Chapter Three : Just Say No

You know somebody had to do it sometime. It was just waiting to creep out and then attack the hapless public. You just knew that somebody would do something violent because they played Soul Calibur.

"The video game made me do it," whined a random young man, making a stupid excuse.

All of the Soul Calibur characters were led into court one rainy day, dressed up in suits and skirts, as the defendents. The person suing them was a seventeen-year-old boy who'd snapped somebody's neck after seeing it done by one of the SC characters.

"Please rise for the honorable Judge Phillips," said the baliff. Judge Phillips walked to his podium and took a seat, then slammed the gavel against the coaster-ish thing.

"You may be seated," he said in a sharp voice.

"The case of Nerdy McGee v. Soul Calibur may begin," the baliff said.

"The (insert title of sue-er here) may present his case. How do you plead, Namco?"

"Not guilty," said a Namco executive.

A smart-looking lawyer stood up tall, handling a stack of papers in doing so. "One Nerdy McGee states that, because he played Soul Calibur in the arcade, he killed someone. Doesn't he look innocent?"

Nerdy took off his glasses and made a puppy-dog face.

"How are we going to win against a testimony like THAT?" shouted Xianghua in bewilderment.

"Shh!" shushed most of the jury, who were made up of...

"Dead or Alive characters," sighed a Namco executive. "We haven't got a chance if Tecmo is the jury."

"Now, Nerdy, what were you doing on the night of the incident?" asked Nerdy's lawyer.

"I was playing at the arcade."

"What games did you play?"

"Pacman, Pong, L.A. Rush... and SOUL CALIBUR." He said the last two words loud enough for everybody in the courthouse to hear clearly. Several people in the audience gasped dramatically.

"Who did you play as?"

"TAKI!"

"OBJECTION!" screamed Namco's lawyer as Taki stood up in rage.

"Yes?" asked Judge Phillips.

"My client is not accountable for the actions of this child, Your Honor! He has NO RIGHT to accuse her of actually committing this crime, as he so obviously did!" shouted Namco's lawyer.

Judge Phillips raised an eyebrow. "Yes, we all know he committed the crime--we're just humoring him."

"...Oh. Well, I still object to his story. This is an outrage, Your Honor, because Taki, who was at a pool party at the time-" Taki darted her eyes around the room. "-and who was done with production of the game IN 1998, and was NOT at the scene of the crime, is not guilty!"

"While you hold a good point, Nerdy McGee was playing Soul Calibur approximately twenty minutes before allegedly killing that man."

"ALLEGEDLY?" yelled Astaroth in a blind rage.

"Yes, Mr. Astaroth," the judge drawled.

Meanwhile, Nerdy's parents were discussing their son's actions.

"Nerdy's never even showns signs of rage towards other people," wept Geekette McGee, sobbing into her hands. "He's been a good boy! A good boy! All his life! It was never like this before!"

"There, there, Geekette," Spanky McGee said, trying to comfort his wailing wife. "Nerdy is going through an awkward stage in his development. It's all right."

"Our son killed another person, Spanky!"

Spanky blinked. "Well... yes. But that's not the point, Geekette. The point is, Nerdy is a good boy and he will win this trial."

"How so?"

Spanky rubbed his fingers together. "We McGee's are quite abundant in... moolah."

"Oh, you didn't... Spanky, how could you?"

The judge slammed his gavel against the coaster-esque thingy-doodle. "Jury, decide or whatever."

As the DoA characters filed into a back room, the Namco lawyer approached his clients.

"How does it look for us?" asked a concerned Talim, looking like a shivering, timid chiuaua. "Is it bad?"

"Well... if we were a grapefruit, and Nerdy was a hammar..." the Namco lawyer started, but an executive stopped him.

"Look, don't make this more complex than it already is. Besides, Namco has plenty of money."

"How much were they suing us for?" asked Taki.

The executive checked a program and adjusted his glasses. "Upwards of two-million dollars."

There was an awkward silence afterwards.

"Hey, you know who I haven't seen all day?" Maxi said, rubbing his chin. "That weird Yoshimitsu guy."

"He had a job to do with Tekken," Xianghua told him. "Something about time travel and the 'space-time continuum', whatever that is."

"Must be important and time-consuming if he missed our trial," Kilik mused.

Very suddenly, the doors of the courtroom opened and in walked Yoshimitsu, in a fancy business suit. As he walked, he adjusted his headdress and looked around, freaking a few people out with his scary glowing eyes.

"Sorry I'm late, I was busy," he said, then took a seat next to Nightmare, who eyed him accusingly.

"What have you been doing all this time?" Nightmare asked him, crossing his arms. He started tapping his deformed hand's talons against his armor.

