Fic: The Sea Like the Stars [4/?]
Fandom(s): Tron: Legacy
Characters: Kevin Flynn, Sam Flynn, Tron/Rinzler, Clu, Quorra, Alan Bradley
Rating: T
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary:
In one story, a program named Rinzler remembered he was once named Tron for the microseconds necessary to ram his lightjet into Clu's.
In one story, he fell, and Clu went on to harry the users and the Iso upon the I/O port's very threshold.
In one story, he drifted into the deeps of the Sea of Simulation, limp and flickering, as Kevin Flynn drew Clu into himself and Sam and Quorra escaped into the user's world.
This is not that story.
Note: Some excitement, and then a lot of exposition. Afraid we're sailing into calmer waters now, so feel free to bring those tray tables down, but please keep those seatbealts fastened while seated, because who knows what we'll bump into along the way...
I also made some minor updates to wording in Chapter 3. Nothing major, but I'm OCD enough to want the edits.
Previous chapters:
[ Chapter 1: Another End, Another Beginning ]
[ Chapter 2: Forever Young ]
[ Chapter 3: The Old and the New ]
Chapter 4: Back in Kansas
How in the world had his life suddenly gotten so complicated?
It wasn't enough that Sam had discovered some sort of secret bat-cave his father had maintained for who knows how long doing who knows what, but then he had been sucked directly into the "who knows what", and now suddenly ended up with more father figures than he knew what to do with -
" - here, you bit-bait!"
- and, oh yeah, who could forget the virtual megalomaniacal tyrant who was now a very real megalomaniacal tyrant, along with the digital life form now trying to beat the crap out of him?
Sam had felt no shame in turning tail and running from the frozen tableau at the bottom of the basement steps. He could tell a losing proposition when he saw one, and unlike his dive off of Encom's roof, this one didn't promise quite as thrilling a ride before one hit the pavement (and most likely face-first, at that). Besides, there was now a very real battle taking place just above, and Sam wasn't about to let a woman - virtual or not - fight all of his battles for him.
Even if she could kick his butt.
Except that, hurdling the last few steps to emerge back on the main floor where the sounds of metal clashing and cried challenges were audible even over the background noise of the arcade, he was all too aware that he was planning on jumping in barehanded. His reappearance in the real world had been accompanied by the same clothes he had worn when he had disappeared, which meant no dock and no disc. Not that, even if he had retained it, the disc would have done him much good anyway - when he had tried to grab at Clu's weapon, the outer edge had been razor sharp, and his palm still stung from the shallow cut; most likely the gloves were what allowed Clu to keep all his fingers while handling that thing. So, depending on what was lost in translation, throwing one might not necessarily mean it ever came back either.
But then that begged the question of what exactly he could do as he skidded to a breathless stop just a few feet from the flurry of black limbs and weapons. Quorra was holding her own for the moment, but it was clear that Clu was not all that interested in maintaining the fight; the Iso had her hands full attempting to cut off his escape routes and keeping him engaged. Though, if past performance was any indication, all Sam needed to do was to provide a distraction and let Quorra do the rest; something which had worked well enough when they had gone up against Rinzler.
A distraction. His eyes lit upon a dusty fire extinguisher strapped against the wall between two machines. The arcade had been stripped of all but its games and some of the larger pieces of furniture, but the emergency supplies required by federal and state code had remained, and now Sam quickly wrenched the tank from its setting.
The heft of the extinguisher was satisfying, but as he started circling around the fight, it was clear that he would not be using it as a close-contact weapon. In the space of a single heartbeat, Quorra's shortsword had sliced through air where Clu's head had been a split-second before and then whipped around in a second strike to catch with an ear-splitting shriek upon his disc's inner edge. Snarling, the sysadmin wrenched both weapons aside and bulled forward, his fist ruffling the hair by her temple as the Iso twisted aside, lithe as a snake. There was no way that Sam would be stepping into that hefting the equivalent of an anvil unless he wanted to be filleted in the process.
"Heads up!" he declared as he pulled the pin, and instead, braced himself the safe and prescribed distance of six feet from a fire as he aimed the nozzle directly at Clu's face and squeezed the handle.
A decade or so after its expiration date, the foam stuttered and spat, but the extinguisher still dutifully emptied its contents as Quorra skittered backwards and Clu stumbled; choking and spluttering. In a wild, desperate gesture, the sysadmin flung his disc at Sam and he jerked the extinguisher up; the weapon bouncing off the tank with a solid clang before crashing through the screen of a machine behind him if the sound of breaking glass was any indication.
Half-blinded, Clu instinctively brought both arms up in guard when Quorra took the opening and spun into a side kick - but the sweep of the Iso's raised leg turned her more than intended with the slip-slide of the extinguishing foam now coating the floor, and the Iso's strike became a desperate, blind thing flung low and behind her as she over-balanced.
