Title: Recruit Titus

Author: Stormhawk

Rating: PG

Disclaimer:

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Word Count: 2230

Summary: Smith gives Stef permission to get a recruit, so she goes and pulls the first random person off the street that she can find – Titus!

Notes: Originally, this was going to be longer. But I wanted to put this part up so it'll come in chapters, ok?

GOTO come on Smith, please."

"I said no Stef."

"But whhhhyyyy?" Stef whined as she sat on his desk. "I asked nicely."

Smith leant back in his chair and shook his head, "you cannot have a recruit."

"But please, I've never had one. Please, please, please, please!"

"Stef, you're wearing a hole in my carpet."

"Let me or I'll get even more annoying."

"Is that even possible?"

She glared at him, "oh believe me, it is."

"Why me?" Smith asked no one in particular.

"But, but I promise I'll feed it and walk it and play with it. And I even picked out a name for it: Bob."

Smith felt a headache coming on, "we are not talking about a pet, we're talking about a recruit."

Stef looked up at him, "there's a difference?"

"Do you seriously want me to answer that? Besides, most of them come with their own names. You can't call them Bob just because you want to."

"Ok then, George."

Smith shook his head, "sometimes I don't know how your mind works."

"Ditto Smitty."

"Have the RAs done something to you? You seem a little more hyper than usual…"

"Well there were these nice cookies T'Lorie gave me…hmm…they probably had too much sugar in them. Want one? I don't understand why you're fighting me on this."

"I know what happened to Blinky."

Stef slapped him, hard. Then shook her head. "Blinky was a virtual fish. He doesn't count, he was a widget that lived on my computer."

"Do you promise to take care of your recruit better?"

Stef held up three fingers and crossed her eyes, "yep."

"If I give you permission to get a recruit, will you leave? And not come back until you're yourself again?"

"Yep!"

"Then you can, please go."

Stef jumped for joy and then shifted out of his office.

Smith sat back in his chair, "I think I need a holiday."

Meanwhile, a perfectly ordinary and naive young man named Titus was walking down the street, never imaging his world was about to get turned on its end.

He jumped back as a young woman appeared in front of him. "What is this? A hidden camera show?"

"Hey cool," Stef said, "you'll do."

"Huh?"

"Is your name Bob?"

"No, it's Titus…Ty."

"You're going to be my recruit Ty," Stef said as she grabbed his arm and started dragging him down the street.

"Did you just escape from a mental ward?" he yelled as he tried to free himself from her.

"No," she said soberly, "I'm usually not this insane, the RAs do it professionally. But I did just get permission to get a recruit, and guess what? You're him!"

"Wait a minute!" Ty yelled as he grabbed a lamppost to stop her from pulling him any further. "Recruit for what?"

"Have you ever heard about the Matrix?" she asked as she let him go.

Ty nodded, "vaguely, in math, once...I think I was half-asleep."

Stef blinked a couple of time, "o…k, this is a different type of Matrix. The world is virtual."

"Is it like a VR game? Cool, sign me up!"

Stef bashed her head against the lamppost, leaving an indent, "now I know why Smith didn't want me to get a pet."

"Pet?"

"I mean recruit. The Matrix isn't a game, it's…everything." She pointed to a building, a bird and a koala… "Koala? I've got to tell Alo to put collars on them."

The koala gave her a dirty look and then scampered away. A moment later, there was a scream and the sound of a random coppertop becoming lunch.

"That, was disturbing," Ty said as he sat down. "Very, very disturbing."

"Ah that was nothing, just one of Alocin's koalas."

"This is New York. Why are there koalas here at all? Is she some crazy Australian chick?"

"Pot calling the kettle black? I can hear your accent. And no…that's T'Lorie and Angel. Alo is Welsh. So is Star as a matter of fact."

"Welsh…with a koala obsession, can I wake up now?"

"Only if you want to take drugs off a scary bald man, and then we can set the koalas on you."

