Compiling - Tron, Rinzler, Clu - R for dark themes
Title: Compiling
Rating: R
Fandom; Pairing: Tron; Clu/Tron or Clu/Rinzler if you squint
Word Count: ~1500
Disclaimer: Full disclaimer in my profile. I don't own the story or characters. They belong to Disney.
Summary: An exploration of the dark, dangerous relationships between Tron and Clu, Clu and Rinzler, and, perhaps Tron and Rinzler.
Note/Warnings: Dark fic. Warning for TORTURE/BRAINWASHING/BAD THINGS. Also, SPOILERS.
Fic involves an imagining of how Clu turned Tron into Rinzler.
This is the background I needed to do to write future Clu/Rinzler fics. So. Yeah. Guess I should get back to writing some RicStar fics now.
Streamlining
He enjoyed watching the Games. Yes, there were many other things he could be doing with his time-certainly more productive things. That was why only two out of ten came to the Games these days-all others were being rectified.
The Games had been innovated, stream-lined, and then made larger than life to accommodate the larger crowds and the thinning flock of aberrations to be tossed into execution by Games. But he did not watch for the innovation or the splendor. These things bored him.
He came, because at the end of a few rounds, the announcer said, “Opponent 4 versus Rinzler,” in the same monotone tone used for any other challenge. Through the force field, he could hear the roar of the crowds. They didn’t want to see the de-resolution, though they would, but it would always be disappointing to them. They came for something other than the data spilled.
The crowd frenzied as Rinzler swept into his first move. Opponent 4 was capable, certainly, might even make it through on a technicality as he had before. But Clu did enjoy watching the data come tumbling down. He twisted his fingers and the arena turned smoothly, Rinzler moving in perfect balance, while Opponent 4’s guard slipped around him.
Rinzler was efficient and powerful, but for the economy of his motions he was always an entertainer. Somewhere between perfection and a program built to please came the grace of a well-balanced weapon.
Yes, he observed the Games for much the same reason any one did-because of Rinzler. He was so wholly perfect that it was enrapturing. When he moved it was as if the cycles themselves slowed down in awe.
And Clu knew, deep in his coding, that that grace came from the perfection of the program. No extraneous lights or design. Pared down to smooth dark surfaces. His communication was even stripped down to the body of his code. There was so little code and so much power-that was what perfection was.
But it was a brutal, violent road to that sort of perfection, he reflected. There had been so much of the imperfect in him before, though, that it had been a joy to strip Rinzler into the program he was today. Yes, a true joy.
Dreaming
When not at the Games or at CLU’s side, he was often at a loss. It felt unnatural in some way to not be following some directive, so he usually returned to his excessively lavish quarters-a gift from CLU, of course-and went into power-saving. He was never really off, or unaware, but he wasn’t wasting energy feeling ill at ease in this elaborate waste of data that CLU had built him. It was, he had to admit, perfection, but perfection did not mean as much to him as it did to CLU.
He often felt data leaking from his disc while he power-saved. It was most likely a flaw that he should have repaired in his coding, but he almost enjoyed it. Some of the data made no sense to him, but if it was truly a flaw in his code then surely CLU would have noticed it.
“You are perfection,” he always said. “Truly, the most perfect of programs, Rinzler.”
He would clap a hand on his shoulder then and the empty thing inside him that left him unnatural when not fighting something would fill and, as close as any program could, he thought he felt something. CLU assured him that feelings were not only evidence of the flaws of users, but he struggled with the concept.
The data the leaked was almost always of the Games, but it was simplified and not quite as sleek. When he was running at full power he could never remember having done exactly as he had in these data leaks. It did not bother him, however, as he was clearly only processing and making a coherent whole of unrelated packets.
“New guy was asking about you,” a voice said, casually from over his shoulder. There was only a wall there, his sensors told him. The voice was only a leak, even if he would never remember whose voice it was once he was running on full power.
“It’s too bad he’s in a match now,” he heard another voice say. “I’ll probably never meet him.”
