Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of the Matrix, nor do I own the concept. Each chapter will act as a scene, and hopefully will try to be updated biweekly or so. This may feel like the same old story told over again, but I'll leave that for you to decide. Now, prepare to go back down the rabbit hole…

The Matrix Returns

By DigiScanner-Shonen

Program Start: Jake Manson/MAGNA

Again, the dreams…

The mysterious black man in a trench coat and sunglasses. The coloured pills in his hands. Taking the pill that was coloured red. Then, an explosion of green code raining all around the dreamer. Faces that seemed foreign, yet familiar flew past. Machines that looked like squids flying down pipelined tunnels. Red glowing pods with people attached to wires inside them. Endless fields of the pods are being harvested by giant machines. Then, a man. A dark, smartly dressed man whose face lunged at the dreamer in an attempt to swallow him whole.

Then, he'd wake up.

He had this dream before. He'd had it for the last sixteen years. First it was every few months, then every few weeks, and now every day. Every night it haunted him like a predator constantly circling its prey. Even though he had council from Sati, also known as "Oracle", that his dreams were meant for a purpose, he didn't want them. He didn't want to know that purpose. He just wanted to forget it all and try and be content with his life.

Jake Manson was sixteen, had greyish-silver hair, blue eyes, a strong physical build from doing martial arts and was orphaned at an early age when his parents died in a tragic car accident. With his only family gone, he didn't know what do to. Escaping from the orphanage where he was sent following his parents' death, he was found by the man called Seraph. He took Jake with him and gave him a home with himself and the young woman called Sati the "Oracle". He'd been living with them ever since then.

Jake took to Seraph like white on rice. He'd always pick Jake up after school and they'd do some training before heading home to Sati. Seraph taught him martial arts, how to hack into computers, and on the odd occasion, would take him out into town for dinner. To Jake, Seraph was the father he never had.

When he told Seraph and Sati about the dreams, Sati told him that it served a purpose and would reveal itself when the time came. Seraph, however, taught him how to hack into computers. When asked why he did this, he'd reply that he was starting Jake on a path to the truth. Confused, but eager to get rid of the dreams, Jake would hack into computers every night under the hacker name "Magna" trying to find answers. That's when he found him.

Morpheus. The black man in the trench coat in his dreams. According to police and government reports he was seen throughout Mega City, but always somehow managed to elude the authorities. He had been caught once, but escaped with the help of some "fellow terrorists" as the reports called them. The reports said that he was possibly the most dangerous man alive, but Jake didn't believe a word of it. He somehow knew that Morpheus was anything but dangerous and had spent almost half his life searching for him.

He'd try again tonight to look for Morpheus, the key to his dreams.

"Hey! Manson!"

Jake snapped out of his thoughts and turned to see a friend of his coming to greet him on the steps where he sat. Elias Wilson, a fellow sixteen-year-old with brown hair and brown eyes to match, took a seat next to Jake.

"Glad school is over?" Elias asked.

"Of course!" Jake replied, "I couldn't wait to get out of Mr. L's English class."

"I know! 'You must seek the meanings within the meanings'? Come on!"

"Yeah, it is kinda stupid."

"You waiting for him again?"

"Yeah, he's my ride. What about you? Don't you have to catch a bus back home?"

"In a minute. So…they find her yet?"

"Find who?"

"You know…her."

"Oh…no, not yet."

The girl they were talking about was Jenna Forrester. She was about their age, if not older by a few months. He'd had a thing for her since coming to high school. She'd disappeared from Mega City a few months ago. The authorities believed her to be kidnapped by the terrorists led by Morpheus, but Jake didn't believe it. He'd seen her a few times during his hacking times in a photo or two, looking completely different from how she used to look.

"Don't worry, buddy," Elias said, putting his arm around his friend, "They'll find her. Then she'll be back with all of us again and you and her can do some smooching to celebrate."

"Come off it, lover boy," Jake shoved his hand straight into Elias' puckering mouth and then Elias removed his arm from Jake's shoulder, "She'd never be interested in me."

"I don't know. I did see her smile at you once or twice."

"I said come off it. Anyway, what about you and Mariana?"

"Things are going great. I was planning to ask her to the dance a couple weeks from now."

"Cool."

Jake saw a black car pulling up to the front of the high school and reached for his backpack beside him. As the car stopped, Jake could identify Seraph as the driver.

"There's my ride. I gotta go."

"See you tomorrow?" Elias asked.

"Of course!" Jake said as he and Elias brought their fists together in a sign of farewell before Jake started off toward the car, "Later!"

"Later!" Elias called as Jake got in the car with Seraph and drove off.

"How was school?" Seraph asked as he drove on the highway.

