Rinzler / Tron (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
notglitching) wrote2015-08-23 12:10 pm
notglitching) wrote2015-08-23 12:10 pm
Entry tags:
Application: Inugami
Player Information
Name/Alias: Sharn
Player Journal: N/A, PM this journal ormusebucket
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
notglitching
Timezone: PST
HMD: here
In-Game/Processing: none
Character Information
Name/Alias: Rinzler (previously Tron)
Fandom: Tron
Canonpoint: immediately before Tron: Legacy
Gender: male
Age: ~1354 cycles (1237 years) of experienced time. Rinzler physically resembles an adult human.
Physical Description: In canon, Rinzler wears an armored bodysuit covered in red-orange lights, or "circuitry", at all times (gif here). As Rinzler his face is never seen, but as Tron he went unmasked (1 2 3), and was a visual match for his creator, Alan Bradley. Like all Basic programs, Rinzler's eyes have hexagonal pupils, and there's a faint electronic flange behind his voice. When damaged, his body cracks and shatters to glasslike colored cubes. Rinzler in particular emits a constant ticking growl due to his conflicting codebase.
Humanizing will leave Rinzler without either his noise or his program traits; on his arrival in Inugami, he'll appear to be a normal (if extremely athletic) copy of Alan.
History:
Wiki links here and here, though both articles are incomplete. It should also be noted that the events of Tron: Uprising may or may not be in the same universe as Tron: Betrayal, Evolution, and Legacy. If any players from the series apply, I'll work out details with them, but as Rinzler wouldn't remember it regardless, I chose not to include it in the summary below.
In the Tron universe, every script, edit, or line of code a user writes acts as input to a thriving world inside the computer. Programs are people, and Rinzler was created under a different name: “Tron”. Encom programmer Alan Bradley wrote Tron in 1982 as an independent security program, one that could monitor and protect his company's network against threats inside and out. Unfortunately for both Alan and his creation, the AI running Encom's system was in the process of going Skynet. To a computer (or "Master Control Program") that wanted to rule the world, an independent user-loyal program was a threat, and the MCP tried to dispose of Tron before his security upgrades could be finished. His user's clearance was suspended, and the half-developed program was sent to the Games, a digital arena designed to delete or conscript anyone who rebelled against the AI.
But Tron survived the Games, and purposefully adopted the directive to “fight for the Users” in defiance of the MCP's control. When one user, Kevin Flynn, accidentally found his way into the system, Tron joined him in escape. They worked with others inside the computer and out to get Tron his upgrades and destroy the MCP. With Encom restored to a free system, Tron was only too grateful to the user who had helped him, and when Flynn asked for his help in a new project, the program agreed.
The Grid was Flynn's private experiment, an attempt to create an ideal world from the inside out. His primary assistants were Tron and Clu, a sysadmin written by Flynn with the directive to “create the perfect system”. When Flynn’s system started spawning ISOs—Isomorphic algorithms, self-generated programs written by no user—Clu determined the newcomers were a harmful imperfection. Tron disagreed, which stuck him in the position of peacemaker. This job might have been better suited to someone with any diplomacy skills at all. Tensions grew rapidly between the ISOs and the other programs (now dubbed ‘Basics’), fueled by both Flynn's increasingly long absences and Clu's overt aggression.
Both Tron and Clu went to Flynn when he did appear, but the user waved off everything from collapsing buildings to inter-program terrorism, promising to handle it later. But time passes more quickly inside the computer than out, and after several centuries of "later", Clu ran short on sanity as well as patience. The sysadmin attacked Flynn, trying to stop his user from leaving the system while he pulled a coup from the inside. Tron interceded, sacrificing himself in the hope that Flynn would escape and set things right. To most of the Grid, that's where Tron's story ends: fighting for the users until his own demise. Certainly Tron would have preferred that.
The reality wasn't nearly so easy. Instead of finishing Tron off, Clu decided to test out his repurposing privileges: his ability as an administrator to rewrite a program’s code. Tron was stripped of his name, his memories, and most of all the independence that had let him fight for a free system twice already. With a black helmet hiding his face from the system, a second disk of restrictive code merged with his own, and his normally-blue circuits glowing the orange of Clu's followers, Tron was gone for all intents and purposes. Clu had his perfect enforcer: Rinzler.
