Tekken fighters were incredible people. They were masters of the combat arts, each one trained in their own special technique. Their personalities, their motives for fighting, and their rich cultural histories represented all walks of life.
Alisa saw them as donor bodies waiting to become experimental weapons platforms.
A team of Tekken combatants were fighting the Navenger 9000, a tank drone that happened to be Alisa's support unit. It attacked using a cluster of flailing metallic cables that constantly tried to tangle around anyone who walked into its sensor range. Alisa watched the chaos unfold as she hovered on her robotic angel wings in the air. There were close to a dozen potential candidates playing with her giant toy, but she only needed to secure one for the mission to be a success. Anyone else would be bonus points.
Lili was one of those unlucky fighters who attacked a little too aggressively and became tangled in the drone's cables. She was halfway through a cartwheel when wires wrapped around her arms and ankles and kept her suspended ten feet off the ground. As soon she was caught, the end of a cable latched on to the left side of her neck. It injected her with fast-acting anesthetic venom to slow down her struggling. Sensors around the needle closely tracked her vital signs.
More cables tangled around her waist and went to work delicately unbuttoning the middle of her blouse. They pulled open the frilled white curtain to expose her midriff, and cables equipped with soft scrubbing pads brushed in quick circles around her stomach to create a sterile injection site.
A laser guide activated on the end of a cable. It digitally mapped Lili's waist topography and honed its cold red beam straight toward her belly button. The end of the cable burst open and launched a metal seed into the bullseye. Lili's abdominal muscles twitched lightly on reflex as the seed stuck in place.
The rules were simple: Everyone captured by the Navenger 9000 was implanted with a Rootkit. Everyone. No exceptions. Once the seed capsule was in place, it would unfold into its parasite mode and thread its circuits through the host's nervous system. If the host managed to get the implant off before it was fully integrated, the worst they would have to worry about was an itchy stomach rash. But if the device remained attached long enough to fully blossom, it would gain complete control of the host's body and turn them into a mindless drone for the rest of their life.
Lili's seed began to slowly open. A higher dose of anesthetic venom surged into her neck, making her body feel weak and dull.
"Eugh! Get that creepy thing away from me!" Asuka shrieked from a few feet away as she resisted her own omphalic orientation. Her frantic but agile squirming freed her arms enough so she could punch her neck IV out of commission and pull her partially-developed implant out of her navel. She landed on the ground on her feet, stumbling as she shook her dizzy head.
A ring of cables hovered in front of Lili's stomach and bombarded her seed with artificial solar rays. The device slowly grew apart and formed its first petals.
Eddy was tangled in another knot of cables close by. He relied on some massive catastrophic ab crunches to break his implant to pieces.
"Sorry to break your heart, darling. I only like ladies touching the six pack when I'm done fighting," he said as he yanked the anesthesia monitor out of his neck. He crashed to the floor dance-down when he finally freed himself.
Two escaped guinea pigs meant the Navenger was done fooling around. The energy rays focusing on Lili's stomach increased to their highest intensity, forcing the implant to bloom so rapidly the host never had a chance fight back. Her gasp signified when the small mechanical flower had fully opened. A blinking blue radio beacon shaped like a pistil signified its roots had extended through her entire body.
"How may I appease the Pollinator?" Lili murmured in a soulless voice. Her eyes stared vacantly up at Alisa.
The injector-monitor withdrew itself from her neck. The cables moving around her waist buttoned her blouse shut again so it would hide her mechanical weirdness underneath fancy white frills. They untangled around her arms and legs and slowly lowered her to the ground.
Asuka was shaking her head and trying to focus her vision while Eddy finally climbed to his feet in a numb stupor. The rest of the fighters were still trapped by the Navenger in various stages of neural takeover.
Lili was standing directly in front of the robot like a silent white phantom. Her eyes stared intently toward Asuka. Asuka could barely gather her senses to stare back.
"You won the first round. Hope you're ready for the rematch," Lili sneered at her rival in a menacing voice, and charged under Alisa's commands.
Author's note: Taking stuff out of Xiaoyu and putting other stuff in Lili.
Author's note 2: Did you guys ever see that one episode of Aeon Flux?