You'll come back when they call you

[notglitching]

Who: Alan, Rinzler, and mostly-open!
When: May 14-16
Where: From the planetary Ingress to the Grid and back
What: Rinzler gets stuck in his old life and people go to get him back.
Warnings: Rinzler things and Tron canon. Depression, violence, NPC-murder, and copious references to genocide, mindscrew, etc. All culminating in... BSOD by warm fuzzies?


When Rinzler had first left the Grid, getting back was all that mattered to him. More—it was all he was capable of caring about. Directive and function were locked in alignment, every line created by a thousand cycles of correction pulling him the same way. Rinzler was the Grid's enforcer. Clu's weapon. He was perfect, he was right, and he belonged at his administrator's side.

Since then, he's spent months trapped in a user shell. He's spilled blood and lost fights, flown through half a dozen different skies and learned what stars look like. He's spoken. He's been listened to. He's shattered to a thousand pieces on lost memories, and cut himself on the truth they left behind. He's killed users. He's met [his] [Tron's] creator, and disobeyed his will.

It's painfully fitting for that to be what brings him back to the beginning. Rinzler is home, Rinzler is back, and everything is how it should be except him. Directive is a frayed leash, function warped by too much time spent wanting. Clu's voice still locks every process to obedience, but even as he bows and follows, Rinzler can't stop the squirming twist of terror underneath. He'll kill Clu's enemies. He'll serve exactly, precisely as directed. But the enforcer has always been unstable, always in need of fixing (breaking) to keep him working as desired.

Sooner or later, Clu will open up his code to check. And then, it won't matter how well he's fit himself back to the mold. His programmer will correct each flaw and imperfection, remove those memories and reset him to automation.

It's nothing Rinzler can fight. Nothing he can run from here, and even if he tried, there's nowhere to go. The ship already feels much too distant, but Rinzler remembers enough to know his absence will only bring relief. He'd been a disruption. A threat. Tron was the one the users wanted, and even that had never been enough before.

No one is coming, and nothing will change.

[[ooc: this is open to anyone signing on for the rescue effort here! As below, prod freely with any questions. Alan's monitoring things from the Ingress-side, and will make sure people get where they're trying to go.]]

Comments

[notglitching]

Rinzler hears the voices. He knows his name. He knows his place, too, knows his task and function at Clu's call. There's nothing else he needs to know. The shrunken shapes of these combatants isn't one he's seen before, and the distortions (fur, a corner of his processing supplies) covering the lighter one make little sense. But they're errors, consigned to the Games, and all the more faulty for their failure to listen to its rules. Deletion is inevitable.

The other shape draws more attention, and Rinzler's noise picks up just slightly as he flags the matching circuit pattern and paired disks. A mirror? Those colors (mean Tron) mean user-loyalty, but Rinzler is Clu's, has always been Clu's, always been unique and singular. Some user-coded imitation? Or a test? (Can't fail, can't stop, can't give him a reason to look—)

....something is wrong, something is missing, and he can feel fragments of compulsion failing to string together (kill the source, forget—he'd tried before in the ship halls, broken himself on those chains until they snapped). Some sort of error. Rinzler puts it out of mind, tracking each small shift. Even with questions of identity aside, it was clear from its motion that this program was the real threat.

Clear too, where its priorities lay. Rinzler's first weapon flicks out in a blur, singing across the distance of the cage in a straight shot for the mirror. Easy to dodge or avoid, but it's not the only program on this line. Doing so will force the smaller programs in the line of fire. The next disk ricochets out on an angle, bouncing off the cage walls as it tries to take the leading program from the side.

[pleasereset]

Even as Frisk tries to protect him, and even as Tron stands in front of them both, Asriel squirms and tries to shift himself a little so that Rinzler can at least see who it is. Keeping a tight grip on Frisk, Asriel opens his mouth to call out to him again-

-only to let out a yelp when one of Rinzler's discs goes flying past. Asriel moves on instinct, moving his body so that he's standing in front of Frisk.

"Rinzler, stop! It's us!"

Asriel waves at him frantically.

"We heard you were in danger, so we came here to get you!"

[gainedlove]

Frisk yelps and grabs onto Asriel, trying to pull him back and keep their body in front of his (they're the one that can survive, that can come back, they can't let him be hurt), but everything is happening too fast. They can see the disk closing in, and throw their whole weight into pulling Asriel out of the way.

"Rinzler, stop it! You don't have to fight us, we're here to help you!" It's the hallway all over again, but so much more dangerous. Frisk's mind is racing, but they don't know what else to do. All they can do is call out. "Please!"

[fight4theusers]

Tron sees Rinzler's strategy (a good one, he'd use it himself), and lunges to the side, disc thrown out in an arc to intercept the one aiming for the smaller combatants. It's not enough to stop it, but enough to deflect, prevent a killing strike. Tron's disc ricochet's off out of reach while Rinzler's sails over the other's heads, forcing Tron into a diving roll to retrieve his own weapon.

His second disc is flung even as he reaches out for the first, a curving arc meant to throw Rinzler off his aim, force him back and away from them to avoid the ricochet off the back wall.

He can't derez Rinzler, not here. Even when he fought in the arena, as Tron, he never fought to derez. But Rinzler is, and Tron has two others to defend... his only hope is to incapacitate him enough to drag him out.

Sorry for the slow!

[notglitching]

One of his opponent's weapons was wasted on deflection, and the enforcer ducks below the other, planting a hand to perform a complicated twisting flip around the rebound. He snatches one of his own disks from the air mid-maneuver, and lands in an even balance, reaching back to catch the second as it ricochets off the walls and to his grip.

Every motion is precise and fluid. Rinzler's showing off—more, playing with his prey, and if the duplicate across the cage concerns him, there's no obvious signs. The Grid might be strange and fearful to the visitors, but it's easy to see from a glance: this is Rinzler's home. His killing ground. He's in the only place he's ever belonged, doing exactly what he's made for.

If Frisk and Asriel's calls are having much effect, it doesn't show. The enforcer's mask angles just slightly to the side, but it's analysis, not hesitation. Certainly the faint tickle of familiarity at the back of his processing doesn't seem like something to pursue. Distant memories have faded even further over the past few millicycles, and Rinzler has another task to fulfill now. The concept of responding doesn't even occur to the enforcer, and if Frisk or Asriel glance to his wrist, they'll find the MID absent.

They won't have long to check. A deliberate step forward, and Rinzler drops into another flip, hands and feet spinning across the ground in a protracted blur as he slings out one weapon. Just as before, the blow could hit his mirror or the noncombatants it's trying to defend—but this time, there's just a little more force behind the strike. And a little more taunt in Rinzler's movements. A challenge. He's in no rush to close the gap, not yet. But he is coming, and if (Tron) the threat wants to stall his attacks on the rest, it will have to come to him.