A/N: Hello, fellow fanfic people, I just wanted to say two things: one, I'm sorry for the huge gap in updates. This fic is still kicking, in one form or another! And two, there is reason to celebrate today... This fic, this horribly random, sociopathically pointless fic, has made the Matrix fanfics recommendation page on TV Tropes! TV frickin' Tropes! This calls for a round of digital cookies on me.
Genius-626—Yeah, Socialists are fun. So are cookies! Take one.
7—Jones is always bland without a pinch of oregano, doncha know, doncha know. =p Cookies for you!
Chaos Gamer—Thanks! Have a cookie.
Jasper Blood—Jeez, I'm so sorry your summer had been boring and monotonous! I hope you're not dead! I had NO inspiration whatsoever, and it was a really sucky summer on this end... I hope these few following chapters can make up for it. Cookies for you!
PAI fan—You know what? It took me three months to realize that PAI stood for Pointless Agent Insanity. That's how monumentally stupid I am. Cookies for you!
Cookies to all reviewers.
Now let's get going.
Pointless Agent Insanity! Part XV: The Pimp Finger of Doom
Once upon a time, between the merry old lands of Oz and Narnia, there was a war. This war was waged by fictional iconoclasts, who both kidnapped child soldiers to constitute their armies, and used brainwashing to convert them to their cause, feeding those young impressionable minds the illusion that they were superhumanly important. None knew how it had started, only that it had no end, that their respective writers had created this terrible blight on the human race—and that as long as little kids played Candy Crush Saga and never cracked open a book this atrocity would not continue.
Jones blinked as the credits to the documentary rolled and the narrator on the History Channel hung himself before the aliens could detain him for reciting some real human facts.
"ALIENS!" screeched the wild-haired aliens guy beside him, thrashing his arms joyously as he was ransacked by a headhumper crab. "WE SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH!"
The station blacked out. Jones sighed, flipping the channel to Rachel Ray, who was busy showing America how best to spice a headhumper before putting it in the oven. He then flipped the channel to a religious show, which featured a headhumper pastor clad in white and gold robes as it recited the Ten Headhumping Virtues: Headhump, Headhump, Headhump, Scare the Shit Out of Some Weak-Ass Hyoomans, Headhump, Headhump, Headhump, Bleed Some Acid Shit, Headhump, and Headhump.
Jones flipped the channel again to ESPN, where the Interplanetary Headhumper Championship was well underway. Sports commentator Headhump McHumperhead predicted that this was the best year for the prestigious sport of Headhumping. His colleagues argued over which MPV had the best stats. Jones flipped the channel once more to MTV, where an interviewer held up a microphone to the beautiful and famous actress Humpahead O' Head-a-Hump. Her next movie would be a summer romantic comedy, examining the social stigma between zombies and headhumpers—
A crowbar smashed its way through the television, cutting out the program mid-sentence.
"Hey!" Jones cried, as he jumped behind the couch for cover. "I don't like MTV either, but you don't see me destroying your crappy cable!"
The figure clutching the crowbar raised an eyebrow, then smashed the window and leapt out of it into the street below.
Jones stood in the middle of the drafty room, silent.
"Goddamn Jehovah's Witnesses," he said.
Moments later the two other Agents came running in.
"Jones!" Smith called.
"What?"
"Who was that?"
"Dunno."
"Was that a famous video game character who smashed through our television screen just now?"
"No," said Jones.
"Did he carry a crowbar?"
"No."
"Did he say nothing to you?"
"No."
"Did he wear an orange Mark IV HEV Suit?"
"No."
"Did he have a goatee?"
"No."
"Did he have unearthly green eyes?"
"No."
"Did he wear Buddy Holly glasses?"
"No."
"We can rule out Demi Levato then," Brown said, "but Miley Cyrus might still fit the bill."
Smith threw Brown through the wall into another continent.
"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—" and the Agent landed head-first in a cabbage patch in Moscow, was harvested and enjoyed in a delicious Russian soup.
"Dipshit, that was GORDON FREEMAN!" Smith screeched, blowing off a chunk of the roof with the sheer loudness of his voice. "From HALF-LIFE! The ONE PROGRAM I'VE BEEN CHASING FOR MONTHS! AND YOU JUST LET HIM GO!"
"A simple 'Thank You' would suffice every now and then," Jones said, placing his hands on his hips. "Gawd, I just hate how you take me for granted sometimes!"
