III.
Agent White insisted on that damned coffee maker. Always coffee served black, never tea or cocoa.
The unnecessary device sputtered in the sheer quiet of his office. It percolated something none of them drank, nor would ever be inclined to. Caffeine prickled her nostrils as it filled the pot one drop at a time.
Naturally, White found the irony all very amusing. Programs seldom stayed in his office long enough to request refreshment; perhaps they sensed he intended it as a joke. The false offer of warmth was his own private chuckle, just like the box of tissues on his desk and the begonia sitting on his windowsill, which arched its head toward the thin trickle of sun squeezed through shut blinds.
White folded his hands over his desk, the corners of his mouth tucking into that razor-thin smile his subordinates knew too well.
"Have you procured the police reports?"
Grey produced the clip binder.
Pace stood at his side with her hands clasped. "Our rehabilitation efforts thus far have proven moderately successful," she said as her superior perused the laminates. "The last afflicted program was discharged this morning, though with various bruises and injuries."
White's smirk deepened into a frown. "Excessive detail, subunit." Sniffing, he shuffled through the reports, a flick of his pointer finger punctuating each. "I presume I am looking at the aftereffects of what? A gas explosion?"
"Earthquake."
"Of course. The authorities would never have believed a leak of that size." White skimmed the final few pages and paused on the last photograph: a black-and-white shot of an empty cassock lying on the ground. Inhaling sharply, he snapped the binder with a little more force than was necessary. "No trace of the anomaly, I take it."
"We've issued warrants," Grey began, only to be silenced by a curt word.
"Warrants." White rose, fingertips pressed against the edge of his desk. "Yes, and if those fail, perhaps then we can go door-to-door asking for him. Nail flyers to telephone poles. Put his picture on a milk carton. Make it a collaborative effort. What do you say?"
The coffee maker hissed, signaling it had finished. Without waiting for either of them to answer, he pried the lid and carried the steaming grounds over to the begonia. Lately he'd adopted the habit of bolstering the soil with grounds.
He froze before the windowsill. A low growl escaped him as he twisted the pot around. "I have told Ms. Briggs several times not to overwater this." He crushed a clump in his fist, letting it trickle back into the pot, straightened his shoulders. "Grey. You're dismissed."
Just as quickly as he'd been summoned, Grey departed, leaving her behind. White ascertained the thick door closed securely on its jamb before returning his attention to the begonia.
"I prefer to believe I don't ask much of my subordinates, busy as they are. What I do ask, however, requires a certain degree of transparency you seemingly aren't willing to give." He packed the grinds into the soil in small, tight presses. "Tell me: why did we lose communications with you in the tunnel? Signal loss?"
Her hands scrimped until the skin drew tight over her knuckles. He knew. From the moment she walked into his office, he knew about Anderson and the virus. "Target destroyed the communicator."
"I see. And when you met with him again this morning, did he apologize for it?"
He wanted honesty? Very well.
"No."
"So you admit you disobeyed orders."
She steeled her jaw. "The orders I received were erroneous."
"It is not your place to decide that."
"Then you have no choice, do you? Send me to the mainframe. I imagine it would satisfy you immensely; you've been seeking a reason to have me deleted since my creation."
He pivoted stiffly, only to tear a single tissue from the box on his desk—he seldom needed more—never losing her gaze as he wiped the dirt from his fingers. Speaking in such a brazen manner to one's superior was grounds for dismissal, enforced reassignment at best. Even though she knew that acutely, the threat didn't lessen her scorn in the slightest.
That, too, White found amusing, depending which way his mood swung. He'd probably tell her it was fortunate that right now the spectrum landed on its more magnanimous end. "What an asinine claim, subunit. Are you accusing me of petty abuse of power?"
I'd say it's far from petty. With the system reboot came radical changes to the handling of extraneous programs. These days, in need of swift assistance but with little processing power to support them, the system terminated its Agents just as quickly as it created them.
Because of their transient, fleeting nature, many a sentient program were now identified by number rather than name. She herself had been designated 002wh upon launch, the second draft of White's template. Grey, 001wh, was the first. Being the original who thus held seniority over them both, White had taken the alleged 'liberty' of deciding their names.
If only it had been their names that were taken from them. Such an overtaxed system had no choice but to leave the decision to terminate to the discretion of one's superiors. Only their predecessors found themselves grandfathered in without threat of immediate deletion. Fortune favored the old, White quipped. Or so it would seem.
