Greetings programs! I think the title says it all for this fic, really. Kitty!Rinzler finds a ball of string on the Grid and cuteness follows with a helping of meanie!Jarvis and Clu being Clu. Inspiration for this fic came from all over the place because Kitty!Rinzler is quite possible the cutest damn thing in this fandom.

One thing I need to point out is that in this fic, Rinzler is a cat. He is not a normal program, just with ears and a tail; he is a four-pawed, furry, whiskered feline. Black fur and orange markings instead of circuits.

With thanks to my awesome beta, ScribeOfRed, without whom, this fic would've been a lot worse.

If I owned Tron, I would have pet Bit. Sadly, I don't.

Enjoy!

The door into the main room of Clu's quarters swung open and a small black head with orange accents poked itself inside. Rinzler scanned the area for his master, but found it empty; Clu was still out at the arena. No matter. The small feline nudged the door farther open with his head and padded into the room, his favourite identity disk of a long derezzed program between his teeth.

The room was just as it always was before Rinzler got his claws into everything he could. Clu must've rewritten the coding to repair the damage from his last visit. Strictly speaking, it wasn't Rinzler's fault everything had gotten so out of hand; Jarvis had been asking for it.

The cat set down his toy in the middle of the floor and began shuffling it around with his paw, spinning it and wishing the lights would stay on even after its owner had been derezzed.

Mere millicycles later, the smooth couch had a large tear in it, causing yellow-black pixels to spill from the damage. The window was covered in scratches, three circuits that ran along the walls had been severed, and Jarvis's spare info-pad was a scattering of fading pixels. Rinzler was in the centre of the room, adding to the mass of marks on his disk by contentedly chewing the side of it. The item had caused a surprisingly small percentage of the damage inflicted on the room.

A flash of yellow caught his eye.

Halting his pacing, Rinzler crouched down and peered beneath the couch to see a round object sitting motionless in the shadow. For a moment, he wondered if it was a bit. It was the right size and of a similar shape. But it wasn't moving. Curious, he reached under with one paw to bat the thing out.

Soft was the first word that came to mind as his paw cautiously touched it. The thing rolled out from its hiding place in the shadow unresistingly, and Rinzler stared at it with wonder. He'd never seen anything like it. It seemed to be made up entirely of a single length, wrapped around itself multiple times, sections inter-crossing. It gave off no light of its own, as almost everything did in the Grid, and wasn't animated in any way.

Was it even from the Grid? Could it be from the User's world? It would certainly explain why Rinzler had never encountered it before and why it was so strange. He tapped it again, feeling the soft texture, and decided he liked it. He thought about everything he knew about the User world, trying to put a name to the object. His knowledge was limited, as Clu himself didn't know all that much, but he remembered, very vaguely, a familiar voice laughing and joking about how they should try to catch gridbugs in a string web like fli-

String!

That's what it was! A ball of string!

Rinzler patted the ball again, feeling very pleased with himself; that he had been able to name it. The strange, soft texture felt so different, but so good against his paw. Identity disk forgotten, he began nudging the string back and forth across the floor.

How it had gotten into the Grid, let alone Clu's quarters, he had no idea. But there it was, and he had, officially, promptly fallen in love with it. His affection grew each time he touched the twine with his black, orange streaked paw.

Rinzler purred happily as he battered the ball between his paws, looking at it inquisitively as it rolled across the floor. He let it roll away from him for a few feet, then gathered his haunches and pounced on it, rolling over and over. He ended up on top and curled around it, hugging the twine while satisfied purrs rumbled from his chest. He loved his string. Forget broken batons and the identity disks of derezzed programs; he had string and he was completely happy.

Rinzler rolled over again so he was on his back. The ball of string balanced between his forepaws and back paws, he raised it up above him, admiring the intertwining length. He tried to follow the lines with his eyes, but found it impossible due to their nature of twining under another line and disappearing. In the end, he just admired the patterns the string created, rows inter-crossing with each other, and all a lovely shade of yellow like Clu's circuits. Perfect.

The door opened, letting in a stream of gold and red light, and Rinzler rolled over and looked up hopefully, expecting his owner so he could show off his new toy. But it was Jarvis, Clu's right hand man. Rinzler's feline face twisted and his content purr shifted into a warning hiss as his aggressive subroutines came online.

'What's that?' Jarvis asked, looking down at the small black and orange cat through the transparent mask that covered most of his face. Rinzler hugged his prize closer, the hiss getting louder and more threatening. His string! Jarvis ignored the warning and walked noisily over. Towering over Rinzler, the two regarded each other with distaste until Jarvis's eyes locked onto the twine clasped tightly in Rinzler's paws.

'Give it here,' he ordered, holding out one hand as if he expected the cat to just hand it to him.

But Rinzler didn't follow anyone's commands, except Clu's, and in any case, he didn't want to be parted from his string. He clutched it closer. After a few picocycles, Jarvis bent down and picked up the ball. Rinzler dug his claws into it and was consequently pulled up off the floor with it.

Jarvis raised the ball of string with Rinzler still attached up to eye level and regarded them with an annoyed expression. 'Let go,' he said, shaking the string.

