The story begins with a young college boy who had recently bought the brand new Nintendo game console, the Wii U. The first games he bought for the system were Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge and New Super Mario Bros. U, and on his way back to his dorm room one night, he thought he'd go down to the local game store to buy another game. That is, until spotted something in the garbage can in the residence building's lobby. It was the game case for the Wii U version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and he opened it up to find that the disc was inside looking perfectly intact.
The boy was very excited because he was a big fan of fighting games and had heard nothing but positive remarks about the Tekken series. Making sure no one would spot him (because you're guaranteed to be declared weird if you go rifling around in trash for a video game), he took the game with him back to his dorm and started playing it the second he sat down in front of his TV. The game booted up like normal, but right away he noticed something strange. Instead of the regular main menu music, the song that was playing was "Antares" from the fifth game in the main series of Tekken. Very odd considering he'd researched the game extensively and hadn't heard about this song being in it. Nonetheless, it was fine to him because…let's face it: that song is awesome.
That wasn't the only strange thing, however. He found that every mode aside from Arcade Battle was grayed out and not selectable. He figured that Arcade Battle would be a good place to start the game, anyway, so he selected it. It only got weirder from there, because upon the character select screen appearing, the only two character icons that could be seen were the ones for Alisa Bosconovich and Unknown. He found this even stranger because Unknown wasn't supposed to be playable at the start of the game. You had to beat her in Arcade Battle to unlock her. He simply ignored it and selected the two fighters.
Upon the loading screen blaring "Get ready for the next battle!" appearing, it looked like things were starting to be normal again until he saw that Alisa and Unknown were no longer the characters he selected. Now he was fighting them, and in their place on his side was a character he had never seen before. She seemed to look just like Alisa, but her skin was incredibly pale and everything else on her was a deep purple, not to mention that the displayed name read "Asila". It took him a moment to realize that the name was Alisa spelled backwards…fucking genius.
Upon the character intros transitioning into the fight, "Asila" performing the same animations that Alisa would normally use, but when she opened her mouth to speak, nothing came out. Upon Alisa giving her intro animation, she said nothing and simply adopted a look of horror, as if she were frightened by this glitch of a character. The fight at first started up like normal, with the player noticing that although Asila had the same model as Alisa, she had the same fighting style as Unknown, almost as if the two characters had fused upon him selecting them. Upon landing the first blow, however, Alisa suddenly screamed and fell to the ground as though she had lost all her health. The game screen didn't read "K.O.", and right as the player suspected that the game had crashed, Unknown jumped in to continue the fight.
Against Unknown, the fight remained normal with the CPU actually fighting back and even managing to knock out the player once. Some minor static appeared on the screen when this happened, but the player just ignored it and kept going. When the next round began, Alisa was still lying on the ground unconscious, so Unknown continued the fight. Upon the player defeating her, the typical sound when a Wii U game freezes rang out and the game froze for a few seconds. Right as the player got up to push the power button, the game unfroze. Unknown screamed as normal, but what shocked the player was that it appeared as though her head had been torn clean off, and he could see it in Asila's hand. Unfortunately, it only got worse from there, because the game didn't announce that he had won the fight. Instead, the camera slowly zoomed in towards Asila, who turned towards the camera and seemed to smile at the player before the game froze yet again, this time not restoring. The player turned the game off and went to sleep, hoping that when he got up the next morning and tried the game again, everything would be fine.
How wrong he was.
Upon waking up the next morning, he sat down and turned on the game again. This time, nothing was grayed out. Satisfied, he selected Arcade Battle and saw with even greater relief that none of the characters were missing…aside from Alisa and Unknown. With Unknown it made sense, but why would Alisa be gone? Then he saw who it was that had taken her place. Nervously, the player selected Asila (though the game's announcer still identified her as Alisa), and to go along with her, he selected Jin. Upon the intro screen popping up, he saw that Jin was nowhere to be found, and this time Asila could speak. Normally this would be fine, but what was strange was that she spoke in English when Alisa speaks in Japanese. The exact words that she said were "I'm going to kill you." The player didn't know if she was talking to him or the two characters they were fighting against, but he pressed on.
Thankfully, Asila functioned normally this time. The game didn't freeze when he defeated an opponent, and Asila made Unknown's normal winning pose. All this was fine until he got to a specific match against Alisa, who again displayed a look of horror and again went down with only one hit. Nothing much else happened until the player got to the last fight in Arcade Battle with Jun Kazama. Normally after winning one round against her, she'd transform into Unknown, but this time she started off the fight that way. As soon as the announcer said "FIGHT!", Unknown screamed and dropped onto the ground, followed by Asila staring at the player again. It then showed the usual cutscene that would normally happen after beating Arcade Battle, and while there would normally be a character specific ending afterwards, the screen just stayed black before the Wii U turned off a few seconds later. Not surprising considering that if Asila was a glitch character, she wouldn't have an ending. That's when the player was struck by the most horrifying experience of all.
He felt the Gamepad rumble in his hands every seconds or so, and upon looking down at it, he nearly screamed when he saw Asila looking through the screen at him. She seemed to pay no attention to him and proceeded to pound against the screen (which was what caused it to rumble) and seemed to be crying out for help, like she was somehow trapped within the Gamepad. Not knowing what else to do, the player said, "Everything's going to be okay". Upon doing this, Asila stopped thrashing about and looked him straight in the eyes. A relieved smile seemed to come over her, and she spoke to him, asking him point-blank, "What's your name?" Considering the Wii U had a Skype-like function, the player answered with his name. The player then asked for her name.
"My name is Alisa."
