I wrote this in the wee hours of the morning, so it's not my best work. It spawned as a result of the fact that on there was character battle, and one of the matchups was between Mario and JC Denton. Everyone on the Deus Ex forum believed that in a fair fight, JC would win, but of course this poll was a mere popularity contest. I began to wonder what an actual battle between the two characters would be like, and found them more evenly matched than I expected.
JC Denton vs. Mario
"Your target is an Italian plumber who calls himself 'Mario'," informed Alex over the Infolink. "Orders are as follows: Find him, shoot him, repeat step two."
"Any info on what he's packing?" asked JC, struggling to remove the grate covering his planned entrance route into a eight-story tall warehouse. Tired of messing with it, he mentally activated a strength augmentation. The sudden burst of enhanced power always went strait to the head, and the UNATCO agent swooned for a split second before recovering himself and ripping the rusted metal right off of its wielding.
"Sources say he's alone and unarmed," replied Alex, "But we can't be sure. Proceed with caution; we don't know WHAT this guy is capable of. I'm sending you a picture over your Infolink so you know what to look for.
"Oh, an overweight plumber in overalls, scary," sighed JC sarcastically as he pulled up the image. His eyes were augmented with not only enhanced vision, but with a display panel that kept track of his weapons, ammunition, and was able to display images sent over his Infolink. All this was affectionately called his "HUD".
With that, he jumped down the ventilation shaft. He stuck out his arms, still blessed with strength by the extensive technology, and slowed his decent with the friction of his hands against the tight walls. When at last he dropped into a crouch onto of a large metal storage unit, he hadn't made a sound the whole journey.
Slipping a pair of binoculars out of his trench coat pocket, he scanned the large warehouse, looking for any sign of Mario. The place was mostly filled to the brim with steel boxes containing some kind of contraband or another; the one he was on now was the lowest, a row that ran across the east wall. He slowly crept along the stacked crates, careful to disturb nothing, but was not able to find a single trace of his target. A loud cry pierced the air, causing JC to whip around, his duster flailing in his wake, to see the source of the noise.
"Momma-mia, pizza-ria! Hey!" sang Mario as he affectionately patted the dough. JC smiled; his target was so occupied with his cooking and singing, he wouldn't even know death had come for him until his soul had already leaked from his fallen corpse.
JC unholsterd his pistol and clicked on the laser sight. Formally it had also been equipped with a scope, but the magnets used to attach it altered the spin of the bullets as they passed through the barrel and played hell on his aim. The agent slowly lined up the bright red dot against the back of the singing plumber's head, preferring to do this with a single shot. This was complicated by the fact that Mario was now twirling the pizza dough in the air and dancing to accompany his song.
"C'mon, just stand still," muttered JC under his breath. "I'm only trying to make it easy for you..."
"When the moon hits your eye," wailed Mario, switching to a romantic ballad. He twirled the dough in his fingers and flung it directly at JC. "... like a big pizza pie!"
"Idiot," grumbled Denton, firing a singly shot to take down the pizza dough. It fluttered to the ground, but Mario was already racing towards the metal crate JC was perched on.
Panicking slightly at the change of events, the anti-terrorist specialist stood up and started firing as best as he could while back pedaling. He tossed his pistol to the side and quickly reached for his assault rifle, but his arm went limp with what he saw next, the automatic weapon sprawling across the top of the container.
With barely a grunt, Mario had hefted himself into the air in a gigantic leap, soaring above Denton towards the roof of the warehouse.
"Alex," hissed JC as he stooped down for his gun. "Why didn't you tell me he had augmentations?"
"I didn't know," replied Alex, his shocked face appearing in the Infolink window. "You'd think we'd have tabs on that, but he must have gotten them off the black market some how." Mario had now reached the parabola of his flight and began to head back down. "From the looks of things, I'd say it's an extremely enhanced form of Leg Augmentation," continued Alex, as JC realized that Mario was coming down directly towards him. "because he can apparently jump easily six times his own height."
"No," snapped JC, as he quick dived to get out of the way once he realized Mario was actually trying to land ON him. "Friggin'" he continued, as he hit the edge of the metal container, rolling off of it as the sharp edge bit into his shoulder. "DUH!" he concluded, landing on his feet and firing his assault rifle up to where Mario stood.
