Rinzler / Tron (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
notglitching) wrote2015-11-23 01:00 pm
notglitching) wrote2015-11-23 01:00 pm
Entry tags:
Application: thisavrou
OUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: Sharn
Are you 16 or older: Yes.
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
notglitching
Current Characters: N/A
Tag: rinzler (crau)
IN CHARACTER
Name: Rinzler (formerly Tron)
Canon: Tron
Canon Point: Immediately prior to Tron: Legacy (plus CRAU in Inugami)
Age: ~1354 cycles (1237 years) of experienced time, though much less passed in the human world.
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 continuity as Tron: Betrayal, Evolution, and Legacy. If any players from Uprising apply, I'll be glad to work things out with them, but as Rinzler wouldn't remember it regardless, I chose not to include it in the summary below.
Canon
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 Tron and his user, 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. Alan's clearance was suspended, and the half-developed program was sent to the Game Grid, a digital arena designed to delete or conscript rebellious programs towards the AI's service.
But Tron survived the games, and purposefully adopted the directive to “fight for the Users” in defiance of the MCP's conversion attempts. When one such user, Kevin Flynn, wound up trapped alongside Tron, they joined forces in escape. They gathered help from others inside the computer and out, including a fellow survivor called Ram and Tron's romantic counterpart, Yori. In the end, Tron made contact with Alan, received his upgrades, and went on to destroy the MCP. With Encom restored to a free system, the programs were only too grateful to the user who had entered their world, and when Flynn asked for help with a new project, Tron readily 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 to be harmful imperfections. Tron disagreed, which left him trying to keep peace between the factions—a job better suited to someone with any diplomatic 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. He attacked Flynn, trying to stop his user from leaving the system while he pulled a coup from the inside. Tron interceded, deleting Clu's guards and tackling the admin 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. Flynn never left the system, and instead of finishing Tron off, Clu took the time 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, 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 the admin 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.
All this time, whatever struggles Rinzler made against Clu's code 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 Rinzler left his universe, these plans were starting to reach fruition.
CRAU:![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
inugamirpg
Inugami is a horror game set in a Japanese high school that draws heavily from the works of HP Lovecraft. Characters are trapped inside with a student body of faceless drones and exposed on a regular basis to ghosts, monsters, and sanity-straining events. A full list of Rinzler's Inugami threads can be found in this post; below is a brief summary of the major points and people.
Personality: 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 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 anyone, user or program, who actually manages to form a connection with Rinzler will have their survival and well-being valued far above his own.
In Inugami, Rinzler was forced well outside his parameters, both in terms of the situation at large and his own condition. As a human, while Rinzler was still conditioned to obey, the restrictions weren't quite so literally hardcoded. Recovered memories weren't wiped automatically, and recognition of an error didn't always lock him up too much to keep pressing through it. Perhaps most importantly, the enforcer was completely unaware of this shift. Rinzler's so used to being incapable of beating his own limitations that he didn't even realize when he started to surpass them.
For the most part, this growth has been relatively subtle. He hasn't recovered many memories or recognized his former self, but his time with Yori offered positive reinforcement for the attempts that have only ever brought him pain. He's starting to wonder at reminders that would have had him flinching away months ago—though Rinzler is still too obedient (and perhaps, afraid) to willingly acknowledge the truth of his "imperfections". He hasn't lost that loyalty to Clu, and still considers himself to be nothing but his admin's tool. But when Clu was present, Rinzler actively worked to get around his orders and to hide the ways he was trying to be more.
Text-based communication has opened larger doors. Rinzler isn't permitted to use vocals, and in his own world, he rarely needs to do more than accept orders and surrender his code and memories to Clu. In Inugami, communication was both vital to survival and encouraged by everyone he came across. With text proposed as an easy alternative to his restricted voice, Rinzler was trading information inside an hour. Within a week, he was actively grateful for the chance. His phone is the one item Rinzler has become seriously attached to in Inugami, and as much as he might try to write this value off as sheer utility, the excuse is flimsy at best. He knows what he's written for, and on this point more than anything, he knows he's going against what Clu would want.
The fact that this knowledge hasn't stopped him is a testament to Rinzler's progress, but interacting with others has had dividends in more ways than one. The people he's talked to in Inugami have done the unthinkable again and again: treated Rinzler as an equal worth acknowledging instead of just a tool. He's met users who didn't abandon him the moment he proved useless, and AIs who needled him at every chance towards self-examination of his code. Rinzler might not consider himself to be a person, but his CR quite definitely did. Their expectation, more than anything, has helped him grow to fit the role.
