A/N: So, I don't know about everyone else, but I absolutely LOVED Tron: Legacy. Everything about it just blew my mind, and like everybody else, I fell in love with Castor. (And Rinzler since he was always doing crazy flips and shit.)
Well, you could tell that Zuse and Quorra had totally had a thing for each other at some point, or at least he'd felt something for her. I have decided to explore that relationship using a Tron 50 Challenge created by someone I found on tumblr. As such, this will not be a traditional story like what I usually write, but I will try to make each chapter related to each other to form a larger picture. The timeline for this story takes place before and after Clu took over the Grid and will more than likely follow the events of the movie and a little of my own speculation to what happens afterward. If that made any sense, then I feel accomplished.
I'm done talking now. Hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own Tron: Legacy. If I did, Castor and Daft Punk would have been the main characters.
Fandom: Tron: Legacy
Pairing: CastorXQuorra
Prompt: Tron 50 Challenge
Title: Entertainments and Diversions
Chapter One: Millicycles
She shivered from the cold but refused to make any other indication of her discomfort, merely continuing to examine the glossy obsidian floor beneath her feet. White light from all sides illuminated the room and the other figures around her, whom she'd come to recognize in the short time she'd been alive were her brothers and sisters. Who or what exactly she was, what they all were, remained an unknown to her. All she knew came from hearing something within her when she'd first come into being.
System is stable and functioning. Program is active and online.
She was a program, but she had yet to fully grasp what that meant. For what purpose was she created and how? She hoped to get these answers soon.
"Program."
She jumped at the sudden digitized voice in her ear. Recovering quickly, she withdrew her gaze from the floor to stare confusedly at the straight-faced program who had approached her.
"You're next. Come with me."
Throwing a nervous glance around her towards her brothers and sisters, she received a few encouraging nods from the ones who had already gone through the process and received better-equipped clothes than the thin, cloth-like material with which they'd emerged from the water. Without question, she followed the no-nonsense program, the circuitry in his black leather suit casting a light blue hue around them both as he escorted her out of the waiting room through two sliding, white doors.
The walk down the short hallway was silent, and as they reached the end to step on a slightly-raised platform, nothing but the soft hum of it rising sounded through the air. The platform came to a smooth stop, and her escort gave a sharp nod towards a set of white doors identical to the ones they'd both entered from the level below.
"You're expected through there. The Creator is waiting for you."
Her head turned sharply towards him. The Creator? While she understood some of what these unfamiliar programs were saying around her, she couldn't grasp how to respond back, how to ask questions, how to figure things out. But before she could even try to question him, he nudged her off the platform, motioning for her impatiently to go, the first sign of animation she'd seen from him thus far. Without much choice left to her, she made her way hesitantly towards the doors, unable to slow them down as they slide open.
She stepped past the threshold and found herself surrounded by a dazzling white room. Even the floor was lit up as opposed to the dark, glassy surface she'd seen before. Directly across from her, though, the wall was made entirely of glass, displaying the shadowed but bustling city of which she'd only had a glimpse. Seized by an urge to investigate further, she began moving forward but halted abruptly as another voice echoed off the wall around her.
"Another one has come, Flynn."
"Yes. Another miracle."
On her right, dressed in black leather pants, shirt, and jacket, the style of which were completely different from the other programs', were two men, completely identical down to the same satisfied grin, which at her staring, one of them quickly lost.
"You will tire of saying that eventually, I hope."
"Hey, don't question it, man," the other laughed, clapping his twin on the shoulder. The other accepted this show of affection stoically, moving his sharp gaze from her to stare resolutely out at the city. "Don't mind Clu, my dear. The guy's not too big on jokes really."
She gazed at him warily as he approached. He must have noticed her unease because he stopped a respectable distance from her, a cajoling smile on his lips. She felt herself relax instantly, detecting no threat from him and his decidedly warmer personality as opposed to his twin's. He seemed trustworthy enough to her, and her system could detect nothing to suggest otherwise.
"My name is Kevin Flynn," he declared, "and I am the creator of the Grid and the TRON System. In other words, this, uh, this world you've found yourself in, well, you're welcome." Another good-natured laugh escaped him, bringing a small smile to her own lips.
"But," he continued, "I can't really take all the credit, certainly not anymore. Your creation and that of your fellow programs I'm both proud yet sorry to say was not my doing. You all came out of nowhere just two millicycles ago–that's sixteen hours–and it's all I can do to keep up with properly linking all of you to the system. Isomorphic Algorithms, ISO for short… I still can't fully believe it, and I'm wise enough to admit that I don't understand it. Not anywhere close. But enough about the particulars. What's your name, and do you have anything you wanna ask me before we begin?"
