"Strelitzia and I are going to the mall and we need munny."
"Again, huh?" Luxu eyed her with amusement. He stood up and stretched, then set his hands on his hips, gazing at the two girls in the living room of their home. "What, do you think I'm just made out of munny or something, princess?"
"I mean...kind of!" Namine admitted.
Luxu laughed, shaking his head. "Alright, look, we need to start limiting these sprees of yours to once a week, or even my tidy little fortune is going to go bone dry pretty fast here. Do you even wear half the stuff you've bought?"
"You've seen me wear them!" Namine protested. "I even change clothes multiple times a day if I feel like it!"
"Have I? I don't pay too much attention to your outfits..."
Namine glared. "Well you should!"
Luxu blew a breath, putting a hand to his forehead. "I'm not going to ask why you think that. Just - here - take it - go have fun." He waved a hand, conjuring a large bag, and tossed it at her. It landed in front of her with a loud thunk and clinking metals. "Just- can you try to be a little more...conscious this time, about what you want versus what you really might want?"
Namine stood silently, then frowned. "Sure. I guess?"
"Thank you. I really would...appreciate that, kiddo."
"Okay. Bye!" Namine took up the bag, slinging it over her shoulder, then took Strelitzia's hand and stalked from the house.
Luxu watched her go, snorting to himself.
"Teenagers...fuuuun."
And it was only going to get a lot worse once the little princess had actual, real human hormones running through her body...
Well, at least he couldn't say life was boring anymore, could he?
The kid kept finding all new ways to surprise him, even now.
Luxu turned his gaze to the other kid, who had just come down the stairs into the living room. "Hey, Roxas?"
"What?"
"You're a good kid."
The boy tilted his head at Luxu. "Uh...thanks?"
"You're welcome." Luxu paused. "Hey, you want pop over to Radiant Garden? Hang with Lea? I've got some business over there to talk to Even about, anyways...gotta check on some stuff."
"I was going to ask you," Roxas said, nodding, a small smile lighting up his face.
"Neato - take your homework with you. Get some of that done before the week's up."
Roxas's smile evaporated. "Fine...I still don't get why we need to learn any of this stuff, though..."
"One day you're going to be glad you did," Luxu responded. That was what an actual parent would say, wasn't it?
Didn't believe it, himself, but...eh. He had to set an example.
Kairi landed in a new Sleeping World, looking around to take in her new surroundings.
It looked...unlike anything she'd seen before.
She stood in the middle of a street.
A sleek, black, shiny street, made up of hexagons of transparent glass or something, with glowing white strips of neon light on either side. There were thick, long, curving streetlights interspersed up and down the street. The symbols denoting the crosswalks of an intersection were shaped neon light strips, matching the rest.
Kairi raised her head, and gasped, stumbling back at the sight that greeted her.
Massive, black, rounded skyscrapers and other structures, glowing with blue neon lights, towered overhead. They were densely packed, side by side, interconnected by bridges and walkways that crossed over the streets far above.
She craned her neck to look beyond them, seeing lights and reflective black materials above a dense smoke covering...peeking through from some structure above the city itself! The view was obscured, so she couldn't even tell what it was supposed to be. But the fact that it dwarfed even the city was just-
A flaring orange light stole her focus, making her gasp. She watched as a- a ship of some kind came floating down out of the fog above, into the city. It was made up of a wide bridge, with two pylons hanging down on either side. Like a sharp, angular horseshoe or something. It had glowing orange lights on it. It moved down the street swiftly and effortlessly - approaching her.
Kairi stared up at it, wondering if she should wait around and let it pass, or find out who was flying it, or- or if she should hide. They could be friendly, and she'd never want to just assume anything - but after her encounter in the last world...she was still kind of on edge here.
Before she could make up her mind, though, the ship had swooped down on her, closer and faster than she'd realized. A spotlight flashed on from the front, shining down on her.
Kairi winced, raising her arm to shield her eyes, trying to squint out at the ship.
