Timestamp: August 19, 2002

Location: FCon Server 1, Digitization Portal

"Jet, I'm activating the digitization beam now! Make sure you're right behind me." Mercury rounds the corner of the hallway just in time to see her User Guest, now known to her as Alan_1, run headlong into the digitizing beam without so much as a 'well done' or 'goodbye.' Her electric blue eyes stare after her User as he transcends this simple existence, back to the InvisiRealm of the Users. Logically, she'd rather him put his own safety first, but such an abrupt departure...

"Mercury!" The call of her name, filled to the brim with urgency and relief, immediately draws her attention. Jet is running toward her, arms outstretched. Her circuits light up in response to his presence. "You got to get off this server right away. In a few real-time minutes, it won't be safe for any program to be on." Mercury's circuits dim to a dull blue, and her electric blue eyes seem to do the same. Jet grips Mercury's arms, but even that touch is not enough to revive her spirits. "Mercury…?" Jet queries gently. He sends her a quiet ping, no doubt unknowingly; he is still unaware of the simplest of functions, despite having accomplished so much. He peers intently down at her, and the program can almost believe the User is peering directly into her Spark.

Mercury smiles faintly and ever so slightly shakes her head. "Go where? Do what? My core directive is complete." She just as gently pries his fingers off of her form, and turns to walk a few paces away. Oh yes, she fulfilled it with flying colors. She was instrumental in saving both Jet and Ma3a. She sacrificed herself time and time again to see the mission through. She experienced the agony of losing her memories and will as a result- reformatted, reborn and yet miraculously restored. "I even fought against your own kind in the form of the datawraiths and won, if only barely." The rate at which Users learned and rewrote their own code to suit their needs is nothing short of terrifying and reality defying. Given a few more microcycles unchecked, and there is no doubt in Mercury's processor that the datawraiths would have become unstoppable, untouchable to any program.

But Mercury had touched them before that could happen. Mercury stares down at her hands, flexing them, remembering...

READING MEMORY FILE

The first time she fought a datawraith, a User-on-System, it was not at all like she expected. She wanted to make it a cleancut and painless sudden shattering of voxels, a merciful end to a legend taken form. Instead, it was messy, brutal and terribly drawn out.

She pounded them down into the ground with her batons again and again until something snapped. And yet, they didn't derez.

She threw them off buildings, twisted limbs at unnatural angles, endured threats and curses that she feared would manifest true until, acting on impulse, she dislocated the entire bottom portion of their jaw. Still, they didn't derez.

She cut her energized disc through their purple armor and shell exterior until red fluid rained out in every direction and all she could hear were all-encompassing screams, gurgling cries, wet dripping silence-

Finally, she realized that Users cannot derez. They simply stop functioning.

FORCE QUIT MEMORY FILE PROCESS THREAD

Mercury shudders, tearing herself away from the thrill and horror to return to the present. "I - I've taken part in something much greater than any one program, like stepping into a non-sterilized version of Guardians' stories they tell young betas before sleep mode. Wars between Users in the Invisible Realm. Programs fighting side by side their creators against tyranny." Things that used to capture Mercury's imagination when she herself was only a beta, until she thought herself disillusioned from the lonely and cold-circuited reality of an infiltrator's existence.

"You're incredible, Mercury. Everything you just said proves it again and again. Why are you so unhappy about it?" Jet murmurs despondently, confused and taken aback by her ramblings. His forehead is pinched and his bottom lip is caught tightly between his teeth.

"That's just it. I've achieved my directive, and then some. There is nothing left for me."

"That's not true," Jet declares fervently, spinning her around and forcing her to look him in the eyes. "Users are forced to find their own directives, their own meaning in life. So can you! You don't have to wait for someone to give you direction. I've seen you make impossible and tough call to actions all on your own. Why not with this too?"

"Programs are not Users, Jet. We don't function that way." Well, maybe some programs can, for all Mercury knows. Stranger things have definitely happened. But for Mercury? No friends, no bundled software unit. An infiltrator lives and dies to fulfill their directive. That is all. Mercury wouldn't even know where to begin.

Mercury lets out a sigh. "Besides, you're leaving too, aren't you? This is no world for a User. We are too crude and rudimentary."

Jet scowls and crosses his arms. "If anybody is crude, it's us," he declares sternly. "We're not ready to exist here full time- not yet, anyways."

Mercury blinks up at him, lips slightly parted in wonder. "Always surprising me, even now…" she murmurs. And suddenly, it occurs to Mercury that she does know somewhere to begin in finding a new directive- with him. After all, aren't Users where all directives originate from? "Promise you'll search for me," Mercury says. The sudden genuine request startles Jet out of his scowl.

He uncrosses his arms. "Of course," is his immediate response.

Mercury nods. "You'd better get going." Truly, she's wasted enough of his time already. "I guess this is End of the Line." She backs off, before he can reply.

Jet reluctantly coincides and turns away, running towards the luminous pillar Alan_1 disappeared through earlier. Nearly there, he hesitates and looks over his shoulder to her with pursed lips and furrowed brow. For one glitching moment, Mercury believes he would walk back to her. He would take her into his arms and press his mouth sweetly against her's, the User's departing gift, like Flynn and Yori in the tales of old.

A towering three-headed abomination blindslides them both and shatters the dream. It rams through a nearby door and barrels directly into Jet. He gives out a surprised yell as he is tackled into the digitization beam. Mercury screams, draws her battle staff, and runs toward the glow. She throws herself in, only for the light to cut out halfway through.

END OF LINE

Girl/Gal-of-Action: Right, so in regards to the mini flashback horror scene... the more I thought about it, the datawraiths from Tron 2.0 were definitely human beings underneath that armor. No way should Mercury have been able to derez them like normal programs, especially after we established that Users bleed in Legacy. (Legacy isn't canon in my universe, but the mechanics are, if that makes any sense.) That small flashback scene was the result of all this, just something else Mercury is going to have to deal with I guess.