Lucas held Damien’s hand in his, as they approached his student dorm room.

One week into their relationship, and this was the very first time either of them had gone to the other’s residence.

Unlocking the door, Damien saw that his boyfriend’s abode was exactly what you would expect for the most part when it came to a dorm room. On the wall, there were a few football shirts; and some of the furniture was different from that which was generally placed in the university’s dorms.

“I can’t do much with the place.” Lucas admitted. “But I’ve tried to make it as homely as I can.”

Both of them turned to look at one another and smiled, grasping each other’s hands tightly. They walked to Lucas’ bed, sitting down. There was a pause, as Lucas sheepishly glanced at his partner. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Lucas asked, apprehensively.

Saying nothing, Damien pushed Lucas onto his back and climbed on top of him. He began kissing any exposed skin he could find, and Lucas moaned. Lucas gazed at Damien, and at once Damien quit what he was doing.

Laughter erupted from the pair of them.

“Okay! I like your style!” Lucas said, his eyes half lidded.

The pair of them lost themselves in pleasure. They explored one another’s bodies passionately, and by the end of it, Damien was scared that he had been a little too rough. Lucas laughed, assuring him that, despite being a little sore - he was otherwise completely fine.

Damien let out a sigh of relief, and chortled. He relaxed, and held onto Lucas, cuddling up with him for a short while.

“I’m going to use the shower, if that’s alright?” Damien asked.

“I’ll climb in after you.” Lucas answered him, and rested on the bed.

As they had discussed, Damien cleaned himself up first; Lucas followed once he had finished. Upon climbing into Lucas’ bed again, Damien fell into a deep sleep.

When he awoke, it was evening.

He didn’t open his eyes at first, wanting to rest a short while longer – however, when he realised what had woken him up, he stretched his entire body out and yawned.

“What band is this?” He posed the question.

Lucas hadn’t expected Damien’s wake so soon, and he had to take short while to form a response. He read the band’s name from the cover of the CD, which he had placed on the table. “This is ‘They Chomp’.”

Damien took in the music which played through the portable speakers.

“If you don’t like it, I can turn it off.” Lucas offered.

“No, actually... I really like this.” Lucas perked up. “I mean, most music makes my ears feel like they’re bleeding – but...” Damien pondered for a brief period. “Well, most of the stuff my mother plays, anyway.”

Lucas let a thought pass through his mind, but opted to let it go for the time being. “You hungry?” He quizzed Damien.

Damien sat at the title screen for much longer than was necessary.

A repetitive animation played of that man with a cat’s head flexing his muscles, and of the game’s logo glowing and pulsating along with him. ‘Super Kitty Beat Down Fighter’ was the name of this game: it was a fighting game released in 2002.

He could hardly believe that his favourite piece of media was twenty-five years old, and his head was filled with flashes of the past. Nostalgia clouded his mind’s eye; it blocked out all of the bad and awful memories, in favour of the more palatable ones.

Damien wanted his record back. Currently, he wanted that more than anything else in the world. Yet, so much as pressing that circle button was such a daunting task.

He stared at his laptop screen, knowing that viewing the same set of animations there wouldn’t help his decision paralysis.

“Three.” He said out loud. Damien had to do this. “Two.” He got ready to start his timer, placing his hand over the button which he used for his splits. “One.” There was a quick second, before ultimately, he got past the title.

The average player took around five hours to complete the entirety of the story mode. Cutscenes were unskippable – unless, one did a certain set of button presses. “Up, Down, Circle, Square, Start!” Damien reminded himself of the sequence. And he skipped the first cutscene of many. Cutscene skips were not frame perfect, likely because the developers used that exact input during testing – however, there was a certain art to them. Damien had done them so many times now, that they were trivial to him.

The time he aimed to beat, was twenty minutes, and thirteen seconds.

After he’d gotten all of his equipment set up, he’d watched his rival’s run of the game. Damien, despite his frustration, was very impressed by it. In truth, S.K.B.D.F was a rather obscure game. Not horribly obscure, enough people knew about it – but speedrunning it wasn’t something which interested a lot of people.

There were many technical tricks which most people had issues with performing. One review which Damien had read back when the game had first released, accused it of being ‘too difficult.’ As Damien let his eyes scan that passage, in an issue of his favourite gaming magazine, he laughed boomingly. Damien had managed to get incredibly good at the game in the first few weeks of its release; he had pondered then, that if a fourteen-year-old could master it, that somebody with a job in gaming journalism shouldn’t have too much trouble.

Alas, he was very wrong. And, the game was destined to only have a cult following from that point forward.