"Why have you been chasing him?" Brown asked, now floating in the tub with his trusty noodle. I am not going to begin to explain, since Brown's epic journey back to the apartment involved lots of time travel, unrequited love, psychological horror, genocide, spiritual growth, introspective staring into the rain, chain-smoking and like half the plot to Back to the Future 2.
"My microwave casserole," Smith said, his voice dark with rage. "He ruined it."
"Actually," said a random nerd walking by the scene, "if you play Episode 2 you'll find that that casserole really belonged to Dr. Arne MagnussUUUHHHN!" as he was shot in the chest seventeen thousand, two hundred and thirty-six point five times... The half-bullet had stopped on the way to work for a midmorning coffee at Starbucks, but the girl behind the counter was goofing off instead of actually getting his order, so Billy the Bullet got super pissed as he sat there and his Hummer spat lethal carbon emissions into the air while he waited, and not to mention the fact that when he finally did get it, as he was pulling out some prick on the road who'd never even heard the phrase "right-of-way" side-swiped him, causing Billy the Bullet to knock his arm into the holster and spill hot coffee all over his junk, so of course he got some road rage and swerved to the left and only grazed the random nerd's arm, and when his boss called him in everyone at the cubicles swiveled around in their chairs and said "Ooooooooooh" like shrieky little schoolgirls, and as he glared at them Billy the Bullet knew it was only going to be a matter of time before he got canned for poor performance, he'd been doing poorly lately due to the baby being up at all hours of the night busting caps in gangstas' bitch-asses, and he thought of begging his boss not to can him, because he had a bullet and two shells at home, but as his grandpa always told him, Son, you don't never beg when you can kick 'em in the nads and run the touchdown, but he didn't know what that had to do with anything as his boss ranted and raved at him, and then he realized he never had a grandpa in the first place as his boss kicked his groveling ass out the door. Thus recounts the tragic story of how Billy the Bullet got fired. And everyone in the universe died from that very horrible, very drawn-out pun. The End.
"You have no idea," Smith said, "of how long I've waited, and watched, and planned... I swore I would have my revenge... I could forgive him for pushing that crystal into the chamber. I could forgive him for unleashing hordes of alien predators onto the Earth and indirectly causing humanity to become enslaved. I could forgive him for the subsequent wanton bloodshed and destruction. But that casserole wasn't just any old casserole. It wasn't your mother's green bean, or the mac and cheese she pops into the oven for Christmas when it was still left over from Thanksgiving. It was... Lean and Fit. LEAN AND FIT. LEAN. AND. MOTHERFUCKING. FIT! ...and the worst part of it was..." Smith's voice hissed like pistons between his teeth. "He... he... sprinkled Parmesan on it and added FIFTY MORE CALORIES TO MY SERVING THAN MY DIETICIAN RECOMMENDED!"
His two cohorts screamed.
"Smith—is that true?"
"No," Smith said, "but it sure makes a good horror story, innit?"
Meanwhile, as Rachel Ray finished spicing the headhumper roast, she looked up, sensing a vague disturbance in the Force...
...Someone in the infinite universe just trashed the use of Parmesan cheese.
"Oh," she said, eyes narrowing, "it's on."
The audience gave her a standing ovation as she ripped off her costume, revealing a pterodactyl underneath, spread her scaly fifteen-foot wings and flew braying through the roof.
Smith sent Jones and Brown to investigate every arcade in the city... and no, I'm not saying "amusement hall," you pretentious SoHo bastards! Go get your championship taken away by that deaf, dumb and blind kid somewhere else!
As he sat and sipped his tea, Roger Daltrey looked up and exploded. And the entire '60s generation thus decimated me with their walkers. I died as they poisoned me with their vile untrue stories of Woodstock. I got better.
Anyhow, Smith sent the other two to scope out every game and entertainment station in the city in order to sniff out Freeman... who often cleverly stood still and disguised himself as huge ten-foot tall arcade machines.
"Oh my GOD!" Tank shrieked from the operator's chair, bouncing up and down. "It's Mortal Kombat! I haven't played that in forever!" Before Trinity could interrupt to say he'd played the Android version while on the can just five minutes earlier, Tank yelled into the headset: "Neo, quick, gimme a quarter! Johnny Cage is kickin' asses and chewin' bubblegum, n00bz!"
