I have nothing to say right now except this and: Enjoy this chapter.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Introduce and Equip
. . . . .
"I'm in." Neo said to the operator on the other end of the line via his cell phone.
"Are they there?"
"Yes. Just in front of me."
"Great. Over and out."
Neo shut the phone with a click.
He stared at the two identical figures standing a few meters in front of him, looking around at their new surroundings. Straightening his coat he walked up to them.
"Hi, I'm Neo."
"Yes. The One, right?"
"How'd you know?"
"It's in our programming. We know quite a bit. Including the fact that you created us; at least not directly."
"So... what are your names?"
"Alpha."
"Omega."
"Meaning?"
"You don't know?"
Neo slowly shook his head.
"You are so smart, aren't you?" Alpha said sarcastically.
"Her name, Alpha, means the first letter in the alphabet. That's where it got its name from as a matter of fact. Mine, Omega, means the last letter of the alphabet. Get it?"
"Yeah. How old are the two of you supposed to be?"
"God. You know we have just been created. Our programming is brand new."
"I mean how old are you on the outside?"
"Fifteen."
"Our appearance will stop aging once we get to twenty-four; our programming will only be nine years old then."
"Okay..."
Neo looked the pair- Duo- over.
They had jet-black shoulder length hair, which was arranged into five vertical 'fins' at the top and gradually flattened out to join the smoothness of the rest of their hair.
On each cheek a dark blue line traveled from the inner corner of the eye out to the top of the jawbone. From the same starting point was another line of the same color, which moved downwards and ended at the corner of the jaw line. In the middle of the space between the two lines that formed a half-crescent was a 'V', tip touching the lower lines and upper ends merging with the streak on top.
Around each of their necks was a black leather band from which all around protruded sharp metal studs.
They had an average neckline and sleeves, which came down to just above the elbow and converged with their gloves. The thick, strong and shiny nylon encasing the lower arm had a single, curved, wicked looking and extremely lethal blade sticking out from the outer side.
The fingers of their gloves had slits in the tips, allowing the sharp metal tips of their fingernails to protrude.
Their pant legs fitted into their semi-leather, semi-synthetic ankle-high boots.
The tight fitting, shiny clothes had the effect of making them look like quicksilver, beauty flowing with each movement they made.
Only one thing seemed to be missing...
"Where are your weapons?" Neo asked.
Alpha flicked her arm backwards with a small snapping sound. When she brought her arm back up again it held a dagger.
"We can do that to any object that we dematerialize earlier. Objects. Not people. We can have with us up to the equivalent mass of a Boeing 747 , maximum number of passengers and crew onboard, fully loaded with luggage and everything the plane would normally hold."
She waved the hand holding the dagger and it disappeared.
"You'll have to be careful on how you move around, aren't you?" Neo said. "Otherwise your things are going to keep appearing and disappearing."
Omega turned to her sister. "This man has no brain."
Going up to Neo she yelled in his face, "It's in our mind whether we want our things to appear or disappear! Those movements are just so that we can drop into a fighting stance at the same time!"
"Okay! Okay! It's not really my fault if I don't understand you!"
"I seriously cannot believe he is the One."
"Never mind him. I want to see what weapons we've been given."
Alpha opened her hand and a switchblade, a razor, and a pair of ninja daggers appeared in it. She carefully examined each one, running her finger down the sharp edges and testing their balance by throwing them at a wooden bench nearby.
"Good quality," Alpha commented as she walked over to the bench and retrieved her weapons. "But such a pitiful collection."
"Yes, indeed." Omega said, nodding her head in agreement. "Only four weapons in total."
"That was all we could give you..."
"Where are we going to live?"
"And what about finance?"
"We didn't think of that..." Neo began. He was interrupted as his cell phone rang.
"Operator." Said Link's voice when Neo picked up.
"What?"
"I've been watching your conversation and I have just created a house for them."
"Wonderful. Where is it?"
"Western side of the city; 47 Efil road. Not far from where you are."
"They're asking about finance too."
"Hang on, I'll do a quick hack..."