While just over 20 years went by in the outside world, Rinzler had an experienced millennium to settle into his new existence. He was Clu’s weapon, his utterly obedient tool, and Clu used him to great effect. When Clu’s army destroyed the ISO strongholds, Rinzler was sent to hunt down those who remained. When rebellious programs took steps to free the system, they would find a black-masked shadow derezzing them with vicious skill. More than just a weapon, the enforcer stood as a symbol of Clu's power. This was evident nowhere more than in Clu's Games: deathmatches of captured prisoners with Rinzler waiting as the final opponent, ready to execute the last surviving offender and prove the invulnerability of Clu’s dictatorship.
Whatever struggles Rinzler made against Clu's code, they never proved enough. Not with his admin always there to tinker and improve, not when the user Tron had sacrificed himself to save never returned to discover his friend's fate. Clu's control of the system only grew, and by the time anyone else appeared to intervene, the administrator had turned his plans past the Grid—to conquering the user world by force. At the time of Rinzler's entry to Inugami, these plans are starting to reach fruition.
Personality:
While there's certainly more to Tron-verse programs than their creators assume, they're still synthetic beings, and as such, are largely defined by their code. For Basics, the core of that is their directive: the function their user wrote them for that they exist to carry out. This can range from helping users with their taxes to laser processing to "create the perfect system". Tron's function was to protect his system, and more, to do it independently from outside control. This foundation helped to build a person who was stubborn and loyal, fiercely devoted to defending his world and the users who created it. Like Rinzler, Tron was skilled and confident, often to the point of recklessness. But where Alan's program operated on his own definitions, Rinzler simply can't.
As his administrator's enforcer, his directive summarizes to "serve Clu". He kills in Clu's games, hunts Clu's enemies, and follows at his admin's heels like a well-trained pet. He doesn't talk or take action of his own accord, only waits for Clu's orders or the occasional system failure that sets him loose to hunt. When things do go wrong, that's what we hear—"System Failure: release Rinzler". He's a tool. An automated piece of Clu's system, intelligent enough to track and ruthless enough to kill, but lacking the initiative to ever try to do more.
At least, he's supposed to.
Rinzler is being taken from a canonpoint before the movie, but the events of Tron: Legacy prove that even in a thousand cycles, Clu couldn't wipe out every fragment of Tron's personality. We see Rinzler spare his targets and speak aloud, lie to his admin and struggle to recover his own memories. In the end, he succeeds, suicide-bombing Clu in an attempt to protect those he'd fought for one more time. While part of this breakdown can be attributed to the interference of the users (and certainly, Sam actually caring enough to come back for his friend practically crashes Rinzler on the spot), at least as much seems to be Rinzler taking what opportunities he can. As much as Clu may have forced his obedience, Rinzler never stopped struggling, and Tron's personality never fully went away. It's audible in the only noise he's allowed to make (and that much, probably because Clu couldn't stop it): the rattling of code in conflict that never, ever stops.
Rinzler doesn't fit together, and Clu's overrides do a lot to stifle any sort of self-direction. More, it can be hard for Rinzler to want to try. He knows what he's supposed to be, and whatever frustrations he sometimes remembers, he's spent a millennium acting as Clu's weapon—a role he was left to because Flynn never bothered to look back. That's not conducive to a great sense of self. For all his overconfidence in combat, Rinzler considers himself little more than a tool, and has no expectation for anyone (but particularly users) to treat him as more. Between his resentment and his lack of communication, forming attachments can be difficult, though if someone succeeds, he'll prioritize their well-being far above his own.
Whatever Rinzler's limitations, Tron was written to adapt, and being tossed in a situation he has no precoded responses for is likely to encourage that. This doesn't mean he'll revert to who he was, but many of Tron's traits were never really removed. Rinzler is blunt and confrontational. Rinzler hates idling and loves to show off. And under the right circumstances, Rinzler will give up every bit as much to fight for his friends as Tron ever did. He's spent more of his runtime as an enforcer than an independent program, and even without the code changes, that's changed and stunted him in a big way. But there's potential for growth, and plenty of bad decisions along the way. "Stab it dead" is about as far as Rinzler's creative problem-solving goes, and between his missing admin and his user body, he'll have his hands full.