"But I thought that other girl's name was Alisa."
"Oh…you mean this one?"
To the player's horror, she held up the severed head of Alisa. At that point he slammed the power button on the Gamepad and stayed away from the game for several days until he was visited by one of his close friends. Upon him asking about his new game, the player warned him that he'd seen "the freakiest shit since Dead Space" in it. The friend ignored his warning, sat down and turned the game on. To the player's surprise, Asila wasn't on the select screen anymore. Unknown was still missing, but Alisa was now back in her rightful place. The friend seemed to think for a moment before he said, "This reminds me of something weird that happened a few weeks ago." When the player asked him what he was talking about, he was asked if he had ever loved something so much that he wanted to kill it.
Supposedly there was a girl that lived in the same residence building as the player. She liked to call herself Alisa even though that wasn't her real name. She was heavily into cosplay and was rather sociopathic, not really speaking to other people very often and always having a strange glint in her eyes. She hated her mother for some reason and always imagined her as a total monster, though her roommate said otherwise. She was a fan of Tekken as well…in fact, she was a little too much of a fan.
Ever since the character's first appearance, this girl had been obsessed with Alisa Bosconovich; dressing up as her, drawing pictures of her, typical fangirl stuff. Upon purchasing Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (the player had a bad feeling that it was the Wii U version), the team she always picked was Alisa and Unknown, and her roommate apparently once heard her call Unknown "Mommy". The last anyone ever saw of her was her slowly walking into her room and whispering "Alisa and Mommy…I love you…I'm gonna kill you." Even worse was that after she mysteriously disappeared one night, what was found in her bed was a drawing taped to her copy of the game.
The player could understand why someone would be a fan of Alisa (considering she was a half-decent fighter and was very cute to go along with it), but this was just more than he could believe. He didn't dare to mention that he had seen Asila's face on the Gamepad. After the friend left, the player picked up the game box and opened it. He carefully looked it over until he found something tucked into the instruction manual. Upon pulling it out, he found that it was the drawing his friend had mentioned. It was very well-done, but the content disturbed him beyond belief. It showed Asila holding the severed head of Alisa and kissing it passionately. After hearing the story from his friend, he began to suspect that he'd be able to find some sort of answer by playing the game again.
Sounds a little insane to me and probably everyone else, but okay.
Instead of Arcade Battle this time, he selected Team Battle. Once again, Asila was where Alisa should have been, and Unknown was nowhere to be found. He assembled his eight-character team, making sure he picked Asila last. Much to his shock and even annoyance, none of the characters on his team had made it to the intro screen. The only character there was Asila, and all of the opponents were either Alisa or Unknown. The player attempted to simply leave the character standing there and allow Alisa to attack her, but upon that happening, Asila counterattacked in the most horrifying way possible: by impaling her arm through Alisa's chest. Alisa's scream was loud enough to nearly shatter glass, and the player rushed forward to turn the game off until Unknown jumped into the battle and attempted to take down Asila, only to meet with the same fate. At this point the player had enough and shut the game off, but not before noticing that his Gamepad screen was starting to flicker. Right before his eyes, the Wii U turned itself back on and Asila had landed in a stage resembling the one from Arcade Battle where the player characters fight Unknown, save for the fact that the water was blood red.
Suddenly it happened: Alisa and Unknown's screams echoed through the air, the screen began flashing over and over again, and Asila appeared on his Gamepad yet again once all the noise had stopped. She didn't speak this time; she simply smiled at the player, who could do nothing but stare back at her. Out of curiosity, he pressed a button. "Get ready for the next battle!", blared the announcer. An image of Asila holding Alisa's severed head appeared, this time holding Unknown's head as well. His opponent, as he could see, was a decomposing version of Alisa. At this point, he was starting to get more irritated than he was disturbed…until Alisa spoke.
He realized the sound had come from the Gamepad, and as he looked down, he saw her pounding against the screen, sobbing "Please help me! She's going to kill me!" She let out one terrified scream before the Gamepad screen flickered out to show Asila's face again before returning to the character select screen. None of the characters were selectable save for Asila. In a last ditch effort, the player went back to the main menu and selected Customize. Again all the characters but Asila were grayed out, so he selected it. Out came "Get ready for the next…" Before the game could say "battle", the screen flickered again, covered in static and once again letting out Alisa's terrified scream as well as her screaming "No…no, please! Don't do this to me! NO!".
The game dropped the player's character into the same stage as before, but this time the player was relieved to see that he was not playing as Asila anymore. In fact, he was playing as Unknown, and noticing he had a character in reserve, he switched it to reveal Alisa. The player pushed one button and Alisa rushed forward, seizing Asila's head and attempting to tear it off by the looks of it. Sadly, this once again failed as Asila buried her hand into Alisa's chest, lifting her high up into the air before ripping her head clean off and holding it triumphantly. The player hit the power button on the Wii U, but for some reason, it didn't turn off. Looking at the Gamepad again, he saw Alisa crying. "Why…why didn't you save me…I thought I could trust you…" The player could feel himself beginning to cry as well, as though there were a way for him to save her. The game returned him to the character select screen, with every character but Asila grayed out. The player turned the Wii U off, this time successfully. Taking the game out of the system, he placed it in the game box and threw it out the window as hard as he could.
The next day, the player went to his local store and bought the game. To his relief, Alisa was still alive, and her lovely smiling face was there to comfort him as he found endless joy in his now confirmed favourite game of all time.
The moral of the story is that if a game is in a trash can, it's supposed to be there. Don't touch it. What you'll find may be more than you can bear to see.