" She produced a dirt-covered pretzel from her sleeve and nibbled. "So," she munched, "what says The Gate? ‘Nay. He shall not enter!'”

In each repetition of the final line, hundreds of thousands around the stadium echoed her. Through brute persistence, through the fact she'd survived where others hadn't, she’d managed to convert a minority section of the audience, those who’d seen beyond her absurd act to her immaculate devotion to the spectacle.

This showmanship, some were acknowledging, had not been solely from Uncle PLH, blessed be his friendship, but from her darker Crippled parentage as well. The duels in The Way of Fighting Alone when re-analysed revealed a heart aimed on performance. The Cripple's Legendary tools had been configured as much to win as to generate a narrative, to provoke and exhibit the greatest talents of his enemies, to immortalise them in defeat as he had himself in victory. His duels had arcs and climaxes. They had foreshadowing, the finishing combo introduced early and repeatedly in cryptographic fragments.

A controversial faction within the Virtual Realist community, mostly fans of The Third Gate, were beginning to argue that ‘The Cripple’ should be inaugurated as one of their own. Had he not gone into The Beyond of RP by learning archaic samurai Japanese for his character’s authenticity? Had he not generated vast lineages of lore? Had he not, in the spirit of artistic sacrifice, refused to break character ever, despite this causing everybody to call him cringe and to dismiss The Strategy as ultra-cringe?

The Cripple might, in fact, have been the most hardcore roleplay of all time.

The Third Gate, his deranged student, familiarised herself as usual with the arena’s dirt, dropping from the roof and scooping up a pinch to eat. This time, however, she seemed to taste something ominous within its grains.

“…ashes?” she said with a start.

Cranking her RP to the max for these quarter-finals, she at once threw herself down onto her belly like a serpent. In further imitation of the creature, she wriggled about, darting out her tongue and ingesting extra samples. With the experience from her Earthfriend shapeshifting, her snake impression was disturbingly superb.

Costumed Virtual Realists in the stands leapt to their hooves and applauded. Bravo, they bleated and whinnied, to this artisan of roleplay!

A shadow of death soon eclipsed the snake-woman’s licking features.

She hissed in terror. "ASSHESSSSSsssss! Friends, what is this sooty sweetness on our tongue? It seems to be the foretaste...of our ashes." Her eyes rolled into the back of her skull. "Before us smokes a burning bush, and within its crackling branches sits an Angel of The End who’s questioning our faith. She speaks: 'Sister, will you come to The Beyond wearing these soiled garments? Will you contaminate The Garden with this era’s obsolescent dirt? Or will you, Our Beloved Kin and Our Beloved Kindling, leap upon this starting fire in your most naked and exquisite forms?'"

Curiously, she used the plural, ‘forms’.

All this roleplayed nonsense did was introduce a gear swap. This was a routine procedure between matches and sets for students of A Thousand Tools or The Strategy since the extra weapons hogged inventory space.

By the arena side, a smokebomb puffed, and out of it stepped forth a disciple of The Third Gate draped in full-body cultist robes that hid their face. (Security had let this person in a few minutes earlier - the gear change was preplanned.) Summoned by her distress, the disciple clambered onto the stage and limped over to help. They moved with a decrepit gait like a 120-year-old suffering from quadruple arthritis. A samurai sword used as a cane prevented their fall.

A few oldheads in the crowd noticing the weapon slapped their knees in joy.

The Third Gate, getting up from her slithering in the dirt, ducked into the village map’s church with the disciple and an inspector, who would check for any contraband.

SaNguiNe, meanwhile, had been ignoring the weird theatrics.

During her absence, with his body warmed up, the wrestler jogged around the map, climbing its buildings with a speed impressive for a non-specialist.

He was a little distracted, but not by the roleplayer. Every now and then, his gaze was pulled towards the hilltop of the adjacent map overlooking this one. There on its slope, most of the finalists were gathering to watch. The knight roleplayer, the Indian pro, the random grandmother, and the assassin he'd known as 'Alphamutt', another embarrassing dupe in disguise, were all obediently trailing...him.

The Tyrant, whenever the fancy had taken him that day, had strolled onto the sidelines for a closer view of the matches. Those who followed him were blessed with his sage-tier duelling commentary. He praised the respectable plays and dissected the misplays, some of which he offered improvements on before they’d even occurred. In this teaching capacity, the teen had been careful with the advice given, beholden as he was to the role’s ethic of impartiality and his equal love for every student, promising and unpromising. He thus never addressed the competitors themselves mid-fight. Similarly, with a mind to the long view, he avoided sharing any killer tips that might alter the course of the competition.

