A/N: Alright guys. I'm completely not sure about this one. You'll have to
let me know. It seems a little forced. You know. I really hate it when
I'm reading fanfiction and the author tells me how awful the thing is
before I read it. So I'm going to shut up now. But some constructive
criticism would be nice.
Xixie
Chaos Ensues
A glowering Pusher followed Morpheus into the mess hall. Apparently the room had become the defacto war room, and Neo and Trinity marched in towards the sofas accordingly.
Only Morpheus remained standing. "What did you find?"
Pusher's mood was in no way improved when Neo spoke. "We got it. It is a new agent. Once we run the program, we should be able to ascertain exactly what her specifications are."
Morpheus nodded. "I'll be going in to look at her later. Do you three have any suggestions, before we run her?"
When no one spoke, Trinity shifted. "Let's just run it. I'll feel a lot better when I know how Neo's going to kill it."
"What's the difference in the code? Why did it take so long to reconstruct?" Morpheus was looking at Pusher.
"It's has a new symbol. I've never seen it before. I didn't get all of it when we were in."
Trinity interrupted. "Neo figured it out. I think we should go back in as soon as possible."
Morpheus nodded while the three stood. Neo began walking towards the Core. "Once we're in, I'll shield us so that she can't see us. We'll add some simulations of me and see what happens."
Pusher was confused. "What do you mean 'shield us?'"
"I'll skew the code so we're cloaked." He said it as if it were nothing.
"Can you do that in the Matrix?"
"No."
As if it were a stupid question. "Why not? They run on the same principles."
"Yeah. But, in the Construct, we control all the independent variables." Pusher still looked confused, so he continued. "It's one thing to change the code when I know exactly what forces are going to be acting on it at every moment. It's another thing to change the code that completely, for that extended a time, and have to contend with a thousand coppertops walking by. The Butterfly effect could throw everything out of whack. The Matrix runs on Chaos theory, like in Jurassic Park."
He had stopped at the door for his lecture. Trinity walked past him, amused. "Neo, we were all unplugged before that movie came out."
"Oh. Well, you missed out. A T-Rex ate a lawyer. And that was the comic relief. Says a lot about people, doesn't it?"
Tank entered the mess hall. "Morpheus. The Amelia Earhart has contacted us. Captain Femina wants to talk to you."
"Connect her to my personal quarters." He turned to his crew.
Neo waved a hand. "It's cool. We'll go in. Just have Tank resituate the code a bit before you enter, so I'll know you're coming. I won't let her see you."
Morpheus nodded before moving towards his quarters.
Pusher rankled as Neo led the way to the Core. "Trinity, do a sweep of the coding. Make sure it's grounded in the Construct. I don't want it trying to work its way into our systems."
Pusher spoke. "That was the first thing I did, Neo."
"I just want to be positive. Once we're in, I want you to run a standard diagnostic every thirty seconds. I'm going to need as much data as possible when we come out."
Pusher narrowed his eyes at the order. "Shouldn't I be watching a readout of the code as she runs?"
"Don't worry about it. I'm going to be doing that. Once were in don't move out of a five foot radius of me. For your own protection."
Glancing at Trinity's form in the corner, "Shouldn't you go tell Trinity that, or something?"
"She already knows." Turning. "Trinity. If you're finished, go work out the standardization codes for the Construct. I want them to be slightly different."
Pusher watched as Trinity looked up, nodded and headed for the control panel. What the hell was wrong with her? She was Neo's superior officer. Hell, he was Neo's superior officer, if you really wanted to break it down. "Neo. I think I should run the testing."
Neo looked confused. "Why?" "Because that's why Morpheus asked me to come here."
"No. It's cool. You've done all you needed to. You got the basic outline down. I've got it from here. But you can access the storage files. Maybe you could hollow out a file for the program. I don't want it anywhere near our important information. It looks worm-like from an angle."
