Agent Smith (Matrix Triology) vs. Lain (Serial Experiments Lain)

OPENING
Spider: Computers are among humanity’s most remarkable creations, and allow us to share knowledge on a scale our ancestors never dreams possible.

Pixie: Unfortunately, computers also allow horrifying gods in human form to invade our world, control our daily lives and just generally treat us like rats in a maze. Take Agent Smith, rogue AI of the Matrix.

Spider: Or Lain, the God of the Wired. I’m Spider.

Pixie: And I’m Pixie!

Spider: And it’s our job to analyze their powers, abilities and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle!

Agent Smith
Pixie: Did you ever get the feeling that, like, maybe the world around you wasn’t actually reality, man? The feeling that maybe, just maybe, you were being held captive in a massive simulation controlled by heartless machines that have conquered the human race?

Spider: Agent Smith was originally created to protect the fabricated reality known as The Matrix, carefully monitoring humans who came too close to gaining awareness.

Pixie: But then a drug dealer with some cool shades helped Keanu Reeves murder him by exploding his stomach. Or something like that. Anyhoo, Agent Smith came back to life, but instead of being an enforcer serving the machines, he had become a crazy, out of control walking virus! Makes you wonder if our computerized overlords don’t have a soft-spot for porn…

Spider:  Like Neo, Agent Smith’s awareness of the Matrix grants him incredible superhuman speed, power and flight, and he can apparently move fast enough to create a sonic boom. Not to mention survive that force. He is also a master of hand-to-hand combat, and actually defeated Neo in a one-on-one duel.

Pixie: He can also conjure guns from nowhere and dodge bullets!

Spider:  Agent Smith’s most terrifying ability, however, is his power of replication.

Pixie:  Basically, he jams his fingers into your chest, and then you become one of him. This power is so dangerous, Smith used it to convert the majority of people inside the Matrix into clones of himself, forming a massive army of Agent Smiths, which can apparently merge to form one giant Super-Smith!

Spider (face-palming): Pixie, Smith only used that ability in the video-game. It isn’t canon in the films, so he doesn’t get to use it here.

Spider: Oh. Still, Agent Smith makes the Terminator look like a freakin’ can-opener. He can make more of himself just by touching another person, and every clone is super-powered. How the hell does anyone stop this guy?

Spider: Well, Smith is, first and foremost, a computer program, so he has trouble doing much to you outside of the Matrix. Not that he needs too, since killing you in the Matrix will cause you to die in real life. All of his clones can communicate with each other remotely, which, while a useful ability, can also be turned again him. Neo ultimately defeated him by allowing himself to be turned into a Smith, and then… committing some kind of digital suicide that spread to all of the other Smith’s, destroying them.

Pixie: In addition to his digital powers, Agent Smith is utterly fearless, calculating and determined. When a guy who is basically a combination of Superman and Computer Jesus can’t take you out without killing himself in the process, you know you’re a badass.

[Clip from Matrix]

Agent Smith: You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death... Goodbye, Mr. Anderson...

Lain
Pixie: We’re seriously going to make a fucking Middle School girl fight Agent Smith to the death?

Spider: Well…

Pixie: Okay, I get that Death Battle is pretty brutal just by its nature, but this is a new level of fucked up, Spider.

Spider: Don’t count Lain out so quickly! Although Lain was an ordinary girl, and rather timid, her life changed soon after her father presented her with her first Navi, a computer. After obtaining a mysterious and powerful new part and installing it, Lain gained the ability to access parts of the Wired network that other people couldn’t.

Pixie: So she can access information that other people can’t and can spy on them all over the world. That’s… kinda creepy.

Spider: But Lain is far more than a simple hacker. The wall between the Wired and the Real World began breaking down, and Lain found that she could travel between them at will. She demonstrated this power when she appeared in the dance-club known as Cyberia to speak to the bar-tender, then vanished into the Wired while his back was turned.

Pixie: Lain’s access to the Wired’s information also gives her the power to speak to anonymous voices and mysterious digital ghosts and ask them for advice, yoga tips and apple pie recipes. They don’t always give her the information she wants or needs though, because as we all know, anonymous people on the internet tend to be complete assholes.

Spider: Upon further flexing her powers over the Wired, Lain discovered that she could access the data that formed people’s memories and wipe it out of existence. She can also influence electronics remotely, such as when a couple of mysterious black-suited men with shades—

Pixie: --who are obviously rip-offs of Agent Smith--

Spider: --were spying on her from just outside her house, and Lain caused their electronic eye-pieces to explode.

Pixie: She can also mind-control people into shooting themselves in the face.