Then the data leaks moved on. There were sometimes other voices, but the faces had been smoothed out into featureless black or white surfaces.
After a few cycles, he turned on and returned to normal function.
The voice he’d heard while power-saving, though, disturbed him. It was all just excess data making sense of itself, he hypothesized. Still, it had felt as if it was coming from his own code. He growled slightly, but there was only a rough sound. No, his code had never had speech functionality-it was unnecessary and inefficient. He communicated perfectly without such a frivolous plug-in.
If Clu had wanted him to speak, Rinzler trusted it would have been in his code.
Rectifying
Repurposing a program needn’t be a messy, painful process. In fact, it can be quite simple.
Clu does not want this to be simple, or clean, or painless-though that is so outside his programming. He did not think there was any part of him that did not want for perfection, but until recently he did not know how that want would make him feel. Betrayal, first, then many other things flood his data.
The Creator has betrayed him. Tron has betrayed him for the Creator’s sake. But the Creator is not here, and that is what caused his hand to fall short of deresolution. No, deresolution would not satisfy this thing inside his code that demands something more than perfection. He must obey the things that the Creator has written into him.
Tron screams until his coding corrupts. Then there’s silence, unless one is close enough to hear the skipping growl of his broken voice faculty.
His lights are so dim that his skin is darkening everywhere but where open wounds in his code are actively leaking his data. There it lays on the floor, bright and red. Clu expected it to be blue, but it’s a dark burnt orange.
Leaning down, he picks up a handful. It’s still warm.
Tron growls. Clu can only assume it’s at him, though his eyes can no longer focus.
He picks a shard of data amongst the pile and forces it against Tron’s slack lips.
“We’re hardly done here,” he says.
Tron growls and spits out his own data.
Clu lifts up the two data discs and looks at them. He could use both of them together; fuse them somehow. He’ll be taking apart so much of Tron’s basic programming that it would be an easy transfer.
Then, if he were ever betrayed again, though he will make certain that Tron’s programming does not even allow him to conceive of betrayal, he would always have a second. A second disc. A second chance.
“When I’m done with you,” he says. “You’ll be perfected.”
He rolls the word around on his tongue, but it doesn’t seem to fit right.
“No, rectified.”
Unmaking
He feels it slipping away, a slow deresolution that still comes terrifyingly quickly. He is broken inside and out, from his most surface data to his deepest code.
Kevin is there, sometimes, but it isn’t Kevin-it’s Clu. It never doesn’t hurt.
Once they’ve shredded his data and left him an inch from derezzing, Clu comes to him and speaks.
“You’ll need a new visual interface,” he says. “We wouldn’t want anyone getting too suspicious and accusing my foremost soldier of disloyalty.”
“Speaking of loyalty,” he continues. “I’ll keep most of that programming. It’s almost your root and I wouldn’t want to disrupt it. Your training, your capabilities, yes, you’ll need those. But your memories.”
He hears Clu erase that data and it hurts him worse than anything before. He has only small strings of that code when his data disc isn’t installed, but once the disc is back in place even those last strings will be gone.
Who will Kevin Flynn be to him? An enemy? A blank? He feels sick thinking about it.
And what of Yori? That memory data will be the last of her left anywhere on the grid. He will not even remember her to mourn. He already knows Clu would never allow it.
“Most of your programming is for protection,” Clu says. “But I need you to be a hunter, not a guard, Tron. Sorry. It’s nothing against security programs. I just want you to be better.”
“I want you to be perfect,” he adds.
His one intact hand, trapped in a force field, clenches into a fist.
“There,” Clu says. “That should do it.”
Tron hears something he can’t identify, almost like the sound of data discs colliding. Then Clu is behind him, lining the rewritten data disc up with the space on his back. He braces, sick with the knowledge that in a few cycles he will not even remember this pain.
Everything goes black as his code is washed over by new data.
The refresh comes. Rinzler stands in a small cell. Before him is a program he does not recognize.
“I am Clu,” it says. “You are Rinzler.”
He nods, understanding.
