Tesler

**General Tesler** is the main antagonist of *TRON: Uprising* voiced by Lance Henriksen. He is one of Clu's generals and is both extremely ambitious and a evil coldly-calculating sadist. Tesler rules over Argon City from his failure command ship.

## Synopsis

### Beck's Beginning

Tesler, one of Clu's generals, was tasked with taking over a section of the Grid. This he successfully did, swiftly conquering Argon City with his army. He ran into complications, however, when a renegade program disguised as Tron destroyed the new statue of Clu in Argon Square. Assured by Clu that the real Tron was dead, Tesler began to round up programs for the Games in a gambit to make the renegade program reveal himself. When the renegade overturned a Light Rail full of prisoners and freed them, Tesler decided to take him out personally, destroying the Black Guard who had helped him and telling him, "You can't save them all!" As they dueled, the renegade cut off Tesler's arms and caused him to fall from the building where they were fighting into a Light Rail beam, from which he was eventually rescued by Paige.

### The Renegade, Part 1 & 2

Tesler announced the beginning of a deadly game of Disc Wars at the Coliseum, unaware that the renegade that he so hated was fighting in the tournament, having been captured for breaking curfew. Though without his disguise, Beck, along with fellow conscript Cutler, brought himself to Tesler's attention by defeating the first wave of enemies and then escaping. They were recaptured and brought back by Paige, but defeated their second round of opponents as well. Tesler remarked that they were "too good" and Pavel, his second-in-command, suggested that the two fight each other to the death, thus eliminating the threat of programs beating the games. However, Cutler forfeited to allow Beck to live. Tesler, incensed, considered derezzing them both, but Paige convinced him to let the winner go free as promised. So Tesler sent Beck off and had Pavel move Cutler to Argon Square to be derezzed.

To Tesler's disgust, the renegade rescued Cutler from deresolution. When the two comandeered a Light Boat to escape, Tesler gave pursuit in a boat of his own. He very nearly succeeded this time, but his Light Boat was disabled by a third boat -- piloted, unbeknownst to Tesler, by the real Tron.

### Blackout

When Tesler went to inspect his new energy drilling operation, he found that Paige had ordered the drill be shut down. Angered by this decision, Tesler ordered it turned back on and replaced Paige with Pavel to oversee the drilling. Before leaving, he told Paige she had been sloppy lately. He later made a public announcement that the renegade had tried to sap all the energy, and promised to find him and bring him to justice. He congratulated Paige on her idea for blaming the energy plot on the Renegade.

### Isolated

Overruling Pavel, who had left Paige on a derezzing island to die, Tesler piloted a Light Copter out to the island and rescued Paige by means of a grappling hook. As they returned to Argon City, he told Pavel never to underestimate her.

Back in Argon, Paige regretfully confessed to having worked with the Renegade, who had also been trapped on the island, in order to survive as the terrain began to derezz around them. Tesler replied that all in all, she had done well by retrieving the data cube which the Renegade had stolen. Paige mentioned that while on the island, she had thought about the time she first met Tesler in her home city; he had seen her desire for revenge upon the ISOs, Quorra and Ada, who had destroyed her friends and their medical clinic, and recruited her into his army. The memory reminded Tesler of how he himself had been the one to order the clinic's destruction, blaming it on the ISOs. Smiling at his success in hiding this fact from Paige, he coolly stated that he would never betray her, since he knew what she was capable of.

### Price of Power

Tesler tasked a scientist, Shaw, with developing a disc mod that would make his soldiers invincible. Beck intercepted Shaw's dirigible en route to Argon, trying to recruit the scientist for the Uprising, but as Beck escaped with the weapon, Shaw fell to his death. Enraged by the weapon's loss, Tesler executed the reporting Black Guard by punching through his chest and ripping out his disc. He then tasked Paige with its retrieval, but her ambush on the Renegade failed. Beck then used the shipment of a massive modified tank to infiltrate Tesler's ship. Rendered highly aggressive by the weapon, he confronted Tesler, taunting him for being a coward. Tesler, with the help of his arm prosthetics, light grenades, and even a gatling gun turret, barely managed to old his own against the empowered Renegade. Finally, he managed to escape, zooming past the Renegade by grappling onto a wall and tossing a grenade. The explosion caused a recognizer to fall on top of the tank and injure Able, who was shipping the tank, which was enough for the Renegade to stop the fighting and run to Able's rescue. Later Pavel took the mechanics in Able's garage hostage to draw out the Renegade. In the process, the weapon was damaged. Pavel, having had a taste of it, collected a residual fragment. He reported the weapon's destruction, earning Tesler's fury, but later secretly found out that the weapon regenerated, which he kept from his superior. Nevertheless, the Renegade's heightened aggression and ruthlessness in this encounter raised Tesler's worry and strengthened his obsession with bringing the rebel down.

### The Reward

It was a cold, dark night in Argon City. Tesler stared out his window, looking at his glorious city, when he thought he heard the sound of disks flying, but paid no attention to it, thinking it was just his imagination. But his imagination was not as vivid as he has hoped, as the disk of one of his men came rolling towards his feet, and when he went to pick it up, a frightened Black Guard grabbed him, having been sliced in half. As he crawled towards Tesler, weakly begging for help, The Renegade jumped down and proclaimed that he was taking back Argon. "It's *mine!*" Tesler shouted with fury. "There's no going back!" Tesler then attacked, but it was no use. The Renegade maniacally laughed as he evaded every punch, limb and levitating off the ground as if he were a corpse being held up by some invisible force. Just when Tesler had him cornered, The Renegade leaped behind him and held him hostage by the window, forcing him to watch as he turned Clu's red-orange world into a land of blue purity. Tesler then awoke in a cold sweat, breathing a sigh of relief as he realized it was all a horrid nightmare. It was in this moment that he came up with a scheme to be rid of the creature that haunted his mind...

