Disclaimer: I do not own Tron. Disney owns Tron.

Since Tron had become himself again, he made it a point to restore the Games to the way Flynn had envisioned. Four cycles later, he achieved it. No one died in the Games and so they were reinstated. The first thing Tron did when they opened was compete. He was his old self when he competed and Risie was always there to watch, hiding behind the crowds. They used it as a time to be themselves.

Risie's program code wouldn't last more than a few more cycles, that much was certain. Tron had started taking over some of the responsibilities she had set for herself. To his surprise, most programs had not blamed him for what had happened and welcomed him like a hero. Everyone came to see him compete, like the cycles when the system was new and it seemed like nothing would ever disturb the peace. Programs could forget the horror of the last few cycles, and the tyranny of Clu. That made Risie happy.

Risie sat above the stands, watching the current match. Of course, Tron was undefeated, but he had a lot of close calls. This match was one of them. It was a Lightcycle race and the challenger had derezzed not only Tron's Lightcycle, but the spare Tron often carried. Now the challenger was on his Lightcycle and Tron was on foot. The crowd gasped as Tron calmly pulled out his disk while the challenger rode straight for him. At the last second, Tron ducked and spun his body to the side, slicing his disk into the Lightcycle. The rider lost control and the Lightcycle exploded into a pile of pixels. By the time the challenger recovered, Tron was standing over him with his disk ready to strike.

Risie clapped her hands as Tron was declared the winner of the race. He smiled at the challenger, helping them to their feet and clapping them on the back. Tron looked into the crowd and caught sight of Risie. She waved at him. He waved his disk and left the Arena.

They met outside as Tron exited the Arena. He looked Risie up and down. Her deterioration was getting worse. Old wounds had started to form cracks in her armor. The injury his eyes fell to was the one on her arm, the one he had given her as Rinzler. Every time he saw it he had a knot in his stomach. Risie saw his eyes and pulled the sleeve down on her coat.

"Did you try to let him win?" Risie said as they walked towards the central complex.

"What makes you say that?" Tron said.

"The way you took out his Lightcycle," she said, "you just stood there and waited for him."

He smiled but said nothing. Two of the faction leaders were waiting for them at the complex. One looked furious and the other one was almost as angry.

"What happened this time?" Risie said as they approached.

"Someone tried to access the archives," one said.

"So?" Risie said, "The archives are open to all the programs. We can't afford for ignorance to let us repeat the past."

"It was on the creation of the ISOs," the other said, "and it wasn't a program."

"A User accessed the Grid?" Tron said.

"All evidence points to that conclusion," the first said, "but why did they access it from outside rather than come here?"

"Maybe the portal was destroyed," Risie said, "we knew it was possible and prepared for it. Whoever it is knows about the ISOs, meaning they have been to this system before. We are still a closed system."

"They abandoned us!" the second said, "they don't deserve access to the system."

"This system is a free system for the Users," Tron said, "that was its purpose and that's the way it'll stay. Anything different is against everything we've worked for."

The two leaders walked away whispering to each other. Tron was furious at the idea that they would want to block information from the Users. He looked at Risie next to him, who was clutching her arm against her ribs. She was rubbing it a little, which told him that she was trying to ignore whatever pain was there.

"Is it bothering you again?" he said.

"A little," she said, "nothing worse than usual."

He shook his head. That phrase didn't mean much anymore, considering her worst pain left her crying out in pain. The code connecting her combat and Lightcycle subroutines was gone, leaving her defenseless. He didn't let her leave the complex anymore without him or another trustworthy program. As they went inside, he made a note to take the two faction leaders off his list.

Tron went to check the security of the city while Risie went to her private quarters. She never had the heart to tell him just how much pain she was in, especially her arm. She went to her table of tools, still trying to invent something new, when a light outside caught the corner of her eye. She turned to look at it when everything changed.

Her vision started to blur and she collapsed. The sound of pixels shattering told her that her core program was finally failing. She glanced at the sky. There was a single white light above the Sea of Simulation. The portal to the User world was open. She couldn't think of what this meant as pain erupted in her body, causing the world to keep spinning around her.

Tron entered moments later. Her left arm was gone, shattered by the deterioration of her program code. She was curled up in pain when he found her. He ran up to her, rolling her onto her back.

"Risie!" he said, "talk to me."

"Look," was all she said.

She turned to look at the light outside. He caught where her line of sight was going. Tron stood in shock. There was a User on the Grid. He turned to Risie to see her perfectly still. Her eyes were open, but there was no other sign she was online. Her armor lines were flickering and fading.

"I'll find them," he said as he picked her up, "just hang on."

He laid her on the couch and sprinted out of the complex.

Tron's Lightcycle skidded to a halt in front of the sign to Flynn's Arcade. No one had been here since the portal had closed last time, thinking that the Users had abandoned them. Tron ran inside, trying to find the User that had accessed the portal.

What he found was a disk in front of his face, ready to slice it in half.

"Are you the one that came through the portal?" Tron said, not able to see who was holding the disk through their black helmet.

"I was," a male voice came from around the corner, "Quorra, who's there?"

The program in front of him didn't answer. The voice's owner came to stand next to the other program. Tron's voice caught in his throat as he recognized the User. He had almost killed Sam Flynn last time they had met. He had been Rinzler then and Sam was trying to save his father. The last time they had seen each other, Tron had finally overcome his corrupted programming long enough to try and kill Clu before Sam and the others with him made it to the portal.

"Tron?" Sam said.

Tron nodded. Sam put a hand on the shoulder of the program holding out the disk. The program lowered their disk and opened their helmet. Tron knew this face too. Quorra, the last ISO.

