"Hello, I'm everyone's favorite announcer, Nash (not to be confused with the not nearly as cool Charlie Nash, who's not nearly as cool because he's connected to Interpol and is a jerk to all Shadowlaw members) and I'm here to announce the champions of this tournament!"

Action Figure Nash hopped up and down on the table, thanks to the feminine hand holding on to him and controlling him.  And he spoke with a decidedly feminine voice.

"The winner for this tournament is JUNI!  All hail our champion!  And the crowd goes wild!"

The blonde paused, then glanced around.  Oh shoot!  She didn't have a crowd!  Wait... ah ha!  Serina's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure collection would have to do.

"WOOOOO!  YAY JUNI!!!"  The crowd went wild!

Behind Juni, a certain brunette frowned.

"You know, I am your partner, right?" Juli remarked.

Juni beamed back in reply.  "Oh, yea, I know!  You'll get your trophy and cheers... erm, as soon as I get my action figure of you!"

"There's an action figure of me?"  Blinking in reply, Juli suddenly found herself rather curious at what she just found out.

"Erm... well, not really.  I went on e-bay and got some sort of strange custom prosthetic post-divorce barbie doll for eight hundred dollars to play your role, though."

Juni beamed as Juli looked slightly annoyed.  There was an uncomfortable silence, but it didn't last very long.

"...did you know that your Nash action figure is a stick figure that looks like you drew it with a pencil on paper, then cut it out with scissors and shoved a pencil with tape up its--"

"HEY!"  Janet's voice interupted Juli's colorful description.  "What are you doing, here?  Your match is starting, soon!"

Silence.  A cricket chirped.  Before Juni said, "Ew!  Cricket!" and squished it.

Juli finally looked off to the side.  "Sooooo... erm, what are we supposed to be doing, now?  Warm-ups?  That's something Fenrir would tell us to do."

"We're supposed to be going over how you're going to cheat for this match!  Do I have to do everything?"  Janet sighed as a look of shock went over both of the other two girl's faces.

"ACK!  I forgot!"  Juli quickly looked at her wrist.  "How much time do we have until the match starts?  ...damn, I really need to start wearing a watch."

"They say that ninjas could tell time by looking in a cat's eyes!"  Juni beamed.  "So I could tell the time by looking into my kitty cat Cuddles' eyes!  ...damn, I really need to find Cuddles!"

Janet dragged the two off to a briefing room as they were trying to figure out the time, with Juni having a look of >_< in her eyes.

"Okay, we only have two minutes before we need to get you two on stage, so I'll be brief."

Sound of a rolled up piece of paper unrolling.  A rolled up piece of paper with PLANS written on it!!!!!1

"......."

"......."

"....and you call that cheating, Janet?"

"Do you have a problem with the master plan that could only be masterminded by one as smart as SHE, Juli?"

"Well... erm, no, of course not.  But... this... this isn't even illegal!  Characters do stuff like this in tournament fighting games, all the time.  Hell, Juny does it in Road Basher for one of her super moves, even!"

"...well, I knew that, of course!"

Juni's voice chimed in.  "Well, actually, that was the Road Basher Beta series, which wasn't a tournament."

"Juni, be quiet."

"Okay.  ^^;"

"Besides, if it wasn't a tournament, then why did everyone fight two out of three rounds?  And why was there an ambiguously gay announcer?  And why was there..."

"I don't know!" a flabbergasted Juni screamed.  "Crepecom is a strange company, okay!?"

The three walked back into the locker room.

"Yea, so anyways, we don't even need the dragging off-stage part, then," Janet continued.  "Just write it off as a special level three super move.  I knew about this all along!  I was just testing you!  It was all part of my brilliant plan!"

"I'd hope so!" Juli remarked.  "This one was just a little too direct, isn't it?  I mean, how on earth could we get our opponent off stage anyways just so the rest of you could all..."

The brunette was silenced as Janet put her hand to her face.  "I SAID that it was all part of my brilliant plan."

