It was a dark and stormy night. Well, not really, as there was a distinct lack of rainclouds, so it really wasn't all that stormy and it was broad daylight outside, so it wasn't a night, but it was dark. The sunglasses took care of that. *LOADING* DEUS EXCEL by Sean Duggan Starter by Lawrence Chu. All characters are property of Koshi Rikudo or Spector/ION Storm/EIDOS Interactive I am making no profit off of this work of fiction and I do not make enough money to justify a lawsuit, so may all the powers that be tolerate this work. *LOADING* -- Loading Surreality Matrices -- -- Extruding Meshes -- -- Calibrating Weirdness Quotient -- -- Reticulating Splines -- Excel Denton, agent of UNATCO, was having problems. "WAH!!!! I CAN"T SEE!!" Excel Denton cried, arms spinning at speeds analagous to your average plane propellor, as she opened her eyes and found that the world had vanished like a professor who has just been confronted with a thorny problem as the class ball rang. * Agent Denton, CALM DOWN!* came the voice of Koshi Rikudo, using the "intercom transmission stuff" introduced in the last part and once more used here. *They're standard issue sunglasses which are issued to all our agents to make them look cooler. Hey, it worked for The Matrix* And lo, Excel did calm down. Behind impenetrable shades, she blink-blinked in confusion as suddenly the world made sense once more. It was supposed to be dark. And it made her look COOL! Cheerfully, she started walking and promptly was run over by a passing bus. *LOADING* Excel stood at the edge of the curb and looked both ways this time. She stepped out and was promptly run over by the bus again as she really couldn't see anything out of the sunglasses still. A huge swirling ball of stars appeared beside the sail-agent and swapped the current opque glasses for a slightly less tinted brand. *LOADING* --New York City, Battery Park --Time: 00:00:00 (blinking) --Date: Blind --Non sequitor: A Purple Fish Excel found herself suddenly standing on the edge of a dock bordering a seedy looking park. Behind her a police boat bobbed in the waves. She quickly reviewed the mission objectives. 1) Altoids 2) Whipped Cream 3) Disposable Cameras Well, that was the grocery list. Let's try that again. 1) Find a way into Castle Clinton 2) Eliminate Terrorist Threat 3) Locate the Secret Sauce Excel's eyes lit up as she viewed the first objective. She knew just how to handle this! She'd had tactics training and she knew the perfect way to approach the place! Frontal Assault! The words practically glowed as you said them, illuminating the world with their truth. After, all no one expects the Spanish Inquisition^K^K^K a frontal assault! With that, she rushed madly into the front entrance of Castle Clinton and was promptly converted to a spray of blood and tissue by the terrorists within. *LOADING* Excel decided to take a bit more of a cautious approach this time. She approached the entrance to Castle Clinton and looked around for a contact. Ah-ha, Hyatt! SHe quickly approached her fellow agent to find out what the plan was. "Hiiiiiiiii, Hyatt!" Hyatt turned her head towards Excel. Hyatt's head suddenly exploded like an over-ripe melon, splattering the nearby scenery with brain-tissue. An NSF sniper within the compound high-fived his companion. Hyatt's headless body collapsed to the ground. Excel was all over the body like a dog wearing a cheap suit. "NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! You were supposed to help me!" Excell gently stroked Hyatt's ragged stump, "There... there must be a reckoning. Someone must pay for this." And lo, Excel STOOD and [-POWERPOSED-] mightily. "You shall be avenged, Hyatt! I shall lay low the villanious foe who did dare strike you down in the height of your life. I shall GAAK!" and Excel collapsed, also lacking a head, the camera unaccountably zooming out and spinning around the fallen body. Somwhere within the base, an NSF sniper was collecting on the bets he'd made. And the universe crashed on a degenerate mesh. --------------------------------------------- Notes: *sigh* It's not great. I meant to work on it this week but professors kept assigning "just one more thing" and so I wound up writing this late Friday night. It has been proofread and generally read to the best of my ability but I'm sure I've made mistakes. Contact me at Dream@innocent.com or publicly lambaste me on the Review section of the Improfanfiction MB. Allusions: * The loading lines after the initial *LOADING* are patterned after The Sims. * The "grocery list" was actually a list of supplies for a church youth group function I went to. *grin* We really did have a non-ecchi use for them, really. * The bit about knowing tactics, FRONTAL ASSAULT is due to a D&D character my brother used to play. a Troll who had that as his only tactic but was extremely proud of mastering tactics that far. * "No expects the Spanish Inquisition" is from Monty Python. And yes, I ended it suddenly. I ran out of steam. I was debating as to whether to have the player quit in disgust or have a machine crash, both of which were disturbingly frequent when I played Deus Ex. Settled on the second as we've never offically designated this place as really being a game.