Nonetheless, he preferred that. He’d tried running games which had a larger audience, and he’d found them difficult to keep up with. As of late, he hadn’t had much time to be active anyway. The stagnant state of S.K.B.D.F speedrunning was perfect for his schedule.

To see that ‘KittyFighter121’ had decimated his previous world record run of twenty minutes and fifty-four seconds, was a rather shocking development.

Damien perused their run, and observed that they had implemented a few tricks which Damien hadn’t bothered to try in years. This, was mainly because of how difficult those tricks were, even for somebody of his level. There was nothing in there which had never been pulled off, however – the RNG of the run was amazing. In Damien’s old run, his luck had actually been awful – he’d simply responded to everything that had been thrown his way aptly, and had enough skill to salvage it.

As it turns out, Kitty had gotten the record around a week ago. Damien hadn’t been checking anything, so he’d not noticed.

He dropped a quick congratulations message to them - regardless of the fact that inwardly, he was seething. After that point, he sat in front of his television, unmoving.

Currently, he was trying to get into the flow that he required to complete a run. Damien wasn’t expecting to succeed on his first try, or his second, or even his hundredth. Though, he was putting his all into every single attempt.

Attempt one – failed at stage three’s boss, when Damien couldn’t perform a glitch quickly enough.

Attempt two – didn’t get past the fifth wave of enemies, as he kept getting stun-locked.

Attempt five – made it to the penultimate stage, but Damien lost to the first wave of enemies in 6-1.

And, on Damien’s eleventh attempt – he had at last, a run which made it to the final boss: Inu Masuta. The margin for error was minimal, and the most he’d beat the record by was a few seconds. Still, in speedrunning – that was impressive.

Damien just needed Inu-Masuta to give him a good pattern.

If he pulled this off, Damien could be proud of himself; to catch up so quickly was an admirable feat. He’d been playing for almost three hours now, and he was more than ready to finish this.

The final stage loaded in, and he watched Neko-Tsuyoi’s idle animation like a hawk. There was an in-game cutscene here; it was entirely unskippable, unlike the FMV ones which littered the other parts of the game.

Inu’s villain monologue had become somewhat of a meme in the community, and even now, Damien mumbled it to himself. ‘Young venturer! To think that you could ever hope to defeat my might!” It was an absolutely pointless piece of dialogue.

Damien prepared to face the final boss; he couldn’t let his nerves get to him.

Inu had a variety of attacks he could choose from; the very first one he used now, was the best-case scenario for any player. Inu grabs his large wizard hat, and fires energy balls from his staff. If one is playing as Neko-Tsuyoi, they can use the litter box shield to protect themselves, and reflect the orbs back at Inu.

Damien did just that, and all seemed to be going well.

Whenever Damien played through the game, even when he was in a high stress situation – he took in just how pretty all of the stages were. The character models themselves were stylised in a very interesting way, and although dated, they had a certain charm to them which no other game from that era captured. (At least, in Damien’s opinion.)

The stages themselves, however, really gave S.K.B.D.F its personality. The platforms which one moved on, were modelled in the same way as the characters; there wasn’t much he could comment on concerning them. The backgrounds were pixel art and they were beautifully animated; each told the player something about the world in which these characters inhabited.

Inu-Masuta’s castle was dark and dreary; yet, the artists had made the stage come alive with particle effects, and a multitude of smaller details which most people wouldn’t notice. For example, if one hit certain objects in the background - they would update to accommodate for that. Books would fall, glass would break... Damien was astounded that they’d managed all of this on such a small budget.

He didn’t get the chance to admire everything as much as he’d have liked to during his attempt; he had a fight to win, and a record to get back!

He fired off his usual attacks, and managed to get to the final phase of the fight.

Inu was surrounded by a vivid blue light, and he transformed from a dog-like creature, into something more resembling a wolf. His wizard robes were now torn, and Damien briefly cast his mind to some of the more... risqué art, he had seen of Inu in this state.

He fought valiantly. The creators of the game had done a brilliant job of balancing the major fights, and Inu had earned the title of final boss without a doubt.

Attack, block, attack, block... This pattern continued for a good while.

The timer ticked up. Damien was so close to reclaiming his crown. Just one more stretch.

And in one instant, everything was ripped away from him.

Inu charged up his attack, and fired. Damien’s nerves had at last, caught up to him. Inu’s Were-Beam was one of the easiest to dodge attacks in the game, and Damien had managed to get himself caught by it.

Damien stared at his character, as his health ticked down to zero – and the red tinted ‘Game Over’ screen filled his vision.