Song Listened To - New Eden by Mirror's Edge Original Videogame Score
*Chapter 141*
Zed froze his entire being and, amidst trying not to look too surprised, he swallowed, with much difficulty, and suddenly felt as if him and Tessa were magnets. As if getting out of this mess took the teamwork of each other, nothing more, nothing less. He could feel Tessa diligently worm closer to him, though she kept a cool air about herself, so not to seem too startled. He choked a small noise and held his solid stare straight into Mr. Litwak's tired eyes, his bushy brows furrowed into his larger glasses, though he clumsily adjusted them on the bridge of his noise and gave Zed a rather inquisitive look.
"I'll be darned," Mr. Litwak muttered under his breath, though through the silent stiffness of the old carpeted arcade, Zed's ears pricked to so much as the sound of the silence of the coursing electricity through the very games he called his home.
"E-Excuse us, we were... just-" Zed choked out.
"A-Arcade's closed, kids," Mr. Litwak grumbled kindly through a bewildered smile, though he held his intuitive gaze straight into Zed's soul, as if he was immediately onto them. Tessa felt her skin grow cold, though she remained silent, just like instructed.
"Right," Zed breathed through a collected smile, as he tried his hardest to convey understanding and casualness, "We got a call from an employee, here, late last night. A call about a cabinet not working the way it should. W-we showed up, last night, to fix the problem, but the arcade was already closed."
"Ah, one of 'em buggers must've made it known that I like to stop by on Sunday and spruce up the place, hmm," Mr. Litwak sighed as he sagged his old hands into his properly creased khakis, his eyes lovingly glossed over Fix-It Felix Jr. Tessa raised her eyebrows in scared stillness and let her eyes subtly scan the screen, as if any sign of the arcade life reassured her that it wasn't all just a dream.
"Yes," Zed scoffed as he looked down to the carpet that clearly once held a more solid amount of color, though he hooked his gaze into Mr. Litwak's and tried to seem confident, "We figured this was probably the best time to come take a look at it. Wh-while there were no kids in the arcade."
"No, no, wouldn't want to disappoint the kids," Mr. Litwak breathed through a huff of a sigh and lazily let his eyes gloss over Tessa's father's homeland, once more. He lovingly slid his hand onto the worn buttons and smirked, "Hope you're not gunna mess with this, here, gem."
"No, w-we got called about-"
"Sugar Rush?" Mr. Litwak stated sharply, though with all the kindness in the world. He averted his gaze to Zed's, though his curious eyes hooked into Tessa's, "Looks as if she's had a bit of a downgrade issue. That game got revamped a few years back."
"Yeah, we were told it's just a simple memory glitch, just needs a nudge or two in the right direction," Zed stated casually. His eyes softly glanced about, in search for Sugar Rush. His heart jolted once he saw it in his peripheral; so close yet so far. His fingers itched to get to work so they could finally go home.
"I'm sure you guys know just what to do," Mr. Litwak chimed with a kind smile, though he tucked his hands politely behind his back, as well as the soft cloth he was using to clean the game cabinet with. He tenderly moved around Tessa and Zed, and began to worm his way towards the direction of his office.
"Uh," Zed stammered as the two slowly turned around to keep their eyes on the more than curious situation before them, "Thank you. We'll be out of your hair in no time."
"Not a bother," Mr. Litwak's voice crackled, he scrunched his expression to that of a delightful smile as he turned heel, though he carefully whirled around and raised his finger in contemplation, "Oh, and if you must know... The first door on your left. Align the disc just to the right degree, or else all your hard work might be all for not."
Zed raised his eyebrows in dewed concern as Mr. Litwak wrinkled his look to that of scheming knowing, though he still held the same amount of kindness. He finally turned around and moseyed in a painfully slow saunter back to his office. Zed felt his heart throb in needy fear, as if he was now certain he'd have to work as fast and as accurately as he possibly could. Just as Mr. Litwak slipped down the long hallway, across the arcade, Zed urgently reached for Tessa and gripped her upper arms in a fit of adrenaline that hit them both like a nuclear bomb. He exhaled a shaky sigh and, as she slid her trembling hands to the undersides of his arms, as if them touching helped keep her brain firing on all cylinders, she gazed into his eyes in a scared manner.
"He knows," Zed said above the faintest, shakiest whisper, "Listen to me Tess, there's no time to sit and dilly-dally with the cabinets, or see if we can say hi to anyone from the outside."
"How do you know he knows?" Tessa nearly whispered so quietly, she could hardly feel her mouth form the words. She inhaled a nervous, shaky breath, shook her head and felt tears sting her eyes.
"Because he just gave me directions on how to get back to Tron with my light disc," Zed rushed as he squeezed Tessa's arms, "C'mon. We don't know if he's on our side or not. We can't chance anything, here. We need to make like Felix, and get out... Get in, rather."
"Okay," Tessa hissed with another nod of approval.