[Personality revisions requested on application; revised version below:]
In his initial incarnation as Tron, Rinzler was first and foremost a protector. He was written to safeguard his system, and more, to do so against threats both inside and out. That last caveat has a particular significance when considering the circumstances of his creation-- Alan was deliberately working beneath his boss' radar to make a program that could take down the MCP. He wanted Tron to be powerful, but independent, a single program that could stand up to corrupted users and administrators alike.
For the most part, he got what he wanted. While Tron's early decision to "fight for the users" was made with a few blind spots toward their fallibility, Flynn's intervention made for some very rapid learning curves. Before Clu ever becomes a threat, we have ample chance to see how Tron's grown up. He's serious and driven, focused on the safety of every program in the Grid, Basic and ISO alike. He's stubborn and confrontational. He's confident bordering on cocky when it comes to his own abilities, but while he loves to show off in the Games of his new system, Tron is violently opposed to going back to the deathmatches he used to know. He values his world at large, but the individuals-- the people in it-- are what make it a free system. They're who he wants to save.
Most of all, Tron is every bit as independent as Alan could have hoped. Where yelling at Clu and entreating Flynn doesn't work, Tron goes behind everybody's back to make things right on more than one occasion. He sneaks, argues, and disobeys his user's orders. And when that doesn't prove enough, he chooses to sacrifice himself. There's no user input or administrator command involved at all-- just a competent, responsible person willing to lose everything to preserve the values he lived for.
In many ways, that makes what Clu turned him into just that much crueler. Rinzler isn't independent. He doesn't care about preserving life. He knows he's better than anyone (excepting Clu)-- but only by virtue of being a flawless killer. He's strong and skilled. He's Clu's perfect enforcer: a tool that never fails to complete its task, and a program who has no other way to self-define.
"Self-define" is of course a misnomer. Rinzler's definitions are set for him. Clu has been in his code for the last millennium, locking down as many memories and freedoms as he needed to perfect his former friend. By Rinzler's current canonpoint, there's not a lot left on the surface. The enforcer kills in Clu's games, hunts Clu's enemies, and follows at his admin's heels like a well-trained pet. He doesn't speak or take action of his own accord. He doesn't remember a time when he could. He sees ISOs as viruses, users as the enemy, and the system as Clu's to control and improve. Rinzler's meant to be a piece of that, no more.
Still, Clu couldn't take away every part of Tron without losing the skills he wanted to repurpose, and Rinzler isn't always as automated as he acts. He thinks and watches. He knows when to stay quiet and how to deflect his admin's rage. He shows off when he fights, drawing things out much more than Tron did, particularly in the Games. For Rinzler, combat is both a validation of his own perfection and an outlet for frustration. It's one of the few times every part of his code works in concert as it should.
Rinzler doesn't fit together. His programming is an intricate balancing act of restrictions and redirects, and if the enforcer's not allowed to view it, that doesn't mean he doesn't know. It's audible in the only noise he's allowed: the constant, grinding rattle of conflicting code. As much as Rinzler knows what he "should" be, that doesn't mean those struggling fragments of Tron's code have never prompted him to try to be more. Locked down doesn't mean deleted, and when in situations Clu never coded him to handle, Rinzler has the potential to adapt past his limitations. If confronted by something more personal, Tron's remnants might glitch to the surface more directly.
But after losing himself continuously for a thousand cycles, it's hard for any of Rinzler's code to even know what else to fight for. The system belongs to Clu. Its user abandoned all of them to hide-- and if Rinzler doesn't consciously remember how personal Flynn's abandonment really was, the results are undeniable. No one is coming, and nothing will change. It's easier to be what Clu tells him. Easier to push back the anger his own limitations bring-- or vent it on the next permitted target.