And so, the two sister agents found themselves being shoved out into the Clashdome yet again for more fun tourney hijinks that would most likely result in Juli getting a concussion somewhere down the line and losing, like always.  ...sigh, that trophy WOULD be nice.  Lord knows that Juli sure as hell couldn't figure out any other reason why she was participating in the stupid concussion-happy thing.

Oh, this was just fucking perfect.

Edge, like a Jojo from a certain song, thought he was a loner. He didn't like having to rely on anyone (though he often did, which might've made him a hypocrite; like he cared). He was independent.

Then what god had decided it'd be a great time to piss on him and make him fight two really hot chicks? What the hell was wrong with this world? He was supposed to date pretty girls, not beat the crap out of them. And why was he always having to fight girls, anyway?

Insane. Completely insane.

The sound of footsteps signaled Katsumi's entry into the strangely empty locker room.

"Well?" Edge asked. "Did you have any luck?"

"Um, well yes. I found you a partner to help you out in this fight." Which was what pissed off Edge in the first place. He didn't want to fight alone against two people. Considering that this was the first match in the tournament, he didn't want people to remember Edge's ass getting kicked all over the place as their selected memory of the tourney. "After all, can't have you fighting against two deadly genetically-enhanced assassins by yourself."

"...what?" He was fighting against trained killers? Shit! "Well, who is it? Gan, right?"

"No, I couldn't find Gan. I called his house, and his parents told me that Gan was away seeing his grandparents. But I did find someone."

"Who?"

"Well, let them introduce themselves. Come on out!"

A figure bounded into the locker room.

Edge saw who it was. He recognized the person.

Well, that did it. Whatever god it was had crapped on him, too.

He screamed.

Now, hacking the tournament records to get Juli and herself on the same team while playing it off as dramatic battle style was just really cool (hey, it worked in Road Basher Beta.  ...even if that wasn't a tournament).  Marzche was just really neat, that way.  But apparently things could only go so far before someone would notice and the records would be updated a little to keep things 'fair'.  It was really weird, though.  Juni always figured that having four people in a fight at once would like... cause a system override on the video game board or something.  ...course, this wasn't a video game, either.

Ah well.  Together, Juli and Juni were... um... well, not exactly unstoppable, but together the two had the highest efficiency rating of all the Dolls and that had to speak for something.

Roar!

Juni spun her arm in a windmill circle for a pseudo warm-up as a familiar announcer's voice rang across the stadium.

"And we're here back at the Clash Dome for our absolutely fabulous Round 3 match!"

Juni glanced towards the announcer's booth to see a certain short reddish-pink haired girl eagerly proclaiming over the Clash Dome airwaves.  How did Avelle get up there, anyways?  And where did the old announcers go?  ...who were the old announcers supposed to be, anyways?  She thought it was Nash, but on second thought, she realized that she wasn't sure about that, at all.  Oi, this is what Juni got for not paying attention.  And... was Round 3 even the right round number?

"It might be called the Clash Dome, but there is definately a lack of clashing fashion here!  Because Team 1 consists of our very own, the beautiful Juli and Juni!  Wearing the latest in assassin trends, they..."

Avelle became aware that Juli was right behind her.

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?" Juli asked.

Janet stepped in and answered Juli's question.  "She's still alive.  She's the evil custodian's apprentice, remember?"

"Eh?"  Juli stared at Avelle, then back at the Doll Leader, before looking annoyed.  "Well gee, thanks for spoiling that."

"Spoiling that!?" The other girl replied with a rather flabbergasted look on her face.  "It's been known for HOW long, now?  Do you even READ your own chapters?"

"I'm not allowed to magically know stuff that happened in someone else's POV far away, you know?"

"Actually, that scene was still in your POV for the most part."

"But it switched to a neutral POV when it came to revealing that Avelle was still alive!"

"And you would know that because...?  I thought you didn't read that part of the chapter."

"......." Attempting to salvage back some dignity, Juli turned redirected her defense towards Avelle.  "If you're the custodial apprentice, then why aren't you doing any custodial things right now?"

"Eh, I get a storyline break for this."  Avelle shrugged with a grin. "It kind of boggles me that you two are arguing about canon when we're in a noncanon chapter, anyways.  Cheer up!  Smile a little!  The camera is watching you!"