Neo waited, without hanging up the phone, wondering if Link was doing/ going to do what he expected/ was expecting.
"Okay. Now ask them to try and conjure up a few bank notes."
'I was right, as usual' Neo thought to himself.
Neo forced himself to stop flattering himself by thinking 'But then again, Link is so predictable.' before asking the Duo to do what Link had said.
It worked.
"Now they're happy." Neo said back to Link.
"Good. Tell them that they can do that to gain as much money as they want; they'll have to buy their own furniture for the house, but the plumbing and electricity will be automatically fixed up the instant they're happy with the arrangement. Over and out."
Neo clicked his phone shut and told the Duo about their unlimited cash and the house.
"Let's go now, sis." Omega said, turning to leave.
"It's near but it's not walking distance you know." Neo said.
The Duo double-stared at him with a 'your head is emptier than we thought' look.
"Who's going to walk when you can fly?"
"No no no." Neo started to back away. "I'm not going to have the both of you sitting on my back while I fly. No way."
"Idiot you." Alpha said, clearly annoyed. "You can play Superman and fly to our house. We can trans and follow the shadows around us."
Neo, seeing that he was not about to be used by the Duo as a mode of transportation, said, "Okay. You know the address, I'll meet you there."
He crouched down into his launching position, one hand upwards in a fist, the other behind his back.
His bending of the code caused the cement floor to ripple in concentric circles around him just before he leapt upwards and disappeared into the clouds.
"Let's race him there shall we?" Omega challenged her sister.
"I'm game if you are."
"Now."
They walked into the shadow cast by a wall and transed, immediately vanishing.
~ @ ~
Neo landed on the pavement with a dull thud. He stood up and looked in at the window of the house he was standing next to. This couldn't possibly have been the right house? It was fully furnished and he had only taken about thirty seconds to fly there. And by the way, he never landed at the wrong place . . . he was never wrong. . . "Can't hurt to check the house number. . ."
Neo walked round to the front of the house.
"This is the right house?" Neo mumbled to himself.
"Yes, it is." said a voice from behind him.
Neo spun around.
It was one of the Duo. Alpha or Omega he couldn't tell.
"How did you do up the house so fast?" Neo asked in amazement. "Link said he only gave you an empty shell of a house."
"Ohhh...we're faster than you think..."
"Than you could imagine..."
Neo looked over his shoulder and saw the other twin standing in the doorway.
"Never mind Neo." The twin that had greeted him first said as she walked past him and into the house.
"Come on in." the other invited.
The door was closed behind Neo as he stepped into the living room. The first thought that entered his mind when he saw that almost everything was either black or silver, was 'How did Link program these two?'
Although Neo was not in the least claustrophobic, all the lights in the house were on and none of the curtains were drawn, the walls still seemed to be closing in on him.
"Um . . . you two?" Neo said, eyes darting around the room in search of the Duo. "Did you have to make everything black? I'm starting to feel rather uncomfortable here..."
"Alright..." came the two toned echoing reply from... somewhere...everywhere...
Neo watched, transfixed, as the dark gloominess of the black walls shrunk down into a patch behind him, melting into his own shadow. He turned around and watched as his shadow began to rise up from the floor. It stood erect at the same height as...
It materialized.
"Alpha?" Neo said in shock when he saw who was now standing in front of him.
"Lucky guess." she replied.
"What the- how did you-"
"We can take any shape we want while we're in that state because we won't have mass."
"Oh...okay..."Neo looked at the walls again. They were now an aquamarine blue. Much better. "But if you like black so much then why didn't you just paint the walls black?"
"Because we expected that other people might not like it. And the other color that we like apart from black and silver is this." Alpha waved at the surrounding blue. "What we did just now was only to see if black walls would look good. And it did, but you didn't like it, so this is perfectly fine."
Omega came walking down the stairs. "Blue's much better huh?"
"Yeah."
"Now that that's settled we can go."
"Go where?" asked Neo.
"To buy more weapons. You can stay here and watch television in the room over there if you want." Before Neo had time to say anything else, the Duo transed through the front door and headed down the street.
