Disclaimer: Victorious is the property of Nickelodeon. TRON is the property of Disney. No profit is being made. This is an idea I hope to continue, so updates may be slow.
TRON:Victorious
It was another party for Hollywood Arts at Kenan Thompson's house. Due to the success of the last one Kenan decided to let another party happen. But he had changed addresses again so he could stay one step ahead of the panda with his tennis raquet.
Almost everyone had arrived, but Tori Vega had not arrived. Most everyone had wondered where she was. Beck then decided to ask Jade, who had given directions out, if Tori had gotten the directions. "Yeah I gave her directions." she answered. Just then Jade's phone had rung. It was Tori's number. Smiling Jade picked up and said in her best mock sweet voice "Hollo Tori."
"All right where's the party?" Tori asked over the phone. "So far I'm in some run down section of town that looks like it hadn't seen civilization in years." Jade then smiled and said "I said it was on 41st street and West Avenue."
"You said the party was at 41st AVENUE and West STREET." Tori said over the phone wondering if Jade hadn't mixed up the street names. Jade responded with a "Whoops!" Tori however picked up on Jade's joke.
"You deliberately sent me to the wrong place!" Tori said. "Just you wait Jade. I'm going to get there. I'm going to find my way out of this slum and I'm..." Jade broke the connection just as Beck and Andre came forward. "Was that Tori?" Andre asked.
"YEs. Yes it was." Jade answered with mock innocence. Beck then asked "When's she getting here?"
"Tori will be here later." Jade said with a smile. "She's just taking the scenic route." In the meantime Jade went and enjoyed the party.
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Tori Vega never arrived at the party. She dissapeared that night.
Trina arrived, but when asked where Tori was she said she didn't know. Trina hadn't been invited anyway, but she decided to crash. As the party went into the night Tori was still a 'no show', and soon people started to worry.
Police were soon called. Among them was Tori and Trina's father Lt. Vega. Questions were asked to the invited sudents and soon all the answers pointed to Jade. Jade started to look around and soon she found herself face to face with two LAPD officers. One of them had cuffs to be placed on her.
"Jade West you're under arrest. Suspicion of kidnapping." the first LAPD officer said as he brought Jade's hands behind to cuff her. As her rights were being read, and she was escorted in a squad car her eyes went wide in fear. How could this happen? How could she get blamed for Tori's dissapearance? Looking around she saw her friends hoping to find some compassion and understanding in them.
They knew she didn't like Tori. They shouldn't have given her the directions to give to Tori. They knew that. _Why are they looking at me that way?_ She asked herself. As she looked in the eyes of her friends she found no support in them.
Instead she saw eyes full of distrust and suspicion. Some even had hate in them. Jade saw the look in they eyes as she was driven away in the patrol car cuffed. Her heart shaken.
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The next morning Jade was released. As Tori's body had not turned up there was no evidence, and the questioning indicated that Jade did nothing more than play a prank. Any malicious intent never went farther that that as far as the detectives could tell, so the next moment she was free to leave the police station. Once she got home she changed her clothes, got some sleep and went to Hollywood Arts the next morning.
The other students were far from friendly. There were angry glares from some and turned eyes from the rest. Normally Jade would not have cared what the other students thought of her, but this time was different. This time they actually thought Jade did something terrible to Tori Vega.
When she came up to Beck's locker she said "Hey." to him as he talked to Andre. He just gave a dispassionate 'Hey' and walked off. "Hey!" she then shouted. "What's your problem?"
"My problem?" Beck turned around not hiding his anger. "My problem is that I thought there was a line you wouldn't cross with Tori. I thought you would have at least respected her not to hurt her."
"I didn't hurt her." Jade shouted. "She dissapeared. I just gave her bad directions. It was one of my jokes. I do that all the time."
"But this time that joke may have cost her her life." Beck said finally as he turned and walked away. Jade was relieved that Beck didn't say that he and Jade were through, but she didn't feel like bringing up the issue at the moment. Cat then walked past not wanting to make eye contact with Jade.
"Cat!" Jade said like it was a shout. Cat just turned around and asked "What?" in her lost little girl voice.
"You...you didn't say anything to me." Jade said. "You usually say some comment to me and I just say something nasty back. You didn't say anything this time."
Cat paused for a moment and just said "I'm not talking to you." before walking off. Jade was stunned as she asked "You're not talking to me? Why?"
Turning back around Cat then said "You made Tori dissapear."
"I didn't make Tori dissapear. I gave her bad directions as a prank. That's all I did." Jade was really getting defensive in her voice. Cat just said "Bad directions that made her dissapear."
Jade didn't know how to respond to that comment. Because in a way Cat wasn't wrong. Jade had given Tori the directions to that run down area of town. The area Tori had dissapeared in. Cat gave a sad sheepish look at Jade and then said "Bye, see you in Sikowitz's." before walking away from the mean girl she called 'friend'. Soon the hallway was empty leaving Jade alone in the center looking around until her eyes caught the sight of Tori's locker.
