"Sam!" An assistant, John, yelled over the noise of the newly re-opened 'Flynns' arcade machines and the voices of excited teens. "Will you tell your daughter to quit messing with the Tron game? It's unusable!"
Sam sighed as he made his way towards the back of the old arcade to where his eighteen year old daughter, Mandy, was fiddling with the wiring in the side of the old 'Tron' game. It was inevitable that his daughter... his and Quorra's daughter, should want to find out about this particular game. It was in her blood to be inquisitive, and to be an uncertified genius when it came to technology - especially computers.
Mandy looked similar to both Sam and Quorra. She had her mother's slim but well-rounded figure and raven black hair, she had Sam's blue-green eyes and warm smile, but she also had inherited Sam's stubbornness. Sam looked past that particular trait and concentrated more on her wild emotions which provided a constant entertainment.
"Mandy Flynn," Sam called to his daughter. She turned and looked at him. Her long, black hair fell in loose, shiny curls to just below her shoulders. The tight, black, leather pants and shirt she was wearing was showing off what she had more than her father liked. Especially since he could see several of the older boys checking her out, but they didn't go near her because of the biker look she was carrying. To anyone who didn't know her, she would have looked dangerous and completely off limits. She could beat the crap out of anyone she chose, but she didn't. Mandy rolled her eyes at him when he didn't say anything more and smirked before she turned back to what she was doing.
"Hey, dad." Mandy replied as Sam came to kneel beside her. "I swear, I've nearly got this."
"Mandy, this game was decommissioned when my father owned this arcade, years ago," Sam told his daughter for the millionth time, she was too much like him. "The game doesn't work anymore."
But the system behind it still did. It wasn't that he didn't want her to see it... it was just that he didn't want to lose her. Or at least not lose her any more than he already had.
"One day I'll show you the grid." Sam said to Mandy. He'd been telling her that since she was six years old, been telling her the stories of the grid, but that's all it was... stories and riddles about a place she would probably never know existed in reality.
"What does that even mean?" Mandy asked, her tone flippant. "You've been saying that to me ever since I was little but you won't explain it. It's just part of your story. You're 'make-believe' story of how you met mum and went on some wild and crazy adventure that you amazingly lived through."
"One day, you'll understand." Sam said, as he pulled a stray lock of hair from her bright eyes. "One day."
"One day isn't good enough anymore dad, one day doesn't explain to me what you've been talking about all these years or what those words even mean. When are you going to realise that I'm not a little girl anymore but that I have, in fact, grown up. I'm eighteen, not six. I don't need a rich father who always speaks in riddles... I need a dad I can depend on, who's not always away on business trips that can last months at a time or can't talk to me because he needs to take this call or send an email that could wait five minutes. Where's my loving dad who used to read to me and help me with my homework and give me advice when I needed it." Mandy fumed.
"You haven't needed help with your homework for years now." Sam replied, wanting to avoid this fight.
"That's not the point, dad," Mandy yelled. "I don't know you anymore."
She stood up and grabbed her jacket off the floor before turning back to him, still kneeling on the floor beside the 'Tron' game she'd been trying to fix.
"I'm going home." Mandy announced. "I'll come back later when you're gone."
Sam stood and watched his daughter walk away from him and out the doors of the arcade. He listened as her motorcycle revved into life and then sped off down the road, the sound growing continually fainter, until he could hear its engine no more.