"Oh well, at least they got cable television." Neo said to himself as he walked into the next room, plopped himself down on the sofa in front of the T.V., took the remote control in his hand and started flipping channels.
~ @ ~
"I want to buy this one." Omega said, fingering a knife with a wavy edged blade. "What do you think of it?"
"Let me see?"
Omega tossed the knife to Alpha who identified it as something called a Kris.
"Take it. It's a good weapon." Alpha said as she handed the knife back to Omega. "And what do you think of this?" She held up the two ends of a metal chain of medium thickness, which had jagged blades attached to it at regular intervals. Lowering it into one of her hands, the 'death snake' as a label indicated, lay coiled up like what its name suggested, as if awaiting orders to kill.
"Should come in handy." came the distracted reply. Alpha glanced over to her sister.
Omega was holding a 'life cutter'.
"What is that?"
A chain joined what seemed to be two pods, but were actually casings for the seven blades hidden inside each of them.
"And what does that do?"
"I'll try it out." Omega said. She held one of the pods and flung the life cutter outwards at a corkboard, an estimated twenty meters away, specially there for that purpose.
The instant the weapon left her hand, the two pods/casings moved in towards the middle of the chain and snapped together, pulling the ends of the chains closer to each other. The blades, now free to move, fanned out and the four at the sides interlocked, forming a deadly, spinning metal flower. It hit- no...cut through the five-inch thick corkboard and made a deep gash in the concrete wall behind...and stuck there. The whole procedure took no more than one-and-a-half seconds.
"Nice." they both smiled simultaneously.
"I'll buy it. . ." Omega said walking over to the cutter. ". . .after I get it out of the wall."
Alpha laughed a little, but her attention was more focused on the contents of a black box with the engraving of a six-pointed star on the lid.
Omega easily yanked the cutter out of the wall. She held the two halves/sets of blades joined together and twisted them in opposite directions. They came apart and folded back under the top blade on each side. She did the same to the pods and pushed them outwards with a click to cover the blades again. Satisfied, Omega slung the now 'lengthened' cutter over her shoulder and materialized the Kris.
Alpha had finished selecting what she wanted and was already at the cashier's counter. Omega joined her.
"What are you buying?"
"The Death Snake and these ninja stars." Alpha said taking the black box out of the plastic bag and opening it to show Omega. "You?"
"The Kris and the Life Cutter."
"Wonderful."
"That would be US$1, 854." said the scruffy cashier.
Alpha, hardly noticing the amount (didn't they have an unlimited supply of cash?), materialized a five thousand dollar bill behind her back. She slapped it onto the counter, grabbed the bags containing their purchases and walked out of the store- to join Omega who was impatiently tapping her foot outside- saying, "Keep the change."
The cashier stared after them, wondering if they knew that they had given him an extra US3, 146. In the end he decided that a 'little' extra cash wouldn't hurt.
Outside, Alpha and Omega happily took their new things out of the bag, dematerialized them and discarded the plastic bags before transing and heading back home.
~ @ ~
"Neo! We're back!" Omega called as she stepped into the house.
Neo switched off the television and went out into the living room.
"You didn't buy anything, did you?" Neo asked when he saw that they weren't holding any bags.
"Just to remind you, we can make things disappear."
"Oh yeah."
"So what did you buy?"
"These." the Duo said at the same time, holding out the items in question. They let Neo take them and have a good look at them.
"You do know what you are supposed to do with these, right?"
"Eliminate the Twins. The Merovingian's bodyguards." They both said, suddenly sounding very dutiful.
"You know where to find them?"
"Of course. The Chateau."
"I suggest you find out what their weaknesses and strengths are first, although I can't stop you if you want to use your own strategy."
"What you say sounds the best. We'll do it that way."
"So you are clear on everything? No questions?"
"No."
"Perfect. So do your duty, okay? I'll be leaving now. I know where there is a payphone." With that, Neo walked out of the house, fully trusting the Duo to accomplish what he couldn't. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Yay! Finally done with this chapter! And thanks for the reviews!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Introduce and Equip
. . . . .
