Reviews :
Awesome Stories May Occur : Hey, thank you so much! I appreciate all the support and love. I personally think dreading or anticipating trauma to be too overbearing, and voicing that, wouldn't benefit Turbo. Ralph knew to start him off slow, due to past experiences. Had be mentioned Turbo's trauma, Turbo probably would've just tunnel visioned on it and it would've likely been worse lol. I'm glad you're enjoying the character development and such! Lash's redemption arc will definitely be one for the books.
Nikki Firesong : Thank you SO much! I obviously adore the movie, but I too thought that Turbo, and his counterparts, had SO much potential for expansion, so I just ran with it - and I'm sure glad I did! And yes, Mara and Berri have a bit of a reconciliation chapter coming up - you will for sure being seeing more of her, and how she reacts to Lash being around all the time. and YES of course! If you'd like spoilers, PM me with your questions and I'll reveal at my discretion :)
chuckiboo : Thank you friend! :) And YES! I have a WIP of Lash and Mara I'll try and get uploaded shortly here. It will go to my insta as usual.
Song Listened To :
Sky Diving by Lights
*Chapter 218*
With a pop of electric red coding, Lash choked a small noise of confusion and shook his head a little. With boggled eyes, he urgently looked about and quickly tried to assess where he was, though he was certainly in a place he had never been before. Due to the clues that hit his retinas in hot confusion, he sharply furrowed his eyebrows and quickly realized he had been teleported to Berri's bedroom. Just as he was due to opening his mouth and making very blatantly clear that he was inside the sacred, fresh and secretive depths of Berri's private bedroom, he tossed his gaze across the sunny place and jolted in hot, terrified confusion the second Berri stepped out of her bathroom, topless.
"Holy SHIT," Lash barked as he urgently flagged his hands, ducked his head, slapped his nervous hands to his eyes and firmly turned about.
"WHAT THE HELL MAN!" Berri shrieked in mortified confusion as she yanked her clean shirt tight over her bare breasts and ducked back into her bathroom.
"Holy shit, I'm so sorry, I-I... I was teleported to wherever you were because I was given permission to talk to you!" Lash urged hotly across Berri's bedroom, his heart began to race in terrified confusion as he kept his eyes shut tight, he urgently began to mutter nervous notions towards himself, though loud enough for Berri to hear, "Shit, man, I-I... I should've made more noise or... User, for fuck's sake, I'm... User I'm so sorry..."
"It's fine, it's... Fine," Berri grunted in hot agitation as she straightened out her sports bra, as well as the thin grey cami she had corrected over her body. She furrowed her eyebrows in sharp agitation and fixated her eyes on Lash's figure, across the way.
Berri just barely softened, put her hands on her hips and caught her breath. She peered to the back of Lash's head and sagged her shoulders as she could hear him continue to mutter nervous, mortified notions to himself, his hands still tightly slapped over his eyes. His shoulders were scrunched tight, his back hunched, he looked as if he was potentially doing everything he could to teleport himself away, though he was entirely powerless. Berri cocked an eyebrow and peered to Lash in a further, softened show of immediate understanding. She wondered just who had given him permission to chase after her, as such, and quickly gathered that it had to have been no one other than her own mother. Frustrated, in her full disguise of short brown hair and ready to escape to Orion City, she huffed a hard, annoyed sigh and tossed her eyes up to her high ceiling, simply as if this was likely her mother's way of knowing, full well, that Berri was due to running away, and putting Lash dead in front of her was palace rule.
"Lash, it's... Fine, I'm dressed," Berri finally muttered, he finally stood up a little straighter and warily peered his vividly minty gaze tight over his shoulder; Berri felt her heart jolt with surprise, having never seen any other color from Lash prior, though she held it in strictly for the fact that she wanted to appear entirely annoyed.
"I'm... Really sorry," Lash muttered in tired sorrow, he raised his eyebrows and gave a very good, solid show of terrified humility, though Berri shook her head and knew it wouldn't last long.
