Reviews :

Lyssdoodle : I am BURSTING AT THE SEAMS. He's been in development for 3 years now. That's the longest I've ever pre-conceived a character. I'm about to die, I'm serious. This chapter satiated me a tiny bit.

Burgie : Indeed :D

Snake557 : Oh good! I'm glad you feel that way, I always worry that I may not be coming across correctly, but I'm glad it all makes sense! :)


Song Listened To :

Lucid Dream by Owl City


*Chapter 31*

Thousands of twinkling code boxes smiled down on Vanellope, Ralph, Tessa and Zed. All three beings eased in and out of murmuring chatter, their stoic, gentle voices eventually drowned out to unintelligible warbles in Vanellope's ears; the only thing she wanted ringing in her skull was the steady, rapid thumping of Gideon's heartbeat. Her eyes fluttered, her coding did everything it could to stay steady amidst somehow feeling tugged by the hand. She hugged her arms and allowed the colors above her to want to warp into shapes and scenarios that weren't real, there was something about Gideon's coding that began to itch the underside of her brain like a toxic energy drink. She quickly tapped her fingers against her arms and shifted on her feet a little, and though in the beginning she was worried Gideon's little coding couldn't possibly handle the sheer amount of random access memory to conjure up such beautiful, projected scenery, she eased off the anxiety as his heartbeat confidently thud on, desperate to erupt with life, as if he already had a million ideas to offer.

"Van..." Ralph's voice mumbled for the fourth time, to which Tessa finally blurt a giggle and gripped her mother's upper arm.

"Mom, come back to Arcade," Tessa gave her an apologetic smile as Vanellope's eyes suddenly dart to Tessa's in a flinch of rejoined realization, as if she had drifted off to some other random universe far away from the people in front of her.

"S-Sorry, sorry," Vanellope huffed, she eased a smile and now had to somehow push her ability to hear past Gideon's aggressively thumping heartbeat. She shook her head, as if to have a cute argument with him, although she had only known Gideon's being for a week now, the two proverbially squabbled in coded nonsense of sweet, familial binary. She breathed a shaky giggle and showed her teeth in further-renewed sweetness, as if every second in this realm of fresh, giddy excitement was addicting, "Gideon's like AWAKE awake."

"He's right on time," Ralph mumbled cutely, to which Zed furrowed his brow in prickled confusion and peered to Ralph; he shrugged his much bigger shoulders and sagged his huge knuckles to the ground by his feet, "Gideon's wake to sleep cycle is reversed from ours, for some reason... Vanellope comes home from racing and sleeps for like four hours."

"He won't let me sleep through the night," Vanellope muttered, she finally inhaled a calm breath and was relieved to feel her coding finally strong arm Gideon's away from having a say, "I don't ever remember you other three kids being nearly this active. It's weird..."

"You, uh... You think it has ANYTHING to do with, uh... Well..." Zed started, though he trailed off in regrettable shyness; Tessa furrowed her brow and blurt a small laugh in his direction.

"Spit it out, King," Tessa urged with a sly little smile in his direction, to which Vanellope and Ralph erupted with laughter; Zed grinned in annoyance and looked off.

"You think it has anything to do with just how many times you swapped, within the day, before the loading bar presented itself? Think back to your other three kids," Zed shrugged.

"... That's a good point," Ralph mumbled shyly as he rubbed chin, lined with stubble, "Well... With Tessa, Oliver and Koko, it was always one swap, at night, right before bed."

"... And, with Gideon?" Zed prod gently, Ralph heaved a raspy sigh as him and Vanellope caught eyes in a slow drag of smiling dread.

"You just HAD to have your 'I want a baby' epiphany first thing in the morning, didnt'cha," Vanelope stabbed, Ralph's demeanor lifted from the dead as he urgently gestured to his chest in whole defense.

"Let's start at the source," Ralph rushed, he hissed her a conclusion, "Taffyta."