The ship came down to land in front of her, on sleek black landing gears. Then, an elevator platform suddenly emerged from the underbelly of the wide bridge.
Suddenly, all around Kairi, the street, made up of those hexagonal shapes, began to peel away and retreat down into the earth - leaving her standing on a very small ledge directly in front of the ship's elevator platform.
Standing on the platform were around a half dozen people - wearing black clothes with blue lights. Jackets and coats, etc. They stood in a line, all striking Kairi immediately as looking...afraid. Afraid and resigned.
Two other figures stepped forward, striding toward Kairi together, stealing her attention. They wore sleek black armor, with neon orange light strips, and reflective black helmets with visors to hide their faces completely.
It reminded Kairi way too much of Vanitas's getup.
These two figures were also wielding weapons - black polearms, with orange lights on the ends of them.
Kairi stepped back, almost slipping off the edge into the pit behind her.
The two armored figures stopped on either side of her. One seized her arm immediately, looking her over. Turning her, to look at her...back?
"This Program has no disc. Another stray," a morphed voice spoke from within the helmet of the figure on her left.
Suddenly Kairi was being roughly pulled forward - toward the elevator, where those other people were still just...standing on glowing white squares, with strange energy waves rippling up over their legs? Was that what was keeping them from running, escaping in that moment? Were they frozen, locked in place? Trapped?
Kairi stared at them all as she was led up onto the platform, closer - being guided toward a vacant energy tile. No way was she letting herself get trapped like that, too! And no way was she just going to let these armored guys do whatever they wanted with her without a fight! And no way in heck was she going to just do nothing when there were these people in front of her who were clearly helpless and afraid!
She didn't know what was going on, she didn't know where she was - but she knew people in need when she saw them. And she knew things weren't right with these armored guys and their big glowy ship.
Kairi summoned her Keyblade in an instant, using magic to empower her, tearing her arms out of the armored figures' grasps. She whirled and slashed across the front of one's chest, sending them falling to the ground with a cry. She ducked as the other reached for her from behind-
And spun around and slashed them across the stomach. She gave them a hard kick to send them flying backwards, hitting the side of the elevator.
Dozens of tiny blue cubes fell from a glowing white wound across the armored figures' bodies.
Kairi stared down at them, feeling a thrill of shock and a bit of horror.
But she refocused, looking instead to the people on the white squares. "Is there any way to break these and get you out of here?" she asked them quickly.
Some stared at her.
Two looked away.
One, a woman with pale skin, and a ponytail of green hair that had pulsing lines running down it, looked at Kairi directly. "You-"
Several armored figures suddenly came down from above - out of the upper level of the ship - dropping onto the elevator platform around Kairi!
Kairi immediately did a backflip, landing on the hexagonal ledge again. Then she bent her knees, and she lifted off the ground. She flew backwards to land on the street again.
The armored figures froze, weapons in hand.
The prisoners were all looking at her now, too.
The armored figures stalked forward, and the dark pit began to fill in again, the hexagons rising up to restore the street to normal. They readied their weapons as they approached her, twirling them. "Program, your illegal self-modification puts you in violation of-"
Kairi hurled her Keyblade out, spinning and glowing with energy. It slammed into the warrior's chest - and tore right through them, sending them to the ground in two separate halves, thousands of little cubes spilling everywhere. Kairi stared, horrified all over again - but the other enemy was running at her now, swinging their weapon!
Kairi leapt backwards, then rolled right and flashed up a hand, casting Firaga.
The warrior placed their weapon in front of them to block...
But Kairi's attack exploded on impact. Obliterating them.
Blue cubes flew out in all directions, flying past Kairi and pelting the walls of the buildings.
The remaining three warriors came at her together, now.
Kairi kicked off from the ground and flew up into the air, far out of their melee range, calling her Keyblade back to hand. She stretched out her hand, casting rapid Blizzagas. Ice burst on the ground around them, freezing her opponents in solid blocks of ice. Kairi flew forward and swooped down to land on the elevator platform again.
