Heya guys! So a bit of clarity, since it's been a hella long time, this fic was originally meant to take place a YEAR after the events of the first Wreck-It Ralph, which I headcannoned to be in the year 2013/early 2014. There are a few details in this chapter that will make sense of my fic's timeline, so I felt that was important to let ya'll know.

I'm planning a few more chapters after this to finally wrap this story up, so stay tuned!

Anyway, I see a lot of you guys are viewing all my old chapters, and I appreciate that there is still interest in this, despite it being delayed. As always, you guys are more than welcome to leave me any comments or suggestions, even just general thoughts you may have!

*In Mario's voice* HERE WE GOOOO

Chapter 17: Flynn's_Arcade.(.mp4)

For almost the entirety of the drive, I must've fallen into a deep sleep, because the next thing I knew, my peering vision caught sunlight peaking over the horizon like the twinkling of an eye. I heard the rumbling but steady hum of Car number 2, so eloquently renamed with our new team name 'The Game Enders', as we drove the steady highway. Those last few moments of sleepiness seemed to dissipate as we came from over a hill, beyond it a sparkling city shining with silver. Unlike the city I had started at, this one was still untouched by the Cy-bugs—the sheer difference was like night and day.

Imagining the devastation of the Cy-bugs, and what King Candybug had done, my city had been reduced to broken buildings, shattered cars and crumbled streets. People wallowed about, covered in dirt and grime, and the castle that stood in its center, although the most pristine of the view of the world I had known for so long, had a sinister and dark aura cast upon it. Despite the veil of illusion it harbored, with its structured walls and polished floors, the smell of iron and ash had filled the air, giving away the chaos that had been placed upon the real world.

But here, this city so far departed from all that chaos, was an example of my world untouched by misfortune. The further we drove in, the more I was reminded of what normalcy looked like. Despite there being hardly any people driving around, having quarantined themselves in preparation for what was bound to come, the streets were paved firmly and smoothly on the ground, the many buildings' metal and glass windows catching sunlight as of newly polished diamonds, and homes and cars remained undestroyed. Even the smell in the air seemed fresh with the hint of a recent rainfall, and in the air and outside the car window, I heard the faint song of birds chirping as we passed, and the barking of a dog or two on the sidewalks and backyards of homes as we turned a street corner.

I thought to myself how easily this could all change for the people that lived here, but instead of allowing fear to instill within me, I'd turn the idea around, and thought only how it drove me towards my goal. We had already made it to the city we needed to be at, and were so close to finding another way to fight back the swarm of Cy-bugs that remained in the world.

I only hopped that what was promised would still be here.

"Steven, are you awake?" My voice was hoarse at first, probably from sleeping with my mouth open the entire time.

"Yes," he said. "I've been awake for a few hours now."

"Do you ever sleep?" Calhoun said sarcastically, but a soft chuckle escaped her throat afterwards.

"I slept, yes," Steven answered. "I'm just nervous is all…"

"Why do you say that?" I asked. I was trying to be as positive as possible, despite how deep in my chest I wrenched just thinking about if this entire trip had been for nothing. On top of it, it seemed too good to be true that we had made the entire duration of the drive without any mishaps.

"Well… these old files I got the address from are so old, and Flynn, the original creator of the Shiva Laser has been dead for a decades now, too. I had done some research on this place—Flynn's Arcade—and it seems the establishment, although abandoned, is still here with the address of Mead Street."

"Ok… it seems like you got it figured out though. All we can do is hope for the best."

"But what if the best doesn't come? What if there's nothing for us here but a bunch of old arcade games? The characters can't even get out to help us without the device anyway—so Cy-bugs in or Programs out—we're doomed."

"Jeez, Steven, a little bit of a downer, huh?" I heard Felix whisper from the back.

"Let's just focus on the mission, everyone. Put one foot in front of the other, and take this one goal at a time." Calhoun huffed. I heard her shuffle in her seat. "No use in acting like a bunch of pussy willows."

I chuckled a bit upon her comment. I was starting to enjoy Calhoun's way of words. "You hear that though, Turbo? We're heading to Mead Street," I'd say then, turning my head to look at him, who was sitting at the wheel.

"I heard…" Turbo grumbled, his focus on the drive quite dedicated, in all honesty.

