#askbeckandpaige

[user-alan]

    Deep within another world lie a peaceful glowing city. Its inhabitants blissfully carrying out their lives, unaware of the doom that lies ahead. With each moment, each pulse of energy, their fates draw ever nearer. It is here, within this city, that one program may yet rise above the cast die and forge a new fate.  

...

    A lone figure watched as the sky became speckled with ships. One of the ships, much larger than the rest, dropped a conspicuous package on a field below. CLU. The figure knew the admin’s calling card before the package came to rest. He’d seen it too many times before. Too much was the suffering brought by this cloud of doom. Too often were innocent programs derezzed.

    No more! No more would he sit idly by and watch as city after city fell to the crusade of the Occupation. The man’d had time to learn, time to grow, time to discover who and what he was. And what he was capable of.

    The cloaked figure stood in the shadows and watched as the fun of some young programs was dashed by circuits of red and souls of ice. One young program dared to defy them. The response: immediate. The punishment: death. Disgust was a tame way to describe how the shadow-viewer  felt. It took more than a small amount of restraint on his part to refrain from confronting the situation then and there. He took a silent breath and grounded himself. For the moment.

[multiverse-of-misfits]

Under the Wreckage x2

With @askbeckandpaige continued from here.

He looked shaken, horrified at what he’d just done. He’d just thrown away the last remaining piece of her he had left, to someone who might not ever give it back to him. He held down his arm, grabbing it with his free hand, though this quickly turned into hugging himself where he stood as they looked through the disc.

[lifesshortpop]

from askbeckandpaige: Wrath

He never understood that odd quirk of his father’s to keep an appearance of glacial calm and a perfectly even voice even when it was obvious to anyone who knew him that he was about to breathe fire. 

That was…until Jet found the EN-1282 archive. The contents were degraded, but when he downloaded the entries, they were...unusual. Not just seeing the text in his head, but he could hear them. 

“Shiva Laser set for decommission. Tried to...Lora’s leaving for DC...No luck.”

His godfather. He hadn’t heard that voice since he was seven. Jet wondered what he would say to this. Greedily, he kept grabbing, kept downloading more and more of the archive into his disc. Yes, there had to be information on the Tron upgrade, but just any kind of memory or fragment of his godfather...

“Digital Frontier...change the world! Just obtained the Shiva...”

Wait a second.The Shiva was Mom’s invention with Gibbs. He hadn’t thought about that as a kid, but...

Did Uncle Kevin have a functioning Shiva all this time, the damn project that kept her in DC trying to rebuild it? A child part of him wanted to scream. That laser took my mom away. How dare you.

He kept downloading, kept adding to the archive on his disc. Please tell him that he just didn’t have the whole story, that there was some good reason for all of this. 

“It’s going to be my Rome. My gift....I’ll change the world! have to keep it secret right now, even from Alan and Lora...”

Really? Pop still slept with a damn pager more nights than he slept with Mom. Not to mention all the times Jet found him passed out on the sofa, one of Flynn’s speeches in the DVD player and a bottle of scotch on the coffee table. Jet concluded a while ago that he was probably some accident, that his parents married for appearances, and Pop saw him more as an obligation because the rumor mill was always saying that Pop and Uncle Kevin were a thing. But if they were (and he knew at one point, Uncle Kevin and his mom were close, too), then why did he lie to them? Why did he not trust them? 

Maybe he was protecting the Programs. That had to be it, right? no matter how much Uncle Kevin loved Jet’s parents, the Program world was an ethical landmine, and the only way to keep it safe was to keep it a secret. 

“Free will? Yeah, Programs don’t have it. They aren’t human. They may look human, but they’re not...have to keep remembering that. Far as they’re concerned, I’m God.”

“I’m gonna be the Master of it all...The User. No interference. Just me and them, working...”

It was the term “Master,” that got him to freeze. “Master User” was what Thorne was calling himself while unleashing a Romero film across multiple computer systems, killing innocent people. 

And that's when it sunk in. New worlds,digital frontiers, changing the parameters of everything fromphilosophy to physics. The laughing, oversized kid of a godfather,his best friend's dad, the Programs' legendary hero. Did he really dosomething so evil? Did he really lie to everyone, steal fromJet's parents (his professed best friends), and try to set himself upas a god?!