"It's fine," Berri mumbled as she looked down to her workout gear, she straightened out her shirt and gave Lash a cheeky little smile of whole annoyance, "I thought you'd at least buy me dinner, first."
"Yeah, right," Lash huffed a sharp exhale of a laugh and looked off with a wide, nervous grin.
"Wait'll Turbo hears this," Berri pressed nonchalantly, though Lash raised his eyebrows and stabbed his eyes tight to Berri's; they immediately lost all color.
"You wouldn't," Lash stabbed in hushed terror, to which Berri shrugged and looked up in coy, girly tease.
"I might," Berri's velvety voice lilted in cuteness, though Lash knew to not be fooled, for underneath all of it was solid frustration, Queenly dominance that was only rivaled by the Queen herself.
Lash furrowed his eyebrows and very quickly realized the ball was in his court, in this conversation; he lazily crossed his arms after gesturing to Berri's phone, lazily schlepped to the gorgeously crafted white wooden table she stood near, "Alright, then, go for it."
"... What?" Berri wondered in soft, deflated innocence.
"Tell Turbo, text him now," Lash shrugged in exaggeration and looked off in cute, boisterous nonchalance, "Text him and tell him I just walked in on you half naked."
"I'm not going to tell him now," Berri muttered, now knowing that Lash knew his strength, here.
"Well, why not?" Lash wondered in hugely sarcastic, wistful sighing. He boggled his eyes in joking, mean jabbing and gave Berri a largely sarcastic, dumbfounded look, "You two are on good terms, surely you could just message him NOW right?"
Berri rolled her eyes and looked down to her feet, the cute disguise she was wearing, that Turbo gave her, as Bailey, caused her now short, choppy, brown hair to fall in front of her vivid blue eyes. She heaved a long, hot sigh through her nose and was feeling the adrenaline of needing to be right very quickly wear off.
"Wait a minute," Lash hissed in mean, nonchalant delight as he fingered his lip and looked off for a moment, "You guys... AREN'T on good terms, what the heck do we do now Bailey?"
"Eat shit, dude, I'm pissed, okay?" Berri suddenly stabbed, her icy eyes pierced Lash's, though only for seconds did it purely intimidate him before his slump of submission rose from the dead.
"What happened, you guys rush away to The End, Tessa barges in to Turbo's loft and BEGS me to come mediate?" Lash's words sauntered on in a trail of smiling, irritated discovery, "You're frustrated that Turbo has your powers now, and, oh... I don't know... Now feels anger at a more heightened rate?"
"He threw me under the bus," Berri huffed as she rubbed her forehead, she firmly stood from her lean, on her doorframe, and irritatedly gestured to Lash, "Look, I'm headed to the gym, I don't really feel like talking right now. Can we just do this later?"
"The gym?" Lash narrowed his gaze in boyish confusion, though Berri bugged her eyes in hard irritation and gestured to her outfit.
"Disguise? Sports bra? Shorts? Running shoes," Berri firmly listed, "ALL a great combination for a celebrity undercover that doesn't want to be bothered at a public gym."
"... Okay, Hannah Montana," Lash grunted with a hard laugh and a grin that only spread at the sight of Berri's further irritation, complete with a solid eye-roll. Lash tried to quell his laughter, he rubbed his jaw and, although his grin was just as contagious as Turbo's, he softened and narrowed his creepy golden gaze, knowing, full well, he had to keep Berri here for as long as he could, "How did he throw you under the bus?"
"I wrecked his wall, the other day, cause I was arguing with Gunner on the phone," Berri stabbed as she began to gather her phone and keys, she looked as if she was prepared to press to her teleport pad, though Lash was largely in her way, "He told my grandpa that he had seen 'other wreckers' lose their cool, in a bout of anger, before..."