The further into the city we went, and the closer to the address we got, the bright portion of the city, untouched by Cy-bug decimation, would soon turn into a different kind of decline. Unlike the absolute wreckage I had been so accompanied to seeing, this older part of town we had arrived in was old and unkempt. The buildings, every which way I looked, were abandoned, some windows even being blocked and stamped with wood planks and graffiti. Some stray posters and trash would occasionally scatter the sidewalks when a gust of wind swept by, but other than that, it seemed this area was destitute. I was starting to feel that ache in my chest return just before we turned the corner onto Mead Street. Ahead, and to our left, and at the corner of a crosswalk, was Flynn's Arcade.

Silence seemed to remain with us as the group took everything in. Seeing the arcade in person cautioned us. The giant letters that spelt 'FLYNN'S ' at the forehead of the building, that may have once been lit with blazing colors in its prime years, were turned off and rusted. There looked to even be a since abandoned birds nest sitting caressed in the Y. Above the letters was a metal-fenced balcony, with two arched windows that were blocked out with large sets of plywood. The entrance itself was just as foreboding as the rest of the building, having been locked up with a metal gate, and at the door itself, there was yet another lock set up that had been situated tightly on the door handle. It seemed this place hadn't seen much of anything for quite a number of years, to put it obviously.

"Oh my land…" Felix was the first to break the silence.

"Don't get whiny just yet! We haven't even taken a look inside!" Vanellope seemed to become the optimist to Felix's pessimism, which was kind of odd, considering Felix had often shown himself to be rather chipper in almost every circumstance I had seen him face thus far.

The car came to a stop and Turbo shut off the engine directly in front of the fenced off entrance. Steadily, we all got out of the car, and walked up to our barrier, contemplating our choices from then on out.

"All right, you guys try not to touch anything," Steven directed.

"We gotta break this fence down somehow, it's not like we have keys!" Calhoun said.

"Which won't be a problem, for yours truly." Ralph took his large hands, and stretched them outwards together, making a crackle sound with his knuckles.

Steven sighed, and gestured his arms toward the entrance, taking a step back as he lowered his head. The rest of us followed suit as we watched Ralph tear the fence apart with ease; the metal creaked and groaned from being picked apart, and compressed together. All the remains of the security fence was thrown to the side in a nice pile. After that, all Ralph had to do was grab hold of the lock that kept the door shut, pinching it between his thumb and index finger to pop it, and free the doors confines.

I didn't hear anyone make a comment, but I heard a few relieved sighs at that moment. It was then that Steven and Dannen took the first steps into the arcade.

As I followed behind them, and the others after me, I would soon see exactly how old and run down the place actually was. Old 80's arcade games, covered in large plastic coverings that had become saturated in dust and cobwebs, served almost as shrouds to long shutdown game consoles. They lined the left and right of us like a darkened, abandoned runway—a place that had once been alive and thriving with gamers, partygoers, and families alike had become a shell of its former self, its game inhabitants forever lost in limbo in their blacked out worlds.

The Programs in our group, each and every one of them, became uncomfortable in their own way. I took a glance at their faces and gestures—Calhoun scowling, Vanellope twitting her thumbs, Felix staring agape, Ralph bowing his head, and even Turbo glancing at all the blackened screens as if they were all literally looking into a graveyard into the past. Games like Dragon's Lair, Centipede, Crystal Castle, Missile Command, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, and Pac Man were some of the many consoles that remained asleep.

Dannen had taken the opportunity to peer back towards the right wall from the entrance, seeing an equally dusty, half-opened power breaker. He'd gently wipe away a few lingering cobwebs before he traced his finger over the different buttons, soon jumping the system which suddenly, and like a resurrection, commanded the lights to turn on in the building, and the chorus of many sounds and voices from the arcade games to awaken. As if the music in the building had just ended a song prior to shutting down years ago, I heard a stall before a new track began to play. After a moment, and then resuming as if it had waited years to do so, the speakers distributed throughout the arcade began to play the song Dance Hall Days by Wang Chung, the additional music clashing and stirring with the many arcade games, seemingly placing me in a time that I would never know.

While the Program members of the group weren't quite recovered from their initial shock of seeing their kin shut off, the arcade's resurrection seemed to bring them into a new state of mind: confusion, worry…even hope seemed to fill their eyes as they walked down the hall, staring into the screens, and looking upon the game worlds and characters as through the eyes of their creators.

"Do you think… they remember anything?" Felix asked. All of us had not said a word up until then, and even through the loud music, I could hear and feel exactly what Felix must've been thinking. In fact, I was pondering these questions myself: how was it that game characters survived a power shutdown?