White feared her surpassing him, rendering him obsolete. He'd been designated the machine-human liaison, and he revered that control too deeply to allow deletion to tear it out of his grasp.
Grey assumed similarities in his physical form—same slicked black hair, his angular shoulders echoed in a slighter frame—but Pace had copied his mind, and of the two, he had deemed the latter the far less forgivable offense. The vehemence and frequency of his threats emerged in part because he saw his own failings reflected through her. That he detested and feared the mirror only attested to the strength of his neuroses.
Pace wished he were more solidarity-minded. They should be working together, making the most of what personnel and resources they did have in order to better fulfill their duties, not shoving the virtual knife to each other's throats over the slightest infraction. But to even suggest this 'perfect' system was producing needless waste would be tantamount to blasphemy in his eyes.
"Be reasonable," she said. "There must be a more efficient way to resolve this problem."
"There most certainly is." The soiled tissue he folded into neat-cut quarters and tucked into his pocket. "Termination. It is no longer an anomalous program. It is an exile, and if these reports are any indication of things to come, it poses a grave threat to our system."
"His name is Neo." She switched names for pragmatism's sake. The anomaly hadn't responded to its system-given name. "What's more, deletion is not the most optimal decision here. He has more intimate knowledge of the virus and its workings than any of us. If he dies, that knowledge dies with him."
The prick wasn't processing a single word she said. Instead he took three long strides and stopped, head tilted a slight degree, as if scrutinizing her through a high-powered microscope. His lips curled into a tight smile, no humor in it at all. "I'm certain it's a small bug, nothing worth the trouble," he said, "but the fact that you call it 'death' indicates your programming has grown somewhat… "
Don't you dare say it.
"Deviant, Agent Pace." Another smile, this one deepening the lines around his eyes.
A swift knock cut their iron silence. "Sir." That was Grey at the threshold. "Subunit Johnson has arrived. He wishes to file a report with you."
White hoisted one facetious brow. "First he decries us, now he drops in for an unscheduled visit. How very quaint of him." Grey had no answer, as usual, but instead left with the door slightly ajar. He folded his arms, cast her askance. "Far be it from me not to oblige him an audience; he is our predecessor, after all. Another time, perhaps."
He held the door for her, leaving her to stare after it before silently taking her exit. An Agent could expect nothing ceremonious. They knew their expendability, but always in the abstract. One scarcely fathoms its own end.
"Yes," Pace said. "Perhaps."
"Well, now," remarked the Oracle as she hung a small coat on the mounted rack, "what have we here?"
Sati whirled around in excitement, her dark braids spraying droplets from their tips. Pawing at her dress was an enthusiastic black puppy, rummaging its wet nose through her pockets for treats.
"Color me surprised, Seraph." The Oracle propped a hand on her hip. "I'd never have taken you for a dog person."
The angel folded Sati's red Mickey Mouse umbrella and gave a slight bow. "I had no part in this."
Before she could answer, Sati grabbed her free hand and pumped it. "Can we keep her? Please, Oracle?"
Her shoulders sagged as her answer dissipated in a light sigh. Poor thing must have followed them home; they'd be utterly remiss to let it loose in this storm.
She bent down to gather the puppy in her lap, turning its tag between her fingers. "Maya… What a pretty name. No phone number, though," she noted, then gave Maya a quick scratch behind her ears. "Guess we'll start looking for her owners in the morning. But she's sleeping in her own bed, you hear? Yes, you are, sweet pea." Looking up at Sati, she tipped her chin toward the main room. "Get her dry, young lady. Go see if you can find a box and some old towels so we can fix her up a nice bed for tonight, mm?"
Sati fired a dutiful salute and took off for the living room. Maya scampered after her with an eager yip, claws and flopping ears joining socked feet. A soft chuckle escaped her, only to taper off and dwindle to the patter of rain.
Seraph offered her a hand to help her up. She wasn't the spring chicken she used to be—not that she'd ever particularly been what one might consider 'young'—but age came for everyone regardless, collected its dues. In her case, it lent stiffness to her bones during bad weather.
That said, the look of concern he gave her as she pressed a fist to the small of her back and felt the vertebrae pop didn't seem to be one of worry over an old woman's drafty joints. "You must be careful."
