A/N: A repost from the meme, to an excellently straightforward prompt. This can... probably be considered another followup to "Hold On". It's kind of... pure crack.

"Sam. What… happened?"

Sam tried to keep a straight face. Really. He did. Tron's expression was serious enough. Strained, even. The security program stared at him across the replica arcade, grey eyes fixed and searching, the crease in his brow twitching in a way that bordered between confusion and outright panic. Sam breathed deeply. Focus. Explain. You can manage that much.

Then the caption floated up to the side.

'This iz srs bizness.'

Sam collapsed in a giggling heap as twenty pairs of slitted eyes reproachfully stared him down.

Cats. Longhairs. Shorthairs. Calicos. Tabbies. Sprawled across the arcade in undignified heaps, leaping to bat at imaginary butterflies, dangling down from a hole in the ceiling he was pretty sure shouldn't even be there.

He couldn't stop laughing.

"…Sam?"

Oh man, and Tron was just not helping. He gasped for breath, waved reassurance to the program now crouching down beside him as he shook with hilarity on the floor. He heard a huffing sigh, felt a touch on his shoulder. Sam closed his eyes, tried to stifle the giggles still building. Explain, then laugh your ass off. He could do that.

He looked up at Tron, managed not to lose his composure at the increasingly perplexed expression on the program's face (though man, it was funny). Sam blinked a few times, even strung together a coherent response in his brain. Opened his mouth to deliver it.

Then his gaze caught on the puffball floating forward behind Tron's shoulder. Tiny ears, limbs drawn in, little mouth in a determined frown that struck Sam as hilariously familiar. White text scrolled up around the brownish lump.

'Hover kitteh
Looking for
purrmision to land'

…So much for coherency.

Six minutes later, Sam was calm. Calmer. No longer indulging in fits of laughter longer than thirty seconds at a time. Tron had dragged him up to the Grid-version of his dad's little office, which had seating if nothing else, and attempted to "quarantine the contaminants". Apparently this meant shooing cats from the room. Sam wasn't much help. He kept staring at the scene and breaking into giggles. Tron. Herding… lolcats.

He snorted and covered his face. Calm. He could do calm. Really.

Sam felt the shifting of the couch as weight settled next to him, but no words came. He glanced up. Tron was looking at him, a flat stare that seemed to waver between frustration and fond amusement. Sam grinned back shakily, and the program tilted his head in silent question.

"Right. Uh…" He could hear the laughter in his own voice. "…remember that partition test I told you about last time?"

"You were going to isolate a sector outside the city and test compatibility with external hardware." The even tone of the recitation reassured Sam somewhat. If Tron were actually upset, he'd hear it.

"Yeah. So… it went well." This was the awkward part. "Better than well. So, I… we… uh…" Tron was giving him a look. "…we wound up testing Quorra's drive, too. It… leaked."

The program closed his eyes. Twitched slightly. "Leaked."

"So, she downloaded this program. It… um…" …he? She? Sam really didn't know. "It's basically been stocking her hard drive with lolcats for the past few weeks. Nonstop. When we hooked up the connection, it… uh… redistributed."

Tron just stared at him. "You… let…" The security program shook his head, and Sam winced. A moment passed, then Tron refocused. "Could anything else have copied over?"

"Shouldn't have." Yeah, that's not a reassured look. Sam tried again. "No. We're pretty certain. We weren't even trying for a file transfer. This one program just kind of… hijacked the connection."

Tron glowered into empty space. "Quorra's program?"

"Well, she didn't write it, but yeah." It wasn't like Quorra had known what would happen. Sam frowned. She hadn't known. Right?

Tron sighed, and Sam glanced up. The unhappiness had mostly faded, and the program's expression was more resigned than anything else. Sam smiled as the grey-blue eyes met his, and after a moment, Tron's mouth curled faintly in response.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"What's a 'lolcat'?"

Sam grinned. "So… cats are little… animals in the user world." He wasn't completely sure how far Tron's extra-worldly knowledge went, but the residual confusion in the program's expression hadn't increased yet. "And a lot of people… really like them. And take pictures of them. With captions."

Sam glanced down to see yellow-rimmed orbs peering up from the blackness beneath the couch. He reached down and scooped up what seemed to be a pure black kitten, which dangled solemnly from his grip as purple letters drifted after it. 'Ninja cat cannot be FOUND' He snorted, deposited the fuzzy lump on Tron's lap. "You missed one."

