ranoutofbuts

Extended Intro Post for Grid_Lined

(Note: The original intro post is too large for the Grid_Lined forum so I cut it to an acceptable length. This is the full length version which itself is a cut from a larger chapter of one of my fics I am yet to finish, with definite changes to it to make it flow.)

(This follows on directly after the End of Line club battle and the falling elevator scene on the undercity platform.)

---

The blast of backward force tears at his arms tightly attached to the roof of the dislodged elevator as he rides the current down. Not one of his smartest moves. Though manages, maintaining his tenuous cloak takes concerted effort that pulls at the edges of his shell, biting at his composite pixels as the effect manages to circumvent the user’s attention away from his presence. The inertia was painful yet only lasts thirty or so nanocycles as the carriage slows to an idle at the last possible stop; the Undercity docking area.

Several unclear mutters from the two active targets occurs, he ignores them and readies himself carefully to take out the main target ‘Flynn’ in one certain, unexpected strike. Tightening his grip on the one baton in hand and releasing his disk from his back, he calculates possible outcomes of going up against two users. At first glance they don’t look like much. In direct combat as he has observed thus far, they weren’t. Their true threat level comes from their astonishing abilities as users. He’d seen some of Flynn’s powers first hand up above in the End of Line Club moments before, and the elevator carriage he is on top of only briefly ago. His only advantages being his unknown presence and the hindering charge in the secondary user’s arms.

The secondary user, ‘Sam’, hadn’t exhibited anything unexpected as of yet, though he is most likely to put up resistance despite how lacklustre his skills had appeared to him. It would be an uphill battle if he didn’t manage a swift conclusion. He is without backup on clear ground and once his advantage is discovered it would be unlikely to trick them again so close. The third, vulnerable program could be sufficient leverage if need be. If they cared enough to pull the program from harm’s way from up above, they would surely not risk derezolution for her.

Personally he didn’t think much of the users; especially this Flynn. Besides some fancy hacking, in any case he has seen in equivalent on multiple occasions from the administrator himself, there isn’t anything he particularly gauged as necessary and quantifiably deserving attributed to a user status. From the small snippets he has collected and Clu’s own ‘chats’ over the cycles all he has really accumulated is an understanding of the sheer disappointment that he has beleaguered their system with whenever he had appeared. Running away from everything, from his problems, from Clu (despite what their Excellency may say otherwise), ‘ha’, such a laughable amount of neglect and uselessness. He feels Clu’s anger through proxy, its Clu’s unacknowledged disappointment that takes this emotion to the level of loathing. His secret thoughts are kept contained and promptly filed away. He is not meant to ponder such wayward things. Only follow orders.

He can almost hear those spoken words:

“Your new priority.” Clu said in a cold voice, and proceeded to whisper into his ear. “Find the user Flynn, and kill him.”

Those orders were spoken to him a long time ago now, so simple. He had been proud to accept the challenge. Failure is not an option, it never is. He would complete his task and make Clu proud, as he has always done; strives to. From that thought the strange fluttering sensation of an unrecognised feeling brushed through his system, he believes it could be happiness, maybe elation; aggression gives cause a similar rush though it always passes through him in such an unobstructed way. He curbs the hidden content from his processor, running purely on task now. Precision is key

Faux takes a final moment to reassert his cloak and jumps down soon after the users walk away towards the solar sailor waiting on its timed journey outbound. He understands what they’re up to. Their focus blinds them to his presence and so he manages to elude even Flynn’s more attune senses and creeping behind, is aligned in a perfect opportunity to strike. He holds there within reach, and then a step away, 2 steps, 6 steps out and he passes out of reach.

‘Why?’

The disk won’t budge. His hand is shaking infinitesimally now through the force of its persistent deviation. And he is aggravated by this confounding weakness. Despite its unregistered variance it is more than enough to enrage and aggravate and he wonders how long he can hold here until the other reacts ahead of completing his mission.

Throw the disk.