"I don't know," I said honestly, placing a hand on a Duck Hunt console, as if placing my hand on the forehead of a sick patient.

"There would be only one way to find out," Steven said, his hand muffling his voice just a tad as his fingers wrapped around his lips and chin in thought. "Where do you think he'd keep the laser?"

Everyone attempted to shift the mood, and hold questions about life after shutdown for game characters. Calhoun in particular seemed to be the one to buck up the quickest, soon her scattered gaze upon the game worlds shifting back into mission mode, as she scanned the arcade up and down and side to side. "There is a second floor it looks like," she point out, "but it doesn't look like there is a laser up there, as far as I can tell."

"Let's split up," Vanellope suggested. "I'll go take a look upstairs!"

Before we could even all agree on anything, Vanellope ran towards a door, labeled 'Flynn's Office' to the far upper left corner of the arcade, and past more consoles. The rest of us shrugged, and began to pace up and down the first aisle of games, soon some of the group making their way leftward and deeper into the arcade itself, while I and the other half went straight towards the back.

Steven had been patting the walls like he had become a detective, while I couldn't help but continue to stare down the game screens, soon coming to a Tron arcade game at the far back, which seemed to be particularly situated to look as if it was being heavily showcased with the help of a blue lit sign above it, simply spelling out the word 'TRON' in big bright letters. Unlike the other games in the arcade, however, there were no characters or animation on this screen. While obviously turned on, it was blank, almost as if a world had never existed within it.

"Hey, guys?" I asked aloud. "Is this supposed to be broken or what?"

Dannen and Steven had walked over, eyeing the Tron console intently. Dannen was even the one to remove the plastic that covered it, revealing to us more clarity that indeed it was an arcade game…without a game.

"That's odd," Steven mumbled to himself. His Omni-Tool suddenly appeared on his arm, the orange glow of the game item reflecting into the blank black Tron screen like blaring a flashlight into a dead persons pupils. Steven would proceed to scan the console, although oddly enough, its code was significantly lacking the usual gaming codes of other arcade games, the line of code itself actually being very short, and only consisting of a few dozen or so lines as I glanced over at Steven's holographic depiction of it on his arm.

"Whoa, that's odd," Steven repeated again. I could see he was getting lost in thought.

I cleared my throat, hoping it would be enough to pick him out of his internal debate with himself. It seemed to do the trick as his head perked up, and his blue eyes shifted from the hologram and up to me. "See here? The game code is stationary; meaning its grid of the sorts is blank."

"What does that mean?"

"If I'm reading the Omni-Tool correctly, that means the game, if there ever was one, is no longer there."

"Tron's dead?" I raised a brow, curious as to how that was possible. "Why are all the other characters still in their consoles?"

Steven shrugged. "I don't think it had anything to do with cutting power from the arcade, if that's what you mean. If there isn't code in the game, there's no game, simple as that. You can't just destroy the inner digital workings of your computer, for example, when you shut it off."

"Hey!" Vanellope's voice came from the office door; not more than a few seconds after that did she appear back downstairs with the rest of us. "I didn't see any extra door, or laser at all up there. Just some dusty old sofa…"

"I'm not seeing anything over here either," Ralph chimed in from the other half portion of the arcade. "Just more games."

I felt my heart sinking. I couldn't believe this. Here we were, miles and miles away from where we started, at the very arcade we set to seek out, only to have gotten backed up into a metaphorical corner with nothing to show for it. Other than the idea we already had to use the laser to reverse engineer the portal to become a beacon, I couldn't think of any other way to create a bright enough beacon to entice and trap the Cy-bugs with, and without one, they'd surely continue their progression into the real world and destroy everything. They'd eat every single electronic device, kill every human, and multiply until the entire planet was filled with nothing but Cy-bugs. I began to imagine them spreading even further into the solar system—on the moon, on mars and beyond until the entire galaxy itself was invaded by the viruses. The thought of it terrified me so much that for a brief second I lost my balance as I tried to steady my breathing, suddenly realizing that I was falling into symptoms of an anxiety episode.

"Don't give up, guys!" Steven encouraged. "Check the walls…anything! Maybe there's a secret passage or something."

"This isn't a game, you know that, right?" Dannen asked out loud, suddenly even my own brother becoming negative in his thinking. "Look around you, dude! There isn't any Shiva Laser! The old asshole must've packed up and abandoned ship, and died somewhere in the woods with that thing ages ago!"

