Tron: Remembrance Chapter 1, a tron fanfic

Streams of errant data flowed up from the depths of the Sea as he sunk down. Rinzler's coding screamed at him, telling him to move, to swim to the surface and save himself. But from the depths of his core, the program he had been–the program that had fought for the Users–stubbornly ran a counter-command, rendering Rinzler helpless.

It was his fate to derez here. He would not resist.

The surface grew further and further away as he was swallowed by the depths of the Sea. It was ironic that he would meet his end here, of all places.

The place where Flynn's miracle had emerged.

The part of him that remained Tron had awakened when Flynn called his name.

Tron, what have you become?

Only at the last, when Clu had been about to derez the light-jet carrying Flynn, Sam, and the last ISO, had Tron been able to regain control over his own body. Memories that had been suppressed by Clu's protocols had surfaced in a furious explosion that had disoriented Rinzler long enough for Tron to claw his way back into consciousness. It had been a moment of exhilaration and despair.

When Tron rammed his own light-jet into Clu's, he had expected to be derezzed. Survival had not mattered.

He deserved to die.

But both of them had come out of that explosion unscathed. Some of Rinzler's protocols then took effect, forcing an unwilling Tron to grab his spare baton from his right leg. But before he had a chance to activate it, Clu was on top of him, fighting for a grip on the baton. Weakened by the war within himself––as Rinzler strove to release the baton to his master and as Tron struggled to keep ahold of it––Tron could not stop Clu from snatching it out of his grip.

Tron could only watch powerlessly as Clu activated the light-jet and sped off in pursuit of Flynn. Then his body hit the surface of the Sea of Simulation and he was enveloped by the darkness.

Tron knew that he had only a few moments before his functions shut down. On the Grid, programs had a constant source of energy that they absorbed from the Grid itself. But here in the Sea, the effect was quite the opposite: it drained energy. And Rinzler had already used up quite a lot of it powering his vehicle during the light-jet chase.

It was the end.

As his circuitry began to flicker out and his body grew numb from the lack of energy, Tron found himself buried in ancient memories dredged up from when he first met Flynn…

"Alan!"

Tron glared at the unknown program standing before him, in both irritation and suspicion. "Where did you hear that name?" he demanded.

"Well that's your name, isn't it?" the other said belligerently.

Tron clenched his fists at the attitude of this upstart, and snarled, "The name of my User!"

An expression that Tron couldn't properly designate crossed the stranger's face, just before the other program took his place in the game-transfer pad.

"How did you know?" Tron asked coldly.

"I'm a program from a User that knows Alan."

"He was disoriented during transport, Tron," Ram offered, standing on Tron's right.

"Yeah, but I'm remembering all kinds of stuff," the stranger said loudly. "Like my User wants me to take out the MCP."

Tron inwardly flinched at the stranger's brash declaration, and fought to keep his expression calm. "My User wants that too," he gritted out through his teeth.

"I know," the other program responded.

Tron, who had remained perfectly still up to that point, turned his head to look at the new program in startled amazement.

Who is he?

Inside his dark helmet, a sad smile crossed Tron's face. Flynn had always stood out starkly from other programs with his, as the User had later described it, easy-go-lucky personality. Flynn had been everything Tron wasn't–cocky, belligerent, and immature–and it had driven the security program crazy. Tron, who had been spurred to action by his directives and core programming, had had very little toleration for Flynn's abnormalities.

But during that fateful light-cycle game so long ago, Flynn had given them a chance to escape the Grid, leading them through the maze of the system and proving himself a worthy warrior in the process. Tron slowly gained respect for Flynn's underlying qualities and started to consider him a friend, even if the other man's quirks still bothered him.

Then, a few megacycles later, Flynn had revealed the truth about himself, who and what he really was, to Tron and Yori…

"It's time I level with you. I'm what you guys call a User."

Tron thought for a microcycle that he had misheard what Flynn had said.

"You're a User?" Yori asked, with hardly veiled amusement and disbelief.

"I took wrong turn somewhere," Flynn said easily.

Willing to accept Flynn's statement, Tron asked hopefully, "Well if you are a User, then everything you've done has been according to a plan, right?"

Flynn laughed and replied, "You wish!"

Tron's puzzled expression must have informed Flynn that an explanation was required.

"Well, you know what it's like," Flynn continued. "You just keep doin' what it seems like you're supposed to be doin', no matter how crazy it seems."

"That's the way it is for programs, yes," Tron admitted.

"I hate to disappoint ya, pal, but most of the time that's the way it is for Users, too."

That statement turned Tron's world upside-down. It didn't show on the surface beyond a mild frown, but on the inside his thoughts were moving a mile a minute. Programs, himself included, had always assumed Users were perfect and didn't make mistakes; after all, Users had created programs in the first place. They were practically gods to them. Then Flynn comes along, the most unusual person Tron ever met on the Grid, and he claims he's a User.

A User? Flynn?

All of Tron's preconceptions of Users instantly crumbled. If Flynn was what he said he was, and if what he said about Users was true, then that meant that Users weren't gods, but just people. And, surprisingly, Tron found himself willing and almost eager to accept that. Seeing Flynn, and having spent time around him, it made it a lot easier.

A smile crept across his face and he shook his head with bemusement. "Stranger and stranger…"

A soft shudder ran through the Sea, but Tron didn't feel it. His body's automatic survival functions had shut down his consciousness in order to keep him online for as long as possible, while his energy fell to barely adequate levels.

Just as the ripples quieted and the Sea was calm again, an enormous explosion rocked the entire Grid. White energy erupted from the Portal in a circular shockwave that shattered everything in its path, including Clu's command ship The Rectifier. The Sea trembled violently and heaved up a tsunami wave of data up from the farthest depths, sending trillions of data bits crashing on to the Outland shores. In the aftershock of the wave, Tron's body was carried up gently on the swells, and deposited in a limp heap on a small rocky outcropping.

His body hungrily sucked up energy from the surface of the Grid, just microcycles before he would have shut down permanently. So instead of derezzing, Tron's body started a reboot, running a diagnostic on all his functions and reactivating them one at a time.

Query: What is your designation?

Reply: Designation Rinzler011001, Clu's enforcer–––error: proper designation Tron100110, security program.