“You fight for the programs,” Clu says. “You fight for me.”
Rating: R
Fandom; Pairing: Tron; Clu/Tron or Clu/Rinzler if you squint
Word Count: ~1500
Disclaimer: Full disclaimer in my profile. I don't own the story or characters. They belong to Disney.
Summary: An exploration of the dark, dangerous relationships between Tron and Clu, Clu and Rinzler, and, perhaps Tron and Rinzler.
Note/Warnings: Dark fic. Warning for TORTURE/BRAINWASHING/BAD THINGS. Also, SPOILERS.
Fic involves an imagining of how Clu turned Tron into Rinzler.
This is the background I needed to do to write future Clu/Rinzler fics. So. Yeah. Guess I should get back to writing some RicStar fics now.
Streamlining
He enjoyed watching the Games. Yes, there were many other things he could be doing with his time-certainly more productive things. That was why only two out of ten came to the Games these days-all others were being rectified.
The Games had been innovated, stream-lined, and then made larger than life to accommodate the larger crowds and the thinning flock of aberrations to be tossed into execution by Games. But he did not watch for the innovation or the splendor. These things bored him.
He came, because at the end of a few rounds, the announcer said, “Opponent 4 versus Rinzler,” in the same monotone tone used for any other challenge. Through the force field, he could hear the roar of the crowds. They didn’t want to see the de-resolution, though they would, but it would always be disappointing to them. They came for something other than the data spilled.
The crowd frenzied as Rinzler swept into his first move. Opponent 4 was capable, certainly, might even make it through on a technicality as he had before. But Clu did enjoy watching the data come tumbling down. He twisted his fingers and the arena turned smoothly, Rinzler moving in perfect balance, while Opponent 4’s guard slipped around him.
Rinzler was efficient and powerful, but for the economy of his motions he was always an entertainer. Somewhere between perfection and a program built to please came the grace of a well-balanced weapon.
Yes, he observed the Games for much the same reason any one did-because of Rinzler. He was so wholly perfect that it was enrapturing. When he moved it was as if the cycles themselves slowed down in awe.
And Clu knew, deep in his coding, that that grace came from the perfection of the program. No extraneous lights or design. Pared down to smooth dark surfaces. His communication was even stripped down to the body of his code. There was so little code and so much power-that was what perfection was.
But it was a brutal, violent road to that sort of perfection, he reflected. There had been so much of the imperfect in him before, though, that it had been a joy to strip Rinzler into the program he was today. Yes, a true joy.
Dreaming
When not at the Games or at CLU’s side, he was often at a loss. It felt unnatural in some way to not be following some directive, so he usually returned to his excessively lavish quarters-a gift from CLU, of course-and went into power-saving. He was never really off, or unaware, but he wasn’t wasting energy feeling ill at ease in this elaborate waste of data that CLU had built him. It was, he had to admit, perfection, but perfection did not mean as much to him as it did to CLU.
He often felt data leaking from his disc while he power-saved. It was most likely a flaw that he should have repaired in his coding, but he almost enjoyed it. Some of the data made no sense to him, but if it was truly a flaw in his code then surely CLU would have noticed it.
“You are perfection,” he always said. “Truly, the most perfect of programs, Rinzler.”
He would clap a hand on his shoulder then and the empty thing inside him that left him unnatural when not fighting something would fill and, as close as any program could, he thought he felt something. CLU assured him that feelings were not only evidence of the flaws of users, but he struggled with the concept.
The data the leaked was almost always of the Games, but it was simplified and not quite as sleek. When he was running at full power he could never remember having done exactly as he had in these data leaks. It did not bother him, however, as he was clearly only processing and making a coherent whole of unrelated packets.
“New guy was asking about you,” a voice said, casually from over his shoulder. There was only a wall there, his sensors told him. The voice was only a leak, even if he would never remember whose voice it was once he was running on full power.
“It’s too bad he’s in a match now,” he heard another voice say. “I’ll probably never meet him.”
Then the data leaks moved on. There were sometimes other voices, but the faces had been smoothed out into featureless black or white surfaces.