His pleas fell on deaf ears, for Thomas was already jacked into the Matrix. When Trinity handed Tank a quarter, he seized it and jammed it into the slot marked HA HA IT'S JUST MY PIGGY BANK YOU GULLIBLE BASTARDS. He then illegally downloaded a PC port of the game, drooling as he did, and nearly broke off both his thumbs button-mashing the first twelve rounds. He then died in the next round as his thumbs broke off and went flying across the room. One of them landed in Morpheus' chili cup from Wendy's, and so Morpheus tearfully sued Wendy's for a googleplex of dollars, on the grounds that his severed thumb had chili on it.
"Why do I feel like punching something out of sheer rage?" Smith asked as he walked into the arcade. He shrugged, figuring his rage quota just hadn't been met for the month. His fist automatically shot out and slammed into an ATM beside him, which released such a flood of twenty dollar bills that Wendy's was able to pay Morpheus back the googleplex-dollar lawsuit, and in retaliation made him his legal bitch—namely, standing out on the corner in the middle of July dressed as a giant bowl of chili.
Morpheus shed a single manly tear as he handed a woman a flyer for delicious pretzel burgers.
Smith walked down this aisle and that. Past Space Invaders. Past Dig-Dug. Past Donkey Kong. Past Pac Man strung out on E and eating everything in sight and the Ghosts having to stage an intervention by replacing all the food in the house with horrible-tasting pellets that were actually rat poison. Past the teenagers playing DDR and Guitar Hero, past the grandmas who were bowling on the Wii, past the time-traveling band of nerds who were strangling each other with the cords of their Segas and Nintendos, past some two-year-old as he killed his father in Halo, his baby-fat arms raising his beer in victory as his father curled up on the carpet and cried. When he had walked the entire length of the hall, seeing nothing remarkable, he walked right back out.
Gordon Freeman, who had been watching the Agent all this time from behind an obsolete machine, breathed a sigh of relief. He stepped out into the open, watching on with a measure of smug satisfaction as his mortal foe walked obliviously past the arcade and down the street. He smiled. Then, realizing something grave, he turned slowly around, eyes wide with horror.
The machine he had ducked behind was none other than... Polybius.
[Warning: Joke may not apply in all fifty states. All ages are not eligible to LOL. Must be a legal citizen of Life to LOL. Employees of joke, or any of its respective affiliates, parent companies, advertising agencies and subsidiaries and their immediate family (spouses, children and half-children, siblings and half-siblings, and members of household) are not eligible to LOL. Joke starts on June 9, 1981, 6:43 EST and ends on December 30, 2007, 12:59 EST. Participation to LOL constitutes entrant's full and unconditional agreement to laugh as hard as humanly possible. Joke is subject to all applicable federal, state, and local laws and restrictions. Joke may not be redeemed for cash or other sources of LOL. Void in Puerto Rico, Guam, and where prohibited. Must be eighteen years or older to LOL.]
As Gordon Freeman raised his trusty crowbar to decimate the vile thing, it tipped over from its complete standing position and crushed him.
Smith went on walking until, as if pulled along by an unseen force, he ducked left into an alley and found Thomas huddled in a corner. The program was hunched over an unplugged keyboard in his lap, giggling softly and typing away. Smith walked slowly to the program and stopped. Thomas continued to chuckle. Then, sensing something, he looked up and over his shoulder, at the Agent towering over him.
"Aw, shit," Thomas pouted, "of course I get a Level 2 Mage!"
Smith blinked. His mind considered an option that popped up, then dissolved it the instant it appeared.
No. He wouldn't do it. Not with this moron...
Smith looked down and saw that among the pile of games stacked beside the program was Half-Life. Bending down, he picked it up, studying the box.
"You're playing this?" he said.
"A variation," Thomas said. "Gary's Mod."
"So you know of Gordon Freeman, then?"
Thomas snorted. "I'd be a complete dweeb if I didn't," he said, as he sat with his socks pulled up to his eyeballs, his pocket protector leaking ten gallons of ink, and the blades of the propeller cap stuck on top of his head whirling like a merry-go-round.
That... actually made some sort of inane sense, Smith thought. He thought he'd killed Freeman twenty years ago, when he kicked him so hard that his heel pierced the thin membrane of the space-time continuum and sent the famous video game character to Development Hell for his sins. If Anderson had somehow re-activated the program's code, and re-inserted it into the Matrix, then his foe would have encountered no problems in continuing his criminal career. He shuddered. A rogue physicist running amok, free to cause hell, free to kill and mar and rape and plunder, free to sprinkle Parmesan cheese willy-nilly and ruin other casseroles...
