Attempt number five hundred and one. Damien had now been on his mission to get his record back for nearly five days.

He had taken a few more substantial breaks since River’s visit, and had done his best to keep on top of his personal hygiene.

Oddly enough, despite being absolutely exhausted, he was almost ready to return to his position as mayor; he just needed to do this for himself.

Starting the timer, Damien did the first cutscene skip; he blazed through all of the other stages, implementing tricks which he’d managed to get really good at over the last few days.

Cancelling attack frames was hard. It was something that Damien never even considered doing. For a start, Neko Tsuyoi was a very slow attacker – this was the only drawback to using him, seeing as he was the best fighter in the game. To cancel the attack frames of enemies who were both unpredictable, and came in giant waves, had been nothing but a fever dream to him just days ago.

When he’d watched KittyFighter121 pull those frame cancels off, he’d been astonished; now though, Damien had gotten the hang of them and could pull them off flawlessly (give or take a few blunders, but that was the nature of speedrunning).

Damien ruthlessly cancelled the attack frames of every enemy on screen with the litter box shield; but that wasn’t the end of the glitch.

No, there was one extra step to it. For some reason, doing this messed with the damage formula, and allowed the player to almost instantly knock out any enemies which had their attacks cancelled.

How the developers had fucked up the code that badly, was likely something which would never be revealed to anyone.

It was probably never noticed, because like clipping through the stage, it was very difficult to do and rarely worked. The main reason people never used it in runs, was because it was very inconsistent. However, through playing more and more, Damien had found that there were certain enemies that it could be triggered on every single time. Of course, timing was still a major issue.

Damien decided a few attempts ago, that he would be going for consistency. Any tricks which he was not confident in, he would not bother to try. Being able to mass kill huge groups of enemies was already enough of a time save, and he did not need to do any of the technical stuff to secure a record.

It had been around fifty attempts ago when he’d figured this out, and fatigue was at long last catching up with him.

There was a road to victory now.

By stage two, Damien was back onto that legendary pace he’d gotten at the eleventh attempt.

He couldn’t believe it at first, and to avoid choking – he refused to take a single glance at his laptop screen from then on. He would not allow the clock to rule him now.

He continued on, and got incredible luck through the third and fourth stages, erring at five, but he sensed that his pace was still very good.

As he entered stage six’s boss, he was ready for an easy fight. Usagi-Kunshu was a joke in the community; her patterns were predictable, and there was a very easy way to stun lock her with the litter box shield.

The fight began as normal - with Damien performing all of the actions that the situation called for, to ensure that he’d never take a single point of damage.

Usagi’s attacks were strong, which was why she was the penultimate boss in the game. Given how short the development of S.K.B.D.F was, it was no wonder that they hadn’t considered certain techniques which, in the modern era (and, basically five minutes after the game first released,) allowed one to bypass any difficulty which had been initially intended.

Damien had no clue what his timer read then, but if the remainder of the attempt went well, he’d clutch out a time under twenty minutes.

This would be quite the accomplishment. But soon, whether or not he was aware of how good his run was, it wouldn’t matter at all.

One slip of his thumb allowed Usagi to get her comeuppance.

He cursed repeatedly, grabbing his controller with so much force that he thought it would break.

Being caught completely off guard had meant that Damien had difficulty recalibrating himself, and it wasn’t long before that dreaded game-over screen took up the entirety of his television.

Damien had a decision to make.

He could quit right then and there, on the best paced run he’d ever managed; he could begin another attempt, and forget that this blunder had ever occurred.

Or, he could continue.

The Usagi fight was not difficult, he could easily pick up from where he had left off, seeing as the game always placed the player at the beginning of the stage where they were defeated.

Damien had no clue how he’d make up for all of the seconds he had lost, and he was not looking at that god-forsaken timer to see how much he’d need to save.

Not allowing himself to think anymore, he pressed that shiny, golden ‘Continue’ button, and salvaged his hopes for that attempt.

He was not going to let the stupidest mistake he’d ever made ruin his chances, even if the run was doomed.

Now, the Usagi fight was taken care of efficiently – with Damien taking extra care to keep track of where his fingers were. Everything went of without a hitch, and he was fired up again.

Damien’s heart was beating through his chest, and 7-1 was just about to begin.

The glowing mushrooms beckoned him dangerously. For a moment, just that one singular point in time, he toyed with the idea of completely smashing any hopes that another would ever take his crown again.