"I know I did some terrible things to you both," Tron said, "I won't ask you to forgive me, but I need your help."

"Name it," Sam said.

Tron was taken aback by Sam's willingness to help without question. It reminded Tron of Flynn and his trusting nature.

"Quorra, was it?" Tron said, "did you know Risie?"

Quorra nodded.

"Her core program code is deteriorating," he said, "it hit critical when we saw the portal open. Can either of you help her?"

"I have no idea," Sam said, "my dad built the system and I was only here the once."

"Please," Tron said, "just try."

Sam nodded. Tron led them on their Lightcycles to the central complex. They used the back entrance Tron and Risie had created when they wanted to escape to the Games unnoticed. The lift led them to Risie's private quarters. When they arrived, Quorra ran up to where Risie lay, putting a hand on the other program's chest.

"She's stable," Quorra said, "but I don't know for how long. This is really bad."

Quorra removed the coat to reveal the extent of the damage. All of Risie's armor lines were cracked. The blue lines on her chest were dark and the red on the rest of her body was slowly flickering out.

"She said once that there were gaps in her program that only a User could repair," Tron said, "we didn't think you would be back before her program failed."

Sam quietly took Risie's disk and accessed the programming. He sat in front of the couch for a long time before he took his eyes off the code. He looked up at Quorra and shook his head. He put the disk on the floor in front of him.

"My dad wrote this," Sam said, "it's more complex than anything I've worked with. I saw him fix Quorra's code once. I'd be working in the dark."

"Is there anything you can do?" Tron said.

Sam was quiet again. He stared at the code, then at Tron. Sam let out a long sigh and finally spoke.

"I can try something," Sam said, "but it could destroy her code as much as it could repair it."

"What do you need?" Tron said.

"I need another stack of code," Sam said, "do you have an extra disk around? I can try to copy the code from that disk into the gaps in her code. If it works, it should bridge the gaps and then I should be able to realign the code."

Tron handed Sam his disk. Quorra stared at Tron in shock as the security program explained.

"I technically have two core program codes," he said, "she risked herself time and again to get me back. Take it from mine."

"What if your corrupted code overrides your current code?" Quorra said.

"Then you can break the disk," Tron said, "that will keep Rinzler from activating. We can always find a backup of me somewhere before all this happened."

Sam took the disk and nodded. Tron sat on the floor beneath the arm of the couch and went offline as Sam accessed his disk.

The next thing Tron knew, he was wide awake and Quorra was yelling.

"Can you stop it?" Quorra yelled.

"I don't even know how it started!" Sam yelled back, "I told you I had no idea what I was doing. We have to get Tron back online."

"What happened?" Tron said as he stood.

"Tron!" Sam said, "I filled in a lot of the gaps, then suddenly there was a line of code that attached to a line in yours all on its own. Now a whole routine has jumped and I can't stop it."

Tron looked at Risie, who let out a scream. Her whole body tensed and her back arched. All of her armor lines were now a dark red, pulsing with life. Her helmet was folded down, hiding her face from his view. Tron grabbed Risie's wrist.

"The entire Rinzler core program code is in Risie now," Sam said, "I couldn't stop it. I can't tell if it's healing her code or tearing it apart."

Tron let go of Risie. He looked at her and stopped in surprise. Where he had grabbed her wrist, her armor lines were dark blue, the same color her armor lines had been the day she had come online. Risie screamed again, and then went very still.

"It's over," Sam said.

"Try to reboot her," Quorra said, "Her lines aren't dark."

Sam nodded. With Tron's help the two rolled her onto her side and clicked her disk into place. Sam turned it, triggering the reboot. Tron watched her as her lines faded out while the reboot started. She had said this would take a full cycle.

Could the system last a full cycle without her?

It did.

While Risie was initially rebooting, Sam explained his plan to Tron. Quorra and Sam were going to recreate the situations that cause the emergence of the ISOs as best they could. They were here to work on the isomorphic virus that had infected the Sea of Simulation. They would be coming in every night, though Tron wasn't sure what that meant. He soon learned that it meant they were there almost as often as they weren't.

While Risie continued to reboot, Tron led the faction leaders. He introduced them to Sam. Some left the alliance after this, and some instantly began to worship Sam as much as they had his father. Sam wasn't sure what to make of it, but he did find that his task of recreating the birth of the ISOs was easier with the help.

Quorra and Sam had just left again when Risie finally woke. Tron was sitting, watching the scoreboard on her wall that Sam had installed while she was rebooting. Tron didn't compete much in the Games unless Quorra was there to watch Risie. Tron was also no longer undefeated. Sam's name was above Tron's in all the Lightcycle races and most of the Disk Wars.

"Tron?" Risie's voice pulled Tron away from the scoreboard.

Tron spun around and sat next to Risie as she struggled to sit up on the couch. She held her head in her hands. Her armor lines were all dark blue again.

"How long?" she said.

"A full cycle and then some," Tron said, "we almost lost you."

"I feel terrible," she said, "like my head is going to split open."

Thinking of his own reboot, Tron put an arm around Risie's shoulders.

"You were right, the portal was open," he said, "there was a User here, Sam Flynn. He's Flynn's son. He tried to repair your program."

"Tried?" she said.

Tron took a deep breath and told her what had happened. In one fluid motion, Risie pulled out her disk. One side was blue and the other was an orange-red.

"What does this mean?" she said.

"I don't know," he said, "and neither does Sam. We can only hope we don't get another Rinzler out of the deal."

"There's a way to find out," she said, "but you won't like it."

He looked at her.

"Game Grid," she said, "after hours."

"As soon as Sam gets back," he said, "you and me."

"Don't hold back, Tron," Risie said, "just in case."