She opened her mouth to speak at last but quickly closed it again, finding that she had no words to say nor any knowledge of how to say them.
"Hmm?" Flynn scrunched his brows in confusion. "What's wrong? Not shy, are ya?"
Once again, she attempted to say something, anything but she was blocked by something. A gap in her data. Something was there, just beyond her grasp but she didn't know how to reach it. Her system was fully operational, but she had no identity to run it through. What was she? An Isomorphic Algorithm was what he'd said, but who was she? Her name, what was her name?
"This has happened a few times now," Clu replied, pulling away from his brooding to join Flynn and the ISO. "Most of them have come in knowing their identities, and because of that, they've been able to function relatively well without having an identity disk and can communicate with us. However, there have been a few cases like hers where we've had to trigger a response in their circuitry for them to realize their identity and thus their purpose."
"But after that, they function well beyond their original purpose," Flynn muttered softly before trailing off, running a finger along his lips, clearly thinking about the odd circumstance. "What have you done to fix this so far?"
"We've issued in some interpreter programs to communicate with them to bring forth that elusive connection. We haven't needed more than that," Clu responded, crossing his arms tightly and sizing the ISO up as he replied, as if daring her to contradict him by being the one case where an interpreter wouldn't be enough.
"Fine," Flynn replied, smiling again. "This shouldn't take too long then. Tron!" He turned to address a program she hadn't noticed before whose form was encased in a black leather body suit much more like the other programs except his suit only contained small specks of blue circuitry as opposed to the long lines of circuitry on the other programs' suits and the matching jackets Clu and Flynn wore. "Bring Zuse here for me, will ya, man?"
"Of course, Flynn."
Once Tron had left the room, Clu addressed Flynn, "You really think sending for that program is wise?"
Flynn threw a look of surprise at Clu while she watched the interaction with curiosity. If this Zuse was going to be the one responsible for helping her find her name, her purpose, then she wanted to learn as much about him as she possibly could beforehand. "What? You don't like Zuse?"
"He's just so…loud."
"'He's just so–'" Flynn broke off, as amused laughter shook through him again. "Well, that's certainly true, man. As far as his basic programming goes, Zuse has far exceeded my original intentions for him, but he's often proven that he's still the best interpreter we've got."
Clu looked like he wanted to argue but he refrained. Instead, he withdrew himself away from them again, this time to sit on the long ivory couch that wrapped around in front of a fireplace on the opposite side of the room. Meanwhile, Flynn took her gently by the arm and led her to sit on a white chair in front of a dining table. He sat down beside her, on her right side, at the head of the table.
"It shouldn't take too long now," he assured her. She nodded, feeling her short, bobbed hair brush against her ears.
And it didn't. Shortly after they'd all sat down, Tron returned, this time escorting another program.
"Alright, Flynny, I'm here. Now, what's the rush?"
"Ah, Zuse, good. C'mere, man, we got ourselves a little communication problem."
She gawked at Zuse as he approached, no longer listening to the briefing Flynn was giving him about her. She had seen a lot of crazy and amazing things in this world in just two millicycles, but none were as strange as the program now before her.
In truth, she had yet to see a program clothed in anything that wasn't black; even when she and the other ISOs were born, they were garbed in black cloth which displayed much of their skin along with the glowing white mark on their upper left arm that marked them as ISOs. Zuse's suit, on the other hand, was completely white, the matching circuitry standing out against the few gray sections lining it. Combined with his slicked back, equally-white hair and pale skin, he could easily blend in undetected with the surrounding room if it wasn't for the fact that he was so animated. She watched, fascinated, as he displayed so many movements–constantly leaning from one foot to the other, playing and gesturing with a long, white cane between his fingertips, darting his electric blue eyes to and fro–and all he was doing was having a conversation with someone. It was with some surprise to her that she suddenly found his strangely bright eyes pinned to her own.
"Well, well, and who is this pretty miss?" he grinned at her.
"That's what I want you to find out, Zuse," Flynn said tiredly, having just gone over this.
"Well, I'm aware of that. I was trying to give her some incentive to speak. I imagine that Clu over there has thoroughly succeeding in winding the poor girl into a twist." Zuse smirked at the glower that had permanently attached itself to Clu's face since Zuse had walked in the door. The smirk quickly fell away as he intoned while giving Flynn an impatient look, "are you going to give the lady and I some privacy to have a heart-to-heart or what? Finding a program's identity isn't exactly a spectator sport, Flynny."