It was a wild shot - unpredictable - and Clu caught it right between the legs, folding with a choked whimper. Quorra, already recovered and ready to send a follow-up elbow strike, hesitated and blinked perplexedly down at her opponent when she realised where he had gone. Sam had to swallow reflexive sympathy before hastily stepping forward to deliver the coup de gras, foot cracking soundly across Clu's face and sending the program sprawling onto his back.
In the relative silence which followed, the jukebox crooned, "... so good to cruise with you, babe, so good to cruise with you ..."
"Sam, I do not understand," the Iso querried, staring down at the now unmoving Clu. "Why would there be such an obvious weakness - "
Sam began to mentally tally the train of explanations involving the male anatomy which would be required to answer that question - apparently, the literary classics had not gone into great detail on that aspect - and quietly began to panic. "Uh, great job, Quorra!" he interrupted quickly, injecting the leftover adrenaline into his grin as he crouched and started levering the limp program up. "Let's get him all tied up and tucked away - "
"Wait - but, how do we know that he is not pretending - "
"Quorra, a little help please!" Sam overrode cheerily, the muscles in his cheeks beginning to ache as he fought to hold the expression. "I mean, lame hand and all," he prompted with a wave of his bloodied palm, not above a little guilt-tripping as a distraction. The Iso sent him a conflicted look of suspicion and contriteness before finally plucking Clu's disc out of the mangled arcade machine and helping to prop up the sysadmin's unwieldy weight from the other side. Sam was not overly concerned with how the program's head and limbs flopped and bumped into the various surfaces they passed, but it was still quite an exercise trying to navigate the narrow, twisting aisles between the games and then on down the stairs with an uncooperative body.
The remainder of their skirmish had not lasted that long, but between that and the time it took lugging Clu back, it seemed from the pitch of their voices that his father and other father-figure had managed to make up or call a temporary truce, at least. There were still some definite strained notes, but for the moment, no outright yelling.
" - is all right - "
" - with Quorra, should be just - "
"- should see a real doctor - "
"Alan, dude, we've been over this - "
"And why have you not grown up at all over the last twenty-one years - though, if anyone were to manage that, I'd imagine it would be you ... "
"Hey, I've done plenty of growing! See this, man? Tell me this wasn't here before - "
In fact, if he didn't know any better - which, in fact, he didn't - Sam might have thought they were enjoying themselves on some deep, subconscious, masochistic level. As soon as he and Quorra came into sight and dumped an unconscious Clu on his face, however, all banter stopped.
Kevin blinked at them, and the hand which he had originally raised to gesture toward his facial hair slowly lowered; expression sobering. Alan, crouched over a jigsaw mess of curved, black acrylic, straightened with an initial look of relief that was soon taken over by vague alarm. In between them sat a dark-suited figure, head bowed and back against the wall - a bare head, dark brown hair mussed and sweat-matted, which rose just enough to reveal a young-Alan's face with a disturbingly un-Alan expression. The brown eyes, shadowed into near-black, fixed almost immediately upon Clu's form as lean shoulders hunched into an uncomfortably Rinzler-like curve.
Sam knew what features had most likely existed beneath that black helmet. He had owned far too many action figures, posters, and tradable cards to not know who Tron had been modeled after, and could put two and two together. But it was still a shock to see incontrovertible proof of Tron/Alan in Rinzler's suit; nearly as big of one as when he had seen Clu's face for the first time.
"Is he dead?"
Alan's question broke Sam from his uneasy thoughts as he protested with reflexive heat, "Of course not!"
"Unfortunately," came the none-too-careful comment from next to him, and Sam shot Quorra a pained look. "I heard Flynn!" she protested.
"Small favors," Alan muttered in turn with a hard look for the both of them as he came over to check on the unconscious program. "What in the world is this stuff he's covered in ... "
"Hit him with a fire extinguisher."
Alan paused, cast Sam an unappreciative look, then went back to his mutterings over Clu. "Great, now we have two concussed patients -"
"I meant - " Sam began, needled, at the same time which Kevin began with a long-suffering air, "No doctors, Alan - "
"I got the memo, all right? But forgive me if I don't think the lawyers will take the word of a man who has been missing for twenty years if I'm sued for negligence." Kevin raked a hand through his hair and abruptly stood with a rough exhale, looking exasperatedly between all the present parties. "So, now what? No doctors, no police, no explanations - no real explanations, anyway - "
"Alan," Kevin held up a hand with a guilty wince, voice grave. "I am sorry, really. Just bear with me a little longer, all right? But maybe we should move this somewhere else - "
"Which reminds me, Dad." God, it was still strange to call someone that after all these years. "You got any rope down here?"
Alan looked scandalized for a moment as he inferred the use for said rope, but after a single glance down at the comatose form, his mouth visibly tightened; perhaps recalling just how he had encountered Clu in the first place and what state the program had been in. Whatever his motivations, though, Sam was simply grateful that his godfather held his tongue this time as they managed to rummage up some ties and trussed Clu up as best they were able to. Sam was beginning to regret having dropped out of boy scouts. "I guess that'll work for now until we can get some zip-ties or duct tape ... " he ventured, eyeing the mass of clumsy knots dubiously.
