Tron Odyssey

Chapter 10: Behemoth

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

~O~

Ed peered out of his cover, hoping to find some kind of weakness on the mechanical monster that was busy decimating the other players. Its back was exposed to him, but he couldn't see anything that he could damage to hinder the war machine: no heat sinks, no exhaust pipes, not even a single glowing bit or an arrow that spelled "AIM HERE". He had tried aiming for the leg joints, but between their constant movement and the huge, half-meter thick walls of armor bolted on the forelegs, the shots were too difficult.

Better some damage than no damage at all: almost all tanks have inferior rear armor.

Ed charged the cannon that covered his right forearm, aimed, and released the payload. It hit the main body right in the rear, causing the whole machine to stagger for a moment. Ed smiled, although he really wished his helmet's GUI could give him more feedback than his own health bar, a countdown, and an ammo indicator. He had no idea just HOW much damage he did.

780 seconds left. A few shots remaining, no reloads. I'm going to have to-

The chest high-wall that he had been using as cover exploded in a shower of gravel, and he was blown away by the shockwave. Quietly thanking his armor for absorbing the impact, he scrambled to his feet and tried to run for cover, only to hear the roar of the walking tank's main snub guns charging up. They were aimed right at him.

Damn. Oh well, this game must have multiple rounds. Hate to wait to respawn, but…

Somebody tackled him from the side, and he could feel a cannon blast whizzing by his feet, then another close to his arm. He had landed just behind another (conveniently placed) chest high wall, and someone was lying on top of him.

"Hi," said Quorra. "I don't suppose you've seen a User anywhere?"

"Gmmph hmpph Mmmmph!"

Quorra double-tapped something on the side of Ed's helmet, and he gasped as it unraveled, exposing him to fresh air.

Argh! You can't talk in these things!

"You! Get off me!" he shouted, pushing her away.

Quorra leaned against cover and peered out. By the sound of explosions, Ed assumed it was busy massacring other players…a golden opportunity to fire a few quick shots into her back. The glowing bullets seemed to fizzle out harmlessly when they hit her armor, although she did look annoyed, surprised, and very angry.

"Hey! You shot me in the back!"

"Just be thankful they turned off friendly fire!"

"Friedly F-? What the fuck, Ed?"

"When this game is over, you and your friends are going to face some MAJOR consequences! I don't care if your ex is my boss, I don't care if he's richer than Croesus himself: There is no way I'm letting you get away with kidnapping!"

"…Wait. You think I'm responsible for THIS?"

"It's just typical of you! I remember every single goddamned pranks you pulled, each one crazier and more humiliating than the next and I've tolerated those but this? This? Getting men dressed up as mercenaries to beat me into unconsciousness and strap me into a VR chair? This crosses the line!"

An explosion rained pixels on them, and they ducked.

"…I killed one of those men and maimed another trying to save you! You saw it!"

"I also remember you turning invisible, executing gravity defying acrobatics and used a guided Frisbee as a weapon! Frankly, I don't trust anything I saw! You could have staged it!"

"Alright, alright, fine! You're right, I've put you in a crazy, dangerous prototype VR game, and everyone in R&D is laughing his ass off right now!"

"I knew it! Those-"

"-And you know what else? Unless we destroy this giant killer robot, you'll be stuck in here for hours!"

"Hours?"

"Hours! Now, they wouldn't have put you up against this thing without some small way of hurting it. What have you got besides that arm cannon and grenades?"

"…Grenades? I don't have any grenades!"

Quorra grabbed something on his thigh; one of many small disks that covered his armor's cuisses. She held it up to his face so that he could have a closer look.

"Those are grenades? I've had explosives strapped to my legs this whole time?"

Quorra just rolled her eyes. "You are such a newb."

Quorra pressed buttons on the grenade, bringing up a holographic menu.

"Have you got anything else?"

"No, at least I don't think so."

She sighed, just as she finished altering the grenade's settings. "How much ammo have you got left for that gun?"

"Not much," Ed answered, and Quorra grabbed his weapon with both hands, and closed her eyes. It red circuitry went from red to bright teal. "What are you doing?"

"Cheating. You've got one thousand units of ammo now. Also, I've got a plan." She primed her grenade and shouted "INCOMING SMOKE!" before throwing it at the metal monster. It exploded just above its turret, showering the war machine with a multitude of small shards and a heavy smoke that covered and blinded it. The few remaining other players popped out of cover and began shooting charged shots into the smoke.

