Comments | grid_lined: A Clu without a clue...

tanks4thememory in grid_lined

A Clu without a clue...

May 09, 2011 18:33

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

( Not the most auspcious way to start the millicycle... )

clu1 (tanks4thememory), kevin flynn (creator_man), !open, yori (yorisearching), anon (voiceless_anon), kevin flynn (the_gamesmaster), location: tron city, aadi (isoartist)

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yorisearching May 10 2011, 02:20:06 UTC

It had been a very long millicycle, and Yori was glad to be headed to her apartment. She didn't have energy to think much beyond the route home and her recharge needs when she got there.

Until Clu's face looming with nightmarish suddenness from an alley sent all Yori's processes into frantic overdrive, hatred and terror ice-cold in her throat.

One hand went to her vehicle baton to ensure her escape route, the other snatched out her disk to guard herself. Yori snarled, "Clu," and only then realized that in fact Clu had never been in the habit of wearing Encom vintage armor.

[ooc: Are you having trouble with your lj-cut? You should be able to edit. Either cut and paste the main text into the spot between the tags, in html-mode. Or select everything you want to hide before using the cut button, in rich text mode, and then whatever's hidden should be gray.]

LOL Clu outta nowhere! X3 tanks4thememory May 10 2011, 04:04:24 UTC

Clu had only just reached the end of the alley when a female program came into view. Several things about her struck him at once. First, her skin and hair seemed to have a bit more color than they should have, while her blue circuitry seemed to have a little less color than it should. And speaking of her circuitry, it didn't look like any he'd ever seen on a standard program. The lines were too thick, too few. It was strange ( ... )

Re: LOL Clu outta nowhere! X3 yorisearching May 10 2011, 12:34:01 UTC

If he didn't know her, and he looked like Flynn from Encom cycles...

Slowly, Yori put away her disk, in response to the program's gesture of surrender. She kept a white-knuckled grasp on her baton, to comfort her instincts in case this was some insane trick.

Yori tilted her head and squinted slightly, trying to see the program as an ally from Encom and not her ruler and bitter enemy from the Grid. It only worked if she couldn't see his face. Crash the admin program for corrupting even memories he had no part of.

"It's going to be a very long story," she warned...Clu. "That name has belonged to someone else for many cycles." Yori hesitated. "What's the last thing you remember?"

[ooc: The only way I know to do that in comments is to use HTML tags. Here!
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=72 ]

Re: LOL Clu outta nowhere! X3 tanks4thememory May 10 2011, 23:51:50 UTC

As the woman put her disk away, Clu relaxed marginally, greatly relieved that the ending of his glitched memory wasn't about to become a reality. After a long moment of the woman looking him over oddly, felt confident enough, at least, to slowly lower his hands.

At the comment that it would be a long story, Clu nodded. He suspected that any sort of story that would explain someone randomly pulling a weapon on another program like that would indeed be a long one. Though it was at least a relief to hear that it wasn't him she had such obvious hatred for, just a program with a similar name and appearence. He was glad; though he didn't wear their blue circuits, he too was a User believer and would've been upset to discover that he'd unknowingly harmed any innocent programs while glitched. Especially a program that looked like this woman; despite the oddities of her appearance, now that she wasn't threatening him, he noticed that she was rather attractive. Still, given the circumstances, he kept his thoughts to himself ( ... )

yorisearching May 11 2011, 19:12:58 UTC

The yellow-armored program's voice seemed indefinably off, but the emotions that flickered with uncalculated honesty over his face in the course of the story were more like Flynn than like the recent Clu. As reassurance went, it wasn't much, but Yori would take what she could get ( ... )

tanks4thememory May 12 2011, 05:34:35 UTC

Clu was aware that his speech patterns tended to be a little odd to the ears of most standard programs. He supposed it came from haveing Bit as his primary, if not only, conversational companion for the better part of his life. It may well even out somewhat if he started spending more time around other programs, but it wasn't something he'd ever been greatly concerned about ( ... )

yorisearching May 12 2011, 06:26:04 UTC

"No one is sure how yet," Yori answered the first question, dodging all mention of digitization and the Portal for the time being. Complications, and trust; well, a lack of it, heavy on her tongue. "But yes, it's been a very long time." She gave the User year and her best approximation of the length in Encom's measurements, which had been different from Grid cycles. That was the easy part ( ... )

tanks4thememory May 12 2011, 09:12:16 UTC

Clu's eye's widened as he heard just how long it had been since he'd been derezzed. Over 1400 cycles... such a staggering ammount of time was difficult to comprehend. No wonder things, and apparently programs as well, if the woman was any example, looked so different here. If he'd been familiar with the User story of Rip Van Winkle, he may well have compared himself to the main character, who spent 20 years asleep while the world changed around him. But he wasn't privy to the existence of such a story, and thus simply nodded slowly in acceptance of the information, waiting for the woman before him to tell hers ( ... )

tanks4thememory May 12 2011, 09:14:28 UTC

And the rest of what the woman had said... Clu drew his knees up to his chest, burying his face in his crossed arms on top of them, letting out a muffled sound of horrified sorrow. This other Clu... who shared his coding... his brother... had become a monster, a veritable virus like the MCP, except even worse because he'd had abilities the MCP lacked. He knew how much damaged the MCP had done, what it had coerced programs into doing to each other simply by lies and threats, how it had nearly devoured the entire System to sate its hunger for power, both literal and metaphorical... He shook his head, still buried in his arms, trying futilely to deny it. That someone who shared his coding had become all that and worse, warping and rewriting innocent programs to their very cores, enslaving them and taking them away from a User who loved them...

