Joy entered the arena, and many things hit his senses all at once. The first thing that registered was the smell. The air smelled heady and green. He wasn’t sure how the smell could be a color, but it was the scent of the jungle.

The second thing that hit him was the sights. After his eyes readjusted from the relative darkness of the entryway, he realized that the arena was far different from yesterday. The previous day it had been a pit of sand with little to no ornamentation or excitement. Now, the arena was a lush jungle filled with fruit trees, vines, and brush.

Finally, his ears heard the announcer shouting his praises.

“He is the ruler of Random. He defeats the odds every time with a smile on his face. He is… Jo-oy!”

Joy assumed the announcer must have been berated the previous night for his overinflated introductions of the competitors, now he was being forced to give shortened introductions.

Joy basked in the attention. He could feel the dark pieces of his mood get thrown into the recesses of his mind, while the egotistical fun-loving parts took control. He smiled up at a random spot in the foliage and made a show of wiping the dirt off his snakeskin shoes.

“And he has already found the hidden sites from which we present their battle to the audience. For those of you worried about the foliage covering up the most spectacular parts of the battle, rest assured, we have found some of the most gifted people to observe and share their visions of the battle with you on this massive screen above the arena.”

It was a little silly, Joy thought, to have shown up in person to this massive event, only to be forced to watch the whole thing play out through someone else’s gift. That was what people did in the rural villages, too far away to come see the event in person.

A wild chant broke through the restless noise of the amped-up crowd. A great stamping of feet all in unison cut through the noise filling up the arena. From the high stands, the men and women with red skin and horns all raised their hands to the sky and shouted, “thank you!”

The arena was completely still for a moment. It was a truly moving moment and Joy almost felt all his fun exterior slip away, awash in a sea of emotion brought up by these people. He bowed his head in their direction with as much sincerity and love as he could share in a bow. They had suffered and he would not forget it.

The announcer continued, apparently ignoring the show of pride from the isolated section of the crowd.

“In the other corner, we have one of the Shining Twins. One of them is lightning, the other is water. Each are a handful when alone, but together they make an unstoppable duo. In the ring right now, we have the Watery Twin. His depths are hidden beneath an icy exterior, but he is here to fight with all the hidden flames of passion in his heart. It is Trent!”

Maybe they just weren’t doing exaggerated introductions for Joy. It was saddening, but Joy wasn’t one to hold a grudge over something so petty.

Joy couldn’t see his opponent enter the ring, so he could only assume that he walked in with a similar amount of swaggering and posturing, but the giant forest kind of ruined it for Joy. Half of the fun of the battle was the way that the contestants interacted, and this got rid of that aspect of the fight entirely. It was going to be a stealth game through the woods.

The crowd roared at an unseen opponent and Joy made a big show of yawning towards the hidden viewers.

With a deafening force the announcer shouted, “begin!” And suddenly the game started, the sounds of the crowd were filtered away by someone with a gift from Sound or Silence, and all Joy could hear was the sounds of the jungle.

Creepy crawlies slithered around the entire arena, giving the stage a sense of realism that Joy felt was unneeded. Who actually wanted snakes to be slithering above their head as they fought?

Joy took a hesitant step forward. The brush around him crinkled and crunkled. The sound carried and Joy knew that he was not a man made for stealth. He did not have the silent feet of an assassin prowling the woods at night. He was a gambler, and being true to that version of himself would serve him better here.

Joy took his first deliberate step forwards and crunched a branch underneath his feet. He took his second as a few small animals skittered away, chirping in annoyance at the massive foot.

His third, fourth, and fifth step went similarly. He went on a crusade against silence in the jungle. He created a cacophony of noise that would only be matched by the jeering that he couldn’t hear coming from the crowd.

After tromping around the jungle for a goodly while, Joy felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight. His back arched for a moment, but he suddenly relaxed and continued stomping.

Behind him in the brush, Trent had a watery suit of armor on that absorbed any branch of leaf he was about to step on. The water made him a silent, deadly force in the jungle.

In his hands a sword that wavered between being a single edged blade and a two-edged massive sword appeared in his hand. The blade itself was made of water and was held together with more willpower than physics. Gifts truly were magical.

The sword finally coalesced into being a single edged long blade and froze into place. Trent had made his sword, and he prepared himself to strike down on his foe.

With a deep breath in, Trent used the water in his armor to propel his feet forwards into a strike that moved at speeds beyond human comprehension. Using his gift, Trent was able to shoot pressurized water out of his body parts at such extreme speeds that they propelled him forwards.

This technique is what allowed him to cover the fifteen-step area between him and Joy, and this technique is what allowed his sword to come down like the anger of Wrath.

Any yet, his sword whiffed. It went entirely past Joy as he ducked down to flick some dirt off his snakeskin shoes.

Joy was disappointed, while Trent was thankful for the silencing effects of the arena. Joy would have loved to hear the jeers and laughs at Trent, while Trent felt that if he heard the people laughing at him, that he would keel over and die.

Joy knew that his stealth left a lot to be desired, but that was why he had relied on one of his more reliable traits. He had known that he was lucky, and luck is always how he came ahead. Some people would be ashamed to admit that luck was how they made it through life and in Joy’s humble opinion those people were fools. There is nothing greater than a person’s luck.