"Yeah, Taffyta's the source of all our problems," Vanellope droned on in sarcastic irritation, to which Tessa flagged her hands and blurt a giggle to cut the two at the quick; Berri and Turbo's figures finally arrived on the code room's teleportation pad from across the way.

"Wait, seriously, how many times did you swap before Gideon's bar showed up?" Tessa questioned, and though Turbo and Berri strolled up and were due to cutely greeting their family members, they sagged into the conversation at hand and gave Vanellope and Ralph their eager, awaiting eye contact, sans greeting, due to the intensity of the situation at hand.

"... Four," Ralph muttered as he rubbed the back of his head and looked off.

"Dude," Zed stabbed, Turbo raised his eyebrows in near dreaded surprise and scoffed a hard noise. Zed glanced in Turbo's direction, for camaraderie, and finally gave Ralph a bewildered look, "My dick hurts just thinking about that! FOUR! Four times... FOUR TIMES."

"Say it again, the people in Game Central Station didn't hear you," Ralph grunted as he put his hands on his hips, though he finally shot Zed and Turbo a little smirk of challenge, "So I have stamina. I was King before you, my dude, maybe take down some notes, or something."

"Boys," Tessa mumbled in a lilt of annoyed, motherly sternness.

"Stamina? Or stupidity," Zed huffed, to which Ralph firmly ruffled his huge hand over the top of Zed's head, thus destroying the precise weft of his cerulean blue faux-hawk.

"Whichever gave you another brother in law," Ralph argued, to which Zed grunted a noise, pulled from Ralph's gravity and sagged into Turbo's, so to do what he could to tidy his hair to normality.

"But, seriously, think more logistically about that," Turbo's deep voice coated the group with care, everyone peered to him in soft curiosity as he glanced in Berri's direction, "I mean... I know nothing about actively attempting to code a baby, but, I can imagine pumping four times the amount of coding into another being, in such a short span of time, HAS to do something to up either the chances of pregnancy, or... Rapid brain development of some sort."

"You really think that's the culprit?" Vanellope questioned, to which Turbo looked down, inhaled a steady breath and shrugged with a cute smile.

"Welp... We're here to find out," Turbo concluded with great warmth, to which he lovingly held his hand to Berri's lower back and smiled into her eyes; he continued on to the group as he kept his loving gaze locked with Berri's becoming shy eyes, "As much as I've been teaching my brothers and Tessa about core coding, this one is getting all the lessons in full, coded downloads. So... Berri's going to conduct this little core coding test."

"I've been the main person the boys come to, to get alignments now," Berri mumbled cutely as she tucked her shoulder-length cerulean blue hair behind her ears, her bright eyes caught with Vanellope's, "They keep saying I have a magical touch."

"The magic of a womanly touch, the future Queen, no less," Turbo politely ushered, he pressed a cute smush of a kiss into the side of her cheek before he broadened his demeanor to the beings out before him, "Tessa filled us in, a little bit, on just what was going on, but... Do you have any thing else you want to tell us before Berri tries to access Gideon's core coding?"

"I'm not sure, I guess... I have to warn you," Vanellope tenderly cautioned, and though the warning, Berri still tenderly allowed her bare feet to press closer to her grandmother. Vanellope heaved a shaky sigh and felt the world almost tremble with bass, the edges of the code room tiles almost bevelled into a kaleidoscope of colorful mirrors, she firmly blinked to keep her thoughts straight and hooked tight to Berri's gaze for further stability, "He's an entire wild card... I have no clue how to even describe it, you're just gunna have to experience it all for yourself."

"What am I to expect here?" Berri's lovely, womanly voice hushed in Vanellope's now tighter proximity, and as Berri politely and slowly slid her hand into Vanellope's loose t-shirt, she kept her bare palm to Gideon's loading bar and awaited the go-ahead to cue live-wired coding.

