Reviews :
SamanthaR1987 : Aww, I'm so sorry! D: I understand. I have a very musical and artistic family, and singing is very important to me. So I can definitely relate!
faolan1230 : LOL! Yeah, Turbo and Berri have done a decent amount of back and forth. There's not much more of it though, before they both go insane LMAO
Song Listened To :
blonde by Isaac Dunbar
*Chapter 123*
Amidst twinkling code room lights, orbs and code boxes that illuminated Sugar Rush's black, starry night only added more magic to such a sweet, colorful atmosphere. Although a beautiful show, the code boxes hung in a poised readiness, a haunting show of just what kind of authority Berri's mother and father had on the code room. Everything held their tight attention to Sugar Rush's King and Queen, every single strand of binary, every rope of coding, every glistening box and orb of beauty knew it's roots, the epicenter of control both Tessa and Zed had over the game. The vast openness of the code room assured to Berri that the game was a free running, nearly sentient being, though had diligently chosen to follow the guiding, careful hands of its King and Queen. In the gentle, lively hum of the code room, Berri noted that the palace meeting was a little bit smaller than usual. Typically Nox, Koko, Throttle, Oliver and Emery had been sneaking into the meetings, so to linger in the back and simply observe, though tonight, the only beings present were Ralph, Rancis, Tessa, Zed, Berri, Turbo, Libby and Wren.
"The pool is a more fun place to be, in this time," Ralph grumbled, dutifully noting the pool party that was currently ensuing outside of the code room walls.
"You can go back to the party afterwards, dad, this is important," Tessa sighed softly, she rubbed her forehead and had a plethora of holographic screens before her. She thumbed through a few different screens, all pertaining to Eighteen's bubbled coding and every little detail in between. She shot her father a soft, apologetic smile and pressed deeper into her work, "Trust me, I want to get back to it, too."
"It's freezing in here," Berri grunted in mild irritation, she began to claw her wet hair from off of her upper arms and into a collected mass that hung down her back; they had been pulled from a fun night of swimming to properly follow through with this meeting, which had been pushed back an hour due to said fun pool party.
"You want my coat?" Turbo questioned in reserved warmth, a gentle hesitation he usually had around this many pairs of eyes, especially the attention of Berri's elders.
"Oh no, I'm okay, my hair is just cold cause it's wet," Berri shrugged, and although she eyed the cozy zip up Turbo was wearing, she knew soaking into potential boyfriend-esque routines, with Turbo, wasn't going to help their fresh start.
Turbo bobbed a conclusive nod and got the hint, he was well aware just why Berri denied said gentlemanly action, and although it was a mutual agreeing, he still looked down to his canvas shoes and felt the sting. The reality that they had taken a step back on everything, something they now couldn't get back unless a few terms and conditions were mutually agreed to. He heaved a silent, shaky sigh and looked out to the small group before him. Although he had bounced back from the night prior, the incident with Lash's purgatory bubble, he still felt his veins wiggle with the thought. He watched as Tessa successfully tabbed into memory and storage files, in Eighteen's coding, and although Turbo narrowed his gaze and got a decent show at Tessa's chore, he knew somehow that Eighteen's memory files were so incredibly valuable, so extremely fragile and detrimental to how they carried on. Turbo bit the inside of his lower lip, and although Berri silently hung close to him, alongside Wren and Libby, he felt as if his exterior walls were thickening; the urge to shake Zed and beg to unbubble Lash, he had the hugest inkling that somehow Lash would at least have heard of this nonsense.
"Alright, guys... I'm going to keep this short and sweet," Tessa eased with a very exhausted sigh. Although everyone had quickly thrown on warmer clothes on top of their swim suits, a slop of wet hair and the smell of clean, salty pool water that clung to everyone's skin, the aura in the code room was anything but that of a party. Turbo was the only one who had politely declined said pool party and was dressed like normal. Tessa tossed her drained eye contact to Zed, and then to Berri, "You all have probably heard about how Berri has adopted a creature we once labelled as a deleter."
