Power of voodoo
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.
( Who do? You do. Do what? )
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.
( Who do? You do. Do what? )
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 gone.
Ram 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.
He took a step back. Then another. Then he ran at full tilt for the half-opening, leaped to the side to kick off from the wall where the broken edge made a tenuous foothold, felt a crunch beneath him as his foot hit, and hurled himself upward for the left wall's top edge as the rest of the barrier crumbled away. There was just enough momentum left to let him scramble to the top.
Rinzler might be going after the Recognizer. He might be going after its pilot.
Or he might simply be going.
There was too little time for the Users to react. Too many factors to run a calculation. Whatever was going to happen, the only way Ram was going to get to do anything about it was if he were right there when it did.
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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.
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The Users were better suited to emergency care of anyone damaged (Users all, they were only damaged, please!).
She was already moving as Flynn spoke. If Flynn wanted eyes above, that was fine. Good strategy.
Not a chance in infinite worlds that Yori was going to stay up here paralyzed.
She drew her lightjet baton, running, and initiated it in the moment she leaped from the platform, counting nanocycles of unsupported drop before the patterns solidified and her own jet bore her up.
Yori cut a sharp turn to her left, banking to circle the area in a tight orbit. Searching by sight and by modified targeting systems, she tracked the movements of programs in the rubble below. One terrifyingly still. One moving slowly. One moving fast. One blur headed away, as only Tron--only Rinzler, here, could move (relief Yori didn't have time to feel). Two identifiably the Users--
That was too many programs. What--?
Tinge of yellow energy on the Recognizer. Yori jumped to conclusions, and hit an area broadcast with all the volume and the widest spectrum her refitted Blackguard jet was capable of. "Virus in the Recognizer!" she shouted.
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Two more steps, a leap off a shattered wall as it crumbled and slid below him, and Rinzler landed on a jagged shard at the edge of the crater. Huge, angled, the slag of broken structure half-joined with a chunk of the recognizer's leg, all skewed in a heap of code and fragments that still burned with the heat of destruction. Rinzler didn't care. Disk and hand dug in equally as he clung on, swarmed up the side as it destabilized beneath his weight. The Recognizer would have been easier. Safer. But Rinzler didn't care about that, either. The Recognizer was further. And all he needed was height.
He pulled over the top, past the top, baton snatching free of his side. A quick jerk apart as the world rushed closer, disk snapping back into place behind as the ground slammed nearer, lines tracing through the space around him, falling, closing-
-lifting. The jet was still half-structured, orange filaments of compiling code firming as pressure slamming up against new-formed wings. Rinzler skimmed the ground, watched voxels and debris flash in front, the looming Recognizer blocking the path ahead as he pressed up, cleared it to the side. Noise surged up quick and harsh: relief, satisfaction, fury. The lightjet curved as it lifted, a short twist to face his enemies below, weapons bright. He was out, he was up, and they would never-
'Virus in the Recognizer!'
...
He knew the voice. Knew her. She was here, she was-
(It hadn't been a lie.)
Rinzler froze. Hesitated, smooth turn of the jet skipping. Faltering. Then it rose up, rolled away. He needed to leave.
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Yori wasn't conscious of making any kind of decision. She was following, that was all. The turn she pulled sent the maze and the Grid spinning under and above her, and none of it mattered right now but Rinzler.
All Tron's friends below would understand. No matter how much they disapproved. They could disapprove later, when Yori had time.
Yori arced her jet upward, with a high-pressure twist crushing her toward the controls but bringing the Grid back to its usual orientation.
She didn't want to follow too closely, she wasn't targeting Rinzler and had no wish to make him think she might. But she dumped what few extra drops of energy that allowed into gaining altitude. He would try to shake her. She intended not to let him.
In happier days, when Tron had outflown her it was usually because he was designed for long battles and she exhausted her reserves more quickly. But Rinzler had spent a great deal of energy inside the maze, and Yori's modified lightjet was efficient. She had a little margin.
Yori had no idea whether Rinzler could hear her or would allow himself to listen. No idea what Tron's struggle and Clu's code had made of the whole mess, except that she was sure he wouldn't hurt her. She forced her teeth out of their clench and transmitted, "It's only me. Please, wherever you're going, let me come with you."
He might be hurt; he'd never wait for anyone to help him, not after the trap. Even if he was entirely undamaged, letting him run now meant they'd made things worse, chased him away from his best sources of help.
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I did that.
