[DISCONNECTED] Mailbox [IC]

[a_perfect_end]

[he got it to beep just like a tape-fed answering machine]

Greetings!

Recently-deposed Grid management and complaints department.

You know what they say: if you can't say something nice, lay it on me. Do your thing at the tone!

Comments

when you're not even trying to be delicate bc ur alan bradley

[alan_1]

[The sudden shift in emotional tack alone is enough to throw Alan off balance for a good minute or so. Even more so is the information Clu provides next.

After a long moment, Alan replies.]

It sounds like you already knew.

[Another long pause. Then, in a rapidfire of typing, another message appears.]

Do you actually want him to come back?

[In another time, Alan maybe wouldn’t have been so blunt. Now, he isn’t thinking about tact or grace. And, with Flynn's killer having fled back to the shadows, perhaps part of him wants to lash out at the person who’d taken Flynn away the first time.]

Re: when you're not even trying to be delicate bc ur alan bradley

[a_perfect_end]

[The cursor just waits there for an interminable stretch of seconds, Alan-1 synthesizing information and best presenting it.]

I couldn't[Nothing, and all one chunk:] I did not know he was dead. Or in the library. Or how it got there, or where it is now.

Your best source of incoming tactical data is already with you. Stay by him.

[Dude.

Ow.]

Of course I do!

[alan_1]

[The next question is short, simple, and, though Clu can’t tell one way or the other, entirely genuine. Everything Alan knows about Clu centers around a few facts: that he had hated Flynn, that he had spent a dizzying amount of time hunting him down, and that he had ultimately killed him. The following question is thus entirely warranted in Alan’s mind.]

Why?

[a_perfect_end]

[Well.

Straight to the point.

He can respect that, and he can perform the same courtesy.]

Killing him was never in the plan. Or, not in mine.

Disc is a tool, same as a socket wrench. I needed his.

He never needed to die for it.

[alan_1]

[Alan would be hard-pressed to tell if Clu was lying face-to-face. Through text, it’s impossible.]

But he did. [Short and biting, a reminder neither of them needs. It feels almost ridiculous to be having this conversation now, discussing the death that happened almost two years ago instead of the one that’s taken its place now, but Alan knows this is the only time he’ll ever be able to talk about it this openly.

He can't flinch from Flynn's death any longer, not when he just saw the body.]

If you didn’t kill him, what did?

[a_perfect_end]

Everybody keeps saying that, yeah. I'll believe it when it happens.

[The last thing he does remember is Flynn's disc bright and slim in his grip, and then he was here.

...Dude. Seriously? Seriously, dude?

Dude!]

I keep telling you, a really fast [there are no such things as monsters, monsters do not exist] enemy, female torso, with bite strength like a forklift and an unbreakable grip.

It. Crushed--

Look, stay away from its limbs; four--or five--allowing for apparent vestigial structure. Super agile, in the bargain.

[alan_1]

[Alan had actually been asking about the first time Flynn died, but Clu’s already made it clear he doesn’t know anything about that, so Alan lets him patter on unhindered. He doesn’t mention that he’s already seen the monster nor that it had broken his arm. Though he feels something dangerously close to sympathy for Clu at the moment, part of him remembers well that Clu will likely hear—or see—that information from Rinzler later.

For now, he’s done the very least he can in this situation. Clu knows the fate of his one-time user—and perhaps Alan knows a little bit more about the admin than he did before.]

I’ll pass the information on to Rinzler. [It’s purely pragmatic. Business-like. It may be all the closing this conversation requires and yet, after a long pause, Alan grudgingly adds two more words.]

Stay safe.

[If only for Rinzler’s sake.]