Of course, Zane took this personally--questioning his honesty, were they?--and took it upon himself to personally visit his client. After a talk that didn't involve too many swear words, the professor who had hired Zane bluntly expressed disbelief that Zane could expend sixty-five hundred rounds of ammunition, thirteen anti-tank rockets, several gallons of anti-flesh-eating-plant herbicide, and an exploding rubber chicken over the course of thirteen hours. For one, the old man said, how could Zane even carry that much warmongery?

After another heated exchange that involved (probably untrue) comments about the client's mother, Zane threatened his career by flipping his middle finger at the professor.

The raising of the middle finger wasn't in and of itself dangerous, because, after all, Zane is not a hero and can thus flip off anyone. No, what really made the day interesting was that Zane's finger--and later arm--reconfigured into a gatling gun and blew approximately 1,337 holes in the building. After a perhaps-heartfelt apology, Zane returned home. Upon receiving his check in the mail, he noticed that it still wasn't what he'd been asking for. This time the client cited "repair costs."

But, oh, the perks of having all these metal things almost made up for it. He never got a traffic ticket again, since cop cars stood out like Christmas tree lights, and he deccelerated to the speed limit like a good little driver. The angry father who was after him after a perfectly tame (sort of) night with the daughter never got within fifty yards of him. Oh, and being able to dodge past three dozen axe-armed War-Trolls was obviously helpful to business.

One memorable incident involved an obstacle room full of swinging razor blades and dart-shooting murder holes. In the ideal, Indiana Jones story, Zane would have dodged every blade o' death and retrieved the Coveted Idol of Jiruhame with nary a scratch, like a hero. But Zane is not a hero. Zane admits that he's a selfish bastard, which is not a heroic quality

Zane ended up in four pieces, and the largest piece was peppered with dozens of poisoned darts. Normally, this would have been a difficult situation, even for someone of Harrison Ford caliber, but, no sirree, Zane was good to go. Well, good to go after the miniature robots gathered up his severed body parts and stitched them back together.

After that thoroughly painful process Zane wasn't in any mood to be reamed by his client. Sure, he was a few days overdue, but, dammit, he should be compensated for being chopped to bits. The collector who was financing the whole shennanigan disagreed.

That being said, adventuring wasn't for everyone. You needed smarts and some type of edge in order not to be dinner for the Sentry Boar of Angumar. Yes, in the world where a little old Webley could stop hordes of enemies, smarts just might be enough. Not in Zane's real world, though. You needed an anti-tank cannon with explosive shells to fend off the mob of multi-tentacled creatures while your brain deciphered runes that were from a language that died out sixteen hundred years ago.

Three assignments later, Zane had been hired through emails and go-betweens to retrieve something called the Apocalypse Box from somewhere in Africa. Several hundred shotgun shells later, Zane delivered, a day early, too. After getting his hefty paycheck--they paid quite well--Zane noticed that the Box had been hooked up to some sort of device. A few clever moments later, Zane discovered that the Box was going to be used in something involving explosions and massive craters and stuff. He decided that that wasn't very nice.

So Zane blew all the little SOBs away and took the Box. Zane then went to a museum.