"You don't know that," Steven argued. "We gotta try something."

"We have tried everything!" Dannen erupted suddenly. I hadn't seen him do anything like this in years, lashing out that is, but it was bound to happen. We had been traumatized, continuously, for so long now that it was finally hitting us Users. Besides me and my brother already freaking out, Steven looked like he was the only one trying to maintain composure.

"We can go onto the flash drive system and replicate a bunch of Hero's Duty guns!" Steven tried to come up with another idea on the spot. "The military can use those to their advantage and stop the Cy-bugs with them."

"You act like you've never even played Hero's Duty!" Dannen's hands fell into his dark hair, grabbing hold of the strands at the root. "You know good and well that Hero's Duty even is maintained by a beacon to kill the Cy-bugs after every game session! Fighting them directly is not an option!"

Steven's eyes had widened by now. The Omni-Tool on his arm had vanished at that point as his arms dangled at his sides, for a moment looking almost like he could've been catatonic.

The song that had been playing loudly on the speakers had begun to fade out at this point, soon the next track spitting Things Can Only Get Better by Howard Jones at us in the moment of debate of our future. I thought how ironic it was, as the synthesized tune mixed with the wind instrumental intro shifted, the positivity in its lyrics talking about not faltering, and success or failure not changing our course of action.

To be completely honest, being positive for as long as I had been, it was now starting to become really hard to keep it up. I found my mind spilling back into the past, the memory of feeling gravity overtaking my body as the grinding gears of the inside of the massive Goliath Cy-bug's mouth yawned and waited for me to fall. The only thing that had held onto me in those moments of giving up, of all people in the world, was old man Aaron.

'Just let go,' I had told him. I had reached my limit at that point in my journey. I had felt like I was useless in comparison to everyone else. I was the guinea pig to this entire science experiment gone wrong, and for the longest time I had felt like the one holding everybody back. It had been because of me that Steven, Calhoun, Felix, Vanellope, and Ralph had to turn around and come back to rescue me from King Candybug, and up until that moment during the Goliath battle, I felt I might as well cast myself into the massive Cy-bugs mouth and end it all there.

And yet… Aaron had held onto me. That bitter old man, who hated the world, hated games…somehow held on to preserve my life.

My mind suddenly shifted gears. My dark thoughts soon had a light shown upon them as I thought backwards and forward again in time. I was the First User. I was the wayfinder. I was the one who separated that Cy-bug from Turbo's code, the one who got us out of that cave, and I was the one who would continue to do good, here and now.

Yes, I was the First User, and my circumstances now would never change that.

My eyes slipped from the fight in front of me, and back down towards the Tron machine. I contemplated its design: the ENCOM logo to the left of the game's title still glowed, revealing that the machine was still receiving power, despite the lack of a living world within the game itself. Down passed the black screen, and onto the floor, my eyes briefly settled on the ground just below it, catching a glimpse of the collected dust that seemed to have fallen over the arcade like snow. On the ground, it was there that I saw a cut in the dust's pattern, almost like a windshield wiper had appeared from under the console, and had retreated back into place. My mind attempted to understand this for a few moments longer, until a thought had crossed my mind, which I couldn't help but speak aloud.

"Tron is the doorway."

"What?" Dannen asked. His brown eyes looked to be glistening, as if he was about to start crying out of frustration before I had spoken up.

"I said, Tron is the doorway," I repeated.

"Kailey… what are you talking about?" Steven wasn't sure what I was implying at first, but suddenly his blank expression shifted, and his eyes seemed to light up. "Wait, maybe you're on to something."

Dannen sat aside baffled for a second before Steven and I shifted over to the left side of the Tron console. Like Steven had been doing to the walls, feeling and searching every nook and cranny, his fingers would quickly slip behind the back of Tron, triggering an ecstatic reaction.

"Help me move this thing!" he'd say.

I immediately complied, fitting my fingers behind the console too join his, and began to pull the longtime stationary console backward. Like someone had said 'open sesame', pulling back Tron revealed to us a secret doorway.

"Oh my land!" One of Felix's catchphrases immediately met our ears the second we cleared the way, the others then huddling together behind Steven and I as we stared at what was now so obviously the door we had been looking for since we got here.

"That's a User for you," Calhoun complimented behind us. I couldn't help but smile.