Pusher looked to Trinity, who was happily carrying out Neo's orders in Tank's chair. After all that Pusher had gone through, after he left his damn ship, Neo just hopped into the Construct, randomly fixed his work, and was now ordering- ORDERING- him to do sweeping up work. What the hell?
As Neo turned, in what Pusher took as a dismissive motion, he was spun around by Pusher and punched in the face. As he reeled backwards, Pusher moved forward to land two hard punches in his stomach. Pusher smiled. Thank god he had enough sense to attack the guy in the real world. He may be a god in the Matrix, but on the Neb, he was a wimp.
What he hadn't counted on was Trinity. She had turned around on the first punch, and by the third, was at his side. Glancing at Neo, she kicked Pusher swiftly in the stomach, then moved to the side to come in hard with a right hook to the face.
Pusher moved to trip her, but was in no way fast enough. Trinity managed to land a few more blows before shoving him against the back wall. Neo had moved behind her. "Trin."
Holding Pusher against the wall by his throat she didn't look at her lover. "Neo. Go to our room and wait for me. Lock the door when you leave."
"Okay. I'll wait for you."
Trinity nodded even as Neo turned his back. Once she heard the lock click into place, she spoke. "Do you realize that he was bleeding?"
Pusher had never seen her this angry before. "Yes."
"Generally speaking, I would have already killed anyone who made him bleed."
Pusher tried to move away from Trinity, but as she had a firm grip on his throat, and his arm was pinned behind him at a strange and very painful angle, he figured he wasn't going anywhere soon. "What the hell were you thinking?"
"Jesus Trin. He's got an attitude, and he treats you like a servant."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Let me go, will you?"
Trinity paused for a moment, then released him. "You realize that I'm not finished with you yet, right?"
Pusher slowly brought his arm around to his front. He held it against himself. "Trin."
"Don't call me that again."
"See? That's it. You hate it when people call you Trin. You hate it. But he does it all the time. And you let him. In the Construct earlier, he casually ordered you to call Morpheus. You did it without hesitating. And he was in here, walking around like he's the Captain. He even gave Morpheus directions about entering after us. Just because he's the One, doesn't make him the leader."
Trinity closed her eyes. "Yes it does. That's exactly what it does. He's the One. Yeah, he said to do something, and I didn't hesitate. Because, in the Matrix, hesitation will get you killed. If he tells me to call Morpheus or change a code or fucking duck, I'm going to do it. Because not doing it could get me killed. When Agents show up, you don't generally have time for please and thank yous. When it comes to the Matrix, he's in charge."
"Well that doesn't account for everyone following his orders on the ship. You cater to him. You give in to half his demands. Hell, you wouldn't even let him handle his own battles. Here you are, dealing with me."
"No one caters to him. First off, we're in a relationship. The definition of which includes giving in half the time. Trust me. Half the time, I'm doing just fine. But that's none of your business. If I want to marry him, have kids, and let him make all the decisions, it's my fucking business. I let him call me Trin, because I like it when he does it. I like it. Why can't you just understand? Stop being jealous. You're not my lover; you're not the One; at this point, you're not even my friend."
"Trinity. This is between me and Neo. You jumped in between us. I don't want it to effect our friendship."
"No. This is between you and me. You attacked him here, because you're too much of a coward to face him in the Matrix. This is the dichotomy of our relationship, Pusher. He controls the Matrix. It's his domain, and he protects everyone there. He protects me. But he's not equipped to deal fully with the real world. He's only been unplugged for four months. His muscles aren't even fully reconstructed yet. So I protect him here. You say I follow his orders. How quickly did he leave this room and lock the door when I told him to? Don't assume you know a damn thing about us. You don't live here, Pusher. This is Neo's home and mine."
As she finished, they heard a pounding on the door. Morpheus' voice worked it's way through the metal. "Trinity. I saw Neo. Open the door."
Pusher couldn't look Trinity in the eye. She glared at him from about six feet away, looking as if she'd like nothing more than to begin hitting him again, very hard.
"Trinity. I've always loved you."
"I know. And up until the point where you made him bleed, I felt bad about it. But now, I just want you gone."
