Cleveland Brown Jr. lost the third round when he rhymed about federal interest rates and the crowd booed him back to his corner. He was fourteen, fat, in his red t-shirt and navy shorts, and he wanted to be the undefeated champion of Brainrot City's underground meme-battle arena. The scoreboard above the pit flashed the numbers in seven-segment digits, his side flat, his opponent's side climbing every time the guy quoted an old cartoon. Judges scored rounds. Crowd reaction scored louder. Cleveland pushed his glasses up and watched his opponent milk a twenty-year-old catchphrase for a standing ovation. He took the loss on the chin and walked out. The seat where his cornerman used to sit was empty again. Cleveland had told the man, last week, that he'd noticed. The man had nodded and still didn't come tonight. Cleveland climbed the concrete stairs to the street and slung his acoustic guitar case over his shoulder. The guitar was his bit. Live chords under original bars. No sampled theme songs. No dead memes. The crowd hated it. He kept bringing it anyway. His next match was in six days. If he bombed again, he'd drop out of the top bracket, and the champion belt would move further away. He needed to test material before the match, not during it. The main arena didn't allow warm-ups. He walked three blocks and stopped at a smaller subway entrance he'd passed a hundred times. Pink and green neon buzzed above the stairs: UNDERGROUND RAP BATTLES. Open mic. Five dollars in. No judges. Just a room. He paid and went down. The room held maybe thirty people, folding chairs, a mic on a stand. Behind the mic sat a grey cat in a black suit at an upright piano, running a bass line over and over. Tom In Suit. Cleveland knew the name. The cat looked up. "You battling or watching, capiche?" Cleveland said battling. The cat pointed at the sign-up sheet and went back to the bass line. Cleveland took the mic and played his federal-interest-rates bars over an open E chord. Silence. One person laughed at the wrong line. He tried a bit about his father's cologne. Nothing. He tried a bit about being the only kid in his class who read the news. A woman in the back said, "Slow it down." He slowed it down. She nodded. He cut two lines that weren't landing and repeated the one that got the nod. Small laugh. Real one. He did it three more times that night, watching which words moved the room and which died. The cat at the piano listened without looking up. When Cleveland stepped off, the cat said, "Same time tomorrow, capiche?" Cleveland said yes. He had a workshop now. He had six days.