"Fine, sensei," Jake replied in his usual way. Looking at the cars passing down below, Jake thought back to the dream and all it's mysterious components. But nothing more unnerving than that man trying to swallow him. Jake shuddered at the thought of it.

"You can't sleep well?"

"Not really."

"The dream again?"

"Yes. It's getting worse and more frequent. Now I have it during the day."

"…"

"Do you think Sati baked us some cookies today?"

"We'll find out after training."

"Seraph, I don't really feel like training today."

"You have to. You never know when…"

"Yeah, yeah. 'You never know when an enemy will appear and you'll have to fight'. I know, I know, I know," Jake growled, "We've been training too much lately. Don't you think we deserve a break?"

"No. A warrior must always be prepared."

"Yeah, I know."

There was silence between them for a while as the highway ended and Seraph drove them into Chinatown, where a dojo awaited them.

"You know…" Seraph began.

"…?"

"Maybe I could see if we could go out for dinner tonight…"

"Really?" Jake asked with a sense of hope in his voice.

"If…"

"If…?"

"If you do well in your training today."

"Of course," Jake sighed, "Of course I'll do well."

Seraph pulled up in front of the dojo and stopped the car. After getting out, Jake and Seraph took some wrapped packages out of the car and took them into the dojo. Unwrapping them on the wooden floor after taking off their shoes, they found a pair of swords, some sais and some staffs. Quickly changing into his training uniform, which looked just like Seraph's, Jake took his place on the floor of the dojo. Seraph quickly took his place a good distance from Jake.

Both of them bowed to each other, keeping their eyes on each other. Both then raised their arms to chest level and covered their right fists with their left hands.

"Are you ready?" Seraph asked.

"Yes, sensei," Jake said, trying to clear his mind enough to beat his mentor.

"Then let us begin."

Seraph rushed up to his opponent and thrust his fist towards Jake's face. Jake moved his head to the side, grabbed Seraph's extended arm and tried to use his foot to flip Seraph onto the ground. Seraph saw this and swiftly used his other arm to push Jake away. Jake flew back a couple of feet and awaited Seraph's next move. The Chinese martial artist came over with his elbows pointed to his student, who blocked them with both his hands and pushed Seraph back. Not giving him an inch, Jake quickly moved behind him and used his foot to trip Seraph up. Seraph fell onto his back, but used his feet to kick Jake's chest and sent the boy towards the dojo wall. Jake hit the wall, got the wind knocked out of him and while trying to breathe some air back into him, Seraph used his legs to push himself back to a standing position and rushed at Jake with an extended arm which ended in a fist. Jake dodged the fist again and circled behind Seraph. Wrapping himself around his teacher's back, Jake thought he found the one safe place where'd he be safe from his sensei's attacks.

But he was wrong.

Seraph did a black-flip, but Jake still held onto him. Doing several more back-flips, Jake lost his sense of up and down and lost his grip on Seraph. Falling onto the floor, Jake quickly recovered, but gained a sense of dizziness. Seraph took this as his opportunity and struck Jake's neck with a knife-hand. Jake fell unconscious and the teacher thought he had won, but before a moment had passed, Jake's opened and he used his own knife-hands to strike the back of his teacher's legs, forcing Seraph to his knees. Jake slid from underneath Seraph and grabbed an unwrapped sword from where he and Seraph had put the weapons. Tossing the other sword to Seraph, Jake readied himself for the next round.

"'It is unfair when the opponent has an advantage. True warriors fight as equals'," Jake quoted, "Isn't that right, Seraph-sensei?"

"Of course," Seraph smiled as he got up, brandished his sword and engaged Jake in a duel of swords. The two immediately began thrusting, parrying, dodging and defending their swords. The quick movements between master and student were astonishing to witness.

Just as Jake thought he was getting the upper hand, Seraph knocked his sword away and aimed it at Jake's throat. Looking around the room quickly for some other weapon, Jake suddenly had no time to think as Seraph thrust his sword toward him. Jake took out two sais from his training outfit and caught Seraph's sword in them.

"I grabbed them when I was quoting you earlier," Jake said, "What do you think?"

"Fast movements you have, but what if your opponent has the same thing?" Seraph said as he pulled the sword from the sais, threw it aside and pulled out an identical pair of sais from his uniform. Not wasting a moment, Seraph attacked. Jake used his own sais to counter Seraph's and the two resumed the battle.

Attacking, countering and ducking each other's sais, the pair circled the room twice, back and forth each at least once, during the sai fight. Seraph spun around and tried to attack, but Jake copied his movements and they ended up in a stalemate. Spinning his sais, Jake caught Seraph's weapons and threw both of theirs away before dropping to Seraph's knees and tried a sweeping kick on Seraph. Seraph jumped to avoid it and in response tried to sweep kick Jake, but Jake avoided it in the same manner. Resorting to fist fighting, Jake and Seraph circled the room again using their arms and fists to attack each other.

