Disclaimer: I don't own Tron. Disney owns Tron. I don't own Disney. *sigh* I'm broke. Enjoy, please R&R.
Risie stood bound in the same cell as Tron had been so many cycles ago. It had been ten cycles since Clu had imprisoned her, slowly corrupting and rearranging her code. Every time he changed her code she experienced excruciating pain. By now, the pain was constant as the code corrupted itself while he was absent. Her armor lines on her arms and legs were a dark red. Only her chest and back were still dark blue. She thought of this as Clu stood behind her, accessing her disk.
"This would be easier if you just gave in," he said.
"I'll give in," she said, "after I kill you."
"Are you still set on that?" he asked as he deleted another line of code, "no one is going to help you."
Risie's growl turned into a shriek as her code changed. She kept screaming until he was done realigning the code, stepping in front of her. Now the armor lines on her back matched her arms and legs.
"Sir," a guard said as he entered the room, "we have the Master Key. A program named Zuse obtained it."
"Let's go," Clu said, "I'll come see you when I get back, Risie. I'll tell Flynn you said hello."
Risie stared at Clu's back as he left, imagining a dozen ways she wanted to shatter his disk. After he was gone, she hung her head and let the pain consume her.
An explosion and the yell of a terrorist attack shook Risie's cell, causing the power to flicker. She used all the energy she could muster to free herself. The bonds on her hands shattered, releasing her. Her armor lines flickered as she fell to her knees. She heard guards yelling and the door opened. Risie smirked and drew her disk from her back.
"Shouldn't have turned on the combat routines," she said to no one.
The guards never knew what hit them. Risie split her disk and charged. She sliced open the power relays imprisoning the other programs as she ran past them. She engaged her Lightcycle outside and didn't stop until she got home. She glanced at her scoreboard, still active, and stopped in her tracks.
The match was long over. What had caused her to stop was the "cancelled" label across Rinzler's match. His opponent was an unknown, but the eyes Risie recognized. She looked at the opponent's picture hard.
"Flynn!" she said.
She spun on her heel to look out the window. The sky held a single white light. The portal to the User world was open! It flickered out almost as soon as she spotted it. Then another light filled the sky. A shockwave hit the city. Buildings crumbled, hers included. By the time Risie escaped the ruins of her home, the city was in chaos.
She walked back towards the city center. Immediately she heard the rumors. Clu was dead and Flynn with him. They had met and neither had survived. The new User that had come was gone. No one was left to run the Grid.
Risie found herself in the plaza in front of the central complex. She wasn't sure what idea had brought her here. Resistance faction members were attacking the guards. Two of the leaders, however, were attacking each other. Risie dove between them, grabbing their disks and then tossing both programs across the plaza. She then threw their disks at them, embedding the disks in the wall next to their program's heads. The chaos around her calmed and all eyes were on her.
"Clu is dead and you are no better than he was!" Risie shouted, "The Grid is going to fall apart and you are fighting each other."
One program approached Risie from the gathering crowd. He was nervous, but his eyes told her that he suspected who she was.
"You were the security program that made peace with the ISOs," he said, "you knew Tron."
Risie nodded.
"Will you lead us?" he said.
Risie's eyes went wide.
"What did you say?" she said.
"Will you lead us?" he said again.
Her hands went limp. Her eyes clearly reflected the shock she felt. She shook her head.
"Have the faction leaders meet me at the Game Grid," she finally said, "If I can get them to work together, then I think I can."
"Thank you," he said with a smile.
It took three cycles for Risie to restore order and an uneasy peace on the Grid, even if the peace was frequently shattered. She settled in the city core, retaking the central complex. She worked with the faction leaders to organize her fellow programs. Anyone who lost their disks in the shockwave that almost destroyed the city were given new ones from the Game Grid Sirens. Risie took anyone under her wing, finding them a purpose. She also kept all the disks that had no owners. She worked not only on making sure the faction leaders kept peace between them, but also tried to find the disks' original owners.