"You mentioned recruitment for something…does it have anything to do with koalas?"

"No traditionally, depends if you hang out with the RAs or not. Come on Bob, recruitment time."

"My name is Ty," he said as she resumed pulling him down the street. "And I don't have a choice in this do I?"

"Not really," she said as she pulled him into the door of the Agency. "It's lots of fun…you might get killed, but you get to wear a shiny suit, and a tie clip, see?" she said as she held her tie up for him to see. "Tie and Ty…that's funny."

She slapped herself, "I am never eating cookies the RAs made. Ever again."

"So usually you're not this insane?"

"Not usually. Sometimes. Tests are this way."

"Tests?"

"Yeah, we can't pull any random person off the street and recruit them." Ty just looked at her. She smirked, "well, we can't just pull any random person off the street and keep them as a recruit unless we test them."

"Is it like standardised testing? Multiple choice? I'm not that good at critical thinking…"

"Bob…er…Ty, you just left yourself wide open for an insult, but I'll refrain."

"Five minutes ago, I was minding my own business…how the hell did this happen?"

"Blind, dumb luck, it happens all the time."

Ty held up a finger, "can I leave now? Please?"

Stef pouted, "you don't wanna be my recruit?"

"I'm still not sure that you aren't an escaped mental patient."

She pulled her gun from her holster, "do they let mental patients carry firearms?"

"AHHHHHH!" Ty screamed, ducking behind a plant. A plant, that had so far escaped being interrogated by Angel. Lucky plant. It's luck was bound to fun out sometime.

"You scream like a girl," Stef said as she waved her Desert Eagle around. "It's perfectly safe, the safety is on and I'm a brilliant shot."

Proving the safety of firearms once and for all, the gun went off of its own accord, ricocheting off the plant, bouncing off one of the marble columns and then landing in the roof, causing dust to fall onto Stef's head.

"I really, really, want to leave now."

"That doesn't count! The gun is possessed!"

"She's correct you know," an English voice said.

"What now?" Ty said as he sat up and watched in a kind of fascinated horror as a lie detector rolled into the room.

"Hi Sheerluck," Stef said, "and my gun is really possessed?"

"Indeed," he said.

"What the hell is going on? Why is that thing talking?" Ty yelled he pointed at the lie detector.

"Oh Sheerluck is just the RAs lie detector, he assists Angel when she wants to interrogates plants? Oh…you aren't here for that plant are you? That's the last fern in the agency."

"I'm afraid so Agent, she suspects it of knowing a secret rebel plot."

Stef buried her face in her hands, "oh well, take it away. Here," she said as she placed her gun on his scanner, "get rid of the possessed gun while you're at it."

"You're not the insane one, I'm the insane one. I'm completely flipping insane. Why me?" Ty sat down, rocking back and forth, trying to wonder when his sanity had slipped away.

"Oh this is completely normal around here, you should be grateful Bob isn't here any more."

"What is it with you and the name Bob?" he asked.

"Bob was a punching bag, and Bob is just a cool name."

"Some people might think so. Was the punching bag English too?"

Stef cocked her head to the side, "I don't really remember, I did like when he bitch-slapped Brown though."

"A punching bag?"

"Yep."

"That's what I thought you said."

Titus ran for his life.

Stef grabbed the back of his shirt, "not that way, the tests are this way."

"Nooooooooo!" Ty yelled as he was dragged deeper into the nuthouse…er…Agency.

The reached the testing room and he relaxed somewhat when there wasn't anything too scary. Nothing isn't all that intimidating.

"So…?" he asked. "Thought there was some kind of test."

"Yep. You have to jump a thirty-foot high wall."

"The fact that you can say that with a straight face scares me."

"I'm serious," she said and required one.

Titus blinked, then blinked again, "that's a thirty foot high wall of chocolate, what the hell am I…oooohhh…" his eyes glazed over as he ran to the chocolate wall, and he started to take bites out of it. "I don't care if I'm insane, this tastes great!"