The lights on Tori's 'Make it Shine' locker were off, as if without Tori there was no light to light up the locker, or the rest of the school for that matter. Another thing Jade was blamed for. Jade promised she wouldn't cry. She refused to let her self cry.
She cried anyway. As the tears fell she shouted "Damn it Vega. Why did you have to dissapear? Why did it have to be like this?" She wiped the tears away walking to Sikowitz's class as if on auto pilot when a message on her phone came on. It was from Robbie Shapiro.
_Shapiro leaving me a message?_ Jade thought. She then realized Robbie hadn't shown up for school today. Neither had Trina. Jade thought Trina not showing was because she was mourning her sister, despite her shallowness and conceit. But why didn't Robbie show up? Looking at her phone Jade read Robbie's message.
The message said :Meet at Tori's house. May be something to clear your name.
Jade hoped the geeky Robbie Shapiro was right.
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At the Vega house Robbie was working with his pear pad as Trina was pacing. "Are you finished yet?
"I'm still working." Robbie said as he tapped on the pear pad keys. "This new app takes a while to download." His sidekick Rex was at home, deciding to leave him behind. He didn't need Rex distracting him from the work he was doing. "64% download. Now we wait for everyone to get here."
As if on cue the door knocked and Tori's classmates arrived. First to come in was Andre, followed later by Cat. When Beck arrived Trina couldn't help but stop drooling. But when Jade arrived Trina's blood ran cold.
"What's she doing here?" Trina asked with venom in her voice. Robbie said "I invited her. She's a..." Robbie avoided calling Jade Tori's friend because she often said she never liked Tori. Added to the last time someone called Tori Jade's 'friend'...well they weren't walking well for the next few days.
"She's a classmate of Tori's." Robbie said. "We're all classmates of Tori's, and we're all worried about her." Trina looked at Jade skeptically, but Jade was tired of being scrutinized by Tori's shallow sister.
"Look, I gave Tori wrong directions. I fully expected her to find her way to the party. It's not my fault she dissapeared. Now we are here to find out why she dissapeared and see if we can get her back from wherever she was taken to. When that happens I can get back to my life without people wondering if I did anything to her." Jade said. Trina however let her mouth speak without her brain and asked "Did you do anything to her?"
"Okay that's it." Jade said about to hit Trina with a drawn back fist. Beck and Andre then stepped in to break the girls up. "This sin't going to help us find Tori." Beck said. "ANd that's what we need to do. Got it girls?"
"Yeah we got it." Trina and Jade both said. Beck then turned to Trina and asked "Okay, why are we all here?" Taking a sigh Trina then began her story.
"I got a call last night." Trina said. "It was Tori's number."
"Tori?" Andre asked. "That means she's alive?" His voice filled with hope but Beck brought him back down to Earth. "Not so fast Andre. All we have is a number."
"Yeah." Trina said. "It was Tori's number, but she wasn't answering. It was just static. I don't know where the call came from."
"Well it's a good thing I brought along my pear pad with locator app." Robbie said as he took out his pear pad. "Now I just need to put in the number and..." Robbie motioned his fingers on the keypad and the info then came. "yep, Tori's number and it came from a place called...Flynn's Arcade?"
"I've heard of that place." Beck said. "It's been closed for 20 years after it's owner Kevin Flynn dissapeared." Andre then asked "Kevin Flynn. Wasn't he the guy that ran that company...ENCOM?"
"Yeah, he made a lot of games for them." Robbie said. "Space Paranoids, TRON, Matrix Blaster, a whole slew of them. His work was taken by a guy named Ed DIllinger, but he got exposed and fired. He started his own company, Dillinger Systems. Stuff done on the cheap."
"Yeah, he was even big on that whole digital frontier stuff." Jade then added remembering Kevin Flynn herself. "How our future could be inside a world of a computer." Everyone looked at Jade wondering how she knew that. She answered with "I read. Besides how can you make fun of something if you don't know something about it?"
"Didn't Kevin Flynn dissapear?" Cat asked while tugging her hair. Jade nodded "Yeah, 20 years ago. No one knows how or why. Kind of like how Tori dissapeared."
"We know how." Trina said as she glared at Jade. "You made her dissapear, because you hated her." Trina was about to attack Jade again when Jade stepped back. Beck stood between the two girls and Jade shouted "I told you I had nothing to do with Tori's dissapearance."
"Sure you didn't!" Trina shouted as Andre held her by the waist. Beck shouted "Okay break it up girls. Robbie, do you know where Tori called last? Maybe you can see about how far she was from this arcade when she dissapeared."
"Yepperoo!" Robbie siad as he typed on his pearpad. When the information came back Robbie was stunned. "No way. That can't be right."
"What can't be right?" Cat asked. Robbie then explained.
"According to this Tori's last call was from that very place. Flynn's arcade." Everyone looked stunned after that revalation. "My call from her came from the last place she called from?" Trina asked.
"Apparently so." Robbie said. Everyone looked at each other wondering what to do when Beck spoke. "Guess we're going to Flynn's then."
"Why?" Cat asked. Jade said "Because this could help clear my name with Tori's dissapearance."
