NAWBALL Fight Club

Unfinished poster for NAWBALL Fight Club featuring Spark, Felin, Aegis, Brooke, Ash, Prism, Larry, J0hn, and Liquid Crystal.

NAWBALL Fight Club, or NBFC for short, is a series of casual Super Smash Bros. Ultimate online matches organized by Aubz with an emergent storyline. It started in February 2022 and lasted until March 2022 before going on hiatus, and is the precursor to Amiibrawl. It's somewhat of an AU of CPU Kerfuffle by Jenny Chongoshow, with a few fighters from CPU Kerfuffle being major characters in NBFC, but otherwise has become its own beast.

NBFC stars the original versions of Felin and Aegis, Spark, Brooke, and Ash (with cameos from Aubz as herself) as they fight and befriend various characters from CPU Kerfuffle such as Larry the Florida Man, Hackerman J0hn, and (regrettably) Elijah Wood. Original characters would later be introduced - this is the origin of the Figureheads Cinnabar, Citrine, and Copper, as well as fan-favorite side character Leadboy. Also in the mix is CPU Kerfuffle antagonist Prism, who is intrigued by the properties of the pocket dimension NBFC takes place in.

Because of CPUs not being available in battle arenas, Aubz's workaround to include the CPU Kerfuffle crew was to make Amiibos of them to throw into the arena. The various shenanigans that ensued became the basis of Amiibrawl! Many elements from NBFC carried over to Amiibrawl, like the pocket dimensions being in Space Florida, the Figureheads, the worldbuilding around FPs, and various inside jokes. The Amiibrawl setting can be considered a soft reboot of NBFC without the CPU Kerfuffle elements and with the player fighters now being commentators.

It has 13 and a half episodes and two noncanon Gaidens - Gaiden 1 was unrecorded and treated as a dream, while Gaiden 2 is part of the transition into Amiibrawl and is dubiously canon to both. All of NBFC's story was done in Discord text chat and therefore isn't in video form (although VODs of some of the matches themselves exist), but the entire series has been compiled into transcripts for ease of access.

Plot Summary

What should've been a perfectly ordinary match between Aubz, Felin, and Spark has a surprise twist thrown into the mix with the appearance of Larry the Florida Man. They fight a couple rounds before Larry heads off with a request to do that again sometime; unfortunately, the next fighter they run into is Prism, who has far more nefarious goals centered around the battle arena pocket dimension. She proceeds to use the Fight Club as a testing ground for various gimmicks, although Larry and his boyfriend Hackerman J0hn interfere now and then to try and figure out what she's planning.

During one of Prism's visits, she explains the rules of the pocket dimension to the Players - capital P intended. Normally, there are two types of fighters: Players and CPUs. CPUs are your average AI fighter, and while they can have a lot of personality they can also be predictable in their fighting style. You always know what you're gonna get when you see a CPU in battle. Players, on the other hand, are the exact opposite: they're adaptable, difficult to predict, and capable of basically anything due to being on a completely different level from the CPUs. The pocket dimension, however, adds a third type: Figure Players, which CPUs can be converted into and that have the capability to learn and grow. Prism is interested in the untapped potential of FPs, and Larry and J0hn's temporary conversion into FPs while in the pocket dimension makes them unknowing targets of her curiosity.

Prism's experimentation on the Fight Club builds up to her giving the fighters the ability to use Final Smashes fueled by her own godly Color Power. The Players are able to use it without ill effects, just like the rest of Prism's gimmicks up until now, but Prism's meddling has always given Larry and J0hn the feeling of something being off. Larry reassures the Players that they have a plan, and when Prism reappears J0hn agrees to test out the Color Power himself. Prism retrains J0hn into Liquid Crystal: a Prismatic version of himself with no memories and no connection to the others, including Larry. Liquid Crystal defeats the Fight Club easily, and from there the plan to rescue J0hn from Prism's control begins.