It was the biggest set of errors she'd ever caused. It was rad.
Abraxas would have been pleased.
But why did it hurt......?
She'd managed to hide the more obvious aspects of her infection well enough to fool the pilot, but the impact had accelerated the process. Sickly yellow-and-black veins inched down over her skin. The remote possibility that she might have enough energy left to infect part of the maze as well was nixed as her arm gave out beneath her. Collapsing to one side with a squeak of surprise, she toppled over a broken edge and out of sight into the jagged rubble.
A small puff of yellow pixels tinkled upward, vanishing into the wind.
Ram had let out a yell as Rinzler sprinted for the Recognizer, faltered as the enforcer sought a vantage point instead of the vehicle's pilot (there, inert but blue circuits still glowing, please let him be all right), and gasped as the red lightjet roared out of the crater and took to the sky.
His first instinct was to follow. Up, out, away, chasing the fleeing program into the illusion that had been created for him, because somebody should, no version of this program -- however changed -- should have to race alone into the dark like this. Instead, he sprinted for Anon, calling his name, getting no answer, kneeling at his side to take a remote reading of his vital stats. The results brought a flood of relief. He was no medical program, but despite the visible damage, it was clear that the monitor wouldn't be derezzing any time soon, even if the Users hadn't been moments away.
Turning around, Ram raised both his hands, thumbs-up in a signal of glad reassurance. The Users were closing fast. He could see ZackAttack right at Flynn's heels, and for a moment just wanted to go and hold onto him until they could all figure out what to do next.
Then Yori's jet shot off after Rinzler's.
And he was pretty sure the Users hadn't brought their own jets.
With one last look back at Roy and Flynn, Ram bolted for the Recognizer, swarmed high enough up the tilted leg to get ground clearance, pulled his baton and leaped.
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No. (She was there.)
Rinzler's jet was a dark streak through the air, splashes of red-orange glow burning out in sharp contrast. Rise, twist, past the plateau, evade, evade. He was better in the sky, there was no one who could match him here, he knew this.
She still followed.
Behind. Above. She'd started with height, and the blue-white jet slipped upwards still, cutting him off. Not cutting him off, not blocking, angle of the nose skewed, wrong for attack. He flattened against his own jet as it danced up closer, flipped for a better angle, he could show this-no, no, wrenched aside, down, away. She couldn't be here, he couldn't...
'let me come with you'
No. The sky flew past, twisting from light to dark, bright outline above to the black rocks and jagged canyons below. Twisted like mirrors, twisted like lies and broken blue-edged voxels and he was breathing harsh and fast in bursts of static and everything was sharp and he couldn't-not again-
The black mask dipped, and the red-orange shape hovered, skipped-dropped. Nose down, no trail, a moment (two, three...) of true freefall, edges and lines below crashing towards a sudden close. A... a pause. A fraction of an instant of uncertainty. Then hands tightened on controls, the jet sliced to the side in a sudden arc, skipped the edge of a jutting dark spike-and dipped below. Jet angled, slicing sideways through a low canyon, below an overhanging ledge.
Back out again, but it was fading, the jet's glow drawing inwards before the whole shape darkened to black. Black to match the program, black to match the formless stone around. Rinzler's focus was a blur-twist up, duck below, skim beneath that clifftop. Unmapped terrain, proximity on all sides forming a swarm of input/output/threat, and he was drained-by the maze, by the effort of concealment. Didn't matter. He wouldn't let it. He wouldn't let her follow, wouldn't let her find him, and if the sky was hers, he wouldn't fight her for it.
can't
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An old game, this, testing Tron's reflexes and Yori's ability to track him, but over the unfamiliar territory Yori could only hope to trace expanding paths of best probability--he'd choose the sheltering cliffs, the harder turns, the ones she couldn't even see. Always had. And Rinzler now was feeling hunted enough that nothing short of complete exhaustion would stop him.
Chasing Rinzler into crashing or stranding himself in the Outlands was so totally the opposite of what Yori wanted that she slowed, saving her energy, reassessing.
There behind, a glint of blue. Ram would insist. She couldn't blame him under the circumstances, but Rinzler faced with Ram was demonstrably less able to resist the deep-coded aggression.
Yori swallowed a curse and addressed Rinzler again, gently, whether he could hear her or not. "You know my reflexes aren't up to that kind of speed in the rocks. I'd crash." An instant's hesitation, fighting back her own desperate longing. "I just want to know you're not hurt. Please. If--" She broke off again, gritted her teeth, went on. "If you'll tell me you weren't damaged, I'll make sure no one follows you now."
