ROUND TWO
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His whirring hitches. She is confusing him. He has not had capacity to want since his purification at Clu's hands, but want is what he feels now. It burns like his periodic upgrades on the re-purposing rack. Clu is anything but gentle, but the pain and invasion are necessary. There is no perfection without purification.
The first thing he does is de-rez his helmet and gridsuit as swiftly as he can. Then, he pulls the unresisting female to her feet and pushes her brutally against the wall, hand snaking into her soft hair, trapping her there as he kisses her, trying to scorch away the kiss Clu marked on her and replace it with his own.
She giggled, eyes bright with mischief and the heady feeling of victory at long last. “It's something Users do.”
Another glitch. They are infrequent now, but still present. He is not yet perfect. It does not matter. The only thing that matters is between his body and the wall. Her circuitry is flickering and her body trembles with fear. Fear is a comforting thing, familiar. The only Program who does not fear him is Clu. Yet, her arms come up to wrap around his chest and a thrill courses through his circuits. It is like that moment in the games where the opponent knows he has lost.
Those small, thin hands of hers trace a circuit line down his back that has nearly been forgotten, sending a jolt through him. It's so shocking that he pushes back from her, growling low, and the female's face curls into a cruel smile.
He does not like surprises. One hand still twisted into her hair, he yanks her head so far back as to be painful, growling with annoyance. She gasps, and it only excites him more. The other hand grasps the sparkling cape...
Her worker uniform, a plain white gridsuit with electric blue lines, was transformed; replaced with a shimmering cape of red-purple. It hung loosely from her shoulders and arms, but clung to her body everywhere else, accentuating her sensuous breasts and hips. The warm, seductive smile on her face was full of promise...
Rinzler clamps down on the unwelcome glitch and while he still has a grip on her hair, uses the other hand to tear away the shimmering garment. It hits the floor and dissolves in a shower of sparkles. She glares at him, partly in defiance against the pain, and part because she wants to fight the inevitable.
No mere Program fights him and wins. Using his knee, he forces her legs apart while bowing his head to bite her neck, eliciting a cry of pain. The sound sends a buzz through him like a shot of pure power.
There is no purification without surrender to the stronger. Strength is the only truth on the Grid. Strength is perfection.
His free hand explores her, dancing across the dimly-lit curve across her collarbone that ends with a triangle pattern just above her breasts. Circuit markings are always unique, carved into a Program's rendered skin indelibly. Newer gridsuits do a better job of masking them, but there is nothing to cover the sensitive patterns now. Even in her weakened state, she shudders and tries to struggle.
She is strong. He is stronger.
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Her strength is waning, her struggles growing more feeble. He cannot help a cruel smile of his own. Right now, his circuits are more alive than they've ever been, afire with want. Yet, she must be undone first. Her surrender must be complete before she is perfect.
The hand in her hair slides down and clasps around her slender neck, holding her still as the other caresses the delicate patterns of light on her body, finding them both exotic and familiar. She whimpers softly as his finger traces the lighted mark curving down her hip, and something in him flares. Something is wrong, but he cannot pinpoint what it is.
There is no gentleness as he forces his hand between her legs. Her cries are cut off by the hand on her neck and another brutal kiss. The low humming coming from his throat is loud, like a lightcycle. He can feel the moment she surrenders. One of her hands grips his shoulder and the other palm centers on his chest, over the obsolete “T” symbol. Energy and power surge through them, her raspy cries barely audible over his ominous hum.
In surrender comes the pleasure. In this moment, she is his. It's better than pure energy; better than the Games. Her head is thrown back, eyes closed, her pale hair a tangled mess and her circuit lines afire. She arches into his touch as her fingers trace the edges of his four-square pattern. The sight alone brings him close to overload.
The System was free and Master Control had been destroyed. There had been little time for celebration before. Even her playful seduction earlier had been rushed by the fear of discovery and the need to get to the Tower. Now, as their home lit up in bright, iridescent colors and the joy of freedom, they had as much time as they needed. They'd barely remembered to re-rez the door before they were in each others' arms, trying out that marvelous last gift of the User called “kissing.” Pulling her by the arm, they collapsed on the soft cot in a tangle of limbs and laughter.
He fights back that glitch. There has never been freedom. Programs serve. They know their place and carry out their functions. There has always been Clu and the unceasing war against the Creator's imperfection. Rinzler is so enraged, he barely notices the momentary blush of cold blue that lights him. Curse that glitch! Curse her!
