Title: Trojan
Rating: G
Fandom: TRON: Legacy (direct follow on to Wishing Well)
Warnings: The more I look the more Mary Sue it gets I'm sorry!
Summary: Trojan becomes something of a legend - the thief with a thousand faces, the thief who has never been caught
Disclaimer: Any character in here you recognise is not mine. Trojan/Umbra on the other hand...
The first time she opens her eyes on the Grid, she knows who she is and what is her purpose (Trojan - Filename: Umbra. Function: Information Collection and Retrieval), for all she is just newly rezzed. She lifts her head to survey her surrounding and smiles. The connection to Outside is miniscule, but it is there, and it is enough. She knows what to do (and oh, she is going to be busy). Stepping out confidently, within moments she is merely one of the crowd.
She starts small. As Umbra, she sets up a restaurant. Careful hacking by her/her User, means that no one will be able to trace how long it has been there, when systems tell them "always". She names it "Wishing Well" (her User was always a bit whimsical), and it becomes known as a quiet and discrete place to meet. As Umbra, she is elegant, poised and reserved. She offers a sympathetic ear to guests, and if people find it easier to talk when drunk, well, she is known to be understanding. She ensures that her chef is good, and she waits the bar herself. If her musical choices are influenced by her User, who would know? She starts the rumor of the fountain granting wishes herself, for there are always those who have wishes for something more.
As Trojan, she starts smaller still. For a long time she only watches, listens to the gossip and looks. Something in her programming demands a bit of flair, but she knows better than to act before knowing her opposition (and it is pretty intimidating opposition!) Her first thefts are small insignificant things, tests of the system, more than anything else. When the first few probes go largely unnoticed, she pushes a bit harder, going after information that is actually valuable to her User. She leaves a card, this time - a riddle which spells out her name/function. This time she does not go unnoticed, and she learns for the first time the thrill of the chase. She is not important enough to draw the notice of Tron, and for this she is grateful, but for the first time she needs her ability to blend for more than just the distinction between Umbra and Trojan.
Slowly, slowy, she pushes the envelope, ever so careful not to draw too much attention too fast. Even as the Wishing Well becomes more popular a location, so Trojan becomes something of a rumor - the thief with a mocking grin, the thief who can look like anyone at all...the thief who has never been caught. Among the security programs, she becomes something of a prize, a legend to be caught. Her calling cards are examined, the firewalls strengthened, but still she slips through the cracks. Often the first clue they have is a friend (a stranger) who turns and cracks that mocking grin at them, and then she is gone (she gains a reputation for a love of heights and falling out of windows and off ledges), and it is too late. Even Tron, now, is aware of her, and she has to be so, so very careful, every theft and escape planned with exacting care. She learns the value of distraction now, of using the flash and dazzle of illusion to blind her pursuers to her true intent (she cannot bring herself to be less flamboyant, and she wonders sometimes what quirk of her programming makes her so).
And then Clu happens.
After, the Grid is in chaos, and the danger means that it is safer if Trojan fades, and so for a while she is only Umbra. Wishing Well is popular (but unimportant) enough that it earns no more than the standard sweeps and warnings, and she is content to leave it at that. Flynn is gone, Tron is gone, the Grid's stalwart protector replaced with the terrifying Rinzler and the grim Black Guard. The Games are now a place of derezzement, and programs vanish off the street. As Umbra she is unimportant and largely unnoticed, but she remains still Trojan, and although she dares not act openly, her function remains information. Slowly, painstakingly, she puts the pieces together, and she does not like what she sees. The wishes in the fountain are no longer the playful whimsical ones of Before (I wish my partner would say yes), now they speak of loss and grief (I wish my ISO friend comes home safe). One night, she takes a long, long look at her own functions, what leeway she has, and makes a decision. Her User cares not how she gets the information, after all, only that she does.
Once again, she starts small. ISOs are vanishing anyway, who will notice a few more gone? To her customers, she simply hires a few staff, it was getting hard to manage with so few. She has long been an expert in looking like something other than herself, it is easy enough (it isn't) to disguise another (it helps that the restaurant is themed a certain way to start with, the only comments from patrons are that the new uniforms are cute). Slowly slowly, she tests and probes and gathers information. Then she delivers her first warning notice. The heist that night is everything she hoped for - the system is in uproar, Clu is furious, Rinzler is occupied elsewhere and will not make it back in time, and Trojan is a laughing, mocking shadow, changing faces like breathing, dodging Black Guards and sowing confusion everywhere she goes. She starts as one of the Black Guard and it is all she can do not to laugh as Clu paces across the room and assigns her unit to guard the information node in question. When he leaves she gasses them all, and when they burst back into the room they are only in time to see her mocking grin as she leaps out of the window. The chase is exhillarating, and she cannot stop laughing. Before they realise she stashed the information for her associates to pick up before leading them away, she blinds them and then simply turns into someone else, merging into the crowd.