Two disks she kept for herself. Early in her leadership someone found them on the shore of the Sea of Simulation. Risie checked them in private. They were Rinzler's disks. She didn't know how he lost them, but if he had, she assumed he was dead. On one disk was the Rinzler core program code and on the other the Tron core program code. These two disks she kept in her private quarters.
Risie was thinking about how this all happened while she sat at a large desk on the top floor of the complex. A group of Sirens, grateful for being released from their service on the Game Grid, had made her a new set of armor. Risie's arms, legs and back still held dark red lines. Her chest only had two dark blue lines, one across her shoulders and one down the middle of her chest. These were usually hidden by a long white coat that also concealed her face under the hood.
Two programs brought in a rogue program without a disk. The rogue program was yelling, begging for her life to be spared.
"We found it by the Sea of Simulation looking for energy nodes," one of the escorts said.
"Take it to the Sirens and put it with the others," Risie said.
The rogue program shrieked.
"Please, not the Games!" the program cried out.
Risie stood. A soft sigh escaped her lips.
"The original Games were disabled two cycles ago," Risie said, "you'll be working with the Scavengers trying to restore the city."
The rogue program paused in shock. One of the programs escorted her out as she regained her composure, thanking Risie for her life and kindness. The other escort, the program that had first approached her three cycles ago, stayed behind.
"There is one Scavenger you should meet," he said.
"When?" Risie said, "I've been so busy I barely have time to recharge and after the survey is my first break in a long time."
"Well, he's here actually," he said, "they say they found him washed up at the Sea of Simulation. No disk, no memory. He's the best Scavenger though and even competes in the unofficial Games, where he's undefeated."
Risie swallowed hard.
"Let him in. This may take some time," she said.
"You know him?" he said.
"No," she said, "but I may have his disk."
As always, restoring a disk to its owner was a private matter. The program nodded and left, letting in another program. The new program stood in front of the closed door. He looked around then approached Risie. She moved to the front of her desk, trying to get a better look at him. The white glowing "T" on the program's chest created a knot in her stomach.
"You came to see me," Risie said.
"They say you keep lost disks," the program said, "I thought you might have mine."
She swallowed again. Here was Tron, right in front of her, with no memory of anything he had ever done. He didn't remember being Tron, or Rinzler.
"We found a lot of disks in the rubble," she said, "most are from programs that were derezzed."
"So how do you know if a program is alive?" he said.
Risie closed her eyes. She wanted to tell him she didn't have his disk, or give him a blank one. Deep inside, she knew she had no right to keep his past from him. For good or evil, he was her oldest friend.
"I think I do," she said, "have your disk I mean…but I need time to check. Can you come back after the next survey?"
"Do you know who I am?" he said, "I hear programs talking. They're afraid of me. No one tells me why, but I can tell. Was I one of Clu's Black Guards?"
She clenched her fists. Every pain Clu had caused her never compared to this. She lowered her head.
"I think I know," she said, "you are a very old program. It's complicated and something I don't want anyone else to hear."
"So where do I go?" he said.
Risie reached into a drawer behind her. She pulled out a small map. She handed it to him.
"There is an old building between the Sea and the Game Grid," she said, "it's where I used to live. Meet there."
He took the disk and left. Risie went back to her work, letting it fill her thoughts. Time passed and she left the complex with a handful of other programs to survey the progress of the Scavengers. The city core was finally stable. When Risie returned to the complex, she headed straight for her private quarters. She pulled out a black box from under her couch and opened it. Two orange disks stared back at her. She pulled out the disks and combined them, changing into a black coat and riding her Lightcycle away from the complex.
She arrived after the program that had been Tron. He was looking out over the Sea of Simulation. Risie pulled out the orange disk. There was a chance that she would not awaken Tron, but Rinzler. She no longer had the strength to fight Rinzler and knew that if that was the program she awakened, she was as good as dead. She decided it was worth the risk.
"You're early," she said.
"I know this place," he said, "There was a small house here. I would watch the Games from here if I couldn't make it to the Arena for the match."
"I have to tell you something before I give you this," she said, holding out the orange disk.
Their eyes met. Risie sat on the rubble of her old home. She turned the disk over in her hands.
