Logged in here for the first time in years. My profile (and the many many locked entries I have here) tell me I've had this LJ since April of 2001. That's a long time.
A man's destiny, a mercenary's honor, and the fate of a city all hang on a song!
For centuries in the Temple of Valnon, young men have paid a tremendous price to be chosen as Songbirds. Every twelve years, a new Lark and Thrush are castrated for their heavenly voices, but few men have ever been capable of claiming the title of Dove: the holy avatar of Saint Alveron himself. In the six hundred years since the Temple's founding, Willim is only the third to buy the Evensong with his blood. A virtual prisoner of the Temple for the duration of his term, Willim pays little heed to anything but his duty to sing for Valnon. That all changes with the murder of the Songbirds' loyal bodyguard and Willim's rescue by Nicholas Grayson, a sell-sword who brings whispers of Temple scandal and ancient prophecy in his wake.
Plagued by ghosts and nightmares, betrayed by a fellow Temple Bird and forced into exile, Willim struggles to unravel the tangled history of his title in the hopes of understanding what it truly means to be Valnon's Dove. With his friends scattered and Valnon poised on the brink of war, Willim's only hope lies in summoning the ancient power of his saint: to Sing Down from Heaven a music that can fell an army in its tracks, or wipe a city from the surface of the earth. But the song of Saint Alveron is as unpredictable as it is powerful. Whether Willim's Song will bring salvation for his city or the destruction of everything he holds dear, only Heaven knows.
* * * For more about Valnon, the Songbirds, and the book release, check out my website and my tumblr!
[NB: I started this intending for it to be the beginning of a story I'd already started, but I didn't get far before I realized this was its own thing, and took place far earlier in canon than the other one. I should know by now that these boys will do what they will do, and I'm just along for the ride.]
.Tempest in a Teacup.
They were out of bowls. That was Rowen's excuse, anyway, flimsy as it seemed when there were in fact plenty of bowls, all of them heaped up dirty in the sink. Rowen's real answer, then, should have been: "We have bowls, I was just a lazy ass and couldn't bother washing one."
But really, no response would have been completely satisfactory to Sage, not even if every bowl within a ten-mile radius had been reduced to dust. There was nothing in Sage's mind that could excuse his coming in from his morning kata to find Rowen Hashiba standing up at the kitchen counter, nose wedged in a Star Wars novel, noisily eating his fruit loops out of Sage's teacup.
Sage's. Teacup. The plain clay one with black glaze and no handle, dimples set just so to fit his hand. They all knew it was his, they all knew it was sacrosanct. Or at least, Sage had thought they did. He pointed this out to Rowen, with as much restraint as he could muster. "That's my cup," he said, as he had said when he first came in, only sounding a little more aggrieved and less shocked this time.
"C'mon, man," Rowen said, without looking up from a paragraph about blasters and wookies and planets with only one climate, "No biggie. We got tons of mugs. You can use one of those."
If there are tons of mugs, Sage thought, with vehemence, then why are you using mine? He did not say it, however. He took a breath, held it, and forced himself to remain calm. Rowen intended no insult. He simply did not understand the depth of his transgression. Sage had endured many such misunderstandings since he and Rowen had been rooming together with the other armor-bearers at Mia's house. Rowen staying up to all hours watching Korean horror movies (and the nightmares that invariably followed). Rowen leaving trails of dirty socks and boxers all over his side of the room (and more often than not, on Sage's as well). Rowen's grating Europop albums, Rowen's posters of dragons and buxom women in metal bikinis, Rowen's videogames with their relentless beeping, Rowen's hair dye leaving a blue stain-ring in the bathtub they shared.
Rowen was an only child of divorced parents, Rowen was a latchkey kid used to living on his own terms, Rowen had not had a traditional upbringing in a large extended family, as Sage had.
Sage let his breath out, feeling a fraction more Zen about the matter. It was no use to curse the rain for falling, the wind for blowing, or Rowen from being Rowen. It was the way of things. ( Collapse )
(NB: I have a whole pad of those old notes, btw. The one on our fridge is from Alan to Flynn and has a few pointed things to say about where Flynn wants Alan’s ass, but I’d love to tell a whole story with them. They sure aren’t seeing use in my office. Meanwhile, here’s something slightly less multi-media. I needed some fluff after the last round— and after my morning. :p It’s bad when you reach for the Zoloft before the coffee, man.)
.While You Were Out.