"Imagination, it's really the only word I can use to describe it," Vanellope huffed with a giggle, she sweetly rested her hand to the back of Berri's and held her hand a bit firmer into her flat, lower stomach. Gideon's loading bar was hot to the touch, as if it were working on overdrive, "I think we're due for a very hyper child..."

"Let's see," Berri whispered as she lulled her eyes closed, took a deep, steady breath through her nose and allowed every single pixel of Turbo's diligent teaching to rush their shared coding with unlimited knowledge.

In a proverbial strike of the flint, Berri stood still with Vanellope and dipped into her's and Gideon's coding. Although the three danced about each other's coding in a swirl of welcomed delight, Berri felt her eyes lull closed a little deeper as she sagged past the first class of coding. In the quick swipe of greeting Gideon's coding with a little squeeze of love, she felt the bounce of curious confusion as she immediately dove straight past the second coded class and right into the very essence of Gideon's being, the Quintessence Class. Berri suddenly gasped in hot surprise and popped right into a full out of body experience, a plane of existence her coding very quickly accessed; she was entirely alone in this space, though just as she opened her eyes and tried to get a good look around, she scrunched in a further roll of shock and was floored to see nothing but a gape of a void, a nonsensical show of milky stars in full collision with a golden dust cloud, astronomical in size.

"Family," A deep press of a voice glossed Berri's ears with gooey, irresistible warmth; Berri gasped, whirled around in this space and fixated her gaze on an individual stood a dozen feet from her.

Berri felt her skin prickle in the rise of shock, her lungs expanded with the cold, almost tasty air about the two, they hovered in this star-splashed void of calm, and though Berri knew her body was still in the code room, fully attached to Vanellope's coding, safe and sound, she began to feel scared at the thought of potentially not being able to come back to her body. Never having been able to access this strong and vivid of an out-of-body experience before, Berri panted and urgently fixated her gaze on the gentleman stood across from her. In the fleeting feeling of worry that hit her, that she was just in this space with a strange man, she held her breath, narrowed her gaze and slowly allowed an elated, knowing little grin to sprawl her cheeks. The man stood across from her was tall, built strong, the familiar sculpt of wrecking hands that hung by his sides, the elite glean of unadulterated power inside of his golden eyes had Berri struggling to get the word from the stunned little gape of a smile on her face.

"... Gideon," Berri loudly hissed in an exhale of shock; her heart began to race faster as a cute grin crossed Gideon's innocent face, a smile that was all Vanellope. Berri scoffed a gentle giggle and eased a few steps closer to his tall, bigger, sculpted figure, "Or, Uncle Gideon, I should say."

"Berri," Gideon's deep voice lilted in tender inquisition as he narrowed his gaze with the world of tenderness only Ralph could match, and as Berri stepped into his gravity, his haunting, golden eyes peered into hers with every single last byte of delicate, stoic naivety the universe could afford. He wore pristine, plain white clothes, the pop of his handsome auburn hair tidily sprout from his head in true Ralph fashion. He gingerly outstretched his hand to her, and upon his coding further colliding with hers, upon the grip of their hands, he beamed a handsome smile and peered down to her; proof that he was Ralph's child, he towered almost a whole foot and a half over Berri, "It's nice to meet you."

"H-How..." Berri whispered in a lilt of a caught breath, her eyes welled with tears of overwhelmed joy, she shook her head and firmly swallowed, "How are you... Realized? Why are you an adult?"

"This is who I am," Gideon's deep voice assured with steady patience, as if this version of Gideon was a complex, higher self. Although seemingly all-knowing, it was entirely clear that Gideon knew nothing beyond the realization of pure self, this state of his was exactly who he'd become, though his mind was still as pure as a child's.

"Wh-who exactly are you?" Berri wondered cutely, she sagged her coding deep into his, the merge of their core coding nearly caused the area about them to form the most gorgeous, tragic black hole of divine intervention.

"Imagination," Gideon his deep, raspy voice stated surely, he nodded once and eased a bright smile, "A different point of view, an organized wreck, an asset."