Tron gave a baffled glance from Sam to the cat, and settled with staring suspiciously at it. It stared back. "They spawn," he muttered darkly.

Sam bit the inside of his cheek as more laughter tried to bubble up. Tron reached out a hand and cautiously prodded the kitten. It looked distinctly unimpressed.

"These aren't just image files, though."

Sam shook his head. "Nah, Quorra's… the program she found attaches a little script to help with the display. He glanced out the window in time to see a cat leap up the wall and fall off behind an inactive machine. "…and some might have been video files to start with."

The kitten stared after the glowing circuits with interest as Tron's hand withdrew. His return look was disgruntled at best.

"They haven't caused any issues, have they?" He was pretty sure Tron would've brought up any serious problems before now.

"They… spread. Everywhere. Actual quarantine doesn't hold them. Containment systems in general are… ineffective." Sam very carefully restrained his grin. Sounds like cats.

Tron blinked as the 'ninja cat' text floated up in front. "They don't even stay derezzed."

"Wait. What?"

"They just recompile elsewhere in—"

"No, no… wait. You—" The grin grew and the hilarity bubbled up, and he really couldn't hold it back anymore. "You tried to derezz a lolcat?" Can I get this on film?

Tron didn't bother answering, just gazed back flatly as Sam tried to stifle his laughter. It took a while.

"…Oh man, you really…" He shook his head. "Right. Sorry. Uh, we'll try to clear them out externally. It shouldn't be too hard." Tron was prodding the cat again, and Sam took pity on them both, reaching out to take the kitten back. It latched on to Tron's suit with its tiny claws and refused to leave. Sam could hear the smile in his own voice. "It likes you."

Tron glanced down almost desperately as Sam petted the kitten. "What does it do?"

"…Exist?"

"So it serves no function?"

"…I'd have to go with 'amusement' for that." Sam was very amused. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if Quorra had done it on purpose. They had talked about Caltech's pranking tradition last night.

Tron tentatively reached out a hand and followed Sam's example, stroking along the kitten's back. It blinked slowly up at him, lids closing contentedly. Grey-blue eyes flicked from the dark puddle to Sam. "Why is it covered in hair?"

"Fur. It… a lot of animals are like that. So they stay warm." This had to be one of the more surreal things Sam had ever seen. And I know surreal.

A soft rumble sounded out from the black lump, and Tron froze. Looked at Sam. At the cat.

"…It's corrupted?"

This just did not stop being funny. "No. It… it's happy. They purr like that when they're happy."

Tron's expression was beautifully dubious. He cautiously laid a hand back on the kitten, and the rumble increased. Sam had never seen someone pet a cat so… warily.

After a minute, the yellow eyes opened, gazed up briefly at the program, and Ninja Cat seemed to decide its purpose was complete. It stood, stretched briefly with a wide and toothy yawn, and hopped down to stroll back under the couch. Curious, Sam stuck his head down to look further, but couldn't find it. Maybe it ninja'd off to someone else's furniture.

Tron was watching him when he sat up, a faint amusement tracing the program's features that Sam felt sure wasn't all directed at the cats. He grinned. "Any other crises while I was gone?"

One side of Tron's mouth curved up in a smile. "Nothing urgent."

"Well, that's good." Sam reached out to trace the side of Tron's face, took in the faint brightening of the blue-white circuits. "I hate urgent."

Tron huffed a soft laugh, hand tightening behind Sam, contact edging on the white panels of light in a way that made Sam's breath catch. Sam pressed in, pushing Tron against the couch, and the program moved with him, easing back to let Sam straddle him. He watched Tron for a moment, memorizing the slightly open mouth, the intensity of the grey eyes as they reflected Sam's own white glow—

Then Tron tilted his head, gaze sharpening past Sam, expression a faint frown as he stared upwards. His voice was rough, but the bemusement in his tone was unmistakable.

"…That's not accurate."

Sam reluctantly turned upwards. He blinked at the wide eyes peering down from an angled orange face. The cat's head poked expectantly out of a square gap above them, bold black letters dangling below.

'Ceiling cat is watching you masturbate.'

Sam closed his eyes, head dropping to Tron's shoulder as he repressed the urge to curse.

Okay. Less lolcats.