### Scars, Part 1 & 2

Dyson, one of Clu's right hand lieutenant, came to inspect Argon City regarding the issue of the Renegade, much of Tesler's annoyance. He clarifies that the Renegade is simply a minor disturbance and everything is under control, but Dyson is unconvinced. Tesler orders Paige and Pavel to keep the Renegade activities suppressed in Dyson's presence, but met with failure as he detected a bomb and managed to catch a glimpse of the Renegade, much to Tesler's anger.

In his stay, Dyson frequently voices Tesler's incompetence of handling a single rebel program, nearly provoking the latter.

After Dyson's abrupt departure from Argon City, the general expresed delight to his lieutenants, unaware that Dyson had confirmed that the Renegade's identity is Tron to Clu himself.

### Tagged

Tesler's ship arrived at the Argon Fueling Towers for the refueling it undertook every fifth cycle. As it docked, the Jolly Tricksters tagged the surrounding buildings with free code. Angered at the security breach, Tesler ordered Paige to keep looking for the vandals: "This 'Tron Lives' blasphemy must stop." Pavel remarked that in that case, Tesler would definitely not want to look outside. Approaching the viewing port, Tesler glowered at a panorama of free-code graffiti reflecting from the buildings below, and demanded, "Where is that coming from?" Pavel replied that it was coming "from us" -- Rasket and Moog, two of the Tricksters, had infiltrated the ship and tagged its exterior, causing the "Tron Lives" message to shine from it in every direction.

After Pavel captured the two hapless artists, Tesler was summoned down to the prison level for their interrogation. But before he arrived, Mara and the Renegade freed the prisoners and escaped with the data cube which had been the Renegade's target all along.

### State of Mind

Tesler, overseeing Keller's phase-one test of her pathogenic code, declared the phase complete and ordered her to finish the job of infecting Argon's residents and making them "believers" in order to quell dissent in the streets. When she opted out, he gripped her shoulders and clarified his position: "You walk away, and I'll have Pavel tear the code from your body. You run, and I'll derezz you myself."

Tesler later threw a dance party in Argon Square in order to infect the assembled programs, standing above the crowd in an airtight helmet as they inhaled the pathogenic gas and cheered for Clu. His pleasure at the success was marred when the blimp dispensing the gas was hijacked, crashing into the signal tower and deactivating the code.

Standing in the tower's wreckage, he ordered Pavel to reconstruct it, but was told that Keller's sabotage had neutralized the code's effects and reconstruction would be useless. "Then find Keller," he replied, "and neutralize *her*."

### Welcome Home

When Paige returned Keller to Argon, Tesler greeted them and appeared happy to have Keller back in the fold and to accept her declaration of loyalty to Clu. However, after asking Paige to leave so he and Keller could "talk," Tesler placed his hand on her shoulder, ignited his gauntlet, and derezzed her, fulfilling his promise and ensuring that she would never disappoint him again. Standing above her remains, he growled, "Welcome home."

### Rendezvous

After Paige and Beck escape from the Coliseum Prison, Tesler is notified to come to Gorn's Shop by Pavel as he predicts that Paige would come here to interrogate Gorn. Paige of course comes here, but Gorn acts like she already denied her service before, which confused Paige. Pavel then announces his presence by stating that he was afraid that they'd find her here before stepping out the shadows, with Tesler following him.

Paige tries to reason with him, but it all turns to folly when Pavel disarms her of her disc and passes it to Tesler, who plays the guilty footage. Gorn then steps in stating that she came to her to erase that memory. Feeling furious and betrayed, Tesler condemns Paige to the games without a second thought.

At the Coliseum, Paige is forced to fight Gladiator after Gladiator in jousting, but stands her ground by remaining the victor against each of the duels. Frustrated that they are running out of Gladiators, Tesler rhetorically asks if there is any program in Argon who could beat Paige, to of which Pavel answers with himself. Pavel makes true to answer, making quick work of her thanks to the power upgrade weapon but before she could be derezzed, she is saved by The Renegade.

Later when Paige tries to leave Argon through an escape route, she is caught by Tesler. However Tesler forgives her, as she was proven innocent, when Lomox was shown to have incriminating evidence of The Renegade asking him to implant a fake memory into Paige. Unable to protest that the memory was fake and used to frame him because he was unable to speak, Lomox was taken away. Paige then tries to tell Tesler that Pavel was keeping the power upgrade weapon away from him, when he pulls it out with Pavel stating that he was always going to turn it in, once he knew it worked. Impressed with Pavel's actions, Tesler decides to reward him with his own district much to Pavel's delight but that delight soon converted into dismay when Tesler announced that the district would be Purgos as he thinks Pavel is the best program to clean it up for him.

### Terminal

After the crash of the giant recognizer in Argon City, Tesler demanded answers from Paige: what was "that monstrosity," why was it in his city, and why had he not known about it? Paige had no answer for him, but did have a guess. Taking her data pad before she could complete the sentence, Tesler stared in slowly-growing horror as a face resolved on the screen, heralding the unannounced approach of a giant military fleet, and hoarsely named the impending arrival: "Clu."