The Marquis and its entire crew is made up by me, as well as certain other characters. The rest of it is the property of their respective owners. So here it is.
MATRIX
ACE
Epilogue:
25 Years Later
Captain Ace looked steadily at the green characters scrolling downwards; he didn't even see the codes anymore. All he saw was a fourteen-year-old sandy-haired boy at his computer, using technically-legal file sharing software to illegally download videos and music. He pondered what to do, and then said, "All right, Ratchet, I'm ready to go in."
"Right," said the young woman sitting next to him -- Ratchet, the Marquis' new Operator. "Oh, and I just remembered -- a message from the Neb," she added. "Captain Zephyr said to tell you 'good luck'."
Ace grinned. "Glad to hear she's still thinking of me," he said as he moved to lay down on the bed.
Ratchet grinned back. "The way you two are, I'd be surprised if she stopped." And she plugged him in.
A fourteen-year-old boy named Valentino Kaiser sat down at his computer and turned it on. A login screen appeared, and he typed in:
Username: VashTheStampede
Password:
He wondered if he'd be contacted again by the one who called himself "MarquisAce", who claimed to know something about his grandfather, who'd disappeared before he was born; it had something, MarquisAce claimed, to do with the Matrix, but he wouldn't be clear on what, exactly, the Matrix was.
Everyone knew about the Matrix nowadays -- or at least, most people knew that there was something called the Matrix that existed. But beyond that, no one had any idea what it could be.
His screen suddenly went blank. He blinked, and looked around to see what the source of the problem might be, when suddenly several green words appeared.
Follow the Desert Sky.
Vash just stared at the screen for several moments. He looked around for a moment, and then happened to glance out the window ...
... where he saw a large, eye-catching yellow car with the words DESERT SKY in bright red letters emblazoned on the sky.
He looked back at his computer, which was back to normal.
He logged out and turned off the computer, then stood up.
Ace smiled as he looked at the codes; the Machines had implemented a patch that allowed the traitorous crew of the Argent (which had a different crew, now -- the originals were either dead or back in the Matrix, leading blissfully ignorant lives) to see the green codes of the Matrix while still within it, which had previously only been a skill available to the One; of course, this meant that all runners could see the codes now, if they had the skill.
He could see, through the green haze of the walls of the apartment, and the much less substantial codes of the car windows, the boy standing up and leaving his computer. He knew that the boy was going to come and follow the car in his bicycle, when he drove off. He knew that the boy was almost at the potential he needed to be free himself from the Matrix; all it would take was the one last push that occurred at all unpluggings.
And he knew that this boy, Valentino Kaiser who called himself Vash the Stampede (after a popular anime character) in all internet chatrooms and message boards he was on, would one day be the captain who freed the Eighth Incarnation of the One.
Ace smiled, looking at the Matrix once again the way it was intended for those inside it to see, and drove off, waiting for his grandson to follow.