A Clu without a clue...
Who: Clu here, and anyone who happens to stumble across him
Where: A random alleyway, somewhere in Tron City
When: Sometime post-Legacy mostly, but I'm flexible :)
Warnings: Shouldn't be any, unless people start cussing Clu out for stuff his future counterpart did
A yellow-circuited program lay in an alleyway, unconscious, slumped against the wall of one of the buildings bordering said alleyway. Given the dimness of his circuits and the fact that he was partially hidden by a protruding bit of the building's support structue, it would be perfectly understandable if no one noticed him there at all. However, if they did, they would have realized that he looked somehow out of place in his current surroundings, as if he didn't quite fit in this system.
Slowly, the program's circuits flickered to life, and he stirred, opening his eyes and looking around groggily. 'Where am I?' , Clu wondered. 'What happened? The last thing I remember is...' He winced, bringing a hand up to his forehead as the memory was called up.
~"Forget it, Mr. High and Mighty Master Control! You're not makin' me talk!" Attempting to pull away from the wall, more because that was just the kind of program he was than because he thought he had any real hope of escaping.
The booming, echoing voice of the MCP. "Suit yourself."
Crackling energy ripping through his body, tearing his code apart, indescribable pain, himself screaming, the scream... everything... fading... and then...~
Nothing. Nothing until rebooting here. 'Did I... was I derezzed?' No, that was impossible. If he was derezzed, he wouldn't be here to think about it. Once you were derezzed, you were derezzed. Pixel-dust. An exe-program. He gave himself a quick once-over just to be doubly certain. Two arms, two hands, ten fingers, check. Two legs, two booted feet, check. One torso, check. One head, helmet still firmly in place, also check. No obvious damage or pixelation; his armor, what he could see of it, anyway, didn't even look any more scuffed up than normal.
Ergo, since he was quite obviously alive and mostly functional, the memory of his capture and deresolution couldn't possibly be accurate. He could only assume that he'd suffered some sort of glitch, most likely thanks to all the knocking around he'd recieved in the recognizer attack and subsequent crash of his tank. He sighed, useing the protruding bit of building next to him to help haul himself to his feet. He wavered unsteadily for a moment, bracing himself against the wall of the building, before his sense of balance reasserted itself.
He then took a moment to inspect his surroundings more closely. It was a fairly non-descript alleyway, open at either end. Surprisingly high-resolution too, given how much power the MCP had been hoarding, which ruled out a number of sectors, but that still wasn't much help. He could be just about anywhere. Great. Well, at least he'd managed to evade the recognizers somehow, it seemed.
Which brought something, or rather someone, else to his processor. Bit. Where was Bit? Was it alright? The last time he recalled seeing it, it had been making all possible speed for the head-module of one of the recos he'd downed with his cannonade. He hoped that memory was accurate, and not a result of the glitch he must have suffered. Bit would've been reasonably safe there; there had to be plenty of little nooks and crannies in a reco cockpit that could easily conceal a bit from prying eyes. It certainly found enough places to hide in his tank when it was feeling playful.
He then realized that he had no idea how long he'd been out, or how long it had been since his apparent glitch had drawn him off-task. Nanoseconds? Millicycles? Microcycles? Probably not cycles, but he couldn't even be certain of that; if he'd been able to find a way to get energy while glitched.
His first priority was clear, then. Find the nearest I/O Tower and convince the Guardian there to let him use it to contact his User. He needed to report in, find out how long he'd been offline, get new instructions, hopefully get a diagnostic, and request a new tank, since it was all but certain the recos had derezzed the one he'd crashed. Then, he needed to locate Bit. He might even be able to ask his User for help in that area as well. He just hoped his User wouldn't hold the loss of the tank and the delay in finding His missing data against him.
Course of action determined, Clu steadied himself with the thought, 'Flynn will know what to do,' and with a nod of afirmation, he turned toward one end of the alley and started walking purposefully but cautiously forward, on the alert for recognizers, memory guards, or any of Sark's red elite. Time to find that I/O tower.