His casseroles.
And it also explained the reason why Freeman looked a character from The Boondocks every time he raised an eyebrow.
Smith brushed a mote diplomatically off his suit. Well, much as he was one to loath, he had to admit it—when he needed him, Thomas was always there for him. Being annoying and idiotic on supreme levels, granted, but the Agent supposed that in the Matrix even morons like Anderson had to have some sort of pur—
His own hand suddenly flew up and whacked him in the eye during his internal monologue. He glared through his glasses, only to see Thomas' finger perched dangerously near F11, which was the Architect's shortcut for "smack yo'self like you some trick at a slow-ass truckstop."
Everyone in the world, whether they knew it or not, feared utterly the Pimp Finger of Doom.
Grinning, Thomas hit the key again. Smith smacked himself again and felt a small vein twitch in his forehead; that dope had that dangerously idiotic look on his face... the one where his tongue lolled out of his mouth and his eyes were crossing.
Smith's hand smacked him again.
"Stop hitting yourself stop hitting yourself stop hitting yourself stop hitting yourself!" Before Smith could lunge for the jugular, Thomas swiped the keyboard clean across his crotch, which was incidentally the command for "Freeze Smith in Bullet-Time."
"What the hell are you doing?" Smith shrieked.
Thomas lifted up his keyboard, causing an avalanche of Mountain Dew and Monster Drink cans to become sentient from the jolt of static electricity and terrorize the city. "FPS, motherfucker!"
"Isn't every day an FPS for you?"
"Nah," Thomas said, "sometimes it's an RPG, sometimes it's a Miyamoto game, and sometimes it's that one mod run on a crappy eight-bit emulator where all the glitches make the characters look like they really need to take a crap because the modder has a serious pathological crap fetish that his wife doesn't know about and acts all shocked about when he fishes hers out of the toilet and makes religious statues out of them." He paused. "And sometimes it's Candy Crush Saga."
Before Smith could comment on the sheer idiocy of that statement, Thomas pressed Up on the keyboard, walking Smith down the street. He lifted his finger from the key, causing Smith to stop. Then he hit Ctrl + Z, which caused Smith's line of vision to zoom in on a man, normally suited, checking the bills stuffed in his mailbox.
"I'm gonna use my deadliest weapon," Thomas said gleefully. "When the Halo fanboys see this they're gonna crap right in their pink little panties!"
He button-mashed round the weapons menu, and selected among them a fifty-foot medieval catapult filled with meowing calico kittens.
"You have got to be shitting me," Smith muttered, as he sat in the middle of the catapult and a pair of wrestling kittens tumbled mewing over his lap.
"Okay," Thomas said. "I'm aiming for that guy."
"Why?"
"'Cause," said Thomas.
"But he's just checking his mail," Smith said. "Even by mainframe standards he's unremarkable."
"How would you know?"
"Trust me, I know," said the Agent, as a kitten sitting on his shoulder nom-nomed on his ear. "The Matrix invented unremarkable."
The Matrix, pissed off that Smith just insulted its street cred, materialized a seventeen-story apartment building over the Agent's head, the likes of which cracked in half, poured out all its occupants and left him sitting in the exact same position pondering his moral dilemma.
"Crap," said the Matrix, which in human form looked suspiciously like Mr. T. "I'll be 'round later to bust yo' sorry-ass, foo'!"
"NOW, MY MINIONS!" Thomas screeched, firing the catapult at the poor man.
Mr. Rhineheart, without looking up from his mail, took half a step to the right and avoided the crater the mass of kittens caused in the concrete. "Anderson!" he cried. "Where the hell are those projections you promised me?"
"NEVERRRRRRRRRR!" Thomas shrieked, despite the fact that nothing about that response made any type of sense. "WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER TO YOUR CAPITALIST REGIME!"
"Anderson, I swear to God, if you don't get those projections on my desk by this Friday afternoon, I guarantee you you won't be coming whitewater rafting with the rest of the company! Now quit playing around with your LARPy goth friends or whatever and get your ass to work!"