"I'm in." Neo said to the operator on the other end of the line via his cell phone.
"Are they there?"
"Yes. Just in front of me."
"Great. Over and out."
Neo shut the phone with a click.
He stared at the two identical figures standing a few meters in front of him, looking around at their new surroundings. Straightening his coat he walked up to them.
"Hi, I'm Neo."
"Yes. The One, right?"
"How'd you know?"
"It's in our programming. We know quite a bit. Including the fact that you created us; at least not directly."
"So... what are your names?"
"Alpha."
"Omega."
"Meaning?"
"You don't know?"
Neo slowly shook his head.
"You are so smart, aren't you?" Alpha said sarcastically.
"Her name, Alpha, means the first letter in the alphabet. That's where it got its name from as a matter of fact. Mine, Omega, means the last letter of the alphabet. Get it?"
"Yeah. How old are the two of you supposed to be?"
"God. You know we have just been created. Our programming is brand new."
"I mean how old are you on the outside?"
"Fifteen."
"Our appearance will stop aging once we get to twenty-four; our programming will only be nine years old then."
"Okay..."
Neo looked the pair- Duo- over.
They had jet-black shoulder length hair, which was arranged into five vertical 'fins' at the top and gradually flattened out to join the smoothness of the rest of their hair.
On each cheek a dark blue line traveled from the inner corner of the eye out to the top of the jawbone. From the same starting point was another line of the same color, which moved downwards and ended at the corner of the jaw line. In the middle of the space between the two lines that formed a half-crescent was a 'V', tip touching the lower lines and upper ends merging with the streak on top.
Around each of their necks was a black leather band from which all around protruded sharp metal studs.
They had an average neckline and sleeves, which came down to just above the elbow and converged with their gloves. The thick, strong and shiny nylon encasing the lower arm had a single, curved, wicked looking and extremely lethal blade sticking out from the outer side.
The fingers of their gloves had slits in the tips, allowing the sharp metal tips of their fingernails to protrude.
Their pant legs fitted into their semi-leather, semi-synthetic ankle-high boots.
The tight fitting, shiny clothes had the effect of making them look like quicksilver, beauty flowing with each movement they made.
Only one thing seemed to be missing...
"Where are your weapons?" Neo asked.
Alpha flicked her arm backwards with a small snapping sound. When she brought her arm back up again it held a dagger.
"We can do that to any object that we dematerialize earlier. Objects. Not people. We can have with us up to the equivalent mass of a Boeing 747 , maximum number of passengers and crew onboard, fully loaded with luggage and everything the plane would normally hold."
She waved the hand holding the dagger and it disappeared.
"You'll have to be careful on how you move around, aren't you?" Neo said. "Otherwise your things are going to keep appearing and disappearing."
Omega turned to her sister. "This man has no brain."
Going up to Neo she yelled in his face, "It's in our mind whether we want our things to appear or disappear! Those movements are just so that we can drop into a fighting stance at the same time!"
"Okay! Okay! It's not really my fault if I don't understand you!"
"I seriously cannot believe he is the One."
"Never mind him. I want to see what weapons we've been given."
Alpha opened her hand and a switchblade, a razor, and a pair of ninja daggers appeared in it. She carefully examined each one, running her finger down the sharp edges and testing their balance by throwing them at a wooden bench nearby.
"Good quality," Alpha commented as she walked over to the bench and retrieved her weapons. "But such a pitiful collection."
"Yes, indeed." Omega said, nodding her head in agreement. "Only four weapons in total."
"That was all we could give you..."
"Where are we going to live?"
"And what about finance?"
"We didn't think of that..." Neo began. He was interrupted as his cell phone rang.
"Operator." Said Link's voice when Neo picked up.
"What?"
"I've been watching your conversation and I have just created a house for them."
"Wonderful. Where is it?"
"Western side of the city; 47 Efil road. Not far from where you are."
"They're asking about finance too."
"Hang on, I'll do a quick hack..."