He had learnt from his mistakes, though.

Rather anti-climactically, he continued through 7-1 as normal. There were a few attacks he managed to cancel, cutting off ten seconds.

There was still a very real chance that this was all for nothing. Damien was conscious that refusing to take a glance at his timer was very childish; after this many consecutive attempts though, he couldn’t cope with it if he was on pace for a time under nineteen minutes.

7-2 was the easiest level in the game. Most of the stages in regular gameplay, amounted to five minutes at least – with some of them being up to fifteen minutes long. Each stage usually had around six to eight levels, plus the boss; but stage seven did not.

He and the other runners for S.K.B.D.F had found various ways to significantly reduce how long these stages were. 7-2 however, was a side-scroller. Various magical creatures commanded by Inu attacked the player, and it was padded with cutscenes – which is the only reason it could get away with being placed just before the final boss.

Valiantly, Damien mowed down all of the enemies with ease – and at long last...

He’d made it to Inu’s castle again.

His cursor hovered briefly over the stage, but he didn’t have any more precious seconds to spare.

He entered the boss room.

Damien dodged as many attacks as he could, using his shield to deflect those which he wasn’t quick enough to.

Attack, block, attack, block.

That familiar pattern repeated again; with Damien playing much more cautiously than he usually would.

In his gut, he was cognizant that this was it. If he only succeeded by a few seconds, he would be elated.

In a final, dazzling exchange of attacks – Inu’s health bar ticked all the way down to zero.

Damien’s hand raced to stop the clock, and his eyes scanned that string of numbers a multitude of times to make sure he was reading it correctly.

Twenty minutes, and eight seconds.

A record by just five seconds.

Damien cried out in joy, tears filling his eyes from utter elation. On his television, the final cutscene played. Inu crumpled to dust, as the other main characters high-fived and hugged.

In Damien’s heightened emotional state, seeing that cutscene after so long felt like pure magic.

In his mind’s eye, that night when Lucas had first stopped at his flashed across his vision.

They had played the game in co-op mode, and it had taken them around three hours to complete together.

A lot had changed, but Damien experienced that same happiness at reaching the end of the game, that he had back then. Yes, he certainly did not act the way that he was acting now, but that kind of love he’d felt... that was exactly the same as it was now.

The screen faded to black, and the credits started to roll. Damien ended his recording, and just sat and watched the various names scroll upwards.

Finally, he let himself lean back into his sofa as the title screen re-appeared. He reached for his laptop, and found all of his video files.

He liked to upload as many attempts as he could - both to prove his validity, due to the fact that he didn’t stream, and just for documentation’s sake.

He trimmed down his winning attempt, and uploaded it so that it could be authenticated by the mods.

The ring of his doorbell had been what snapped Damien out of his dreamless rest.

The TV had gone into sleep mode – and the streetlights outside were the only things which illuminated his home.

He got up, and turned on the lights.

When he opened the door, he was surprised to see Margot standing there. She looked rather resolute, as she greeted him.

“You look really tired.” Nothing did escape his daughter’s notice.

Damien sighed. He smelt the night air, which he’d been deprived of ever since he’d holed himself up in his house.

“I am.” He professed. “Is it pressing?”

Margot nodded, and Damien did the same back.

“Then, I’d rather you talked to me.”

Damien scuffled back to the sofa; Margot turned to the fridge, and then to the bottles which were on the table. “Do you have any left?”

“Yes.” Damien sat down. “Grab yourself one.”

Voiceless, Margot grabbed a beer. She seated herself across from Damien, and opened it with the bottle opener which lay at the edge of the table.

She sipped quickly once it was open, as some fizz had built up.

Margot put it down, pushing some of the other bottles out of the way – being very careful to not knock any of them onto the floor.

“Dad.” Margot began, she clasped her hands together – she had gone over what she was to say a multitude of times before showing up. “You’ve tried for years to keep everything from me.”

Damien grabbed the back of his head, stroking his fingers through his hair; he didn’t like what his gut was telling him about what she’d say next.

“I didn’t believe any of it, you know?” She took a long glug from her bottle. “I didn’t like you at first, but that was unrelated to what I’d heard.”

They looked into one another’s eyes; the air was heavy.

“You likely know what this is about.” Margot bit her lip; she let out a disconcerted cackle, before she composed herself.

“It seems that I had you summed up correctly the first time around.”