You're not going to see much unless you hook in!
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One year ago
The girl was lithe and fit, dressed in tight clothing and a red leather jacket. She crashed through the emergency exit with enough force to break one of the doors, sprinting desperately into the alleyway.
The other door broke seconds later, with rather more force, propelled violently into the street by the Agent. With a quick glance to the right, he pulled out his gun and fired, almost blindly, towards the girl.
The alleyway stretched out along the line of the block. Coming across wire fences in the way, the girl leaped nimbly over them. The Agent simply crashed straight through them.
The second Agent stepped from the shadows in front of the girl as if materializing through a wall. Not hesitating, the girl rebounded with one foot off the alley wall, pirouetted over the Agent, and gave him the back of her heel in the face as an aftertouch, before continuing on past him down the alleyway. The third Agent’s outstretched arm was like an iron bar. The girl ran into it and rebounded back to the ground in an instant, her nose bleeding.
The others closed in around her; three Agents surrounding the fallen girl. One of them had a smirk as he stepped forwards.
A knife dropped from the fire escape above. No delicate blade this; a large, serious hunting knife, large enough to decapitate a man. It landed by the girl, in the middle of the three Agents, causing the smirking one to pause and look up. Dropping down now was an older woman, an Indian, with a pitiless face, She landed with some force, dropping to her knees, and then took hold of her knife.
Scowling, the Agent moved forward once more, but then the near-dead quiet of the alleyway was torn apart in a mass of gunfire, and the agent’s form turned into a blur as it picked its way between the bullets faster than any human eye could see. The firer was up above too, a widely grinning man with unkempt black hair.
As the other Agents stepped forwards, there were more firers from above; a typical Zion warrior dressed in trenchcoat and shades, and a hugely man dressed like an off-duty marine, with the American flag tattoed on his arm.
As all three Agents blurred, and the fallen girl got up, the Indian woman showed no hesitation as she plunged her knife towards the first Agent.
“The crew of the Bounty,” says Marduk. He, like the rest of you, is watching the scene from atop a nearby building. In the Matrix, he wears a fine silk shirt and his hair is in a ponytail. “The younger girl is Medea, the older one Khali. Giving covering fire are Loomis, Sinister and Tyr. As I am sure many of you know, this crew was considered possibly the most dangerous in Zion. They were a special operations crew, a commando unit, there to do the most difficult jobs.”
Khali and Medea fight against the Agents. Even with the covering fire, this seems a hopeless fight, but thirty seconds later the Agents stop suddenly as the building Medea fled from explodes in a giant ball of flame.
“Like destroying your target even when forewarned the Agents are waiting for you,” says Marduk. Acting together almost as one, the Bounty crew turn and flee.
Two of the Agents set off after them immediately. The third takes one step forwards, then raises his hand to his ear, and turns and runs back down the alleyway.
The scene shifts, and now all of you are now inside the destroyed building. Fires are all around. The Agent comes back in through the fire escape that Medea came out from earlier. Inside a man is there waiting for him; an older man, with hints of grey, but sturdy and stoic, and a face of total seriousness.
“But don’t forget the most important of their number, their leader and founder,” says Marduk. “Captain Jericho.”
“Jericho,” says the Agent, in flat tones. “You are a fool, not to try and escape.”
“Your goons won’t catch my crew,” says Jericho. “You’ll need more then two to catch us in these streets.”
“So you stayed to save them? I am sure they will find that touching at your funeral.”
“No, I stayed because I’m not done yet,” says Jericho.
The Agent takes several rapid steps forward and aims a solid punch at Jericho. Jericho steps back and dodges, and then he dodges the next swing, and the next. He is fighting very defensively, taking step back after step back, climbing back up the rubble his bombs have created.
The Agent lands one solid blow on Jericho, causing him to reel, and immediately follows it up with a jab from his other arm. Concealed at Jericho’s back, a perfect katana now flashes forward, gleaming in the bright firelight, swooping around at impossible speed, blurring and disturbing the air around it. The Agent’s hand flashes back at great speed also, but the top of it is slashed open.
The Agent growls and re-adjusts its glasses, as Jericho steps back and adopts a hasso guard stance, waiting for the Agent to come forwards.
Again, the Agent attacks, and again, Jericho falls back. His sword sweeps are strong and deadly, but not designed to kill his foe, or drive him back, but to keep the Agent away. The Agent fends the blades off, but every time he tries to make a killing blow on Jericho, he has to stop and defend himself, lest he become impaled or cut in two.
They have climbed the rubble now onto a shattered part of the floor above, the Agent’s frustration growing stronger and stronger. Suddenly, Jericho changes tactic. The Agent moves to block a one-handed sword flash, but Jericho is on of offensive. A vicious chop lands against the Agent’s throat, followed up by a backhander that drives it back a step. Then Jericho is propelling himself into the air, his sword flashing up as he does so, cutting open the Agent’s left leg.
The Agent stares with pure hatred at Jericho, who has escaped further up. He stops once more, to straighten his tie.
“Now you die, Jericho.”
The Agent, in turn, launches himself through the air, and rains down vicious attack after vicious attack on Jericho. Now the Captain suffers, the Agent batting aside the sword as if it was not there. Jericho doubles over from a blow to his stomach, and then the next drives him ten feet back into a partially collapsed wall, which now completes its collapse by falling on top of him.
The Agent moves forwards again to haul Jericho out of there to finish him. The sword flashes out of the rubble first, causing the Agent to swerve to one side, and Jericho bursts out from the rubble and tears again at the Agent with furious sword strokes. The Agent is surprised for a few seconds, stepping full five steps backwards from the assault, but at the next he catches Jericho’s blade just above the hilt. Ignoring the blood seeping from his hand, the Agent holds a wide grin as he stares deeply into Jericho, and breaks off the blade of the sword, throwing it contemptuously to one side.
Jericho, freed from the Agent’s grasp, lands a foot directly into the Agent’s chest. The Agent takes the blow without flinching, but Jericho uses that as a springboard to leap up to a broken girder above. He stares down at the Agent, unarmed.
“Time’s up, Jericho,” the Agent says. Jericho reaches inside his jacket. “Another weapon?”
“In a sense,” says Jericho. He pulls out a remote trigger mechanism. “I told you I wasn’t done yet.”
The Agent suddenly looks down, and sees the floor he has been fighting on is covered in explosives. Jericho pushes the trigger, and the scene explodes in smoke and flame.
Now you are back at the building you started upon. It is raining outside now, but the flames hold strong against the water.
“Jericho just would not die,” says Marduk. Down below, Jericho is pulling himself clear of the wreckage, burnt and battered but alive. Wearily, he brings a phone to his mouth.
“I need an exit point,” he says.
“Time and time again, Jericho was the man who would plan and win against impossible odds. He was beloved by the Council and Locke. He was not the only successful Captain, but his victories came not from sheer faith or optimism…”
“Hey!” comes a loud Texan voice, from somewhere you cannot quite see. “Are you talking about me?”
Marduk carries on as if he heard nothing.
“Jericho’s victories came from his planning. Both in and out the Matrix, Jericho was a master strategist, and for his skill and his victories, he became the head of Zion’s Strategic Planning Group. Our war plan was under Jericho’s control; the plans the Council rejected or adopted were made by Jericho.”