Avelle beamed as Juli sighed.

"Yea, well, okay, this tournament had just better not end with me getting another concussion..." she grumbled as she mach-slided back into the ring.

With Juli gone, Avelle happily proceeded with introducing Team #2.

"And on the flipside, we have the spike-haired Edge and his pet bird!  Edge is a student of Gedo who enjoys poking things with knives, collecting knives, and poking things with collected knives!"  Avelle eagerly shouted into the mic, before looking off to the side with a grin. "But when the sun goes down, watch out, girls!  Because his hair goes down with it, and when Edge lets down his hair, he becomes After-Hours Edge!  The most gorgeous handsome ladies' man bishounen this side of the planet!  Or at least he would have, if Capcom had any brains at all to realize what we ladies want.  Burning Batsu has nothing on this guy!  Why don't you let your hair down more often, Edge?  Do you not love me?"

Of the announced pair, a certain redheaded Taiyo student, Tori, entered first. She screamed a random Japanese phrase at the top of her lungs (heard by most to be "ringo desu", though it might've been "rinjuu desu", which probably would've made a little more sense; no one could hear her well, though, because she didn't have a mic or anything), mostly because it was the style at the time. And it sounded really cool! Throngs of otaku cheered, for she could indeed speak their language, but soon quieted, as they realized the length of her skirt was perfectly respectable.

Edge followed a few moments later, his eyes narrowed and dull with confusion. He couldn't believe his bad luck. Not only was his tag team partner a nutcase, but the hot redheaded announcing chick was obsessed with his hair. Normally Edge would've accepted attention from hot girls. This was different. This was disturbing. This displayed some freaky fetish on her behalf, and Edge didn't like it.

Edge wasn't the only one.  Janet had enough.

"Stop goofing off.  This is getting ridiculous.  We have our own part of the plan to do." Janet motioned towards the exit to the announcer booth.

"And... that's our signal for the match to begin!"  Avelle quickly finished.  Rolling her eyes, she reluctantly got up from her chair and followed the leader, while muttering a few remarks to herself. "Eh, I'd hardly call that silly thing a plan, anyways..."

It only took a split moment for Juli to size her opponents up.

"Hmm... I can see Avelle's point, but my estimates are that even after the hair is down, it would still need to be combed off to the right about an inch to be really anything to write home about," she remarked.

"Um... Juli?"  A sweatdrop appeared over Juni's head.

"Oh, right.  Juni, back me up.  We'll take out knife boy, then."

Juni blinked.  "But won't that leave us open to his partner?"

"Juni, she's just a little girl."

A pause.

Juni spoke up, again.  "Aren't quite a few of us 'just little girls'?"

"Well, yea, of course," Juli remarked while glaring at her partner, before pointing at Tori.  "But she's littler."

"What was her name, again?  Bird?  Ah well."  As Juli turned back to begin a sniping arrow kick, Juni flipped towards Edge in an arc with a hooligan combination attack behind her.  Juli's kick was about to impact with Edge while Street Fighter Alpha 3's funky dramatic battle physics engine allowed Juni to fly right through her as if she wasn't there to hopefully grab Edge while he was attempting to block Juli's attack.  Eh... a wizard did it.

Edge found himself confused with the physical impossibility long enough to let Juni snare him with her legs. She used the leverage from her leap to flip him over, slamming his face into the ground as he crashed.

Anyone who thought this would be a fun experience, head sandwiched between a cute girl's legs, obviously forgot about the impact. Much of his body ached as he hit, but when the girl moved away afterwards, he stood back up again.

"Edge-san!" Tori's cry echoed through the Clash Dome. "I'll avenge you! Reijingu no Tori!" She dashed, then leapt towards Juni, her foot extended and ready to plant itself into her face...

Juni was almost caught off guard by the sheer... ungracefulness of the attack.  Fortunately, the attack being ungraceful and all, she was able to get back on guard in time to dodge the attack.  Or, more specifically, step out of the way, resulting in Tori flying past her and tumbling down a bunch of stairs, of where those stairs came from, no one knew and no one really cared.