After the first embarrassing attack had been thrown the two fighters stared each other down, trying to size up their competition. Joy felt that the man in front of him was vaguely familiar but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. The haze of pain and misery had made the previous evening hazy in his memory.

As he pondered the mystery, the sword in Trent’s hands melted from ice back into water before reforming into a wicked spear.

A quick jab struck like a snake as Joy backed deeper into the jungle to avoid it. Trent made a giant sweeping motion with his spear, intending to try and take Joy’s head off, but the spear got stuck in a massive thick tree.

Joy pounced in that moment, he closed the distance and hit Trent in the watery armor as hard as he could.

What Joy had not been expecting was for the water to turn into a spike of ice that impaled his hand. The blood mixed with the water of the armor, creating a beautiful crimson color.

The ice started to crawl up Joy’s arm and he made the executive decision to pull his arm free no matter what. Joy lost a bit of skin but was able to escape before getting trapped by the icy embrace or struck down by a newly formed dagger made of ice.

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Joy sighed, the hole in his hand hurt and he was feeling a bit angsty. The day had not been a good one so far, so maybe he should try and finish this rather than playing around.

Joy asked his opponent, making sure there was a reasonable amount of distance between them, “do you want to play a game?”

Trent and a team of knight strategists had put their heads together to figure out how to defeat Joy before his ability was activated. Before the game started, Joy was no different than a giftless person and so if Trent could keep him from being able to activate his ability, then Trent would be able to win easily.

The team had come up with two plans and one of them had already failed. The initial plan was to ambush Joy before he was able to see Trent. The team theorized that Joy needed some sort of visual confirmation of his opponents before he could initiate the game. So, they had crafted this jungle environment and sent Joy up against Trent in the hopes that Trent would be able to ambush Joy before he would even be able to see Trent.

That had obviously failed.

So, now it was time for plan B. With a confidence that was undeserved, Trent straightened his back and proudly said, “no!”

Silence filled the air between Joy and Trent, a tense aura of uncertainty radiated from both of them.

After an a moment an aged voice sounded in both Joy and Trent’s heads. The voice was filled with the proper dignity, however had an edge of condescension in its tone. “Tic-Tac-Toe But Don’t Get Mauled by The Cat. Do any of you need the rules explained?”

A blazing three by three grid of squares appeared above Trent and Joy’s head. Joy’s burned bright blue, while Trent’s blazed a bright red.

Joy started laughing while Trent immediately said “yes, explain them.”

Joy wiped a single tear off his face and spoke for the benefit of the audience, “no one has ever tried that before. But I guess the question is rhetorical.” This caused Joy to have a small laughing fit and start wheezing, thinking about what would have happened if that plan had worked.

With a final wheeze, Joy also asked the mysterious voice if they would deign to describe the rules of Tic-Tac-Toe But Don’t Get Mauled by The Cat.

The voice sighed in Joy’s head, then explained “you and your opponent will be playing tic-tac-toe. If you don’t make a move within ten seconds a move will be made for you,” Joy looked up at his blazing tic-tac-toe board and noticed that while he had been having a minor breakdown, Trent had already made the first move. A blazing red X hung in the center of the board. Quickly, Joy found that he could select the square he wanted by pointing at it, suddenly a bright blue O was in the top left corner of the board. The game seemed simple, so Joy returned to listening to the rules.

“If someone wins a game of tic-tac-toe, the blazing board hanging above the loser’s head will turn into flames that will fall on them, which would cause a bad hair day. However, to discourage tie games there is a small cat that is prowling around the arena that will grow every time a game is tied. Since a tie game is called a cat… get it?”

Sometimes Joy worried that there were too many games, some of them far too ridiculous to be any actual fun. But Joy was still going to give it his all, despite his quibbles with the complexity of the rules.

The game of tic-tac-toe continued on their own burning boards. The nice thing about the massive glowing boards is that it made stealth impossible in the jungle. Joy and Trent found that it was incredibly difficult to be sneaky with a massive glowing apparition sitting above their heads.

Joy and Trent played back and forth for a bit. Neither one of them moved from their positions in the jungle.

A red X would slam into the board only to be followed by a beautifully placed O. Finally, Joy and Trent came to a tie. Neither one could win the game since it was incredibly hard to lose.

Joy had spent quite a few years on the road, and he had enjoyed meeting traveling caravans of performers. They were always quick to bet and quick to leave. Which meant that Joy got the satisfaction of his luck winning another game, but without truly worrying about making someone bet their life saving against him.

He had met a man named Chris who trained chickens. His entire job was to train chickens to play tic-tac-toe. There was something wildly exciting about playing the game against a wild animal that brought the crowds into Chris’ exhibit in the caravan.

There was an invisible whimsy to playing against a simple creature like a chicken. Even Joy found the magic at one point. But he had made the mistake of learning how Chris taught the chickens.

Chris did not have some amazing gift that let him bestow skills onto chickens. All he did was feed them when they made the right sort of move. There is an algorithm to playing tic-tac-toe and if both players know what moves to make in response to the other, there is no way for anyone to win. It’s so simple that even a chicken could do it.

