Hyperlexia

And if my day keeps going this way I just might break something tonight

For TehKittyKat, who requested: “Can I just have Yori punching someone? Lots of people deserve a punch from Yori!”

You get two for the price of one.  Because I love you.

Not Without Incident

——————————

Dyson and his squad of Black Guards are regulars at the End of Line, and no-one likes them.  If it were up to Eckert, he’d have the whole lot of them barred.  Zuse, however, was always quick to remind him  that Dyson was considered a VIP, and that the End of Line had just been recompiled a cycle ago after that terrible incident with the rogue System Monitor, and that he’d very much like to keep it that way.  So Eckert minds his own business—the End of Line is nominally neutral ground, after all—and makes the occasional curled-lip sneer at Dyson behind his back.

The small woman with the short dark hair and loose belted jacket with the hood is also a regular, although a far less frequent one, these days.  Usually she keeps to herself at the far end of the bar, and so rarely speaks to anyone at all that most patrons tend to forget that she’s there.

Tonight, however, is different.

“Do I know you?” Dyson asks, quirking an eyebrow as the woman approaches.

The woman smiles, a tight, icy little smile.  ”Yes,” she replies.  ”You do.”

The woman’s fist flashes out before the former Security lieutenant can mark her movement.  It catches him square in the jaw, sending him head-over-heels backward over the table and into two of his men.

By the time that Dyson is able to right himself, Yori is gone.

I May Have Deserved That

——————————

“What the hell did you do to yourself??” Lora exclaims.  ”You got blood all over my terminal!”

“I had the funkiesht dream,” Flynn answers drunkenly, holding the sleeve of his jacket over his his still-bleeding nose.  ”An’ he was there, an’ you were there, and I kished you, and you punched me!  Wight in da nobe.”  

Alan snorts, and Lora rolls her eyes, grabbing Flynn by the forearm not engaged in trying to stem the nasal hemorrhaging (the printout proclaiming Dillinger’s perfidy is still clutched in his free hand) and dragging him to his feet.  ”Come on, let’s get the hell out of here while we still can.”

“Todally worf it,” Flynn mumbles as they make for the elevator, and wonders why he’s surprised when Lora punches him in the back of the head.

All alone by the telephone

For Omnicat, who requested: “I will not pretend I am not predictable: YORI and her link to Able.”

Hahahahaha “five sentences” I said. /casually drowns self

Call Me, Call Me

Confusion creeps inside me, ranin’ down

Got to get to you; but I don’t know how

——————————

“Please, Able, it’s been so long…if I could just talk to him, hear his voice…”

Able closes his eyes.  Users, how this hurts.  ”I know you want to, Yori.  And believe me, I know how bad he wants to talk to you, too.  But somethin’ ain’t right with him.  He hasn’t been right since I found him out there.  And until I figure out what’s got him glitchin’…”

“I could find out,” Yori insists, eyes blazing.  ”I know I could.  You know I could.  If you’d just take me—”

“You’re staying right where you are,” Able interrupts.  ”And I’m sorry, Yori, but I won’t tell him where you are, either.  I can’t risk you like that, he’d never forgive me.”

She wants to protest.  Wants to shout and rail and force him to bring her to him, or him to her, just so that she can know that he’s really alive and whole.  She needs something to hold onto, to keep the isolation from driving her mad.

Able reaches out and takes her small clenched fists into his own large hands, squeezing them gently before reaching into his cloak and bringing out a small, flat object.  An image file, imprinted onto a standard-size data-hex.

Yori swallows a sob, tracing the face in the image file with shaking fingers.  Pale and scarred and grim, but unmistakably alive, and unmistakably Tron.

“I’ll bring him back to you, Yori.  When it’s right.  When it’s safe.  But in the meantime, you have got to stay alive, you understand?”

“Yes,” she whispers.  ”I understand.”  With an effort she tears her eyes away from the image, looking up into Able’s lined, earnest face.  ”You’ll call me?  Keep me informed?”

“Always,” Able answers, and pulls her into a tight hug.

It’s the last she ever sees of him.

EXPO NEEDS YOU. AGAIN.

So we’re all very frustrated over the cannot-in-any-crack-smoking-universe-be-considered-an-ending of Tron: Uprising.  At the same time, I am badly in need of something to jumpstart my ability to write so that I can finish/move forward on my big projects, and I’m stuck.

That’s where you guys come in.  Give me a plothole you’d like to see addressed (note: does not necessarily have to be related to Uprising, there’s more than enough to go ‘round this franchise), and I’ll write you a five-sentence drabblet. 

Help a girl out, huh?  You know you want to.

infiniteviking:

omnicat:

winzler:

windgirlcurse:

Bruce playing with his Boston Terrier Mike

All of you writing programs-in-the-real-world fic, this is the closest to Tron & Marv I’ve ever seen.