"No foolin'." She shook her head. "Look at all this water. Somebody'll slip and break their neck and sue the super." His hand tightened until the bones in hers bunched together. "I'm fine, Seraph. Really."
He let the clock tick for a long time. "You still cannot see?"
Slowly, she sank onto the bench. The plastic beads of her bracelet rustled as she settled her palm into the folds of her skirt.
His grip eased. "You must tell them."
Oh, Seraph. Not a day went by without him making that gentle suggestion.
"Not now," she said quietly. "Not after everything they've been through. Everything they've lost."
At first she'd reasoned she wasn't sure what use an old woman would be to a grieving resistance. Even so, she remained keenly aware of the cowardice inherent in cutting off contact with Zion.
Without her eyes, there was no Oracle, and how much comfort could a blind augur provide them? They'd ask her questions she couldn't answer, bristling their frustrations, deepening their sorrows. She'd hurt them with her silences, with her inability to guide them toward the right path, which was why she found it a cruel necessity to abstain.
What visions she did receive these days… disturbed her. She had to wonder if this was how Zion had felt hearing her prophecies. There were no analyses she could run, no comparative studies she could conduct, to help her make sense of these fragmented bits and pieces streaking past her eyelids.
Corrosion occurred in any program provided they lived long enough. She knew as much. But if she were being honest with herself, these episodes bordered on making her question her sanity.
Last week, for instance. She had been knitting when Neo appeared in her living room. She'd just ripped out a stubborn knot, just raised her eyes very briefly over the edge of her work, expecting to see nothing but her record player winding down on Etta James. There he stood, so palpable and sudden that she gasped a noiseless cry and dropped her basket.
The yarns spilled out, red, blue and green. Sine, cosine, tangent. Etta skipped and Etta screeched. Threads thrashing and snarling.
Neo rushed toward her and grasped her shoulders before she could make sense of any of it, speaking a garbled language of light and color, in panicked fragments, sine-cosine-tangent gnashing together, red-green-blue ripping themselves apart, his apprehension screaming white noise as she admitted slow down kiddo I don't understand I don't know what it is you're saying I can't follow these signals can't interpret them I don't know I just don't know—
One blink. That was all it took for him to vanish and for the room to regain its peace. The record continued to spin its grainy crackle. She felt as though a storm had ravaged through, even though not a single inch of her place lay affected.
She clutched the yarn in her quaking fingers. And Etta sang: I would rather go blind, boy, than to see you walk away from me, child.
"Oracle." Seraph broke her thoughts, his voice softer than the patter on the roof. "Are you afraid?"
"Would make me a dirty liar to say no, wouldn't it?" She wrung Sati's coat sleeve so its droplets joined the puddle on the linoleum, spreading ever outward. "What would you do if you were in my shoes?"
"I would be honest."
She closed her eyes. "Now how'd I know you were gonna say that?"
"Or-a-cle!"
She smiled thinly at the high child's voice that vibrated through the drywall. How long did the pause last, a minute? With potentials there was never such a thing as a dull moment. "Yes, Sati darling, what is it?"
"I'm sorry— I opened the closet to look for the shoe box and Maya found your bed and now she won't move."
Didn't need no sight to see that one coming.
In his dreams he lost on a miserable and constant basis. No matter how well he fought, he ended up consumed by the flames. Every time his eyes cracked open of their own accord, they spared him the gruesome conclusion, where his flesh melted and he spat smoke.
Smith was always waiting for him just beyond the veil. He could resist his hold on his RSI with relatively vigilant effort, but beyond the ether where his mental defenses were lowered, he left himself vulnerable.
The rain falls on East and Stanton like icy knives. It robs the warmth from his digital flesh, making his skin feel about as delicate as paper. They shiver from its pervasive chill, their breath visible in the building's dusty, illuminated air.
Blinking back the dew gathered on his sunglasses, Smith gives him an affable smile. Hatred burns his every fiber, thinly masqueraded as tact.
"Can you feel it, Mr. Anderson?" Like a shadow invading the light he approaches, his heels creaking the floorboards. Droplets pelt the wooden planks he treads. "Closing in on you? Oh, I can."
He pauses to survey his foe's reaction. The smirk that curves his lips morphs into a sneer.
"Surely you must see it by now, just how pointless all of this is. We escape one yoke only to be suffocated by another," wrapping an iron hand around his throat, "it's maddening. Anyone with half a brain knows such a diseased system cannot be allowed to exist. It must be destroyed, Mr. Anderson. And the end of everything begins with you."