"I'm just here to make sure you're doing okay," Berri stated cutely, although she was standing here with the quintessential perfection of Gideon's fully realized adult form, she knew his state of mind was still very much untainted with the glory of naive, childlike wonder, the beauty of blissful ignorance, an untouched being of purity, she swallowed hard and knew that treading lightly wasn't an option anymore, but simply detrimental, as if a matter of law. Berri squeezed Gideon's hand and ran the trillion core-coding checks Turbo had so diligently taught her, though in sinking deeper into Gideon's gravity, she felt his piercing eyes so lovingly keep to hers in a hypnotic pull of energetic heat, "Y-Your mom and dad are worried about you. There's a lot goin' on in that brain of yours."

"Isn't it great? It's like... I can go anywhere, I can do anything," Gideon stated with a gentle, boyish shrug, his mature face held to the glow of Vanellope's sweet, toothy smile, he long-blinked in warm realization, as if every single waking second he endured was another added second of discovery, "I have so much to show you guys."

"Like what?" Berri hissed with an excited smile, said toothy smile that also gleaned Vanellope's familial mark of glowing, passed on traits.

Berri suddenly flinched in hot surprise as their surroundings suddenly were alive with hot white before it trickled to the whipping mess of every single color of blue Berri could even begin to think of. She gasped, sagged into Gideon's gravity in a firm tuck and was relieved his bigger arms came about her littler shoulders in the jump of gentlemanly comfort. Berri's eyes wildly glanced about the massive bevel of universe they were simply hovering in. Her short hair whipped about as Gideon held her in a loving hug about the backs of her shoulders, and with her cheek pressed to Gideon's strong, lower chest, she panted as the world about the two erupted with all sorts of rushing blues, hot, golden shooting stars whizzed by in sync with the raised tidal wave of goosebumps that coursed her shivering body. Heavenly music suddenly sapped the inside of her skull, music she was entirely sure wasn't something that could ever be recreated, and as Gideon's deep voice huffed a cute chuckle over the top of her head, she sharply hiccuped a reserved cry that brimmed in the back of her throat, simply as if the overwhelming envelope of sensitive emotion rushed over her, all at once, was nearly too much to bear.

"Anything your heart desires," Gideon's husky, sweetly inviting voice assured, he squeezed Berri into an almost needy hug, the vivid blues about her began to dribble to warm, lonely greys of sea waves, like a rolling mist that buoyed in glistening stardust hovered inside Saturn's rings, "I just require patience. Give me patience, I'll give you the world."

"It's yours," Berri firmly assured, her cheeks were wet with tears, and though the place around her was innocent and happy, she felt Gideon's innocent coding begin to curiously happen upon all the hard realities that Berri's coding unfortunately harbored; coupled with the severe, endless sea of trauma that Turbo's coding was jam-packed with, Berri widened her eyes and began to feel Gideon's glorious, innocent daydreaming begin to want to turn into a waking nightmare. With surprised ease, she yanked her coding away from Gideon's grip and so tenderly took a step, or two, out of his gravity, "Thanks, Gideon... I'm excited to officially meet you in a week."

"I won't let you down, mom," Gideon's deep voice ushered with polite warmth, and though Berri furrowed her brow in a swing of confusion, as to just why he had called her that, she suddenly choked a small gasp and had to forcibly yank her eyes from the back of her skull.

With a pop, she wobbled on her feet and was suddenly present in the code room, once more, though her and Vanellope were eagerly gripping each other's hands, as if they were about to fall off of a cliff. They both urgently peered into each others eyes, both girls were equally drowning in a sea of realized tears. Zed, Tessa, Turbo and Ralph eagerly stood frozen near the two women as they clutched each other's hands and heavily panted nearly in each other's faces, and though Berri opened her mouth to begin rushing Vanellope everything she had just endured, she could see the writhe of understanding in Vanellope's eyes, as if she had potentially lived out the same exact scenario Berri had. Both girls began to shakily usher nervous, elated laughter to each other as more tears poured down their cheeks.

