Power of voodoo

[creator_man]

Who: Flynn, notglitching, and anyone else who would be involved.
Where: Outlands
When: Now
What: Actions, reactions, attempting to reason.
Warnings: Probably some mind screwery. Attempts will be made to keep violence to a minimum.

Comments

[notglitching]

Someone was already in the air. Lightjet, though. Even if he'd had ready access, a recognizer would have been too obvious.

And Rinzler liked to fly.

But the roar of wind and sky outside the dark shell that contained him could do little to drown out the agitation in his processing. He'd scanned disks off targets programs across the city, rifled through memory files and cross-checked data. It was rumor, mostly. No visuals, no solid data or images. Still.

Clu was back. The thought tightened through his code with formless relief. Rigidity. He needed (had to)-he was wrong (broken). Clu would fix it. (He always did).

Precise coordinates weren't readily available, but he'd gotten several approximate vectors, general regions outside the city. Triangulating the data narrowed it substantially. Reasonably far into the outlands, away from easy access or notice-by programs or users. (There were too many users.)

Not relevant. They didn't matter. Clu mattered. Orange-lined hands clenched on the control sticks, jerking more forcefully than was

[creator_man]

Flynn wasn't inside that structure.

Nor was Clu, but that would take time to realize, for the program.

Flynn was watching from a cliff nearby, sheltered by black boulders. Invisible. He'd told others he'd be here, because he had learned about avoiding secrecy with his whereabouts, but he'd told them that he'd ping them once there was somebody there. Until then, the waiting was his own.

And then there was a lightjet, the color familiar from looking back - and sometimes ahead - while Quorra was flying the larger aircraft.

Flynn sighed slightly and leaned forward, waiting for the program to enter the shelter so he could trigger the rest of the trap.

[notglitching]

The baton snapped back together a distance from the ground, the jet derezzing around him as he fell. Further than was necessary-further than was wise, by most standards. Rinzler didn't care. Black clad-limbs tumbled over each other as the program dropped, twisted in the air. The ground came up fast, impact jarring through his code as he slammed into the dark rock below, hit hard. He didn't bother rolling to disperse the force.

Rinzler looked up.

The entrance was in front, hardly ten paces away. Closed, nothing visible but smooth wall, sealed opening. The program stared, unmoving. He should-he should feel Clu, shouldn't he? Know where to go, where he was supposed to go. He used to know. Now, he just felt empty. Wrong.

(He didn't want-)

Error-

Redirect cut through the fragmented uncertainty, sharp and edged, searing through the scattered shards of wrongness. Rinzler didn't move, didn't react at the familiar correction. No reason to. And he did know better. His motions were still slow, noise rattling out with a faint skip of

[creator_man]

Ah yes. The energy signature.

He knew there was a reason for not calling many people in before; now it made some more sense.

Again, Flynn sighed. It was next to impossible to think of this program as an enemy; he wasn't trying. This was a friend in need of help, and he was going to try.

The user was in readiness; he was already crouched low, both palms on the ground, his mind going through the code and the code triggers.

As soon as Rinzler stepped inside, everything changed. The flat, clear line-of-sight landscape vanished as walls started rising, quickly and silently, twisting passages in pre-determined shapes growing from the boulders of chaotic code into a maze. Harmless, but enclosing.

And the door itself... once closed, there was no keypad on the inside to enable its opening.

Mirror sections

[creator_man]

When the structure was fully erected and closed at the top by the force field, there were areas in the labyrinth with mirrored walls where, between the twisting of the passage and the reflections, it would be difficult to pinpoint anyone's location, especially if they were moving.

It was where anyone who wanted to talk with Rinzler, could.

[yorisearching]

Once Flynn resealed the labyrinth behind her, Yori closed her eyes, clenched her fists, and slid down one mirrored surface to sit staring at the image of herself in another. Blue. Still blue. Still much like the Yori she remembered, faintly, having some respect for

[notglitching]

More tricks.

Rinzler had targeted the enclosing solidity of the tiny cell, turned strikes into fractures, fractures to broken shards, shattered voxels, opening, exit. There was no quarantine field, no background overlay of disruption to lock him down. Mistake. He wouldn't be kept so easily.

When the darkening fragments had slid to join the others on the ground, the gap growing large enough to slip through, the program had emerged only to more walls. Twisting corridors cutting off retreat, the static crackle of a force field blocking the sky above. The space was larger. Less direct. Still a cage. He'd stalled for a moment, fury rising through his processing, surging loud and jagged in his endless noise as his grip tightened on the burning orange disks. His disks. (The user tried to take them, too.) He'd known the paths would be useless. Expected the turns, spirals, branching misdirection. This was a trap. It had always been a trap. A lieThe mirrors came as a surprise

[yorisearching]

In the distance, Yori could hear the shatter as Rinzler broke free of the first room, echoing strangely in the walls of the maze. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, scraping together all the strength she could find

'Team Protagonist' discussions

[creator_man]

After the labyrinth was complete, Flynn pinged those of his friend who'd expressed concern over Rinzler.