Success makes her braver. The chases become spectacular, the heists more and more bold. She is still careful, but so long as Rinzler is elsewhere (and with others working with her now, distraction is easy), she has little fear of the Black Guard. (Clu she fears for a different reason entirely, but so long as she stays free...) By now even the average program on the street knows her name. And then one night, one her waitressess brings her one of the wishes from the fountain. 'My partner has been taken to the Games. I wish he could be free.' When they shut down the restaurant for the rest cycle, she calls her staff to her and they talk, and then when they are all agreed, however reluctant, they plan.
This is how it goes.
Jarvis meets Clu, as he always does, and if he is rather more obsequious than ever it is easily explained by his news. With him, he brings Trojan's latest challenge, delivered this time spray painted on an unconscious Black Guard.
'Tonight I will come for the Program designation: Gemini.
~Trojan~
Clu rages of course, before returning to that terrible calm, and laying out his plans. Jarvis nods, makes deferntial suggestions, and finally agrees with his master as he always does, and Clu misses the cocky grin that splits his face as he walks out the door to implement his orders. The crowd at the games that night knows that something is up when the unlucky Program in question is announced to be duelling Rinzler solo. Clu has learnt as well (he is hardly stupid), and Rinzler had been kept by his side, the Black Guard sent to deal with the rumors of Flynn and the brewing unrest (some of it might be real, but he has learnt enough to know how Trojan operates and he will not be so easily fooled). The arena is a death trap, lined with Black Guards and Rinzler is eager. In the Armory halls, Clu comes down to give Rinzler final instructions. Walking away from the area where the Sirens sleep, he claps a friendly hand on Rinzler's shoulders. When the platform lifts Rinzler into the ring, the crowd cheers and the Program flinches. Rinzler is silent, prowling forwards, forcing his opponent back and back until there is no further space by force of intent alone, and the crowd grows hushed with anticipation.
"Get ready to run"
Gemini has time enough to blink in surprise, disc still held defensively before him, and then everything starts to happen at once. An angry roar sounds, and Rinzler vaults up from below, and there is a single, frozen moment, when Rinzler stares at Rinzler, a perfect mirror image, and then the outline wavers, and dissolves, and it isn't Rinzler at all, but a program cloaked and hooded, with that brilliant, crazy grin.
"Show time!"
The explosion is brilliant and sudden, more dazzle than substance, lancing up from somewhere beneath (the armory!) and rocking the platform. It is barely any distraction at all, but it lets Trojan dodge, flipping backwards as Rinzler lunges, lets her drop her dazzle bomb, and the arena floods with light. By the time the lights clear, there is only the gaping hole and the empty platform, and Trojan's laughter echoing from below. The chase this time is far too close for Trojan's liking, but as expected (hoped), they seem not to care that they are chasing only one, not two, programs. While her people get Gemini and his partner to safety, she leads them a merry chase. More than once, she is forced to change her appearance, and it is only luck several times that keeps her free from Rinzler (That grin never drops, never falters, but inside she is sweating. Rinzler is too good and she plays a desperate game, staying only just ahead, keeping their attention). She switches transports too, going from the light cycle to the light jet, and then back again a few times. Only once she is sure that she has given them enough time to get away does she lead them back into populated areas, abandon the cyle (it was stolen, anyway), and merge into the crowd to truly loose them (even then it is a bit too close - Rinzler tracks her all the way to the End of the Line, where she finally loses him in the crowd, and while the Black Guard question Castor, she slips out, one of dozens of terrified partygoers who flee as the Black Guard enter).
That night Umbra has to deal with Clu and his enforcers, furiously checking discs and issuing silkly dangerous threats. (Clu is terrifying if odly charming this close, and Rinzler's brooding presence doesn't help). Her staff are jittery and nervous, her patrons only staying because the Black Guard won't let them leave. Umbra herself is only politely acqueising (Of course, Administrator, please, have a seat. Certainly Administrator, would you like a drink. Naturally Administrator, whatever you say. Oh, this lowly program would not presume to use your name, Administrator). She knows he will find nothing, after all everything is in order, exactly as it is meant to be (it isn't). If her smiles have just that touch of steel beneath the elegant politeness, and her answers just stop short of being rude (is that an insult? only if you take it that way...), well, Clu cannot take her away for that. Not yet. They leave after finding nothing, and with a promise that all wishes will be screened by the Black Guard. As they do, they miss Trojan's grin on Umbra's face. She will have to lay low for a while, but it was worth it. (She hides an abrupt pang of pity as she turns back to face her staff - she has always been observant, and yet it is only now she realises - for all his talk of freedom from Users, it is Clu whose chain binds him tightest to his User still)