Disclaimer: Same thing.

I have a sadistic maths teacher who's making us finish worksheets in a day in what normally takes a week. I don't think I've ever done three hours of maths in a stretch before this. (Five hours in total; I took a break on the computer because my brain was hurting. Integration is evil. Especially the direct integration bit where you have to find the volume of a revolving solid.) Yay for weekends.

Meanwhile, one of my poems got through two rounds of reading and was shortlisted for Australia's Andromeda Spaceway's Inflight Magazine, which is this magazine for humorous sci-fi. If it gets published (approx 1 in 3 chance), it would be my first officially published writing, and I'd get a grand total of... uh, $10 for it. Plus a free copy of the magazine it appears in. Yep.

MATRIX REVOLUTIONS - THE CHEAP VIDEO GAME VERSION

Neo never remembered the Matrix being so pixellated. "Strange," he thought, but then he saw Smith standing opposite him in a weird position.

He was about to laugh, then realised that he too was standing in a weird position.

"Round One!" a voice shouted out of nowhere. Neo blinked.

"Uh..." Neo said.

"FIGHT!" yelled the voice. Neo jumped in shock and fell down. The little red bar over his head grew a little shorter. He didn't recall ever having a little red bar above his head, but was spared from wondering about it any further when Smith charged into him and let off a rather cool combo that caused Neo's bar to shrink into nothing.

He died.

Corny victory music played for Smith's benefit; and then, just as Neo was getting used to being dead, he found himself rudely ressurected and standing in the same strange position as before.

"Round Two!" went the same disembodied voice, but this time Neo was more prepared for it and retained enough of his composure to shout back.

"Who are you?" Neo asked.

"You're not supposed to ask questions," Smith hissed out of a corner of his mouth.

"You're not supposed to ask questions," the mysterious voice affirmed.

"But-"

"FIGHT!"

Smith lunged a fist towards him. Neo turned and ran, and crashed into an invisible barrier. The red bar above his head grew shorter.

dfsa;lkufopwr, thought Neo. He pounded against the invisible barrier, the red bar getting shorter with each pound. Then it was gone.

Oh no, not again, Neo thought in frustration as he died.

---

"Round Three!"

"This isn't the Matrix," Neo said. "Where am I?"

"Don't ask questions. FIGHT!"

Smith launched a bazooka at him. Neo died.

---

"Round Four!"

"Not again!"

"FIGHT!"

Smith threw a bowl of petunias at him. Neo died.

---

"Round Five!"

"LET ME OUT OF HERE!"

"FIGHT!"

Smith whipped out a lightsaber and sliced him up. Neo died.

---

"Round Six!"

"AAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!11"

"FIGHT!"

Smith force-fed him food from my school canteen. Neo died.

---

"Round Seven!"

"No... please, no... no more... let me out... let me-"

"Neo?"

"I don't wanna fight any more..."

"Wake up, dude."

Neo blinked. Suddenly, the pixellated and badly-coloured surroundings vanished and he woke up to see Ted shaking him awake. Neo blinked again and raised his head from the computer table where he'd fallen asleep.

"Wha'?" Neo asked.

"Want some popcorn?" Ted asked, offering him the bowl.

"No..."

Next to Ted, Alex Wyler took some popcorn out of the bowl and ate it.

"We heard you screaming," Alex said. "John was going around with a lightsaber, so we just thought we'd check-" His eyes landed on the computer screen. "...Is that Keanu Reeves' bank account?"

"Huh? Oh... that. Yeah." Neo ran his fingers through his hair, making it stick up at odd angles and look vaguely like someone else's hair. "Uh," he said. Then he closed the Internet window.

"Whoa," Alex added after swallowing a mouthful of popcorn, looking at the window under that. "Zero seconds for expert level Minesweeper? How'd you do that?"

Neo hastily closed that window too, only to fully reveal a webpage beneath that showed that all four of his Neopets were satiated with food. He bet that Smith didn't have any Smithpets, and that bit of info made him unreasonably happy. But he closed that window too, got to the computer desktop, and shut down the computer.

"Any idea what John was going on about?" Alex asked. It turned out that he had, after all, registered John's words, despite the latter not being a hobbit, elf, wizard, or dirt-encrusted human.

"What?" Neo asked.

"He said something about us being underground." Alex took more popcorn.

"Huh? Oh... that. Yeah," Neo said again.

Neo's vocabularly was at that moment having a very nice holiday in Singapore, and had no intention of returning to its owner any time soon.

Ted and Alex ate more popcorn.

Neo didn't want any popcorn.

John doesn't get any popcorn because he already has a lightsaber, and lung cancer to boot.

And I don't get any popcorn either, because my family just finished this huge tin of popcorn over the course of several nights while watching the new series of Battlestar Galactica.

...I think it would probably be a good idea to end this chapter now. Such concludes the tenth installment of The Not-Particularly Excellent Adventures of the Keanu-Spawn.

end.

This fic's reviews have been dropping... especially for the previous chapter. :( The hitcount actually halved... Where's everyone?