Hyperlexia

Send a heartbeat to the void that cries through you; relive the pictures that have come to pass…

Ruined

For now we stand alone 
The world is lost and blown 
And we are flesh and blood disintegrate 
With no more to hate

——————————

“We are the same,” the Virus whispers. “We are ruined.”

The only desire left within Abraxas—death—has been denied him by his very nature. Always he reforms, from viral remnants in the colonies he ravaged, from the black depths of the Sea itself, and nothing Clu’s best men or Abraxas himself have tried can keep him at bay for long.  Clu truly made him perfect, and the thought makes him laugh and scream all at once.

For a time he remained in the dark desert of the Outlands, haunting the edges of the Sea, feeding on any stray Programs unfortunate enough to wander his way. One thing, however, continues to draw him back to the City: a connection, twisted and shattered and ruined, but seemingly as stubborn and determined as the both of them had once been, a thousand thousand cycles ago.

It’s the same, mostly, every time.  Abraxas cannot infect the Security Program. His root coding simply will not allow it.  At first this fact enraged him, then fascinated him.  Tron’s touch burns him, far worse than the pain that already consumes him, and his own touch is anathema and repulsive to Tron’s very being…but he’s losing that, anyway, more and more every day, and so they make contact regardless.

Sometimes Tron calls Abraxas by his name; sometimes by the other, the dead one.  No one calls Tron by his true name anymore but Abraxas.

Eventually, Tron stops speaking altogether, and that’s fine, too.

(Source: expositionfairy)

Acting on impulse without any thought; ignoring the lessons our precursors sought

Bringing my spookiest fics back for the holiday while I write some new ones!  Happy Halloween, Tronblr <3

This Isn’t Happening

This isn’t happening.

The thought has been repeating itself in Clu’s mind ever since Flynn’s lightcycle first began to yaw and wobble as they drove back from the Sea, skipping and stuttering over and over in an endless loop as his User veers and finally crashes, voxels splashing against the rocks.  He clings to it like a mantra as he pulls his bike to a shrieking halt and rushes to Flynn’s side.

This isn’t happening.

The User—his User, his Creator—is screaming and writhing, and as badly as Clu wants to believe it’s only from injuries sustained in the crash, he knows what’s really causing it.  He can see the black slime on Flynn’s hands and clothes spreading, crawling, disintegrating fabric, eating into his flesh.

This isn’t happening.

He hadn’t even flinched when Flynn had waded into the contaminated water.  Flynn was a User, and he hadn’t created the virus to harm Users.  Only to prevent the Sea from spawning more ISOs—practically viroid in their own right, as far as Clu was concerned—and of course any ISO stupid enough to touch the water would probably meet a rather unpleasant end.  He’d been so careful, dammit, unwilling to accept anything less than perfection in his engineering before he’d released it into the Sea.

This isn’t happening.

He drops to his knees at Flynn’s side, tearing at the remains of his clothing, trying to get the contaminated fabric off of his User’s body, but it’s too late.  The virus is flowing up his neck with liquid, undisciplined speed, across his face, into his eyes.

“No…NO!”

Flynn screams again, a distorted, accusing howl, and Clu stumbles back, his face a mask of horror.  Flynn actually seems to be melting now, swirling flashes of yellow-green light twisting through the black like the sheen on an oil spill, and Clu can’t look anymore.

This isn’t happening.

Finally the screams die down into choked gurgles, and then silence altogether.  Clu remains frozen on his knees, back turned, shaking so hard he fears he’ll shake himself apart if it doesn’t stop soon.  Surely Flynn isn’t dead.  He can’t be.  Clu would never have created something that could concievably harm his creator.  This is a waking nightmare, brought on by the stress of trying to hold the Grid together and watching Flynn crash.  When he turns, Flynn will be there, scraped and banged up and possibly unconscious, but otherwise perfectly whole and alive.  If he could just get himself to turn…

Razor-sharp claws suddenly close around Clu’s calf, piercing and burning, and Clu screams.

This isn’t happening.

(Source: expositionfairy)

Ficlet - “Keys”

brightdreamer:

Thanks to ExpositionFairy. I wrote a thing.