Slowly then, I was the first to reach out and grab hold of the door handle, twisting it down to open and reveal the dark passage downward into a tunnel. Looking down the tunnel, I saw there was another door of the same structure. Just the act of staring at it made my heart leap as I felt then just how close we were now.

"Come on, ya'll," I said then, although I stopped myself as I contemplated. "Actually, maybe a couple of you should stay out here… as guard."

"I'll stay," Ralph immediately volunteered. "I don't think I'll even fit through that little doorway, anyway."

"Haha, you're such a goof, Ralph," Vanellope chuckled then, taking note of his honesty. "I'll stay with ya, pal."

"Me too… if any Cy-bugs show up it'll take more than just Ralph's wrecking powers to keep them at bay." Calhoun sat up straight then, her blue eyes glancing down at her husband. "Felix, you go ahead and tag along with them. You'll probably come in handy if they need a healer." When she said that I couldn't help but be reminded of the dragon attack back when this had all started. Like it or not, a team needed a healer, and I found myself nodding at her suggestion for Felix to follow us.

The group came to a silent agreement then. One at a time, the rest of us, consisting of myself, Steven, Dannen, Felix, and Turbo, crept into the doorway and ventured down the steps, meeting the second doorway for only a moment before I managed to get through that one as well. After we began to filter into the second door, however, was when it really hit me that we were actually in the presence of the original Shiva Laser.

It was almost identical to the one that Steven and Dannen had recreated back at Litwak's, only instead of a new modern computer, a large and flat screen of a system from the 1980's sat directly in front of us as if it was embedded into the table—more rather, was the table. Behind this computer was the laser itself, and to the side on a small desk, scattered upon the desk, remained a variety of papers of both printed and hand written in nature, and old photographs of what looked like a young Flynn and what seemed to be his little son. I recognized Flynn's face from the video I had seen on Dannen's laptop computer before it had gotten eaten by Dell the Cy-bug.

"It's all here!" Steven exclaimed, almost like he had been holding in his breath, and then let it pop like a balloon from the excitement. "There's the laser… and look, would ya bloody look at that, it must be the computer platform to the entire program portal here!"

My eyes scanned the room in more detail; I was taking in every last drop of this scene as if I were going to take it away having to remember every detail. My brother Dannen, Felix, and Turbo did the same as we all split to different sections of the room, contemplating everything themselves.

Steven continued to narrate everything he was seeing. "This computer's a touchscreen… it has to be the way to login to the system."

My hand had slipped over the many papers on the desk, my eyes lifting up to Flynn's picture and of the little boy next to him, before I began to read the notes scribbled on some of the writings. These notes were talking about scientific jargon, in what I only knew before to be theoretic physics, in a way that admitted its definite reality—realities that I had actually seen working in real time throughout my journey, such as genetic algorithms and quantum transportation. However, there were other topics that I had not heard of before, like the reality of isomorphic algorithms.

Before I could manage to ask any questions, I heard the creaking of a chair, suddenly taking notice that Steven had already taken a seat at the front of the old computer.

"Steven, what are you doing?" I asked.

"It looks like the same program sequence that I had written for our laser," he said. "Logging into the system literally means it'll trigger the gun to send us into the arcade."

"Do you know where it'll send us?"

"Hmmm… I'm not sure…" Steven replied, although while he drifted into silence, his fingers continued to tap over the touchscreen quickly as he began to monitor a series of code, and for the longest time, began to decipher the information himself as we watched and listened.

"To be honest I'm surprised this thing is even working…" Dannen admitted. "It hasn't been touched in years."

"Actually…" Steven's voice drifted back into reality gradually as if he were waking up from a dream. "I'm seeing there was actually a login in 2010… someone has been here before."

"Really? Who?"

Steven was silent for a moment, the scrolling of the code on the screen reflecting in his glasses. "It was an admin login… but that can't be… Kevin Flynn is dead."

"You're not suggesting that this guy is still alive, are you Steven?" Felix said, not being able to help himself in joining the conversation.

"No… that wouldn't make sense either. See, the admin had been logged in twice in the span of a decade. There was only one logout after the last one a few years ago in 2010, so that means two people logged in the same admin, but only one left."

My eyes glanced over towards the old picture again. For a moment my mind jumped to a random conclusion: could it have been that boy? Could it have been Kevin Flynn's son?

