abaxcity | Conflict://018 — [text; private, encrypted]

[ Well, that's not suspicious at all... ]
Damage report.

[...glitch.

There's a pause before response. Not hesitation, though. Well. Mostly not hesitation.]

Shell damage (minor; multiple).
Impact fractures (left side).

Right arm: partially derezzed.

[Typing's just... a bit slower than usual.]

[ B/ ]

Location. Movement functions impaired?

[The first query's easy enough to answer—a coordinate ping, at the south edge of District One. The second's harder.]

Movement-capable.

[ Right. And Clu's a simple data-pusher. ]

ETA: 8 micros.

[ His lightjet is cloaked -- the threat might still be in the vicinity -- but if anyone could pick it out against the sky, it'd be Rinzler. ]

Acknowledged.

[From everything Rinzler can tell, the user is gone, but he's still taking precautions. From an aerial approach, the combat zone's easily spotted. A half-shattered building, gleaming white ice still coating much of the interior—and visible from the gaps blasted through the roof.

The coordinates lead to a different structure. Rinzler wasn't going to call his admin from anywhere so easily trapped, and if the office building across the street didn't give as much distance as he'd like, it still functioned. Eight micros later, Rinzler's made it to the structure's upper levels. The wide, reflective windows offer easy view of the sky, and Rinzler can spot the faintest shift of dark silhouette interposing between the stars. The enforcer stills and waits, circuits dim, room enclosed from easy view. No way for a threat to know where to look.

But Clu always finds him.]

[ Clu alights on the building's roof, a brief flash of gold wireframe before the lightjet is once again contained in its baton. He makes his way to the stairs, silently finding his way into the room Rinzler is crouched in.

Only when he's certain they're both away from prying eyes does he let his own circuits relight, shedding a warm glow on the abandoned room.

Your admin is not amused, Rinzler. ]

Report.

[ An actual report this time, if you please. ]

[Rinzler moves to stand as his admin enters, the motion just slightly uneven. His own lights are substantially dimmer, the glow of circuitry half-mingled with the jagged glint of cracked and damaged code. Right arm is absent from the elbow down, though relatively few fractures spread up from the gap—a clean cut, low chance of cascade.

Still, form shifts to his usual hunch, head bowing as he outputs response. Verbal report. He's almost getting used to that.]

Resupply attempt. Resources located; structure entered by user. Designation: Rukia.

Avoided encounter.

[The way you told him to. The low rumble skips faintly, an irritated growl edging up beneath, though his stare stays lowered.]

Detected. User attacked; initiated combat. [A one-sided shrug, a few lingering ice crystals dropping to join a damp patch on the ground as he glares downwards.]

Lost.

Clearly.

[ Don't you growl at him, program. Clu frowns, taking in the damage. It's severe, but Rinzler's not in danger of an immediate derezz. ]

Sit.

[ Clu gestures curtly. There's no attempt to reassure Rinzler -- he doesn't need it -- but Clu's certainly not going to let him remain this way. ]

Disc.

[The enforcer bristles slightly, eyes flicking up at the implied rebuke, but he obeys the order. A shift downward, half-kneeling crouch against the wall. And then the second order comes. That gets a freeze. Still, there's no uncertainty to the motion, when it comes. Reach back, snap the disk free from dock. Bring it forward. Gaze low, weapon unlit and inactive. It's automatic. Hardcoded.

It's something he hasn't done for the better part of the last three decicycles.

Rinzler stops. Sound jars out, the harsh rattle of code in conflict building as the pause stretches out, hand locked around his backup. But he's used to that. Used to the conflict, to the crackling press of directive and restriction. Command. Clu hasn't looked at Rinzler's disk for any length since the users first broke the admin. Not even since he had his code repaired.]

You— [Voice stutters out beneath the noise, red-orange lights giving a faint flicker.] You said you'd give it back.

[ Clu pauses in the middle of reaching for the disc, eyes flicking up to Rinzler's.

He'd been avoiding the issue. They both had, really, dancing uncertainly around each other, each watching the other. But it was unavoidable. Here, in this glitched excuse of a User-system, Clu could no more stop Rinzler from regaining parts of himself that he could rezz up his entire army. The only thing that was within his power was controlling the process. Make his enforcer go through him, retain that small scrap of control.

...and he had promised.

(Clu didn't break his promises. Not like Flynn.) ]

I did.