Alan Bradley returned to the office after his first three-day weekend in six months, and found his desk awash in a tide of pink paper. On closer examination, the deluge was comprised of multiple While-You-Were-Out notes, with the ones on the bottom (being oldest) filled in neatly by Flynn's secretary. Those were fully formed questions, complete with date and time. Let me know about the Verbisware idea, was one; another said: Get down to the art department when you can, the graphic guys need your face for the design on the side of the Tron cabinet. The more recent ones, on top, had degenerated into broken syntax in Flynn's own handwriting, the last one saying only "WHAT," written in what looked like kung-pao chicken sauce.
Alan waved the note in front of his nose. Yep. Uncle Foo's #26 combo, with extra hot mustard. Kevin Flynn had worked through the weekend again. Alan sighed, put his briefcase down on the fluffy pile of notes, and grabbed a random handful of them before heading right back out to the elevator.
The hall to the CEO's office had changed considerably since Ed Dillinger's days. The oppressive black scheme had been replaced with silver gray and pale blue; the soulless relics of modern art in the niches were gone in favor of Japanese prints and one of the original Harryhausen skeleton puppets from Jason and the Argonauts.
The massive console desk was the same, only at the moment it was covered in wires and guts from what had once been a standard Encom terminal, and Kevin Flynn was looking down at the carnage as though he wasn't quite sure how it had come into being.
"Do I have to be on the side of the machine?" Alan said, in greeting. He held up the kung-pao note. "And I would appreciate it if you would stop sending me messages in condiment form." ( Collapse )
(NB: For the most part I'm really selective about the canon I accept from side sources, just because they often make more plotholes than they mend. I intend no censure towards people who adore every panel of the Betrayal comic; it's just my personal opinion that Tron's writers have some issues with their female characters in general, and Betrayal had some glaring continuity and character problems in particular. But while I might think Jordan is a terribly-written dead mom trope that never had the chance to be a real character, I don't feel that way about Flynn. If I'm writing him with respect to her, I want it to be honest. For his sake, for Sam's, and for the Jordan Canas that deserved to exist instead of the one that did.)
.Time for Such a Word.
"He's late," Clu said, staring up at the darkened sign above Flynn's building. Flynn was millicycles past his appointed time, and while construction on the Grid continued apace, certain key aspects could not proceed without the input of the Creator. Clu's eyebrows drew down in annoyance, but it was not enough to mask an underlying concern in his eyes. "...He's always late."
"Not this late," Tron countered, equally worried. "What could be keeping him?"
"He'll have some User explanation we won't understand," Clu said, and expanded a page of design specs between his hands, nudging little bits of data around with one finger. "Some flippant excuse for why we're always left hanging here without him." Clu breathed a tiny sigh of frustration out of his nose, his mouth clamped shut in a frown.
Tron gave his companion an appraising look, faint disapproval in the set of his shoulders. "...We're here to serve him, Clu."
"Negative. You're here to serve him. I'm here to build the perfect system, and I can't exactly do that if he can't even be bothered to come see it." Clu swept a redundant bit of information off his schematic, and Tron had the impression that he would have liked to pick it up and throw it, instead. "Doesn't he know we need him here?"
Clu's last question was little more than a movement of his lips, and patently rhetorical. But Tron answered anyway, because Clu's complaints set off an uneasy pulse of energy along his circuits, and because Kevin Flynn was not there to lay down the law himself. He'd brought Tron in for that, and Tron took that responsibility every bit as seriously as Clu did his directive for the perfect system. "Kevin Flynn is needed in the Users' world just as much as he is here, Clu," he said. "Maybe even more, for all we know. He's an important User, lots of other Users rely on him, and he has a little User to care for. He put us here because he trusted us to handle things without him. And I for one do not begrudge a moment he spends there. He doesn't have to come here at all. He could speak to us through I/O towers like other Users do. He could treat us like slaves."
"I thought you liked being treated like a slave." Clu closed the schematic with a snap. "Missing your old User, Tron?"
Tron's lights flared with anger; Clu's remark had hit home. "Say what you like against me, Clu," Tron said, his voice level and dangerous. "But keep your comments about Alan-1 to yourself."
