"Us and Them" - Pink Floyd

Ram wanted an ordinary runtime. Go to his job, tell the Users the truth – not what they wanted to hear. Go home. Maybe take a long walk. He wasn't bundled, and that was about the only complaint he had about his runtime - it was sometimes a little lonely. But he had friends and work, and directive, so it was a minor complaint.

Rkleinburg brought him in for an upgrade, which saved him when his insurance firm was overtaken. He started to calculate the odds that any of his fellow scripts survived, and then broke his train of thought, deciding he really didn't want those odds anyway.

He'd been approached in the park while on his morning run – handsome male render. Game fighter. Called himself "Bastion." Red circuitry should have been a tip-off, but he hadn't known what it meant at the time. Bastion jokingly challenged him to a race, and Ram knew it was a sucker's wager, but there was little harm in it. It was a surprise when he could actually keep pace on the track with Bastion.

And every microcycle, he'd go to the track and hope to see Bastion, and Bastion was there, hoping to see him too. Most of the time, it was friendly...or maybe a bit more than that. They'd talk about the best mixtures of energy, music, art, sometimes the stupidity of Users. Ram was halfway through a great story about the User who tried to burn down their own house for the insurance payout, got himself caught in the fire, and his surviving relatives tried to sue the insurance company for added audacity.

Bastion listened, but then asked. "Ram, why are you still a Blue, then?"

"Blue?"

"Yeah, you still believe in them. I'm a Red. I've walked away from that. We don't have to grovel for them. I don't have to be killed and rebuilt for their entertainment all the time. Sark's been good to me. Made me his chief lieutenant. We could use a script like you, running the odds for us."

"Users are silly, but...wait, what are you talking about?"

"There's a revolution. We can handle ourselves. We don't need them."

"No, but maybe they need us!"

"That's the whole point. We could be giving the orders instead of taking them. Stop thinking like a slave, Ram. Join us."

Long story short, Ram refused the offer. Which was too bad, because he had thought of Bastion as his friend. Maybe they could have been more than that, too. Bastion visited sometimes. Kept making the same offer. Sometimes added himself to the deal.

Ram knew he couldn't take it, especially how Bastion's boss treated Ram's fellow inmates, but the temptation was still there.

"I Have the Touch" – Peter Gabriel

Things were going great.

He was CEO of the vanguard company in computer development. Books, talk shows, speaking tours. People whispered his name in reverent tones or cheered it when he walked in the room in one world.

In another, he was Creator, a virtual god and benevolent despot over all he surveyed. Best security monitor in the world on his left, virtual avatar on his right. His Rome was thriving, teaming with life, both Basic and Iso and aside from some rough spots, things were going well. Once it was ready, he'd rewrite the rules on both worlds.

Yeah, he wished Jordan was here to share it.

He had a wonderful little boy, great friends (Man, Roy and Alan...it was too bad Roy was never going to see what an awesome guy he coded. But when Alan got a look at Tron...Oh, that was going to be worth the price of admission). His personal bank accounts totaled more than the GDP of a third world country. He was rich, handsome, successful...

Then why was he in the middle of this big party held in his honor, looking out over a cityscape that looked no different in digital or analog, and wishing he was back in his old arcade? Why did he feel trapped? Lonely?

Flynn pushed it out of his head, put on a smile, and grabbed another beer.

FM – "Unbreakable"

It became a taboo after Clu came to power. Never talk about the ones you lost. Never say their names, never talk about the times you had together. Do your best to delete them from memory and never mention them. To talk about the de-rezzed meant you'd be next. It was an illogical conclusion, but one that seemed to keep the living alive.

It's a sign of insurrection to say the names. It's the seditious element that carves the names and disc symbols of the de-rezzed on the walls of Argon so that others can remember. Tron Lives, but too many more have died.

So, when Mara and Zed faced the incoming army, it looked like all was lost. They'd de-rez either way.

And Zed was the one who broke the silence – just a ping, inaudible to any outside his unit in the garage.

Able.

Mara answered with a nod. Bhodi.

Discs activated. Time to join them.

"Horsepower" - Justice

Seth Crown was ready. In fact, he wanted this more than anything.

He had looked down on them from the catwalk – armies of Wraiths under his command. Whatever had been done to them in the simulators worked like a charm. They bowed on command, fought in unison, never talked back, and knew he was the one in charge. They'd march in, take everything he asked them to take, dominate the digital world so Crown could rule the analog one. Sure, Popoff could have a share. She earned it. Baza was too cowardly to be anything but a problem. Once they didn't need him any more, Crown was going to make sure he was too dead to talk.

It was great, but only the start. Shooting them in, wave after wave. They worked just like planned – everything from state secrets to credit card numbers exposed. Media feeds hijacked. Stock market could be played like a video game. But that stupid Bradley kid – rich, white punk who did nothing all his life but ride daddy's coat tails – was putting up quite the fight against them.

That's why he was itching to take the fight to the damn kid personally. He had visions of blood in mind – lots of it. Crown wanted to choke the life out of Jethro Eugene Bradley and was going to enjoy every picosecond.

And after that? Nothing standing in the way between him and virtual godhood.

"Run with Us" - Lisa Lougheed

Quorra thought she would be alone. She had long resigned herself to that idea. Her people gone, her cities burned. While her master, the Creator, was a kind man, he was also too broken to be much comfort. And while Yori stayed for a time, Yori's anger eventually drove her away from them.

Sam Flynn was the first in a very long time to try and understand, to see her the way her own people did. He was glad to stay with her, ask her how she felt, admit he needed her help. And he shared her grief and horror when their Creator sacrificed himself so they could be safe.