[ Neutral. If you want it, you're going to have to ask for it, Rinzler. ]

[Avoiding. Delaying. He'd watched Clu test his read/write functions on his own backup after the repair, and when the admin hadn't asked for Rinzler's disk next, the enforcer stayed quiet. Easier than volunteering for reformat. Or offering his code to whatever wipes or fresh restrictions Clu might prefer to install. He'd worked to make backups, retrieved Tron's old disk, and even asked his mirror for advice. Contingencies. Important.

And all much, much easier than asking.]

I...

[I want it back.

Voice stalled, the jarring, glitching noise filling the gaps. Not supposed to want. Not supposed to ask. Not supposed to speak by any normal metrics, and maybe he wasn't the only one this place had changed, for that to be a standard. Rinzler stared down, mapped the light shifting visibly through internals as a spark of blue-white flickered and died across a damaged gap.

He looked up at Clu.]

...Give me my code.

[ Well then. A long, inscrutable look was directed Rinzler's way, and Clu silently weighed his options. Refuse, and Rinzler would defy him anyway. Agree, and he would be undoing the work of a kilocycle. His enforcer would remember everything Clu had worked so hard to lock away. But it was becoming increasingly clear that if he wanted to keep Rinzler at all, something would have to be done.

Removing the filters in their entirety was foolish and potentially dangerous; he couldn't predict how his enforcer would react to the sudden influx of information. But in batches, perhaps...

Clu held out a hand. ]

[Stance tightened. Nearly a flinch. But Rinzler stared back. Processing was in lockup, his own projections frantic beneath the constant, grinding press of coded restraint. Restrictions were fragmented, and broken, but still enough to cost in pain and effort. Enough to force a struggle for every disloyal thought or filtered memory. But not always enough to stop him winning. Now.

Clu could fix that easily enough.

But the admin held his hand out, and after a moment, Rinzler passed the disk forward. Maybe from habit. Or reflex. Or hope. Not trust, not quite, if the struggling, desperate glances upward were any sign. Attempts faltered partway, stare dropping before the deep-coded block: the enforcer couldn't examine his own code.

He kept trying anyway, this time.]

[ The joined disc somehow felt heavier than before -- which was impossible, as nothing had been added. But Clu wasted no time in getting down to business, and the red-lit code spiraled out of the disc.

First things first: repairing the physical damage Rinzler had taken. Clu worked deftly, rearranging, rewriting the damaged code, rebuilding the derezzed arm and fractured side. Broken connections and missing subroutines were restored, energy flow resumed -- this was routine, familiar work.

Far more difficult, however, was reversing the filters he'd built up over a kilocycle. Clu exited out of the physical repairs, pulling up the myriad, convoluted sections of code that comprised Rinzler's memory filters. Everything was balanced -- enough filters to prevent conscious access, but wouldn't hinder Rinzler's combat abilities, his intuition, his skills. Things that Clu had held valuable.

The admin considered the code for a few long micros, formulating the best way to remove some of the restriction while refusing to dwell on why, exactly, he was doing this.

In pieces, then.

One by one, Clu altered the lines of restriction, removed the punishing reprimands that kept Rinzler out of his -- out of Tron's -- memories. Not all of them, not all at once -- but enough. Up to the Coup. Let him remember the beginning, before the ISOs, before Clu had to take things into his own hands to keep the system whole.

With the memories returned (in part), Clu turned his attention to the obedience protocols. "Don't harm Clu" -- well, that was staying. But some of this... some could be lifted. Like keeping Rinzler from viewing his own code; he already knew that Clu had tampered and had been tampering with his code for hundred of cycles. Being able to view the changes didn't matter as much, now.

When the edits where finally finished, Clu gave the spiral of code one last, thorough glance over, then shut down the interface. He held the disc for a long moment, turning it over in his hands, before pushing away his misgivings and offering it back to his enforcer. ]

[No movement. No words. Just the half-initialized attempts to watch, noise skipping and stuttering in jagged bursts as Clu rewrote him. Rinzler didn't need full memory access to match the familiarity here, or have some idea how many times the process had repeated. Kneeling before his admin, waiting wordless and obedient while he was fixed. Changed. Perfected. Only the content of the edit that was different, here.

(Please let it be different.)

He'd fought. He'd tried. He'd done what he could to back himself up, and saved as many records as he could to cache. Enough to clear a wipe (he hoped), enough to remember, whatever Clu chose to edit in, what Rinzler wanted. That Rinzler wanted.

And maybe what scared him most wasn't that Clu might try to stop him.

