Damn this is good.
No, really...I mean this is VERY good. The only thing that'd make it better is an appearance from the Hitman.... ;) Just kidding. Please, do more soon.

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The Agent missed.
Deusek had ducked again, and the bullet had simply grazed his beard. No serious damage done. He ran into an access tunnel and hid in a Maintenance closet. Several disturbed brooms, mops, and pails rained down on his head, but he brushed them away and hid.
This gave him time to remember.
He remembered back, years ago, when it was all different.
He remembered the previous Ones.
Every time a One had attempted to save Zion, except twice, had been at least a failure.
Each time, after the deed was done, the One had been smuggled out of the human realm.
Deusek knew this.
He was a Program, an Exile. How many nanoseconds had passed since the transition from freedom to banishment? In some fundamental part of his mind, he counted, and knew the exact number. It was immense. Every second was eternal in coming. And he knew Fear; that slowed down his perception of time, and made the wait unbearable.
The Ones between the time of the first One and Neo had all been failures. The first One...
He shuddered at the thought.
At the same time the one who delivered mankind, and the one who condemned it; the General Washington and Benedict Arnold.
It reminded him of the early Oracle: How different she had been! But that had been before the One. After the first One...she changed, fundamentally.
Deusek knew why.
He exited the shack, and ran as fast as he could. He tried not to pass out. How he hated this human shell; but it was all he had.
He had only one goal in mind now.
That was to reach the Oracle. At any cost.

----

"Morpheus, let me tell you something. I remember the first One. Don't worry. The One will come again. And you will be the one to find him."

-The Oracle to Morpheus, 2182

"Morpheus, let me tell you something. I remember the first One, and the Last. Don't worry about them. But do worry, because before mankind may be totally free of the Machines, there will be a time of problems, and the One will have to come again. I can't tell you the outcome of that battle--believe me, look at all of the Ones before Neo! It took so long--and I'm sorry about that, Morpheus, but I simply can't. This One will be both the same and different in genesis, make and model. You remember my earlier prophecy. Listen to it, and hope that this time it will happen on the first try, instead of taking forever, like it did the last time."

-The Oracle to Morpheus after the death of Niobe, 2207

----

"When the One has saved Zion thrice, then shall the Peace be nigh everlasting"

-The Oracle, shortly after the death of the first One

---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------

-Snoopy

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damn this is good. keep it coming...more....

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The Mercury hit Junction 98-M, spun about, and went up the large KTO-5 sewer pipe via a hole in the side of it.
A simple "Hey!" from Black Cat.
"Watch it!" advised Columbo.
"What in Neo's name did you do that for?" yelled a very irate Jesse, who had knocked the recline lever on his chair and therefore had been batted about like a leaf.
"Sorry, guys!" Kovak shouted back to them.
The hovercraft burst out of the end of the piping where another gaping hole appeared at an elbow.
"They're not stopping!" said Black Cat.
"There's millions of 'em!" shouted Jesse.
From Columbo: "Steady as she goes..."
He brought the ship up. The metal suddenly started to ping and creak. Even though the ship was hot, they all could swear that somehow they had felt the temperature drop.
"No way. No way. NO WAY..." said Jesse.
"Come on, baby, come on..." Kovak purred, attempting to reassure an inanimate object. It won't work. But, hey, you never know...
The Mercury burst out of the Network, the Renegades following like iron filings trailing a magnet moving only slightly faster than the speed of magnetic attraction. They were pulsating--it was almost rhythmic. It was reminiscent of anchovies in a ball, except it wasn't a ball.
They were heading straight into 01.

----

You're going to die, Sati!
Sati runs away. The Dirty Man is chasing her, his dreadlocks and long, sharp fingernails threatening to cut her into a million pieces.
I'm going to kill you, Sati!
She runs into a corner.
She is scared.
The Dirty Man chases her, closes the old wooden door, its white paint chipped and its door handle tarnished, and locks it.
All hope is gone now, Sati. You're fighting for a lost cause, Sati. It's over, Sati.

----

Sati snapped out of her daydreaming.
She remembered this dream.
It was one of the ones coming lately.
Why had she thought of it now? She did not know.
It seemed that lately, she had started to daydream, too. The thoughts of the dreams chilled her to her base programming.
She did not know what to do.