"Um... okay," Juni remarked as she glanced down the stairs where the noise of a tumbling Tori could still be heard.  "I guess we won't be needing to use that secret super attack, after all."

"Still, I'd like to make this quick.  Those stupid concussions can come out of nowhere so the sooner this is over, the better," replied Juli as she did another sniping arrow straight for her foe.  It did come to her mind though that she REALLY needed to expand her repertoire of moves.  Unfortunately, it came to her mind after she was already in the air that having only one move to rely on could make one really predictable.

Edge knew what was coming. After all, the girl with the rack just used this very move on him moments ago. This time he was prepared. He pulled a knife from his pocket and tossed it at her. "Eat this!" he cried. It span towards its destination speedily.

Juni watched in shock as the knife sped towards her partner.  "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

But... there was nothing she could do.  The knife hit its mark.

In the foot.

The pointed foot that was meant to kick Edge.  Actually, it still did, except with the knife already in it, the impact only embedded the sharp instrument further.  Which wasn't exactly a very pleasant experience for Juli, even if it did leave Edge with a knife-handle shaped bruise on his own face.

Unable to keep her balance without jamming the knife into her foot even deeper, Juli fell to the floor while cringing.

"@#$@#(!)!!!"  She spouted some rather colorful language as she tried to reach down to yank the thing out.  Juni, meanwhile, was still in a little bit of shock.

"The foot?"  She blinked. "Well, that was... sort of unexpected.  ...I guess."

Edge rubbed his face, trying to ease the pain of the kick. Dammit! Why hadn't that stopped her? She ought to have stopped in midair to scream or something. He complained under his breath to himself about the state of things.

However, it was then that he noticed Juli trying to pull the knife out of her foot. A fair fighter might've let her do this.

But since when was Edge fair?

He scraped his foot along the ground, then kicked up a spray of dust at Juli. As they would find out later (maybe), the move was called the Destructive Kick for a reason.

The dust sprayed into the girl, and then she was sent flying back as the sound effect of a slam impact occurred.

Juni stared, dumbstruck, in confusion, as Juli, still under a LOT of pain from the knife, was trying to figure out what was going on.

"How the heck can DUST do that?" Juni asked, out loud.  In actuality, it was one of the seven great mysteries of Rival Schools.  The second mystery being the seventh mystery, the third mystery being the sixth mystery, and the fourth mystery being the crazy nutcase fairies that want to spread Project Justice throughout the real world via their Rival Schools network.  Oh, and the fifth mystery being how there was no fifth mystery.

While pondering the pointlessness of that last paragraph, Juni quickly mach-slided over to her partner.  The dust attack had provided some distance between Juli and Edge, so Juni could safely get away from him and close enough to Juli to use her Psycho Charge and heal her.  Phasing out of the mach slide next to her still rather groggy partner, Juni held out her arm and began to glow and sparkle shiny sparkles of negative energy psycho power healing goodness.

Unfortunately, while she anticipated Edge, there was a factor that both of the Dolls had completely forgotten about.

"All right, you mean nasty naughty girls!" a female voice shouted, leaving the audience to wonder what she meant by 'naughty'. Tori now stood at the top of the staircase, then dashed toward the pair of assassins. At the last second, she extended her arms and grabbed Juni, flipping the blonde upside-down, her head between Tori's legs, and held onto each of Juni's legs tightly.

"Spinning Pile Driver no Tori!" she shrieked, and leapt high into the air, spinning all the way down until they collided with the ground.

The audience sat there, dumbfounded. There was absolutely no way that Tori should have been able to do that, they tried to reason. But she had. She had.

It was enough for the mind to go mad.

"Yatta!" Tori chirped, striking a vaguely magical-girlesque pose. "Tori does it again!"

At the time of her landing after being bounced off the floor, Juni found herself in dangerously close proximity to Edge.  And Tori was in dangerously close proximity to Juli.  The girl was easy to dodge, but holy crap, that... that SPINNING PILE DRIVER (HUH!?) hurt!  And Juli was in no position to get out of the way, either.