All of this to say that Joy didn’t expect to win a single game against Trent. His win condition for this battle was not going to be winning enough matches of tic-tac-toe, it was going to have to be something more spectacular.

Joy grinned as he jumped forward. Trent was standing still; no weapon of ice had formed in his hands yet because he had focused on the tic-tac-toe game too much. He was only saved from Joy’s vicious attack by the incredible defensive abilities of his watery armor.

Blow after blow slammed into the water, but it automatically formed plates of ice to deflect Joy’s blows. Joy’s hand was still bleeding miserably, and even the watery armor that surrounded Trent was still dyed a deep crimson from Joy’s blood, but the blows kept landing.

Trent was confused by the onslaught. He had spent quite a bit of time analyzing Joy’s fighting style, and he always seemed anti confrontational. He was incredibly skilled, but he enjoyed letting the game do the vast majority of the work for him. He wasn’t the type to get down and dirty.

Yet here they were, Trent was covered in another man’s blood, but Joy kept happily donating more of it via his fist.

Trent finally woke up to the true nature of this battle. He squared his shoulders and formed a cudgel out of ice. It shimmered in the sparse sunlight that passed through the jungle canopy.

He lifted the mighty weapon and brought it down upon his enemy.

Joy dodged the blow and continued his pummeling. The cudgel was far too slow to catch Joy. He felt like the wind. A wind that was in a lot of pain, but the wind, nonetheless.

He struck at every part of the body that he could think of. Legs, arms, back, face, and yet nothing worked. Joy was too weak to get past Trent’s armor. So, Joy improvised.

He leaned back and grabbed a big stick from the ground. He brought it down upon the icy knight’s armor and it made a satisfying crunch. But no more damage was done by the stick than had been done by Joy’s broken hands.

Moments add up. A fight is a collection of moments that make a momentous event. Sometimes the action is not that impressive. This time in this fight, the defining moment, the moment that all other moments were building up to, was very simple. Trent got so absorbed in fighting Joy physically that he forgot to make a move.

Joy leapt back as the flaming tic-tac-toe board that hovered above Trent’s head became much hotter and much more real.

Like the hand of some angry god it smote Trent.

Trent screamed as all the water that had covered his armor was evaporated and turned into steam. He did not have a solid grasp on controlling steam, so it slipped out of his magical grasp, and he writhed on the ground as he was severely burnt by the flaming board.

After a breath, the flames let up and a new board appeared above both the players.

Joy made the first move this time. Placing a single “O” in the center of the board. Joy waited anxiously for his opponent to do something.

The ground as still covered in a layer of steam and Joy could not pierce the veil.

A single red ”X” appeared in the top right of the board and a massively red and blistered Trent emerged from the steam with a howl. He no longer had his beautifully formed icy weapons. Instead, he had cut his palm open to loose a flood of blood that formed into a single brutal icicle.

Joy laughed as the two of them clashed. Now without his armor, Trent was much more vulnerable, and Joy capitalized on it.

Trent’s entire fighting style had relied on his perfect armor, now that he was without it, holes opened in his normally impenetrable technique.

Joy struck like a snake. Always searching out the most vulnerable area and making Trent pay for every strike he took with his blood and pain.

As the epic match was unfolding into its final chapter, the two of them played tic-tac-toe. It was as fast and brutal as their hand-to-hand battle. No more mistakes were made, and so more and more ties started to stack up in the queue.

It was an endless cycle of strikes and placements. The game was played and the two men hit each other. They played the game, then they hit each other. Neither man gave the other an inch of ground as they continued to battle.

Joy felt that this must have been the fiftieth game of tic-tac-toe he had played with Trent. Both combatants were breathing heavily, sweat dripping down their backs. Joy held nothing in his hands, while Trent held the remains of what had been his brutal icicle. It had been chipped and shattered until all that remained was one thin point of ice barely thicker than Joy’s pinky finger.

A deep growl emanated from the forest around them. Joy had never forgotten about the ties and the mysteriously growing cat, but hearing the growl made the problem seem much more apparent than it had before.

Joy’s bones never lied, and right at that moment, they told Joy that this was the final round of tic-tac-toe.

The two men drew upon the last vestiges of their strength and launched themselves at each other. A bloody icicle raised into the air, met with the destroyed fist of Joy.

But that was the least important thing happening at that moment. Because a giant paw slammed into Trent’s chest and knocked him through a tree.

Joy landed in a heap and looked up at what had to have been a tabby cat that was almost the size of a house. It licked its paw then disappeared into motes of golden light.

The silence of the arena suddenly disappeared as whatever gift had been warding away noise was lifted. Joy heard the crowd shout its approval. Big whoops emanated from the stands as Joy fought his way to his feet.

He swayed this way and that, nearly unable to keep himself upright. But he managed.

The showman inside of him took over and Joy took a massive bow to the audience. It had been a good show and Joy loved a good game.

Joy slowly ambled his way out of the jungle towards the waiting medical professionals while being surrounded by the roars of an approving audience.

He had done pretty well this time. He had even left the ring on his own two feet.