Between that sense of helplessness, his low self-value, and the blocks literally written into his brain, Rinzler is unlikely to defy Clu's rules for his own sake. He does, however, have the potential to do so for others. Users are valued and resented in equal measure, but Rinzler would hesitate to kill one, and have serious code issues if he did. And if anyone, user or program, actually managed to form a connection with Rinzler, he would value their well-being far above his own.
Abilities:
Rinzler's combat abilities are extensive. He's both stronger and faster than human capabilities, prone to running (or lightcycling) up walls, surviving incredible damage, and fighting with flips, leaps, or other improbable acrobatics. His weapons of choice are his disks: rounded weapons (think chakram) that can be activated for melee or ranged attacks, capable of cutting nearly any material. His armor is literally a part of him, and will deflect or blunt most types of damage. Rinzler's tactically intelligent and extremely precise, and while he can be caught off guard, he's the strongest combatant in his world for a reason.
Outside of a fight, Rinzler's talents lie in tracking and infiltration. As a security program, he has a variety of scanning functions typically used to acquire data on programs' function, nature, and current state, and is also capable of detecting energy signatures in proximity. He can follow electronic "footprints" to trace the movement of others and conceal his own presence from similar scans. Masking functions can dim his own circuitry or alter its color, and he's canonly used other programs' shell templates to disguise himself more completely.
In short, glowy death ninja. But where there are pros, there are cons, and Rinzler definitely has his share. As a program, he requires energy, and while he can take plenty of hits, when something surpasses his durability, he doesn't bruise or bleed—he shatters into pieces. Electrocution and strong magnetic fields can scramble the program in a big way, and high temperatures cause overheating and malfunction. Most significant is the risk of recoding. A program's identity disk isn't just a convenient weapon—it's the main backup their code writes to, and the easiest way to rewrite that code. For any programmer skilled enough to get past Clu's locks, Rinzler is a supremely easy target, incapable of even viewing his own code, much less overriding his synced disks.
Lastly, Rinzler has the social skills of a brick. A mute, angry brick.
Samples
Dialogue:
Note passing party on the test drive. \o/
Exposition/Introspection:
Sample from Abax: Rinzler copes with unpleasant personal discoveries by trying to murder the crap out of some monsters.
Name/Alias: Sharn
Player Journal: N/A, PM this journal or
musebucketContact:
Timezone: PST
HMD: here
In-Game/Processing: none
Character Information
Name/Alias: Rinzler (previously Tron)
Fandom: Tron
Canonpoint: immediately before Tron: Legacy
Gender: male
Age: ~1354 cycles (1237 years) of experienced time. Rinzler physically resembles an adult human.
Physical Description: In canon, Rinzler wears an armored bodysuit covered in red-orange lights, or "circuitry", at all times (gif here). As Rinzler his face is never seen, but as Tron he went unmasked (1 2 3), and was a visual match for his creator, Alan Bradley. Like all Basic programs, Rinzler's eyes have hexagonal pupils, and there's a faint electronic flange behind his voice. When damaged, his body cracks and shatters to glasslike colored cubes. Rinzler in particular emits a constant ticking growl due to his conflicting codebase.
Humanizing will leave Rinzler without either his noise or his program traits; on his arrival in Inugami, he'll appear to be a normal (if extremely athletic) copy of Alan.
History:
Wiki links here and here, though both articles are incomplete. It should also be noted that the events of Tron: Uprising may or may not be in the same universe as Tron: Betrayal, Evolution, and Legacy. If any players from the series apply, I'll work out details with them, but as Rinzler wouldn't remember it regardless, I chose not to include it in the summary below.
In the Tron universe, every script, edit, or line of code a user writes acts as input to a thriving world inside the computer. Programs are people, and Rinzler was created under a different name: “Tron”. Encom programmer Alan Bradley wrote Tron in 1982 as an independent security program, one that could monitor and protect his company's network against threats inside and out. Unfortunately for both Alan and his creation, the AI running Encom's system was in the process of going Skynet. To a computer (or "Master Control Program") that wanted to rule the world, an independent user-loyal program was a threat, and the MCP tried to dispose of Tron before his security upgrades could be finished. His user's clearance was suspended, and the half-developed program was sent to the Games, a digital arena designed to delete or conscript anyone who rebelled against the AI.