"Aaaaah!" Juli screamed, still in excrutiating pain from the knife.  "This is a LOT worse than a concussion!"

"Juli!  What do we do?"

"We're... going to have... to use it!"

"Oh yea!  Our super secret super attack!"  Dashing over to Edge to begin the super combo, Juni... slapped him.

That was the signal.

Normally, the audience would have wondered about the legality of the move, but Juni's shout of "Super Attack:  Help Me, Doll Version!" pretty much spelled out to them that it was just a super attack hit auto combo!  Which may or may not have actually been legal, but there weren't any announcers to announce whether it was or not, anyways, and referees was something that the Clash Dome didn't have, most of the time.

That said, Edge soon found his head on the receiving end of a quarterstaff smash by Janet, followed by a direct upwards slice by Fenrir (which did not leave a scar and was actually not deadly thanks to the fact that swords magically just aren't in fighting game engines), which then proceeded in him getting zapped by a huge bolt of electricity that Marzche programmed into the dome from the sky, then followed by...

Well, the attack taking too long, Janet motioned to the other Dolls and Edge soon found himself in a big puff of smoke as all the other Dolls basically kicked the crap out of him.

Down on the floor, Serina quickly ran up to him and kicked him a few more times just for good measure while Aurora kept on whipping him while laughing maniacally before Janet yanked them both away.

"Okay, wait.  That combo only hit forty times.  It's supposed to be five hits for each of us, not including Juli, Juni, and Cammy because she's off to who knows where," the leader of the Dolls observed.  "So... where the hell is Avelle?"

The Dolls, including Juni and Juli (who had finally managed to get that EVIL knife out of her foot), all glanced towards Edge to see Avelle over him with her gun pointed at him, but her arms were shaking.

"I... I can't do it!" Avelle cried.  "Why do the good-looking guys always have to die young?  ...well, okay, I could probably do it if it were for a good reason but this is just a stupid tournament where we don't even get anything if we win and none of us even know why we're HERE for crying out loud, so why?  Why!?"

Fenrir sighed.  "I think you're overreacting.  If my sword slash didn't kill him, I hardly think your gun will.  At most it'll probably KO him.  Capcom games don't have fatalities, after all."

"Oh, right," Avelle remarked as she shot Edge five times, then hopped over to the other Dolls.  "So... now that we've won, how about some Starbucks?  Um... what are you staring at?"

Edge got up.

Fenrir glared at him in shock.  "But... how?"

Sighing, Janet crossed her arms.  "I swear, the combo damage scaling in this stupid Clash Dome overdoes things just a bit, doesn't it?"

Truthfully, Edge didn't know how he had managed to stand once more. Until he realized that he hadn't been hurt a whole lot before the Massive Beatdown of Chickly Death, so that explained it. Maybe. Or maybe it was that this wasn't canon, so his ability to sponge up damage was greatly increased.

Of course, Tori was still celebrating her 'victory' in an almost Dan Hibiki-ish manner. But he didn't need her!

"Ahahahahahaha!" Edge grinned evilly. "There's no stopping me! I am invincible! I'm the king of the--"

His insane ramblings were suddenly cut off by a gust of wind catching Edge and sending him flying into a random koi pond, while not damaging anything else in the entire Clash Dome. He was sent hurtling into the water, slapping the surface with a loud splash. Bored fish poked at his likely unconscious body.

Edge's friends (Taku, Sho, Muso, and Saikaku), as well as Katsumi, ran over to the pond.

"No!" Saikaku wailed. "The fish are eating him!"

"No they're not, fucktard," Muso said.

"Oh."

"Well, that does it for Edge," Sho stated, shaking his head sadly as he reached into the depths of the pond and pulled a sopping-wet Edge out enough so that he could breathe.

Everyone else stared for a little over a minute in silence, trying to figure out what just happened.

"So... did we win?" Juni asked.

After punting Tori away (making her scream "EVIL!" as she flew through the air), Juli walked up to the koi pond to stare at Edge.  His head was above water, but the koi were still poking him.

"...yea, I guess so," Juli finally answered.