"It's not supposed to be chocolate," she mumbled. "There must be a glitch in the code somewhere."

"I don't mind," he said as he swallowed, "this is the first thing this morning I haven't minded."

"I'll try again," she said as he required another wall. Ty almost bit into a brick wall.

"Oh, you didn't have to go and do that…"

"Jump the wall."

"How?"

"Just jump it, it's easy."

"If I had a jetpack, it probably would be easy."

"Just do me a favour and try."

"Ok, ok, I'll prove it's impossible." A light bulb went on in his head. It started to burn his brain.

"Do you smell something burning?" Stef asked idly, sniffing.

"I hope it's BBQ," Ty, "oooh…I see pretty colours…" Then his brain smushed the light bulb and he looked over at her. "That's the test isn't it, for me to keep trying and trying while you sit there laughing at me until I get bruised and bloody and come to the conclusion that the point of the test is for me not to jump the wall! Ha!"

Stef jumped the wall, then jumped back and gave him a deadpan stare, "no, not really."

Ty pushed his dropped jaw back into place, "can I have a straitjacket please?"

"Just jump the wall, god if I was Brown, you would have got shot already."

"You did shoot at me…"

"Not at you, the bullet just came dangerously close, it's not the same thing."

"According to who?"

"Someone…jump the wall."

Ty ran at the wall, jumped, and hit the wall. Hard. "Ow…"

Stef held up a little sign that said 0.5

He tried again, hitting the wall slightly higher this time, he warranted a 1 this time.

"Doctor…I need a Doctor…"

"Why?"

"I think I'm bleeding."

"Jump the wall, the next tests will make that blood seem insignificant."

"Nope." He said sat down and leant up against the wall, "I don't want to be a recruit. Find someone else."

He pushed his back up against the wall, and suddenly, it started to tilt. Then the entire thing fell backward, and landed like a fallen book. Ty stood, and walked over the basically intact, now horizontal, wall and walked back. "I went over the wall and came back, does that count as a pass?"

"You know, that's the first time I've ever seen one of them fall over. You'd think thirty-foot freestanding brick walls would be inherently unstable, but this is the first one I've ever seen topple."

"Did I pass?"

"Well, logically no, but technically yes, you want to try the next test."

"Do I have to jump anything?"

"No."

"Ok then, I'll give it a go."

Stef called up the traitor simulation, required him a gun and shooed him into the dark city.

Two minutes later, she heard a shot. She walked in and found Ty sitting at a bar, a coke in one hand and a cookie in the other.

"I think you just set a time record for this test. How'd you know he was a rebel?"

"What's a rebel?"

Stef looked down at the corpse, then up at Ty, "uh…so why'd you shoot him then?"

"He was annoying me, and wouldn't leave me alone. And he wouldn't give me a cookie."

"Except for the cookie thing, I might suspect you were related to Brown."

Titus munched on his cookie and shrugged, "so what's next?"

"This is a one-eighty for a guy who was screaming to get out here ten minutes ago."

He smiled, "maybe it was brain damage from hitting the wall so many times. You mentioned something about rebels, is there some lecture I should take?"

"Next time, I don't think I should be so arbitrary when I pick a recruit…"

"So what kind of rebels are we talking about?"

"You want to take the third test? Then all your questions can get answered."

"Ok, bring it on."

"I think that's what I said."

They walked to the third testing arena and Ty looked at all the frozen opponents. Before Stef could open her mouth, he lifted his gun and shot all of them.

The frozen opponents fell down, dead as doornails. To contradict this theory, some doornails jumped from the door and ran to freedom.

"Um…the point is that you actually fight that, that's…cheating."

"But isn't the point to win?"

"Yes, but you cheated."

"How can you cheat when the point is to win?"

"Oi…nurg…ok, I guess you've passed."

"Coolies!"

"Come on Recruit Titus, let's get you suited up."

"I have to wear a suit?" Ty asked as they headed for the door.