"Clearly talking about you," Lash shrugged nonchalantly, he furrowed his eyebrows and peered to Berri in soft confusion, "What's the problem?"
"It felt like a jab, we always go on about being more open and honest with our emotions, it just felt like he was using that one instance against me," Berri hurried on, she jostled her keys and phone and gave Lash an irritated look of impatience, "Want me to teleport you back to the loft? I gotta go."
"What, you make an appointment with a treadmill?" Lash stabbed with an incredulous grin, he was well aware he had the makings of pushing every single last one of Berri's buttons, all at once. Lash gestured his hand a little and gave Berri a serious glower, though he tried not to look too sinister, "The ellipticals are just way too irresistible? For User's sake. The workout can wait."
"For WHAT," Berri huffed in exasperated irritation, clearly due to bubbling over, though Lash looked off in soft contemplation and allowed the silence to deafen the room in pondering.
"We all say stupid shit when we're mad, you and I BOTH know he'll apologize, you'll forgive him, and you won't miss your nine p.m. code swap," Lash muttered darkly, to which Berri froze and peered tight to Lash's intelligent, creepy gaze. Although his eyes were obviously similar to Turbo's, they were a bit more vertically rectangular, making his gaze likely the hardest to endure, "This isn't about some stupid he-said she-said bullshit. This isn't about Turbo now having to control a whole world of emotion now made harder to get a grip of. This is about getting to the root of the problem."
"What are you saying?" Berri pressed gently, she narrowed her gaze and softened her stance, making clear to Lash that he had successfully gotten her to derail from her impending departure.
"Allow me to tell you a little story... You got time?" Lash dared, he squinted and side-eyed Berri in almost mean cheek, and though Berri inhaled a deep breath and was prepared to argue Lash into next week, she heaved said breath through her nose in hot irritation and shifted on her feet.
"... I got time," Berri muttered hesitantly, she glossed her urgently annoyed eye contact about her sunny bedroom before she finally brought her curious, hurt, irritated gaze tight to Lash's once more.
"Once upon a time, in a magical little sugary land called Sugar Rush, Turbo Black, Whiplash Black and Rancis Fluggerbutter were essentially all crammed into one measly code box... This was LONG before even Tessa was a blip on Ralph's and Vanellope's radar," Lash's deep voice pressed, the cadence in his usual tone was delightfully sagged into something a bit more sinister, something sweetly haunting, his creepy eyes hooked tight to Berri's, and it was in this tender switch up did Berri freeze and understand that Lash was being dead serious, here. She felt her heart begin to pound in a bout of remembered fear, the very gaze that stabbed into Berri's mother's eyes, all that time ago, shivering in Sugar Rush's code room, dangling above The End. Berri swallowed and felt Lash's whole demeanor commandeer the attention of the game, every pixel of it. He just barely took the slowest, sauntering steps forward, towards Berri, their gap was about a dozen feet, "Us, as one unit, wrote Wreck-It Ralph a note, pretending to be Vanellope, saying that we had no time to be messing around with a silly wrecker, that we had responsibilities and it was time to let go, to go separate ways. We just wanted Ralph out of the picture."
Berri frowned and peered tight to Lash's eyes in hot confusion, a story she had likely never heard in such depth before, she held her breath and now quickly began to wonder just where this was going. Lash's slow footwork braved yet another molasses step forward.
"Shortly thereafter, Sugar Rush was taken out of Litwak's temporarily for our upgrade... The upgrade you see before you," Lash pressed darkly as he gestured to himself, "When we were wheeled back to Litwak's to be plugged back in, unfortunately to End of Line station, the game was rebooted, and us three, as one unit, were separate for a short amount of time."
"Lash, WHAT does this have to do with anything?" Berri finally unveiled in solid frustration, though Lash continued to press slowly closer to Berri in tight reveal, his stern voice got a little louder.