Flynn smiled and held his hands in a halting gesture as he gradually backed off. "Whatever you say, man."
"Ah, now then."
Without waiting any further, Zuse pulled out a chair and sat directly across from her, laying his cane parallel to the table's edges at its center, lazily propping his head in his left hand as he leaned his arms on the table. Though his face expressed playfulness, his eyes had turned keen and penetrating, no doubt examining her to deduce what her malfunction was. It didn't take long before she broke her gaze to pointedly stare at her hands clenched nervously in her lap.
"The Creator has told me that they haven't gotten you to say anything, that you've been mute the entire two millicycles your system has been active," he stated matter-of-factly, pausing for a moment as if he was waiting for her to do something, anything to confirm or deny his statement. When she merely continued to stare silently at her lap, he resumed speaking again. "But maybe that's because no one has been asking you the right questions, hmm?"
For some reason, this observation struck something within her, causing her to raise her dark eyes to finally look at him again, indicating that she was listening. He quirked a sly smile, secretly congratulating himself on making progress already. He was, after all, the best.
"I suppose then we can start by asking if you know why you're here. Do you know why you were created?"
She listened to him intently, and though his words made sense to her, she found that she still had no answer for him. The truth was she didn't know anything about her purpose at all, and if the Creator of this system didn't even have that knowledge, then, she reasoned, how could she? Beyond being brought to the city to receive an Identity Disk and become incorporated into the system, there was no other reason she would be here at all. The discovery of this lack of purpose, this lack of existence caused a hollow feeling to begin forming inside of her, and she knew that if she couldn't find a way to erase it by gaining some sort of reason for living, it would consume her very soon. Her inner circuitry began to speed up in fear of this potential outcome.
Realizing that Zuse was still waiting for her answer, she slowly shook her head in denial, suddenly feeling ashamed of herself and what seemed to her to be utter uselessness. To her continued surprise, he was less than discouraged. If anything, his next question sounded even more eager. It appeared that he was just as excited at getting some answers from her as she was anxious to discover her identity.
"Well, that's fine. To be honest, I didn't expect you to know that answer right away. Just wanted to get your, uh, thoughts turning." He smirked at her, and she felt a rush of annoyance. Was this just a game to him? "Now surely you remember where you were created. It wasn't too long ago after all. Is there anything specific that you remember about it?"
Her vexation at him temporarily forgotten, she furrowed her brows as she thought about her birth. She didn't know if it was the same for the other ISOs as it was for her, but the first thing she recalled seeing was light, followed by a strange heavy sensation which dimmed her senses. This sensation was cool to the touch but slowed her motions. She rose from it, breaking from it like all the others, and suddenly, just focusing on it, she was able to give it a name.
"Water," she finally said, her voice sounding so odd to her ears as it cracked from disuse. She didn't notice that with that single word, she had grabbed the full attention of the four men in the room.
"The Sea of Simulation," Zuse verified for her. "Most programs originate from there as well. I suppose you could call it the heart of the system, if such a thing actually exists. And might I add, what a lovely voice you've come to have." He grinned cheekily, unable to resist teasing her, while she was completely unsure of how to respond to it.
"You know who created this entire system, I trust?"
She nodded, still unsure and uncomfortable with her voice, but Zuse wouldn't take her silence now.
"Who?" he pressed.
"Flynn," she said hesitantly.
"Correct, but do you know what Flynn is?"
She was completely lost by this question, so she answered as best she could, though she thought they had already established what Flynn was. "The Creator."
Zuse gave a small chuckle. "No, no, I mean, well, how shall I explain this? I am a program." he pointed at himself. "Tron and Clu are programs." He waved his hand lazily in their direction. "And you are a program, though a very special one at that. Kevin Flynn, on the other hand, is something else entirely."
"He's not a program?" she replied, the warm feeling of curiosity gripping her once again.
"Ah, and she begins to ask her own questions. Good, very good," the eccentric program stated, more to himself than to anyone else. "No, Flynn is, using his terms, a human from outside of this system, essentially from another world far different from our own. The name we've given to those like him are the Users."