Mario quickly jumped back up into the air, flying through a deadly hail of bullets from one stack to the next, eventually landing on an overhang that seemed to contribute some kind of resting quarters within the ware house.
"What the heck is the deal with this guy?" snapped JC, running as quickly as he could between the gigantic stacks of tall red metal towards a ladder that offered more traditional means of ascent.
"It's-ah me! Mario!" called the fat plumber from his ledge.
"I'm aware!" shouted JC, quickly pulling himself up the ladder built directly into the wall. He managed to get about twenty feet up when he looked up and saw Mario kick something that looked like... a gigantic turtle shell?... down the entrance to his platform.
"I'm starting to get sick of this," muttered JC, watching the turtle shell bounce between the wall and the metal container. Using his nanocomputers to time it just right, he leapt off the ladder, planted his feet against the metal crate that sat opposite him and jumped off once more, crossing diagonally above the turtle shell as it ricocheted about. He couldn't quite clear it though, so he flung his feet below him, and literally jumped off of the turtle shell rather than crash into it.
This resulted in an unexpected burst of vertical acceleration, as he was almost literally "popped" strait up the remaining fifty feet, and luckily managed to slide within the trap doorway that the ladder led to.
JC landed hard on his feet and collapsed on the overhang, panting from confusion and exhaustion. He had no time to rest though when he saw that Mario was already leaping into the air once more to squash him. Realizing he had dropped his assault rifle somewhere during his frantic jump, he reached into his coat's inner pocket and tightened his hand around a small device.
Meanwhile, thirty feet up, Mario had brought his fist up and against the ceiling, pounding the metal with a reverberating clang. The force of him striking the obstacle propelled him downwards, nearly twice as quickly as he had gone up. Mario looked down, his mustache whipping about gleefully as he approached JC's prone form.
JC hit the "arm" button on the LAM, then let it slip from his grasp. He quickly started rolling like a barrel away from it, hoping to get out of the main blast range. The whistling beeping of the grenade chirped behind him as he made his hasty retreat, briefly muted by the thud of Mario landing before the explosive device detonated.
JC hadn't been able to get to far from the LAM before it detonated, but fortunately his back was to it. He was propelled across the somewhat slick floor to the edge of the overhanging platform, and went over it.
Mario was flung back into the air a short distance and unto his back. "That's-ah major boo-boo!" he cried woefully. He got up coughing and sputtering, pain radiating from various burns and bruises. He staggered to his feet, and went over to the side of the platform to see where Denton landed. Mario was enraged to discover a pair of hands clutching to the edge.
JC had activated his Strength augmentation just in time to give himself a starting grip on the ledge, his legs kicking at approximately seventy feet of open air as his remaining bioenergy depleted. He began hoisting himself up after catching his breath, when a toasted fat man (which is the worst kind) ran up and attempted to stomp his fingers off their perch.
Mario's foot slammed into JC's right hand three times before he let go, his knuckles cracking and possibly breaking under the abuse. The plumber was about to start hammering at the other hand, as JC reached into his belt and pulled out a shuriken throwing knife. Mario's foot went up, but the small dagger struck him directly between the eyes before his foot could come down. Without another word, Mario's knee buckled, and he went tumbling past JC towards the floor below.
The UNATCO Agent was happy for his victory of course, but felt celebrations would be in short order since he wasn't able to pull himself up with just the one hand. The fingers of his right appendage had manage a lucky throw, but they were useless now, especially since they had grasped the blade by the wrong end, evidenced by the bleeding scars that now ran across his palm. Looking down, JC noticed that about ten feet down and five feet away was the top of one of the monstrous stacks of containers, filled with unknown contents. He swung his legs forward, then back, letting go with his left hand to send himself flying unto the box.
"Alex," grunted JC as he felt his hand begin to throb and swell. "Would it be at all possible to send someone to pick me up?"
"I'll send in the clean up crew; now that you took out Mario the rest of the security system shouldn't be a problem."
"And just what," asked JC, looking at the vast piles of steel bins, "is being stored in this warehouse again?"
"Er, well, we believe Mario was smuggling mushrooms for the terrorists."
"Mushrooms?"
"Correct. Magic Mushrooms is what the report said."
"Would it be at all possible to tell the clean up crew to just shoot me?" sighed JC.