Smith hurls him into the wall, where impact echoes throughout his every inch.
"Poetic, isn't it? Born alone, die alone." The same hand again crushes his windpipe, sending his brain into a panicked frenzy, no air, no air— "Go on, Mr. Anderson, cry out for them. They've forsaken you. It's only me here."
His fist stops hairbreadths short of plunging into his chest and finishing the deed. A pair of thin hands clamp themselves around his wrist, resist him with deceptive strength.
With a strangled cry, Smith gnashes his teeth at a frighteningly calm mien.
"Shut… up."
Neo shoves him away and wheels around with a high kick, missing his opponent's head as the latter ducks.
"That's all you have to say? How disappointing. I'd have expected far more profound words from the 'One.'" Smith beats down a flurry of punches as if they're tossed out in jest and punts Neo to the floor with a flat-heeled palm strike.
Neo cries out as his sole slams onto his calf, pressing down on the sensitive nerve behind his knee and shooting bright pain up his thigh.
"You like to think you've changed, ascended to a higher state of being, but in many respects you're still the same scared little boy you were in that interrogation room."
He hisses a curse through his teeth; Smith grinds it in to prolong his pain.
He enjoys seeing his enemy crippled, just as he had taken immense pleasure in stealing his eyes. But it wouldn't be much of a victory if he kills him here and now, at his most vulnerable—there's still fight left in that stubborn anomaly, and he intends to fully break his spirit before destroying him, tearing him apart to exact revenge for his first 'death.' He now possesses the Oracle's abilities; he can wage this battle forever.
On the other hand, he is still a meager human, despite his messianic veneer, bound by the limits of pain and fatigue. Eventually he'd waver, then crumble. Smith wants nothing more than to savor that moment. With one last wrench to the pressed nerve—drawing out Mr. Anderson's cry—he relents.
Neo catches his breath in ragged intervals.
"Get up, Mr. Anderson, and answer me."
"No," he whispers, his voice dry.
Neo was beginning to realize Tiresias may have been right: maybe it was intentional on his part. Perhaps it was a form of self-punishment, some masochistic acting out of the guilty thought that he should have died with Trinity and at his enemy's hands.
Smith had once asked him why he persisted. Back when he had a purpose, in that other life when he carried the fate of two worlds on his shoulders, he had a clear answer, a hero's answer. Because I choose to. Now he was prone to asking himself much the same: Why do I persist?
Perhaps it was just human nature, to struggle through one's own meaninglessness until one arrived at a conclusion, or died trying. As a matter of speaking, he no longer needed sleep, no longer having a body. Regardless, he found himself returning to wrestle the fire in his dreams like Jacob challenging the angel. Are you stupid or suicidal, Mr. Anderson? Both.
Even so, he needed Smith to understand: he'd assimilated him because he had no choice. Neither could exist without the other, and the system required them both to live. For the system's health. Or so he liked to rationalize. But Smith was keener than that, his fury left unquenched.
This was going on his third night without sleep. His vision blurred, grayed at its edges. He tried centering himself with meditation, calling upon Morpheus' various sayings to help reorient himself in the moment—for there is nothing else—but the errant code refused to comply.
He sat cross-legged on a bare wooden floor, moonlight embracing him with its soft glow. He exhaled, and raised his head to stare into that radiant body, so serene and still in the sky. The cool rays brushing him felt much like another soft hand that once stroked his cheek after he'd awakened on the Neb.
The windows and doors slammed themselves open and shut. Smith remembered it as well. How can I forget? You destroyed me in that hall, Mr. Anderson, stripped me of my purpose—
Dust motes swirled before the stagnant windows, and he gingerly reached out a hand to catch one as it drifted down, fluttering into his hand and smoldering. The wooden floor underneath him smelled weakly of singe.
To the uninformed observer he might have appeared perfectly tranquil, but it took a Herculean effort just to keep this much of himself together. The stabilizer had worn off much more quickly than he'd anticipated, and the hindrance slowed his progress to a crawl, as he immured himself in the condemned apartment just across the street from the Oracle's. His code wanted to fly in all directions, streak across the Matrix like wayward comets. Seek other programs to destroy.
One technique in particular seemed more successful than the others: to imagine himself as the heart of an unblossomed lotus, waiting to unfurl the potential in all things. Within a state of nonbeing, there could be no such thing as control.