"What about him?"
Sam's gaze slid uneasily toward Tron/Rinzler at Quorra's blunt question, and was not at all reassured when Kevin automatically slid a step closer toward the hunched figure; undeniably in his defense. "It's all right," his father said, predictably. "He's not a threat."
"Uh, hate to say it, Dad, but if he still knows all those kungfu moves he did on the Grid, I think he's a threat just by staying breathing," Sam reluctantly pointed out. "Look, I'm not saying I didn't see how he switched sides at the end - hell, I was staring straight into those canons of his in the back there before he pulled up! - but he doesn't even have any clear stripey things that show which team he's on!" he concluded with a gesture toward the blue and yellow stripes on Quorra and Clu's suits. Tron's attire was noticeably bare of distinguishing colors; the usual circuit patterns were a pale, ash gray pigmenting near-subliminal indentations in the surface.
Kevin's brow knit in bemusement. "You are basing your assessment of his loyalties off of the color of the ... 'stripey things' that were rendered by the laser?"
Sam could feel his face heating. "Yeah, so what? You got any examples of it not working yet?"
"Okay, timeout, boys!" Alan called out with an exasperated wave of his hands, casting a stern look upon both Flynns. His gaze slid toward the, thus far, completely passive Tron, and then flinched away just as quickly. "Look, hard as it is for me to believe, but Kevin made a good suggestion - "
"Hey!"
" - and we should move it out of here, because it's 3 am or something equally obnoxious and all of this isn't going to be solved before my first morning meeting. Sam, let's go to your place."
Alan's delivery had been so matter-of-fact, it took a moment to sink in. "Wait - what?" Sam squawked. "Why my place? I don't even have a separate bedroom, remember? All loft and studio space?" he described while framing a square shape with his thumbs and forefingers and squinting through it. "Perfect bachelor's pad? Not for family functions?"
Alan tilted his head down, looking narrowly at him over the top edge of his glasses; something which never failed to make the inner boy inside Sam squirm. "And which part of hiding concussed psychotic costumed people who know kungfu in the middle of my family and Homeowner's Association controlled neighborhood sounds like a good idea to you?"
Sam opened and closed his mouth a few times before deflating. "I'm just saying," he grumbled.
"Any other objections?" Alan asked rhetorically as he raked the same gaze over the others - obviously not expecting any, and getting none - before he nodded firmly. "Good. Now, let's figure out how to get this show on the road."
"I can see now how Tron attained the status he had," Quorra murmured reverently to Sam as they bent over Clu once more. "Alan-one is very fierce! All of his programs must be warriors."
Sam tried to consolidate the rather nerdy boardroom image of his godfather which he had held all his life with Quorra's words, and could only come up with a strangled, "Uhm, yeah. Right."
The night continued its steady downturn when it was determined that it would be better if Quorra sat in Alan's car instead of taking Sam's bike with him. In case Clu woke up and started causing trouble - Sam offered to give him another kick in the head just to make sure, but was firmly turned down - he would be installed between Quorra and Kevin in the back while the still-silent Tron would take shotgun.
It was weird and unnerving to see the security program in such a state of passivity, though it was obvious there was still someone home. Other than the occasional stare at Clu, he had been studiously avoiding any look directed his way with none-too-subtle turns of his head. But unless Kevin gave him explicit directives - and even then, he seemed to obey out of sheer reflex alone rather than out of any true loyalty - he remained a silent, unnervingly still specter. In a way, Sam found it even creepier than Clu's homicidal tendencies; at least they knew exactly what to expect from the system administrator, while Tron now seemed more like a ticking bomb.
It was a strange comfort to have his godfather chivying them along; even Kevin seemed happy to take a back seat to Alan's directives. Without the constant threat of death or destruction of all he knew hanging over his head and both feet once more planted firmly in the world he had been born into, Sam felt the last residual tensions beginning to leak away, leaving a bone-weary lassitude in its place. He was looking forward to home more than he could ever recall feeling before.
Sam started up the bike, and as he strapped on his helmet, his eyes slid across Alan's car.
In the front, the older man was struggling to fasten Tron's seatbelt for him when the program's confused fumblings kept jamming the thing well short of the distance at which it could be buckled. In the back, his father was slanted across Clu's comatose slump as he tried to take Quorra through the motions, with marginally more success, though at one point he visibly huffed and unbuckled his own belt long enough so that he could get the reach needed to help her. As they tried to find the buckle in between the Iso and sysadmin, Clu started to slide sideways, his head eventually lodging itself at an awkward angle between Kevin's headrest and the man's arm; mouth hanging half-open and nose mashed to one side. Unconscious and not actively terrorizing, he looked disturbingly like a stoned 1980's Kevin.
"Thank god I don't have any neighbors," Sam groaned before kicking up his stand and turning onto the road.
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