----------------------------------CONTINUED-----------------------------

-Snoopy

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"Excuse me!"
"What is it, Subordinate?"
"There are allies coming, from the north!"
The Machine accesses the Core Mainframe. Here, it sees everything.
"Tell the Armada not to destroy the humans."
"Very well."

----

The Mercury found the lines Neo followed on his journey into 01. The Renegades were following, and gaining.
"I can't hold them off much longer!" was Kovak's desperate cry to the gunners in the back of the hovercraft.
Then, suddenly, the Renegades stopped dead. Their cloud spread out as if an immense, invisible, domed wall had been suddenly erected in their path.
"What the..." Jesse said.
Finally, one of the damaged main power lines gave up in a massive blizzard of sparks. The drive system went dead as the Mercury flew over the massive cliff overlooking 01.
"We're going to die!" Black Cat yelped, beside herself.
"Fix it!" Columbo ordered.
"How?" yelled back Kovak.
"There's redundant power supplies in here!"
"How do I switch 'em?"
"Pump the charger!"
"It'll overload everything else!"
"For the love of Pete, just do it!"
"Son of a gun," Kovak said, irritatedly, as he did so. He hit the button on which Kid had used a chisel to carve, "Do it!"
Simultaneously, several things happened.
First, the drive system came back online, travelling down one of the seven power conduits marked for it throughout the Mercury's structure.
Secondly, just about everything else's fuse went up in a shower of sparks.
Third, some of the other electronics went up in a shower of sparks.
Fourth, the whole ship went black, except for a few battery-powered lights.
Fifth, the crimson emergency lights came on.
Sixth, Kovak was having a hard time controlling the Mercury.

----

"And the rest of them will become entangled by a wind coming from the north, and there will be a War such as none have ever seen, even during the Second Renaissance"

-The Oracle to Morpheus after the death of Niobe, 2207 (also, a previously known Prophecy of the Oracle)

---------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------

-Snoopy

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Snoopy, this is good stuff, well written with a nice storyline too. Sorry its taken so long to get to reading this but you have a gift for this. Keep it coming.

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My apologies for being away for long. In any case, here's the next (hopefully long-awaited) installment. (P.S. Swampy, thanks for the comment. Apologies for making you wait so long. I had exams and other things of that nature.)

----

Roz brushed the hair out of her face.
She was piloting the Varuna straight for the biggest Machine she had ever seen.
Bulldog was sitting in the back, looking at his wep console. He was activiating it even though the danger indicators shone red with signs urgently calling his attention to them. He did not care, as long as it involved the salvation of the Ixion from the immense Renegade.
He grasped the triggers of the gun controls until his hand was white. He was sure that his fingerprints would remain there until the end of time, if they didn't vacuum-weld to the console first.
The guns blasted at a voracious rate, in the advanced stages of overheating. Some of the components glowed red-hot as the battery was disgorged at a high rate.

----

The Renegade was continuing down toward the Ixion when it first sensed its equivalent of pain.
Multiple wounds tore through its gleaming-dull metallic body.
It had little time to react as its computer core was repeatedly assaulted by the projectiles.
Mercifully, the pain sector was among the first of the units to be destroyed. It was aware of its destruction, but the core was so completely annihilated that before the immense Machine was completely nullified it only had a single emotion, an immense satisfactory pleasure (if a Machine could feel emotions), toward its eventual elimination.

----

The guns exploded violently.
The slag poured down the ship for a few seconds before the air currents in the Dock caused it to re-solidify.
"Push it, Roz!" Daphne cautioned as the Varuna swung about, being carried along by its momentum, attempting desperately to alter its course. The rear end hit one of the structures that now littered the bottom of the Dock, toppling it over.
The Varuna careened into a small chasm and ended up extending it for nearly a hundred meters before it came to rest after ramming into a barrier wall.

----------------------------------CONTINUED------------------------------

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Glad you decided to continue it, Snoop. Great addition, and nice vocabulary, keep it coming.

__________________

Get out. Get out now, Deusek thought.
Must reach the Oracle.
Do it.
Do it now.
But still, he waited in the maintenance closet, behind the wooden door.
Footsteps. Coming closer.
Towards him.