"What I managed to get a glimpse of, in Litwak's backroom, was the one thing keeping me inside Sugar Rush," Lash firmly pressed, his golden eyes stabbed tight to Berri's as he finally got within six feet of her, "Aroq didn't just promise me richest beyond my wildest dreams, had I turned Turbo over to him and his band of crazy, internet, darkweb deleters."
Berri raised her eyebrows in soft nervousness and now knew that no matter the stab of her irritation, Lash absolutely could not be shaken from his sudden warpath of a topic. Berri sagged her shoulders and peered tight to Lash's eyes, he looked as if he had been bubbling with this information for a hot minute, something Berri couldn't quite nail down.
"Aroq promised me my own home game," Lash hissed as he squinted his eyes for emphasis, "And I turned it down because the brother that game gave me, was far more important than the game itself..."
Berri felt her heart race, her eyes scanned Lash's face in soft confusion, and though she knew the two had touched on this fragile conversation before, she felt her veins pulse at the rush of an idea that it was now becoming a bit more hastily exposed.
"Turbotime?" Berri barely whispered, to which Lash long-blinked in approval.
"You want to solve all of these problems, you want to erase all the trauma Turbo is piggybacking?" Lash wondered darkly as he began to nearly hover over Berri, she raised her eyebrows in collected bewilderment and felt her blood run cold, "Plug Turbotime back in."
"You really expect me to... To just..." Berri staggered in soft defeat, she gestured her hand in rising terror and bugged her eyes, "LEAVE?"
"You wouldn't go alone," Lash humbly concluded, though his tone and demeanor was as still as glass.
"... You just want to have your cake and eat it too," Berri retort calmly, she put her hand on her hip and gestured to Lash's chest as he finally slowed his footwork, he hung a few feet before Berri and kept his haunting eyes tight to her's in hot curiosity, "You really think you're going to be able to rush into Tron, bypass the greatest villain we've come up against, an ARMY of deleters and who knows how many internet friends Aroq has amassed?"
"It's either do or die," Lash darkly pressed, to which Berri frowned and sharply pierced her gaze to Lash's in defeated surprise, "It's either we plug Turbotime back in and amass enough attention to make clear to Aroq that we can't be messed with, or... We continue to live in an Arcade that's going to eventually be ripped apart by deleters..."
Berri's shivering orbs peered into Lash's golden gaze, he grit his teeth and concluded his notions.
"One... Faux-code... At a time," he huffed quietly.
"Lash, how do I even know if I can trust you?" Berri stabbed suddenly as she gestured her arm outwards, "You REALLY want me to steal my dad's light disc, haul ass all the way to Tron, ESCAPE through the portal and plug Turbotime back into Litwak's? You make it sound so easy. You make it sound so..."
"Great?" Lash stabbed, Berri glowered him down.
"Too good to be true," Berri sharply retort, "Look, I'm not an idiot. I saved Sugar Rush as a LOADING BAR."
"All the more reason to save Turbotime as a full-grown faux-code," Lash skillfully volleyed, to which Berri faltered and peered to Lash in hot defeat, "You, my lady, are a rare breed... You have Sugar Rush, Dead Zed, Fix-It Felix Jr., and now..."
Berri panted through her nose and looked off in sharp, concluded dread, a frustrating feeling to marinate in, especially so kindly delivered by the one guy everyone loved to hate and hated to love.
"... Turbotime is your home, now, too," Lash sweetly laid on her heart, she sagged her shoulders and held her forehead in nervous realization, as if she had never even thought of this notion before. She desperately peered up into Lash's eyes, as if to express that she wished the two had never had this conversation, "Look, you don't have to act now. We've had this conversation before... Turbotime exists, and if you ever garner the courage to jump ship and reset Tron's coding while you're at it, you're going to need me."
"I wouldn't go without you, Lash," Berri stabbed in a hiss of a whisper, as if she didn't even want to verbally entertain the idea. She shook her head and felt tears sting her eyes, she looked off and held her hand to her forehead in continued distress, "How do I even know if I can trust you, Lash? You've caused so much grief, you've... Done SO much damage."