Liquid Crystal is just one element of Prism's schemes, however. Using Ash as a basis, she creates the Figurehead of Dimensions, Cinnabar, and sends him to attack the Fight Club. Felin breaks him over their knee. Cinnabar takes that loss and turns it into a rivalry. Fueled by a dream of the first Gaiden, he challenges the Fight Club and secures a win. Felin makes it their goal to befriend the world's most disappointing red Link.

Meanwhile in the main plot, Larry finds himself working together with J0hn's brother, Elijah Wood. He's able to confirm that Liquid Crystal is still J0hn, even with Prism having retrained him, and that means he can progress to the next step of the plan: swiping Liquid Crystal's AI data to reverse engineer what exactly Prism did. One cliffhanger later, Cinnabar decides he's had enough of Liquid Crystal and the Fight Club dunking on him and that he wants to be main plot now, only to get his ass kicked by Felin again using the power of friendship and teamwork.

Larry starts to fill the Players in on why he stole Liquid Crystal's data, but is interrupted by a new arrival: the Figurehead of Time, Citrine. Unlike her brother, she has no interest in playing nice, and nearly defeats the Fight Club; she's about to take out Felin when they turn the tables on her and cement themself as the local godkiller. With one Figurehead down and the other on the way to a heel-face turn, Prism's goal of replacing troublesome gods with loyal FPs is looking less and less like a success. Cinnabar even stands up for his new friends against Liquid Crystal and Citrine. The proof that he's been compromised puts him in danger, but with Felin and Spark's help he's able to send Citrine packing and put a crack in Liquid Crystal's certainty of who he is.

Then the Fight Club makes fun of Liquid Crystal for having a crush on his own boyfriend. It's very silly.

He's not the only one starting to doubt his identity, however. After overhearing what happened to J0hn, Citrine comes to the Fight Club for answers. She's not ready to believe them, but she is ready to infodump about horses and leaves the arena on somewhat friendlier terms. Before she leaves, she asks the Fight Club to keep an eye out for Cinnabar - ever since Liquid Crystal accused him of being compromised, she's been worrying about him. The god in red that shows up afterwards isn't Cinnabar, though: the actual God of Dimensions, Crimson, enters the arena to fuck around a little and see what the big deal is. After all, he's the god of dimensions, so he knows about the pocket dimension already. What's up with this supposed knockoff of him, anyway? (Cinnabar, meanwhile, does not enjoy discovering who he's a knockoff of.)

Prism drops in to showcase that she's finished the final member of the trio: the Figurehead of Death, Copper. Aegis takes over Felin's duty as godkiller and takes all three of his stocks, proving yet again that the Fight Club can overcome nearly anything.

After that, things lighten up a little. Copper joins Citrine in the "not really friends but at least willing to put up with their shenanigans" camp and drops by to celebrate Man Tiddy Monday by reducing Spark to kir component atoms, as is the case with 75% of kir fights. ...or that seems to be the case, anyway. Larry's decided to do a repeat of his funny trick from the very start of NBFC, this time disguising himself as Spark rather than Aubz. Except for the part where Larry is a little too busy working on something with Cinnabar to be fighting. Ah. Hm. Uh oh.

Further tomfoolery catches the attention of Crimson again, who isn't happy about how often things go horribly wrong in the pocket dimension. Connection errors, reality destabilization, people ending up where they shouldn't be, and now two entire Larries claiming "not it". It only gets worse from here: the next session opens with Larry having made a device that should theoretically free him from Prism's control, but tampering from Brooke and impulsive encouragement from Felin causes the Figurehead of Dimensions to eat it and temporarily break the pocket dimension. Good news: He's fine! Bad news: the pocket dimension isn't. It's stable enough for the Fight Club to continue, at least.

Now that he's free of Prism's influence, Cinnabar finds himself at a loss. He makes the decision to continue getting stronger, this time for himself rather than for his creator, and leaves. The damage done to the pocket dimension hasn't gone unnoticed, though, and Citrine drops in to find out what happened to her brother. Spark and Felin proceed to lie to her. A lot. They at least get Citrine to consider friendship as an option, but at the cost of lying to her about the Pope.