"You are my oldest friend," she said, "a lot of things happened, to both of us, that are better left forgotten. A lot of the programs we knew are gone and we've both done things we're not proud of. This is going to hurt a lot. It may even rewrite your core program. You'll remember everything in time."
"It's worth it," he said," I have to know."
"Remember," she said, "live in the moment…"
"And let it all go," he said, "I told you that your first day."
"Stand here and hold onto something," she said, "the upload will be painful, but I'll reboot you and you'll be alright. Are you absolutely sure?"
He nodded. He stood where she indicated and leaned over, grabbing onto the ruined building. Risie took his white, almost blank, disk and clicked the orange one into place. At first nothing happened. Then his armor lines flickered and he screamed. He fell to his knees, clutching the ruins so hard that they bent under his grip. Risie knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. His armor lines went dark and he crumpled beside her.
Risie turned the disk on his back, triggering the reboot. She held her breath as the lines lit up. At first they were orange, then flickered and changed to light blue. He jolted upright.
"Tron?" she said timidly.
"Risie?" he said, confused.
"Oh, Tron!" she said.
She wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his chest. Fluid filled her eyes and streamed down her face.
"Tron, you're alive," she said, "you're alive."
"I feel like I've been dreaming," he said, "I think I did something terrible. My program is still recompiling."
"Clu repurposed you," she said, "but it's all over now."
"Rinzler," he said, "he named me Rinzler."
"Don't think about it," she said, "you'll remember and that will be painful enough."
Tron put his hands on Risie's shoulders and sat her up. He looked at her, unable to see her face.
"Your color is all wrong," he said, "what happened?"
She bit her lip and thought about telling him nothing. Before she could finish the thought however, she found herself telling him everything. When Rise was done, Tron became perfectly still.
"You did that?" he finally said, "for me? Why?"
"I never figured out why. It just felt right," she said, putting a hand on her chest, "here."
"Is Flynn alive?" he said.
Risie shook her head and shrugged. Both were silent for a long time. One would go to speak, then fall silent again. Tron reached up in the silence and pulled Risie's hood back. Her face made him pause.
Small clusters of pixels were missing. She still had the black line across her face from Clu's betrayal. One eye was blue and the other red to match her armor lines.
"Not what you remember," she said.
"It looks like you're falling apart," he said.
"I am," she said matter-of-factly, "I probably only have five, maybe ten cycles until the deterioration becomes critical and interrupts my basic functions."
"Why don't you reboot?" he said.
"It will take a full cycle for me to reboot and there are still gaps in the code that won't repair," she said, "I'd need a User to write new code for the gaps. And without Flynn…"
Risie got to her feet without finishing the thought aloud. She looked out over the Sea of Simulation. She knew somewhere out there the portal was dark, if it had survived the chaos of the shockwave at all. No one expected the Users to return. The programs of the system were on their own now.
"I don't have time," Risie said, "everyone looks to me to keep the Grid stable. The faction leaders hold an uneasy alliance. They're afraid to challenge me."
"In your condition, they'd win," Tron said.
"They don't know that," she said, "they all remember me as the Black Slayer or your assistant working with the ISOs."
Tron got to his feet as Risie pulled up her hood.
"How am I going to face them?" he said, "I failed them all."
"You adapt," she said, "or you hide on the Game Grid where it doesn't matter."
"What about you?" he said.
"I'll try to hold them together," she said, "this is my life now, for however much longer it lasts."
She turned to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
"What's important for you, Tron," she said, "is that you're a free program again."
She pulled out a baton from under her coat. She engaged her Lightcycle. She looked back at him and held out another baton.
"You can ride with me and see where it takes you," she said, "or you can forget again and become something else."
"What would you do?" he said.
"I chose to forget and it almost destroyed me," she said, "but I never forgot about what I thought was most important."
He took the baton and engaged a Lightcycle of his own. He looked out at the city.
"I fight for Flynn's dream," he said, "for the Users."
"Let's hope the come back someday," she said.
They rode into the city together and for the first time in a long time, Risie was happy. There was hope on the Grid again.