"We don't really have time to debate the working'th's of th'this, do we?" Turbo said as he crossed his arms over his chest in an almost impatient way. "You geek'th's have all the time in the world to figure every out once we get thi'th's over with."

"The clown's actually right." Dannen chuckled upon saying this, as if testing the waters with teasing Turbo. I'd imagine there was still some bitterness Dannen held onto as well, and it seemed to reflect within his voice along with the humor. "Let's get us all logged into the system. We can start there once we're inside and figure out some more. Maybe if the game characters remember anything, they can give us some insights."

"Clown?" Turbo muttered irritably, but I could see he was trying hard not to get angry. "I'm a king, you th'simpleton."

"Oh really now?" Dannen got a little serious, crossing his arms over his chest, too. It was a rather comedic scene, seeing Turbo as King Candy, as short as he was, with his bright color palette, going up against my 6'2 brother with his black Yukon-rivaled beard and mustache, and dressed in his dark clothes that must've not been washed in days.

"All right, guys, everything looks ready to go. I can begin the admin login sequence and get us into the system." Steven only turned his head, as he waited for our agreement.

"Ah shit, here we go again," I mused, remembering quite vividly the first time I was shot with a laser and transported into digital space, and a second time with the Shiva Gun. I could only imagine, however, how Flynn's arcade would differ in comparison to Litwak's. These games hadn't been powered on in years, so in addition to lingering questions of all the mysteries surrounding the Shiva Laser itself, and its original creator, thoughts and ideas filtered into my consciousness about the nature of Programs.

Soon, I'd find out.

The portal's light had engulfed me, its seemingly eternal grasp on my body in actuality having let me go within the course of mere milliseconds as I opened my eyes to behold the world within Flynn's arcade. One might assume landing in Tron was a given, but the information we had received before entering finally began to strike us as reality: indeed whatever game world was once here, had very much vanished.

I could not fathom a comparison of what this game may have looked like in the past, as I had never ventured into the Tron game at Litwak's to make that comparison. Nonetheless, as I stood there, gazing into the dark and blackened world, I realized that whatever had been here, what Programs, cities, and structures had once existed, had vanished without a trace. If erasing code was like erasing ones existence, then this was an example.

Steven was yet again looking at his Omni-Tool, attempting to decipher all the inner workings of the blank world around us, when I began to slowly take more notice of this blank digital space which almost reminded me of the flashdrive grid I had seen. In the skies, a sequence of thunder sent flashes of lightning bolts between clouds, momentarily lighting the grid. I could see what looked like jagged rocks in the distance, and the shimmering of an eternal ocean to the north, going on miles and miles to match the solid ground around me. In the far distance, but close enough to make out, I saw a giant doorway, which reminded me of the access point I had seen during my first visit to Litwak's in Skyrim, that must've lead out into the rest of the arcade.

"This is nothing like Tron back at home," Felix commented then. "Ralph and Vanellope would go in it all the time to play around when the arcade closed…"

"I can imagine," I responded softly, although my eyes did not part from the view.

Steven had finally looked up from his studies, his blue eyes scanning the horizon as he began to speak, saying, "There is an exit to the arcades central point of origin." His arm lifted upward, and he pointed at the doorway I had noticed in the distance.

"You mean a game central station?" Felix inquired.

"I guess you could say that," Steven said. "We need to find out more about the nature of Flynn's laser, and in extension why he chose Tron as his portal host. We need to see if any of the Programs in the other games know what happened. If I can fit the pieces together, it'll help me decide the best course of action if I were to turn the portal inside out." Steven paused for a moment, as if he was trying to come up with a more elaborate response that everyone could understand. I could see discomfort shift through his expression as he thought to himself. "Hmmm…we'll see…" he muttered afterwards.

We all started to make our way through the deserted Tron system, and eventually make it to the power connection doorway. It only took us a few minutes longer from there to reach the end of it, although oddly enough, we soon found we had hit another obstacle.

Just beyond the exit was indeed a game central station of the sorts, but blocking us, like some sort of barrier, was a reddish-orange force field. It seemed to hiccup on occasion, its straight lines jagging before it would settle back down again. I watched as Dannen reached out to touch it, though when his fingertips came into contact with it, he jerked back, exhaling a quick "Ouch!" as he did so.

"What is it?" I asked worriedly, my hands falling first onto Dannen's fingers to help him if needed, although it didn't look like he had received a wound.

