The conference tournaments have come to a conclusion and I have turned it to ESPN for the selection Sunday special. Naturally some of the selections were no surprise, such as Gonzaga getting a number seed which made me happy. Once the whole field was revealed, I began my arduous task of filling out my bracket. In past years, I simply filled it out not giving a ton of thought to some of the games, simply basing it off of things such as what conference the teams came from but after Virginia getting knocked off by a sixteen seed the previous year, I realized that process simply would not work anymore.

It took me quite some time but after three hours of doing research that I normally wouldn't I finally came to the national title game where it would be North Carolina going up against those hated Blue Devils from Duke. Naturally I picked the Tar-Heels to win and when I clicked submit, it gave me more than one option for what the prize would be if I picked a perfect bracket. It gave me the option of a prize of $ 10,000 like they do every year but it also mentioned something about a prize of going through a mirror that leads to a completely unknown world. Given that the odds of picking a perfect bracket were 1 in over 9 quintillion and the odds of winning over $ 500 million in the lottery were much higher, I chose the mirror option.

I had told my friends about this and they thought I was nuts for picking such a weird option but I had told them that the chances of that are next to zero so I may as well have a little bit of fun. Once the first weekend of the tournament began, my friends and I gathered to watch the tournament at the sports lounge and the first day would be good, for all of us. For the first time ever, we all were perfect after day one.

In past years all our brackets would get busted rather quickly but after not just the first round, but after the second round, two of us still had a perfect bracket, my best friend Joe and myself. I had never started out that well and he asked, "You know, you've never done this good. You have inside information or somethin'?"

"No, I did research for once."

Naturally the rest of my friends' brackets were in shambles and my closest friend and I looked forward to the Sweet Sixteen, where we were both certain that our brackets would get busted but much to our shock, they didn't. We would be in even greater shock when our brackets remained perfect through the Elite Eight and when the Final Four arrived, I realized that I was only two wins away from the prize I picked. At that moment I began to get a bit nervous and wished I had picked the cash prize.

The national semi-finals came and went and low and behold, out of the many millions of brackets made, my friend and I had perfect brackets going into the national final game of Duke vs. North Carolina. Now we knew that only one would remain standing after this game. Of course not only did we exchange some hostile words given he picked Duke but he also began teasing me about what if that mirror was to go to Equestria?

We both loved My Little Pony and while I was nervous about the mirror, he actually began to wish he had picked the mirror prize because he thought it might lead there and he could meet his waifu, Twilight Sparkle. Now I had done a very good job of hiding the fact that I had a waifu but I did tell him that IF his nasty Blue Devils won, that he should see if he could go through the mirror instead of taking the cash. He said that if that was the case, that he would hook up with Twilight. I couldn't help but laugh over it, someone hooking up with their waifu, hilarious! I immediately began to wonder what Discord would think of such a thing. Now when I laughed, he immediately teased, "Oh come on, you know you that if you went there you'd immediately want Celestia to make you her sex slave."

"What?" I gasped.

"Don't think I don't know about how much you like her. Don't think I don't know about all those well endowed anthro images you have of her on your flash drive." He then laughed harder, "What if it goes to an anthro version of Equestria and Celestia was just like that! You'd be begging her to fuck you for hours on end and you know it!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know that isn't where that mirror leads to so that isn't worth thinking about."

Finally the night of the national title had arrived and both of us were nervous and not just because it would be either my school or his school winning the title, it would be whether or not I'd go through the mirror or he'd beg to switch to that prize. The game was back and forth like many games between the two schools were. When the final buzzer sounded, North Carolina had won 78-77! Not only had I picked a perfect bracket but also I picked the final score correctly.

Apparently ESPN was aware of where the two perfect bracket holders going into that game were because right after the final buzzer sounded, powder blue and white confetti came flying down from the ceiling and I was greeted by the ESPN crew and even more surprisingly, Dick Vitale. Not only were they there, but so was the mirror I chose to go through. I got a lump in my throat and really wished I had picked the money. I was happy as hell that the Tar-Heels won and I picked a bracket of perfection but I was pretty much terrified of what lied on the other side.

After the fanfare I was given, I was escorted to the mirror and I knew the time had come to claim my prize. The time to claim a prize I thought was impossible to get had come. After one last smile for the cameras I walked through it and after I walked through, I found myself flying through a portal of swirling powder blue and white. I thought that perhaps this was just some crazy thing that was carrying me to the post-game party at Chapel Hill but then, when I exited the portal, I hit my head and then nothing.

Author's Note

The odds of a perfect bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.

Almost as close to zero as you can get.