She raised her Keyblade, aiming it down at the floor in front of the white squares on pure instinct, barely half-aware of what she was even doing.
A white beam of light flew from her weapon, hitting the floor in a burst of light and sparkling energy particles.
The ship's churning engines sputtered - the orange lights flickered on the exterior - and then the white squares faded away to nothing.
The whole ship was dead silent now. Shut-down. Offline.
And more importantly, the prisoners were free.
"You - what are you?" a man asked, in awed tones. "In all my time on the Grid, I haven't heard of anything like that since Flynn..."
"She's a User - aren't you?" spoke the green-haired woman, stepping off the glass square beneath her, staring at Kairi with shining eyes and a growing smile. "You must be."
Kairi stared back at her. She looked at the others. They were all looking not so afraid anymore. More...excited. Expectant. Hopeful...
"Sorry, I don't exactly know what a User is," Kairi said slowly. "I'm just a girl - my name is Kairi. I came from...well, I'm not from around here."
"You are a User," the woman said, as if Kairi's answer was some kind of admission (despite that Kairi really hadn't thought it was). "You come from the User World! You've come to save us all from the reign of Clu!"
Kairi frowned, letting her weapon vanish and bringing her hand to her chest. The looks on the faces of these people now was just downright- reverent. Like she was some kind of- royalty, or higher being, or- or goddess, even. Like some great religious figure had just come back from the dead or something. It was really, really uncomfortable! "What do you mean 'User World?'" she asked.
The woman looked at her, then up into the stormy sky. "We shouldn't stay out in the open like this. We can talk after we find a safe place to hide, User."
That term again.
Kairi looked up into the sky as well, and saw neon orange lights emerging from the clouds, far above. She looked to the frozen armored figures on the street, still trapped soundly by her spells. She nodded to the green-haired woman. "Okay. What's your name?"
The woman smiled. "It's Cyl, User. Now come on."
"Okay," Kairi agreed, and she, along with the other prisoners, followed as Cyl took off down the street to the right.
After the little group had escaped down the streets, and ducked into a deep, dark alley that wound its way between towering skyscrapers, Cyl finally stopped.
The woman leaned against a sleek black wall, an arm over her chest.
Another prisoner, a woman with messy, long white hair, sat down behind a large black box with green lights on it.
The remaining few from the ship...three of them went deeper into the alley, disappearing around the winding corner. One looked at Kairi, before she jumped high into the air, flipping and twisting into a series of gymnastics that saw her disappear onto some upper catwalk of thrumming blue light strips. The last two, two men, fell flatly onto the ground, sitting together, looking...well, hopeless again. Like the adrenaline of escape had worn off, and now they were just...
Kairi frowned, looking down the alley. Then, up above, to the walkway where the woman had disappeared to. She looked to Cyl. "Where did they go?"
"Who knows? Everyone's given up on resisting Clu - or joined him," Cyl answered, sighing. "He turned the population against the Users - against Flynn, the Creator - telling everyone he betrayed and abandoned us."
"Who's this Clu person?"
"A powerful, dangerous Program. Flynn created him to manage The Grid - but Clu is the one who betrayed him, amassing followers and power. It was a coupe, against Flynn, and Tron, and all good Programs. For a long while, there was a resistance movement - but..." Cyl looked down, frowning. "The movement was crushed and broken up cycles ago. That, with the loss of Flynn..."
"Everyone gave up," Kairi said quietly.
"Better to live under Clu's rule, than to be derezzed fighting for a hopeless cause," Cyl stated. "The most any of us do now is hide, run. Sometimes people brave individual attacks, but they always get caught. Rectified, or derezzed."
"Is that what you were doing? Why you were captured, on that ship?"
Cyl gave a sad smile. "I was. Because I still believe in the Users, and I know it's what Tron and Flynn would have done."
"Do you know where this Clu guy is?" Kairi asked. "If we all worked together, maybe we could do a surprise attack and-"
"It wouldn't work," Cyl refuted, interrupting her. "He's either aboard his battleship, the Rectifier, or overseeing the Games at the arena. Either way, he's always surrounded by an elite guard of combat Programs, and an army of soldiers. And we couldn't even reach the Rectifier without Light Jets." She paused. "And then there's his personal enforcer, Rinzler..."
