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Bugs's voice shook.
"You… what the hell are you? No—scratch that. Are you even human?"
Raphael shrugged.
"Ever seen Star Wars? That little light show back there feel familiar? May the Force be with you."
It was a half-joke, but Bugs opened her mouth and nothing came out.
Raphael asked again, "Where's Trinity?"
Bugs blinked hard. "What?"
"Trinity," he repeated. "Neo's girl. She's still alive, stuck in the Anomaly Processing Department. If we don't move now, she'll suffocate just like everyone else in these farms."
Bugs's eyes went wide. "How do you—"
"No time to explain." Raphael cut her off. "I just took out the Machine City's power core. The farms are done—half an hour is a miracle. But if you want to save Trinity, there's still a window."
He paused.
"Also, tell Niobe to scramble every hovercraft in Io. Save as many people as you can."
Bugs's face changed. She spun and bolted back into the ship.
"Go! Switch to backup power and raise Io—now!"
Raphael stood there, staring at the blackened Machine City in the distance.
Then he turned and disappeared into the ruins with a few long leaps.
He was heading for the city core. He needed to make sure the Analyst and every boss above it were permanently offline.
More accurately, "extinguished." Death sounded a little too funny when you were talking about machines.
He also had to confirm the Matrix was completely dead.
And that nothing like this would ever enslave humanity again.
Three hours later Raphael stood in the heart of the Machine City's ruins.
Total silence, broken only by the occasional snap of cooling metal.
He'd found the Analyst's control room—or what used to be one.
Now it was just a pile of charred wreckage. Not even a humanoid shape left.
The Matrix?
Raphael looked around. The massive server arrays, glowing ports, endless cables—everything was fried.
The whole world was dark.
He stepped out and walked the empty streets.
Mechanical corpses everywhere.
Sentinels that once ruled the sky. Programs that once thought they were gods. All scrap now.
One thought hit him: was this the only Machine City?
In the movies the empire had spread across the planet. He'd only taken out the capital.
Were there others?
He picked up the pace.
For the next month he wandered the wasteland.
Slept when he was tired. Drank the nutrient slurry the machines used for the farms when he was hungry—tasted like warm sewage but it was calorie-dense and kept him going.
He found countless machine husks, two more human farms, and the remains of what used to be cities.
Every single one was dead quiet.
No life. No signals. No movement.
The moment the main server went down, every human in those pods had died.
Billions of them.
If Hollywood ever handed out a "Biggest Butcher" award, Palpatine blowing up planets would have serious competition.
But Raphael felt zero guilt.
To him those farm people had never really been alive anyway. Their whole existence was fake.
If they weren't truly alive, mourning them felt pointless.
He stood in front of yet another ruined farm, staring at the rows of nutrient pods. The human shapes inside were still visible… but nothing moved.
The golden lightning had swallowed everything the second it was released.
Raphael turned and kept walking.
More farms. Same story.
Black. Silent. Lifeless.
On the thirtieth day he finally confirmed it.
The main city he'd destroyed had been the single core of the entire machine world.
When the master server died, every sub-system died with it.
Every farm. Every machine. Every program.
Gone.
The only humans left were the ones back in Io.
Raphael stood on a ridge, looking out over the endless ruins.
The wind carried the smell of scorched metal.
He decided it felt right.
He'd always hated that cash-grab fourth movie anyway. Warner had forced it out and ruined the first three classics.
Now the slate was clean.
This world got a fresh start.
No machines. No Matrix. No goddamn farms.
Just the handful of survivors in Io.
Raphael turned and kept walking.
A few days later he finally stopped finding any signs of life.
He picked an abandoned building that had been empty for centuries, lay down inside, and closed his eyes.
Sleep took him fast.
When he opened them again—
White ceiling.
Familiar bedroom. Familiar curtains. Familiar nightstand.
He was back in Malibu.
Raphael sat up and looked at his hands.
Clean. Not a speck of dust.
Before he could process it, a semi-transparent panel appeared in front of him.