She barely has the time to utter a cry of protest before he yanks her away from the wall and all but throws her onto his narrow, thin cot. Once again, her eyes are wide with fear, the triangle at her chest pulsing orange and blue.
Fear is right. Anger is familiar. Anger and fear are perfect.
He pulls her narrow wrists above her head with one arm and balances himself with the other. Hate and the desire to punish war with the glitch and its persistent weakness. Who is she and how can she do this to him? Holding nothing back, he invades her roughly. He more feels than hears her cry of anguish.
In pleasure comes the pain. In pain, there is perfection. This is battle - like the Games. His opponent will falter and be destroyed. Rinzler is thrilled.
The glitch is not. The glitch is terrified of what he is doing. The two identities battle for control on a single-bit thread above an abyss as her legs wrap around his waist. She is also fighting. He can see it as their circuit lines flicker and flash in unison.
For the briefest of moments, their lines glow blue-silver. Memory and emotion rush back as their eyes lock. This is not perfection - it's a perversion of everything they ever were to one another.
There is no time to speak or to fight as lucidity slips from their grasp. He snatches her hand and their fingers lace, the briefest of contacts before they overload and corruption seizes them again.
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It is several seconds later when Clu sends for Rinzler again. The mask and gridsuit are back in place, double-disks locked into place. Like always, Rinzler approaches Clu's command chair and bows before it, awaiting orders.
“Enjoyed yourself?” Clu asks.
Rinzler does not answer, so Clu does it for him. He smiles and pats the top of the helmet. “I'm as generous with the rewards as punishments. You know that better than anyone.” After a moment's pause, he adds quietly. “I know you had fun. I had a neural link on both of you the whole time. Very...enlightening.”
Clu is met with a low growl from his enforcer. Rinzler was a dangerous pet to keep, always requiring a delicate balance of manipulation. Enough fear to obey, enough love to carry out orders without hesitation, and just enough hate to keep him effective. Ah, but the payoff was worth the effort.
“She was designed as an engineer. I'll keep her on the bridge with me most of the time and make use of her to perfect the Grid. You do understand, of course.”
Clu can almost picture the combination of confusion and anger under the helmet.
“Be a good boy, Rinzler, and I'll send her to your quarters after the next tournament. Now, go. I'll need you at your best for a raid on sector G4. I suspect some of those Isos eluded us. They'll find another hiding place and we'll need to flush them out.”
Rinzler nods once, then gets to his feet and leaves the room. Over his shoulder, Clu sees his new acquisition, dressed in a respectable worker's coverall. She'll need a new designation to go with her new loyalties, and part of him thinks a variant of “Jordan” would suit her nicely. When the system has been perfected, he won't have much need for Rinzler. He'll have more use for the engineer's skills and...other attributes. But the Grid isn't perfect yet. He will need them both, and they will be very useful for keeping each other in line.
They will be each others' incentive and prize, a mutual chain. And he will gladly hold the other end.
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Mwa ha ha haaaaaa. :3
Seriously, this was great. The clash between Rinzler and Yori's rectified personalities (and the moment where it all breaks down) was fascinating, and Clu's calculation was masterful, too.
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And the way I view Mr. Clu is to take 1982!Flynn and send the Karma Meter to the basement. All that drive and aggression, all that creativity, all that "brakes? what brakes" ambition, and "hell, yeah, I'm a God on the Grid" cockiness, all those slightly perverted tendencies and petty impulses...
What kept it in check for young!Flynn was that Flynn's a genuinely nice guy when it comes down to it - a classic Chaotic Good. His childish tendencies were tempered with genuine love for his friends, compassion for others, and a desire to do right.
Clu was never given those. Clu understood his directives, but never seemed to grasp the whole concept of empathy. Without it, there was nothing to get him considering that his actions were anything less than completely justified and necessary.
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Clu was never given those. Clu understood his directives, but never seemed to grasp the whole concept of empathy. Without it, there was nothing to get him considering that his actions were anything less than completely justified and necessary.
I agree that Flynn was a good guy, but I also think he had a huge blind spot when it came to the programs. To him, they were things, his things that he made so he could change the world, more than they were real people who could be loved. As time went on, that blind spot became Clu's role model, not the good guy; if Betrayal is anything to go by, Flynn stopped being good to Clu many centuries before the coup.