He can’t do it.

Just a flick of the wrist.

The user looks so surprisingly like him.

No he doesn’t.

ERROR

Proceed- _ ERROR

It was only a matter of time before one of the users noticed Faux in his hang up, a vague glint in the surrounds behind them

“What’s that?” Sam slows to stare at him. Flynn turns and catches him, wise to what it is. “Sam move!” Flynn indicates with a rushed voice and a waving gesture.

Faux didn’t see any point in continuing to hold the energy wasting cloak and drops it after switching to plan two in frustrated resignation. Threaten the weakest link.

“Oh shit!” He hears from Sam with the form encumbered in his arms as he lobs his disk at the other at full power, just missing the Sam user fatally by a breadth of a hex point as he rallied his chest and the ISO in his arms out of the line of fire and landed hard into the ground. The shatter point in the flooring stayed silent, correlating around his disk now embedded in the ground.

He missed. ‘Well, damn.’

Faux gave only a hundredth of a nanocycles pause before He chastises himself for the grievous miscalculation, possibly brought about by the insistent pull of Clu’s command that had previously lain dormant and currently making it hard to notice broader information than mere distractions to his intent and this baffling hang up of errors when attempting to target the main objective.

“You stay the hell away from her!” Sam yells out in as a threat. Well that answers his previous calculation.

Releasing his secondary baton from his elbow holster in a rush, powering it up in a readied stance

That made it possible for Sam to lodge a return assault with his disk which, in his surprise, manages to clip the front of his helmet head-on shearing the side of his faceplate where it had luckily ricocheted off course and failed to return to its owner. All his processes halt to a standstill as the closeness of that, if not, equally foolhardy attack as his own had been to slicing his head in half.

Tracing the damage along the helmet delicately with the end of his finger he feels the rough edges of broken coding, damage he would have to mend later on.

“Nice hit.” Faux says aloud. He gave Sam that in all honesty. The distortion that his helmet provided wasn’t anywhere near as efficient now and he finds his own clear voice leaking out of the gash and filling the area, which had the added effect of unnerving Sam and having him pause for a good nanocycle.

Faux now having no reasoning to use the fractured visor commands it to retract. The rest of the crumbling pixels of the helmet dissolve away, derezzing back into the interior of his armour, revealing his face. This simple act has the obvious effect of catching them off guard for reasons he is unsure of. Sam’s eyes widen before a more predictable scowl broadens across his face.

“Oh, geeze, another one!?” Sam questions aloud to the elder. “How many of them are there?” The user didn’t dare trail his eyes off him though. Smart.

The same affliction could be said for the primary target, though his expression was more suited to describe strangely enough, unease. “CLU!?” It was more of a pained whisper Flynn dared to speak aloud. And for half a nanocycle he wonders why.

After that perplexing display Faux cannot help a mild level of curiosity from contaminating his priority queue as he observes the collection of useless but oddly interesting expressions. He thinks that it’s a pity that they would come to nothing.

“Sam, meet your other older digital brother-” The target says to the lesser user.

Before Flynn finishes his words he moves forward forcefully. He has given them enough time to ‘chat’, he leaves them no time for them to regroup as he launches at the closest user, Sam, with renewed vigour. Sam immediately stumbles his lone baton out just as it connects with one of his own in a block only to be struck by the other into his side.

“Arrg! Geez, you made such a swell time to mention it, Dad!” Even with a pained inflection Sam manages to yell to the other. They were talking about him of that he can tell. The context however is beyond his desire to know.

“I didn’t know!” Flynn yells back while he scrabbles to grab the dropped ISO on the ground near the melee. Faux whips a kick in his direction that connects enough to push him away and delay any user powers he may attempt. He immediately turns his attentions back to Sam.

“You’re not much to look at, user.” He boasts in all honesty, unimpressed and uninspired.

“Yeah, well you’re not exactly a ray of sunshine either, freak.”

