Reviews :
Snake557 : Hey friend, thank you! I'm not actually positive. It's all about leaving my readers with JUST enough, it's kind of grey area. It has to be just a touch of whatever is happening. Too much, and it feels too cut in half. Too little, and it's confusing or doesn't hold weight it should. I'd say it's like balancing a scale - takes practice and troubleshooting :)
chuckiboo : You're definitely not wrong! I appreciate your support :)
Song Listened To :
Pray For Me by The Weeknd & Kendrick Lamar
*Chapter 223*
In a mess of a blur, the group quickly scrambled to push past security, to get away from barred off areas, to really see just exactly what was going on, and in the thick of the chaos, the group halted to very quickly assess. Berri held her breath and dart her vivid eyes about in a wild show of desperately trying to source the cause of panic; the hoards of the crowds that had gathered, both on the ground floor of the atrium and the higher levels, were now in a full-fledged stampede of true panic, running in all directions, though most importantly, steering entirely clear of the center of the atrium. With the gang of six now eagerly honed tight to just what was at the golden center of their massive, glistening atrium, three deleters looked as if they were previously lunging at the hoards and crowds, though due to Turbo's skillful handiwork and no visible show of any deletions, they began to back into each other in now worried confusion. Although the three had very quickly let up, the entire crowd continued to flee in a show of horrified desperation, screams that echoed high up the atrium walls and held onto the sound for an eternity to come.
"We have to somehow capture those deleters," Berri suddenly stabbed to Turbo, he largely furrowed his eyebrows and peered to her in a swathe of heightened desperation, his eyes very easily showed a healthy splay of full turquoise, as did Throttle's and Berri's.
"... CAPTURE?" Turbo choked over the chaos, though Theo suddenly pointed and immediately broke up what could potentially be a confused, loud argument between both heads.
"Who's THAT?" Theo barked in hot confusion, and with the whirl of Berri's and Turbo's attention back to the group of deleters, stood just before said deleters was a man, like a black drop of paint precisely dripped onto a pristine, white canvas, Turbo largely furrowed his eyebrows and felt frustration eat him alive.
"The man of the century," Turbo grunted, the crowd was now mostly dispersed, and though the confused screams could still be heard, Turbo inhaled a sharp breath, pushed past Theo and Berri and now embarked on a warpath.
Berri huffed a nervous noise and jolted her hand outward, so to potentially stop Turbo from stepping out, though it was too late. Berri cupped her hands to her chest in a show of confused urgency, and in the sharp, concerned mumble of Turbo's name, she flinched the second he sprawled his arms and hands out, to his side, and sourced his and Berri's lovely coding. With ease, his powerful figure pushed forth, a true King ready to defend his land, he pushed on with every last pixel of strength the station could harbor, the ripple of rose coding that easily began to manipulate the tiles about him, and in a final swing of lightning that nearly came forth from his finger tips, Turbo successfully caused an expansion of a domed-force field to encompass not only his family behind him, but the three deleters and the foe dead in his path. Easily a fifty foot dome, Turbo was eager to keep the danger contained, as well as any conversing, inside said dome, private from the public about them, albeit their panic. Turbo inhaled a deep breath, he exuded every ounce of power the Arcade had to offer, and although he was well aware he had five incredible gamers behind him, that would easily go to war with him, he glowered said haunting figure down and was well aware this was likely his fight.
"Well, would you look who FINALLY came out of hiding," This man belted with a mean laugh, though somehow, he had an alluring charm to him, as if he was willing to sit down and chat about the things that made him estranged from normalcy in the Arcade, a weird, friendly foe vibe that was terrifyingly palpable.