Neo waited, without hanging up the phone, wondering if Link was doing/ going to do what he expected/ was expecting.
"Okay. Now ask them to try and conjure up a few bank notes."
'I was right, as usual' Neo thought to himself.
Neo forced himself to stop flattering himself by thinking 'But then again, Link is so predictable.' before asking the Duo to do what Link had said.
It worked.
"Now they're happy." Neo said back to Link.
"Good. Tell them that they can do that to gain as much money as they want; they'll have to buy their own furniture for the house, but the plumbing and electricity will be automatically fixed up the instant they're happy with the arrangement. Over and out."
Neo clicked his phone shut and told the Duo about their unlimited cash and the house.
"Let's go now, sis." Omega said, turning to leave.
"It's near but it's not walking distance you know." Neo said.
The Duo double-stared at him with a 'your head is emptier than we thought' look.
"Who's going to walk when you can fly?"
"No no no." Neo started to back away. "I'm not going to have the both of you sitting on my back while I fly. No way."
"Idiot you." Alpha said, clearly annoyed. "You can play Superman and fly to our house. We can trans and follow the shadows around us."
Neo, seeing that he was not about to be used by the Duo as a mode of transportation, said, "Okay. You know the address, I'll meet you there."
He crouched down into his launching position, one hand upwards in a fist, the other behind his back.
His bending of the code caused the cement floor to ripple in concentric circles around him just before he leapt upwards and disappeared into the clouds.
"Let's race him there shall we?" Omega challenged her sister.
"I'm game if you are."
"Now."
They walked into the shadow cast by a wall and transed, immediately vanishing.
~ @ ~
Neo landed on the pavement with a dull thud. He stood up and looked in at the window of the house he was standing next to. This couldn't possibly have been the right house? It was fully furnished and he had only taken about thirty seconds to fly there. And by the way, he never landed at the wrong place . . . he was never wrong. . . "Can't hurt to check the house number. . ."
Neo walked round to the front of the house.
"This is the right house?" Neo mumbled to himself.
"Yes, it is." said a voice from behind him.
Neo spun around.
It was one of the Duo. Alpha or Omega he couldn't tell.
"How did you do up the house so fast?" Neo asked in amazement. "Link said he only gave you an empty shell of a house."
"Ohhh...we're faster than you think..."
"Than you could imagine..."
Neo looked over his shoulder and saw the other twin standing in the doorway.
"Never mind Neo." The twin that had greeted him first said as she walked past him and into the house.
"Come on in." the other invited.
The door was closed behind Neo as he stepped into the living room. The first thought that entered his mind when he saw that almost everything was either black or silver, was 'How did Link program these two?'
Although Neo was not in the least claustrophobic, all the lights in the house were on and none of the curtains were drawn, the walls still seemed to be closing in on him.
"Um . . . you two?" Neo said, eyes darting around the room in search of the Duo. "Did you have to make everything black? I'm starting to feel rather uncomfortable here..."
"Alright..." came the two toned echoing reply from... somewhere...everywhere...
Neo watched, transfixed, as the dark gloominess of the black walls shrunk down into a patch behind him, melting into his own shadow. He turned around and watched as his shadow began to rise up from the floor. It stood erect at the same height as...
It materialized.
"Alpha?" Neo said in shock when he saw who was now standing in front of him.
"Lucky guess." she replied.
"What the- how did you-"
"We can take any shape we want while we're in that state because we won't have mass."
"Oh...okay..."Neo looked at the walls again. They were now an aquamarine blue. Much better. "But if you like black so much then why didn't you just paint the walls black?"
"Because we expected that other people might not like it. And the other color that we like apart from black and silver is this." Alpha waved at the surrounding blue. "What we did just now was only to see if black walls would look good. And it did, but you didn't like it, so this is perfectly fine."
Omega came walking down the stairs. "Blue's much better huh?"
"Yeah."
"Now that that's settled we can go."
"Go where?" asked Neo.
"To buy more weapons. You can stay here and watch television in the room over there if you want." Before Neo had time to say anything else, the Duo transed through the front door and headed down the street.