Abilities/Skills: 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. Rinzler's skilled at operating any number of vehicles from his own world: recognizers, lightjets, and lightcycles, to name a few. Thanks to his time in a human body, he's also much more knowledgeable about the user world and humans than most programs, and while Inugami was well behind the Moira in terms of user technology, he's got the basics down. His design as a security program gives him a high level of innate skill with encryptions and security measures (reinforcement, use, and knowing how to break them), and Rinzler's likely to start experimenting a little once he adapts to the technology upgrade.
In short, glowy computer ninja. But where there are pros, there are cons, and Rinzler definitely has his share. As a program, he requires electrical 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 any edits written to his disks.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Items:
SAMPLES
Network Sample: Rinzler doesn't talk much even by text, and Clu discouraged him from Inugami's network; he's likely to need a little more development before he's willing to address the network publicly at all. I can link two examples of private network interactions in Inugami (binary translator for the first one here). If that doesn't work; let me know; I'll shake something out of the muse.
Prose/Action Sample: Test drive thread: Rinzler headtilts at the ocean and Imperator Furiosa. And since that one's kinda short, have him glowering at plants with Mephistophles too.
Are you 16 or older: Yes.
Contact:
Current Characters: N/A
Tag: rinzler (crau)
IN CHARACTER
Name: Rinzler (formerly Tron)
Canon: Tron
Canon Point: Immediately prior to Tron: Legacy (plus CRAU in Inugami)
Age: ~1354 cycles (1237 years) of experienced time, though much less passed in the human world.
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 continuity as Tron: Betrayal, Evolution, and Legacy. If any players from Uprising apply, I'll be glad to work things out with them, but as Rinzler wouldn't remember it regardless, I chose not to include it in the summary below.
Canon
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 Tron and his user, 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. Alan's clearance was suspended, and the half-developed program was sent to the Game Grid, a digital arena designed to delete or conscript rebellious programs towards the AI's service.
But Tron survived the games, and purposefully adopted the directive to “fight for the Users” in defiance of the MCP's conversion attempts. When one such user, Kevin Flynn, wound up trapped alongside Tron, they joined forces in escape. They gathered help from others inside the computer and out, including a fellow survivor called Ram and Tron's romantic counterpart, Yori. In the end, Tron made contact with Alan, received his upgrades, and went on to destroy the MCP. With Encom restored to a free system, the programs were only too grateful to the user who had entered their world, and when Flynn asked for help with a new project, Tron readily 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 to be harmful imperfections. Tron disagreed, which left him trying to keep peace between the factions—a job better suited to someone with any diplomatic 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. He attacked Flynn, trying to stop his user from leaving the system while he pulled a coup from the inside. Tron interceded, deleting Clu's guards and tackling the admin 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. Flynn never left the system, and instead of finishing Tron off, Clu took the time 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, 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 the admin 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.
All this time, whatever struggles Rinzler made against Clu's code 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 Rinzler left his universe, these plans were starting to reach fruition.
CRAU:
inugamirpgInugami is a horror game set in a Japanese high school that draws heavily from the works of HP Lovecraft. Characters are trapped inside with a student body of faceless drones and exposed on a regular basis to ghosts, monsters, and sanity-straining events. A full list of Rinzler's Inugami threads can be found in this post; below is a brief summary of the major points and people.
- (9/10) Rinzler woke up as a new human transfer student to class 1-A of Inugami High. Minor property damage ensued until he stopped spazzing long enough to read the intro letter and stalk off. Gon Freecs helped explain things, and also nudged Rinzler into having his very first scribble-based conversation.
- (9/10-9/17) Rinzler's first week was spent attacking everything that bothered him. This included the faceless drone students, Eiji Hino, and a reploid by the name Prometheus. Prometheus' sister Pandora showed up halfway through that fight and gave Rinzler an educational experience in head blows from behind. At the end of the week, Rinzler's code-conflict noise restarted.
- (9/17-10/10) In an attempt to gather data, Rinzler started watching some of the user "clubs". He got along well with Fifth Generation Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon Unit #31 Labrys and a user called Hiro Hamada. Hiro invited Rinzler to join his team for the Hide and Seek murdergame on Halloween; Rinzler accepted. During planning meetings, Rinzler nearly got in a fight with another user (Niko), and was reluctantly talked down by Gon from his initial Game strategy of "kill the seeker".