"Y-You're not... Gunna unbubble her, are you?" Rancis staggered in a show of rising nervousness, him and Turbo anxiously caught eyes, as if they both were on the same page.
"She's harmless, dad, seriously?" Wren grunted in irritation, though he trailed said irritation with a laugh and a lazy cross of his arms; Rancis threw up his arms.
"The shit us elder gamers have been through?" Rancis started in a gentle uproar of dominance, to which Turbo finally blurt a proper chuckle of agreeing, alongside a bulge of his eyes and a gentle, nervous shake of his head.
"We've earned our nervousness," Ralph mumbled deeply to his grandaughter Berri and nephew Wren, "We've seen the Arcade, as well as this whole game, at its absolute worse."
"Fair," Berri diffused tenderly, she just barely elbowed Wren before she could see him want to potentially get up in arms about it.
"We've discovered that Eighteen is a form of malware protection, and she's definitely from the internet, clearly," Tessa's voice broadened and grew in a gentle bit of strength, as if it maybe took a bit of mustering to get going, here. She brought up a holographic projection of what she was looking at, a proper nose dive into Eighteen's foreign coding, "You can see, here, that she was unfortunately created in the dark web. User knows just what her breed was intended for, or what kind of operating system it was meant to be paired with, but somehow, this creature's coding is unstable."
"The toss up of using something created in the dark web," Ralph muttered, he crossed his arms and bit his lower lip in continuous rise of nervousness.
"Due to this creature's coding being so unstable, it's great at what it does, just..." Tessa trailed off and gestured to the beautiful splay of proper, modern coding, though Turbo cleared his throat and bravely finished Tessa's sentence.
"Terrible at keeping it to itself," Turbo eased, his deep voice glossed the group in poised understanding; Berri softly lofted a glance in his direction and almost felt her stomach clench into a knot at the raw aura Turbo exuded. He looked as if he was due to pouncing on the whole entire meeting, commandeer the lot of any information given, Berri bravely eased her hand to Turbo's lower arm and was thrilled said heavy disposition lifted at her warm touch. He raised his eyebrows in a softened show of fragile apprehension. He eased her a whisper, "I-I'm okay."
"Somehow, Eighteen's breed has fallen into the wrong hands, and due to just how easy they are to control, someone has turned them into self-programmed deleting machines," Tessa muttered, she gestured to old memory files, old memory strands that were highlighted in red, as opposed to newer memory files now highlighted in a lovely splay of gold.
"Reprogrammed to think that self-programmed gamers are the problem?" Libby pressed in the delicate cadence of her Teltokuan accent, she raised an eyebrow and glanced to Rancis and Turbo in curiosity, "Never had anything like this, all that time ago..."
Berri froze and softened in a slump of beginning to feel swallowed. She gingerly cocked an eyebrow and lofted her secretive eye contact in Libby's direction. Although not typically a hot topic on her mind, Berri very often forgot that Libby was, indeed, Turbo's ex girlfriend, previous swap mate, someone that did a shred of life with a very different, rebellious version of Turbo that Berri never got the pleasure of meeting. She stared at Libby's figure, a beautiful being with gorgeous, long white hair, the bold tattoo that clad down her left arm, the pierce of her blue eyes, the determined stare on her face, Berri felt swallowed by intimidation. Clearly a woman of great wisdom, the whole fact that she was only recently created, though had ages of old memories, from another life, Berri could hardly wrap her mind around it. A shred of her wanted to pry Libby for information on just what kind of a boyfriend Turbo could potentially be, though she figured she should likely worry about that at another time.
"We only had Turbo to worry about," Ralph grumbled, though he shot Turbo a tender smile of teasing; this finally lifted the heaviness off of the group, if only for a second.