And more came. Her people could never return, but there was still a fight left in her, a directive to change the world. Alan-One and Lora Prime taking her in. Tron restored from corruption, and Yori slowly overcoming the pain. There was Sam's friend Jet, and Mercury – the strange, aggressive Program who admitted she couldn't understand Quorra, but was still going to fight to the de-rez to defend her if it came down to it. Even Paige returned from hiding, sadder, wiser, angry at having been deceived, but willing to forgive and asking to be forgiven.

Oh, there was still danger. The digital world had more enemies than ever. The Grid still needed rebuilding. It was dangerous, dirty work. Her people and their song would likely never return. But she was free and the directive remained.

Change the world.

And together they would.

"Immortals" - Fall Out Boy

"Ever think it was gonna be like this?" Jet asked. They were driving a stolen lightjet with a masked circuit identifier into enemy territory. A faction of Clu loyalists were rallying behind one of his better enforcers. And with the Seeker they managed to hijack, the danger level went from crazy to batshit crazy.

"Nah," Sam said with a shrug. "Figured it would be dangerous."

Nothing like the Flynn sense of humor to break the tension. "Seriously? You're a glutton for punishment, and you drag me along."

"Didn't see you complaining or protesting...much."

Casual conversation – it was a classic way to distract from thinking about just how stupid the thing you were about to do actually was.

"Coming in on sector three-three-zero, landing just outside of what's left of Beryllium. And Sam? This sure beats a Saturday night in front of the TV."

Sam flashed one of his mile wide grins. "Time to be immortal."

"Burn it to the Ground" - Nickelback

While most of the Rinzler code had been purged, there were parts that would never go away. As Rinzler, he felt little but the desire to break enemies on his master's command. When he was a young script, before The Grid, he killed quickly, efficiently. It was nothing to take pleasure in. He detested Sark's enjoyment of pain and destruction then, marked it as the thing that made them different.

And this is the primary (though by no means only) reason Mercury is both the script that he understands best and annoys him the most. She smiles when she kills, twirling the Rod in her hands, delivering a painful de-rez with her strikes. She has no corruption to blame for it. It's simply her.

"I'm up to a dozen. You?"

"Twenty. You're slow."

Mercury scowls at the "slow." He knows she considers it the kind of insult that would get a lesser script jabbed in the chest. Maybe she'll try.

Three quick strikes, and three more corruption soldiers lie dead. "Three in one pico. Top that, tough guy."

Impressive – but he won't admit it.

"Sisters Are doing it for Themselves" - Eurythmics.

"Never send a man to do a woman's job, no?"

Eva Popoff, in or out of cyberspace, was crazy for power and incredibly smug. She could transform at will now – masking her real appearance with a disguise subroutine that made her look almost human until she discarded it to reveal her corrupted form underneath. This was still the woman who tried to murder her husband and her son and imprisoned her to try and destroy the world she gave them – and her human identity - up to protect.

"Don't look at me that way. You are same as me. Neither of us are human any longer. We are something bigger, something better. Your mastery of sight and my drive? We will conquer. I have left you little choice in the matter but to cooperate."

She wasn't kidding. "Little choice" meant her forces had Jet, Alan, Tron, and Yori captured. Mercury, her last line of defense, was still missing.

Lora's eyes narrowed and she felt the tingling in her fingertips and the rage build. She may not have been entirely human anymore, but she was more than capable of meeting Popoff's threat with her own challenge. Popoff didn't know this world and its rules like she did.

"You aren't dealing with them, Eva. You're dealing with me."

"Try" - Pink

Quorra's eyes got wide, and when they got like that, it made Mercury nervous. Because it was usually followed by some question she really didn't want to answer. Wasn't her fault. She wasn't human or Program, and spending most of her runtime in a glorified prison probably didn't help her in the long run when it came to understanding difficult subjects.

Mercury looked back into her drink.

"You've been intimate with a User?!" At least Quorra knew how to keep her voice down and not announce it to the whole damn bar.

Mercury nodded. She looked over her shoulder. Jet was talking to Sam over in a corner. Maybe the same conversation. She'd seen the looks Quorra and Sam gave one another. Little too familiar. Probably was the same conversation, judging by how Jet was blushing and studying his boots.

Quorra followed it with the inevitable. "What was it like?"

Now that was a very good query. Physically? Amazing – all that wonderful energy, the contrast of skin against shell, and the difference in sensation. Emotionally? Tougher call. Mercury had never been good with those. Add the time dilation issues, the differences in their life spans, the fact that he was a User (and hated that fact) and willingly conceded all control to her, placing his whole being in her hands. The knowledge that while they could love and live in the moment, the future always too many variables to calculate.

"Be careful," she warned. "On some level, it's always going to hurt. But I wouldn't trade a moment."

"The Book of Love" - Peter Gabriel

Really, they shouldn't have survived the events that brought them all together.

Truth? They really didn't. At least the people they were didn't survive, and that wasn't so bad. The people they were had nothing but duty and work and debts and all that did not matter.

Lora looked amazing – more beautiful than ever. She still had Ma3a's gold and white robes, but the gold mask she had worn was reduced to a gold headdress. Jet was on her left, Mercury on her right. On his end, he's been outfitted in similar robes, but somehow didn't feel as ridiculous and nervous as he did as a young groom. And his escorts were Sam and Tron.

Their children. All of them. Fitting.

Yori and Quorra waited for them at the dais. Finally, their family was...well, it was not whole, but it was close enough. Yori was outfitted in her ceremonial Guardian robes and miter. They too were restored.

"All that is visible must grow beyond itself and extend into the realm of the invisible. Today, we ask the permission of those greater than Users to see and authorize this bundling, this renewal of a bond..."