Quorra took the rest of his grenades and clamped them onto her sides. She looked at his neck, and began to press buttons on the collar that had been bothering Ed since they pushed him out into this madness. Another player had told him not to touch it, or it would explode.

Before he could protest, Quorra smiled triumphantly as the collar came off, and she gave it to him.

"You know what that is?"

"I have some explosive idea, yes."

"Good, then keep it, it might be useful. So here's the plan: I'm going around to attack it from behind, you keep shooting at it. Blind fire if you have to, but you keep its attention on you!"

"Are you-mmfff hmff!"

Quorra had tapped just under his ear, causing his helmet to cover his whole head again.

"Don't worry, your cover can take a few more hits before it crumbles!"

And she ran off.

Ed stared, bewildered. He couldn't believe he was going along with anything she was saying, and briefly considered letting the tank crush her. It's not like it would kill her,he thought, and it would teach her a lesson. He then decided against it, as it would more likely cause her to throw a fit and extend this…torment for a while longer.

She might force me to go against an army of aliens with nothing but a crowbar, or something.

He peered out and waited for the smoke to clear until he could barely make out the tank's form, allowed a shot to charge, took aim, and fired.

And besides, I hate to lose.

~O~

Quorra had found cover some distance behind the walking tank, and prepared herself. Ed was making a good distraction thanks to his overloaded gun, and the giant couldn't ignore him. Her thoughts dwelled on Julie: Quorra had told her to stay put in the Disk Wars court until she could lower the glass pod without risking it getting blown up by the tank. "See that red holo-button?" she had asked Julie. "Once I take care of this monster, press it and the whole court will come down.

This is nuts, Quorra thought. A crazed monster program and a mutant user, I can handle, but a walking tank? Come on!

Briefly, the memories of the Monitor came to mind. She had bore witness to his combat prowess once, when Abraxas had been unleashed and CLU began his coup. He had taken on a Tank on foot, and his tactic had been simple: get on top of the turret (thus making its firepower useless) and smack the hell out of it with a disk. Getting in close enough was the real trick to it, but thanks to good use of cover and claiming the high ground, he had pulled it off.

The bad news was that there was no high ground to be taken from a tank with forelegs at least 9 meters tall. The arena's floor was flat and featureless save for chest high walls all over place acting as cover, and it was surrounded by flat walls taller than the war machine itself, and these were further topped by force fields. There was nothing she could use her Tracer skills on to get the drop on it.

That left scaling the machine itself, and that meant climbing the forelegs. The problem was that the armored legs had nothing to hold on to, not to mention that their movements were always slight, ensuring that the long, slightly curved plates they bore as armor were always almost straight up. Those were the bad news.

The good news was that Quorra had several grenades with magnetic clamps, and each of them was a centimeter thick: plenty for a good solid grip. She hated the idea of wasting good explosives, but she stood a better chance destroying the tank up close with her disk than anything else.

Ed had fired six charged shots at the machine, causing it to stagger and getting its full attention after it had finished off a group of three other programs. The tank began making its way to its aggressor, and Quorra ran up to its rear right leg, readied a grenade, and leapt. To her surprise, she had managed to clamp on halfway up the armor plate.

Huh, I must have a Y-amp on or something. Oh well, I might only need just 4 grenades to scale the rest. I should be able to make the last 2 useful.

She mantled over the foreleg, threw her two remaining sticky grenades at the two most sensitive spots she could find, and withdrew her disk. It was time to finish this.

~O~

Ed heard an explosion, and leaned out of cover to see that the tank was struggling with its rear legs. Quorra had apparently managed to ruin two joints, but it hadn't been brought low. Then he saw her on the tank's turret, holding up a black edged ring wreathed in white flames. Then she got on her knees and began smacking it against the tank.

Oh my god, She's hitting a tank with a burning Frisbee.

She's hitting a TANK. With a FRISBEE.

If this works, I swear I will shoot my-

Ed saw several small hatches pop up, and a multitude of disks being launched in the air. He remembered those.

"Incoming AP Cluster Disks!" shouted a nearby player, completing Ed's thoughts. Noticing that the sponson guns had stopped suppressing him, he took aim at the falling disks and fired. Other players joined in, some of them altering their arm cannons to fire buckshot.

"The Disks are headed for that blue player!" shouted another. "Shoot the Disks down!"