Morpheus called out again. "Open the door, Trinity."
Trinity moved towards the door, slowly opening it. Morpheus stared at her. "He has to go back to the Deviance as soon as possible. I think I may have broken his arm. He'd be a lot safer if you confined him to quarters. If I see him again, I'm going to hit him. A lot."
Morpheus didn't say anything. Trinity continued. "I'll be in my quarters with Neo. When I think he's okay, we'll come test the new agent. It might not be until tomorrow."
Without waiting for an answer, she walked down the hallway towards Neo.
Morpheus didn't speak for a time. Finally, "I don't understand what you were thinking. I warned you about this. All I know is that you attacked, not only the greatest weapon we have against the machines, but a man who wouldn't know how to start a fist fight if he had to. I am very surprised that Trinity stopped at breaking your arm. I would have thought you'd be unconscious right now, or dead. But that's neither here nor there. Go get Tank to look at your arm. Then go to your quarters and stay there."
As Pusher left, Morpheus closed his eyes. This complicated matters seriously.
*****
Trinity found Neo lying on their bed with his eyes closed. "Are you okay?"
"Well, I suppose that's relative."
Trinity approached the bed, moving to straddle Neo, careful to sit on his hips, rather than his stomach. "Take your shirt off."
"You're just insatiable, aren't you?"
Trinity smiled even as she pulled his shirt up. "You know it."
Once it was off, she pulled back to survey the damage. In addition to the bruise forming under his eye, and, of course, the cut along his cheekbone, Neo had a large bruise forming on his left side. Pusher must have gotten in two vicious punches at the spot. Trinity sucked in a breath and ran her hands along his side. "Do you have a broken rib?"
"I don't think so. I'll be okay."
Trinity looked up into his eyes. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah." A pause. "Where's Pusher?"
"I left him with Morpheus. I broke his arm."
Neo nodded. "I suppose I should be feeling very unmanly right now. What with my girlfriend having to save me and all."
"Well, considering the fact that you've saved your girlfriend's life a couple billion times in the Matrix, I'm fairly sure she owed you one."
"It's a good thing I'm not one of those macho types. I'd much rather sit back and let you do everything."
Trinity raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"Oh, yeah."
Trinity lowered herself to Neo. "That's interesting."
Moving down the last few inches, Trinity pressed her mouth to Neo's. The kiss deepened until Neo pushed her back. "I never thought I'd say this, but could you get off of me?"
Trinity's eyes darted down to Neo's side. She had put all her weight on him, causing pain to shoot through his body. Laughing, she rolled to her left. Throwing a leg over both of his, she put her head on his shoulder. "I told Morpheus that we probably wouldn't be leaving the room until tomorrow. It gives him some time to deal with Pusher. And it gives us some time to, you know, lie around."
"I'm sorry about all of this. I don't want to come in between you and your friends."
"He's not my friend anymore. I should have seen this coming. I knew how he felt about you. He's always buried his feelings until they exploded at some insignificant thing."
Before Neo could respond, someone knocked on their cabin's door. "Can I come in?"
Trinity rose to open the door for Tank as Neo sat up. "Morpheus wanted me to come check on Neo."
Trinity moved so he could enter. "He's fine, I think."
"Well, that's good. Pusher, on the other hand, has a fractured arm." Trinity sat down beside Neo, and looked at Tank unapologetically.
Tank looked at Neo's bruises. "Damn, that's gotta hurt. I really should do some x-rays. You might have a broken rib."
Neo shook his head. "I really don't think so. I'm fine."
Tank shrugged. "You're call, man. Morpheus wants to see us in the mess hall in an hour."
"I told him we'd go in when I thought Neo was okay."
Tank looked over at Trinity. "It's not about that. I think it has something to do with the Amelia Earhart."
Trinity nodded. "Tell him that I don't want Pusher there."
"I think that's a given."