"I'm not going to game jump anymore, I promise," Turbo muttered with a bashful smile as he shifted on his feet, though as Tessa's voice pressed on, Berri gingerly sunk her elbow into the cushion of Turbo's sleeved upper arm; he merely cocked an eyebrow and shot her a sly, cheeky look of smiling irritation, as if to tell her to playfully knock it off.
"I've... Yet to look into these videos of memory files, here, because, well..." Tessa trailed off and shrugged, she gestured out to the group and finished her statement through a tired sigh, "I figured the more eyes, the better."
"Wh-what exactly are we about to see, here?" Rancis worried as he sagged his hands into his jean's pockets, clearly out of forcing himself to not give off an antsy vibe.
"We're really not sure," Zed muttered, cueing to Tessa's mild exhaustion, he warmly took a stance next to Tessa and, out of the silent show of his body language alone, he warmly took over the speaking of said palace meeting, "I'd assume an every day look at Eighteen's memories. Who knows, really... We'll just have to watch a few clips and find out. Is everyone okay with that?"
"User, okay," Rancis mumbled in agitation, he nervously shot Ralph a look, as if to insinuate that he maybe wasn't okay with it.
"I-I was only able to see snippets of it all," Berri chimed as Zed began to slowly cue open a few different memory files, in the form of playable videos, "D-does... Does everyone have these playable memories, like this?"
"Yeah, of course," Zed bobbed a nod, and although he figured he was just asking a very simple question, he almost snuck a small smile in his daughter's direction once he noticed Berri and Turbo shoot each other looks of silent, eager understanding. Zed inhaled a shaky breath and hovered his finger over the play button, on one of the first memories available, "Alright... Ready, everyone?"
"Ready," Only Libby, Wren, Berri and Tessa meeped, and with the gentle push of a button, the video blipped into existence.
In flickers of dark blues and blacks, an eerie scenery displayed before the group. It was fuzzy and seemed to hop around in gentle glitches of fuzzy confusion, as if this memory was becoming faded and old. It was a dark, careening valley of steep buildings, deadened code boxes and lazy, dusty streets of nearly nothing, and although everyone looked mildly confused, Ralph only barely muttered the words 'dark web' to the group of confused individuals. Upon realization, the scene gently began to change to the bounces of another memory. Much clearer this time, it showed a sea of Eighteen's breed, thousands of protectors with the angry coat of red markings, they seemed to be in the process of being corralled to a massive warehouse like structure. The game they were in was very dark, a blackened environment that had Zed visibly shrinking into himself in nervous understanding. He covered his mouth, and it was here did Zed lull his eyes closed and feel waves of information hit his brain in a wash of cold dread.
Berri frowned and glanced to her parents in a spike of rising terror, her eyes fixated to the foreign structures, the haunting glow of the blue architectural lights, the gorgeous lightning storm that splayed the horizon, she held her breath and flinched as the memory quickly trailed into something else. In the angry rush of protectors that now began to be hurried into the building, Eighteen's line of sight gently lofted over her shoulder and to the right, as if to be curious of her surroundings. Her line of sight flinched the second a few loud, deep, angry voices began to loudly bicker off to the side. Eighteen urgently began to look around as protectors continued to plow past her in a hurried fashion. Eighteen's figure slowed, and in the easy pan of finally focusing on the noise of said individuals, a few figures were seen off to the side, loudly yelling at each other. Berri clenched her muscles so to lean in a little harder, though she firmly flinched the second Turbo's posture suddenly stiffened and took a firm few steps towards the larger projection of the video before the group.
Turbo held his breath and could hardly believe his eyes, could hardly even believe his luck, as if the universe leaned down and kissed him right on top of his head. Turbo long blinked in a spike of entire terror, whole, unadulterated sorrow, the sheer reality of just what he was looking at, his heart sank into a black void of horror. The thirty years he had been honing his senses and trusting his gut feelings, he clenched his teeth and was entirely certain that said honing had flawlessly come to fruition, here in this raw moment. The plain sight of his little brother, Lash, loudly arguing with a few officials from Tron, said barren landscape, Turbo began to feel the anger in his circuits sky rocket, and although he didn't want anyone to see that scary, angry red gaze of his, he was worried he wasn't able to hold it back. Turbo firmly pointed and suddenly shot his angry golden stare straight into the King's shivering blue orbs.