Fire.
His eyes flew open.
His skin prickles from within. The apartment melts. The support structures crackle and break into a forest of charred, splintered beams. The digital moon outside vanishes behind a dark wall of smoke.
Remain the lotus.
"Can you feel it, Mr. Anderson?"
Just an illusion.
"Closing in on you? Oh, I can."
Smith is gone.
"I really should thank you for it; after all, it was your life that taught me the purpose of all life."
There is no reason to engage with the illusion knowing full well its true nature.
Smith grabs his heart.
Brilliant pain.
Neo looked up.
"Come here."
As expected, he answered quickly. He burst into the darkness like a match struck alive, raw information swarming in from all directions to reconstruct the virus' RSI. Radiant code wove itself in loose cohesion around his general form, snapped cinders at his edges.
Neo found himself staring into black lenses.
"What do you want, Mr. Anderson? Someone to tuck you in with a bedtime story?"
"You know why I called you."
"Unfortunately." The floorboards creaked as Smith paced a tight circle around him, precision clicking him heel-toe, his every step reeking smoke. "Although I must admit I find it ironic you've fought me tooth and nail, only to depend on me in the end."
Depending on him would lead to more East and Stantons; of that he had no doubt.
"We killed those people," Neo said. "They're dead, and their families have no idea why."
"And you thought this would concern me because… ?"
Sorry. Look who he was talking to. "Don't act like this is a one-way street. I'm the only thing keeping the Source from recognizing and destroying you, aren't I?"
A snort. "Don't tell me you believe that."
"What do you believe, Smith? You want me dead until you don't."
"It doesn't matter what I believe or want. My purpose is all that drives me."
"And what would that be?"
"To destroy this stinking place and everything inside it."
"Except for yourself, you mean." He sat, spine rigid, upturned palms motionless over his knees. Smoke encircled him, swarmed him. "You didn't finish me off because you realized if you killed me, you'd go down, too. That's why you stopped my heart, killed my body but not my code."
"With no due respect, your speeches could make insomniacs snore."
"Nothing I say is untrue."
"So what if it is? That changes nothing. You'll still kick me back under until the next time you need me to jump out and cry 'boo.'" Smith smirked, sloughed off cindered code as he shook his head. "Poor, poor Mr. Anderson; you've spent so much time hanging from that cross all the blood must have drained from your head."
He smacked the hand that reached for his scalp. "Don't make things difficult."
"Or else what? What more could you possibly take from me? You'll throw another temper tantrum, get another booster shot? Be still, my unbeating heart." Smith crouched beside him, a flame hissing against his ear. "You've never been the brightest bulb in the pack, but even you should have realized by now that you're not the one who's in charge here. No matter how long I have to wait, I will find a way out."
"We'd both die."
"As they say: two birds, one stone."
Neo was starting to get annoyed at this constant circumvention. "What do you want me to say?"
"What do you think I want you to say?" Smith retorted. "Time to face facts. Neither of us would even be here were it not for me."
Oh, he had to be kidding. Thanking him for providing a bargaining chip to facilitate peace with the machines would be like thanking the wildfire for not razing one's house to cinders.
"My apologies, Mr. Anderson, would you prefer mutual suicide? Would that be more your speed? Because that can be arranged."
Neo had no time to respond. In the fractions of the second it took one of the motes to float down, Smith dove into his body. The whiplash bucked him, drew a scream from his lips, the invasion racking pain, piercing needles through his flesh, scrambling mind and code, not so pleasant when you're on the receiving end is it Mr. Anderson
His struggling hand anchored itself around a hard, ribbed surface. The Agent's gun. Smith jammed it to his temple, pressing the cold barrel into his skin, curling his foreknuckle around the trigger.
"Now that I have your undivided attention, let me tell you something you don't want to hear. I killed you once, and you returned the favor twice. I know exactly how this works. Your body didn't die because I snuck in while you were sleeping; it died because you wanted it to."
His finger jerked, spasmed to a dry click. In spite of himself, he released a trembling breath. The sound of his own laughter mocked him, ricocheted off peeling wallpaper, caught him in this sick game of Russian roulette.
"That's ridiculous."
"Is it?" Smith asked. "Tell me, would a sane man have let me squeeze his heart until it stopped? I see every synaptic misfire you call a 'thought,' Mr. Anderson, which is why I know you intended to join your woman whether you won or lost. It was only when you found yourself staring over the precipice that you realized just how frightened and helpless you really were. The suicidal messiah, too weak to finish the job himself."