Light dimmed above, the interface shut off, and Rinzler's eyes flicked upward. Fixed on the red-orange ring in Clu's hands, watched as it was turned and stalled and finally, held out. He took it back from Clu and paused, stared at the backup. His code. Tron's. But he wasn't Tron, and for a desperate, panicked moment, the enforcer wanted nothing more than to give it back unsynced. Apologize, reject the change—ask Clu to take it back. He was loyal; he was Clu's. He was Rinzler.

If he synced that disk, he didn't know who he would be.

Rinzler was shaking. Noise quiet, fist locked desperately tight around the disk. His backup. His. He wanted to own himself, wanted to remember, and he wouldn't run, and he wouldn't glitching hide. Not now. Eyes lifted to meet Clu's, mouth opening for a half-formulated string that could have been I'm sorry or thank you or don't be lying, please. Closed without output. And Rinzler docked his disk.

...

..

.

Repair ran first. Bright-lit fractures smoothed back to a solid shell, gaps connected, and voxels flitted into place to rerezz the absent limb. Breath caught faintly, reformed arm joining the whole one on the ground as he sagged forward, lights dim. Repair was always draining, and reserves had been low enough before. But somehow, that wasn't taking even a fraction of attention, now.

Pupil were backlit solid orange, the dim inner circle of his disk brightening in a ring as the data loaded. But circuits flickered halfway through, rumble catching with a ragged stutter. Then eyes widened. Lights went dark. And all of it came back in clear blue-white.

Self. Memory. Locked off centuries all flooding through awareness, a thousand cycles' worth of trying actualized at once. He was standing by the Sea with Flynn; he was helping Yori test her prototypes; he was fighting side by side with Clu, when there was one ideal of a system to preserve. He was stalling, glitching, crashing, here and now, because it was too much, and too sudden, and it should have been there all along.

He was furious. He was lost. References linked: memory to identity, identity to directive, and still a snarl there, bright/close tangle of protect and serve and fight. But he'd fought, and now the barriers were gone, and he was falling after. Micros passed before the program's stare turned upward, glow behind his pupils dimming to a spark. Sync complete; form utterly still. And until he spoke? Utterly silent.]

Why?

[ Clu watched silently, waiting for the sync to complete and immediately regretting having agreed to this. He was going to lose his enforcer, no matter their bargain. He was going to hand his enemies the perfect tool to use against him, all because he couldn't calculate another alternative, couldn't find another way forward.

Rinzler's words only cemented his misgivings, and Clu bristled slightly at the question. ]

You know why.

[A shove upright, half-staggering as flagging power levels made themselves very clear. Head jerked sideways in refusal, a catch of breath that would have been a snarl, with his noise.]

No. I don't.

[Internals were hopeless. A thousand cycles of obedience. Patterns of restriction and submission. Serve Clu. And now? Hundreds of cycles of new/old self that made the rest a lie. The program was lost. Confused. And furious.]

Because he—because I fought you? Because you needed a glitching pet?

[The ISO's invective. It never cut closer. Another shaking breath, and expression twisted, sharp uncertainty as the fragments clashed. He was supposed to—Clu was... Rinzler was loyal. And Tron would rather have been killed.]

...why?

[ Clu shook his head, frustration turning his words into a snarl. The need to justify himself rankled -- why should he care? He did as he was programmed to do, did what was needed.

(Somehow, even that was ringing hollow.) ]

Because you were supposed to be a part of my system!

[ The Black Guard were pets. Rinzler had been more. ]

[Mouth opened. Stalled. No answer, or too glitching many. Clu broke the system. Broke everything. But those were Tron's words, and the program couldn't tell how far they matched.]

...never just your system.

[True. There's a sharp, possessive spark there that surprises him. Locked down, rewritten, unable to execute for so long, but still that flicker of directive. Mine. The Grid was his to... protect. That's what was missing.]

And Tron wasn't yours.

No one else was willing to do anything to save it.

[ The amount of bitterness in his words is almost surprising -- he thought he'd been over those days for hundreds of cycles. But seeing Rinzler, his Rinzler, parrot back all of Tron's arguments was making him more defensive than he realized. ]

But Rinzler was.

[Head shakes again, quick and furious, though he doesn't bother speaking the refusal. Too much memory still sorting, too many processes uncertain, but there's enough already to know Tron fought. For the users. For the system too.

And for himself.]

Yes. [It's almost a whisper. One that sharpens, low and edged.] Because you took away my mind.