"And yet, here I am... Doing everything I can to help," Lash muttered in smiling irritation as he gestured to himself, "I could so easily take this cute, little phone from you... A phone in which likely holds remote access to the code room, right?"
"Lash," Berri mumbled nervously as Lash so delicately plucked Berri's phone from her hand, Lash raised his eyebrows and gently gestured to her phone.
"I could SO EASILY... Cue up all the right coding, rearrange everything all over again, spread you guys to all corners of the game, steal Zed's light disc and have my way with the entirety of this Arcade..." Lash pressed meanly as he held Berri's phone in his hand, and though he didn't cue her phone to unlock or do anything to make Berri believe he had bad intentions, she froze and desperately peered into his eyes as they shared in a hover of loyalty and betrayal. Berri held her breath as Lash heaved a soft sigh and tenderly set her phone on the table next to the two, his lovely, golden eyes hooked tight to Berri's in soft honesty, softness Berri had been seeking for this entire conversation and felt as if she had struck gold upon finally retrieving it. Lash exhaled a shaky breath through his nose, shook his head, looked down for a moment before giving Berri his shivering eye contact, "... I couldn't do all that, again, knowing what I know now."
Berri exhaled a silent, shaky breath through her nose, darted her eyes down to her phone and finally allowed her eyes to melt tight into Lash's honest, now vulnerable eye contact. She softened as their tones became hushed and secretive, "What would that be?"
"... I didn't really realize you could have more than one home. I didn't... Realize you could love others as your own, even if they're not code related to you," Lash pressed in sweet, though almost silent desperation. He peered deep into Berri's eyes and frowned, "This wouldn't be something I'd want just for me, or just for Turbo... This is a chance to show the Arcade just how great Turbotime is, how beautiful the city of Vidrix really is. A place where my future nieces and nephews could link themselves to with pride..."
"Whiplash," Berri huffed in quiet, grief stricken defeat, though she eased a bittersweet smile and looked down to her feet in pure dilemma.
"If not for me, or for Turbo, please... Please, for the future to come," Lash's voice was just barely a hushed whisper; he narrowed his gaze and peered deep into Berri's eyes, a full show of humble pleading, he shook his head and long-blinked, "There's a hole the size of the moon in our hearts... And just knowing Turbotime is in Litwak's, gathering dust... It exists, it just needs to be plugged back in."
"How can you be so sure Mr. Litwak still HAS it?" Berri entertained, she felt her heart continue to race at all the ideas coming to her.
"I can't be," Lash mumbled as he looked down to his hands, he twiddled his fingers, "Your mother and father were the last beings to leave. I doubt you could get any information from them."
"I could try and pry at my mother," Berri sighed as she rubbed her temple in rising stress, "Dad wouldn't entertain giving me any ideas, but... Mom..."
"... Seems like the fun parent," Lash mumbled cutely, he eyed Berri for an answer, to which she grinned and shrugged.
"Hooo, it greatly depends," Berri urged as she tidied her short, dark brown hair. She heaved a heavy sigh and tried to bring herself from the depths of this conversation, "Alright, Lash, alright... Look... I'll think about it. We have our concert in Arcadia this weekend, but... I'll think about it, okay?"
"Your family thinks I came here to iron shit out between you and Turbo," Lash mumbled, though before he could carry on, Berri raised her eyebrows and looked off.
"I mean, you more or less did... You're right," Berri stated in sorrowful defeat, "HE'S the reason his home is gone. I'm sure that heavy of a thought isn't easy to live with. I've been selfish..."
"No, you just... Don't know exactly what we've been through," Lash shrugged as he looked about, though he brought his diligent eyes back to Berri and concluded his sentiments, "But if you'll let me, I'll make sure you're properly filled in."