But Tron survived the Games, and purposefully adopted the directive to “fight for the Users” in defiance of the MCP's control. When one user, Kevin Flynn, accidentally found his way into the system, Tron joined him in escape. They worked with others inside the computer and out to get Tron his upgrades and destroy the MCP. With Encom restored to a free system, Tron was only too grateful to the user who had helped him, and when Flynn asked for his help in a new project, the program agreed.
The Grid was Flynn's private experiment, an attempt to create an ideal world from the inside out. His primary assistants were Tron and Clu, a sysadmin written by Flynn with the directive to “create the perfect system”. When Flynn’s system started spawning ISOs—Isomorphic algorithms, self-generated programs written by no user—Clu determined the newcomers were a harmful imperfection. Tron disagreed, which stuck him in the position of peacemaker. This job might have been better suited to someone with any diplomacy skills at all. Tensions grew rapidly between the ISOs and the other programs (now dubbed ‘Basics’), fueled by both Flynn's increasingly long absences and Clu's overt aggression.
Both Tron and Clu went to Flynn when he did appear, but the user waved off everything from collapsing buildings to inter-program terrorism, promising to handle it later. But time passes more quickly inside the computer than out, and after several centuries of "later", Clu ran short on sanity as well as patience. The sysadmin attacked Flynn, trying to stop his user from leaving the system while he pulled a coup from the inside. Tron interceded, sacrificing himself in the hope that Flynn would escape and set things right. To most of the Grid, that's where Tron's story ends: fighting for the users until his own demise. Certainly Tron would have preferred that.
The reality wasn't nearly so easy. Instead of finishing Tron off, Clu decided to test out his repurposing privileges: his ability as an administrator to rewrite a program’s code. Tron was stripped of his name, his memories, and most of all the independence that had let him fight for a free system twice already. With a black helmet hiding his face from the system, a second disk of restrictive code merged with his own, and his normally-blue circuits glowing the orange of Clu's followers, Tron was gone for all intents and purposes. Clu had his perfect enforcer: Rinzler.
While just over 20 years went by in the outside world, Rinzler had an experienced millennium to settle into his new existence. He was Clu’s weapon, his utterly obedient tool, and Clu used him to great effect. When Clu’s army destroyed the ISO strongholds, Rinzler was sent to hunt down those who remained. When rebellious programs took steps to free the system, they would find a black-masked shadow derezzing them with vicious skill. More than just a weapon, the enforcer stood as a symbol of Clu's power. This was evident nowhere more than in Clu's Games: deathmatches of captured prisoners with Rinzler waiting as the final opponent, ready to execute the last surviving offender and prove the invulnerability of Clu’s dictatorship.
Whatever struggles Rinzler made against Clu's code, they never proved enough. Not with his admin always there to tinker and improve, not when the user Tron had sacrificed himself to save never returned to discover his friend's fate. Clu's control of the system only grew, and by the time anyone else appeared to intervene, the administrator had turned his plans past the Grid—to conquering the user world by force. At the time of Rinzler's entry to Inugami, these plans are starting to reach fruition.
Personality:
While there's certainly more to Tron-verse programs than their creators assume, they're still synthetic beings, and as such, are largely defined by their code. For Basics, the core of that is their directive: the function their user wrote them for that they exist to carry out. This can range from helping users with their taxes to laser processing to "create the perfect system". Tron's function was to protect his system, and more, to do it independently from outside control. This foundation helped to build a person who was stubborn and loyal, fiercely devoted to defending his world and the users who created it. Like Rinzler, Tron was skilled and confident, often to the point of recklessness. But where Alan's program operated on his own definitions, Rinzler simply can't.
As his administrator's enforcer, his directive summarizes to "serve Clu". He kills in Clu's games, hunts Clu's enemies, and follows at his admin's heels like a well-trained pet. He doesn't talk or take action of his own accord, only waits for Clu's orders or the occasional system failure that sets him loose to hunt. When things do go wrong, that's what we hear—"System Failure: release Rinzler". He's a tool. An automated piece of Clu's system, intelligent enough to track and ruthless enough to kill, but lacking the initiative to ever try to do more.