And this woman... he'd seen the kind of hate that had been in her eyes, how personal it was... this other Clu... he must have done that to someone the woman was close to... someone... someone ( ... )

yorisearching May 12 2011, 19:52:58 UTC

Yori had never seen Clu let himself look so...shattered. So imperfect. Not even in the earliest cycles, when she'd believed him a friend.

She looked away, unable to accept or deny the hacker program's offers, either one. Ask him for help, and give another version of Clu opportunity to take over? Tell him to get out, when the Flynn he knew was gone and the systems outside so updated they were unrecognizable?

But in spite of the name, she had to believe this program was more like Anon, an innocent victim, than any real connection to the sysadmin. Or else she had to derez him, and she couldn't do that.

"If you walk around with that face, what's left of Clu's army will turn you into a figurehead--if a former victim doesn't find you first and forget to ask questions," Yori warned. "You ought to let me update your helmet a bit." If she didn't have to see that face, maybe she'd be able to think beyond blind panic.

[ooc: *hugs Clu, since Yori won't* Aww, you'll be okay. *...then pokes phrasing* "I swear to you. I'm not ( ... )

tanks4thememory May 13 2011, 05:26:47 UTC

At the woman's answer, Clu closed his eyes again for a moment. "I'm pretty good at avoiding being seen, when I want to be," Clu responded truthfully. You didn't last long as a hacking program if you couldn't avoid detection, after all. "But you're right, on all counts." Clu had absolutely no intention of allowing a bunch of glitches turn him into some sort of Sark-like pseudo-commander. He'd let himself be derezzed (again) before that happened. He was rather fond of functioning, though, and despite how horrible he felt about what his brother had done, he wasn't eager to be mistakenly derezzed (again) by some innocent program just because he'd frightened them accidentally. And if he was going to function very well in any system while being more than 1400 cycles out of date, he'd probably need some rather significant upgrades anyway, so he might as well start now ( ... )

yorisearching May 14 2011, 01:58:53 UTC

Yori watched the process of decision closely, the doubt on his face flickering into determined trust as he set the helmet down. It was strange to think of this program as more like Flynn than Flynn's conscious duplicate, but there was an openness in his eyes that made her think of the User in better days, and not the admin ( ... )

tanks4thememory May 15 2011, 03:52:36 UTC

Clu, for his part, wasn't even looking at Yori when she picked up the helmet. Instead, he was glancing around, making a basic map of the immediate area in his processor, an all but automatic response built into his coding, now that he wasn't focused on speaking to someone. Learn the area. Seek out potential hiding places, escape routes, and points to investigate. If Yori happened to glance up from her work, while Clu was turned partway around, looking behind him, she might be able to see that the yellow-circuited program had no disk ( ... )

tanks4thememory May 15 2011, 03:57:05 UTC

[OOC: Oops forgot to add the OOC note to my last post. X3 Anyway, heh, it seems that Clu too Yori's 'he was like the MCP' imagry a bit too literally. X3 Can't really blame him though, given how he was derezzed. X3 He'll find out his mistake for himself when he checks out the system records, though, so no worries.]

yorisearching May 16 2011, 19:13:46 UTC

It seemed strange not to find a disk in the usual spot, although Yori was well aware that as a hacker Clu would never have been entitled to one under the MCP. She couldn't quite convince herself to suggest that he seek one out now. Couldn't send him to the Arena without warning Gem and Tron.

The face shield was never quite going to look natural, and when active it would take more energy from an old-style program than was quite comfortable, but it would do. At least until the hacker found an alternative. Yori looked up, shrugged without meeting the program's gaze. "This will at least give you a chance to explain before anyone reacts, I hope." Users, she hoped no modern Clu caught on to this. Terrifying thought.

"I'm sorry," she managed to choke out, just barely. "For--" She couldn't apologize for being reluctant to trust Clu again. "For...not being a better welcome." Back before everything had gone wrong, she'd have been overjoyed to meet one of Flynn's old programs, particularly one the User had valued so much.

[ ( ... )

tanks4thememory May 18 2011, 04:22:15 UTC

Clu nodded at Yori's explanation of sorts about his helmet's upgrades. "I hope so," he said. "Really not looking to get derezzed again, especially not so soon afer coming back from it the first time." He paused briefly as he considered what he'd just said. "...Wow, that sounded glitched." He chuckled slightly. Despite the seriousness of the situation, there was just something about the matter-of-fact way he'd just mentioned his own derezolution and reresolution that struck a chord with his sense of the absurd ( ... )

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