SmackDown: MadMike's Revenge!

Round 2, Dudecore: Top Secret Junkies - @AngusEcrivain

Top Secret Junkies

by AngusEcrivain

Deep in the heart of EVIL, Inc., a secret agent contorted his body to get past the red laser tripwires. If he'd even so much as breathed on them he would have been immediately vaporized. He somersaulted beneath the crotch of an RDU—robot defence unit—that was in sleep mode. He cooed to the crying kittens, thus destroying the security's CARE Protocol.

He wasn't worried. As the best agent in GOOD Corp.'s intergalactic ranks, this mission was a cakewalk.

Beat EVIL's ancient—albeit extensive—security system, hack into the data vault, steal the cipher, assassinate the head of EVIL, get out, and be home in time to catch the new episode of Lunar Coronation Street.

That was when he found himself locked in the gas-spectrometer room. His stomach trembled.

Rule one, he thought to himself. Never eat Venusian tacos before a mission. Should've known better.

He plugged up and forced himself not to breathe as he maneuvered through the room and out the door. His years of training put to good use.

Unfortunately things went tits up right then and there. He turned to see fifteen RDUs aiming their .50-cal cannons at all his tender places. How the hell had this gone wrong?

And then it dawned on him.

No.

Moving slower than a space slug, he lowered his hand to his waist and tapped his comms unit. And seconds before the RDUs blew him to pieces, he screamed out the coded message to the boys and girls back home in High Command: "Fuck you, MadMikeMarsbergen!"

***

"And that, kids," said Training Officer Summers as the credits rolled and music played, "is how not to do things. But can anyone tell me the single biggest mistake Agent Good of GOOD Corp., made?"

As she expected, every student's hand shot up, and she smiled. It was not a particularly difficult question, of course, but Summers had taught plenty of classes, hundreds of recruits, and had quite often been surprised by the sheer number of younger, would-be spies, who completely missed the point of the exercise, perhaps thinking they were being treated to a movie simply for showing up.

"That's right," she said, a nod of her head serving as an instruction for hands to be lowered. "There is no such thing as a 'super-spy' and it doesn't matter how many movies or television shows are created depicting such individuals. The simple fact is we're all only human and whilst we might have all undergone advanced training in many forms of combat, dodging a bullet can and will only ever happen by chance.

"Now, had Agent Good had the support of a team, had he had tech support and ground support then things might have played out a little differently but there are no guarantees when it comes to things like this. All we can hope is that when the time comes for you to go out into the world, that we have instilled in you the importance of avoiding situations like the one in which Agent Good found himself."

***

Summers thanked the bartender, a young attractive man of Mediterranean origin who probably went by Pablo or Stavros or something, and knocked back the Sambuca.

Her name had just been called and it was not as though she needed the additional courage the liqueur offered but it certainly would not hurt. Even in Summers' line of work there were some things that were simply easier after a few shots.