toomanyfanficsnotimetowriteem:

So, ISOs are really weird, right? We don’t really understand them or how they work. We know they came from the Sea. Who’s to say there’s not more of them down there?

I just had the wild idea of, like, freaky deep-sea-mermaid-like ISOs trapped in the sea, avoiding all surface programs and staying hidden from Clu. They changed specifically to withstand whatever was put in the Sea to kill them and now they’re really odd and sort of monstrous, like many programs treated them.

I’m sure someone’s thought of something like this before. I just finally put these pieces together myself. This concept could be used for a lot of things, but I’m getting one specific image in my head right now…

Rinzler falls into the sea. His lightlines flicker from orange to white. Half a dozen curious young ISOs find him sinking in the darkness. They circle around him for a while, brushing past and tapping him. When he doesn’t respond but also doesn’t derezz, they take him back to their underwater city…

[There was more to this, but it started getting harder to continue without a ton more explanation of stacked headcanons.]