"It felt like it shocked me." Dannen winced. "Why is this thing here?"

"It's a firewall," Steven said in a-matter-of-fact tone. "It must've been put here to keep the Tron Programs in at one point…"

"Or to keep everyone else out," I thought out loud. "Maybe it has something to do with the Tron world's in-game disappearance?"

"Maybe so," Steven said, "and for a good reason, too. I don't imagine deleting Tron at that point would have erased the entire arcade, but more or less whatever or whoever ventured inside could have been deleted, too."

"This is why we shouldn't game jump," Felix said, crossing his arms. "That's a big no-no, by golly."

Turbo would glare at Felix though a side-eyed glance, as if what Felix said was directly a call out to his own past actions. He chose not to give any snide remarks this time, continuing to be quiet as we all attempted to figure this out.

Steven would approach the firewall, and scan it over again. His Mass Effect game item fed him a series of code, and after a minute or two, the orange force field would vanish. I felt a sense of caution as we stepped into the central access point of the arcade, the quietness of it all all-consuming to reflect its long since deserted state for what had already been a couple years now.

"Hello?" Dannen would call out first, his voice an echo to the elongated, rectangular station. Above were the usual plug-ins of all the arcades games, among us and going down left and right quite a ways. Unlike Litwak's, who had been well lit and bright, this station had a soft dreariness to it, covered in shades of greens; the reason for this was what I could see, shimmering above us to the leftward portion of the station, was a large green light, both serving as the literal lighting for the place, and indicating power was being received to the power supply.

"Should we go into the games?" Dannen asked.

"I really don't think that's a great idea," Felix said. "You remember what happened to your sister the last time? You don't know what kind of Programs are in here."

"I'm pretty sure Pac Man isn't going to shred the Users, Felix," Turbo said. "He's programmed to eat ghosts."

"Hmm, you would know," Felix huffed, turning his nose up at Turbo. I was a bit surprised that Felix, in his own way, was actually being savage, but again I had to remind myself of the reasons.

Suddenly, I began to hear footsteps. At first it was only one, but then after a few moments it was two, then four, then ten, and so on. The sounds of them all began to mesh together, reminding me of the general sound of the arcade games and its many different game voices clashing together, only this time it was the many programmed footstep clicks and clops of characters as they were emerging from their games.

As moments passed, I could finally see them. As they emerged, bits at a time, they would all quickly take notice of us in the empty station, walking up towards us shyly—cautiously, noticing us first as strangers, and then as Users the longer they looked at us. A few gasps seemed to escape a handful of their throats, when the main character from the game Dragon's Lair spoke first.

"Are you the creator?" he asked, glancing between Dannen, Steven and I. I couldn't help but be mesmerized with how his character persona deferred so dramatically in comparison to the others, being a 2D drawn character and all.

"If you're asking if we're Flynn, then no," Dannen responded. "…you guys have been asleep for a really long time, do you realize that?"

"Sort of," a dark haired Program said next. She looked like a character that must've come from Spy Hunter. I almost immediately recognized her from having seen her on the side of her given console. "This isn't the first time we've woken up, realizing that years have passed. The first time we were shut off was when Flynn was stuck in Tron."

"Flynn was stuck there?" I asked with surprise.

"For a long time, yes." The next answer came from Pauline from Donkey Kong, although unlike her modern look, with her dark hair and red dress, her color palette resembled more of Peach's design. "The arcade did not get power again until another came along."

"How do you guys know all of this?" Steven asked then.

"We only go by rumors. That firewall was put up for so long that it kept anyone, in or out, from going into Tron."

"Do you know what happened to Tron, as in the game?" I was compelled to ask then.

All of Flynn's arcade residents glanced at each other. Confusion, although already present, had seemed to manifest on their worried expressions by this point.

"I don't know…What happened to Tron?" Pauline said then, speaking for everyone as she asked back the same question.

I felt my heart and stomach twist into knots as I registered their question. It was obvious that the firewall had done its job, so there was no use in prying further when it came to the story of Flynn, the creator, and what had happened in the Tron console. I decided to ask a different type of question, though.

"Did you know Tron, the Program individual?" I was hoping that perhaps the firewall had once not been there. Maybe these characters knew the character, or some of the other Programs that had once lived there.

"Yes, we knew him…" the woman from Spy Hunter said.

"Well…did he tell ya'll anything? Did he tell you about his game?"