He wasn't doing this alone.

And Tron wasn't alone. Any version of him.

So he waited, with the coordinates sent out, until others came for the watch.

[yorisearching]

Possessed of both her own lightjet and a fondness of high-speed flight, it was a very short lapse of time between the moment Yori received Flynn's ping and her arrival just outside the labyrinth.

The thick enclosing walls made her shudder, even from the outside and even knowing they were meant only to help. She silently cursed Clu again for making it necessary.

Yori approached with caution, not wanting to interfere with anything Flynn was doing. She wasn't entirely sure where to find him now.

[creator_man]

Flynn saw the approaching lightjet and was the one who found her, in fact. He moved quickly, relatively, but his face was blank and shaded, mostly by the hood he'd raised over his head again.

"Yori," he called out, approaching, then stopping a few steps out, before looking down. "He didn't give the discs up. Other than that, he's still inside the first structure, though I don't think it will hold him in for too much longer."

Because with the speed she'd arrived yet, Flynn suspected update on the situation here would be of the utmost importance for her, right now.

[yorisearching]

The hope that some part of this might be easy clenched and broke in Yori's core. She'd known there were a dozen ways the tactic could go wrong, but it had seemed worth trying.

"Because he realized it wasn't Clu?" she guessed, from the definite lack of cheer in Flynn's expression. She folded her arms, blinking hard. Either thanking Flynn for the effort or apologizing for the failure of her suggestion felt too awkward to bear, as though she were accusing Flynn. It would probably come out that way, her emotions too volatile to trust.

Very little need to ask, either, how Rinzler felt about that. "Will you let me in?" she asked, quietly. "Maybe I can calm him down." Letting Flynn go in himself seemed like far too much risk so early.

[voiceless_anon]

Anon made another slow circle of the area in the Recognizer, the loop centered loosely on the labyrinth that Rinzler was quarantined in. The Recognizer's long-range sensors swept the Outlands, searching for any potential approaches. Curious programs needed to be warned off; potential rescuers needed to be discouraged somewhat more firmly. He hadn't seen any on his current shift, however

[notglitching]

Crash. Shatter. Near, close enough to shudder through the smooth flat ground with a violent wrench. A crunch as structure failed, turned to fragments, jagged edges, tiny broken voxels. Rinzler let the force pass through him, swayed with quick motion through a low combat ready crouch as his helmet snapped around, towards the impact.

The cage was less adaptable.

Below the walls, Rinzler could hardly view the devastation at the crash site. But partitions fragmented, blocks suddenly disjoint, lines splitting as the code around him unraveled. Just slightly.

Enough to see. Enough to feel. Walls fractured, the former black solidity a sudden spiderweb of flaws and imperfection. Force transferred along hard-coded lines and rigid structure, vibration riding through vibration, shaking, tearing, wrecking the unbending dark walls.

And lighter ones as well.

The clear barrier in front blanked and split, fine lines of instability shearing out in all directions. A grinding slide of voxels on voxels as a large slice of the upper half fell away

[namesram]

The shuddering rush of the Recognizer overhead -- too close, something wrong, oh User, Anon! -- broke whatever tenuous equilibrium they'd really been sectors away from even beginning to establish. Ram ducked instinctively, his startled face turning upward to follow the craft's path, and the shudder beneath his feet as it tore into the maze nearly sent him reeling.

And suddenly, he and Rinzler were face to face, with was nothing at all of any significance between them.

Their eyes might have met across the broken section of wall, except that the breakage hadn't extended to That Confounded Helmet(tm).

Then Rinzler was goneRam pulled in the breath he'd forgotten to take a moment ago. The top of the maze would normally have been too high for him, but that was without the place suddenly being full of convenient rubble

[creator_man]

Flynn was too focused on the programs talking inside the labyrinth to catch the motion of the Recognizer more than out of the corner of his eye until it was way too late to do anything other than a brief cry of alarm.

This wasn't good; not with the color of the Recognizer, not with the damage it had caused, and not with the familiar figure that jumped out of the vehicle. Nor with the defenselessness of his friend down there, nor with the escape of his other friend.

He took a sharp breath, and then he was already moving.

"Roy. Make sure that Ram is safe. Yori..." Quick glance her way. "If you can stay up here and make sure we don't miss anything because of limited field of vision?"

And he was already moving back down.

From what he could see, the structure was no longer holding Rinzler. Which meant that it was only going to get in the way now. He needed to be able to see, so as soon as he touched the ground and could focus on the code, the walls would start retracting down into the ground he'd built them from.