Rinzler? Rinzler...why did that name strike Kairi as familiar for some reason? So had the name Tron, come to think of it, now...she'd heard those names around before, somewhere. Sometime recently. But where...?
Focus, girl. "Where's this battleship of his, then?" Kairi said.
Cyl raised her head, pointing a finger skyward. "It's stationed above the city, right now. And it's surrounded by Light Jets, Recognizers, and Tank and Light Cycle patrols on the streets below."
Kairi looked up into the sky, to the dark clouds, and the rain starting to trickle down now.
"I could get up there, myself - bring at least two people with me," Kairi said. "I can fly, all on my own power. You can't tell me they could possibly expect anything like that. I could sneak past them, we could get on board, disable it - defeat this Clu guy."
Cyl gazed at her, deep in thought. "It might work. Getting on board, anyway. Once you're there, you'll have to face an army to get to Clu. Assuming he doesn't escape on his Throne Ship, which he keeps docked with it. It would practically be a suicide mission. There's no way you could reach him without raising an alarm."
"If it's the only real chance you have - if the resistance is already gone - then what's the risk if you do fail?" Kairi responded. "Look, either come with me or don't, but I'm heading for that ship no matter what. I can't just let this- this dictatorship and oppression go on, when I might be able to stop it. When I'm probably the only one with the power to stop it. You're not Programs to me, you're people - and you've clearly been hurting for a long time. So I'm going to try to fix that. It's as simple as that, got it?"
Cyl stared at her, then around at the others left. The two men, and the woman, hidden behind the black box. "More of us could come with you to back you up if we could get our hands on some Light Jets...but..."
"But what?"
"Vehicles are kept under heavy guard - in a military compound, on the city's North edge," Cyl said.
"Then we'll break into there first, and we'll all fly up to this Rectifier warship together," Kairi replied firmly.
"Or...we break in at the same time," Cyl said slowly. "It might make enough of a distraction for you to slip onto the warship - with one or two others. Then, once you've started causing some chaos inside it, we could use the Light Jets to join you later. Assuming the group that goes for the Jets survives to get back out again..."
"No, either we all go for it, or we don't," Kairi refuted. "We can get these Light Jets of yours, and then we go for the warship. I have some friends who can help us out with this, too. But no one's just going to be a distraction, or a sacrifice for others!" She looked at the group. "So, are you willing to do this with me, or not?"
The two men looked up at her. They looked at each other. One dropped his head. The other - he gave a hollow laugh, and said, "Your programming is faulty, User. You'll never succeed..."
"Maybe," Kairi admitted. "But how can I know if I don't try?"
The man shook his head at her, turning away. He set a hand on the other man's shoulder. "We don't want any part of any resistance...we just want to keep our existences in peace together."
Kairi eyed them for a moment. Then she nodded. "Well, I can't blame you or anything. You probably are smarter than me for that. If we don't see each other again...well, good luck. I hope you don't end up captured again. I really don't."
She didn't get a response. That was fine. She turned her gaze to the only one left - the woman behind the black box, with her wild hair. "What's your name?" she asked.
The woman looked up at her slowly. "Bitz," she said, in a low, husky voice.
"Nice to meet you, Bitz. Would you be willing to help us?" Kairi said.
The woman stared at her silently. She looked to Cyl. Then, up at the sky. Rain rolled down her face, over her hair. She straightened her head, and then she nodded. "For Tron," she said quietly, rising to her feet, her black trenchcoat slithering beneath her.
"For the Users," Cyl said, looking Kairi in the eyes. "We're behind you - Kairi. We'll go with your plan: straight for the Rectifier. If you can get us aboard..."
Kairi smiled. "Okay. Then...let's do this."
Three people and three Spirits against an army - to sneak aboard and storm some super technological warship.
What could go wrong?