THE LONG-AWAITED NEW MÜTTLY FÖE CHAPTER! OMD PLZ R&R!

~~~~

As pathetic fallacy went, it was fairly pathetic. Lightning discharged like a malfunctioning fluorescent tube at pseudorandomly generated intervals. Thunder snickered, then stopped when nobody else joined in.

Smith looked up from his contemplation of the rain-spattered flagstones.

"Mr Anderson," he said, "welc..." He stopped.

"Surprised to see me?" asked Müttly Föe.


~~~~

"I was expecting Neo," Smith said sulkily.

"Sorry," replied Müttly Föe, who wasn't.

Smith glared at him. It was hard to tell a glare from behind the sunglasses, but everyone managed it.

"I expect you're wondering what I'm doing here," Müttly Föe said optimistically and rhetorically. "I sent Trinity and Neo to a safe place. Neo's powers are growing, so they should be safe. Now I am free to challenge you."

Smith sneered in a perfectly understated fashion. "What makes you think you are any challenge to me, Mr...?"

"Prince Zetetnic Peristals Müttly Föe da Schwarzwelt is my shortened name--" said Müttly Föe.

"I see. Well, Mr Imbecile, what makes you think you are any challenge to me?"

Müttly Föe's forked tongue flicked over his blood-red lips. "I'm sure I can give you a run for your money, Smith."
[A/N: oh crap, this is the future, do they have money? No, wait, they do in the Matrix because that's based on 1990s Earth. Yay!]

Smith growled and the two deadly enemies rushed at each other. They went faster and faster and faster and faster still, then -- THWACK!

Smith cannoned into a wall and lay still. Müttly Föe halted and struck a pose with a grin that refracted the light and looked really cool.

"Hang on, but I didn't touch him!" Müttly Föe said, confused. "I was still two feet away."

"Well, the collision detection in this simulation always was a programming nightmare," said another Smith, prodding his fallen colleague with a highly polished leather-effect shoe.

"Wait, you fellows can move?"

"What was the point of duplicating myself if I don't use my crushing numerical advantage?" shrugged Smith. "Or did you think we used up the entire special effect budget on the burly brawl?"

Müttly Föe blinked slowly. (The gormless look, incidentally, was part of the One's job requirements: it was one of the sections Müttly Föe had not had to lie about on the application form.)

"Out of snappy rejoinders, Mr Imbecile?" asked the Smith with rancour.

"...Oh ha ha," Müttly Föe said intelligently. "Well, I can still kick your pixellated arse, Smith."

Smith looked a little put off by this, but bounded at Müttly Föe with a rebellious snarl which, in other circumstances, Müttly Föe would have found very attractive. Hell, he found it very attractive even now. The enemies collided in a whirlwind of punches and slaps and other kung fu moves. Somehow Müttly Föe quickly got the upper hand and sank his fangs into the Smith's neck.

"This is a computer simulation, Mr Imbecile," said another Smith, backhanding him from behind. "I don't bleed. You, on the other hand..."

"Don't actually bleed much either, because I am a vampire (half) and because after a freak teleporter accident involving some people called Rogue and Logan, I have super-fast healing power," chirped Müttly Föe helpfully.

"You really need to die," said the Smith he had bitten, weakly but with feeling. Müttly Föe put him out of his delusional misery and finished off another couple of Smiths while he was at it.

Approximately 7,999,995 other Smiths looked on impassively.
"You aren't depleting my numbers much," said another Smith, "though you did just kill Sati."

"Thank Gaia for that, I couldn't stand that whiny brat," Müttly Föe said charitably.

"I know," said the Smith. "So godmodey." He and six more Smiths charged at Müttly Föe and were summarily vanquished quite a lot.

"Which of you was the Merowhingian?" asked Müttly Föe on impulse.

"Not saying," said yet another Smith.

"You were more accommodating in Lord of the Rings," Müttly Föe grumbled grumpily.

The Smith blinked. Again, you'd think it was hard to tell behind the sunglasses, but somehow it was evident that he was blinking.