Because you turned against me.

[ A harsh gesture. He's not budging on that point. ]

Because you were willing to lay down and die at the whim of our creator without the slightest complaint, and because I knew you were better than that.

You didn't make me better.

[Spat out, eyes flashing furious. He remembers the last time he asked you why. The answer you gave then. The lie.

He remembers more. His mirror's records, Anon's summary; it's his now too. Words continue, but stare distances partway as records access, replay... stall. He's... parts are missing.]

...you attacked.

Anything was better than you waiting for Flynn to realize the system was dying.

[ Clu crosses his arms. ]

I did what you should have done. I removed the virus.

You made the viruses.

[The half-incredulous glare stalls out, though, expression shifting to frustration as he presses at the internal block on further data. It presses back, and eyes widen with a jarring skip of sound as the familiar crackle of reprimand cuts through.]

You—

[The memories are past reaching. But for a change? His code isn't. Pupils flicker blue-white as the synced disk accesses, and for once, he can read the boundaries of his code.]

You left it...?

[A step forward, fists clenching at his sides. But that process stutters too, flags can't and shouldn't as tight restriction winds in close to lock him. He can't hurt Clu.

Still.]

[ Yep, he's pretty glad he left that in, actually. ]

I am not a null-unit. Did you think I'd give you everything back on the hope you'd stick to your end of the bargain?

[ His hands curl into fists, and there's more than a hint of betrayal in his expression. ]

You said you'd stay.

[Betrayal in your expression, Clu? Rinzler's a match. Stance is locked, tight hunch drawing in as noise keeps stuttering, a furious growl as he fights the constraint.]

Said you'd let me choose.

[A shift to the side, step back. Away. Not the first time he couldn't fight. But for once, Rinzler's not afraid.

Just angry, and tired, and sick of it.]

I never said I was going to let you have the choice of whether or not to attack me.

I gave you back your memories. [ ...most of them. ] You chose to sync your disc.

Not all. [That glitching blank spot? Was why he'd wanted to attack. The rattling quiets, stalls out as he stops fighting it. Free to process, now, at least. To remember—within bounds. But not to threaten Clu.

Good to know how much the chains were loosened.]

...doesn't work this way.

[ Seriously? That's why you're pissed? ]

Because you'd have stalled yourself into a hard shutdown trying to process all of it at once, you half-glitched idiot.

Edited 2012-11-18 02:24 (UTC)

[Because you left the leash on? Little bit.]

Could handle it.

[Syllables are short, noise skipping up again beneath. Still, there's very little of Clu's enforcer in the murderous glare being leveled. You give him back hundreds of cycles of completely mismatched records, and leave out what happened after Tron fell? Somehow that doesn't read as a choice made for his safety.]

Like you handled the User, right?

[ You sure you want it back? It was a pretty boring kilocycle. ...apart from killing all the ISOs and everything. ]

And you think I should give the rest back now? [ A scoff. Yeah, he's kinda picked up on the fact that you'd really like to disc him in the face, Rinzler. ]

[Oh, he's still got most of the basic details. It's just a few parts that are really fuzzy... like that rectifying.

And Yori.]

Don't think you will.

[Fists clench, form locked, noise jarring up again before he makes himself look away. Stare catches on the door, and motion stalls before he realizes why. It's automatic. Reflex, coding, protocol. To wait for Clu's permission.

Glitch that.

Rinzler shakes his head. And turns towards the exit.]

[ Clu watches Rinzler turn, helpless fury burning through his code, and is seized with the brief, bright desire to draw his disc and throw.

It wouldn't make a difference. He shouldn't have expected better, shouldn't have expected more from Rinzler. First Flynn, then Tron, and now him. It was clear that the only ones who ever stayed, who were ever loyal were the ones he had to make that way.

Clu's fists clench, and the bitterness nearly chokes his words. ]

Don't come back to the safehouse. You can let your User allies provide for you now -- if they don't attack you first.

[As Rinzler turns, he half-expects a disk in the back. Or a hand locking down on his shoulder, or a fist driving into his dock. Any number of paths to reboot with fresh commands and new-wiped memory.

But it's words instead, enough to make him freeze, frame locked with rage and sharp resentment. Still, he can't quite wipe the savage flicker of relief beneath it all. Clu didn't want him?

Good.]

Command acknowledged.

[He's not staying around to accept any more. Five steps to the door, and Rinzler's gone.]

Edited 2012-11-18 04:49 (UTC)

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