A tall, skinny figure not to be fooled for being frail or gangly, he was fit and stood strong. Although dressed in a cloak clearly of Tron attire, he wore a bit more casual attire, from said game, underneath. He dropped his hood, and for everything that he was, he still looked entirely charming, inviting, a strange sight to see. Aroq had jet black hair tidily over his forehead, lightly in his eyes, with length that stopped at his jaw. With skin nearly as sheet white as Throttle's and eyes as gold as Turbo's, he embodied the whole notion of a fallen angel. Although Turbo was keen on getting closer, Turbo nervously scuffed to a gentle stop about a dozen feet from Aroq, the three deleters that hung behind him were clearly waiting for Aroq's command. Although Turbo had never come face to face with deleters, he was only used to getting a glimpse at Eighteen's design, the friendly deleter that Beri had adopted. Unlike Eighteen, these three deleters, behind Aroq, had vivid, crimson red markings. As beautiful and haunting creatures as they were, Turbo wanted nothing more than to eradicate them immediately.
"You're one to talk," Turbo muttered, he cocked an eyebrow and dared to look about the scared crowd that had now mostly dispersed, though some stragglers remained in the higher wings of the atrium. He finally cocked an eyebrow and stabbed his becoming-orange gaze tight to Aroq's hauntingly golden irises, "Thanks for breaking up the party, we were really wondering how the hell we were going to get home."
"Oh, it's my pleasure, I just loving raining on any parade I see fit," Aroq chimed, his deep, crackly voice glossed the dome of a bubble everyone hung in, though he inhaled a long, irritated breath, of shown stalling, cocked an eyebrow and looked about in searching, as if he was now a little unsure as to even where he was, "Seems you've... Updated the virus protection on this dusty Arcade."
"It's kind of the point, to, I don't know... Keep us protected from viruses," Turbo stabbed, he pointed about the crowd, of which was now almost entirely gone, "You enjoy seeing things like this? Terrorizing innocent gamers? For what?"
"Well, you wouldn't understand, considering you've been living with your head in the sand, for the past thirty years," Aroq muttered through a grunt as he adjusted his heavy cloak. A gorgeous, nearly vanta-black sheen of a cloak that looked untouchable, topped off with a kiss of a blue glow within the lining of said cloak. Aroq eased a mean smile into Turbo's eyes and gave him a small shrug, "'Course... You're clearly not like the rest of us user-made gamers."
"Happily," Turbo huffed in a grunt, he raised his eyebrows and looked off before he apprehensively glanced to the three deleters that stood with Aroq. Huge, gangly beasts that had a similar physique to Chester. The creepiest set of eyes and fangs one ever did see, Turbo tried not to make his nervousness apparent. His eyes scanned the gorgeous, honeycombed circuit boarded dome above their heads, a proper span of about fifty feet, a glitching technique to keep sound inside said dome. Turbo tried to steady his breath, though his powerful chest finally expanded upon inhale, "You're outnumbered, no one here can be deleted but you and, ironically, your deleters."
"Well, cheers to that," Aroq gasped sarcastically, he hovered in a ghostly air of almost whispering aesthetic, as if the breath that left his body was a cold fog of hushed lore, a cold being with fire in his eyes. Aroq shook his head and merely glanced behind Turbo; across the stretch of about fifteen feet, Berri, Wren, Throttle, Tatum and Theo stood, all poised and ready to fight, braver than ever. Aroq pushed a guffaw of a laugh out of his throat, "Even with the disadvantage, I'm not worried. I'm just shocked this moment is finally... Here..."
"What moment?" Turbo quipped, full irritation and protection swathed his whole demeanor.
"THIS one, I'm actually... In your presence, once and for all," Aroq stated in airy loveliness, as if to show a genuine approach to this terrible situation, "Turbo Black... Arcade lore, haunting stories about how he'll steal your soul in the dead of night, he'll lure you to the farthest depths of a game jump, he'll make sure everyone in Arcade has muddied coding..."
Turbo felt his pupils tighten, and with a sudden jolt of quick thinking, he shot his rosy coding to the tiles underneath, in a lightning quick bolt of lightning through the grout lines, he suddenly did everything he could to grip the soles of Aroq's feet with his own coding, to grip him there so to properly defeat him, though the flicker of confused light made Turbo flinch in dreaded surprise. Like a blob of nervous information now intercepted by something tangible, Turbo felt his heart sink at the blatant sight of Aroq before him, merely just a near-perfectly disguised hologram. Turbo raised his eyebrows in hot surprise as the hologram blipped about in binary and finally pieced itself back together, though this clearly got Aroq's attention. Before Aroq could even get words out, Turbo pointed a firm finger and took a daring step closer to Aroq's figure.