Before the two could sit and question just every single still, dreaded worry that hung in the stiff air around them, Zed gripped her hand and kindly began to lead her over to Sugar Rush's cabinet. Tessa caught her breath and, in poised, bewildered surprise, she quietly assessed the totally foreign and bizarre situation at hand. She let her eyes gloss over the cabinet in pure wonder, just how curious everything felt. How large, and how small, certain aspects of her life suddenly looked. As they neared the cabinet, Tessa scoffed a small laugh of incredulous delight and let her small fingers run over the worn, solid metal and plastic of the cabinet's steering wheel. The pedals on the ground, the gear shift, and odometer on the dash. She could hardly believe how it all looked from the user's point of view. She wrinkled her nose and smiled an almost annoyed smile; she knew, inside the game, the carts were vicious, gorgeous, and dangerously fast. Nothing like the way the cabinet looked, with its kid friendly, juvenile look. She figured the downgraded version catered to the children, though once the game was revamped, it appealed to an older audience as well.
The game quietly ran through a small demo of gameplay, where she could see Minty, Jubileena and a few other of her known racers carelessly flying through the bizarre, cheerier looking courses. Far different and more pixelly than she ever was used to. Her race tracks and upgraded circuits held onto a sophisticated beauty, a raw, enchanted wonder that you'd have to see to believe. She furrowed her eyebrows and almost wished she could show the humans just how beautiful Sugar Rush really was. A wilderness deep in the clutches of everything sweet and sour, mysterious and frosted with that certain cold bite of dangerous delight Tessa craved on the daily; she knew others, in the Arcade, could relate. Tessa let her eyes get lost in the images she was only sort of used to, though she noticed Zed softly fumbling with something behind the cabinet. She noticed his hands reaching for the plug, just near the now small Game Central Station, which was the extension cord that Sugar Rush, and dozens of other games, were plugged into. Tessa felt her skin get hot with fear as his hand jiggled the cord a little.
"Zed!" Tessa quietly cried as she lunged and flung her arm out, which caused Zed to largely flinch.
"What is it?" Zed hissed in a scared tone as he dropped the cord and gave her a bewildered look of concern.
"Zed you can't unplug them, they'll... They'll!-"
"Tessa, I have no choice, I have to unplug them!" Zed urged to her, quietly, "I can't open the back of the cabinet and start prodding at plugs and such while it's still plugged in. Electricity isn't a human's friend, here on Earth."
"What? You'll be fine, what's a little jolt?" Tessa naively argue.
"Tessa, I'd get electrocuted... I could die," Zed stated dully as he gestured his hand, though he chuckled a little, at the fact that they both were still trying to navigate this bizarre planet.
"Zed, I'm sure you can still work with everything plugged in, I don't want to do that to everyone," Tessa argued nervously, though Zed peered back down at the wire still solidly plugged into Game Central Station.
"I guess I can try... Help me move Sugar Rush aside, then," Zed instructed as he pushed his strong palms to the back side of Sugar Rush and gestured for Tessa to do the same.
The two grunted quietly and pushed Sugar Rush to the side, so to reach the back compartments of the cabinet, where the key components and the computer lay in hidden wait. Tessa huffed a small sigh, dusted her hands off, and watched as Zed pulled out his materializer, carefully assessed the back of the cabinet, and began to materialize himself the proper tools to get into the back of the game. Tessa bit her lip in hard, jittery anxiousness and looked over her shoulder, towards the hallway where Mr. Litwak's office remained. She heaved a sigh through her nose and turned her attention back to Zed once she heard the dusty pop of the game cabinets back hinges come undone. She raised her eyebrows in growing curiosity and finally knelt down to the ground, with Zed. He meticulously began to hook up a few wires from his materializer to the computer and motherboard of Sugar Rush's computer, though he winced and grimaced a few times, so to avoid being zapped. He bit his bottom lip and, once everything was wired properly, he relaxed his knelt positioning, on his legs a little more, and breathed a small sigh, as if to be relieved and to prepare himself in one breath.
Zed bit his bottom lip harder concentration and let his eyes jolt about his materializer. He scrunched his expression and was pleased to see the hologram and wiring, of his little device, softly lift a decent sized display above it, with its usual, calm blue lights. A proper terminal of Sugar Rush's computer, the very inner workings that operated as the code room, and hull, that Tessa knew so well. Tessa raised her eyebrows in baited surprise and knelt just a little closer to just what Zed was about to dive into. She lightly glanced at him, he carefully set the materializer on top of a small ledge, inside the housing of the cabinet, and began to swipe at a few options on the small computer screen hologram before him.
"Deleting his code?" Tessa wondered; she knew working with the coding of a computer, from this standpoint, was near foreign, though the coding genius inside her still picked up on all the cues; like trying to figure out how to ride a unicycle from a bicycle.
"No, no," Zed gave her a worried glance, "If I delete him entirely, Rancis will go with him. I need to be careful about this..."
"Sooo... If you can't delete Radex entirely, then what, he's still going to be in the game?" Tessa worried.
"Aha," Zed scoffed as he brought down a drop down index, "What needs to happen, is we need to knock Radex's title down. He's currently the admin of the whole entire game... He owns the code. We need to quickly alter his status, in the game. Give that kind of administrative privilege back to your mother."
