Chapter 1: No One Dies
Argon City, Argon Architecture Tower, TC 2014, 0010 PectroCycles...
Travis' smaller-than-normal hands gripped the side of the vent, and his claws shot out into the creases, tearing it off and allowing him access to the inside of one of the largest skyscrapers in Argon City. Almost a MylaCycle had gone by since he became the Renegade, and it still wasn't easy adapting to the changes that had happened so rapidly. So many programs were gone now; Miranda, Beck... it was only a matter of time before his turn came.
"Okay," Travis muttered, sliding down the shaft in his new Renegade suit. "Hey, BIT. Open the shield panel and bulkheads via remote, would ya?" BIT complied, saying "YES" in his usual monotone. "Thanks. There's some tech I wanted to find here. I just need to snatch it, get out of here, and..." A security alarm blared, klaxons flashing red, and Travis raced back into the vent as an ASF squad rushed in, drawing their disks.
'Ah, scrag... I'm gonna regret doing this..." Travis leaped out of the vent, smashing his boots into the heads of six of the seven ASF officers. The seventh dodged the blow, and watched as he raced down the corridor. "Close the bulkheads!" he shouted into his comm. "I repeat, close the open bulkheads! Unidentified program attempting to access mutagenics department!" Travis slid through the door, just as the bulkheads slammed shut. The night vision lenses in Travis' helmet switched on, and he watched the seal magnetize behind him.
"Crud." Travis muttered, not finding any exits. Travis tapped his bluetooth and rung up BIT again. "Alright, Skippy, I need you to scan the outside of the containment bulkhead. Once the ASF officers have left the area, give me an HUD notice. And find a way to reroute the security overrride when I say the word." Another "YES" was heard over Travis' comm before he looked around. Barrels of mutagenic coding compounds were stacked neatly in rows across the room. "Huh. Well, this certainly doesn't look like my tech." Travis walked over to the nearest container and squinted. "Mutagens? Argon Architecture is experimenting with mutagens? On whose order?! BIT, I'm sending you a scan of the mutagen crates in here. See if you can find a signature."
Several MicroCycles transpired, before a new message flashed across his lenses, depicting the signature. "Miranda signed these? She signed for bulkhead-class security on mutagens and never told anybody within her senior staff? That's crazy." Travis grabbed a few samples of the mutagens, and looked around. "Hey, BIT. Can any of these be rigged to explode?" A few more MicroCycles passed, before more results passed on his HUD.
"Lucky me," Travis said, examining the hazardous materials, and huffed in anger. "Only problem: I'm stuck in here with dozens of boomers, just waiting to go off. Wait, that makes all of it bad. Ah well. Live and learn." Travis picked up the equipment he had been looking for, a packet of blueprints and programming chips, and pressed them into the wing chute on the back of his costume.
"Okay, BIT," Travis spoke into his bluetooth, turning on his floodlights to examine the door, "We have a one-foot thick door. Durantanium. If this can't hold the explosion we're going to make, I don't know what will. Any way you can hack into the door systems and open it before I start the countdown? Otherwise I'm gonna be jumping out of a fiftieth-story window, and I'm not used to the cable shooters." A few NanoCycles passed before a 'NO' came as a response. "Alright, thanks for trying. Here we go." Travis smashed through the window, pressing a button on his right wrist and another on his left. On his left hand, a cable spriraled from his wrist-mounted cable-shooters, pulling him away from the explosion in Argon Architecture's storage center.
Tribeca, Travis and Zek's apartment, 0301 PectroCycles...
Travis sat at the desk in his room, intently watching the news for any reports of the found mutagens. Zek had gone to work early for a press conference, and Travis had the day off from GridTech, though as a member of Heliod's think tank, he was allowed to leave and go as he pleased, so long as he created something good by the end of the financial quarter.
He felt good about it.
As if something bad had come up in his life, and a miracle came by in the nick of time to save him at the last nanocycle. Sure, there had been the loss of his apartment and Zek taking him in for a while, but
Finally, it came on. A live Argon News Network feed showed Zek walking up to a white-lit podium, two Enforcers behind him in the smoke-clouded area. Travis knew that he had made a dent in the building, but ASF hadn't taken care of it? Either they were taken by surprise, or Zek was sending it as a message.
"We have the privilege to be at this event, Zek," the ANN reporter said, holding up a microphone, "We ask, what was the cause of the explosion early this Cycle?"
"I'll tell you who did it." Zek's eyes narrowed, and he pulled up a hologram of Travis' new outfit. "This guy did it. The Renegade is a terrorist, destroying two levels of highly unstable building codes and derezzing half of the programs working there. As CEO of Argon Architecture, I will not stand for such an act to occur on my company's grounds. As of now, AA has issued an arrest warran for this terrorist, who claims to be a hero."