"They are not LARPy!" Thomas pouted. "They're DC fans, thank you very much! Oh, and if I get those projections done, can I bring a cho—"
"NO ANDERSON YOU MAY NOT BRING A CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE WITH YOU ON A WHITEWATER RAFT."
Thomas sniffed, then lifted up Marty, his milkshake fiancee, and tenderly patted him on the head to protect him from Rhineheart's cruel discrimination. "Some people just don't understand our love, Marty... for they have no love in their hearts themselves!"
Smith crawled slowly out of the crater, ready to vomit from the sheer random. He pulled himself up, dragged his form across the concrete, and lay panting before Thomas. "Just get me to Freeman, Anderson, and I'll grant you a special request—ONE," he added, remembering the Great Milkshake Horror of Chapter Twelve.
"Really?" Thomas squealed. "You can get me and Marty our own raft and show Rhineheart who's boss?"
"Y..." Smith thought a moment, then dropped his head. He was too damn tired to do the calculations. But, also knowing whatever unfortunate things might result from this, he squeezed his eyes shut and let out a shaky breath. "...yes."
"Well then, what're we waiting for, bitch?" Thomas shrieked, throwing Marty in a puddle across the street. "We're driving to Black Mesa!"
He hopped through the hatch of an M2A3 Bradley and ran Smith over with it.
"Where the hell have you been?"
Smith glared at his two cohorts, who had quarters stuck in every orifice of their digital bodies.
Brown rubbed at the back of his head, an act of which caused two million dollars in US mint to fall to the ground. "The owners of the arcade said we were not... kid friendly."
"But," said Jones, "I don't understand. I have my 'E for Everyone' rating tattooed right here on my scrotum—and if the parents display any doubts about it I show it to them. How is it I'm not kid friendly?"
Smith smacked himself in the forehead so hard his palm left a small dent in his cranial cap. Closed captions and other considerations for this chapter of PAI! provided by: The Denting Glove©! Brought to you from the makers of Facepalm™! Apply directly to the forehead! Facepalm™! Apply directly to the forehead! Facepalm™! Apply directly to the forehead!
"Look," he said. "I'm only going to be gone an hour, at the most. Now I know what's happened when I left you two alone before, and I just want you to know the same rules still apply."
Brown and Jones looked confused.
"Which ones?"
"Um," Smith said. "Those... ones...?"
"Oh," said Jones, "you mean the ones where we can't breathe for more than two times per hour?"
"Or the ones where we can breathe more than two times per hour, but only to laugh at people wearing white after Labor Day?" Brown chipped in.
"Or the ones where we can't rob a grocery store, see some candy on the side counter, pick it up and purchase it for ten thousand dollars?"
"Or the ones where we can rob a grocery store, but we have to do it right—we have to ask the cashier lady if she takes Visa first?"
"Or the ones where we can't sneeze in the library?"
"But it's OK to sneeze on the librarian?"
"Or if we crash our plane into the Indian Ocean, we have to reenact that one scene from Titanic? And not the drowning in ice cold water scene either, the painting each other nude scene whilst drowning in ice cold water?"
"Or if we ever go to a DC comic book convention we have to wear giant signs around our necks that say BATMAN IS A FILTHY-RICH NO-POWER WUSS, SPIDERMAN GETS ALL DA PUSS?"
"How about when we have to be home and in bed by two in the afternoon, right after our seven-hour bath?"
"Or if we bomb a country it has to be anyplace but North Korea?"
"But if we do bomb North Korea, we have to send a package of fancy apples first?"
"And don't forget tracking down and assassinating every racist, sexist, and bigoted commenter on YouTube."
"How could anyone forget tracking down and assassinating 99.9999999% of YouTube," Jones sighed. "And water-boarding the other 0.0000001 percent."
"You know what?" Smith said a little too amicably, for at this time people were starting to stare at the Agents as if they were wards accidentally put on leave. "I think I'll take you two with me after all."
Thomas' Bradley pulled up into the Black Mesa Research Facility parking lot, the place where Smith's adversary worked. When he pushed open the door at the top, the Agents inside promptly gasped and started choking for air; Thomas had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque and driven straight to the moon.