Jet's fist slammed the pixel-glass ofthe archive bin so hard the top splintered and cracked, the achetraveling all the way up his arm and into his shoulder. It barelyregistered compared to the churning in his stomach and the poundingin his head. The world became terribly still for that moment.

If Jet ever found Kevin Flynn, the man had better be dead. 

[multiverse-of-misfits]

Bedridden x2

Previous @askbeckandpaige

“Oh.....Well, alright then......I hope I didn’t upset Paige too much. I wasn’t trying to. She saved my life-both of you did-and I thought maybe the truth about what happened might be somewhat close to enough to repay her.”

[user-alan]

Hello World! [Uprising!Era; askbeckandpaige]

Continued from: [x]

She nods, gaze fixed on Tron’s back.

“I had met some.” She said finally. “ISOs, I mean. The two had been cornered by other programs, and injured. I helped them escape, but barely. You see, I was not originally a fighter.” She finally looked away from Tron. “My original function is a medic. So I had taken them in, and given them medical aid, unaware at the time they were ISOs. If I had known….” She shook her head. “I don’t think I would have helped them. Not with what happened next.

“Tron…he says that the ISOs are trustworthy programs. I don’t know if I believe that. The Occupation had come looking for them. One of them, a program named Quorra, knocked me unconscious. When I awoke, two Occupation guards were detaining. I was scared, so I fought back.”

She could remember it vividly. The training that Quorra had given her had kicked in, core roaring in her eyes as she managed to disable the programs and escape. She had barely made it to the end of the hall before a much larger program had caught her, slamming her into the wall with a hand at her throat.

“I was finally subdued by a much larger program. A general, I think. He assumed that I knew about the ISOs, beyond what they had done to me. He said that I had collaborated with traitors, and had to be punished. Then…I remember his hand getting tighter and tighter. Everything was growing dark…and then he let go.”

Not willingly. She faintly heard the general gasp, and then the crushing pressure on her neck released. She gasps in a breath as she crumples, coughing as she holds her neck. A program pulls her to her feet, and suddenly she’s running.

“Tron had saved me. Apparently whatever happened at the hospital had gained his attention, and he had come to investigate. The ISOs were long gone by the time he arrived, but I was the only survivor he could find. The rest of the hospital was destroyed. Neither of us know what happened. Tron doesn’t believe the ISOs could have done that…I’m not so sure.

He almost left me. I know he didn’t want me to follow; I would be too much of a burden. But I had no one left, no one except this mysterious program who had saved me. So I didn’t let up, and followed him. Eventually, I proved myself to him, and he let me stay. He started training me, and we came to Argon.” She finally looked to Alan as she finished speaking.

Alan nodded, listening to her story. Tron believes them to be trustworthy, yet one of them attacked the program who’d healed them. It didn’t make sense, but then, Alan felt he was only getting part of the story. Why would Tron believe them to be “safe”? Alan then heard the next part of her story. Training? He wondered about that statement, but chose to ask about his earlier concern first.

“Did you ever try telling him why you don’t trust them or asking him why he does?” Alan wasn’t sure if this was even an appropriate question, but he felt it might help him “test the waters” and see where communication was at between the involved parties.

[user-alan]

Christmas Cookie Conundrum

Continued from [x] @askbeckandpaige

“He did?” It’s almost laughable to see the quick pace the program takes to make it to the User’s side to see the plate, only for him to frown. “Why? I thought he was going to take all of them.”

“I guess he left one for each of us,” stated Alan in mock consternation. “I suppose,” he continued, “we shouldn’t disappoint him.” Alan gathered both cookies and held one out to Beck.

[lifesshortpop]

“We’re not here to relive the past.” (Beck)

His eyes are squeezed shut and he’s hoping Beck can’t understand half the swear words he’s using, though he is mixing them with enough “colorful” hex phrases he picked up from Mercury to probably get him filling in the blanks. He’s grasping the shard of virtual glass to the point of pain, but it’s not breaking skin. The former hideout is a broken mess, but still mostly intact, which is a big comparison to the rest of the neighborhood around it.  

“It’s another dead end, Beck. We both know Tron was here, and he survived the bombing of Argon, but we’re no closer to finding out...”

[askkryptor]

Beck: "You keep going and leave me here."

Kryptor looked at Beck with concern. “Don’t give up now,” he said. “We need to get out of here.”

The analyst glanced over his shoulder. Orange lights marked the locations of Occupation soldiers in the distance. There were many, and they were getting closer. Frag… There had to be a way out of this.