"Oh well, at least they got cable television." Neo said to himself as he walked into the next room, plopped himself down on the sofa in front of the T.V., took the remote control in his hand and started flipping channels.
~ @ ~
"I want to buy this one." Omega said, fingering a knife with a wavy edged blade. "What do you think of it?"
"Let me see?"
Omega tossed the knife to Alpha who identified it as something called a Kris.
"Take it. It's a good weapon." Alpha said as she handed the knife back to Omega. "And what do you think of this?" She held up the two ends of a metal chain of medium thickness, which had jagged blades attached to it at regular intervals. Lowering it into one of her hands, the 'death snake' as a label indicated, lay coiled up like what its name suggested, as if awaiting orders to kill.
"Should come in handy." came the distracted reply. Alpha glanced over to her sister.
Omega was holding a 'life cutter'.
"What is that?"
A chain joined what seemed to be two pods, but were actually casings for the seven blades hidden inside each of them.
"And what does that do?"
"I'll try it out." Omega said. She held one of the pods and flung the life cutter outwards at a corkboard, an estimated twenty meters away, specially there for that purpose.
The instant the weapon left her hand, the two pods/casings moved in towards the middle of the chain and snapped together, pulling the ends of the chains closer to each other. The blades, now free to move, fanned out and the four at the sides interlocked, forming a deadly, spinning metal flower. It hit- no...cut through the five-inch thick corkboard and made a deep gash in the concrete wall behind...and stuck there. The whole procedure took no more than one-and-a-half seconds.
"Nice." they both smiled simultaneously.
"I'll buy it. . ." Omega said walking over to the cutter. ". . .after I get it out of the wall."
Alpha laughed a little, but her attention was more focused on the contents of a black box with the engraving of a six-pointed star on the lid.
Omega easily yanked the cutter out of the wall. She held the two halves/sets of blades joined together and twisted them in opposite directions. They came apart and folded back under the top blade on each side. She did the same to the pods and pushed them outwards with a click to cover the blades again. Satisfied, Omega slung the now 'lengthened' cutter over her shoulder and materialized the Kris.
Alpha had finished selecting what she wanted and was already at the cashier's counter. Omega joined her.
"What are you buying?"
"The Death Snake and these ninja stars." Alpha said taking the black box out of the plastic bag and opening it to show Omega. "You?"
"The Kris and the Life Cutter."
"Wonderful."
"That would be US$1, 854." said the scruffy cashier.
Alpha, hardly noticing the amount (didn't they have an unlimited supply of cash?), materialized a five thousand dollar bill behind her back. She slapped it onto the counter, grabbed the bags containing their purchases and walked out of the store- to join Omega who was impatiently tapping her foot outside- saying, "Keep the change."
The cashier stared after them, wondering if they knew that they had given him an extra US3, 146. In the end he decided that a 'little' extra cash wouldn't hurt.
Outside, Alpha and Omega happily took their new things out of the bag, dematerialized them and discarded the plastic bags before transing and heading back home.
~ @ ~
"Neo! We're back!" Omega called as she stepped into the house.
Neo switched off the television and went out into the living room.
"You didn't buy anything, did you?" Neo asked when he saw that they weren't holding any bags.
"Just to remind you, we can make things disappear."
"Oh yeah."
"So what did you buy?"
"These." the Duo said at the same time, holding out the items in question. They let Neo take them and have a good look at them.
"You do know what you are supposed to do with these, right?"
"Eliminate the Twins. The Merovingian's bodyguards." They both said, suddenly sounding very dutiful.
"You know where to find them?"
"Of course. The Chateau."
"I suggest you find out what their weaknesses and strengths are first, although I can't stop you if you want to use your own strategy."
"What you say sounds the best. We'll do it that way."
"So you are clear on everything? No questions?"
"No."
"Perfect. So do your duty, okay? I'll be leaving now. I know where there is a payphone." With that, Neo walked out of the house, fully trusting the Duo to accomplish what he couldn't. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Yay! Finally done with this chapter! And thanks for the reviews!