"I'd rather be ALL of that and MUCH more than be a COWARD!" Turbo bellowed into the now fizzling coding of Aroq's hologram, a sight that could easily be pulled off as real life from a dozen feet away, "You came down here with LIVE deleters, to murder people... ALL from the comfort of your own home? Where ever the hell that is?"
"The internet is a wonderful place, my friend," Aroq's voice suddenly demanded, a tight command with success to garner everyone's attention. Turbo panted through his nose, his heart raced with hot frustration, the three deleters behind Aroq began to quietly snarl and show their teeth, as if to potentially show the readiness to strike, "You were clearly created with a great deal of power, one single gamer with the raw ability to get two whole, entire cabinets unplugged... No one, in Arcade history, has ever accomplished such a crazy act."
"Yeah, it's certainly my greatest accomplishment, losing every single person I loved, my home game and nearly everything it entailed," Turbo stabbed in a mocking tone, he glared Aroq down, narrowed his gaze and shook his head in disgust, "That's the difference between a man like you, and a man like me. My tally marks were an accident. Your's are premeditated. You can't convince me that anything, or anyone, on the internet is feeding you the promise that deleting self-programmed gamers is going to bear fruit."
"That's something you WOULD say, now that your code is messy," Aroq lilted without moving, he shook his head and gave Turbo a pitiful look of softer understanding, "Why don't you and your brothers just... Stop by. We'll reverse your coding, you don't have to stick up for this lifestyle, anymore. It's clear you're exhausted doing it, I mean, look at you."
"I'm not worried about myself or mine, I'm worried about the loss of innocent life, for no reason," Turbo stabbed, "It's senseless, it's genocide. And, I'm still floored by the fact that you came out here... As a hologram. I mean, can you BE more of a coward? Seriously, I want to know."
"You can call me names and point out the obvious of the situation all day long, my offer still stands," Aroq narrowed his gaze in soft sweetness and shrugged, "Remember your roots... It's clear you game jumped for a reason, there was something in you that desired to be the best of the best."
Turbo furrowed his eyebrows and did absolutely everything he could to make it so Aroq wasn't under his skin. He inhaled a shaky breath through his nose and desperately held his tight composure, making sure not to give Aroq a single ounce of ammunition, here.
"Hell, you could probably even compete in Game Over and you'd win," Aroq shrugged, his eyes pierced Turbo's with a soft show of luring desire, "You know what THOSE winners get, right?"
Turbo shook his head and felt memories plague him; the whole process he went through to properly sign up for Game Over, he sagged his shoulders and was well aware it was the rewards that only the last man standing was gifted. A hypnotizing fantasy, an addiction that could seemingly be hard to deter from, though Turbo knew the different route he decided to take, landed him with all the riches in Arcade that he could ever want. He shook his head once more, with more fervor, and shrugged.
"Money's not going to hold me at night, neither is fame or whatever else the winner of Game Over gets," Turbo muttered, he knew, full well, there was absolutely no convincing Aroq of his tender findings, he lulled his eyes closed and tried to quell his frustration, the sheer fact that he was in Aroq's presence, though the hologram made it clearly impossible to stop Aroq, the very notion of being so close yet so far.
"It's your nasty coding, yeah?" Aroq cocked an eyebrow and grinned, "You can't tell me all those things don't at least seem nice."
"It's the woman, and family, I choose to do life with," Turbo gently corrected, "It does sound nice... But what's here is nicer. I just don't understand why you can't just keep your nose out of Litwak's Arcade's business. If you want to do life on the internet and cowardly come back to torture us, there has to be a better reason. There has to be."
"Surely the mystery of the century," Aroq teased with a mean grin, he gestured his hand a little, though Turbo took a nervous step back as this seemed to entice and rile the three deleters about Aroq, "Once you discover that reason, you'll look back on this conversation as the fond memory it'll be... The memory where you had the chance to pivot, to REALLY redo life like the Arcade relic you are. Self programmed gamers aren't going to do anything to further that notion, for you. There's nothing they can do that you can't do ten times greater. It's a shame you've stooped to their level."
