Fic: We Are All Puppets
[This was a thought experiment that popped into my head after reading something of grey_sw's. What if Clu turned Tron, not so much out of misguided mercy or sadistic egomania, but because that was the only way to save his best friend from Clu himself?]
Clu had no heart. Not the flesh and meat one that users possessed. Nor did he possess the blood that it pushed, or the closed circulatory system that carried it rushing through the body. Thus, it was physiologically impossible for him to feel an adrenaline-fueled kick. The flush of crimson-tinged fury. The icy-cold creep of fear, congealing and curdling within the veins.
Yet these were all the images that his queries insisted on cross-referencing as he straddled the supine form of his friend, disc raised high, and watched the bright, glittering edges of a wound he had caused crumble into a deadened gulf of broken code. "Tron," he husked. Commanded. Entreated.
The body shuddered, face tilting, jerking like a crashed hard drive with the heads skipping across the platters. The eyes were staring, locked and wide, all non-essential functions shut down in favor of containing the damage. Yet still, a hand fought to rise, fingers seizing as they clutched at his leg, normal grace lost like actinic blue pixels beneath the ugly crevasse.
His own hand began to shake. "Tron, who do you serve?" Classification: unknown. Action required: undetermined.
The throat worked, the grip tightening painfully where it rested just above his knee. The stumbling, stuttering sound of a damaged audio output broke the eloquent words into ragged caricatures. " ... fight ... for users ... "
Classification: updating. "Tron, who do you serve?" Clu repeated, snarling the last word in desperate appeal, his disc's whine unbearably loud by his ear. Action required: undetermined.
The other hand twitched. One disc remained within its grasp, edges rasping against the ground with the movement, barely limned in ghostly blue. " ... the users ... fight ... "
Classification: obstacle. "Me!" Clu all but howled; trying to drown out the words, from without and within. "You serve me!" Action required: removal.
Tron blinked. Lurched. Clawed his way to half-sitting using Clu's own leg as leverage. There was an answering hum now as light flared in the corner of Clu's vision, white-blue and piercing; a perfect circle rising to greet him.
Classification: threat. Action required: elimination.
If Clu had needed breath, it might have stopped in his throat. If he had possessed a gut, it might have clenched and strangled itself. If he had claim to a heart, it might have paused, or perhaps stopped altogether. But having none of those, he struck, and sobbed at the chime of voxels raining down beside him.
"Who do you serve!" he begged, but this time there was no response, just a shocked gape of the mouth and a back arched in agony - Action required: elimination - and his hand was rising again, the disc-edge blurred by a tremor that was infecting his entire body -
Movement. Distraction. He glanced aside out of caution - out of need, seizing upon any excuse presented - and watched the slow slant of the fallen disc rolling away ... fetching up against a twin, the two indistinguishable in their deactivated states ...
Classification: threat ...
Clu lurched toward them, hooked them through his fingers with a clatter that made his polished standards cringe. Even dark and quiescent, he could tell through touch alone which disc thrummed with Tron's ancient presence; an illusory density that far out-weighed its shallow companion.
"No ... stay with me," he breathed, as reverently as the prayers he despised, cupping a hand gently behind Tron's neck and lifting the ravaged torso to himself. "No, stay mine."
A short twist was all it took. The docked disc lit crimson.
Classification: updating ...