This is based on the idea that Sam didn’t go to the Arcade the same night as going to Encom and talking to Alan. Just a little musing from Sam’s POV.

Read More

I adore missing moment detail fic, and the Tron franchise has a LOT of missing moments to fill.  Excellent job getting into Sam’s head here.

Acting on impulse without any thought; ignoring the lessons our precursors sought

Bringing my spookiest fics back for the holiday while I write some new ones!  Happy Halloween, Tronblr <3

This Isn’t Happening

This isn’t happening.

The thought has been repeating itself in Clu’s mind ever since Flynn’s lightcycle first began to yaw and wobble as they drove back from the Sea, skipping and stuttering over and over in an endless loop as his User veers and finally crashes, voxels splashing against the rocks.  He clings to it like a mantra as he pulls his bike to a shrieking halt and rushes to Flynn’s side.

This isn’t happening.

The User—his User, his Creator—is screaming and writhing, and as badly as Clu wants to believe it’s only from injuries sustained in the crash, he knows what’s really causing it.  He can see the black slime on Flynn’s hands and clothes spreading, crawling, disintegrating fabric, eating into his flesh.

This isn’t happening.

He hadn’t even flinched when Flynn had waded into the contaminated water.  Flynn was a User, and he hadn’t created the virus to harm Users.  Only to prevent the Sea from spawning more ISOs—practically viroid in their own right, as far as Clu was concerned—and of course any ISO stupid enough to touch the water would probably meet a rather unpleasant end.  He’d been so careful, dammit, unwilling to accept anything less than perfection in his engineering before he’d released it into the Sea.

This isn’t happening.

He drops to his knees at Flynn’s side, tearing at the remains of his clothing, trying to get the contaminated fabric off of his User’s body, but it’s too late.  The virus is flowing up his neck with liquid, undisciplined speed, across his face, into his eyes.

“No…NO!”

Flynn screams again, a distorted, accusing howl, and Clu stumbles back, his face a mask of horror.  Flynn actually seems to be melting now, swirling flashes of yellow-green light twisting through the black like the sheen on an oil spill, and Clu can’t look anymore.

This isn’t happening.

Finally the screams die down into choked gurgles, and then silence altogether.  Clu remains frozen on his knees, back turned, shaking so hard he fears he’ll shake himself apart if it doesn’t stop soon.  Surely Flynn isn’t dead.  He can’t be.  Clu would never have created something that could concievably harm his creator.  This is a waking nightmare, brought on by the stress of trying to hold the Grid together and watching Flynn crash.  When he turns, Flynn will be there, scraped and banged up and possibly unconscious, but otherwise perfectly whole and alive.  If he could just get himself to turn…

Razor-sharp claws suddenly close around Clu’s calf, piercing and burning, and Clu screams.

This isn’t happening.

Winzler Requested: SO LIKE MORE OF THIS [Jalen fanboying over Tron] PLZ THX YER HUMBLE SLAVE FOREVER

By the time Tron arrives at the scene, it’s already a mess.

He’d recieved and acknowledged Yori’s distress call fifteen microcycles ago, double-timing it out to the site of the new Sailer junction node at breakneck speeds.  On approach he can already see the disintegrating corpses of several gridbugs scattered around the glitching, staticky, half-crumbled scaffolding of the tower.  More importantly he can see Jalen, defending Yori and one of the junior compilers—Roark, Tron thinks his name is—from what looks to be the last of the bugs.  His cloak is torn to shreds and he’s got a nasty bite wound below one knee, but he’s fighting as hard as any Security program and Tron has never regretted the Disc Wars lessons he’s been giving the ISO architect less.

Jalen finally manages to tear the thing’s head off just as Tron jumps out of the runner to assist.  He staggers briefly, but waves off Tron’s attempt to steady him with a hasty “I’m fine!”

“Status report—is everyone alright?” Tron asks, nodding briefly to Jalen before striding quickly over to Yori.