"So, from there, he'll just be a silly being in the game," Tessa droned on as she tucked her hair behind her right ear and softly pointed at the hologram. It read Radex's name, his stats, and his title over the game; head admin.
"Essentially... But we don't want him around, anymore," Zed assured as he tabbed into Radex's properties, "We need to somehow merge his coding back into Rancis's coding. Make two halves one, once more. Radex is essentially Rancis's dark side."
"But then... Wouldn't my uncle just become really mean and unstable, like Radex?" Tessa pressed, she lightly held her hand to Zed's forearm and gave him a worried look, as if to tell him that he needed her permission before carrying on; he caught on, and softly stopped his motions.
"Everyone's got a dark side, Tess..." Zed quietly urged, his deep voice finally hovered over Tessa, as if to assure her that he had moved his whole attention to her, "Radex is Rancis's dark side... The only reason Radex is so powerful is because he is separated from Rancis, who is wholly good."
Tessa finally gave Zed her nervous eye contact and felt the air between them grow thick with knowing, a sort of rip in time she had grown familiar with. As if cracking the mysteries to this roller coaster was something the universe would gladly pause for. She gave him a look of nervous inquisition, as if Zed's words of hard truth were somehow laced with the warmest love, as if to suggest everyone's bad side could use some tender loving care.
"The only reason Rancis went insane, and nearly killed your uncle Felix, was because the good in him went mad... Like running in circles. Finally you'll resort to desperate actions to get what you want," Zed skillfully explained, his hands gently motioned with his words, "Vanilla Lake corrupted his code... From there, the two split. It's unheard of. Nothing like that has ever happened. That's why Radex is the most powerful kind of being. Not only is he desperate for tyranny, he will stop at nothing... Because there is NO good in him."
"Uncle Rancis is the good in Radex," Tessa eased thoughtfully, though she still gave Zed a nervous side eye, "You still think it's wise to join the two? You sure he won't go back to his old ways?"
"Good always prevails," Zed stated tenderly, he continued to hold his attention to Tessa, "Rancis has a wife, a stature, a daughter, a home... The good side of this situation has a strong standing, deep roots. We'll have to keep a sharp eye out for any mishaps that may bring Rancis to a downward slope, like what brought all this upon everyone, but at least with his hand out of the coding, we'll have a better, much easier time not only reasoning with him, but controlling anything that may escalate. It's all of us, against one. I know my brothers would stand with us, as well."
"Your brothers," Tessa sighed with a smile that finally grew across her cheeks, "I can't wait for you to mend your relationships with them."
"Yeah, I'm sure they've got a bone to pick with me," Zed muttered, though he smiled through and through.
"Well, good news to you is, they really miss you," Tessa eased softly as the two finally averted their attention to Sugar Rush's wirings, "At least, that's how they seemed the last time I saw them."
"That the day that Lickity killed Orph?" Zed wondered nonchalantly, though his fingers worked at the speed of light to reverse the mess they caused; Tessa barked a quiet laugh and nodded.
"Yep, what a shit show," Tessa's smile broadened, the fact that they were finally setting things right with her kingdom. She tucked her hair behind her ear and relaxed her shoulders a little.
"I'm sure I'll get an earful," Zed groaned, though his small smile only continued to grow; the very thought of reuniting with his long lost brothers, once and for all, had him secretly floored.
"What left do we have to do, after this?" Tessa wondered quietly as Zed carefully shifted the standings around. He made the roster correct again, with Vanellope at the head of the game.
"Well... I should probably give my game a hard reset, from the outside," Zed uttered quietly as he finally tabbed away from all the indexes and menus he had opened. As carefully as he could, he unplugged his materializer from Sugar Rush's cabinet and cued to Tessa, to make her aware that he was about to stand and put Sugar Rush back in it's proper place. He raised his eyebrows in a mentally exhausted way and rubbed his forehead a little, "Just need to get rid of the additive in my brain coding, once and for all."
"All that nitpicking, all that hard work I did, for MONTHS," Tessa scoffed with a soft laugh as she stood and moseyed a few feet away from Sugar Rush, "Can just be so easily replaced with one finger swipe in the real world."
"That's the advantage of being outside the computer," Zed grunted as he stood; the two carefully moved Sugar Rush back into it's proper indents in the old, loved arcade carpet, "Users are the most powerful beings, in our world. What could take us days only would take them minutes. They have the whole world at their disposal."
"Welp, can't say I didn't try," Tessa grumbled; Zed raised his eyebrows in worried surprise and cued to her.
"Hey, I never said I wasn't absolutely grateful for all the hard work you did," Zed urged tenderly, though the two fixed their curious gazes to Sugar Rush's cabinet, "If we would've been smart and given you two more days with my brain coding, we could've dodged this problem entirely..."
"Coulda woulda shoulda," Tessa hissed through a long sigh as she straightened her shirt a little. She gave her home cabinet a kind smile and a mental 'see you soon' to everyone inside.