Travis turned off the holonet display with a click of a button on the lens holder, sinking back into his desk chair and sighing in anger. Now he not only had the entire city against him, but his best friend? That was too much to bear.
Travis, leaping out the window, changed into his Renegade suit as he fell towards the concrete. Firing a cable at a nearby building, Travis saved himself from being a stain on the pavement. 'Those mutagens... the ones that Miranda's signature were on. They were ones that could have been made into biogenics weapons. And I don't necessarily blame Miranda for this... they could've disguised the crates and she would've thought they were building codes. But the Cycle I destroyed those mutagens, I killed a good twenty programs. From this day on... no one dies. I swear it on Miranda's cubes, nobody innocent will derezz on my watch.'
Next Cycle, Purgos, Hellsom Street, 0552 PectroCycles...
Night was just starting to fade away from Purgos' usually dark sky, and the system somehow broke its mysterious silence. Programs started to flood the streets, searching for quicker ways to get to work, or to get home after a night shift.
But for a Renegade, there were no such things as shifts.
Travis leaped across the rooftops of massive, graffiti-splayed skyscrapers in Purgos, knowing that just XilaCycles ago, this would have been a gang-ridden, filthy hole where the slimiest of hellspawn lived their daily lives, fighting small wars to gain more control. And, in a way, it still was that way. Just because Purgos had new buildings, skyscrapers and was a massive center of reconstruction on the Grid, it didn't mean that there weren't still programs who gathered in groups and fought others for control.
And as the Renegade, it was his goal and duty to put a stop to it.
Landing on the edge of a roof, Travis peered in a window, and watched three programs point at positions on a map of Purgos, surrounded by a good dozen programs. His eyes narrowing, Travis took the opportunity, smashing through the window and flipping over the dozen programs, drawing his disk as he stood up.
"Greetings, programs," Travis said, his lenses lighting up. "Now, who wants to go prison first?"
In the span of a few nanocycles, all of the programs charged him, making sure that he couldn't escape. Sighing in frustration and chuckling at their incompetence at the same time, he spun forward, using the momentum to trip up two of the programs, knocking them back. Another fell to his elbow, and his partner had his disk, along with his arm, glued to the wall by one of Travis' adhesive bombs. Another one was gripped by the neck and tossed into the manpile, and the remaining programs, spare the leader of the group, retreated into Purgo's morning.
"I can't believe you!" The program growled, his cybernetic eye making him look like a cliched pirate. "I built this small army on nothing, and you just boot on in and ruin it."
"That's why I'm here," Travis said, picking up the disk of an adhesive-bound program and stalking towards him. "I'm the Renegade. And you guys are my meals."
"That's it!" The program yelled, gripping a grenade and throwing it into the center of the room. "If I'm going down, I'm takin' you with me!" As Travis moved the adhesive-glued programs out of the room, he noticed two programs in the back alley, a lovely couple, finishing their morning routine. And if he abandoned his captured quarry, it would be okay. But if he didn't... somebody would die.
Thinking fast, Travis grabbed his captured prey, tossing them into the street, and raced back to the alley.
Just as the bomb went off, incinerating the buildings on all sides of the destroyed base.
Sinking to his knees, Travis gripped his disk, placed it on his disk dock, and swung away on a cable as ASF arrived to take his prey into custody.
Next Cycle, GridTech Labs, 0900 PectroCycles...
Travis pushed his fission welder against the new Light Cycle, hoping that it would be another win in his cap. Unlike last night. ASF had never found the terrorist, and Travis' best guess was that he had been incinerated in the blast. But that didn't do much to alleviate the guilt. In fact, it made more guilty, that he couldn't save him and those innocent programs nearby.
Swiping his identi-card against GridTech's time clock, Travis gripped a wall and sat on the building's rooftop. 'I wasn't able to do my job for once. I failed. And because of it, those two programs will never spend any more time together. One more kiss. Nothing. And I'm all that's left of their memory.' Changing into his Renegade suit, Travis fired another cable, and looked towards what he hoped would be a better tomorrow.
'I have to change. I have to be different. Change my style. Avenge those that I can't save.' The 'T' on his suit finally rezzed in, and Travis smiled, gripping the antennae of a tower and looking over Argon. 'Avenge...That's more like it. Long live the Avenging Renegade.'
A/N: So that's Avenging Renegade. This story in general takes place before Unlimited: Chapter 3, and it's meant to be a one-shot, but get this: If you guys like it and want to see more side adventures in the Renegade's life outside of Tron Unlimited, I'll make more chapters. But there's a catch: updates will more or less be once a month or two months. Hope you guys enjoyed it, and stick around for more Avenging Renegade.
Next part (if any):Takes place after Chapter 5; Travis and Natalie's relationship takes a turn for the worst when she is assaulted by an Enforcer. Travis' rage takes over, and he goes after the Enforcer as the Renegade, hoping to take revenge for his girlfriend's suffering.