"Oh," he said, in spite of the fact that one of his eyeballs had become detached and was now floating in zero G, "sorry. Looks like I made an oopsie. Tee hee." He then closed the door shut, jammed his eye back into its socket, waited two seconds for a portal to appear on the surface of the moon, watched Wheatley the Intelligence Dampening Sphere get sucked out into the utter blackness of space, and drove straight through the open portal, thus running over Chell and pissing off GLaDOS in spades. He shook his head as GLaDOS threatened him. He said he had to be on his way, rambling something excited and incoherent about milkshakes and whitewater rafting. He then climbed back into the Bradley and drove it straight through the wall of the AI's central chamber in Aperture Science... and pulled straight up into the Black Mesa Research Facility parking lot.
And on that day, ten thousand gamers cried out in rage and were suddenly silenced.
Thomas stood proudly in front of the research facility in New Mexico, admiring his mad skillz as The Ultimate Driver. Smith climbed over the Bradley's rim and threw up on the barren ground.
Thomas looked behind him, to a fast, ragged breathing. From the hole in the wall connecting Aperture to Black Mesa stood a hunched figure, weighed down by fifty pounds of artillery.
"You thought I forgot about you," Cave Johnson screeched. "You thought I was kidding? No! You poisoned me with all those moon rocks! I know it was you who lived on the moon! I know it was you who beamed your subliminal moon-messages into my brain! I know the truth! And now I'm gonna send you to hell... WITH MY LEMONS! OF DOOM!"
Grocers everywhere wet their pants a little upon hearing the echoes of this declaration.
But Thomas, ever the genre-savvy gamer, stomped on his head Mario-style, and caused the ancient founder of Aperture to merely disappear in a poof of code.
In his mind. In reality, the ancient founder of Aperture let out a blood-curdling scream as Thomas curb-stomped his skull into a pulpy mess—and then, lacing a shaky finger through one of the pins stuck in his combustible lemons, he pulled it, and thus ended his own misery. GLaDOS watched this entire scene in silent horror, and immediately scanned Thomas' form for future use… if only she could catch him, and turn him into a test subject, she could torture him for the rest of his miserable, pathetic life with the hardest tests ever known to sentience... oh, revenge, bloody, sweet, heinous revenge... she stretched her optic towards Thomas' dissolving form... further... further... ohhhh so close just a little bit more—
"This may have been a bad idea," she said, as she realized she had no fucking arms.
"Anyway," Thomas said as he climbed down a path of rocks, "who's this guy you gotta beef with?"
"Freeman? He's a bastard. Everyone loves him even though he doesn't utter a word," Smith said. "Y'know. The type of jackass who only talks when he's got something smart to say."
"Like Sheldon Cooper?"
Smith looked at him once, then ground his teeth.
"Yes, Mr. Anderson, just like Sheldon Cooper."
"Good," he replied. "'Cause I have no idea who the hell that is."
Smith broke a fifty-foot mesa from its foundations and used it to swing the smiling program clear across the world.
Meanwhile, after accidentally being revived by the cast of Star Trek, Gordon Freeman stepped into a teleporter and wound up back at Black Mesa. Turning around, he ripped off his red shirt, placed his trusty crowbar between his teeth and let out a soundless scream that puffed him up like a balloon. When his scream was finished he took the crowbar out, and the air hissed out of him like a long, not-entirely-unsatisfying rage fart. Just when a guy saved the world from his own damn mistake, and after weeks of fighting through that hell, he winds up here? The worst place to get coffee, because no one knew how to use the damn filters correctly?
He whirled around and began to hyperventilate. Not to mention the Agents were on his ass now, for God knows what—and, deciding he should just chill the fuck out, he sat down. He was tired, having floated in that horrible limbo for twenty years without even so much as a yo-yo to play with, and bored, and hungry—and this was his reward, after fighting Marines and aliens and mythical arcade machines—and—and—and—
OH CRACK ON TOAST HE LEFT THE OVEN ON AT HOME!
The words appeared in caps in a thought bubble above his head. Which was, incidentally, Wordpad. The words in the thought bubble deleted themselves as Gordon Freeman blinked, smiled, and formed a pretty pony picture out of ASCII. He just about finished the touches on the sparkly hooves when—
"FREEMAN!" The three Agents burst into the room led by a screaming Smith. Jones ran face-first into Freeman's thought-bubble and collapsed. "It's time to pay for your crimes!"
Freeman's thought bubble read: O_O
"Don't tell me you don't remember!" Smith shrieked, waving his gun around like a madman. "The casserole, man, the casserole!"