“You are the ugliest creature I’ve ever laid eyes on,” Tron told the ‘dog’ fondly. “If we’d crossed paths in my system, I’d have beaten you into stand-by mode and taken you apart one function at a time, to see what makes a bug like you tick.”

Marvin cocked his head, whuffed.

“Things are different where I’m from, you know. It’s not an ecosystem full of biodiversity. You’re either program and ally, or bug and foe.” A stern look, then he grinned and mussed Marv’s ears. “But you’ve been tamed. You fight for the Users. And that makes us allies.”

AAAWWWWWWWWWWWW.

laskdgfjfhdjkgdjshjkl

Rule #17: Don’t Be a Hero

All the Myriad Ways #18 - Anon/Gibson, Zombie Apocalypse AU (for Kabukins)

Anon’s hands are shaking, and even though he knows what’s happening, knows what needs to be done, he can’t bring himself to do it.

Gibson snarls and grabs hold of Anon’s hands roughly, pulling the barrel of the gun flush against his forehead, grinding out in a voice so rough it’s nearly feral “Goddamn you, you bastard, DO IT!”

I can’t, Anon wants to plead, to scream, but then he looks from Gibson’s eyes—oh God, his eyes are already changing, filming over—to the blackening blood seeping down Gibson’s neck from the bite wound there, and finally, finally pulls the trigger.

TRONDRABBLES — anyone up for some?

grey-sw:

Subject says it all. Let’s write some tiny Tronfics! I’ll start:

“Don’t worry, man. You’ll be perfect soon.” Clu’s voice echoed in the small, closed space. He hummed to himself, too, whenever he forgot he was supposed to be better than that, but that sound was drowned out by the grating burr that issued from the fissure in Tron’s — Rinzler’s — face.

Acceptable. He’d come to think of that as perfect, too: it echoed the system itself, the rumble which only Clu could hear. And Flynn, of course… but it was Clu’s song now, and soon the Creator himself would flee before it.

This is the perfect opportunity for me to dig myself out of my pile of prompts!  I’ll try to get some done today :D

AVOID THE NOID

LOL holy shit I totally forgot I wrote this.

For Spicer, who waaaaaaaay back in, like, February requested an AU where Flynn is a Pizza delivery boy.  Posting now for the sake of posterity and for the edification of all.

—————————

Flynn certainly hadn’t intended for his night to go this way.

The plan, originally, had been to sneak into Encom and deliver a surprise pizza to Lora Baines, who he’d been “accidentally” running into at the arcade for a month now.  Unfortunately, plans were not exactly Flynn’s strong suit.  To his credit, though, Flynn reckoned anyone’s plan would have been derailed by the sight of the guy sitting like a Bond Villain in the middle of the laser lab and apparently arguing with a computer terminal.

A sane person would have quietly backed away and gotten the hell out of dodge.  Sanity, however, wasn’t Flynn’s strong suit either.

“…hey, uh…anyone order a pizza?” he inquired with a lopsided grin.

Senor Bond Villain looked up at him, goggle-eyed.  ”What in blazes…how the hell did you get in here??”

“Came in through the door!” Flynn answered cheerily.  ”Man, LOOK at all this stuff…what the heck does all this DO, anyway?”

“What did you hear?” Bond Villain hissed, eyes narrowing.

“Oh, you know, just you talking to your computer about how you’re planning to TAKE OVER THE—HRRRRK!!”

The laser struck him square in the back, disappearing him (and his pizza) voxel by voxel.

THERE, an electronic voice boomed, as Dillinger stared dumbstruck at the place where the delivery boy had been only a few seconds before.  NOW THAT THAT ANNOYANCE IS TAKEN CARE OF, WE CAN GET BACK TO BUSINESS.

Winzler Requested: Something with Giles from Betrayal!

If not for Radia, Giles wouuld have decamped to Bostrum as soon as it became an option.  ISOs must choose their own functions and supply their own directives, though, and Giles chose his cycles ago: it’s his job to see what Radia cannot, to fill in the blind spots in the Alpha’s far-reaching but not quite perfect vision.  And between her devotion to the glitched, unreliable, irresponsible User and her infatuation with the architect (he’d barely managed to hide his horror at the User’s announced intention to grant the idiot co-Admin status), Giles imagines he’ll have his work cut out for him for the next thousand cycles at least.

Grey_SW Requested: Flynn/Clu, acceptance

Time is a subjective experience, and none know it better than Kevin Flynn and his creation.  Minutes into hours, hours into weeks, two decades into a thousand years of silence and dead air, bitter rage and crushing loneliness.  But it’s the last split nanosecond that seems to go on the longest, stretching on into an eternity that dwarfs that miserable millennium into a unit of time barely measurable even in quantum terms—an eternity in which the two halves finally and forever fit together as they’re meant to, loved and accepted and whole.