- (10/10-10/12) The next batch of new arrivals included Yori, who called out to "Tron" and glitched Rinzler badly with references he wasn't allowed to remember. On realizing the restrictions he was under, she apologized for the mistake, trying to take things more slowly and at least restart as friends. Rinzler was interested, but events were complicated by the second familiar arrival: Clu. After a highly strained inspection and review of Rinzler's failures, Clu confiscated Rinzler's phone and reclaimed his enforcer.
- (10/12-10/31): Rinzler's circuitry and tracking abilities returned to him. He spent most of the month obediently tagging along by Clu's side, but an event left Clu flustered enough to give Rinzler a little breathing room. The enforcer tracked down Prometheus and Pandora, negotiating a tentative alliance towards procuring better weapons. He also met with Yori and encountered another reploid called Lumine.
- (10/31-11/5): Rinzler attended the Hide and Seek murdergame on Halloween. He worked with Labrys and a new user ally called Eri to survive for some time, but was killed together with the user. He remained dead for the next five days.
- (11/5-11/13): Rinzler revived to find Clu missing from the school. Between that and his failure in the Game, he began questioning his own value, and attempting to prove it by picking fights with the slightest excuse. Niko firmly turned him down, and jumping a new reploid, Axl, netted Rinzler one stolen painting but no combat. (Though Axl did spam his inbox creatively about it later.) Eri and Hiro both tried to reassure him (despite having their own issues with the deaths), but this couldn't offset his sense of failure completely. With Clu gone, Yori persuaded Rinzler to take a room assignment with her; uncertain visits gradually shifted to actual cohabitation.
- (11/13-11/22): The drone students began a covert assault on the transfers, first damaging supplies and then kidnapping people. Rinzler escorted Yori on her rescue efforts, and they encountered Axl amidst a series of increasingly blood-soaked rooms. When Rinzler discovered a copy of himself at the center of new carnage, he split the party, chasing after the double and becoming lost. On his way out, he killed monsters, successfully picked a fight with Niko, teamed up with Hiro, and accidentally rescued another user, Lelouch.
- (11/22-12/20): In a slightly better mood for the above murdertiems, Rinzler ran into Prometheus and an injured Pandora, and reluctantly called Yori in to help. The two wound up sharing space with the programs while Pandora recovered, a relationship that put a toll on Rinzler's already strained sense of denial when Prometheus explained their own repurposing. Meanwhile, Rinzler regained more of his own functions, including the ability to feed off electricity. Experimentation with drawing power from electrical sockets ended poorly; Hiro and Eiji tried to help Rinzler find an easier solution.
Personality: 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 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 anyone, user or program, who actually manages to form a connection with Rinzler will have their survival and well-being valued far above his own.
In Inugami, Rinzler was forced well outside his parameters, both in terms of the situation at large and his own condition. As a human, while Rinzler was still conditioned to obey, the restrictions weren't quite so literally hardcoded. Recovered memories weren't wiped automatically, and recognition of an error didn't always lock him up too much to keep pressing through it. Perhaps most importantly, the enforcer was completely unaware of this shift. Rinzler's so used to being incapable of beating his own limitations that he didn't even realize when he started to surpass them.
For the most part, this growth has been relatively subtle. He hasn't recovered many memories or recognized his former self, but his time with Yori offered positive reinforcement for the attempts that have only ever brought him pain. He's starting to wonder at reminders that would have had him flinching away months ago—though Rinzler is still too obedient (and perhaps, afraid) to willingly acknowledge the truth of his "imperfections". He hasn't lost that loyalty to Clu, and still considers himself to be nothing but his admin's tool. But when Clu was present, Rinzler actively worked to get around his orders and to hide the ways he was trying to be more.
Text-based communication has opened larger doors. Rinzler isn't permitted to use vocals, and in his own world, he rarely needs to do more than accept orders and surrender his code and memories to Clu. In Inugami, communication was both vital to survival and encouraged by everyone he came across. With text proposed as an easy alternative to his restricted voice, Rinzler was trading information inside an hour. Within a week, he was actively grateful for the chance. His phone is the one item Rinzler has become seriously attached to in Inugami, and as much as he might try to write this value off as sheer utility, the excuse is flimsy at best. He knows what he's written for, and on this point more than anything, he knows he's going against what Clu would want.