But Rinzler held on firm, growling at the offending program. If Jarvis was fazed, he didn't show it, and continued to try and dislodge the determined feline from the string. At one point, he allowed them to get too close to his face and Rinzler reached out with one paw to swipe him, claws extended. Fortunately, Jarvis's face was covered by his transparent mask and the claws scratched uselessly down it.

His attention momentarily diverted, Rinzler's grip slackened and he was suddenly sent flying across the room as Jarvis gave the string an extra hard shake. He flipped in mid air and landed flawlessly on his paws before turning around and looking dejectedly at Jarvis, who held his string up above his head where it was too high for him to reach.

Rinzler's growling dwindled into a mournful mew. He missed the string already, and looked longingly up at it in Jarvis' hand, who grinned down at him, a mean smirk on his thin, pale face. Rinzler sat down and faced away from Jarvis, his tail curled around him and his shoulders hunched.

The door opened again.

Clu entered the room, only to be met with a very strange sight. Jarvis was holding what appeared to be a ball of string in his hand and grinning smugly at Rinzler, who was sitting in the opposite corner of the room, sulking. Clu could almost picture a rain cloud over the small cat's head.

'What's going on?' he asked in a no-nonsense tone.

Jarvis turned to him, string still in hand. 'Rinzler was playing with this, sir,' he explained, holding the object up. 'I think it's from the User's world so I took it off him.'

Clu rolled his eyes. Jarvis was a good, if slightly annoying, right hand man, but he was useless around Rinzler. The mere presence of the other seemed to automatically activate their antagonistic subroutines.

'Stop bothering the cat,' he said, frowning in disapproval.

Jarvis dropped his smirk and looked at the floor. 'Yes, sir...' he muttered.

Clu held his hand out and Jarvis, after a moment's pause, handed the string over. Clu closed his fingers around it and jerked with his head towards the door, indicating Jarvis to get out. Knowing better than to go against his orders, Jarvis left the room, grumbling about how it was unfair that the cat got more privileges than him. Clu closed the door behind the program, shaking his head. Then he walked over to Rinzler, who was still looking sorry for himself.

'Rinzler?'

The black head slowly swivelled to look at him, ears down, and then he practically fell himself over in his haste to get up when he saw Clu holding the string out to him. Clu laughed at his pet and put the ball on the floor. Rinzler instantly pounced on it, purring happily. He curled around the twine protectively and proceeded to roll all around the room with it tucked into his chest and held firmly between his paws.

Clu rose and sat down on the couch, one leg over the arm rest in his customary pose as he watched the young cat toying with his new favourite object. He rested his head on one hand, grinning as Rinzler flopped down onto his stomach and batted the ball back and forth between his paws.

The end started to unravel. Rinzler examined this new snaking length, then turned and looked back at his own tail, seemingly comparing the two. He turned back and nudged the unravelled bit of string with his paw. After several attempts, it caught on one of his claws and stayed there, despite his attempts to shake it off.

Clu bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing as Rinzler started leaping around, trying to dislodge the string from his paw, but his antics only managed to unravel more of the string, which then got caught around his paws, his middle, his tail…

It was just a matter of millicycles before Rinzler was completely and utterly tangled in a web of red string. Lying on his back, he twisted his head to look up at Clu with wide amber eyes and an expression which clearly read: what the glitch just happened?

Clu chuckled, looking down at him, then frowned as Rinzler's purring hitched slightly, catching for a moment before restarting. This happened twice more before Clu noticed a length of the string wrapped around Rinzler's neck.

He stood up, striding over to the hopelessly entangled feline, who was now moving his head from side to side in a useless attempt to try and get rid of the restriction around his throat.

'Hey, hey, easy,' Clu said soothingly, as he crouched down and put one hand on Rinzler's head gently, but firmly enough to keep him from moving. The small cat stopped struggling, but his breath was still catching as he tried to pull in enough air.

Clu carefully slid his finger under the string around Rinzler's neck, loosening it's hold until it was slack enough to slip over his head. Rinzler meowed quietly, rubbing his head against Clu's palm in what he took to be a show of thanks.

Clu fondled one of his ears for a moment, before beginning to unwind the rest of the string from around Rinzler's sleek body, ravelling it into the original ball as he did.

It took several millicycles, as Rinzler had somehow managed to get the strings into complicated knots, but when Clu brought his disk out to simply cut the stuff, he yowled indignantly and tried to move away, making it clear that he still wanted his string, despite what it had done to him.

Eventually, Clu unwound the last knot from around Rinzler's paw and freed him. Rinzler stood up, stretched, and began grooming himself back to perfection.

Once he was done, Clu picked him up with one hand and carried him over to the couch, the now re-wound ball of string in his other hand. He sat down and set Rinzler on his lap, putting the string down next to him. Rinzler pulled the string towards him again and settled down with his toy between his paws and his tail curled around him. He closed his eyes, and contented rumblings emerged from his chest as his master stroked him.

Life was good.

I'm such a sap. Yeah, I can see myself doing more Kitty!Rinzler fics. He's too adorable to be limited to a single oneshot :D .

So, what did you think? Feedback much appreciated and each review gets Kitty!Rinzler a tasty phish.

Until next time...

Eckert: Programs, disperse!

~EndlessMidnightSky~