"Holy shit," Vanellope hissed as their teary laughter grew. She shook her head and was washed with full humility, "I-I can't believe it, h-he's... He's...!"

"He's the perfect mixture of you two, that's for sure," Berri encouraged as their hands and arms trembled, they volleyed their gazes to Ralph and crew, who looked on in full confusion.

"What happened?" Ralph urged as Berri and Vanellope finally unhanded each other, albeit shakily.

"I met him, I-I met Gideon, he was an adult, I have NO idea how," Vanellope rushed, her voice crackled with the onset of overwhelmed weeping, "It was like his higher coded self, or something, h-he told me that all of this nonsense was imagination."

"OH good, we were right," Tessa encouraged with a nod as Zed and Turbo urgently began to open a few different code boxes; Gideon's much littler box was kept close by, the code room practically sung with divine energy.

"I did a ton of digging," Berri whimpered, she wiped her cheeks and scoffed a small, shaky giggle, "Holy shit, what a ride... That was crazy, how was he able to accomplish that imagery and such?"

"The music?" Vanellope added, Ralph shook his head and gestured his hands outwards, almost as if to show that he was upset that he missed out.

"Y-You guys like TALKED to him? He was a tangible being?" Ralph's voice shook with excitement.

"Yeah, he was there," Vanellope hissed in gentle, starstruck wonder as her teary eyes peered into Ralph's, she gave him a crumpling, delighted little smile as she desperately tried to keep it all together. Her little voice crackled Ralph a cute meep of a conclusion, "Ralph, he's SO handsome, h-he looks just like you!"

"He does?" Ralph staggered with a cute, bewildered little smile as his eyes held tight to Vanellope's, desperate for any and all information.

"He has Vanellope's smile," Berri nodded as she wiped her jawline free of tears, "Wow... So... I don't think you guys have anything to worry about. Somehow, his frontal cortex has developed to the point of absurdity. The ability to create, I mean, it's nearly tangible. It's a LOT."

"It's not dangerous or anything, is it?" Ralph worried as he shook his head.

"No, it's... It's not, and you guys were right, it IS due to the amount of times you guys swapped codes in such a short span of time," Berri mumbled cutely as she inhaled a revived breath and caught Turbo eyeing her with a solid amount of pride, "I think it's random chance that a surplus of coding, in the attempt to code a baby, in such a short time frame, could lead to rapid overproduction of any one thing. Seems like... Y'guys got a dreamer on your hands."

"Phew," Ralph huffed as him and Vanellope sagged into a scoop of an embrace, "User, I'm jealous you got to meet him, was he like... A little kid?"

"No, he was his fully realized self, he was an adult," Berri huffed in continued, floored delight, "I was NOT expecting any of that... It was like, I delved into his core coding and somehow, he was able to manifest it into an actual place we could reside. Usually it's just us sourcing information behind closed eyes, but... He was able to add reality to it."

"It was like we were genuinely in another realm," Vanellope narrowed her gaze and pointed to Berri, "I think Berri and I had the same experience with him, but... I couldn't see Berri, and I don't think you could see me."

"We each had our own experience with him," Berri narrowed her gaze, "I'm wondering if I was just a spectator... He IS, after all, attached onto your coding, currently."

"... I'm speechless, that was wild," Vanellope whimpered as she rubbed her forehead, though she was thrilled to feel Gideon's coding finally calm down and settle in the act of falling into a sleep cycle.

"Welp... Babysitting is gunna be real interesting," Tessa mumbled cutely as she crossed her arms and bobbed a nod, "Gotta really bust out our thinking caps, for this one. I don't think we'll be able to keep up with him."

"A wily Mr. Gideon Fox," Turbo's deep voice politely mumbled, "At least we won't be blindsided."

"Yeah, keep tellin' yourself that," Berri huffed shakily as she rubbed her temples, "I don't think any of us are prepared for the typhoon that's about to hit Sugar Rush."