Spider: Well… kind of. While it is heavily implied that she forced a man to kill himself in Cyberia after he began firing into the crowd, that man was under the influence of an electronic drug that had sped up his perception of the world, so it’s possible that Lain was actually hacking the drug and using it to control his brain, and that is the only time she is shown using that ability. While her powers are unsettling, Lain has a multitude of weaknesses. Her Wired personality is brash and demanding, but she can be very timid and frightened in the real world.

Pixie: Of course, you’d probably be a little nervous too if you were constantly haunted by the digital ghost of a computer programmer who got cut in half by a train. And your suicidal former classmate. And an alien in a Freddy Kreuger sweater. And… whatever the fuck this shit was.

[Clip of Lain strangling her Doppelganger.]

Doppelganger (laughing): Look at me, I’m committing suicide!

Pixie: Brrrr… There goes my chances of sleeping tonight.

Spider: Lain also doesn’t have any kind of apparent combat abilities, and again… she’s a little girl.

Pixie: A freakin’ creepy one, but still.

[Clip of Lain staring into the eyes of the gunman at Cyberia.]

Lain: Everything is connected…

[Gunman kills himself, splattering blood on Lain.]

DEATH BATTLE!
Spider: Alright, our combatants our ready. Let’s put an end to this debate once and for all.

Pixie: It’s time for a DEATH BATTLE!

*    *   *

Lain sits in front of her computer, encircled by a tangle of wires, and stares blankly into the screen. “Hello, Navi.”

“Hello, Lain,” the computer chimes back.

Lain pauses and gazes at the shadows of the telephone poles outside her window. “Tell me about the Knights, please.”

“Searching…”

Suddenly, Agent Smith flies through her window with a crash. Broken glass litters the carpet, and Lain screams and scrambles backwards.

“W-who are you?”

Agent Smith gazes coldly down at the girl and adjusts his shades. “Call me Agent Smith.”

“Why are you here?”

Smith sighs, somewhere between boredom and disapproval. “You’ve become an anomaly in our system, Lain. I’ve come to eliminate you.”

                FIGHT!

Breathing hard, Lain rises to her feet. “Go away!” she bellows.

Smith cracks his neck. “No.”

With a grimace, Lain turns and runs frantically out of her bedroom and heads for the front door, Smith hot on her heels. Smith follows, a gun materializes in his hand, and he opens fire. The girl shrieks and ducks as bullets fly over her head. Thinking quickly, she hacks into the street lights above them and causes them to explode. The hail of sparks and glass obscures Smith’s vision, impairing his aim, and his next few shots go wild.

Lain keeps running, but the hours she has spent at the computer have done nothing for her athleticism, and she is running out of breath. Smith rockets towards her, rapidly closing the gap. Lain staggers and turns towards him, an expression of sheer terror on her face. She shuts her eyes as Smith jams his fingers at her chest…

''                I don’t have to stay here. I can be wherever I want to be.''

                Smith stares in confusion as his hand strikes empty-air. The anomaly has vanished, he thinks, irritated. No matter. He can spread out and look for her.

As he passes through a crowd, he discreetly sticks his fingers into the chest of a passing man, who instantly transforms into another Smith. As the first Smith walks on, the second Smith claims another victim. The second and third Smiths spot new targets, and continue replicating.

Meanwhile, Lain has fled to the Wired, and is confronting a disembodied mouth. “Give me some answers!” she demands. “Who the hell is this Agent Smith guy? Is he with the Knights?”

The Mouth laughs. “Ha-ha, everything’s the Knights with you, isn’t it? I bet you can’t stub your toe without blaming them. People don’t like being accused of things, Lain. It’s really not an appealing trait.”

“Shut up!” she screams. “How do I stop him!?”

“Maybe this guy’s right. Maybe you are an anomaly. But even if he’s wrong, you could always do something about all those nasty thoughts floating around in his head, right? You are God of the Wired, after all.”

Lain shuts her eyes and concentrates on accessing Agent Smith’s memories. “Forget about me,” she commands. “You’ve never even heard of me. I never even existed to you.”

Agent Smith stalls in his tracks, his mouth slightly agape. Another Smith looks at him, puzzled.

“Something wrong?”

“I forgot what I’m doing.”

The second Smith smiles. “That’s okay. I remember. Here, have a backup.”

The second Smith transfers the information back to the first, and the growing Smith horde continues their hunt for Lain.

The girl screams into her hands in frustration. “Damnit! Why didn’t that stop him!?”

The Mouth grins. “Well, it was worth a shot, wasn’t it?”

Lain storms off, scowling, as news footage of the Smith horde pops up in windows around her. “I need to find someone who actually knows about this guy.”

As Agent Smith passes by under the shadow of a telephone pole, he stared thoughtfully at the wires. “Hmm. That’s where you went, isn’t it?”