----

The Renegades were coming up the 484. The noise was as if a swarm of bees had been made of metal and oiled. It was horrible.
Mad Dog knew of only one alternative to the situation. It was grave. It was a long shot, but it was the only chance they had. He swallowed hard.
"Monica--Go into the fuse box. Get the control console."
"Will do."
She ran down into the battery compartment. While it still contained a backup system of fuses, in case of emergencies, the Machines had updated it with the latest in technology--breakers, circuits...the works. But it still was called the fuse box.
"I'm there," she said.
"Good. Get to the PMS menu." Despite the circumstances, he chuckled inwardly. Power Managment Systems. What a moniker. And its acronym was quite descriptive of the errors, checks, re-checks, and confirmation messages it would give.
"All right."
"SMS-3595, set HBX to manual, and go into the EMP-BAR menu."
"It's good."
"All right. Set the BAR circuit connections to: 44, 14, 54, 34."
"It's set."
The Renegades were starting to latch onto the surface of the Charon. Their banging and cutting was very audible, even to the ship's innermost parts.
"Get to FBRM." After a pause, "Change the connections to: 67-18...43-19...202-10...87-88."
"Okay." Her voice wavered, or at least it seemed to.
"Climb back up here, Monica. I'm pressing it."

---------------------------------CONTINUED-------------------------------

-Snoopy

__________________

While everything else relating to this was happening, in the Matrix, a whole other, but related, drama was unfolding.

----

AN HOUR PRIOR

----

The man moved the chess piece.
"Checkmate," he said.
The other man's face transitioned into an expression of fear.
"You lose" was the simple reply given by the victor.
Four red blossoms exploded into being on the unfortunate defeated man's forehead. He slumped over, dead.
The victor snapped his fingers twice. "Clean this mess up; the furniture's too valuable." Two henchmen came over and began to clean up the scene.

----

Mad Dog went into the Matrix feed area. He flipped open the cover of the modified EMP control array master switch, and twisted the dial.
Nothing happened.
He cursed inwardly. Gazing down at the EMP, it was unlit. Under extreme pressure, he checked all the other switches. He forgot to arm the accursed thing, but still he felt something was missing.
The frantic clangs and rapping of the Renegades' many tentacles on the hull of the hovercraft changed; it spoke that the Renegades soon would be entering the ship, if nothing was to be done about it.
He remembered what was wrong.
"Monica!" he shouted. "Get back to the PMS and set Master Confirm C to 'Yes'! It should have come up five seconds after the last dialogue box!"
Monica had just reached the top of the ladder from the Fuse Box. She doubled back down the way she came and ran to the console.
The Renegades broke through.

----

One of the Squad Leaders began to spread the word. "We are in! The humans are in danger!"
To which one replied, "Then let us expedite their destruction!"
And so the battle cry became codified as tradition.

----

They came faster than anyone had anticipated. Everyone was scurrying about, trying to outrun them.
One followed Monica into the Fuse Box and grasped onto her leg. She fell down with a shout. She managed to grab ahold of the boom assembly of the console. She reached up to the console screen. She blindly hit the screen, and--

----

As soon as Mad Dog saw the red light indicating EMP readiness, he twisted the glowing dial.

----

All of the Renegades lost their power and died, if the term may be applied. At the same time and by the same token, the power went dead in the Charon. In the Fuse Box, every single fuse exploded in a supernovae of sparks, a paroxysm of electric stallions. Monica shrieked in pain and fear. She had been badly burned. She fell down onto the grating of the Fuse Box floor; she was in a coma.

----

Sam was in the main corridor of the Saturn, running about, yelling orders at everyone. He was in Olympia, chasing one of the fire-truck-sized Renegade über-machines.
"Dillehay! I want that thing in the scrap heap yesterday!"
"I'm on it!"
A lucky shot caused the rear of the immense Machine to explode in a dazzling bluish-white storm of lightning.
What happened next, nobody was expecting.
The Renegade turned around, dumped the damaged half-end, and came at the Saturn at top speed. Something of a pink color shot out of a small orifice on the front end, which looked very much like a blue version of HAL 9000's glowing eye tacked onto a black abstract sculpture--typical of Machine physiology. Klaxons sounded.
"It's plasma!" Graves shouted. "How the flip can they do that?"
"How should I know? All I can say is that it's melting the plates!" Emily said.
To which Dan replied, "Shoot!"
"I know, you should