Finally getting back to the spot where he got the weapons, Jake grabbed the black wooden staff and used it to hit Seraph's neck. When he should've fallen unconscious, Seraph jumped over Jake, grabbed the second staff and prepared to face his pupil in a staff fight. Their sticks clashed many times as teacher and student fought with their last artificial weapons. Jake was more experienced with staffs as weapons, but Seraph was no slouch when it came to staffs. Almost two minutes of pure clashing, dodging and defending passed when Jake thought it was time to show his teacher just how good he was.

Jake started to move faster with his staff and was able to strike Seraph in several different places.

"You're wasting too much energy," Seraph stated during the fight, "You're leaving yourself open."

"You're the one to talk!" Jake said through gritted teeth as he continued his offence on Seraph.

Wh-what? What's that!

Jake saw a stream of green code flowing down the edge of the dojo wall. Blinking at the sight of it, the code was gone.

What the hell was that?

While Jake saw this, Seraph attacked Jake, taking this opportune moment. Seraph slipped his staff through the empty space between Jake and his weapon and pulled hard on his staff. Jake's staff broke free of Jake's grip and the teenager was left defenceless. Seraph brought the staff down on Jake's head, but Jake thrust his arms up to catch it. What he caught was empty air, however, as Seraph tripped Jake using the staff and the boy spilled onto the floor. Seraph aimed his staff straight at Jake's neck and Jake closed his eyes, waiting for his teacher to finish it.

"You were leaving yourself too open when you fought me with the staff. You only copied my movements with the sais. You were too offensive with the swords. You tried to dodge and sweep me too many times in hand-to-hand," Seraph scolded him, "You were distracted just now. If this was a real fight, you would be dead right now."

Jake listened to his teacher as he reviewed in his mind the fight that had just gone on. And he knew, as always, that his teacher was right.

"Unless you come at me with the intent to kill, you will neverdefeat me."

Seraph then threw his staff to the side and Jake opened his eyes. He stood up to face Seraph, who took the starting position they took at the beginning of all training.

"That is all for today."

Jake was shocked.

"But Seraph-sensei, we always go half an hour at least for training," Jake noted.

"Not today," Seraph said simply.

"Oh…okay," Jake said, not wanting to extend the training session. Both opponents bowed and Jake went to inspect the wall where the green code had appeared.

"What are you looking for?" Seraph asked.

Jake searched the wall, feeling it with his hands and looking at it closely with his eyes. When he saw nothing, he left it alone.

"…nothing, sensei."

"Then go change."

"Yes, sensei," Jake said as he left to change.

"And I'll see if we can go out for dinner tonight."

"But what about you saying that we could go out only if I focussed on my training?"

Seraph smiled. "But you did."

Jake stood puzzled for a moment, but then realised what Seraph was saying and smiled back.

"I'll be right back," Jake said as he went to go change.

"Honey, I'm home!" Jake cried as he and Seraph entered Oracle's apartment.

"Magna! Seraph!" a little girl cried as she ran up to hug the two boys. She was about five years old with light skin, blonde hair and brown eyes. She wore her hair tied back into a ponytail. Like Jake, she was orphaned and was taken in by Seraph. But whereas Seraph took care of Jake, Sati/Oracle took care of Resa. She was overjoyed to see her friends back again.

"I'm not Magna," Jake told the little girl, "That's my computer name."

"Oracle, Oracle! Magna and Seraph are back!" the little girl shouted as she ran down the hallway.

"She never listens to you," Seraph mused.

"I know. But I guess that's part of what makes Resa so cute," Jake said. Resa's full name was Teresa Loewy, but Jake, Seraph and Oracle called her Resa.

Resa came back holding that hand of a young woman who looked to be from somewhere in the Middle East. Her hair was olive black, her skin was tanned, her eyes were brown and she wore a gentle smile on her face. Around her was an apron and underneath it was a pair of overalls and a light-coloured shirt.

"Hey, Sati," Jake said as he moved to give her a hug.

"Her name's not Sati, it's Oracle!" Resa said, matter-of-factly.

"It's okay, sweetheart. He can call me Sati if he wants," Oracle told Resa, "Now go see if the cookies are ready."

"Yay!" Resa ran off.

"We missed you today, Jake."

"I was only gone for a few hours, like every other day," Jake said as he took off his shoes and put his backpack in his room.

"How was school?"

"Good, as usual."

"Was sparring with Seraph good?"

"Ah…yeah, yeah, it was…" Jake said hesitantly.