The physicist rolled his eyes and turned around. Sticking out of the pants of his HEV suit, in a permanent wedgie, was the elastic band of his whitey-tideys. Red stitching sewn on by his mother read: GORDON FREEMAN. ALSO, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, FEEL FREE TO WEDGIE, SWIRLIE, AND PURPLE NURPLE MY SON AT ANY GIVEN TIME. HE IS A BAD LITTLE BOY AND MUST BE PUNISHED EVERY WAKING HOUR. HERE'S FOR NOT TAKING MY SUGGESTION OF GOING INTO BUSINESS MANAGEMENT LIKE YOUR FATHER! NERRRRRD!
"Oh, no, don't you play dumb with me," Smith said. "I never forget a name. Especially one that has wronged me..." Brown leaned into his ear and whispered something. "Or Gerardo. It's pretty hard to forget Gerardo."
THE FUCK'RE YOU? Freeman's thought-bubble said. THE SCIENCE POLICE?
"That's not very polite," Brown sniffed.
DAMN STRAIGHT, MOTHAFUCKA, Freeman typed.
"How come you don't talk? Are you mute?"
UNFORTUNATELY. UNTIL HER PREGNANCY IN HER EARLY THIRTIES, MY MOTHER MADE THE VERY QUESTIONABLE CHOICE OF SMOKING MEOW MIX. ...and in the very same millisecond it was made this response was deleted, as Freeman paused to think about what he was typing. Smith stood and folded his arms as he watched the theoretical physicist craft this alternate response: HOW COME YOU SO DAMN STOOPID?
"Oh, smart guy now?" Smith said. "Psh. No wonder Aperture kicked your ass. Only a stupid research facility would use Notepad."
A flush spread across Freeman's cheeks, his nostrils pulsed, his jaws clenched together, but he kept himself otherwise composed as he closed his eyes and sent this line of text straight into Smith's brain: OH YEAH? LET'S SEE HOW YOU LIKE THIS SHEE-IT!
"Oh my GOD!" Smith screeched, flailing his arms about as though Freeman had taken a burning brand to his eyes. "Rick roll! RICK ROLL!"
Freeman grinned evilly, jumping out the window into an exit tram.
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and hurt you—
"I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE PURPLE NURPLED THAT GUY!"
Smith ran around the facility screaming like a chicken with its head cut off as Jones and Brown sat at a small plastic table, pouring invisible tea for their teddy bears and pretty dollies.
"That joke is so 2003," Jones said.
Boiling with rage, Smith sank to the ground and screamed, Captain Kirk style: "FREEMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"
So even though they'd chased the scientist through the halls of an abandoned research center for five hours, Gordon Freeman was still in hiding. However, as they crossed another narrow corridor they saw text messages scattered across the ground: DX runnin 4 my life sux, herez da pizza delivery man beitchs trolololol luk at dat stoopid lolcat he so stoopid he cant climb up 2 eated da noms ahahahahaha
The Agents raised an eyebrow looking at one another. They strolled down the hall, took a left, and opened a random kitchen cabinet door, revealing Gordon Freeman hunched inside, bathed in the glow of Icanhazcheezburger on his iPhone while crunching on three whole packages of Keebler Cookies at once. He stopped crunching the instant the Agents pried open the door, eyes widening beneath his glasses. He crunched twice more, blinking.
Freeman spat a chocolate chip in Jones' eye, which blinded him.
Smith and Brown leaped over his screaming form.
"You're not getting off that easy, Freeman!"
AGENT SMITH used DESERT EAGLE!
It's Not Very Effective...
GORDON FREEMAN used TRUSTY CROWBAR!
It's Not Very Effective...
AGENT SMITH used SCREAM OF RAGE!
It's Not Very Effective...
GORDON FREEMAN used LOLCAT CANT NOMZ!
It's Not Very Effective...
AGENT SMITH used LONG POLITICAL RANT ON THE INTERNET THAT HAS SCARCELY ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL BEING DISCUSSED!
It's Super-Effective!
SOME PERSON ON YOUTUBE passed out!
GORDON FREEMAN used RICK ROLL!
It's Super-Effective!
AGENT SMITH passed out!
Smith woke up in a white limbo.
"Wh... where am I?" He groaned as he pushed himself up. "Did I die?"
"Nah," said a luminous blue figure above him. "Development Hell." The figure looked down at him with a mixture of disgust and apathy, shaking his spiky quills ever so slightly. He then started tapping his foot.