The shuffle between him and Sam had been going in his favour, a strike to the leg and a blow to the neck, but try as he might he couldn’t manage to disable the user enough. The user was definitely hurting, of that much he is sure, and yet his unfamiliarity with user construction was becoming a significant disadvantage.

Spying movement in his extended vision he briefly breaks his attention to the Flynn user. “Stay down.” A swift kick to the head ends Flynn’s attempt at his user force but not without infuriating the other user who’s coming at him again with a roar and his brazened, yet suboptimal attack rotation. He deflects some of the wild swinging of the fists as Flynn continues to lay dazed on the floor from his heavy kick, far more modest than the last. He’d have to consider something more lethal to use on the user he’d been combating with first before contending with his primary objective.

With a hard blow he is brought down, Sam managing to tackle him and they both end scrambled on the ground a small distance away from Sam’s own disk. Sam rearms himself and prepares to gut him. Sacrificing one of his batons he catches the disk through and levers it out of Sam’s hand and away once more out of reach in a display of pure improbable chance. Hearing a small utterance from the user he leads the other baton straight to the chest, resulting in pushing him slightly off.

Flynn makes a hurried scramble in the direction of his forgotten disk surprisingly not far away from them. Seeing the user’s goal Faux sacrifices his last baton in hand in an attempt to get the primary target by reverting it into a shorted blade and striking it downwards, but only manages to catch the edge of the user’s robe as it lodges into the ground. Flynn’s momentum halts as the object now unmoving snares him in place and he trips back and yet annoyingly still out of reach.

A small sharp pain lances him as Sam hits one of his small exposed circuits and grabs for his arm pulling it away from the baton and Flynn. He elbows him in return and gets a grunt of pain in response.

“You are really starting to annoy me.” Faux says with a clear snarl on his face.

Everything had gone wrong. He had made a severe miscalculation on the performance of the two user’s abilities in conjunction; or more the younger user’s perseverance. He caught a wide eyed glance at Flynn now freed; making a grab of his own disk again, still embedded in the floor those several metres away.

In a desperate attempt to dislodge the infuriating Sam user from his back he buts his head behind him. He at least managed a good hit to the annoying user’s face which serenades him with a pained cry. He hoped it hurt. He leers at a bloody smear now trailed down the nose on the user’s face as best he could, until he is blindsided by a most vigorous pain as one of them out of site got him straight and hard in the docking port. Though his armour repelled the brunt of the force like all the other hammer blows Sam had rained down in their extended scuffle, it still hurt like a glitch.

They were both on him now and it was impossible to shake each user off with their combined weight. Sam now has his head locked between with his right arm, wrung tight and bending up forcing him to concede to the damned position he has become trapped in. There was a possibility that he could reach his third baton in his knee socket if he could just angle his left leg high enough, yet he is thwarted as the users see through the simplistic excuse of a plan and shifted their body weight away making it impossible to bend it closer.

“What are you waiting for!? Take him out Dad! You have a disk!” He gives nothing more than a strangled growl in return.

He knows more than feels the edge of his disk clip straight to the rim of his port and with a tug the user lodges a new upload into his system. The effect is immediate. This isn’t what he expected to happen.

And his visuals feed goes blank and all his processes cease. The updated override command successful.

CMD: FORCE_END

---

The next time Faux reactivates it is for only a brief snatch of a glimpse. He is unsure of how much time since his deactivation had passed. The scenery had changed to the distinct regions near the edge of the sea, of that much he is certain, the gritty particles of rock told him so. A form flitters in his vision as if he were in a daze; the Flynn user. His higher end functions felt throttled so he could barely make out when the user had said something to him or what it was about, little lone answer. A brush of his hair is felt, until his awareness abruptly shuts off again.

---

Somewhere close-by to the shore of the Sea of Simulation Faux lays inert, circuits darkened, and his allegiances unknown. The only thing that sits with him is his disk in the sand where it fell a few feet away, waiting to be re-docked.

It’s a damn big mystery how he got there.