A/N: Okay. So there's the fight. It feels off, so there may be changes later. Once I got to it, I kept thinking that there wasn't sufficient reason for a fight. But I wanted a fight, by god, and I'm the writer! Anyway, let me know what you think.
Xixie
Xixie
Chaos Ensues
A glowering Pusher followed Morpheus into the mess hall. Apparently the room had become the defacto war room, and Neo and Trinity marched in towards the sofas accordingly.
Only Morpheus remained standing. "What did you find?"
Pusher's mood was in no way improved when Neo spoke. "We got it. It is a new agent. Once we run the program, we should be able to ascertain exactly what her specifications are."
Morpheus nodded. "I'll be going in to look at her later. Do you three have any suggestions, before we run her?"
When no one spoke, Trinity shifted. "Let's just run it. I'll feel a lot better when I know how Neo's going to kill it."
"What's the difference in the code? Why did it take so long to reconstruct?" Morpheus was looking at Pusher.
"It's has a new symbol. I've never seen it before. I didn't get all of it when we were in."
Trinity interrupted. "Neo figured it out. I think we should go back in as soon as possible."
Morpheus nodded while the three stood. Neo began walking towards the Core. "Once we're in, I'll shield us so that she can't see us. We'll add some simulations of me and see what happens."
Pusher was confused. "What do you mean 'shield us?'"
"I'll skew the code so we're cloaked." He said it as if it were nothing.
"Can you do that in the Matrix?"
"No."
As if it were a stupid question. "Why not? They run on the same principles."
"Yeah. But, in the Construct, we control all the independent variables." Pusher still looked confused, so he continued. "It's one thing to change the code when I know exactly what forces are going to be acting on it at every moment. It's another thing to change the code that completely, for that extended a time, and have to contend with a thousand coppertops walking by. The Butterfly effect could throw everything out of whack. The Matrix runs on Chaos theory, like in Jurassic Park."
He had stopped at the door for his lecture. Trinity walked past him, amused. "Neo, we were all unplugged before that movie came out."
"Oh. Well, you missed out. A T-Rex ate a lawyer. And that was the comic relief. Says a lot about people, doesn't it?"
Tank entered the mess hall. "Morpheus. The Amelia Earhart has contacted us. Captain Femina wants to talk to you."
"Connect her to my personal quarters." He turned to his crew.
Neo waved a hand. "It's cool. We'll go in. Just have Tank resituate the code a bit before you enter, so I'll know you're coming. I won't let her see you."
Morpheus nodded before moving towards his quarters.
Pusher rankled as Neo led the way to the Core. "Trinity, do a sweep of the coding. Make sure it's grounded in the Construct. I don't want it trying to work its way into our systems."
Pusher spoke. "That was the first thing I did, Neo."
"I just want to be positive. Once we're in, I want you to run a standard diagnostic every thirty seconds. I'm going to need as much data as possible when we come out."
Pusher narrowed his eyes at the order. "Shouldn't I be watching a readout of the code as she runs?"
"Don't worry about it. I'm going to be doing that. Once were in don't move out of a five foot radius of me. For your own protection."
Glancing at Trinity's form in the corner, "Shouldn't you go tell Trinity that, or something?"
"She already knows." Turning. "Trinity. If you're finished, go work out the standardization codes for the Construct. I want them to be slightly different."
Pusher watched as Trinity looked up, nodded and headed for the control panel. What the hell was wrong with her? She was Neo's superior officer. Hell, he was Neo's superior officer, if you really wanted to break it down. "Neo. I think I should run the testing."
Neo looked confused. "Why?" "Because that's why Morpheus asked me to come here."
"No. It's cool. You've done all you needed to. You got the basic outline down. I've got it from here. But you can access the storage files. Maybe you could hollow out a file for the program. I don't want it anywhere near our important information. It looks worm-like from an angle."
Pusher looked to Trinity, who was happily carrying out Neo's orders in Tank's chair. After all that Pusher had gone through, after he left his damn ship, Neo just hopped into the Construct, randomly fixed his work, and was now ordering- ORDERING- him to do sweeping up work. What the hell?