"What happened?" Oracle asked.

"It was kind of weird. While we were fighting, I saw something out of the corner of my eye."

"What did you see?"

"Green…symbols."

"Symbols?"

"Yeah, like numbers and letters only backwards. It was the same code that I see in my dreams."

Both Oracle and Seraph exchanged looks.

"What? What's wrong?" Jake asked.

"Nothing, dear. Nothing."

"But Sa-"

At that moment, Resa came marching in proudly. "The cookies are done!" she exclaimed with joy.

"Oh, excellent. I'll come with you to get them out of the oven," Oracle said as she moved with Resa.

"But Sati!" Jake exclaimed.

"You need to start on your homework," Seraph told him.

"…yeah."

"Hey, Magna?" Resa asked.

"It's Jake, Resa."

"Yeah, Jake. You said that Magna was your computer name?"

"I did."

"You mean the computer that has the blue screen with weird text on it about a 'system crash'?"

Jake went pale. "Oh shit!" Jake screamed as he rushed to his room.

"You said a bad word…" Resa gasped, "Oracle! Oracle! Magna said a bad word!"

Jake didn't have time for Oracle's scolding. He immediately sat down at his computer and began typing frantically.

"Come on, baby, come on. Don't die on me now…" Jake pleaded. He couldn't have a system crash on his computer! It had all the data on Morpheus' sightings! He reset his computer and prayed that he hadn't lost any of the important data.

He held his breath as the computer start-up screen finished.

On it was a message:

SYSTEM CRASH

DATA INACCESIBLE

VIRUS DETECTED

ALL FILES ERASED

"SHIT!" Jake screamed from the top of his lungs. He sat in depression. All of it. His articles, his photos, his files. Gone. All because of some stupid virus that infected his computer. It would take months to get the computer back up to its regular efficiency and get all those files back.

He felt like crying. And he was about to when something made him look up. The screen was black and the computer was shut off. How could that be? He hadn't shut it off yet! He tapped the power button, but nothing happened.

"What the…?"

Then, a message slowly appeared on the screen in green digital letters:

CAN YOU HEAR ME, MAGNA?

Jake was confused at first. This was impossible! How could his computer be receiving a message when it was shut off? And how did someone know what his hacker name was? But the message was there, clear as daylight. Maybe he had finally gone crazy. He pinched himself to try and wake up, but the message was still there. Again, it repeated:

CAN YOU HEAR ME, MAGNA?

Unsure of what to do, Jake just stared at the computer. In partial bemusement, Jake typed three letters into the computer which showed up in the same format as the message:

YES.

"This is too weird…" Jake muttered to himself as a new message appeared on his otherwise black screen:

THE MATRIX HAS YOU.

"The…Matrix…?" He typed back:

THE WHAT HAS ME?

YOU'RE NOT ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION.

WHAT SHOULD I BE ASKING, THEN?

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE TO ASK.

Jake thought about it for a moment. He wasn't asking the right question? Maybe if he rephrased it.

I AM CAPTURED BY WHAT?

A beat. Then:

THAT'S STILL NOT THE RIGHT QUESTION.

This puzzled Jake. First the dream, then the code appearing in the dojo, now this…

The dream! Of course!

Remembering the dream, he suddenly seemed to remember something that he hadn't realised before. It was a word that was repeated throughout the dream without him noticing. And it was just displayed on the computer. Jake typed the rephrased question that he somehow knew all along he was asking:

WHAT IS THE MATRIX?

He waited for a reply.

THAT WAS THE RIGHT QUESTION.

"Jake, honey? You in there?" came Oracle's voice as she walked into the room. Jake turned around to face her before quickly spinning back to the computer, only to find the words gone.

"What…?"

"What is it?" Oracle asked with concern.

"Nothing, Sati, nothing. Did Seraph tell you about the idea to eat out tonight?"

"Yes. We're eating in Chinatown tonight."

"Great!"

"I heard that you said a bad word in front of Resa."

"Oh…yeah. I'd better apologise to her."

"But first, have a cookie. Chocolate chip, freshly baked," Oracle said as she handed him a chocolate chip cookie. Just smelling it made Jake's mouth water. Taking a bite, he savoured the taste. The chocolate was still gooey, just baked.

"Now, let's go apologise to Resa," Oracle said.

"All right," Jake said as he stood up and left the computer. Leaving the room, he stared back at the computer and remembered the strange message conversation he just had. All of what had happened lately seemed to click in his mind and he found that all of his answers didn't lie with the man Morpheus, but rather the answer to the question he just asked:

"What is the Matrix?"

So, did it make for a good first chapter? Would you like to see more of it more often? Why don't you drop me a review or two telling me how you liked it? And look for part 2 soon!