"It wasn't just a game." The dark haired woman placed a hand on her cheek, her eyes glancing upward at the entryway to the long dead game, and then back down to us. "When the arcade first opened, I mean, yes it was. But that was only a part of it. The game you would normally play on Tron was just something to keep the gamers happy while the creator worked on something more when he visited." She took in a sigh first before proceeding, and then said, "During those early years, when the creator left, Tron would talk to us about what he had in store. Tron said, "'the creator is going to create the perfect system.'" We never heard from him sometime after that. That was when the firewall went up."

In my mind I was trying to connect the dots, but the dots were already so vague. All I did know was that Flynn, Tron (both the Program and the game), and this arcade was the focal point of all the work that had been put into the Shiva Laser's creation, and the first contact between human being, and Program.

I had been so scrambled in those moments that I had not looked out into the crowd of Flynn's residents for a few minutes by then. It was easy to do so with the relative quietness of my surroundings. Everyone was so awed by what was happening, and the news they were sharing, that it was easy to get lost in your own mind.

"At least we know now that you are all safe…" Steven said then, breaking the soft hushes of the crowd. "We have an opportunity for you all, an opportunity to help Users." His words seemed to finally stir everyone, as their quiet voices seemed to get a notch louder as discussions among themselves heightened in intensity. Looking at Steven, though, I could tell he was about to make a tough decision. "Our world is in trouble…" he began.

He told them everything. He told them about how he recreated the Shiva Laser, and when I was sent inside. He told them about the Cy-bugs, and how they got into the real world, and all the effort we had gone through to find a way to stop them. Once he got to the present, and how this plan would work, was when he paused again, taking a deep breath, and shut his eyes for a second before opening them once more.

"We need your help," Steven said, "and it's not going to be easy. There is a way out of the arcade—a way into the real world. It's obvious that we could use all your help in this fight, but it's not just that. My plan is to reverse engineer the portal, and elongate how long it remains open. The Cy-bugs, in their game, can only be stopped with beacons. While their in-game beacon destroys them, the light of the portal will not. It will only trap them. It will trap them inside, don't you see? And after I do this, nobody will have the chance to come back in."

Everyone's conversation in the crowd got even louder then, as their concerned voices increased and changed with the new information. Listening into the ocean of dialogue, I heard worried chats of leaving their games forever. I heard dreads of fighting the Cy-bugs…but most of all, I heard their uncertainty. They had been asleep for so long, waking up only to find both their worlds and the real world were meant to clash in a battle of life and death. At first I wasn't sure what they were going to say, but after a long while, they soon would all come to a silent agreement.

"Staying in our games would mean nothing if the Cy-bugs win," Pauline spoke on behalf of everyone then. "We will miss our homes dearly, but there is one thing that is embedded in our codes that all of us have… the desire to be there for humans. We will fight for the Users."

A cheer, soft and meek at first, began to explode, filling the ghostly central station with life again. With their help, I knew this was going to turn the tides to our side. When the Cy-bugs did get here, we'd all be ready for them if duty called us to fight, and the portal would soon be reversed to begin trapping them all inside, and back into digital space where the viruses belonged.

Thoughts of relief and of future victory, however, were snuffed out the second I so happened to look down at Turbo. He had been silent almost the entire time now, only chiming in when he was able. I had forgotten to think of him through all this, as I was so caught up in learning about Flynn's Arcade, the laser, and how to defeat the Cy-bugs, that I didn't realize that he had been staring into a particular portion of the crowd, his mouth slightly parted and his expression skewed into what I could only describe as shock and despair. His hands were slightly lifted upwards, and next to his sides, his fingers sprawled out, and his stance solid like he was backed into a corner. Even his chest, as it moved in and out in breath, was staggering.

I found that I couldn't help but follow his gaze then. At first I could only see the big picture—the crowd of game characters, with their smiles and cheers, was the only thing I could see for the longest time. But as I looked closer in the direction that Turbo was looking, my eyes began to focus, and I found that the same shocked reaction began to fill my own heart. While I could never really know how Turbo must have felt exactly, I knew enough to realize that the sight I saw was triggering memories deep in his past, like the resurgence of something best left behind.

There, among the crowd, smiling and full of hope, and together still with his friends, as if all the horrible moments and choices that my Turbo had ever made never happened, was himself.

It was him left unchanged, with the racing twins in blue jumpsuits; a mirror of an alternate reality; a Turbo that my Turbo never was, and would never be.