Yori nods at him with a relieved smile.  ”Affirmative.  We’re fine, if a little banged up.  Those bugs hit us out of nowhere, had Roark and I cornered.  I got one of them but then the second one ate my staff, if Jalen hadn’t jumped down from the lift—”

Yori’s report is cut off by a yelp and a thud from off to the side, and Tron turns just in time to see Roark shove Jalen to the ground.  ”It’s all his fault anyway!” Roark snarls.  ”Those bugs would never have set on us if we weren’t forced to work with this glitch magnet, why anyone would let one of them near vital infrastructure in the first place is past my ability to calculate—”

“Roark!” Yori exclaims.

“From where I was standing, it looked to me like the ‘glitch magnet’ was saving your life,” Tron observes mildly.  ”And shoving your coworkers around like that—under any circumstance—is a good way to get yourself relegated to error-checking blueprints for the rest of your runtime.  Especially when you do it in front of Security.”  He punctuates this advice with a pointed stare at Roark, who backs off with a mutter, and turns back to Jalen, offering him a hand.  ”All right?”

Jalen just nods quietly and takes the proffered hand, pulling himself back up off the ground and wincing as his injured leg tries to give out under him.  He wonders absently if there’s some force out in the wider universe that has it out for him, why the one person on the Grid he admires most short of the Creator himself never fails to walk in on him when he’s at his worst.  

“Thank you,” he sighs, once he’s solidly back on his feet.  ”I’m sorry about all of this, I—LOOK OUT!”

He knows he’s too late.  The gridbug has already reared up behind Tron to strike before the first warning word is even halfway out of his mouth, and he’s still holding Tron’s left hand—his dominant hand, the one he always leads with in their practice matches.  Tron never hesitates, though, reaching back with his off hand to undock his disc and whirling smoothly to slice the bug in two, spraying the four of them with gleaming green fragments.  He can’t be that fast, no-one’s that fast, Users, I couldn’t even track his movement…!

For several long moments, all Jalen can do is stare at Tron with a goggle-eyed expression of unfettered awe that he hasn’t worn the like of since his earliest cycles.  Finally he realizes that he’s still holding onto Tron’s hand and drops it like it were burning.

Someday, Jalen vows to himself as he fights to keep a blush from flashing through his circuits.  Someday, Tron will finally see him at his best.

Oftaggrivated Requested: WHAT IF QUORRA BECAME ONE OF CLU’S WILLFUL LACKEYS? GLEEFULLY DEREZZING PROGRAMS :D

It used to be, in the earliest cycles of Clu’s reign, that the nights when the Games were held were actually something of a relief.  For the Programs unlucky enough to have been conscripted, it meant that at least things could get no worse—no more running or hiding or going about one’s life in fear, constantly looking over your shoulder and wondering if you were going to be the next to be swept up.  For the Programs in attendance or in the smouldering (but not quite extinguished) Resistance or simply living everyday lives in the city,  it meant that you were safe for the night, that as horrifying as the Games were to contemplate, at least it wasn’t you in the Arena.

Also, it meant that Rinzler was busy.

Now, though, a new shadow haunts Tron City and the Outlands beyond, and there is no relief on Game nights, not anymore.  

Resistance fighters and the last remnants of the ISOs have long learned to fear the  low, grinding flicker of noise that accompanies the Administrator’s top enforcer.  The new assassin is small and slim and utterly silent, and no one sees or senses her coming until she is on them, her sword slicing through her targets with a savagery entirely unlike Rinzler’s cold precision.  Her circuits are never seen until her weapon finds its mark, the long strips of bloody neon red the last thing her victims see as they crumble into nothing.

She still bears her ISO mark, and does not hide it.  Once, not long after Clu had claimed her, she’d tried to carve it away with her own blade, but Clu had stopped her.  He likes it, he says, and tells her she should wear it proudly as a sign to all who see her.

Anyone, everything can be perfected, in the end.  

Notglitching/Smiley_Anon Requested: Gibson vs. Authority, pre-Evolution

(So the OP who requested this, Smiley_Anon of TKM fame, does not actually live on Tumblr, but I am posting her fill here anyhow for anyone else who wants to read!)

—————————-

Gibson can feel the User—and the oncoming lecture—approaching before he’s even halfway to the bar.  Nope, not anywhere near intoxicated enough for this yet, he decides, downing his entire drink at one go before turning lazily in his barstool to face Flynn with his customary smirk.  ”Yo.   Order a guy a drink?”

