TRON: ASCENSION

CHAPTER 18 - GUESTS

THE GRID–SECOND TRONCYCLE

ARGON CITY

Ever since the embarrassing defeat at the hands of masked rats, the General turned no stone unturned to catch those bastards anywhere in the Grid. The attack was no random scuffle, he thought, as it coincided with the victorious march of his troops, celebrating Argon's recapture in pomp and glory. It is a no-brainer that the Renegade is an old nemesis of the General who had always challenged his authority using many hit-and-run tactics known to the Grid. If only the Renegade were in his hands, his face would've been melted to voxel dust by the heat of his palms, the General thought to himself. "Are those two fugitives on the run behind this? Could it be that coward TRON and the Renegade? That Renegade sure looked like a man to me, but ladies too, have the same build overall", these are the insecurities and self-doubts clouding the General's mind. The mere thought of an ISO or User behind the chain of events sent shivers down his spine, which is why the General deployed his men all over the Grid in search of any one portal, or multiple portals if any left after C.L.Us decimation. This portal search party is one of those hidden mysteries which takes several, if not a million TronCycles to yield results, as spotting them needs the portal to be in an active state, which occurs only if the User travels through it. In the public history of the Grid, Kevin is the only User who uses Portal, followed by some anonymous Users a few Cycles back which ended with C.L.Us failed and fatal attempt. His searchlight troops had a few cities set up for their mission: Bostrum Colony, Purgos, TronCity, and Argon.

It would be adding salt to the injury if another attack took place in his own capital. In layman's terms, his nose would be chopped off and laid open in the hall of shame, if he let that happen. And that would never happen, not while he is alive, he boasted to himself, as he sent the best of the best leopards in his army, the razor-sharp, superspeed assassins named RollerBlades by the General himself. Rumor in his men has it that these men were bred with such finesse and state-of-the-art techniques that even two of them could slice their way into a small army band of hundred cavalrymen in a single mTC. Such is his confidence in his newborn band that he allotted only two RollerBlades in the outskirts of Argon and left the others to select their favorite place for hunting. His duties though lay in empowering his limbs with renewed vigor and rage, combined with the metallurgical properties of a mysterious molten liquid filled in them, the one designed out of the waters of Sea of Simulation combined with their trademark secret ingredients, inside his carrier ship.

On the other hand, Paige had no time for relaxation, touring the whole of Argon in search of the rebels. If finding these rebels was not tiring enough, chasing them over the streets and rooftops to their submission is a whole new ballgame. These rebels would either vanish in thin air or ride their way through the streets by the time Paige had requested Recognizers for deployment, and those who get cornered by the troops would make sure to avoid hand-to-hand combats and would instead escape such traps using smoke bombs and other such theatrics. All that Paige could get hold of are pouches filled with comms, trackers, flares, Light Cycle batons, and a total headcount of ten fugitives at the end of their 500mTC run. Interrogating those stubborn criminals was a time-taking and futile exercise in the making, as the interrogators underestimated the level of self-control their targets practiced during several of their grueling torture mechanisms. Reverse engineering of the captured commlinks proved futile as they began self-destructing within 0.01mTC of their activation, albeit the blast radius being less than a foot.

Paige saw the inefficacy in holding on to the captives in sight and then changed her strategy. No matter how hard she felt or how much one corner of her heart opposed her, she has to do whatever it takes to achieve her mission objective. Clearing up her ambiguities inside, she toured the residencies one by one as her guards dragged the residents outside for information, although their methods were as delicate as a chainsaw. Paige tried her level best to extract useful information with as less violence as possible because it's the normal and innocent Basics of Argonians they're dealing with, and insensitivity in such issues leads to unnecessary fights and rebellions which could threaten the empire like with the Renegade in the past. The only regret she has in her line of duty, other than losing her friends and family to ISOs, is that the Renegade escaped from her two times and as if adding salt to injury, he saved her the first time before flying off the mysterious island in his Light Jet. Any warrior with a pinch of honor left in him would consider mercy at the hands of the opponent a shame of eternity and try to end their life abruptly. But it is the General's command and his manipulative mind that saved her from doing so, on the pretext that she didn't avenge her friends yet.