No promises for later.
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If Rinzler was going to ground, they'd never find him alive.
"Tell her," he whispered into the dead air. "So I can take her home."
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Always words.
The quiet voice cut through the open channel, wrapped gently around him as orange lined hands clenched desperately tight on the controls. She would crash. She would leave. She needed to leave. Needed to know. He couldn't help her, couldn't stop her, couldn't-
...he didn't talk.
'Tell her.' The black mask dipped, form drawn in, rigid. And he opened a channel.
Sound ticked out in the harsh rattle, stuttered, skipped. Noise. Just noise. He wasn't damaged, wasn't hurt or broken. He was better, always better-but he had no voice. Sound scraped, out, a rough and snarling burst of static, glass-edged and wordless and furiously desperate.
He was fine. There was nothing wrong with him. But the words weren't there, noise caught fragmented and unsteady with error and limits and lie, and he was flying blind, automation moving him where cognition failed. And he couldn't say it and he didn't know how and she-they-
"Go."
An echo snarled out before it broke, he broke, connection slamming shut. He curled in against the redirect, wind's rush drowned by the harsh catch of skipping conflict.
It was the best he could do.
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"All right," Yori whispered, realized probably no one had heard the painful rasp. She cleared her throat, dragged her jet's controls into a sharp loop, looking for Ram. "I'm going..."
Hard to see anything with tears in her eyes. The friendly jet was a bright, misshapen glitter. At least she was in no danger of colliding.
"You take care of yourself," she added, wishing she knew what Rinzler thought of any of this. She had no idea what she thought of it herself, except that it hurt, razor edges raking through her code. Memory and analysis, too jumbled to be worth anything, memory and the clouds over the Outlands. Hands and words both working automatically, without room for thought. "Get some rest when you can. I love you--"
She hadn't meant to say that at all. Yori shut her eyes in pure horror and turned off the comm before she did anything else so bitbrained. Not that it wasn't true, because this Rinzler was family even if he wasn't her Tron. But for pity's sake Rinzler was canyon-flying on low energy and she'd just used words guaranteed to stall him out.
The reduced speed was safer for a number of reasons, but Yori was studying the canyons below and behind in dread of evidence she'd actually crashed Rinzler.
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He held his own words in, knuckles white on the controls. Nothing he'd had to say had done any good before.
Tears were clouding his vision too. He shook them away and scanned grimly for any sign of what Yori's words might have done.
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But there was another branch, too. A tenuous thread of awareness, confusion, painfully desperate focus. Holding on. Listening.
(It mattered.)
She was going. (Relief-so much relief.)
She wanted him to take care. (She shouldn't-it was a lie-no-it was wrong.)
She loved him.
Rinzler stalled.
Internal. External. Cognition looped, visuals fractured frame by frame. He was flying/falling/gone, there, and she loved him and she loved him and why. The hot crackle of reprimand, edged lines closing him in but he was broken and she was there/gone/missing. And the world was bright blue voxels across a smooth black floor, and Clu's voice on reboot (cold, cold, wary), and he couldn't speak and he couldn't think, and he wasn't made-
There was a crack.
Crunch. Splinter. Senses snapped back, disordered and imperfect, as the right wing sheared on impact with the canyon wall-a jarring, discordant scrape of voxels grinding against unstructured data. The lightjet dropped, turned end over end as it tumbled towards the dark ground below with sickening speed, circuitry flickering to futile life. Less than a hundred nanos to break, fall, shatter in a splash of dim-lit shards.
Rinzler wasn't in it.
The dark shape detached just under a third of the canyon's height from impact, flung up, back, left by the gyrations of the spinning wreck. Still a fall, still a crash, motion erratic, uncontrolled. The program slammed against a rocky protrusion near the edge of a low cliff, skidded across the short plateau. Not a jump, not a roll, not at these speeds, and though he curled to a ball as he hit the black stone, it only lasted so far. When the sideways tumble slowed to a stop, the program lay more or less inert, half sprawled on his side in an unmoving heap. Circuits flickered, dim red-orange pricks of light against the blackness.
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A cry of desperate denial hurt her own ears.
Neither Tron nor Rinzler would ever be so simply derezzed. He was still active down there, still alive, he had to be, or else she'd--
Yori smacked transmission back on. "Ram, stay in the air," she ordered bluntly, even as she dove. "Stay in the air. He won't hurt me. I need you able to fetch the Users."