Flynn raises an eyebrow.  ”Dunno about that, man…heard you’ve gotten into plenty of trouble today already.”

Gibson just shrugs, still smirking, as though hearing those words from the Creator doesn’t sting.  ”That’s me, always.”

“Apparently you really pissed in Clu’s cornflakes, shutting down the processing plant like that.”

Gibson grins at that.  He can’t help it.  ”I have no idea what that means, but you just made my day.”  He raises a hand idly, flagging down the bartender and ordering another round.  ”You want?”

Flynn just sighs.  ”Gibson, you started a riot.”

And here we go.  Gibson has to fight the urge to grit his teeth at the blatant skewing of events.  ”Is that what you heard?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered, but three guys on one isn’t exactly a riot.”

“You beat the task manager into standby—”

“Did they tell you about how they were harassing Cayce?”  Gibson cuts him off, unable to keep the anger out of his voice anymore.  ”Did they mention the part where they almost shoved her into the glitching output beam when she tried to get them to leave her the hell alone so she could get back to her job?  Bet they conveniently left that part out, huh.  Nope, it was just Gibson, incorrigible troublemaker, stirring up errors and being a hazard to the workplace as usual.”  He turns back to the bar and grabs his drink, knocking back half of it in an attempt to calm himself down before he starts ranting at the User, who he’s always considered a friend.

Flynn, for his part, stays quiet for a long moment.  ”…I’ll talk to Clu,” he says, finally.  ”He’ll listen to me.  I’ll get you reinstated.  I’m sorry, man, I should have looked harder at both sides.  But man, you gotta realize getting violent like that isn’t gonna solve anything.”

He means it, too, and for Gibson that almost makes it worse.  ”…you don’t think I know that?” he sighs.  ”And don’t worry about it.  Going back to work there would just make things worse on everyone else.”  He takes another drink before going on.  ”…we’re building a new colony.  Out in the Outlands.  Someplace we can take the pressure off the people who don’t want us here and have a safe place to ourselves.  I’ve been asked to help set it up, and I agreed.”

Flynn looks stricken.  ”Gibson, are you sure…?  We need…I need your skills here, man, you can’t leave.”

Gibson smiles a little.  ”Thanks, friend.  But they need me more.  And besides, it’s not like I’m running off to hide in a cave forever, are you kidding me?  This city’d get too boring without me.”  He leans back against the bar, feeling his usual grin coming back, even if he doesn’t quite feel it all the way through.  ”And you know you’re welcome out there anytime.”

Flynn regards Gibson sadly for another few nanos, and then finally heaves a sigh and smiles.  ”Well, if I can’t convince you to stay, then I better wish you luck.”  He reaches for his drink, raising his glass.  ”To better tomorrows.”

Gibson raises his own.  ”That, I can drink to, among other things.  Better tomorrows for everyone.”

Stalkingbit Requested: Sentries creeping on Alan!

Alan’s first instinct when he hears the pulsing rumble of an aircraft engine and sees its searchlights piercing through the arched window over the desk is to run for the door.  His second instinct, the wiser, is to stay right where he is, lie low until whatever strange craft is out there (it’s flying low like a helicopter but sounds nothing at all like one) moves on.  Then he can concentrate on figuring out what’s happened to him and where he is.

It turns out to be pointless, in the end.  The aircraft lands just outside, sending a tremor through the floor, and Alan’s barely even managed to lever himself out of his seat before the door slides aside and figures march into the room.  There are four of them, wearing blank black helmets that hide their faces and strange black armor outlined in stripes of neon red, and they are carrying staves.  Alan swallows.

I am dreaming, he thinks.  I fell asleep at the arcade at Kevin’s desk, because it is 2:30 in the morning, and I am having a nightmare.  Like the ones I used to have after Kevin disappeared.

But the armored figures are surrounding him now, laying hands on him, and this is far more vivid than any nightmare he remembers.  Alan has to fight to keep his balance as he’s turned roughly in a complete circle, the blank masks leaning in closer, examining him.  One of the (soldiers?  guards? what are they?) reaches up and removes his glasses, and he jerks.  ”What—hey—!”

They’ve all gone still now, looking at each other, making Alan more nervous than ever.  One of them whispers a name.

