Define your meaning of fun

[notglitching]

Who: Rinzler and OPEN
When: After the Moira leaves Emiri, before the events on the 16th
Where: Training Simulation Room, Moro #9, and In Your Ceiling
What: Shenanigans with a side of larcenous roommates
Warnings: Probable violence and a Rinzler, but nothing awful planned

A. Training Simulation Room (Open)

When Rinzler had heard of the training area, his initial response had been disinterest. Defeating phantoms served no purpose, and he wasn't some beta to need training on the very function he was made for. Still, as time stretched out without a proper fight, the need to move started to weigh higher. And if recent events had left him singularly unimpressed with the system's response protocols to a threat, it probably wasn't worth attacking more of his fellow imports. At least, not until he found a target worth deleting.

Still, as the program stood out in the hallway, orange-lit fingers moving quickly over the soft blue of the control console, the ironies were harder to escape. A system in front of him, written for combat. For Games. And here he was, outside, stuck fighting the data-shadows it produced. Rinzler should be in there. He wanted a real battle, not some user-tailored simulation. The enforcer took what satisfaction he could in overriding the safety settings, doubling the pre-loaded templates and setting threat difficulty up to maximum.

The door slid open with a soft chime, and Rinzler stepped into the center, reaching back for his joined disk. But as long seconds ticked by, nothing happened. No lights. No sounds but his own constant rumble. Then:

"Waiting for voice activation."

Noise skipped, mute rattle glitching louder as Rinzler's helmet turned to glower out the door. Those programs definitely needed wiping.


B. Pick your location, (nearly) any location (Open)

While it hadn't rated particularly highly as a threat, Rinzler almost regretted that the beta-user had been killed. Its attack had been an interesting diversion, and if it had gotten away in the end... well, even that had proven educational. The vent-space Chara had escaped through was too small for the enforcer to pursue, but further investigation found larger access paths concealed behind more casings on the walls. Worth securing. Worth mapping. And of course, there was only one way to manage that properly.

Anyone in the cargo bay, barracks, or other main living areas might start to hear some sounds. A scraping in the walls. A ticking rumble echoing through the ceiling. Rinzler moves quietly for the most part, but the navigational difficulties are many and new, and it's difficult to assess when the shape of the passages might carry sound to occupants below. If someone were to look into the ventilation at the right time, they might even see a dim red-orange glow peering back through the darkness. Not that Rinzler's watching you. Necessarily.


C. Moro #9 (Closed to Napoleon Nathaniel)

As much time as Rinzler spent traveling the halls (and air ducts) of the ship, his own room was an almost uncommon waypoint. There was no function to be served inside, and the enforcer slept as rarely as he could. For the most part, Rinzler used it as a storage unit. With barely a handful of items in his possession (and most of those pointless user clothes), he didn't take much space.

On the other hand, it didn't take much effort to notice when those items were disturbed. The first time he'd come back to find his things minutely shifted, Rinzler had offered a flat stare across the room, but no further commentary. Data gathering was a logical goal, and he didn't care enough about any of the objects to object to the intrusion. If the user laid a hand on his disk, it was losing the appendage, but it seemed intelligent enough to know where to stay clear.

At least, until he stopped by and found things missing from his stash. Not the uniforms or the discarded weapons, but the supply of resource tokens they'd been distributed as a reward. Useless on the ship, but necessary for supply exchange on user planets. Valuable.

This time, the stare lasts longer. It comes with a low, building growl.

[[ooc: will match prose or spam!]]

Comments

[Closed to Rinzler]

[whoami]

Sam didn't really have a proper room (well he did, he just wasn't staying in it) so when he was packing his stuff up, his Moira uniform got folded then added to the bag. But seeing that white band of circuit on his arm didn't feel the way he thought it would. That part of Sam was numb. Though it would be more accurate to say that he'd had an answer to the one open-ended question that had defined a lot of his life from the time he was a small child.

Approaching the cargo hold without his uniform meant that Sam was going to stand out. And not only was he going to stand out he would attract attention. Both mostly because he was actually his own light source. With just the one strap on his backpack, Sam set it out of the way and came in empty-handed.

"Hello? Look, I did some snooping and your MID is listed in here."

[notglitching]

The cargo bay was one of Rinzler's most frequent haunts—and only partly because he'd been assigned there. The area was wide and open, with plenty of useful tasks and no shortage on space to do it in.

Of course, it also had plenty of crewmembers assigned to fill the need... which made the target of Sam's call not entirely clear. Still, the user was in luck. Regardless of his target, Rinzler's sound was the answer that came back, a low rumble vibrating through the decking and echoing between the walls of crates stacked around the entrance. The source is difficult to pin down, but wherever the enforcer is, he doesn't sound friendly.

[whoami]

Sam wasn't exactly surprised by the fact Rinzler wasn't showing himself, but it did make handing a disk to him a bit more awkward. For the moment, Sam just sighed taking a deep breath and releasing it gustily.

"I know what you were trying to do, now. Before I figured the goal was killing me, but that wasn't at all."

Bringing his hands up, palms out to hopefully show his intent, Sam looked between the various shadows. He reached over his shoulder for his disk, but didn't activate it. He wasn't even holding it like you would in the Games.

"If you just want to see something you don't always have to take it."