SaNguiNe was wondering whether to ignore or glare at this monitoring presence when the teen himself took the initiative.

“Yo, SaNguiNe!” yelled The Tyrant. “Her grappling's better than she lets on, so make sure you’ve healed up before any engagements or you WILL lose. Whatever you do, do NOT fall into the weird experimental shenanigans. It’s all a façade to dislodge you from the superior standard. Your bet going into this tourney was correct. Stick to it. I’d recommend arm drags. Her upper limb control in human form is lacklustre, although you should still watch for unexpected stabs…”

As tip after hot tip for beating The Third Gate gushed forth, the crowd began to rage. While no rules technically forbade competitors from shouting advice, it seemed extremely bad manners coming from The Tyrant, who'd already spoiled 12 tournaments. Plus, he was breaking the rules by intruding on the arena during the matches.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The greatest anger sprang from her Virtual Realist supporters, who yelled, howled, and squawked. The whole continent of Africa added their boos. The Somali girl was an embarrassment, but she was also their last embarrassment. Her progression to the quarter finals when every rookie from Europe had dropped out had left them with a complicated international pride.

The Tyrant, wiser than the masses, turned to his followers to explain the sage wisdom and necessity of interference. “Let’s be real. This chick is suspicious as hell. She better lose now because I don’t want to duel her again." He snapped back to the wrestler. "Bro, SaNguiNe! Open your DMs, I've got the perfect sequen—"

“Shut up!” the wrestler shouted, mistaking these tips as a Machiavellian ploy to orchestrate his loss. “I’ll rely upon my own two hands to throttle this student that you couldn’t. After her, I’ll throttle you.”

“OK…well, if you have a plan already, that's cool. Good luck!”

“Fuck your luck!”

The Tyrant, one teenage eyebrow cocked in confusion, backed away from the ring and swivelled a 180. He asked the other duellists why SaNguiNe had squeezed into the sour tights today.

Unfortunately, the story of the wrestler’s grudge against him had never reached his ears. Last they’d spoken, SaNguiNe had been treating him with deference as an anonymous member of The Company. That’d been before the Loki-Artemis episode. The wrestler had since ceased communicating or sparring with the teen as he committed his soul to the silent path of vengeance against duelling's obnoxious god.

None of the other competitors knew why the wrestler was mad either. All were caught up in their own little duelling sub-universes.

Whitefrog gestured at the stadium booing the shameless attempt at interference. “You do breed a ton of hatred.”

"Success always does."

The crowd booed louder.

“Perhaps, Sir Henry,” offered Justinian, who’d once been driven to vengeance by his own mistaken grudge, “Sir SaNguiNe shares my former sin, judging according to shadowy appearances and not according to God’s more righteous judgement!”

Septic Rose, who'd rolled some with the wrestler, raised her hand but The Tyrant kept her muted.

While the group contemplated this unsolvable mystery, another mystery arose as the gear inspector emerged from the church alone, shaking their head in amusement.

Suddenly, by a technical anomaly, the projectors around the stadium were hijacked by the scene inside where the mystic had remained. (A cameraman had been invited in.)

The church’s interior had undergone a bizarre makeover to resemble the set of a low-budget student horror.

In the dark (produced by carpets hung hastily to block the windows), The Third Gate accompanied the disciple that’d brought her a fresh inventory. The disciple, a man, had been stripped naked of his cultist robes and was struggling to break free from restraints tying him to the church’s altar. Demonic runes decorated his bare torso. The mystic, hovering above him, panted with terror, her snakestaff shaking in her grip as she tottered back and forth between a choice of fatal consequence. Both shone in a sinister red glow. (This was cast by Lightstones held by the rest of the roleplayer’s assistant team. After stealthing in, they'd taken discrete positions out of angle, although one’s foot was visible to the camera.)

A mysterious voice boomed in the heavens to fill in the audience. (The match commentator had been sent a special introduction.)

"In her next battle," the voice narrated, "our heroine, The Third Gate, confronts her most difficult opponent yet, this saga's paper number one, SaNguiNe, a.k.a. The Blood Wrestler, a.k.a. He Who Flips. How, her heart has begged the heavens, is she to traverse this mighty sprawler and secure our splintered planets their annihilating merger? The heavens have thus answered: 'Child of our scorn, you have always known The Way, for it is You. Unlock The Final Gate.'"

It was time for a power-upgrade sequence RP. Now, she would expose her true and final form…or forms.

The disciple, robes removed, turned out to be an elderly Japanese guy with a flowing snow-white beard. For aficionados of the extended Crippleverse, the figure was instantly recognisable. This was a doppelganger of none other than The Cripple, from his Second Gate sage phase. Back then, his rip-off avatar of Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi had been aged after time travelling even further into the future of duelling.