As Neo turned, in what Pusher took as a dismissive motion, he was spun around by Pusher and punched in the face. As he reeled backwards, Pusher moved forward to land two hard punches in his stomach. Pusher smiled. Thank god he had enough sense to attack the guy in the real world. He may be a god in the Matrix, but on the Neb, he was a wimp.
What he hadn't counted on was Trinity. She had turned around on the first punch, and by the third, was at his side. Glancing at Neo, she kicked Pusher swiftly in the stomach, then moved to the side to come in hard with a right hook to the face.
Pusher moved to trip her, but was in no way fast enough. Trinity managed to land a few more blows before shoving him against the back wall. Neo had moved behind her. "Trin."
Holding Pusher against the wall by his throat she didn't look at her lover. "Neo. Go to our room and wait for me. Lock the door when you leave."
"Okay. I'll wait for you."
Trinity nodded even as Neo turned his back. Once she heard the lock click into place, she spoke. "Do you realize that he was bleeding?"
Pusher had never seen her this angry before. "Yes."
"Generally speaking, I would have already killed anyone who made him bleed."
Pusher tried to move away from Trinity, but as she had a firm grip on his throat, and his arm was pinned behind him at a strange and very painful angle, he figured he wasn't going anywhere soon. "What the hell were you thinking?"
"Jesus Trin. He's got an attitude, and he treats you like a servant."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Let me go, will you?"
Trinity paused for a moment, then released him. "You realize that I'm not finished with you yet, right?"
Pusher slowly brought his arm around to his front. He held it against himself. "Trin."
"Don't call me that again."
"See? That's it. You hate it when people call you Trin. You hate it. But he does it all the time. And you let him. In the Construct earlier, he casually ordered you to call Morpheus. You did it without hesitating. And he was in here, walking around like he's the Captain. He even gave Morpheus directions about entering after us. Just because he's the One, doesn't make him the leader."
Trinity closed her eyes. "Yes it does. That's exactly what it does. He's the One. Yeah, he said to do something, and I didn't hesitate. Because, in the Matrix, hesitation will get you killed. If he tells me to call Morpheus or change a code or fucking duck, I'm going to do it. Because not doing it could get me killed. When Agents show up, you don't generally have time for please and thank yous. When it comes to the Matrix, he's in charge."
"Well that doesn't account for everyone following his orders on the ship. You cater to him. You give in to half his demands. Hell, you wouldn't even let him handle his own battles. Here you are, dealing with me."
"No one caters to him. First off, we're in a relationship. The definition of which includes giving in half the time. Trust me. Half the time, I'm doing just fine. But that's none of your business. If I want to marry him, have kids, and let him make all the decisions, it's my fucking business. I let him call me Trin, because I like it when he does it. I like it. Why can't you just understand? Stop being jealous. You're not my lover; you're not the One; at this point, you're not even my friend."
"Trinity. This is between me and Neo. You jumped in between us. I don't want it to effect our friendship."
"No. This is between you and me. You attacked him here, because you're too much of a coward to face him in the Matrix. This is the dichotomy of our relationship, Pusher. He controls the Matrix. It's his domain, and he protects everyone there. He protects me. But he's not equipped to deal fully with the real world. He's only been unplugged for four months. His muscles aren't even fully reconstructed yet. So I protect him here. You say I follow his orders. How quickly did he leave this room and lock the door when I told him to? Don't assume you know a damn thing about us. You don't live here, Pusher. This is Neo's home and mine."
As she finished, they heard a pounding on the door. Morpheus' voice worked it's way through the metal. "Trinity. I saw Neo. Open the door."
Pusher couldn't look Trinity in the eye. She glared at him from about six feet away, looking as if she'd like nothing more than to begin hitting him again, very hard.
"Trinity. I've always loved you."
"I know. And up until the point where you made him bleed, I felt bad about it. But now, I just want you gone."
Morpheus called out again. "Open the door, Trinity."