[System Notification]
[Host actions in The Matrix world have exceeded controllable parameters]
[Core plot of this world has been completely destroyed. Matrix system fully collapsed. Machine civilization extinct. All human harvesting farms offline]
[Per system rules, the following consequences apply:]
[All purchasable items from this world have been cleared]
[This world has been permanently removed from the host's accessible list]
[This world can no longer be entered]
[Note: The system encourages free exploration in dream worlds, but causing core collapse or species extinction will result in permanent deletion from the panel. Please exercise caution in future actions.]
Raphael stared at the text and felt a little speechless.
Then he shrugged.
Whatever. Cleared is cleared.
The Matrix items had always been limited anyway. He couldn't afford the full Matrix tech, the brain-interface stuff was too risky, and the powers only worked inside the simulation.
No big loss.
He dismissed the panel, stood up, and headed for the shower.
Even though he'd only been gone a month in dream time, he still felt filthy.
October 3rd, Raphael boarded the flight to Saint Vincent island.
Ari came to see him off at the airport.
"How long till you're back?"
Raphael sighed. "Five months. March next year."
In his opinion, this was the biggest pain in the ass about big Hollywood movies.
Half a year just to shoot one film? Total time sink.
Ari grinned like a shark. "Big Six money isn't easy to earn!"
Raphael waved him off and headed for security.
"Later! Call if anything comes up."
---
Saint Vincent island. Pirates of the Caribbean set.
The second Raphael stepped onto the lot he spotted a familiar face.
Bob Anderson.
The old sword master who'd trained him on the Star Wars set.
Bob saw him at the same moment and looked… nervous?
Probably still remembered how Raphael had pushed him back on the first lesson in Sydney.
Raphael couldn't stop his grin.
"Bob! Good to see you."
Bob cleared his throat, a little awkward. "Raphael, I'm telling Jerry we can cancel your training. No need to thank me."
Raphael's smile widened. "Come on, Bob. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up training the rest of the cast for you."
Bob gave him a glare, but his eyes were sparkling with laughter.
They were still talking when producer Jerry Bruckheimer walked over.
"Raphael, welcome to Pirate Paradise."
He shook Raphael's hand. "Bob already told me your sword work doesn't need any training."
Raphael glanced at Bob. "He's exaggerating."
Bruckheimer waved it off. "Bob doesn't hand out compliments. If he says you don't need it, you don't need it."
He paused. "But you still have to stay on set and keep the schedule. Cool with that?"
Raphael nodded. "No problem."
First day on set and he already felt the scale of the production.
The lot was a massive outdoor stage with the actual Caribbean Sea right behind it.
Crew everywhere. Props stacked to the sky. Seven costume trucks alone.
Head costume designer Connie pulled him aside and handed him a set of clothes that looked like they'd been dragged through hell.
Raphael took them. Stains, rips, holes everywhere.
"Distressing looks great," he said.
Connie laughed. "You know how we did it? Cement mixer."
Raphael blinked. "Come again?"
"Cement mixer." She repeated. "New clothes, bricks, sand—toss it all in and let it tumble until it looks exactly the way I want."
Raphael stared at the rags in his hands and suddenly felt bad for whatever that outfit had gone through.
Johnny Depp showed up on day three.
The whole set went quiet for a second when he arrived.
Smoky eyeliner, dreadlocks, battered tricorn hat, swaying walk, toothpick in his mouth.
Raphael looked at him and remembered every internet comment from his past life: "Depp is literally Jack Sparrow."
Seeing it in person? Yeah. They were right.
Depp strolled over, sized Raphael up, and flashed a mischievous grin.
"Little blacksmith?"
Raphael nodded. "Captain."
Depp's grin turned into a full kid-who-stole-candy smile.
"Interesting."
He leaned in, opened his mouth, and showed off the gold teeth.
"See these? Paid for them myself."
Raphael leaned closer. Four different shades of gold.
"How much did that cost you?"
Depp thought about it. "Don't remember, but the dentist said one 14K, one 18K, one 22K, and one platinum."
Raphael was speechless.
"You picked different purities for pirate teeth?"
Depp nodded like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Pirates, mate. Rotten teeth, falling out by twenty. Gotta have standards."
And just like that, they were friends.