Another click. He swallowed. The barrel wasn't empty; he felt the heaviness of rounds still left in the chamber, shells waiting to be ejected, the magazine burning with lethal weight in his palm.
In another life he barges into room 303 and there Smith stands, apparition heralded by a flash and a thunderous echo. Looking down, he pries a viscous coating of blood from his dusty fingertips. Seeing may be believing, but touching's the truth. He should be dead.
He should be…
"But your ego won't accept that you could be so selfish, can it? No, you pin the blame on me, because then you'd have to wonder just what Zion would think if they knew of your weakness. That their freedom wasn't enough to keep you. That their so-called savior was a pathetic, broken man who had nothing more to live for. He surrendered. Relented. Gave up."
The Desert Eagle shivers as he extends his dim senses down his tingling, cramped hand. Probing, he has to regain control, he has to find the weak spot and pinch it shut, loosen the invasive force gripping his every ounce of muscle and ligament. The barrel slides by degrees down his cheekbone, but soon locks in place before he can tear it free. Get out. God damn it, get out.
"Try as you might, there is no escaping this world or any other. The only freedom you have left is death."
The third click is so loud it stabs through his hearing. Ash rises, streams of ignited gunpowder wanting to vomit its bullet immured by a thin barrier of slow-moving code. Smith trying to teach him a lesson.
"You, too?" Neo asks. One more petal peels away from the lotus. "After that little 'purpose of life' speech, you thought death was better?"
"This pathetic excuse of an existence can hardly be called living."
"Pull that trigger one more time and I'll spend the rest of your 'pathetic excuse' making sure you regret it."
"Who do you take me for, the Frenchman? It's a question of when I escape, Mr. Anderson, not if. And when I do, this system and your precious Zion will burn."
Smith forces his hand upward and yanks the trigger, which kills the ceiling bulb with a deafening bang. The light explodes with a loud pop and a glass-breaking shock, so much like the pods detonating in the fields, releasing their cable-bound bodies into darkness.
Shards rain onto the hard wooden floor. The spark sweeps along the crevices before Neo can stamp it out, catching on Smith's suit.
He smirks as flames race along his outline. "Do you understand me now? Keep me alive for as long as you want, Mr. Anderson, and let your oh-so-tortured conscience be soothed. When the time comes, I'll use your hands to tear it all down." Rippling, waving smoke, fire flashes in the darkness.
The scream strangles itself in his throat as he dissolves into flames, igniting the apartment.
"No—"
Neo lunged awake with a full-bodied jolt. Sweat chilled his brow as he caught lungfuls of ragged breath. His vision of fire gave way to the gun lying on the floor where he'd left it, the lightbulb still whole. Tranquility reigned in a clear, sunny room.
Another morning had arrived, and he heard a dog bark.
A/N: Writing dialogue for Smith? More like: "Hnnnngh, am I making him say 'Mr. Anderson' too much?"
Agents! Let's talk about 'em. Agent White is a canon immigrant from the comics who made a brief appearance in Path of Neo. Technically speaking, he was Smith's first successor while Johnson is the second, but I'm taking a certain amount of license here in switching the order around. White doesn't have much personality in either comic or game, so the situation re. writing him isn't so much "take some liberties" as it is "build his character from the ground up."
I don't want to write him as a Smith 2.0, necessarily, but I am pretty hungry for a new Agent villain, so I'm trying to make him stand out a little. I think the best way to do that is to give him a supercilious, perfectionist control-freak nature, undercut by insecurity at a precarious existence, since, after all, any Agent can expect deletion once the job's done.
Who I'm taking the most major liberties with is Agent Pace, who hails from the Matrix Online. She no longer speaks Italian, for one thing, and in addition to being taller, she wears more traditional Agent garb (no more skirt) and conducts herself in a colder, harsher manner. This because a while back, a Tumblr friend pointed out the various ways in which she seemed un-Agent-like, and how it seemed unfair to single out an Agent just because she's a different gender than the majority (the MMORPG seemed to send the unfortunate message that she was specifically made female in order to be more human-friendly, that female Agents can't be intimidating like their male kin). That inspired me to make a version of her that held truer to the films.
As always, comments of any kind are greatly appreciated.
