Ladies and gentlemen, this is a historic time indeed. If you’re not aware of the Blogger Blitz already, here’s my recap of the first round – and make sure you do go and read all of the posts, because they’re all extremely entertaining. The finals of this event for the ages are almost upon us, so let’s catch up with how the semifinal round went down!

After the first round, this is how the bracket looks:

Our semifinal matches are thus as follows:

LIGHTNING AND LIGHTNING TAKE ON THE WELL-RED MAGE AND MEGA MAN IN A BATTLE OF SOCCER SURVIVAL! TO THE DEATH! (well, to the winner of the soccer game)

CLAIRE REDFIELD AND LINK MUST ESCAPE THE CLUTCHES OF THE DREAD PIRATE LECHUCK, BUT WHO CAN THRIVE IN THE OTHER’S WORLD?!

Yeah, these semifinal events start to get a bit interesting!

First up, Lightning and Mega Man went head-to-head in a double-tiered battle: which of them would be able to survive 24 hours in their foe’s universe before arriving at a transdimensional football stadium where a sporting battle would commence? Lightning’s argument is here, and Mega Man’s is here.

The Well-Red Mage constructed a carefully-layered argument for why the Blue Bomber would be perfectly suited to navigate Lightning’s universe and then utterly obliterate her at footy, while LightningEllen put together a story about heart and friendship and all that good stuff. Both were well-equipped to demolish the foes they’d find in their opponent’s world, and both would probably be reasonably good at football, so this proved to be the closest-cut decision yet! Mega Man’s versatility and ability to acquire the strength of his defeated enemies served him well as he blasted through the plains of Pulse and the hallways (so many hallways) of Cocoon, and he reached the stadium in record time before commanding his team with robotic precision. Lightning, meanwhile, used her semi-godlike range of powers to shred the Robot Masters she encountered, then took charge of her ragtag bunch of misfits as she always does. I couldn’t believe how hard it was to decide who was going to win this one, and as it turned out, the other judges were all in the same boat. Ultimately, Lightning’s heart just scored her the victory, with three votes to two – though you’ve got to imagine that Mega Man and his team could beat pretty much any real-world squad on the pitch.

So Lightning advanced to fill that first coveted spot in the finals, but who would be her opponent?

Luke of Hundstrasse championed Claire Redfield in the other semi-final against Teri Mae’s choice: the Hero of Time himself, Link. This, much like a broken fork, was also a two-pronged event: the element of surviving in the other’s world was retained, but instead of a soccer game, the other part of the challenge involve escaping from a deadly trap set by Monkey Island‘s dastardly villain, LeChuck. Link managed to free himself with ease before using his many items to wander over to Raccoon City and beat up some zombies, while Claire… well. Claire’s entry was the single most unique post we’ve had in this championship, and genuinely a really good story in its own right. Luke, if you don’t write short stories already, you really should. Claire couldn’t free herself with any of her usual tricks, and over the course of her psychological narrative she came to a terrible conclusion: the only way to escape would be to inject herself with the deadly transformative virus, becoming the very thing she spends her life destroying in order to survive and wreak chaos upon Ganondorf. Unfortunately, the fact that she basically had to kill herself to escape meant that most of the judges felt she couldn’t be awarded the win, but this has to get some sort of honorary award for most gripping and well-written entry.

So there’s your final, folks: Link versus Lightning! But… what will they be doing?

Well, we had single-event rounds in the quarters and double-event matches in the semis, so naturally the final could only be a triple-whammy. You can read the host’s explanation here, but the long and short of it is that our finalists will have to:

• Protect the innocent and defenceless Baby Peach from all six of the competitors who didn’t make it to the final
• Protect the Mushroom Kingdom’s castle from those same vicious and vindictive warriors
• Protect the castle from Peach herself, whose out-of-control emotion-based powers threaten to level the whole thing!

Phew. It’s going to be really intense, you guys. I, for one, can’t wait to see what happens!