Turbo flinched in a jolt the second Aroq suddenly snapped his fingers, and with said single sound, the three deleter's suddenly lurched into action. With their pupils suddenly shrinking to slits, the horrific belts of their natural, howl of a haunting scream, the suddenly scraping of their claws to properly begin taking their diving shots for Turbo. He grit his teeth and immediately thought to take off in a messy bounce of glitching hopping, though before his coding could rocket him forward, a being suddenly took a graceful, educated lunge right in front of Turbo and swung with such concise accuracy. Turbo jolted in hot surprise the second he caught mere flashes of Wren's gorgeous jade swords catching the glint of the atrium's sunlight, the thick, lightning quick slice of the sharpest, hardest material to cleanly severe the closest deleter's head from its' body. Turbo remained frozen as Wren skillfully doubled-back, spun and sliced his second sword downward, as fast as a single bolt of lightning coming down to just barely kiss the land below.
Although the deleters immediately spilled into a mess of pixel-cubes of deletion, blood still splattered the glossy tiles about the three, and with a third, heavy thud of a slice, Wren's deep voice grunted in a proper deletion of the final deleter. With a perfect show of manifested endurance and strength, Wren grit his teeth in boiling anger, stood up straight in front of Turbo and urgently stabbed his sword inches from Aroq's hologram's eyes. Wren heavily panted, he had blood speckled on his forearms and chest, and with the kiss of bloody freckles across the bridge of his nose, Wren cocked an eyebrow and dared to give Aroq a mean smile. Turbo glanced to the back of Wren's head in hot surprise before he dragged his eyes to Aroq's, who equally looked surprised, though was doing a good job at hiding it. Turbo huffed a shaky chuckle and shook his head in dumbfounded surprise.
"It's clear they're FAR more superior than us, I mean, you got all that, right?" Turbo stabbed with a hearty laugh of hot shock, "I wasn't the only one that just witnessed this self-programmed gamer fully delete three deleters with nothing but ten seconds and two swords, right?"
"Wish you were here," Wren chimed in a cute lilt of full sarcasm, though with a gentle lunge, Wren stabbed Aroq's hologram right through the chest and it easily blobbed about before vanishing for good.
What was left of the six was a dome still tightly concealed by Turbo's and Berri's lovely coding, blood-stained tiles and a disheveled understanding that upon aving questions answered, more questions surfaced. Wren inhaled a shaky breath and peered his nervous eyes tight to Turbo's, and though Turbo was still rocked off the face of Arcade, the sheer amount of physical skill and talent Wren hid daily, Turbo knew this was a much broader spectrum of uncertainty, a situation which now unfortunately involved the internet, the notion of Aroq gaining numbers from an unlimited source had Turbo's head swimming. Knowing the gang needed to go back to the drawing board and really figure out how to protect the Arcade, Turbo eyed Wren in nervous knowing, the raw fact that both men would've taken their shot, on Aroq, had he actually been brave enough to show up, to leave the safety of his hide out and endure the public, like the scared, tortured souls before him.
A/N :
Hey guys, just a small update. My husband and I made the decision to make it so I'm a full time student and nothing more, whilst I attending Ringling College of Art and Design. Working with the public, in this pandemic, has been nothing short of awful, having nearly fried my mental health. This following week is the last legitimate 'full' week at my job (I'm still employed, just now a seasonal worker) and I'm going to finish it off strong without distraction. I need time to catch up on chapters and really flesh out where this is all going, so I'll be returning Sunday the 23rd to upload Chapter 224. I'm pretty excited to fully dive into school, and not be distracted with work. I'm blessed to be in this position, and I'm thankful my husband has helped maneuver so my mental and emotional health no longer suffers. I'm super grateful for him, and for the blessings in my life. I appreciate your guys' support, let me know what you guys think of everything so far!
Like said, I'll be back Sunday the 23rd. Hope you guys are well!
