"Alone against my darkest fear, but I sense my friends are near. I'll draw from each I power I need, evil queen we will defeat."
- Sailor Moon
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"
- Gaston
An oversized Mokujin robot with a sword didn't seem like a very threatening exhibition opponent. Even though his head nearly touched the arena spotlights when he stood completely up, he was still a lumbering and silly-looking contraption that could easily be taken down.
The audience of thousands filling the stadium cheered in anticipation for the special fight. The arena announcer kept the masses excited with hype introductions for each fighter and an awful attempt at freestyle rap. The scoreboard hanging about the action was divided into two grids for Mokujin vs. Contestants. The latter half showed separate rectangular profiles for each fighter.
Today's exhibition was 18 on 1. The challengers thought they were walking into certain victory. What transpired would forever be known as the Purging of the Posies.
Mokujin slowly lifted his giant electrified katana. The arena audience raised their voices in excitement. The stadium speakers buzzed to signal the start of the fight. The unmitigated destruction of the entire female Tekken roster began.
Michelle, Katarina, Miharu, and Angel were the first to instantly get caught in the heat ray that suddenly blasted out of Mokujin's mouth, quickly followed up by a dense bath of toxic fumes expelled from his exhaust ports. Those who weren't instantly vaporized under the intense laser spread (the most merciful end they could be granted) collapsed over and painfully coughed on the ground until they went silent. Each of their profiles on the scoreboard went dim and was stamped with a large red "K.O." logo the instant they ceased to be.
Kunimitsu escaped certain doom and cartwheeled up Mokujin's arm. A stray buzzsaw flying out of his shoulder made sure she came crashing back down, short of her head.
Lili assaulted Mokujin with elegant kicks and pirouettes. Mokujin responded by flinging several dozen wire-guided syringes toward her and overwhelming her. They easily pierced the thin white threads of her dress and found all her major arteries. She fell over on her back as she was put under intensive care in the middle of the ring. Half of the needles drained the blood out of her veins with punishing speed. The other half instantly filled her back up with a heated metallic fluid resembling mercury. Her heart could only live on the artificial compounds for a few seconds, but that was all that was needed.
Vents opened above Eliza's head and doused her in a cloud of vampire pheromones. She dizzily stumbled backwards and suddenly felt very thirsty.
Mokujin dumped a tank of purple industrial waste over Jun. She collapsed to her hands and knees under the muck and wheezed in pain. The unknown chemicals melted her off her fighting gear and transformed her into Unknown for a brief instant. A second wave of merciless purple sludge melted her completely.
Eliza's immortal senses noticed Lili on the ground nearby. Succumbing to her uncontrollable urges, she quickly hopped over the struggling, barely alive girl and leaned in to take a quick nibble. Her fangs pierced Lili's flesh even more easily than the syringes. The concentrated silver in Lili's veins killed Eliza after only a few sips, leaving their legs tangled in strife and their bodies lying in a heap of elegant frills. Mokujin drove a pile bunker through her heart just to make it official.
The scoreboard overhead updated instantly. The challengers' side was being washed over in a wave of large red "K.O." signs in a clean sweep.
A compartment on Mokujin's robotic torso launched a row of stereo speakers where Lucky Chloe was setting up her own attack. She frantically glanced from side to side as they landed around her, not really sure what was going on. Amplifier cables shot out from the speakers and wired themselves to the sides of her kitten headphones. She clasped her mittens over her ears and screamed as she was assaulted by an immense bass boost that grew more agonizing by the second. In the finale of the Concerto Techno, the throbbing inside her skull reached its peak and her head exploded into a cloud of glittering pink and red pyro. Her bloodied plastic cat ears clattered to the checkered area floor as her corpse slumped over on its knees.
Josie was crushed into a puddle of Josie Juice under Mokujin's Exploding Palm Technique. He should have been called Massacrejin at this point.
Alisa and Xiaoyu soared through air together in a double flying kick. Mokujin exposed the three steel life pods built into his torso and trapped them both as they sailed straight into their fate. Inside the privacy of the hallow metal canisters, neon scanner bars urgently graphed a rough 3D sketch of each fighter's body dimensions and rapidly compiled the data into a single naked wireframe blueprint, adjusting the details on the fly to make the curves overlap and the bumps line up in the limited time available. Once all the coordinates were finalized, the outside pods hastily broke down the two base components locked in the tanning beds, filtering their electrons through pipes and energy cables so they joined in the single middle pod.
The young kung-fu master and her quirky android friend had tried to take down Mokujin in a synchronized attack. Now they were being 100% synchronized.
In a rare feat, the Williams sisters briefly set their differences aside and teamed up against their opponent. Mokujin set his voltage limiters aside and instantly flung battery cables around Nina and Anna—one sister at the negative end, the other at the positive end. Mokujin poured his full power supply through the cables, while the sisters' bodies completed the circuit and amplified the wattage against each other. Their eyes and the insides of their mouths lit up like flashlights. It was a quick roast, and the blaring drone of the increasing electrical power drowned out most of their screams. Their charred and smoky remains toppled over side by side an instant later. Stubborn Anna lasted a half-second longer than her sister.
The two canisters on the robot's torso opened to release their pent up steam and reveal Alisa and Xiaoyu's individual selves had been banished. The mysterious third pod between them pulled apart and released a new figure into the battle. She mostly resembled Xiaoyu in her orange combat dress, but now she sported small violet streaks in her black hair, she was wearing something similar to Alisa's black stockings and thigh shorts underneath her qipao skirt, and she came with a slight post-industrial punk look. The resulting product was comprised of Alisa's hacked AI and spare mechanical parts rapidly encoded onto Xiaoyu's meat. The process had been rushed, rough, and left the final creation with an uncertain life span. The scoreboard counted the successful fusion as a Double K.O.
Zafina climbed up Mokujin's leg with spider agility. A compartment opened on the robot's knee and shot an oozing white net around her to trap her. A conveyor arm equipped with a hundred flailing swords extended out of his ankle and instantly chopped her into tiny steak cubes with a single pass.
The Xiao-lisa fusion flipped through the air at mach speed and snapped Asuka's neck between her iron thighs. She twisted her stance on one foot and punched Jaycee's still-beating heart straight out of her chest.
Christie tried her sizzling dance moves against Mokujin's armor. He showed her a new breakdance by picking her up in both hands and breaking her in half.
Mokujin lifted his sword again and swung it into a defensive posture. The combined Xiaoyu and Alisa landed out of her flip and brushed the dust off the back of her shorts.
The buzzer screamed to signal the end of the game. A barbaric crowd of thousands cheered in applause. The only life that still moved in the dazzling coliseum lights were the giant war machine and his small orange and violet drone. The Xiaoyu-thing rolled her shoulders to work out her stressed joints. Mokujin stood over the carnage like an ancient god whose thirst for blood had been appeased... for now.
High above the seats meant for the common rabble, hidden behind the soundproof window of her private VIP booth, Kazumi Mishima was watching with intent eyes. She sat cross-legged and comfortable on a velvet couch in her pure white kimono. One of her hands was curled against her cheek in boredom. The other gracefully stroked her purring pet tiger on his forehead. Her lashes flicked toward the final count on the scoreboard hanging across from her.
53 seconds. 53 seconds was all it had taken to thin the herd and remove all of her competition.
"I'll consider this a success." A wicked smirk crossed Kazumi's glistening ruby lips. "We shall begin preparations for Phase 2."
Author's note: This is not me at my most sadistic, kiddo. This is me at my most passive aggressive.