The match unfroze. The firebird clipped Marth’s tipper hitbox. Falco spun into the blast zone. The screen flashed: The announcer’s voice, stretched and digital: “This game’s winner is… Marth!”

His thumb slipped.

He was thirty-four. His hands ached when it got cold. His Fox McCloud was a ghost of what it once was. The CRT monitor in his garage had finally died, replaced by a low-latency gaming LCD that felt wrong . The adapter for his GameCube controller had a loose USB port. The scene had moved on—Slippi, rollback netcode, UnclePunch training mode. But Leo had never migrated. He just kept playing against the same Level 9 Falco, alone, in his garage.