At least, he's supposed to.
Rinzler is being taken from a canonpoint before the movie, but the events of Tron: Legacy prove that even in a thousand cycles, Clu couldn't wipe out every fragment of Tron's personality. We see Rinzler spare his targets and speak aloud, lie to his admin and struggle to recover his own memories. In the end, he succeeds, suicide-bombing Clu in an attempt to protect those he'd fought for one more time. While part of this breakdown can be attributed to the interference of the users (and certainly, Sam actually caring enough to come back for his friend practically crashes Rinzler on the spot), at least as much seems to be Rinzler taking what opportunities he can. As much as Clu may have forced his obedience, Rinzler never stopped struggling, and Tron's personality never fully went away. It's audible in the only noise he's allowed to make (and that much, probably because Clu couldn't stop it): the rattling of code in conflict that never, ever stops.
Rinzler doesn't fit together, and Clu's overrides do a lot to stifle any sort of self-direction. More, it can be hard for Rinzler to want to try. He knows what he's supposed to be, and whatever frustrations he sometimes remembers, he's spent a millennium acting as Clu's weapon—a role he was left to because Flynn never bothered to look back. That's not conducive to a great sense of self. For all his overconfidence in combat, Rinzler considers himself little more than a tool, and has no expectation for anyone (but particularly users) to treat him as more. Between his resentment and his lack of communication, forming attachments can be difficult, though if someone succeeds, he'll prioritize their well-being far above his own.
Whatever Rinzler's limitations, Tron was written to adapt, and being tossed in a situation he has no precoded responses for is likely to encourage that. This doesn't mean he'll revert to who he was, but many of Tron's traits were never really removed. Rinzler is blunt and confrontational. Rinzler hates idling and loves to show off. And under the right circumstances, Rinzler will give up every bit as much to fight for his friends as Tron ever did. He's spent more of his runtime as an enforcer than an independent program, and even without the code changes, that's changed and stunted him in a big way. But there's potential for growth, and plenty of bad decisions along the way. "Stab it dead" is about as far as Rinzler's creative problem-solving goes, and between his missing admin and his user body, he'll have his hands full.
[Personality revisions requested on application; revised version below:]
In his initial incarnation as Tron, Rinzler was first and foremost a protector. He was written to safeguard his system, and more, to do so against threats both inside and out. That last caveat has a particular significance when considering the circumstances of his creation-- Alan was deliberately working beneath his boss' radar to make a program that could take down the MCP. He wanted Tron to be powerful, but independent, a single program that could stand up to corrupted users and administrators alike.
For the most part, he got what he wanted. While Tron's early decision to "fight for the users" was made with a few blind spots toward their fallibility, Flynn's intervention made for some very rapid learning curves. Before Clu ever becomes a threat, we have ample chance to see how Tron's grown up. He's serious and driven, focused on the safety of every program in the Grid, Basic and ISO alike. He's stubborn and confrontational. He's confident bordering on cocky when it comes to his own abilities, but while he loves to show off in the Games of his new system, Tron is violently opposed to going back to the deathmatches he used to know. He values his world at large, but the individuals-- the people in it-- are what make it a free system. They're who he wants to save.
Most of all, Tron is every bit as independent as Alan could have hoped. Where yelling at Clu and entreating Flynn doesn't work, Tron goes behind everybody's back to make things right on more than one occasion. He sneaks, argues, and disobeys his user's orders. And when that doesn't prove enough, he chooses to sacrifice himself. There's no user input or administrator command involved at all-- just a competent, responsible person willing to lose everything to preserve the values he lived for.
In many ways, that makes what Clu turned him into just that much crueler. Rinzler isn't independent. He doesn't care about preserving life. He knows he's better than anyone (excepting Clu)-- but only by virtue of being a flawless killer. He's strong and skilled. He's Clu's perfect enforcer: a tool that never fails to complete its task, and a program who has no other way to self-define.