"Pac Man?" Smith asked, gasping. "You finally got clean?"
Sonic the Motherfucking Hedgehog curb-stomped Smith in the nuts.
"OWWWWWWW FUCK YOU I'M AWAKE NOW YOU JERK!" He rolled over the pure white floor, moaning.
Bored now, Sonic glanced at an imaginary watch, ran in place, stopped, looked at Smith, narrowed his eyes, and tapped his foot again.
Smith stared at him.
"I... have a tic," Sonic said. "Shut up."
Smith shrugged.
"Anyway, did it ever occur to you to use the Konami code?"
"The whatsit?"
And Sonic was so flabbergasted with Smith's ignorance that he ran right off a cliff, never to be seen again. Upon hearing the tragic news I wept, and in the process cried the state of New York a sixth Great Lake, drowning innumerable Xboxes in the process. They were mourned in a mass funeral. I am now sitting in a cell in Alcatraz for my crimes. Don't worry. I plan to escape by menstruating another river in the San Francisco Bay.
"The Konami code," said Eggman, who pointed boredly at the polygon ceiling. Smith climbed up to the ceiling, pushed the cover open, peered up at the sky, and read: "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start."
A 1-Up popped up beside Smith. He lifted his finger to the 1 and touched it; as he did he felt the life shudder and flow again through his digital body, and it was stronger, much, much stronger this time...
Gordon Freeman sat around cheerfully with Jones and Brown, using Smith's unconscious body as a lawn chair, as they listened to Nicki Minaj on a hot-pink stereo and tried to catch some New Mexico rays whilst covered in full-body armor suits.
Smith snapped awake. He blinked in the hot, arid air. A voice from the sky, which was just Thomas on Autotune, boomed: "FINISH HIM."
The Agent stood up in bullet-time, ready to vanquish this unbeatable opponent. To relinquish his life, if necessary.
Gordon Freeman fell from his chair, ruined his tan, and glared accusingly at Smith.
Smith's heart pounded in his chest. Remember the casseroles, he thought. It's now... or never—
His mind running through the databanks at the speed of light, Smith accessed the most potent code of all: the Konami Code.
And then this happened.
"You know why I hate zombie games?" he said, as he lifted an eyebrow. "Because they're mindless." He then somberly took off his sunglasses, placed them back on the bridge of his nose, and made this declaration to the glowing L.A. sunset: "YEEEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHH—"
And Gordon Freeman, having heard that horrible, horrible joke, blinked, and vanished in a poof of digital code.
The Agents stared at his ashes on the ground.
"I think you just committed fifty FCC violations in that sentence alone," said Brown.
And so it came to pass that Smith made good on his promise, and constructed Thomas a whitewater raft in return for helping him vanquish his mortal enemy. Thomas and Marty had a wonderful time pushing Rhineheart off a two hundred-foot cliff in Angel Falls. But Marty, secretly wanting Thomas' huge sum of life insurance, popped the cork in the raft and leaped out, watching on quite evilly as Thomas slipped down a giant whirlpool leading to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean whilst screaming bloody murder.
THA END.
A/N: "...the Architect's shortcut for 'smack yo'self like you some trick at a slow-ass truckstop.'" I... I'm sorry. Every time I read that, I read it in an uber-gangsta voice, and then I laugh so hard tears leak out of my eyes. Does that make me a horrible person?
Yes. Yes it does.
So I know this chapter has more nerdy insider-jokes than the previous have, a lot more pop culture humor than situational humor and what-not (I thought I was taking a major risk making Gordon Freeman the antagonist (ish) in this chapter, since not everyone plays Half-Life), but be assured that change ain't gonna stick. However, I was generally satisfied with how this chapter came out, in comparison to how it could have come out. (The first version of this chapter sucked balls. Just... trust me on this one.)
If you know the legend of Polybius... yeah. I'm not even gonna say it.
If you got the combustible lemon joke, you've played way too much Portal. I love Cave Johnson. "Don't make lemonade! Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's going to burn your house down... with the lemons!" Oh God, I laughed SO HARD. And then, as he rants and raves, GLaDOS says: "Burning people! He says what we're all thinking!"
Oh, GLaDOS. I lurves you so much.
An M2A3 Bradley is a sort-of tank, by the way. A military vehicle. Smith gets run over by a tank. Lolz. =p
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