The fact that this knowledge hasn't stopped him is a testament to Rinzler's progress, but interacting with others has had dividends in more ways than one. The people he's talked to in Inugami have done the unthinkable again and again: treated Rinzler as an equal worth acknowledging instead of just a tool. He's met users who didn't abandon him the moment he proved useless, and AIs who needled him at every chance towards self-examination of his code. Rinzler might not consider himself to be a person, but his CR quite definitely did. Their expectation, more than anything, has helped him grow to fit the role.
Abilities/Skills: 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. Rinzler's skilled at operating any number of vehicles from his own world: recognizers, lightjets, and lightcycles, to name a few. Thanks to his time in a human body, he's also much more knowledgeable about the user world and humans than most programs, and while Inugami was well behind the Moira in terms of user technology, he's got the basics down. His design as a security program gives him a high level of innate skill with encryptions and security measures (reinforcement, use, and knowing how to break them), and Rinzler's likely to start experimenting a little once he adapts to the technology upgrade.
In short, glowy computer ninja. But where there are pros, there are cons, and Rinzler definitely has his share. As a program, he requires electrical 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 any edits written to his disks.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
Strengths
- Combat: As above, Rinzler's the most skilled combatant in a world full of ageless beings who exceed human limits on strength and speed. This is literally what he's designed for, and he's spent over a millennium improving off that design. Plus, this is the one area where Clu's edits might actually have helped.
- Tracking: As a high level security program, Rinzler can scan for energy signatures and even follow the traces living beings leave behind.
Stalk all the protags! - Stealth: Sneaky ninja killbot. Rinzler can move silently, mask his own presence, and dim or alter his circuit lights as needed. Note that this is specifically physical sneaking; his social tact is... uh. Below.
Weaknesses
- Communication: as he'll be the first to tell you (ha), not his function. Rinzler doesn't have vocal permissions and won't speak aloud at all unless he's glitching. Even in text, he's extremely terse and often forgets little details like subjects, verbs, and comprehensibility.
- Subtlety: As sneaky as Rinzler can be physically, he has all the tact and social grace of a brick. A mute, glowy brick. That wants to shank you. While Rinzler doesn't talk much, lying is well outside his skillset—especially when it would be polite. He picks fights like breathing, and rarely hesitates to murder a real threat outright. Regardless of witnesses, danger, or common sense.
- Compliance: Rinzler's coded to serve exactly one person, and if he can't consciously resent his obedience to Clu, he can sure as hell lash out when other people try to ask the same. While Rinzler can work with others for a recognized need, any attempts to overtly establish authority or control, especially by users, are likely to meet severe resistance on even the most basic points.
Items:
- User clothes (2 sets): Inugami student uniform. One set worn, one carried in the backpack.
- Phone: Inugami standard flip-phone. Prone to fizzling and bleeding if you try to edit settings it doesn't want changed.
- Backpack
- Notebook
- Pencils (2): will never become too short to use.
A pamphlet from Inugami's survival club((ETA: eaten by the Ingress))- Two baton-length sticks: sturdy, with sharper ends where they were broken off. Both have blood worked into the wood, though they've been cleaned since.
- Disks (2): these items were actually absent in Inugami due to humanizing, but would be restored by the Ingress when it heals Rinzler back to proper function. See abilities for more details, though it should be noted that if Rinzler is without his disks for too long as a program, he'll experience increasingly severe memory/function damage.
- Armored gridsuit (plus helmet): similarly absent in Inugami due to humanizing; similarly something his restoration would fix. Rinzler's armor serves to protect him in battle and help with energy efficiency and regulation. The helmet, he's coded to always wear; it hides his identity as Tron in addition to offering protection. Both are actually a part of his coding—closer to a robot's outer plating than a human's clothes. That said, if the Ingress wants to mess with his functions to stop him rezzing them in part or whole, that's fine by me.
SAMPLES
Network Sample: Rinzler doesn't talk much even by text, and Clu discouraged him from Inugami's network; he's likely to need a little more development before he's willing to address the network publicly at all. I can link two examples of private network interactions in Inugami (binary translator for the first one here). If that doesn't work; let me know; I'll shake something out of the muse.
Prose/Action Sample: Test drive thread: Rinzler headtilts at the ocean and Imperator Furiosa. And since that one's kinda short, have him glowering at plants with Mephistophles too.