[notglitching]

The ticking rumble continued unabated, hostility certainly not decreasing as the user made its assumptions aloud. Maybe Rinzler wanted to delete it. Maybe it needed to derezz. For all of the enforcer's runtime and more, the Grid had only ever known one user, and it (Flynn) was a [threat] of the highest level. Noise skipped, bad data cycling as other tags shifted uneasily beneath, but Rinzler clung to the qualifier. Users were a danger. This one especially, if it had entered the system without Clu's knowledge.

And Rinzler wasn't Tron.

Still, it wasn't completely wrong. Whatever decision needed to be made, that data mattered. Attention fixed on the white disk as it came free, and Rinzler stared suspiciously at the user's loose, unready hold. A trick? Calculations moved from probable to certain at the verbal claim, but whatever Game it was playing, it didn't know Rinzler if it expected him to back down.

One beat, then two, and there was a quiet thump as Rinzler dropped down from his perch. Lights brightened as he steps forward towards the entrance, an even red-orange burn.

[whoami]

Sam knew this was all sorts of dangerous. But there was no way he could stop Rinzler from just taking the stupid thing anyway. This way, at least, Sam would know what was happening rather than getting knocked to the ground and every bit of privacy he'd ever had being gone.

Seeing him made Sam want to step back, but he forced himself to stillness. To calm. Instead he put his other hand on the disk and…well he held it out like a plate.

"This is what you wanted, right? Look I'm not going to leave you with a copy of my memories, but I figure if you take a look with me here then it's not so bad."

[notglitching]

Definitely a trick. The Grid's user had hidden from them for a thousand cycles to protect his disk. This user's might be less valuable, but that didn't mean he'd give it up without a fight. Still, as the user extended the weapon with both hands, Rinzler was having trouble anticipating its tactic.

Noise rumbled out threateningly as the enforcer crossed the gap, stance the easy balance of a predator ready to strike. The fear behind the user's eyes was satisfying, even as it itched at calculation, another variable he couldn't source. It knew enough to be afraid. Not enough to keep from trying to bargain, and the mask only tilts scornfully before a circuit-lined hand closes around the disk and jerks it free. Did the user really think it could stop him from keeping it?

Still, there was no resistance. The program's stare lingered for a moment before lowering to the white ring now in his grip. No restrictions on access, either. Another moment's (hesitation) pause before Rinzler keyed open the display.

[whoami]

Oh that was mature.

Sam let Rinzler have the disk, and silently wondered if Rinzler had been subtly edited. He wasn't showing much sign of recognition towards Sam. Which, granted, Sam had not been on the Grid very long but it had been a lot to just delete.

In fact, once he thought about it, it didn't make sense why everything but him would end up remembered just fine. Maybe he was looking for something specific, though?

Hadn't felt like that. Felt like deja vu. Which is making Sam wonder just where-- or rather when Rinzler is from.

[notglitching]

The disk came alive under his touch, soft motes tracing out the user's face in a dot-matrix of bright white. The access menu was more confirmation, if he needed it, of the familiar design: a Grid-coded backup rather than the older model Yori had showed him. Rinzler swiped past without hesitation, and Sam might be gratified to see his own guess wasn't wrong. Memory, not code access—not that Rinzler would have known what to do with the latter. Still, that much, at least, followed both of their plan.

The remainder? Less so.

The directory unfolded in a burst of light, and Rinzler flicked sideways to a start point: the moment the disk first came online. No need to waste time or processing power reviewing its entire runtime when his interest was limited to the Grid. The databurst that followed was too quick to watch entirely, but Sam might catch brief flashes as they slow. The armory. The Games. Rinzler's mask twitched, just slightly as the arena spiraled out to fill the view, and a silent manipulation brought up the timestamp to the side.

This hadn't happened yet.

That answered half of Rinzler's questions. If not in a way he liked. Still, the enforcer watched the user's failure to get away. He watched his own entry, and the fight. He watched, noise skipping louder as the memory-him stopped (user), turning to offer it to Clu...

And Rinzler froze, mask jerking toward the user as the ID it gave answered the rest.

Flynn.

[whoami]

Sam, meanwhile, couldn't do much other than watch. He knew how events unfolded and knew how his memories looked. This was actually the second time he was seeing them like this, though the first was something that Clu had tried to keep to himself. Rinzler seemed to get stuck, though, and Sam thought that maybe seeing himself had somehow broken Rinzler?

"…Uh. You okay?"

[notglitching]

Oh, Rinzler was anything but okay with this. The ticking rattle skipped, noise building to a growl as the Grid's enforcer appraised the second user to enter it. The second Flynn. Flynn had created their world and let it be overrun by virals, forced Clu to go to any length to save it. He'd inspired a thousand loyal followers and abandoned all of them to Rinzler's blades.

And still, they were ready to die for him. Like Tron had died (had failed), and Rinzler could feel something old (and wrong) twisting nauseatingly through his code as he stared at the frozen replay.

(Was that what this user expected from him?)

Audio snarled, harsh with static and bad code, and the display snapped shut. It didn't matter what Sam_Flynn had seen after. It didn't matter what it had been looking for before. Rinzler was not Tron, and it could crash itself if it expected differently. The program's grip shifted, and for a moment, it looked as if he might be readying to strike. But if Rinzler was anything but gentle about tossing the weapon back, the edge stayed unlit. Message, not attack.

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