That said, I think Clu did have the good parts of Kevin ("he's me"). But to Clu, things like empathy and love and compassion were secondary to his directives -- the Perfect System, Changing The World -- because that's as far as Flynn's (and Tron's) empathy and love and compassion for him went. I think he even wanted to do better, in his own way ("unlike our selfish creator, blah blah blah I will never betray you!")... but it was all messed up, just like everything else in his scrambled heart. ;;
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Seriously, though, what'd Tron ever do to Clu?
Already flailed at you about this on FF.net, allronix1, but... yeah. Still scary good and beautifully painful. Your excellent Yori-fics are making me want to write her...
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By that, I meant that he Fought For The Users. I think it's fair to say that his directives came before friendship, too...
Betrayal makes it seem as if they weren't really friends since long before the coup, anyway. Tron wasn't into many of the ~perfect~ changes Clu was making. :P
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That actually interested me a lot in Betrayal-- Tron never actually objects to anything Clu says against Flynn. If anything, he seems to agree on a lot of points, that Flynn set up the system such that it needs him, but keeps ditching them all for cycles. His rift with Clu seems to start when Clu abuses his power over the programs, turning the games to killzones (which really, Clu? Was there a point besides pissing Tron off?) and deliberately targeting ISOs.
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The only thing I can think of is also in Betrayal. Flynn mentions that the Grid was "made to handle a certain amount of traffic" or some such. Given ever-increasing numbers of ISOs, maybe the games were meant to take the pressure off. Clu seemed to see them as a form of natural selection, at any rate.
Pissing Tron off was definitely a bonus, however. As was having a convenient way to keep the population in line... :3
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Then, I fell asleep reading Betrayal on the bus. One world-class nightmare later, and it was "write it out or have it come back." And might as well inflict the bad trip on everyone else in range because I'm evil like that.
As for "what did Tron do to Clu?" Tron knew too much about Users and tolerated User imperfection. He fought for all the citizens on the Grid. Tron may not have liked the fact that Flynn vanished for cycles at a time, but he acknowledged that Flynn had responsibilities and a world of his own to tend to, even if they could not see or comprehend that world. Tron also tolerated the Games as recreation - not as a way to weed out the system's weak elements.
Tron tolerated imperfection. Tron would fight to protect it, even if he couldn't understand it. Therefore, he was just too damn dangerous to be allowed freedom and too damn useful to de-rez.
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(The comment has been removed)
(Some IRL context for this - a hard drive or other storage medium will retail traces of a file, even if you delete the file. Even data that overwrites that sector may not obscure the previous contents. This is why you never use your home computer to plan a crime and why companies de-gauss or physically destroy hard drives, even after formatting them)
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The fact that you stepped out of your comfort zone makes it an even greater fill. Normally I don't ask/read non-con/dub-con but I thought it would make an interesting scenario given the characters and you delivered perfectly.
As everyone else has mentioned, you captured the angst that would come with Tronzler and Yori. Rinzler's battle inside himself--!
"Another glitch. They are infrequent now, but still present. He is not yet perfect. It does not matter. The only thing that matters is between his body and the wall."
"He can feel the moment she surrenders. One of her hands grips his shoulder and the other palm centers on his chest, over the obsolete "T" symbol."
"For the briefest of moments, their lines glow blue-silver. Memory and emotion rush back as their eyes lock. This is not perfection - it's a perversion of everything they ever were to one another."
That last one -- oh. My heart. I can only imagine the reunion that would come in the future (if it ever were to happen.)
That ending with Clu -- it was like the last punch to the gut. Everything about this is twisted but still you keep reading. It all spirals downwards and we're left a quivering mess at the end.
Thank you, really.
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The novel does a great job of foregrounding that bond, including a write up of the infamous deleted scene. He's her strength, and she's his respite. He fights overtly, she works in the shadows. They can trust each other without even a picosecond's hesitation. He sought her out before heading to the I/O Tower, for crying out loud! (Again, the book does a better job of explaining the motives.)
I'm overall not sure why I had that moment where they recognized one another. On one level, it is a mercy, because they break the control on each other for that brief moment. On the other hand, the whole situation is Physical Rape coated with Mind Rape, taking the love and trust and inverting it.
Meanwhile, Clu is probably getting off on the mindlink and the power trip because...well, think about Flynn's interaction with Alan and Lora at the arcade; a backhanded compliment that they're a "clean-cut young couple," changing his shirt in front of them, asking if Lora still leaves her clothing on the floor...There's an element of jealousy there because he is not over Lora at that point, and if you're willing to run with the idea that Flynn's a case of Bi the Way, then you can easily see a part of him squeeing over the idea of having them both. Clu is Flynn with the safeties off and without his creator's love and compassion.
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