Tron: Adagio
By: Shadow Chaser
Author's Notes:
This story covers the entire comic, Tron: Betrayal, and flashbacks from Tron: Legacy itself. The scenarios of the game Evolution are not mentioned in here as I did not play the game. All characters are not mine, they belong to Disney.
Story:
Finale
The Grid was a place of infinite possibilities. I learned that the first time Kevin Flynn imported me into the system. It was a place of new wonders, new life, and a new rebirth. It was a place of hope.
It was my paradise and my home and I would defend it until I was no more.
I fight, for the Users.
The first awareness Tron had was the sound of gentle waves, crashing into one another, a random pattern, yet not at all violent. The second was his passive sensors slowly coming online. They pinged back with the error messages that defined the Sea of Simulation and Tron allowed himself an inward smile. The Sea was starting to heal. During the time of the poison, the Sea never came back with error messages and in his memories as Rinzler; he remembered being completely puzzled about it, unable to comprehend why.
He allowed himself to listen to the Sea's random sounds through his audio filters, before his passive scanners picked up on three anomalies, all of them quite close to him. They were not threatening, yet, they seemed oddly familiar…Users...
But what were Users doing here, unless-
Tron forced his eyes open and looked up into the face of Sam Flynn who had a hesitant grin on his face. He almost sat up from where he was lying on one of the shallow rocks by the Sea before he realized that Sam looked a little older than the last time he had seen him as Rinzler.
"Hey, easy there," an extra pair of hands helped him up and he looked to his right to see that it was the isomorphic algorithm Quorra, surprisingly slightly older looking, kneeling down next to him as he shook his head trying to get his bearings. His scanners had indicated that she as a User, not an Iso. That was odd.
"Tron?" Sam asked hesitantly and he rubbed his forehead before looking up at the younger Flynn.
"You, all of you escaped?" he asked.
"Yeah, we did," Sam looked relieved and Tron realized that the two of them had feared that he was still Rinzler, still Clu's lackey. "Well," Sam looked wistful for a second, "except for Dad. He…sacrificed himself to stop Clu."
It took a moment for Tron to realize what Sam was talking about shook his head grimly, "I'm sorry."
"Hey, don't apologize for it. We know you did your best," Sam clapped him on his shoulder and Tron was surprised at how like his father Sam was. "Saw some of the old footage Dad had on his disc of his conversations with you."
Tron rubbed his forehead again before someone tapped him on his left shoulder and a small vial of pure energy was handed to him. "Thanks," he took the proffered vial and downed it, feeling his processes and command lines smooth out.
"Don't mention it," the voice sounded exactly like his and he froze, blinking in shock before turning to look up towards his left.
"Alan-One," Tron breathed out, stunned to see his User, standing near him, a lot older than the message had shown him to be, but with a still ever youthful confidence to him. He was dressed, not in armor, but rather a similar style as Flynn had whenever he had entered The Grid.
"It's finally good to meet you, Tron," his User stuck out his hand and Tron absently took it, still reeling from the shock of seeing his own User here. "Alan Bradley."
Tron was utterly speechless, his command lines nearly short circuiting before Sam cleared his throat and he turned to face the younger Flynn.
"We were hoping that you could help us. Just only arrived from the real world, you see, but I believe that Dad may be still alive," Sam shrugged, "I figured since you know The Grid the best, you could give us that edge we need to find Kevin Flynn."
Tron nodded as he got to his feet, still a bit dizzy from the low energy reserves, but otherwise good. "Flynn is a good friend of mine. If there is any chance that he may be still alive, then I would help you in any way I can."
"Good, because The Grid's in chaos and we'll need all the help we can get," Sam held out his hand, "welcome to the team, Tron."
Tron took it and shook his hand firmly, "I never left."
~END~
Author's Notes:
And so ends my story. I would like to thank my beta reader, Algae09 and fellow reviewer sharinganavenger for being sounding boards to parts of this story.
Next, I would like to thank all of you, especially those who have been with me from the beginning or near the beginning and read this story through. I thoroughly enjoyed your comments (and catapults/cannons with remotes of hearts – yes you know who you are!) questions, concerns, rants at how Tron needed to get his butt in gear, rants about one more perfect moment with Ophelia (you definitely know who you are ^_^), etc. I enjoyed all of the comments and responding to those comments too. You have made me laugh each time I read one of your reviews, no matter how long or short they were.
And so before I proceed to what is my usual next step in each story, the author Q&A, I ask for those of you who have not yet written a review to give your feedback. Anything is welcomed, whether or not you hated it, you liked it, whatever was on your mind as you read this, anything. If you choose not to leave a review, that's fine too, I just ask that if you liked it, please let others know about this so they can also read it. I'll take seeing my hit counter go up in lieu of a review. Tee hee. ^_^
Author Q&A:
Q: What made you decide to write this story?
A: A lot of factors actually. The main reason was that I was a bit disappointed at the lack of more Tron in a Tron: Legacy movie, even though Rinzler was there, it still wasn't Tron. But I didn't want to do a post-Legacy story since I knew that was where a majority of fanfic writers were going to gravitate towards to. It was only after I picked up the comic Betrayal that I realized I could form a story within the plot holes left in the comics.
Q: How did you come up with the idea of using Daft Punk's soundtrack as chapter titles?
A: I really like the soundtrack, even though I confess, this is my first time hearing some of Daft Punk's stuff (I heard of them before but wasn't quite interested back then). I realized that I could use the soundtrack not only as little plot points within the story; I didn't have to even think of clever titles or whatnot for my chapters. It was all there for the taking. So using the soundtrack I started my outline for each chapter and what it would contain. Hence, the story you have just read. Note, this isn't my normal writing style or my normal storytelling style. I usually go in a more linear fashion with a lot more attention to details and character development.
Q: What gave you the idea for pairings with Yori and Ophelia?
A: My beta reader, Algae09 has read the novelization of Tron, but I haven't as of this posting so I was just speculating what could have happened to Yori. I wanted to emphasize the relationship Tron had with Yori because of the relationship Alan Bradley had with Lora Baines (to whom he eventually married in canon) so that was a major point. I wanted Tron to feel the loss of that and slowly perhaps allow himself to fall in love again with another program. Originally it was going to be an original character, but then I realized, Ophelia would be a good choice. The first self-created program and the only imported program from the old system pairing up. My beta says that Ophelia reminded her of Delenn from Babylon 5 to Tron's John Sheridan. ^_^
Q: Your combat scenes are well scripted do you really plot it all out?
A:Some of it yes, in my head and going through the physical motions shadow sparring. Being a 9th Kyu in Shito Ryu Karate-do as of this posting, I am expected to at least have some knowledge if not more about defensive and offensive moves (including using a bo and sai) and be able to take down an opponent quickly. I applied this to Tron's programming as a security program – they're designed to hit hard and hit fast and eliminate the problem as fast as possible before it could corrupt a system. The disc battles themselves had to be done with a little imagination and Ultimate Frisbee/Disc Golf knowledge from my cousins and uncle who are world champions. Other battles I either take from the comics, or from Legacy itself as what was scripted/shown.
Q: Are you going to continue the story that you hinted at in this chapter?
A: That remains to be seen. Like I said in the previous chapter, there is a tentative title, but it is subjected to change. And right now, I don't have any plans for a post-Legacy story. I don't want to do one until I have a very solid plot that would not be a rehash of all of the others on . So, we'll see.
Any other questions or comments can be directly PMed to me. If you enjoyed this story, please feel free to browse my other offerings to different fandoms. Thanks and see you next time!
-Shadow Chaser