"The team killer? Shouldn't we be shooting her?" said another.

"Hey! She's killing the Behemoth, isn't she? If she derezzes we're all fragged!"

Ed was surprised. She's on the opposing team?Oh, we're red she's blue. Classic. Why is she helping us, then? Odd.

The few remaining members of the red team kept on firing at the salvo of disks, but one made it past their hail of fire. Quorra simply smacked it away with her burning ring, causing it to fly off and explode harmlessly on the arena wall. She renewed her assault with vehemence, and the blue lights on the tank began to flicker and die. The machine began losing balance, several small parts across its entire body erupting in showers of sparks. Ed moved in for a closer look.

Wait, how does savaging the turret destroy everything else? Bah! Video game logic, I'll never get used to it.

It fell and hit the ground with a loud crash. All its light died as the crowd cheers roared to life. Quorra jumped down, and took a breather as Ed approached her. She looked up at him, smiling and exhausted.

"Whew, that took out a lot out of me."

Ed disengaged his helmet. "Had your fun? Then can we please leave this game?"

"Not so fast, we still need to get to the gate."

"The gate? You said that we'd be logged out once the walking tank was defeated!"

"Yes, yes I did, but-"

Another program, still taking cover, shouted at them. "What are you two doing? The timer's still counting down!"

Ed and Quorra stared at the tank, certain that it was dead.

"It's not derezzing…" said Quorra, horror dawning on her face.

"You didn't derezz the pilot!"

The turret's hatch popped off, and from the opening rose another player, clad in what Ed could only describe as power armor. He was huge, almost two and half meters tall, covered head to toe with armor plates. Quorra armed her disk and threw it at him, while Ed followed with a barrage of fire from his arm cannon. None of their attacks so much as bothered the giant.

The pilot slammed his fist into the turret, tearing through the ruined armor and pulled out one of the snub cannons. He handled it with such frightening ease: it was quickly trained on Ed, charged and ready to fire.

Time seemed to slow down. As the barrel erupted, Ed felt two hands push him away with such force that he was propelled five meters away, feeling the heat of the blast on his feet all the way. He got up, reactivating his helmet and took in the scene. Quorra was down, several meters away from where he had been, her armor riddled with glowing fractures. The giant had just loaded another shot and was ready to finish her off.

Then a glass pod crashed on top of the giant, shattering into a million little shards. Ed was once again grateful for his suit, as he would have been torn apart by the glass hail. He looked up, seeing a figure streaked in glowing pink lines some twenty meters above him. The giant, who had fallen from his perch on the turret, stirred, and Ed despaired as he saw that he was still intact.

72 seconds left. There is no way I can whittle him down to nothing in that little time.

Ed walked towards his enemy charged his gun.

No.

Ed fired, knocking the giant back down.

NO.

Ed fired another charged shot, getting closer.

I am not going through all this again!

Ed fired again, this time hitting the cannon, rendering it useless.

I am not going to be humiliated like this! Not again!

Ed found himself being slammed into the ground. The giant had gotten up, and used his broken weapon as a battering ram, and pinned Ed and his gun-arm to the ground with it. The giant was crushing him now, laughing as his helmet receded. It revealed a hard grinning face veined with blue circuitry.

"I'm going to enjoy this, little program! You've been nothing but an annoying little gridbug since the match started, and now I, GOLIATH, WILL-"

He couldn't finish his sentence as he felt something clamp around his right elbow. It was Ed's slave collar, and he punched it with his free hand. The collar triggered, shaping he explosion around the least protected area of the giant's body, severing his arm.

The gigantic tank pilot screamed and howled, backing away, nursing a glowing stump. Ed struggled to free himself from under the tank gun's considerable weight, which seemed to get lighter and lighter until it vanished, burying him under a pile of glass shards. He rose, only to be met with the intense stare of the giant, his eyes filled with hatred. The giant charged at Ed, but the smaller man smiled. He was ready: his gun was charged, and his opponent hadn't put his helmet back on.

The crowd cheered. Goliath, master of the Behemoth, fell apart into a pile of glowing ash, screaming.

~O~

Author's notes: Well. This was a rather hard chapter to write. Needed to create a sketchup model to plan out the scene, too! Well, at least it's over, and now I can get back to unfolding the plot.

Not quite sure where I should take this next, seeing as Quorra is out cold and neither Ed nor Julie have any clue as to what to do or where to go. We'll see.