After a few cycles, he turned on and returned to normal function.
The voice he’d heard while power-saving, though, disturbed him. It was all just excess data making sense of itself, he hypothesized. Still, it had felt as if it was coming from his own code. He growled slightly, but there was only a rough sound. No, his code had never had speech functionality-it was unnecessary and inefficient. He communicated perfectly without such a frivolous plug-in.
If Clu had wanted him to speak, Rinzler trusted it would have been in his code.
Rectifying
Repurposing a program needn’t be a messy, painful process. In fact, it can be quite simple.
Clu does not want this to be simple, or clean, or painless-though that is so outside his programming. He did not think there was any part of him that did not want for perfection, but until recently he did not know how that want would make him feel. Betrayal, first, then many other things flood his data.
The Creator has betrayed him. Tron has betrayed him for the Creator’s sake. But the Creator is not here, and that is what caused his hand to fall short of deresolution. No, deresolution would not satisfy this thing inside his code that demands something more than perfection. He must obey the things that the Creator has written into him.
Tron screams until his coding corrupts. Then there’s silence, unless one is close enough to hear the skipping growl of his broken voice faculty.
His lights are so dim that his skin is darkening everywhere but where open wounds in his code are actively leaking his data. There it lays on the floor, bright and red. Clu expected it to be blue, but it’s a dark burnt orange.
Leaning down, he picks up a handful. It’s still warm.
Tron growls. Clu can only assume it’s at him, though his eyes can no longer focus.
He picks a shard of data amongst the pile and forces it against Tron’s slack lips.
“We’re hardly done here,” he says.
Tron growls and spits out his own data.
Clu lifts up the two data discs and looks at them. He could use both of them together; fuse them somehow. He’ll be taking apart so much of Tron’s basic programming that it would be an easy transfer.
Then, if he were ever betrayed again, though he will make certain that Tron’s programming does not even allow him to conceive of betrayal, he would always have a second. A second disc. A second chance.
“When I’m done with you,” he says. “You’ll be perfected.”
He rolls the word around on his tongue, but it doesn’t seem to fit right.
“No, rectified.”
Unmaking
He feels it slipping away, a slow deresolution that still comes terrifyingly quickly. He is broken inside and out, from his most surface data to his deepest code.
Kevin is there, sometimes, but it isn’t Kevin-it’s Clu. It never doesn’t hurt.
Once they’ve shredded his data and left him an inch from derezzing, Clu comes to him and speaks.
“You’ll need a new visual interface,” he says. “We wouldn’t want anyone getting too suspicious and accusing my foremost soldier of disloyalty.”
“Speaking of loyalty,” he continues. “I’ll keep most of that programming. It’s almost your root and I wouldn’t want to disrupt it. Your training, your capabilities, yes, you’ll need those. But your memories.”
He hears Clu erase that data and it hurts him worse than anything before. He has only small strings of that code when his data disc isn’t installed, but once the disc is back in place even those last strings will be gone.
Who will Kevin Flynn be to him? An enemy? A blank? He feels sick thinking about it.
And what of Yori? That memory data will be the last of her left anywhere on the grid. He will not even remember her to mourn. He already knows Clu would never allow it.
“Most of your programming is for protection,” Clu says. “But I need you to be a hunter, not a guard, Tron. Sorry. It’s nothing against security programs. I just want you to be better.”
“I want you to be perfect,” he adds.
His one intact hand, trapped in a force field, clenches into a fist.
“There,” Clu says. “That should do it.”
Tron hears something he can’t identify, almost like the sound of data discs colliding. Then Clu is behind him, lining the rewritten data disc up with the space on his back. He braces, sick with the knowledge that in a few cycles he will not even remember this pain.
Everything goes black as his code is washed over by new data.
The refresh comes. Rinzler stands in a small cell. Before him is a program he does not recognize.
“I am Clu,” it says. “You are Rinzler.”
He nods, understanding.
“You fight for the programs,” Clu says. “You fight for me.”