"Self-define" is of course a misnomer. Rinzler's definitions are set for him. Clu has been in his code for the last millennium, locking down as many memories and freedoms as he needed to perfect his former friend. By Rinzler's current canonpoint, there's not a lot left on the surface. The enforcer kills in Clu's games, hunts Clu's enemies, and follows at his admin's heels like a well-trained pet. He doesn't speak or take action of his own accord. He doesn't remember a time when he could. He sees ISOs as viruses, users as the enemy, and the system as Clu's to control and improve. Rinzler's meant to be a piece of that, no more.
Still, Clu couldn't take away every part of Tron without losing the skills he wanted to repurpose, and Rinzler isn't always as automated as he acts. He thinks and watches. He knows when to stay quiet and how to deflect his admin's rage. He shows off when he fights, drawing things out much more than Tron did, particularly in the Games. For Rinzler, combat is both a validation of his own perfection and an outlet for frustration. It's one of the few times every part of his code works in concert as it should.
Rinzler doesn't fit together. His programming is an intricate balancing act of restrictions and redirects, and if the enforcer's not allowed to view it, that doesn't mean he doesn't know. It's audible in the only noise he's allowed: the constant, grinding rattle of conflicting code. As much as Rinzler knows what he "should" be, that doesn't mean those struggling fragments of Tron's code have never prompted him to try to be more. Locked down doesn't mean deleted, and when in situations Clu never coded him to handle, Rinzler has the potential to adapt past his limitations. If confronted by something more personal, Tron's remnants might glitch to the surface more directly.
But after losing himself continuously for a thousand cycles, it's hard for any of Rinzler's code to even know what else to fight for. The system belongs to Clu. Its user abandoned all of them to hide-- and if Rinzler doesn't consciously remember how personal Flynn's abandonment really was, the results are undeniable. No one is coming, and nothing will change. It's easier to be what Clu tells him. Easier to push back the anger his own limitations bring-- or vent it on the next permitted target.
Between that sense of helplessness, his low self-value, and the blocks literally written into his brain, Rinzler is unlikely to defy Clu's rules for his own sake. He does, however, have the potential to do so for others. Users are valued and resented in equal measure, but Rinzler would hesitate to kill one, and have serious code issues if he did. And if anyone, user or program, actually managed to form a connection with Rinzler, he would value their well-being far above his own.
Abilities:
Rinzler's combat abilities are extensive. He's both stronger and faster than human capabilities, prone to running (or lightcycling) up walls, surviving incredible damage, and fighting with flips, leaps, or other improbable acrobatics. His weapons of choice are his disks: rounded weapons (think chakram) that can be activated for melee or ranged attacks, capable of cutting nearly any material. His armor is literally a part of him, and will deflect or blunt most types of damage. Rinzler's tactically intelligent and extremely precise, and while he can be caught off guard, he's the strongest combatant in his world for a reason.
Outside of a fight, Rinzler's talents lie in tracking and infiltration. As a security program, he has a variety of scanning functions typically used to acquire data on programs' function, nature, and current state, and is also capable of detecting energy signatures in proximity. He can follow electronic "footprints" to trace the movement of others and conceal his own presence from similar scans. Masking functions can dim his own circuitry or alter its color, and he's canonly used other programs' shell templates to disguise himself more completely.
In short, glowy death ninja. But where there are pros, there are cons, and Rinzler definitely has his share. As a program, he requires energy, and while he can take plenty of hits, when something surpasses his durability, he doesn't bruise or bleed—he shatters into pieces. Electrocution and strong magnetic fields can scramble the program in a big way, and high temperatures cause overheating and malfunction. Most significant is the risk of recoding. A program's identity disk isn't just a convenient weapon—it's the main backup their code writes to, and the easiest way to rewrite that code. For any programmer skilled enough to get past Clu's locks, Rinzler is a supremely easy target, incapable of even viewing his own code, much less overriding his synced disks.
Lastly, Rinzler has the social skills of a brick. A mute, angry brick.
Samples
Dialogue:
Note passing party on the test drive. \o/
Exposition/Introspection:
Sample from Abax: Rinzler copes with unpleasant personal discoveries by trying to murder the crap out of some monsters.