"Want a shag?" asked Müttly Föe, ever opportunistic.

"Gaah!" said the Smith, palm smacking his own face, and "++Out Of Character Error. Redo From Start.++" said another. (On second thought, perhaps the blink was more of a facial tic.)

"I bet you say that to all the Ones," said Müttly Föe cutely. "Ok, ok, just asking. I am polyamrous, you know."

"Is that fanboy lingo for 'desperate slapper', by any chance?"

"That stung," Müttly Föe pouted, "not that YOU can talk. I mean, I don't blame you, I wouldn't have turned down root access to that Seraph guy. Mmmm."

"Our relationship is purely professional," Smith mumbled embarrassedly. Just then 23 other Smiths pounced almost at once and Müttly Föe beat them up for about five minutes.

"I will defeat you, Smith," said Müttly Föe, staggering a bit.

Yet ANOTHER Smith cracked his knuckles in a leisurely way. "Why, Mr Imbecile? Why, why persist? Does this dying planet mean that much to you? Did the deus ex machina plot twist actually impress you in all its pathological triteness?"

Müttly Föe thought about this. "No, I'm pretty much just here for the violence and black leather," he said happily.

"Fair enough." Smith rose into the air, surrounded by twoscore-and-one more of himself. Müttly Föe used his powers of levitation to follow until he remembered that this was the Matrix and he could fly anyway.

~~~~

[A/N: Final fight scene! Brought to you while listening to Ponchielli's Danza Ore! Hello Mudder!]
The deadly and, by this time, damp adversaries faced off above the dark skyscrapers.

Müttly Föe shouted something above the wind.

"What?" yelled a Smith.

"I said, we're so going to end up in the sack! It is inevitable!"

The Smiths glanced at each other and ground their collective teeth, then flew apart and zoomed about to attack Müttly Föe from all different angles. The same warped virtual gravity that allowed them to fly made the raindrops wheel and plummet upwards, sideways and all around them. While Müttly Föe swatted at enraged airborne Smiths like a bad case of the mosquitoes, a sphere of water droplets formed around them, blurring the view from outside and throwing up crazy reflections. The airborne puddle pulsated, seeming almost solid enough to stand on; a Smith paused to check his hair in this handy dihydrogen monoxide mirror before launching himself back into the fray.

Müttly Föe, however, did not have time to enjoy the lavish and implausible visual feast. The relentless Smiths were testing even his superior speed, power and reflexes. BAM! A lucky jab connected with Müttly Föe's jaw, and POW! a patent imitation-leather foot caught him in the midriff.

"I wish my magic powers worked in the Matrix," Müttly Föe thought to himself a little regretfully, "and I definitely wish I hadn't had that stack of pancakes for breakfast. Uuurgh..." He slashed at a taunting Smith with his nails, which always lengthened in times of stress.

The fight continued faster and faster, as both opponents tested the other's speed and endurance. Finally Müttly Föe had had enough and he dived for the nearest Smith, held on with all his might and crashed through the whirling wall of water. In all the excitement he had forgotten which way was up, but Müttly Föe soon deduced that they were heading downwards, from the way the ground was approaching at what could literally be called breakneck speed.

Suddenly deprived of acceleratory forces, the dancing droplets stopped and dropped after them, continuing their interrupted journey towards gutterhood.

The crash was bone-jarring. It excised a great chunk of tarmac, which both Smith and Müttly Föe had forgotten to make springy. They lay bruised and panting at the bottom of the hole.

"W--" said Smith, before he fell on top of himself. All the flying Smiths were close behind them, and shortly the crater was full of stunned Smith clones. Very wet ones.

"Thivv iv sorff off egviting," came Müttly Föe's voice from somewhere under the heap.

"You know, Mr Imbecile, I've been thinking. Perhaps this whole world is more than I need. I've decided to release the people I possessed and go back to being just me... with maybe just a couple of spares," said Smïth.

"Yay!" said Müttly Föe.

~~The End~~