Clu shrugged, the gesture indistinct from Flynn's own kind of irreverence, and opened up his blueprint again. "Whatever, man." ( Collapse )
Last one for tonight, guys-- sorry for all the spam. ^_^;
(NB: I couldn't leave Ram out of my fannon, and I certainly couldn't leave out his User. In spite of not even really being in either of the movies, and not having a name until last year, Roy is probably one of my favorite characters in Tron canon. I also have to say that I adore Dan Shor, and I love how he has all of fifteen minutes in The Next Day to establish Roy's character, and he does it with absolute grace and conviction. If I have done a decent job of extrapolating Roy Kleinberg out of that fleeting moment, it's thanks to the skills of his actor. If they don't give him a spot in the third movie, someone in casting needs to be fired. Out of a cannon.)
Illegal Entry
Alan Bradley was up to something, and Roy knew it. He had not spent the last twenty years neck-deep in corporate espionage without developing a healthy and accurate sense of paranoia, as well as a nose for secrets. The only difference was that this time, Alan wasn't letting him in on things. Encom's new president and Chairman had become as thick as thieves, and Roy had to admit--if only to himself--that his exclusion from whatever they were doing chafed.
True, Alan had brought him back to Encom, had set him up with a corner office, had made Encom's whole business wide-open and transparent to Roy as the new Director of Internal Compliance. But there was something he was doing on the down-low, something that involved Sam Flynn, something that was deliberately omitted from Encom's systems and records. Roy knew that for certain; he'd already been through them all. And though there was no hard evidence of activity, Roy had learned to trust his gut. The sudden ending of the Flynn Lives movement, the Encom leadership shakeup, Sam's new and decisive action with the company, all of it pointed to one thing.
Kevin Flynn had been found. Dead, alive, or somewhere in-between, Roy didn't know. But Sam Flynn and Alan Bradley knew, and they were pointedly not telling him anything about it. It was, Roy thought, a hell of a way to thank a man who had devoted two decades of his life to keeping Flynn's memory alive, risking jail and worse, all to be summarily dismissed just because Sam Flynn jumped out of a chopper with some glow-sticks around his ankles.
Roy knew he wasn't being fair, or objective, or charitable. Sam had lost a father, and what was Roy's sacrifice to that? Sam's recent actions had fired life into Flynn Lives like never before, and if his father could not be brought back from the void, at least the movement had been. But still, Roy thought, the least they could do was tell him. Was that so hard? They didn't even have to give details. Roy had every right to at least know if Flynn was dead or alive, after twenty years of being Encom's Schrodinger's Programmer. So Roy was going to ask them. That was all. Just walk right up, and ask. No big deal. No drama. In and out and done.
Roy had been telling himself that for at least ten minutes, and yet he was still sitting in his car outside of Sam Flynn's house.
"Come on, Kleinberg, grow a pair," Roy muttered at last, and ripped his keys out of the ignition. It was needless wear and tear on a car that was long since past its prime, but Roy slammed the driver side door as though it didn't have a habit of falling off, strode across the junkyard, and rapped his knuckles smartly on Sam's garage door.
(special thanks to the fellow crazy internet ladies on the tinychat, for putting up with my blather about this one. Takes place shortly after the end of Location Query.)
Glow
The sector of Grid City around Flynn's was instantly recognizable, to Program and User alike, as a bad neighborhood. Long considered a breeding ground for revolutionaries still loyal to their Maker, CLU's constant Recognizer patrols and Program roundups had left the sector vacant, with half-rezzed shells of buildings awaiting their turn at rectification during the next rebuild initiative. That cycle never came. After CLU's fall, Flynn's sector was left to its own devices, a place avoided by all programs, regardless of their allegiance. Grid bugs and worms were common, the structures unstable. But not all avoidance was of a practical nature. Rumors spread like foxfire among the Grid's inhabitants, whispered breathlessly in the dark. Flynn's ghost had been seen there, flickering dully in the shell of his broken creation, looking as he had the day the Grid had been born. Some even said they had seen Tron, his lights unmistakably blue in the shadows of the past. Other programs walked there, too, programs never seen in the Grid before, with strange lights and unsettling circuit patterns. The Grid was a dangerous place in those cycles, and there was no need to invite more danger. Flynn had created his programs with a better sense of self-preservation than that.
Which was why he had set up his new headquarters right in the building that bore his name, bold as brass and twice as stubborn. Yori's presence in the building was invaluable for security, for a start. Flynn had asked her to keep up subtle frequencies of unease to target any stray program that might wander too close. She could also shut up the place tight as a clam should invaders arrive. Flynn said he wished he'd had that kind of protection on his old arcade back home, Tron wondered what exactly a clam was, and Ram asked Yori for the umpteenth time if she wouldn't like to come out of her housing in the walls to join them.
nostalgic
cold
flirty
spammy
accomplished