Katsumi spoke up. This whole thing bothered her quite a bit. "Something's wrong with this. Where did that gust of wind come from? And for that matter, the pond? I didn't see that when we first got here. And why did it knock him unconscious? It's just a damn pond! The whole thing seems rather Deus Ex Machina to me." The audience, as a whole, could think of nothing to say or do.

Save for one member of it. Somewhere in the stands, a pale girl, clad in a black beret and a matching trenchcoat, watched. She quickly hid her pencil and paper before anyone could accuse her, whistling innocently the whole while.

More silence filled the dome.  Even the audience didn't know what to say.  One by one, they all slowly realized the match was over, then just got up, and left.  Over time, they were soon followed by the Dolls, and the crowd around Edge gradually diminished, until even Edge's friends finally gave up and were gone.

The lights of the clashdome finally turned off.  The janitor finally called it a night and was gone.

But standing over the pond reflecting what little light was left, tears in her eyes, was one remaining girl.  She still cared about him, even after he was gone.  Everyone else had left, but not her.

Avelle cried, some more.  "The good-looking... always die young."

The water stirred.  The koi quickly dispersed.

Looking up, Avelle's solem expression slowly turned to a smiling one.

"You... you're really... I knew it!"

Standing up, in front of the lake, the moonlight shining behind him... a blonde long-haired man with his wet hair shining just like the lake was, Prince Charming himself, the knight walking back home from his meeting with the lady of the lake...

After-Hours Edge!!!

Avelle eagerly ran to him.  "It's really you!"

Edge looked at Avelle blearily, not recognizing her. His witty and dashing reply would be forever immortalized in history.

"Huh?"

Of course, this wasn't a good thing.

Moments later, he thought of something more intelligent to say; marginally so, but more intelligent. "Where is everyone? What happened? Did I win?"

"Well, of course you won, Mr. Handsome!" Avelle happily remarked as she put her arm around him.  "By falling into the pond of the dead Geese, you now transform into a beautiful bishounen whenever you get wet!  Oh, if you're talking about the tournament, nah, not really, but I'm sure you don't mind, right?"

"Mr. Handsome?" He blinked. "Beautiful bishounen?" After a long pause (because, needless to say, that really confused him), he realized something else. "I lost? Not again. I've always been getting my ass kicked by girls as of late." Edge sighed sadly. "It's not fair."

"Aw... poor little bishounen," Avelle tried to console him with.  "It's okay.  We girls just tend to be really good at ass-kicking.  That's all.  Especially when there are more than ten of us ganging up on you.  Well, okay, actually, you should really blame that random gust of wind.  But... I have a hunch that that was summoned by a girl, too.  Hmm..."

Wait a minute.

Us?

She was one of those girls who beat the crap out of him!

And she looked at him in a terribly familiar way...

She was... the Red-Headed Hair Fetishist.

"No! No! Get away from me!" Edge managed to step out of the pond, still sopping wet (which made exiting a chore, as his pants felt like they weighed a good fifty pounds), and bolted, his shoes squishing like sponges the whole way.

And then... he was gone.

Avelle stared at where he used to be, her knight faded away into the distance, the sloshing noises of his pants still echoing throughout the dome as he made his way to the exit.

Juli, who had been watching in the distance the entire time, finally walked up to her, her partner behind her.

"Avelle, I..."

"Drat."  Avelle snapped her fingers, then turned to Juli.  "Ah well.  Hey, do you think Starbucks is still open?"

"Not really."  Juli shrugged in reply.  "But Juni saved a cup of mocha latte for you.  It's kind of cold by now, though."

"Eh... get to hang out with a bishounen for a while at the cost of my coffee going cold?  Well, I guess that's a decent enough tradeoff."  Grabbing the coffee from Juni, Avelle took a couple sips before quickly spitting it out.  "It tastes pretty bad, though.  Well, when this tournament is finally over, back to my craptacular canon of being a custodial apprentice, I suppose."

She drank some more of the cold coffee, then the three girls proceeded to leave the arena.

And the moral of the story, friends?

A bishounen in the hand is worth two in the bush.