Trinity moved towards the door, slowly opening it. Morpheus stared at her. "He has to go back to the Deviance as soon as possible. I think I may have broken his arm. He'd be a lot safer if you confined him to quarters. If I see him again, I'm going to hit him. A lot."
Morpheus didn't say anything. Trinity continued. "I'll be in my quarters with Neo. When I think he's okay, we'll come test the new agent. It might not be until tomorrow."
Without waiting for an answer, she walked down the hallway towards Neo.
Morpheus didn't speak for a time. Finally, "I don't understand what you were thinking. I warned you about this. All I know is that you attacked, not only the greatest weapon we have against the machines, but a man who wouldn't know how to start a fist fight if he had to. I am very surprised that Trinity stopped at breaking your arm. I would have thought you'd be unconscious right now, or dead. But that's neither here nor there. Go get Tank to look at your arm. Then go to your quarters and stay there."
As Pusher left, Morpheus closed his eyes. This complicated matters seriously.
*****
Trinity found Neo lying on their bed with his eyes closed. "Are you okay?"
"Well, I suppose that's relative."
Trinity approached the bed, moving to straddle Neo, careful to sit on his hips, rather than his stomach. "Take your shirt off."
"You're just insatiable, aren't you?"
Trinity smiled even as she pulled his shirt up. "You know it."
Once it was off, she pulled back to survey the damage. In addition to the bruise forming under his eye, and, of course, the cut along his cheekbone, Neo had a large bruise forming on his left side. Pusher must have gotten in two vicious punches at the spot. Trinity sucked in a breath and ran her hands along his side. "Do you have a broken rib?"
"I don't think so. I'll be okay."
Trinity looked up into his eyes. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah." A pause. "Where's Pusher?"
"I left him with Morpheus. I broke his arm."
Neo nodded. "I suppose I should be feeling very unmanly right now. What with my girlfriend having to save me and all."
"Well, considering the fact that you've saved your girlfriend's life a couple billion times in the Matrix, I'm fairly sure she owed you one."
"It's a good thing I'm not one of those macho types. I'd much rather sit back and let you do everything."
Trinity raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"Oh, yeah."
Trinity lowered herself to Neo. "That's interesting."
Moving down the last few inches, Trinity pressed her mouth to Neo's. The kiss deepened until Neo pushed her back. "I never thought I'd say this, but could you get off of me?"
Trinity's eyes darted down to Neo's side. She had put all her weight on him, causing pain to shoot through his body. Laughing, she rolled to her left. Throwing a leg over both of his, she put her head on his shoulder. "I told Morpheus that we probably wouldn't be leaving the room until tomorrow. It gives him some time to deal with Pusher. And it gives us some time to, you know, lie around."
"I'm sorry about all of this. I don't want to come in between you and your friends."
"He's not my friend anymore. I should have seen this coming. I knew how he felt about you. He's always buried his feelings until they exploded at some insignificant thing."
Before Neo could respond, someone knocked on their cabin's door. "Can I come in?"
Trinity rose to open the door for Tank as Neo sat up. "Morpheus wanted me to come check on Neo."
Trinity moved so he could enter. "He's fine, I think."
"Well, that's good. Pusher, on the other hand, has a fractured arm." Trinity sat down beside Neo, and looked at Tank unapologetically.
Tank looked at Neo's bruises. "Damn, that's gotta hurt. I really should do some x-rays. You might have a broken rib."
Neo shook his head. "I really don't think so. I'm fine."
Tank shrugged. "You're call, man. Morpheus wants to see us in the mess hall in an hour."
"I told him we'd go in when I thought Neo was okay."
Tank looked over at Trinity. "It's not about that. I think it has something to do with the Amelia Earhart."
Trinity nodded. "Tell him that I don't want Pusher there."
"I think that's a given."
A/N: Okay. So there's the fight. It feels off, so there may be changes later. Once I got to it, I kept thinking that there wasn't sufficient reason for a fight. But I wanted a fight, by god, and I'm the writer! Anyway, let me know what you think.
Xixie
