A Preface to Roundabout Annoyance:
For those unfamiliar with The Matrix Online's current story, here's a quick catch up. If you already know the current events of The Matrix Online, then please enjoy the following story below. :)
After getting a tip from a program named "The General", Niobe and her new recruit, Anome, went searching for a mysterious briefcase that was in the hands of a bicycle messenger. After going to some trouble to retrieve the key that opened the case's lock, and making a bargain with the Messenger, Niobe was in possession of both the key and the case.
Niobe immediately called a meeting and presented the key and the case to a group of Zion captains, Anome standing by her side. Tension drew high as she opened the case, and finally she clicked open the lock. Inside were numerous vials of "cheat codes" special code from one of the original versions of the Matrix that gave the agents incredible powers and the ability to circumvent much of the current rules in place inside of the Matrix. She lifted one vial to her lips and was about to take a sip when...
BANG! Niobe fell to the floor, a gunshot wound to her shoulder. Anome blew the smoke from the gun and four other Zion captains drew their guns to back him up. A short gunbattle later, the rest of the loyal captains to Niobe were dead, and Anome and his small group were in possession of the case.
Leaving the meeting site quickly, Anome had one more thing in store. With his newfound powers, he separated the floor of the building that Niobe was inside into a small data construct just outside of the Matrix, so no one could get back to their former leader. Zionists who investigated the scene found elevators that didn't go to her floor, and stairs that just mysteriously ended when they got to the meeting floor.
Now, worried about Niobe, Ghost made a deal with the Merovingian himself for his help. The deal made was to have the Merovingian's resident teleportation and construct analyst, the Effectuator, attempt to trace Niobe's signal and find out exactly where she's located. As he does this, numerous Merovingian-loyal redpills have been helping both the Effectuator and the Merovingian track down Niobe and Anome. Once their work is completely and Niobe is safe, Ghost has agreed to call off the Zion redpills from attacking the Merovingian, putting the two organizations into an unsteady truce... at least until Anome is dealt with.
We now find ourselves looking at the work of the Effectuator as he searches for Niobe, and one of the redpills sent to make sure that the Effectuator was doing his job properly. Her name is whispered in the inner circles of redpills, as she is someone to be feared by all organizations. Some called her the "Lady in Mourning" or even "Miss Murder" as she had been tied to numerous strings of violence aganist bluepills and redpills and exile programs alike. And with her accomplishments, she had been given a title by a former exile program that trusted her the most, and other redpills still referred to her with this title today... Lady Return.
The apartment was in literal chaos. Papers were flying around everywhere, phones were ringing, computer keyboards were being typed upon, and sitting calmly in the middle of it, checking her white hair in a mirror while sipping on a bottle of absinthe, was Lady Return. She put the mirror down and sighed, looking around at the multitude of people running around her, all doing some sort of job in unison to help perform a trace program.
Soon enough, The Effectuator ran up to her, out of breath and looking extremely overworked. "Excuse me, Return, could you hold this for me?" he said, offering out a file overflowing with papers. Return simply nodded and took the file, and the Effectuator ran back into the chaos to wherever his workstation was.
Just as he left, another Effectuator came over to her from her left, this one not as tired but still looking a bit ragged, his shirt a bit unhinged. "Did I just leave a file for you, Return?" he asked. Return simply nodded and handed him the file she was just given, and he quickly paged through it. "Ah, ah, ah... yes and no. Here, give these papers to serious me. He's over in the next room, on the laptop." Return simply nodded again and got up and slowly began to push her way through all of the Effectuators running about the room, towards the correct door.
Putting the trace down on Niobe was taking longer than he figured. Return was amazed at the number of sub-routines he had spawned to work on this single task, but it didn't seem to be getting him anywhere. That's why she was there, to help "persuade him" to move a bit faster. However, even she was baffled at how anyone could persuade him to work harder... he was already working as hard as he could... or at least as hard as 50 of him could.
Return pushed open the door in a dreary state and walked through the piles of Effectuators in the next room, and finally found the one working on the laptop. "Papers for you from you," she said, putting the papers next to him.