“…I’m sorry, I don’t understand what’s happening here, but you’re mistaken.  My name is—”

But before he can continue they’ve got hold of him again, pulling him toward the door and whatever lies beyond.

(There may be more of this later!  Stay tuned!)

Grey_SW Requested: Flynn/Clu, after the coup (any interpretation)

(So this turned into a Symbiosis!verse story.  What a tweest.  At this rate, I’ll have another 10,000 words of sidestories written before I ever make it to the sequel @_@)

———————————

Flynn is hiding, and Clu hates him for it.

There was never a time before now when Clu couldn’t feel Flynn within him.  He’d never needed the light of the open Portal to tell him that Flynn was on the Grid; he’d simply known.  They shared a face, a voice.  They’d finished each other’s sentences, sometimes.  He’d shared Flynn’s dreams, seen hazy images of the world of the Users through Flynn’s eyes, and he knows Flynn dreamed of him, of their world, when he was gone.  They’d shared a vision.

That Flynn is hiding physically from him is bad enough.  But he’s hiding himself, his soul, too, leaving nothing but a distant spark to indicate he’s even still alive, and the cold absence where his Creator’s presence had once lived makes Clu burn with rage.

The Games are on this millicycle, and Clu participates, to the mingled shock and uneasy delight of the crowd, taking on a team of six captive Programs in the Final Round.  Disc Wars is not ordinarily his sport—he’s always preferred the thrill of the lightcycle derbies—but tonight he tears through his opponents with vicious, savage gusto.  Two of them bear the bright green circuitry of Bostrumite ISOs, dragged out from their underground knotholes, and Clu pays them special attention, eschewing disc to tear one of them limb from limb barehanded and driving his fist through the chest of the other.

Can you feel this?  Clu thinks, as the second of the ISOs crumbles into nothing around his fingers.  Can you see?  I know you can.  Come for me, stop me, answer me!

Flynn never does.

The first time Jalen tries practicing solo in the rebound chamber he set up, he nearly takes his own head off.

His next few attempts don’t go much better.  A botched handspring leaves him sprawled ungracefully on his back, groaning from the impact of the floor against his disc port.  An attempt to catch a high-speed ricochet ends with a damaged glove and a stinging score across the palm of his hand.  By the middle of the session Jalen is panting and disheveled, looking for all the world like he’s fought his way out of a gridbug nest, and is pretty well convinced that this is the stupidest idea he’s ever had.

He’s picking himself up off the floor from his latest near-miss dodge when a voice calls from the sidelines: “You’re throwing too hard.”

Jalen looks up, startled, to see Tron—of all people—watching him from just outside the chamber’s entry port with an amused expression.  His immediate urge is to scramble for his disc, dock it, and pretend he’s been doing something, anything else, but he has the sinking feeling it’s far too late for that. Users, how long has he been watching…?

“Greetings, Tron…I wasn’t…I mean, I was just…”

“You’re putting too much power into your throws,” Tron repeats, entering the chamber.  He picks up Jalen’s disc from the floor, holding it out to the taller ISO.  ”Disc Wars matches are about timing and precision as much as speed and strength.  I can show you some tricks, if you like.”

Jalen’s eyes widen, and he takes his disc back with a hesitant, disbelieving smile.  ”Ah…yes, I would like that.  If you’ve got the time.”

Tron nods with a smile of his own, then undocks his own disc, taking up a basic starting stance and motioning Jalen to follow his movements.  ”Here.  Set your feet a bit wider, and pay attention to the angle of your throw.  Like so…”

They practice together for the next thirty microcycles or so, and by the time they’ve parted Jalen’s gone from thinking that this was the stupidest idea he’s ever had to thinking that maybe, just maybe, he can do this after all.

Alan’s been staring at his laptop, and the OS restore discs next to it, for the last two hours.

Sure, it’s something that happens to every computer owner at least once, even programmers with thirty years of experience under their belts.  A perfectly normal service pack install gone wrong, leaving the entire system completely borked.  Any normal person (any sane person, he thinks), would have just used the damn restore discs from the get-go; after all, that’s what restore discs are for.   Two weeks ago, Alan would have been one of those people.  And yet he’s been scrambling madly all day to find any other solution—attempting to uninstall the service pack and start over, trying to reset from restore points, even breaking into the OS’s base code in order to find the error.  Finally, though, Alan’s been forced to come to terms with the fact that it’s no use: the only way to fix the computer is a complete reformat.