Rather than a disciple, it'd been The Third Gate's master limping to her aid, but now...

The Not-Fake Cripple screamed into the mouth gag that'd once stopped his disciple's sermons.

The Third Gate, brushing her master's venerable white locks, whispered a conflicted apology. “Forgive me, my Second Father in these Days Before, whose tutelage I recompense with treachery. Know that in this martyrdom I choose for you, I’ve chosen also mine. Fate has decreed that we of The Gates, who form its Rails and its Pickets, may only open up The Way to The Beyond. Never shall we pass into it, never into The Gardens of Its Conjoined Splendour. Thus are we, The Kindling and The Seeds, but not The Fruit Trees Sprouting from The Ash. Thus are we, The First Rays to crack The Dark of The Horizon, but not The Endless Sun.”

She tipped her snakestaff sideways. Her jittering fingers unscrewed its bottom. Its shaft separated to reveal a dagger hidden inside. An oily green fluid oozed down its crooked blade, which was shaped like a key...to a gate.

The doppelganger, The Second Gate, panicking at the weapon, increased his struggle to break free. This accidentally worked as he slipped out of the rope tying him to the altar.

The actor froze in real panic.

The Third Gate, queen of RP improv, chucked a white powder from her sleeve into his face, after which the doppelganger pretended to be comatose.

“Second of The Gates!” she chanted with the key-shaped dagger raised. “Second Father of The Beyond! No-Longer Invincible One! With the turning of this Gate-Key, we will commit our spirits!" She was about to plunge the weapon, but then stopped when a message from the tournament organisers approved her request for an intro extension. "But first," her blade withdrew and her head sank in nostalgia and admiration, "for your revelation of The Dark Way of The Alone, we give our gratitude. We give you, Second Father, our gratitude, as we give our gratitude to The First Father and The Non-Autistic Gate,” she referenced here Uncle Peaceloveharmony, “and His Bright Way of All-Friendship. Our gratitude, we give both Gates, but not our mercy, for we, The Third Gate and The Final Gate, have seen the limits and the falseness of your prophecy. In our quest for The Two-Fold Eden, we have discovered a Third Way, a Way between your Ways and a Way above your Ways. With the turning of this Gate-Key, we will go this Third Way, Beyond your Ways, Beyond to The True Way and The Only Way, Beyond to The Way of The All and The Way of The Alone, The Way of The All Within The Alone.” A note of self-amusement had infiltrated her chanting of this circular gibberish. “With the turning of this Gate-Key, we unlock The First Gate and The Second Gate, and then we go Beyond!" She next began to trash-talk via reference the other remaining competitors. "With the turning of this Gate-Key, we unlock The Sex-Duped Wrestler and The Sex-Starved Crone, and then we go Beyond! With the turning of this Gate-Key, we unlock The False Disciple Assassin and The False Disciple Indian Kid, and then we go Beyond! With the turning of this Gate-Key, we unlock The Noob-Pummelling Veteran and The Noob-Pummelled Crusader, and then we go Beyond! With the turning of this Gate-Key, we unlock these Many and we unlock More, and then we go BEYOND!"

The mystic plunged the key-dagger into her master’s chest. As they both shrieked—he (the actor forgetting he was comatose) in anguish, she in greater anguish—she turned the instrument within the meat and, sawing, unlocked his bloody heart from out of his chest. The dying doppelganger disintegrated from the altar. As he disappeared, she used a sleight-of-hand to switch his heart with a second from a dog.

Kneeling with the substitute, she lifted it trembling upwards (and directly to the camera) in a pose of reverence.

The murdering disciple whispered a final prayer. “O Thou Who Claimed Invincibility But Have Now Died Twice, we confess that this is truly Your Invincible Heart, we confess that this is truly Your Invincible Pulse." She massaged the heart to imitate a beat. "Enter, Invincible Father, through our Gates of Pearl Betrayal…and commingle with The Many unifying into...THE ONE!"

At last, grimacing, weeping tears of reluctance at the unholy extremities of their quest for The Beyond, she sank her pearly fangs into the offering.

A foul crimson dribble moistened the dirt caking her chin as she ate.

Inspiration for her power upgrade sequence may have been plagiarised from previous events in Suchi.

The rest of The Third Gate's blasphemous feast in the church was concealed by fireworks and smokebombs thrown by her assistants.

Outside, groans of horror travelled through the audience. Parents shielded children’s eyes. Virtual Realists faked disgust and indignation at the fallen prophet. Africa sighed.

When The Third Gate reemerged to meet her opponent, the transformation was complete.

Only, she was no longer The Third Gate…