"I was busy," Yoshimitsu repeated, pulling an overly-stuffed manila folder from his suit. He silently slipped it to the Namco lawyer, who flipped through it and made several dramatic faces before looking like an eager-beaver and presenting it to the judge.

"Goodness me," gasped Judge Phillips. "This is...!"

"Yes, one of my clients uncovered this and, frankly, the news is rather shocking," chuckled the lawyer heartily. "I'll have you see that that is no Soul Calibur machine." He looked over his shoulder at the emerging DoA characters.

"We've come to a conclusion, You Honor," said Tina. "And we find the defendent-"

"Hold up, Ms. Armstrong," said Judge Phillips. "Our evidence shows that Nerdy wasn't playing on a Namco-lisenced arcade machine."

"What?" said the DoA characters as ONE BIG ODOR.

"He was actually playing on... a Tecmo machine," the Namco lawyer said. "And he was nowhere near the Soul Calibur game, since in this particular arcade, there are no Namco-lisenced games in the vacinity. As the evidence clearly shows, Nerdy was playing the original Dead or Alive twenty minutes before killing that person. Why, the closest Namco-carrying arcade is two blocks away from that spot!"

Several of the Tecmo characters gaped and looked at each other in horror.

"Yaaaay!" cheered Xianghua, jumping into the air like a Power Ranger or a Sailor Scout. They're kind of interchangeable.

"Nerdy, why did you lie to the court, the judge, your family, Namco, and the general public?" asked Spanky of his son.

"Because I... I lost a game of Soul Calibur II to a... a GIRL! All right, there! I said it! I've hated Soul Calibur ever since!" Nerdy cried over-dramatically as many people in the audience gasped.

Then the Namco executives, lawyer, and characters started to party-hardy. But one question nagged in the back of everybody's minds.

It was Ivy who asked: "But where did you get this shocking evidence, Yoshimitsu?"

"I have my sources," chuckled the Japanese man.

Meanwhile, several light years away, in the grand year of 2005...

"Hahaha! Take THAT, you snot-nosed punk!" jeered Heihachi, putting his thumb to his nose and waggling the rest of his fingers as he watched the boy break down on television. "That's what you get for saying I was the sissiest character in Tekken!" He proceeded to laugh maliciously at the boy's expense.

Back in 16-whatever...

"Well, I think we've all learned a great lesson/moral from this experience," said Hwang inspiringly to his comrades.

"What's that?" they asked.

"When wanting to copy something you see on a video game that you think you can pull off and you'd be the shizz-nizz for," he paused dramatically. "Just say no."

The SC cast shared a good hearty chuckle as sakura blossoms flew by on the wind. Then they turned into a drawing.

They started moving again and stopped chuckling.

"Okay... that was stupid," muttered Cassandra. "We shouldn't do that anymore..."

"Well, we tried it and it just didn't work," Rock said, nodding in agreement. "So now that we know it doesn't work, we won't do it anymore."

Then they started mingling casually as if nothing had happened.

Aftermath:

The nice folks at Namco can rest easy now, for they won the trial. Oh, happy day!

The McGees distrusted Nerdy for the rest of their lives. Oh well- they were just random original filler characters, anyway. (shrugs)

Tecmo went on trial about two weeks later with Nerdy, and were found guilty of being a bad influence. For their punishment, all the girls had breast-reductions and all of them were forced to tone down the violence to only hitting each other with one move. The ESRB has rated their latest game 'eC' for 'Early Childhood', since it has a built-in dictionary of all fighting terms and even most of Webster's Dictionary packed into it, along with many fun learning games starring Kasumi and her buddies.

The cast of Soul Calibur were free to party-hardy like there was no tomorrow, and had a grand old time making fun of Dead or Alive afterwards. Oh, they sure slay me!

Epilogue:

"Was it really right to have those girls be embarrassed like that?" asked Mitsurugi as they were having a big party one night in a big mansion. "I mean... if we had Taki get a breast-reduction-"

"Excuse me?" gasped an astonished Taki.

"-Hypothetically speaking, of course," he added quickly. "Wouldn't she be less appealing to the gaming audience and nobody would ever play our games again?"

"Hey, Sophitia's are bigger than her head, talk to her," Taki grumbled.

"She hasn't said anything this whole chapter. I wonder where she is, anyway...?"

Meanwhile...

"OH GREAT ARES, TAKE THIS SACRIFICE AS A SIGN OF MY LOYALTY!" called Astaroth to the heavens, holding up his battle axe, to which Sophitia was tied and gagged to. He then added as an afterthought: "I COULDN'T GET A VIRGIN, BUT THIS WAS THE BEST I COULD DO FOR YOU, MY LORD!"

"Mmmmmph!" she screamed in muffled terror.