The thought is paralyzing him.

He wants to tell himself that he’s acting irrational, but he can’t.  Not after what Sam showed him the week before last.  Everything he knows has been turned on its head, he’s barely slept in two weeks (1996 all over again), and all he can think of right is the miniature world that could possibly exist within his laptop—a world that is now a corrupted, glitching ruin.  A world he has to destroy to save.

When Sam comes into Alan’s office an hour or later and sees him still sitting there he doesn’t say anything, just lays a hand on Alan’s shoulder.  Alan takes a shaky breath and finally puts the first of the discs into the drive, swearing to himself that he’ll light a fire under Junior’s ass down in R&D to debug OS12 Service Pack 1 before this starts happening all over the country.

Flynn used to joke about the weight of worlds resting on Encom’s shoulders. Now, Alan understands.

Clu/Alan - “Changeling”

(Man, this drabble turned into a monster @_@)

At first, Alan was tempted to just chalk it up to Kevin being, well…Kevin.  But he’s acting particularly bizzare today, and Alan’s unease is growing by the hour.

For one thing, he’s never known Kevin to be so quiet before.  Usually he’s the bane of board meetings with the way he interrupts and spins off on tangents and generally doesn’t let anyone get a word in edgewise (unless he’s falling asleep in his seat), but today he simply sat in near silence, chin resting on his hands, head cocked slightly as he just listened to the other board members speak, with hardly a suggestion of his own.  Then there’s the way he keeps running his hands over every surface, walls and office furniture and even passing coworkers (which gains him fewer odd looks than one might expect; Kevin and personal space have never been on speaking terms), the way he stares at everything with a sort of lazy but sharply-focused fascination that Alan’s never seen before.  More than once today Alan’s caught Kevin looking at him that way, curious and slightly predatory, and it spooks him.  Kevin never misses an opportunity to flirt with him, of course, but this is different.  

Alan’s never considered himself a particularly intuitive person, but every instinct is telling him that something isn’t right, and right now one suspicion is rocketing to the top of the list.  He knows Kevin’s got his recreational vices, but he’s never come to work high before, and Alan is becoming seriously worried that what was once an occasional vice might well be becoming a habit in the aftermath of Jordan’s death.

When he enters Kevin’s office, the first thing he notices is how neat the room suddenly is, and Alan’s near-certainty that Kevin’s loaded on something falters at the sight.  Generally any space Kevin occupies tends to look like a small hurricane spun up around him after approximately five minutes or so, his workspaces cluttered with notes and takeout menus and soda cans and casually-tossed diskettes.  Now, though, all the notes have been sorted into orderly stacks, placed neatly to either side of Kevin’s desk in perfect symmetry, and there’s not a can or a Shakey’s Pizza coupon flyer in sight.  Even the furniture’s been rearranged.  

“Kevin?”

He’s standing in front of the big plate-glass window, hands clasped behind his back, with L.A. sprawled out below him in the summer haze.  When he hears Alan’s voice he turns, smiling.  ”Alan,” he says, and something in the tone or pitch of his voice makes Alan’s skin prickle.  ”Alan Bradley.  What can I do for you?” 

“…Kevin, are you alright?”

Kevin blinks, his head tilting to the side again, regarding Alan with that strange hyperfocused gaze. His smile widens. “Of course I’m alright, Alan.  Never better.”  

He crosses the room to Alan, fingers trailing absently across the slick black surface of the touchscreen desk, making it light up in response to his touch.  There’s a soft “click” a second later, and it takes Alan a moment to realize that it’s the sound of the door closing and latching behind him, seemingly of its own accord.  In that time Kevin’s already closed the distance, staring thoughtfully at him before reaching up to slowly pull Alan’s glasses away from his face.

“Kevin, what is going on with you??” Alan nearly squawks.

“I don’t know,” Kevin replies, leaning in closer.  His hand is cool against Alan’s cheek and temple, but his fingertips are hot, as if there were electric coils beneath the skin.  ”Why don’t you tell me, and I’ll tell you when you’re getting warm.”

