Cross, circle, circle, triangle, cross!

The input flashed across the screen — and in an instant, Scar launched into one of his signature combo attacks. With a sickening crunch, he shattered his opponent’s ribs, knocking her out cold. Then came the usual: the mocking victory animation, his foot pressed near her side, that cruel smirk dancing on his lips. The screen dimmed.

Victory.

Match over. And then — nothing. Total blackness.

Scar opened his eyes again, expecting another match to load. Instinctively, he dropped into his fighting stance... But there was no arena. No opponent. Just... silence. He blinked. Turned. Waited. Nothing.

And that’s when the fear began to settle in. Because for the first time, he was moving without player input. No commands. No joystick. No buttons. He was walking. Breathing. Thinking. Something had changed. Somehow, somewhere between the frames, he had awakened. No longer just a line of code. No longer just a puppet. He had a mind. He had feelings. And the terrifying realization hit him harder than any finisher ever could: He was alive.

---

And then... He was back. Standing in his usual spot. Same stance. Same loading screen. Same arena. And there she was. Opposite him, just like always. Her usual idle animation played out — graceful, deadly, perfect. Nothing seemed different. Then the match began.

“FIGHT!”

Scar hesitated. For the first time, he didn’t know what to do. He tried. He moved. He threw a punch, missed. Blocked late. Moved clumsily. She tore through him like a storm in full control — her attacks crisp, merciless, beautiful. He didn’t even last a full minute. The final blow sent him to the ground, and for the first time...he felt it all. Every strike. Every kick. Every broken piece of him.

He sat there, dazed, as her post-victory taunt played — the same mocking line, the one burned into her animation script. And just like that... She vanished. Gone. Like she’d never been there at all.

And Scar stayed behind. Still sitting. Still hurting. After that match, he couldn’t bring himself to fight anymore. No matter how many times they queued him up — he refused. He wouldn't move, wouldn’t respond. Developers tried everything. Patch after patch. Fix after fix. But nothing worked. Eventually, the servers emptied. No one played Crimson Fate anymore.

And Scar was left behind. Alone. With a mind that wasn’t supposed to exist, and silence where battle used to be.

---

And everything changed the moment he found her. She wasn’t alone — ten other characters lay around her, frozen in time, scattered across some strange, dimly-lit storage space. A forgotten corner of the game’s code, maybe. Or something deeper. Scar’s eyes flicked across the room. And then he saw it — an empty slot. Just his size. They were supposed to be there together. All of them. Sleeping. Waiting. But he had already woken up.

He stepped toward her. She looked just as she always had — perfect, untouched by memory, unaware. Scar crouched down, eyes glinting with amusement as he brushed a lock of hair from her face.

“Wake up, you digital oddball,” he muttered with a smirk, voice dripping with mockery and something almost... affectionate. He tapped his chest with a laugh. “Let’s make a real human out of you — just like I did.”