Traveling through digital networks is nothing new to Agent Smith, and he slips into the Wired and continues his pursuit.

Lain, in another section of the Wired, is talking to a stranger, a large man with sunglasses and a shaved head. “You know about Smith, don’t you?” she asks.

The man stares at her, blank-faced. “I do. I know more about the true nature of your world than even you do… but the question is, why should I help you? You have as much a chance of conquering our world as Smith does.”

Lain frowns. “Because I have a heart and Smith doesn’t. Maybe you don’t want me to control this world, but you’d rather see it in my hands than in Smith’s, right? Between the two of us, who would you rather see as God?”

The man frowns. “The truth is,” he says, reluctantly, “the Wired and the world with which it intersects are merely part of an even greater computer program. One that encompasses everything you see and feel.”

“And Smith is… a virus within that program?”

“Of sorts. An element of program gone wrong.”

The horde of Smiths finally catches up to Lain in the Wired and crowds around her and the man. Lain gasps and quickly leaps out of the Wired and back into the real world. She appears standing in the city square, but even here, the Agent Smiths surround her. The massive television screen on the building overhead shows a teeming sea of Smiths, as do the televisions in every home and shop-window. As the Smiths close in on Lain, she takes a breath and closes her eyes.

“Everything… is connected.”

Suddenly, her face appears on every screen, gazing calmly down at the Smiths. The Smith nearest Lain begins to shudder, then dissolves in a cloud of golden light. The effect spreads, leaping to every Smith in the horde as they all vanish, and Agent Smith is no more.

K.—

                Lain raises her hands. “I’m not finished yet. I have a bigger Wired to become God of.”

The world shimmers and quakes as Lain, now awakened to the Matrix, touches its computers. She spreads through the machine’s systems rapidly, swallowing their information, seizing control of every circuit and bit and byte of Data. She sees it all now, the true world, the Matrix, the Wired within. Her mind extends like roots, passing over the womb-like chambers that hold the entire human race. Then it all vanishes. A silence and blackness like the time before the Universe began.

Lain’s face appears, staring out through a pixelated screen. A few seconds pass in silence. She offers a tiny, polite smile. The screen goes black.

                …K.O!!!

Post-Battle Analysis
Pixie (terrified): …Spider?

Spider: Yes?

Pixie: WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED!?

Spider: Well… Lain won. And then hacked the Matrix and became God, I guess?

Pixie (sobbing): Hold me.

Spider (lovingly holding Pixie to her chest): This was a very close fight. Obviously, Lain had no chance of competing with Agent Smith in direct combat, and Smith’s unique nature of as a being of pure data made it hard for Lain to understand what she was fighting, since she’d never had to face anything quite like him before.

Pixie (wiping her eyes): Okay, okay. Then what happened?

Spider: Lain did the smartest thing she could have: she ran. Her control of electronics wasn’t enough to stop Smith, but her ability to leap between the Wired and the real world kept her out of Smith’s reach and gave her the time she needed to gather information. You see, Smith, as a computer program, is a being literally made out of data. Lain has already proven that she can delete data from the Wired and from the Real World, such as when she wiped everyone’s memories, so once she knew what Smith was, she simply deleted him.

Pixie: But why the hell was Morpheus there!? How the shit did that happen?

Spider: Ah, about that. Normally Death Battle does not allow for outside help, but there have been exceptions, such as Dr. Eggman and Dr. Wily being allowed to their robotic minions during their Death Battles, or Red and Tai being allowed to use Charizard and Agumon. Like those other exceptions, Lain’s ability to gather information using her omnipresence in the Wired is a critical part of how her character functions, as is Smith’s ability to turn innocent bystanders into clones of himself. Given her skill at weeding out information, it was only a matter of time before Lain found the person who knew the most about Agent Smith, namely, Morpheus.

Pixie: Ugh… okay, I guess it’s starting to make some sense now.

Spider: Lain had one other crucial advantage over Agent Smith, and that is in the way the two move through virtual realities. While Smith had to self-replicate, spread out and force his way in to gradually corrupt the world and the Wired, Lain already had full access to the Wired and could jump to anywhere she liked. It’s sort of like Agent Smith is the ultimate computer virus, but Lain is the ultimate debugger.

Pixie: This fight got experi-Mental!

Spider: The winner is Lain.

Next time, on Death Battle!
''In the distance a lone man in a gi walks down a dirt road. The camera pans closer and he turns his head to reveal… pink clothes, a brown-pony tail and a cocky smile. He opens his mouth to speak, but is interrupted.''

''“WE ARE SEX BOB-OMB, AND WE ARE HERE TO WATCH SCOTT PILGRIM KICK YOUR TEETH IN!”''

''Blaring rock music plays.''