"Mmmm.. yes... that will do. You can relax again now," he said. She rolled her eyes and began to walk away when he turned back to her. "Miss Return, I don't need this paper. Give it to my subroutine that's in the room you were just in. He's on the computer. Thank you in advance."
Return gritted her teeth and snatched the paper from him, moving back through the flying papers, the shouting, the talking, the laughing, the thinking outloud, the overblown shorts and colorful dress shirts, and made it to the copy of the Effectuator in the next room.
When she got to him, she simply stared for a moment, as this Effectuator was literally SITTING on the computer monitor, his feet on the keyboard, typing gibberish with his toes and drooling from the corner of his mouth. "Um... hi," she said softly... staring at him.
"I like CANDY!" he said excitedly, not stopping his typing and continuing his drooling. Return offered the paper to him carefully in her black leather gloved hand and forced a smile.
"I'm suppose to give this to you," she said. He reached out and carefully took the paper from her, his eyes going wide and his typing ceasing. He then took the paper into his hands carefully, ripped it into shreds, and put the pieces into his mouth and began to slowly chew them. "THANK YOU!" he commented, laughing and then going back to his gibberish typing.
Return put both of her hands up to her temples and began to massage the sides of her head as she closed her eyes, her white hair falling and blocking her right eye from view. "What... the... fuck... is... his... purpose..." she sneered through her teeth, tensing up her body. One of the copies of the Effectuator heard her as he walked past and stopped to give her a back rub.
"Oh, that's my sense of humor. See, I didn't want him screwing things up, so I put him to work over here on this Commodore 64. Brilliant, wasn't it? I thought it was!" he told her softly, slowly massaging her back.
She slowly turned her head to look at him, taking her hands off of her temples and drawing in a deep breath. "Get the hell back to work before I use you for target practice." The Effectuator quickly took his hands off her, saluted, and ran back to his post.
She sighed again and grabbed her purple glasses from the bookshelf next to the apartment's main door. "I'm going out. I need to get out of here for a while," she said to no one in particular. The Effectuators keep running about, all looking like World War III was breaking out in the apartment two doors down. She sighed again and was about to leave when something occurred to her.
"Hey, I'm going to go get Chinese. Anyone want anything?" she absentmindedly asked. She immediately regretted it.
Every single Effectuator stopped whatever he was doing, turned to her, and smiled. "Won-ton soup! Lemon chicken! Two helpings of General Tsos! Those awesome fortune cookies! Get it from China Express, they have the best rice! No, get it from The Great Wall! They have the best FRIED rice! No get it from China On The Run in Sai Kung! They have the best..."
She clenched her fists and moved her hands to let her twin Bedlams slide out of her sleeve holsters and directly into her hands. She pointed one up into the air and fired three loud rounds into the ceiling before putting it back down. Every Effectuator fell silent and stared at her.
"PICK ONE DAMN THING OR EVERYONE GOES FREAKIN HUNGRY!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
"10 helpings of General Tso's with white rice and 50 fortune cookies," one Effectuator called from the back of the room.
"FINE! 10 HELPINGS OF GENERAL TSO'S WITH WHITE FREAKING RICE AND 50 FREAKING FORTUNE COOKIES! YOU WANT GOD DAMN DUCK SAUCE?" she continued to scream. All of the Effectuators shook their head no. "FINE!" she shouted, and then walked out and slammed the door shut after her, knocking two pictures off of the wall.
All of the Effectuators stood there for a moment, staring at one another. Finally, one turned to the rest and broke the silence. "You know what? I think she has PMS right now."
"I heard she couldn't have kids... so I don't think it's PMS."
"If she does have PMS, then you guys better check that couch... I don't want to sit there otherwise."
"Nah. It's not PMS. Flood said she's always like that."
"Who seriously drinks absinthe anymore? Wasn't that a trend back in the 40s?"
"Yeah. Maybe she thinks she's one of those hot 1940s chicks when she drinks that."
"It's a shame a girl that pretty didn't get married."
"I don't think she could get married. Her boobs would smother her husband in bed."
"I wonder how her hair went white so early."
"Probably from being a stress case all the time."
"She needs to chill like us," one finally suggested.
"Yeah she does!" all of the copies of the Effectuator said at the same time. All of them turned to one another and gave each other a high five, and then went back to work like nothing ever happened.