Kabukins Requested: Clu cares for a sick/glitching Rinzler after an encounter with Abraxas

Two of Flynn’s pet phrases have been ringing in Clu’s head ever since Rinzler dragged himself back from the Outlands: “every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction”, and the one about what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.  His two perfect weapons, equal and opposite: Rinzler, the object that only he was allowed to move, dammit, and Abraxas, the unstoppable force that he’d never meant to be unstoppable, not really.

It occurs to Clu for the first time, as he combs through the twisting display of code projecting from Rinzler’s disc while his silent (friend) enforcer twitches in agony that not even shutdown can fully subdue, that perhaps the word “perfect” is a double-edged sword after all.

It’s that time again!

So I have been trying to get back in the writing groove and am failing hard with my longer fics, so it’s time for that well-loved old standby: the 3-sentence Minific Challenge!

Y’all know how this works.  Throw me a prompt (pairing, AU, whatever you like), and I’ll write you a 3-sentence microdrabble!  I’ll probably start writing them tomorrow since right now I’m still feeling very dazed and icky from this morning’s seizure and Ativan festivities.  

Come at me, brograms! 

Spicer-Motherfucking-Lovejoy Requested: Dillinger/Rick Santorum

(Oh, Spicer…)

EDJ_O431> Dad

EDJ_O431> Dad I know you’re online

EDJ_O431> Dad seriously stop fucking avoiding me

MCTRL_751> I don’t have time to listen to your whining right now.  This had better be important.

EDJ_O431> Why the hell did we just donate half a million dollars to the Santorum campaign?

MCTRL_751> Because we have leverage on him.

EDJ_O431> …why the fuck would we need leverage on Rick Santorum.

MCTRL_751> Leverage on the President of the United States gives us a lever on the world.

EDJ_O431> …  Dad.  Rick Santorum is not going to be elected president.  He’s not even going to be the Republican nominee.  Nobody in their right fucking minds is going to vote for him.  

MCTRL_751> The minds of the voters do not calculate into this election, right or otherwise.

EDJ_O431> Ha ha.  No, seriously.  You just blew half a mil on an unelectable douchetard.  What the fuck are you on.

MCTRL_751> Dillinger Systems produces electronic voting consoles.  These electronic voting consoles will be running Encom OS12.  I can choose any candidate I wish.

EDJ_O431> … 

EDJ_O431> let me see if I understand you correctly

EDJ_O431> You are seriously planning

EDJ_O431> To rig the 2012 presidential elections

EDJ_O431> In favor of -Rick Santorum-

MCTRL_751> Correct.

EDJ_O431> … What.  Are.  You.  On.

MCTRL_751> Do you have any relevant input?  Because I have other matters requiring my immediate attention.

EDJ_O431> …the hell kind of leverage do we even -have- on Santorum, anyway?

[USER MCTRL_751 HAS SENT FILE: R_SANT-01683-220.RAR  ACCEPT Y/N?]

EDJ_O431> Y

EDJ_O431> …OH JESUS WHAT THE FUCK.

MCTRL_751> End of line.

[USER MCTRL_751 HAS LOGGED OUT]

InfiniteViking: CAN I REQUEST QUORRA AND THE NINTH DOCTOR BECAUSE I SKETCHED THEM ONCE AND AND AND~

At first, the Doctor is irritated when the TARDIS inexplicably decides to plunk him down in the middle of downtown Los Angeles in 2011.  He’d had half a dozen other places he’d really rather have been, thank you very much.  Not to mention he’d written off California in general as a bad job ever since that rubbish New Years in San Francisco a lifetime and a half ago (and oh, how much it hurts to think of himself as he was then, now).  But then he happens upon the young dark-haired woman, cornered in an alley by the pilotfish roboforms she’s somehow inexplicably attracted.

“Hello!” He calls cheerily from behind them, with a little wave.  ”I’m distracting you so she can kick you!”  And she does.

When it’s over, when the roboforms have been reduced to a deactivated heap between them, they look at each other, and know one another for what they are.

He looks human but is not.  Neither is she.

He shows her the TARDIS and doesn’t have to explain, because she understands how an entire world can exist within a seemingly tiny box.

She understands that everything is a miracle, that nothing is ordinary, that wonder is everywhere and anywhere for those with the capacity to look.

She understands the pain and the rage and the soul-crushing loneliness of last.  

She refuses to travel without her own companion, a reckless young man whose world has suddenly been turned upside down—who’s just realizing just how enormous the universe really is, and how dangerous, and how amazing—and even though the Doctor knows this Flynn bloke will probably drive him bonkers, he agrees to have him on board without a second thought.

The TARDIS may not always take the Doctor where he wants to go, but it always takes him where he needs to be, and for the first time since the end of the War, the Ninth Doctor is no longer alone.

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.