"It's all we've got to go on and we need to check it out." Beck then said. "Either Tori is at that arcade or whoever used Tori's phone is at that arcade. So that's where we have to look."
"Well then. Let's go to Flynn's then." Andre said as the gang all stood up to leave. Soon everyone was heading to Flynn's to hopefully find Tori.
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The arcade was in a section of town that had definitely seen better days. The streets were dirty and unkept. A lot of the buildings looked run down, and the crime rate was incredibly high. However for some reason the arcade remained untouched. No one went into it. No one vandalized it. For reasons of their own the criminal element left Flynn's alone.
The gang immediately thought that since Flynn's was left alone that Tori thought she would have been safe there. Since she had dissapeared, that conclusion was put in doubt.
Looking around Cat felt frightened. She wondered if something dark and scary wasn't going to jump out. Everyone else felt a little fear, except for Jade who felt at home in the run down neighborhood. Finally they came to the door and Beck moved to open it. It seemed to open with ease.
"Awkward." Robbie had said. Who would leave a door unlocked? Then the gang realized the unlocked door must have been how Tori got in. Wasting no time Cat, Jade, Trina, Beck, Andre and Robbie all ran into the arcade and closed the door.
"Okay, we're in." Andre said. "Where are the lights?"
Robbie went to a panel on the wall and activated a few switches. The arcade lit up in a shower of light, color and sound as Journey's music played in the background. Everyone was in awe of the sight of the arcade. The old covered games, the loft where Flynn had done his work, the neon lighting illuminating the entire room. Cat looked up and said "Wow!" reflecting the feelings of wonder and amazement the gang had felt.
"This must have been some place back in the day." Andre said.
"We have to look around though." Beck said bringing everyone back to reality. "There must be some clue as to where Tori is." Soon everyone began looking around hoping to find some sort of device that didn't fit in the arcade. Something that wasn't 1980's.
Everyone except Cat.
She looked at all the covered games, how they all lit up and the game sprites moving along. Then she came across a game at the end of the row. A game lit up by a giant neon blue sign. A sign that said 'TRON'. A game that had not been covered.
"Why are you uncovered?" Cat then asked as she walked up to the TRON game. She then saw the Light Cycle game being replayed and looked in her purse for a quarter. Finding one she pulled it out of her skirt pocket and dropped it on the ground. She went to pick it up only to find some grooves in the floor. Grooves that reflected some sort of moving platform.
"Guys, I think I found something." Cat said as the gang came to the TRON game. She then pointed to the ground and said "I think there might be a secret door."
"How would you know Cat?" Jade asked. Cat answered "Because there's grooves on the floor and this game is uncovered. Maybe Tori found the secret door and walked in?"
"Secret passages?" Trina said in disbelief. "Do you know how lame that sounds?" Cat got upset at Trina and shouted "Well what other reason do you have for Tori dissapearing and the only clue being a phone number that led us here?"
"Cat it's okay." Beck said as he asked Andre and Jade to help give him a hand. "Why not me?" Robbie asked as to why he couldn't help move the door. Jade answered "You're too nerdy, and I have better upper body strength." Robbie went to pout off to the side with Trina and Cat as Beck, Jade and Andre moved the game and true enough found the door to a secret room.
"The inner sanctum of Kevin Flynn?" Robbie asked looking down the dark hallway. Trina then said "If Tori's down there she'd better not be rat food." with Jade following up with "If rats ate her it could only improve her looks."
"JADE!" everyone shouted. Jade shook her head and then said "We want answers, they must be down there."
"Then let's go." Beck said as he took the lead with Andre, Jade, Robbie, Cat and Trina following. As they went down the steps the door behind them closed leading them to go down the stairwell. Soon they came to a room off to the side. A room that had a light on. Opening it they hoped to find Tori.
Instead they found an office more dusty and dirty that the arcade was. "Yuck." Cat couldn't help but say. They saw a dirty couch with an unplayed Mattel game, generator equipment and at the center was a huge desk that seemed to light up. Clearing the dust off they saw some kind of counter. "Robbie can you crack this?"
"Let's see." Robbie said as he got behind the computer. "This thing may be old, but I never saw anything like this before." Immediately he began pushing keys while behind the gang a laser cannon started to power up. When Robbie came to the command 'Aperture open?' he typed in 'yes'.
The next thing that happened the laser powered up, and the gang was no longer in the arcade.
Author's note: I had this idea for a while now, but due to work on a story for another archive I was not able to start it for a while. Even now I'm still busy so updates will be slow. The start may have been an 'as usual' start for TRON fans, but I hope to bring in some more twists and turns here.
I want to finish the epilogue for 'Where is Hannah Montana' before going into this work a little more. Especially as it is the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who this year, so the timing for the ending is appropriate. Also if there's any artist out there that can do a photo logo for TRON:Victorious I appreciate it, but only if they want to. My skills with photo manip is basically non-existant.
At any rate I will look to write more on this at some point, but updates will be slow. However to tease a preview I will ask this question 'Can a User be repurposed?'
Expect me when you see me.
John