"I KNEW IT," Turbo stabbed in a firm tone, one that nearly rattled the nearby code boxes, and in a raw, cold switch up, Turbo was well aware he had fully deserved the right to commandeer the palace meeting, from here. In a flick of his finger and the work of his own code room magic, he quickly paused the video in the perfect placement, so where everyone could see Lash in plain sight. Turbo wrinkled his nose and firmly pointed up to the screen, "I was right this ENTIRE time. And NONE of you wanted to listen to me! I KNEW Lash had a hand in this bullshit!"
"Turbo," Tessa eased nervously, it was here did everyone freeze, the sudden tension between the King, Queen and one of their loyal right hand men, everyone softly glanced to Rancis and Ralph in sheer, frozen terror.
"Lash has the answers to all of this! He can tell us EVERYTHING going on, right now, and we can nip it right at the root," Turbo loudly argued, a very strange and jarring visual, from such a soft and reserved individual; it was clear this was not something to be taken lightly, due to just how up in arms Turbo was getting.
"Turbo, we can't just sit him down and reason with him," Zed easily matched Turbo's tone, volume and demeanor, and although everyone very quickly believed this would immediately shut Turbo up, everyone was shocked to find that it did the exact opposite. Turbo inhaled a deep breath and took a challenging step towards Zed, his locked elbow and firm finger still heavily pointed up at the paused video of Lash's very clearly, candid figure in Tron's dark atmosphere.
"If you want answers, we HAVE to try," Turbo firmly argued, though Berri finally yanked herself out of the frozen shock she had been sat in and began to slowly ease to Turbo's aid, as if maybe she could calm hm down, here; she flinched and halted her tender footwork the second her father closed his and Turbo's gap and raised his fatherly voice into Turbo's fight or flight disposition.
"If we unbubble Lash, the whole game will be at risk... The whole ARCADE," Zed loudly affirmed, he peered his dominant, angry gaze tight into Turbo's and felt a vein in his forehead begin to bulge in a rile of manly feuding.
"Just give me TWO MINUTES with him, I've lived with the guy for the past THIRTY YEARS," Turbo loudly pressed, he clenched his fist and began to show a desperate side of mild begging. He narrowed his gaze and, although he was properly affirming that he was praying for Zed's approval, it was clear that he was on the verge of potentially doing whatever he needed to do, outside of the King's go-ahead, "Just strip him of his abilities, put him in read-only, ANYTHING. Just... Let me SPEAK to him!"
"We can't trust him, Turbo, this is ludicrous. Whose to say he'd even give you the right information, let alone ANY?" Zed firmly argued, he gestured his hand outwards and was well aware the frozen-in-terror group, about the two, was now getting a proper show they didn't ask for, "You saw how hard we fought to bring the game to normality! You really want to erase all of that?!"
"Do you trust me?" Turbo firmly stabbed, both boys were now merely a foot from each other's faces in raw challenge, they hovered tight in a very close range of potential swings to be thrown, though they reserved any physical anger as best as they could; Zed firmly dart his eyes about Turbo's face and felt his mind race with the only answer he could give Turbo.
"Of course I do," Zed stabbed in a hiss of rising, defeated despair, a cold feeling of the raw terror that was felt in the act of handing over control.
"Then unbubble him," Turbo demanded in the grit of his teeth, and although both boys hung in tight, angry eye contact, Zed caved, took a step away and gingerly cued for the main code room's master orb.
"Zed, what are you doing?" Tessa rushed in a faint, hushed tone of no longer concealed terror; Zed furrowed his eyebrows and shook his head.
"Hold your breath, keep your wits about you," Zed grunted in whole entire irritation, the group froze in cold terror as Zed's dominant voice carried on, "Let's get this over with..."