She didn't know if he'd listen. Yori probably wouldn't have listened. She hoped Ram had more sense.
Crash site there, trajectory, angles, an active program's energy right here. Yori cut all thrust and slowed to drop as gently as possible into the rough cliff formation, deactivated her jet and bent her legs to cushion the rest of the momentum. She'd come in too fast for grace.
The ground was a painful jolt, shoving her roughly against a lower ledge; her helmet cracked against an outcropping. Yori stumbled upright and shook away the dizziness, running toward the limp dark form. "I said I'd go if you were all right," she whispered angrily. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Users--" She fell to her knees, anxiously looking for physical damage, telltale cracks in Rinzler's armor. That flicker--his camouflage functions, or failing power?
Yori bit her lip and reached for Rinzler's melded disk. There wasn't time to wait, no chance he'd let anyone more qualified check. If he needed immediate help, she didn't care what he wanted.
It accepted her hacked permissions to undock, at least. Clu's traps were never as subtle as Clu thought they were--especially to the program who'd consulted on how to keep repurposed loyalty working in the User world, among other and worse things. Which didn't mean they wouldn't leave everyone nearby derezzed if she grew careless.
She took a careful breath, blinked to clear her vision for the delicate task of opening Rinzler's code, watching for signs he needed an emergency energy infusion from Yori's low reserves. Silent tears itched on both cheeks. "Shh," Yori whispered. "No threat. Only me. I have permission. You'll be all right."
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She was right, glitch it. Someone had to summon help if she needed it -- if they needed it, down there. It was the only argument that could have kept him in the air right now.
"Two micros," he barked. It was a reasonable length, he thought, to wait for a signal before taking more direct action, and there wasn't time to say any more before Yori, landing, was cut off.
He swept around, diving low again to sweep the canyon, sensors and visuals straining for answers. The orange spatter of the ruined jet, already fading into the terrain. A flicker of blue and orange off to the left -- yes, both alive, Yori active, though more details would have to wait for another sweep.
He pulled up above the outcroppings, far enough to get a line of transmission to the maze -- though he didn't think anyone was up on the platform anymore. And nobody back there had a lightjet, anyway, unless Anon had brought one. The chances that they could get here in time to make any difference--
"Rinzler's down," he sent tersely, shoving all the overcalculations aside. "He's alive. Yori's checking."
Then he was diving for another pass. He'd hardly been able to make out any details on the first one -- just the brief motion of light, orange and blue, standing out against the dark. Surely Rinzler's circuits hadn't been flickering that badly -- his fears were magnifying the memory, weren't they? And Yori--
The loop upward had taken about a fifth of his self-imposed time limit.
A lot could happen in that space.
Clenching his teeth, Ram swept into the canyon again.
[[aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ;; ..Roy would like to thank you for saying that, Yori.]]
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Input. Response lagged, functions sparking unsteadily at the projection of movement, cognition failing to meet any active standards. Was this restart? Clumsy. Inefficient. He should run better than this, he knew that much.
He was supposed to be perfect.
But there were footsteps, movement, presence closing, nearing, and sharp panic spiked through his processing, and he didn't know why. He shouldn't be afraid. Wasn't made for that. If he was weak, he would [derezz]/[be fixed], but he wasn't weak, he was the best, he was-
Trapped.
Caged.
Broken.
Hands closed around his disk.
And Rinzler had to move, had to start, but he didn't know how, diagnostics shredding as functions called incomplete, processes flickering through staticky response. Systems scrambled to activity, need, desperation, terror fumbling for control. Sickeningly slow, not enough-never enough, never-and his disk pulled free of sync (NO) and he could feel the touch unlocking him, prying him open and he-
A shudder seized the limp form as functions came online disjointed, wrecked and drained and it couldn't matter, he wouldn't let it matter, he had to stop it. Visuals were still absent, sensors flaring between burning sensitivity and dull blankness, but he didn't need to see, he didn't need to hear or feel, he knew where his disk was.
The program twitched in, limbs dragging unsteadily as faint cracks and abrasions brightened across his outer shell. And then? He moved. Jerked upright-mostly upright-utterly lacking any semblance of his usual balance, and launched forward. No grace, no stability, body lagging and half-responsive. Just speed. Moving, reaching, grabbing for his disks as he crashed into the form that held them, noise rising in harsh bursts of static. This couldn't happen.
(Again.)
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