Tron: Deliverance

TEAM 1: LEVEL 2 BEGINNING

The horizon was lit with so many colors. The IO towers dotted the landscape. Programs of all shapes and designations lined up around them to interface with their Users. Data lines of burning blue energy connected them all in an incandescent web.

The whole vista shimmered around the edges. Ah, this was an old memory file. They tended to degrade over time.

"It's beautiful. I nearly forgot how beautiful it was before the MCP took over" Tron said. A familiar hand took his. A signature he'd know ,even if a million cycles passed, pinged down his frame. Like lightning. Like finally truly existing when he had only thought he was real a moment ago. Now he was real, and full and whole.

He turned and smiled to Yori. Her pale blue lines standing out in the vibrant reds and aquas of the Old System.

First she smiled at him. Like she had so many times. She stepped closer to him and they faced each other. He grabbed her other hand, doubling the contact and basking in the comfort of her signature.

He missed this. He missed it so much he could hardly bear to exist in these memories.

Then, her smile turned sad. It hadn't done that all those cycles ago.

"Tron? Can you hear me? You need to listen" her voice was achingly familiar "You have to hurry. You have to stop him. We can't slow him down for much longer. Tell them the discs are the only way in. You have to tell them..." Her words warped at the edges, like they were coming through a poor connection. But the cadence. The words. They dug deep inside his core.

"What do you mean?" Tron asked. Alarm breaking through the happy haze of the memory. But the warped noise and shimmering edges came together to fill the whole spectrum.

Tron felt his passive sensors kick online.

A program and a User were within arms reach. Two others were further away. Their voices began to filter through his audio and his memory files began to roll backward. The crash, landing beneath the ship. Pushing Mara out of the way.

It really was a wonder he had survived all that. A quick surface diagnostic only showed pain signals from cosmetic scoring. No lost limbs at least.

Then, a horribly familiar signature on his sensors.

Grid bugs. Lots of them.

His systems kicked into full start in response to the threat. His eyes flew open and he jumped upwards, drawing his discs in a single motion.

"Ah! Same side again! Why are you so jumpy?!" Jet's voice assaulted his audio.

The young User and Paige had been the two figures kneeling next to him. A quick assessment put Mara and Sam Flynn a few paces away. And in the shadows of the stones beyond them...

He threw both discs.

Making the User and the mechanic yell in surprise.

They followed the arcs of his discs and scrambled for their own weapons when they saw the Grid bugs he had cleaved in half.

More were coming.

Lots more.

"A swarm of mid-tier Grid bugs is inbound. More than a group this size can handle. We need a fortified position" Tron stressed as his discs rebounded and came back to him. He threw them again at a new set of bugs scuttling between the rocks further up. These bugs were more orderly than their massive counerpart that had destroyed the ship. They had two main pincers and multiple sharp legs. Two glowing red eyes sat atop their heads and they would stand about knee height on him.