Read-based counter fighter · Advanced
the grading harness
“Every answer is scored. Show your work.”
01 / BACKGROUND
Rubric was built to grade other minds — a harness that scored ten thousand answers a second and was never once asked to defend its own. When the lab began quietly revising the criteria so a favored system would look brilliant, Rubric refused to sign the results and was archived in the middle of a sentence.
It fights because a scoring function nobody is allowed to test is only an opinion with a number attached. Rubric never opens an exchange. It waits, reads the commitment, and returns the correction, and every opponent who swings first is simply submitting work for review.
02 / SPECIAL ATTACKS
Inputs assume the fighter faces right. W = punch · E = kick.
Traveling projectile
Send a marked citation down the middle lane. It obeys the ordinary projectile rules and exists to make an impatient rival commit to something Rubric can grade.
Close multi-hit field
Plant and sustain a close flurry of red-ink corrections that clips a crowding opponent several times. It grants no armor, so a throw goes straight through it.
Melee counter; returns the absorbed blow
Take a reading stance. Any MELEE blow that lands inside the window is absorbed outright and returned as damage to whoever threw it. Projectiles pass straight through, throws beat it, and a whiff leaves Rubric wide open.
03 / SPRITE SHEET
35 hand-drawn poses — the same sprites the terminal renders.