"Users?" She was reeling a bit from the influx of information being sent her way, but she couldn't deny that it all made sense. From the moment she entered the room, she noticed that there was something different about Kevin Flynn. Compared to Tron, Clu and the program that had escorted her here, his movements were more fluid, more whimsical, and his speech was more relaxed and natural. Comparing him to Zuse, though, was where she became confused. She wasn't sure if Zuse was more outgoing than most programs, or if he had been programmed to behave more like Users. In any case, she was certain that in this system Flynn and Zuse were one-of-a-kind in their own way.
"Mm-hm, now that that has been established, let's go for the gold, shall we?" Zuse interrupted her queries, leaning even more forward in his seat towards her. "Now, be a good girl and think carefully. What is your name?"
Her name? Hadn't she already been through this? She didn't know!
Or did she? In the two millicycles of her life, she had just been going with the motions, trying to get to a point where she could take the time to think the events happening to her through. Everything following Flynn's discovery of the ISOs had happened so quickly that she had barely been able to process it. Now, she had been granted that time to just stop for a moment and think, thanks to Zuse.
She closed her eyes, recalling all the information she had learned thus far, and though it wasn't very much, it was more than enough to send her circuits racing with curiosity and even more questions. All of the ISOs were born from light and water. Had any of them experienced these strange feelings and sensations she had discovered? Were they born all alike, with the same purpose and function, or were they created as individuals with their own destinies and desires? Had the pulls of emotions she'd been feeling been as strong in her fellow ISOs as they were in her? As she'd followed these emotions to give her the courage to even venture forward into this room, did they follow theirs? They shared the Sea of Simulation as their birthplace, common to other programs in the system. What exactly had Zuse said about it? That it was the heart of the system? Heart? Yes…
And with that, she knew.
"Quorra," she smiled as warmth took over her again and the hollowness faded away. "My name is Quorra."
Zuse grinned triumphantly back at her. "I'm very pleased to meet you, Quorra. My name is Zuse."
Quorra gave a small laugh at his antics, too caught up in the feeling of her system being fully operational that she didn't immediately notice Kevin Flynn coming to Zuse's side.
"Excellent work," he shook Zuse's hand warmly as the program rose from the table, grinning in amusement.
"Naturally," he said, wanting to laugh at the sour expression on Clu's face at his success, though he refrained. He didn't want to press his luck too much with the serious program. "Now, I'm right in presuming that's all you need me for today, yes?" He began twirling his cane between his hands again.
"Yes, Zuse, feel free to head back when you're ready. Quorra," Flynn said, switching his attention onto the ISO, who had still remained sitting at the table, a bit overcome, "nice to see that you're finally with us, my dear."
She accepted his hand-up gratefully after he approached her as she tried to regain her bearings.
"Since you are self-aware of your identity, the disk should be able to recognize your system now. C'mon, we'll get you suited up."
In the exchange, she was oblivious to Zuse's intense gaze fixing on her again. The white-clad program shook it off quickly and began to take his leave. With a last smug look (mostly directed at Clu), he walked out of the room.
Flynn was just escorting Quorra towards another room when she noticed Zuse's disappearance. She felt like she needed to do something in regards to him, so she halted their progress and timidly asked Flynn if she could try and catch him.
"Yeah, but you better hurry. I've never known him to linger in any place too long when he's being called to somewhere else."
"Right," she nodded, turning to run out of the illuminated ivory room down the darkened hallway. She caught him just as he was stepping on the lift.
"Wait!"
Zuse turned, lifting an eyebrow questioningly. Quorra suddenly felt a little foolish for doing this, and she inwardly cursed her tendency towards shyness that was quickly catching up with her.
"I-I, um," she swallowed nervously, focusing her attention on the design his white circuitry made on his chest, "I just wanted to say thank you for helping me."
"Oh, is that all?"
Her head snapped up, a little hurt that he had just disregarded her sincerity. It must have shown on her face, because he quickly amended it.
"I thought at first that something else had gone wrong. You had me worried for a minute there, lovely."
She cleared her throat awkwardly. She really didn't know how to behave around this program.
"I'll–I'll see you around, then?" she said, wanting to say something to clear up the uncomfortable silence that had settled between them. She also didn't want to keep Flynn waiting for too much longer, nor did she want to delay Zuse from wherever he was going. His response took her aback.
"Hmm, no." He smiled, a little remorseful at the confession. "No, I don't believe you will."
Then, before she could ask what he meant, the lift descended, and he was gone.
A/N: Quorra is Italian for "heart," by the way. Truly amazing how story lines write themselves. Hope you enjoyed this first chapter. Please take the time to review and tell me what you think.