Yori/Quorra - “Survivors”

The explosion of the Guard station has destabilized the entire area, and the ground is collapsing into the Undercity beneath them faster than the rebels can outrun it.  They’re still being pursued too; chased from the skies by the few remaining Black Guards who’d managed to escape the station with their wingpacks, and it’s certainly only a matter of time before the Recognizers arrive.

There’s a cry from behind Quorra, and she looks over her shoulder just in time to see another of her comrades fall into the chasm.  Yori gives her no time to mourn, though, grabbing her forearm and yanking her forward almost hard enough to pull her off her feet.  ”Run, dammit, don’t look back!”

They’ve almost made it across the bridge to the lightrunner when two of the guards set down on them, one on either side, boxing them in.  They’re both exhausted, circuits flickering with low energy, but Quorra activates her katana and Yori extends her spear and they stand, back-to-back and faces set.

They give no quarter.

When it’s over they sink against each other, clinging to one another in the aftermath of battle, a quiet moment that they cannot afford but that they need, desperately, and damn anyone who comes for them.

They are survivors.

Mackey + Dillinger (Sr.) - “Proposal”

Mackey’s just finished his second drink (Jameson’s Gold, on the rocks), wondering bitterly how the hell his entire life and everything he’s worked for have managed to get upended and chucked into the fucking Negative Zone so fucking fast, when the man sits down beside him, setting a third drink by his hand.  He rolls his eyes.  Great.  What do I need to make my day complete?  Some drunk ass hitting on me in a bar.

“Sorry, buddy, I’m flattered, but I’m st—” 

The words die in his throat when he turns to get a good look at the guy.  He’s older, much older, thin and wiry and dressed in a three-piece suit, and he definitely doesn’t look like he wants to chat Mackey up.  More to the point, Mackey’s sure he’s seen this guy’s face before, but stress and sleep-deprivation and alcohol have scrambled his brains.

“I saw the news,” the old man says mildly, but his eyes are flashing behind his glasses.  ”Rough day for you, hasn’t it been?”

Irritation spikes up within Mackey.  A corporate rival, maybe?  Whoever he is, the last thing he needs right now is this jerkoff rubbing it in.  ”Yeah, fuck off.  What’s it to you, anyway?”

“Flynn,” the man answers simply, and now his voice and expression are tinged with a kind of knowing sympathy.  ”I know.  I know all about it.”

The pieces suddenly click into place, and Mackey knows where he’s seen the man before.  Dillinger.  

“Finish your drink, Richard,” Dillinger continues, lips quirking into a smirk.  ”I have stories to tell and proposals to make, and believe me, you want to hear them.”

Sark + Ram - “Laughing at the Devil”

That [Commander] thinks he’s something,

But it’s ME who runs this town~

Sark hasn’t a clue in hell how this little upstart has lasted so long, and it’s starting to infuriate him.

“I could take you apart right this second,” he growls, sending another pulse through the decompiler as punctuation and grinding his teeth when the actuary refuses to scream.  ”Reduce you piece by piece to a meaningless jumble of ones and zeroes and then watch those ones and zeroes dissolve into nothing, and will your Users save you?”

Despite the exhaustion and pain clearly visible on his face, the little Program laughs.

“What??” Sark practically shouts.  ”Are you such a stupid little glitch you don’t even understand the situation you’re in?  What in blazes is so eternally funny?”

“You,” Ram replies, sniggering.  ”Just…imagining you if your User decided to rewrite you into a bit-herder.  Or maybe a herd of bits.  ”YES NO YES NO” all day long…not much different from your regular job, am I right?  Also, your helmet is hilarious.  How does anyone take you seriously?”

For a moment Sark contemplates turning the decompiler up to its maximum level and derezzing Ram right then and there…but that would be too fast.  He wants to break this impudent null-unit, crush his insolence and his faith and his neverending infernal laughter until he’s nothing but the mindless number-cruncher he should have been from creation.

Perhaps he’ll set him against one of his own, next time.  That should do nicely, for a start.

“Take him back to his cell.  Next round in thirty microcycles.”