Defying the Darkness
Chapter Five
"Thanks for the good news, Turbo." Dot said. "We'll be ready and waiting."
The closed the VidWindow and called to Enzo across the park, simultaneously helping Mouse fold up the large checkered picnic blanket.
"What is it, Dot?" The boy asked, clearly chipper and in considerably better spirits than earlier that second.
"You brother is coming home." The violet-eyed female stated, searching Enzo's expression for a definitive reaction. It became immediately apparent that he didn't know how he felt about the return of the brutish Matrix, or else he didn't want to show Dot his distaste. Even the red and yellow streak that was Frisket slowed and looked between the two siblings, choosing to stay closer to the Hacker than either of them.
"Enzo?" The voice was careful in it's articulation of her brother's name. "Are you okay with that?"
The child shrugged.
"I guess so." He replied quietly, glancing to his dog and gesturing for him to come over.
"You sure, Sugar?"Mouse interjected. "Because it's not like you have to be, y'know. I know the two of you don't get along too well." She smiled fondly as she looked down on him.
These seemed to have been the words Enzo had been waiting to hear, and immediately he blurted:
"It's like he hates me or something! Like I did something wrong for being a copy! It's not like I asked to be complied!"
"Oh, Enzo no..." His big sister dropped to her knees to look squarely into those troubled eyes of his. "He doesn't hate you...not for one nano. He just..." She paused, biting her lip. "He just looks at you and it reminds him of all the things he never got to do at your age. He could never hate you. If anything he loves you too much. He just doesn't know how to show it." She pulled Enzo into a hug.
"Don't you fret Honey," Mouse again chimed. "If you're not ready to be all buddy-buddy with him, I'm sure he'll understand."
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"Bob," Turbo's voice echoed through the blue Guardian's apartment via VidWin. "You around?"
The silver-haired sprite actually had his head under the hood of his car. It had worked briefly, but, as seemed to be the way with any car Bob ever owned, it was now broken down and in need of repair.
"Turbo?" Having heard his name being called, Guardian 452 stood up hastily and knocked the support rod away from the hood, sending the hood itself crashing down on the back of his head. "Cursors and crashes!" He yelped, covering the sore spot with one hand while using the other to slam the front of the vehicle shut. "Basic car..." He muttered.
"Bob? You alright?"
"Yeah, Turbo, I'm fine. What's up?" He asked finally, turning to face the VidWin behind him.
"Matrix is ready to go home whenever you and Dot are ready to come get him. I just spoke with her, but I figured you should know too."
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"Ray, I've never have to break up with anyone before...why in the Net would you come ask me?" AndrAIa was incredulously baffled.
"Well...you're a woman." He shrugged. "You'd know what she doesn't want to hear."
"Oh I don't know about that..." The GameSprite replied mockingly, finding it somewhat strange that the Surfr would come to her for help on the matter. "...but I do know one thing," She continued, watching and listening to every movement the other sprite made. "No woman wants to be lied to."
Tracer's facial expression didn't change, but the rate at which he drew breath increased so slightly that perhaps even he hadn't noticed it. He did feel the ever-increasing beating in his chest though, and began to wonder if the GameSprite could hear it.
"Alright..." He ran a hand over his face, standing up and walking around the room, stopping behind his chair and leaning on it. "Here's the deal..." A lump caught in his throat, and for a moment, he just couldn't speak. It was only AndrAIa's persistently suspicious gaze that kept his speech faculties from failing him entirely. "I don't want Mouse. I want you." The words seemed to echo off of the walls in this otherwise silent space.
The aqua-haired GameSprite's mouth dropped open in shock. She had been expecting something odd to be coming, but this had been the farthest thing from her mind.
"You what?" She exhaled the word, truly blown away by what the Surfr had just said.
"I want you."
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Enzo kept Frisket close as Bob emerged from a portal from the SuperComputer with Matrix in tow. He had been at the front of the group waiting to greet the massive sprite upon his arrival at the Principal Office, though why he didn't really know. He speculated that it was because he was short, though his basis for that speculation was entirely non-existant. Dot was directly behind him, and Phong to his side. Even a few of the binomes working in the building had also taken time to stop and see the Renegade come home. Mouse had gone off on her own errands, having said that the picnic had been all well and good, but she had some business to attend to before the second was out.
So here they were. The Guardian's blue face looked almost proud to be delivering such a guest back to his family. Matrix, however, looked uneasy and rather guilty, finding shame in even showing his face in Mainframe again.
He knew that there were people staring, people whispering, as he kept himself by the Guardian's side. He stomach was churning and his innards writhing as he neared the figures waiting for him. He primary concern was how Dot would react. After all, the last time he'd seen her had been at the banquet, and things had not been good. His secondary thought had been, "Where's AndrAIa?"
As the two continued walking, Bob quietly explained that he wanted to get Matrix back into the system and comfortable before he even considered bringing AndrAIa into the picture. After all, she was going to need time to prepare as well.
Bearing that in mind, the Renegade took those few more steps that would bring him close enough to those waiting for him to make it unacceptable not to speak. As irony would have it, he would first be made to speak with his younger self.
"Hey Kid," He said nervously, looking down into the face of an equally nervous child who gave no reply, but only seemed to hold tighter to his dog. Matrix felt the slightest pang of jealousy at this; Frisket was his dog. Then again, Enzo was Matrix, too, so what did it matter? He crouched down to give the pet a pat, and to talk to young Enzo a little more personally. "I know I haven't been a very good big brother to you," He told the boy. "But from now on I'm going to try a lot harder, okay?"
The red ball cap bobbed up and down as Enzo nodded, starting to cry. Matrix bowed his head, swallowing hard and putting a giant hand on each of his copy's shoulders. "I promise you, I'm really going to try." Then, most unexpectedly the younger of the two reached for a hug, and for perhaps the first time ever, the elder naturally responded to him with reciprocation, hugging him so hard he thought perhaps he would crush him. "Don't you ever turn out like me, Enzo..." He whispered to his little brother through gritted teeth, on the verge of tears. "Ever."
He heard a slight sniffle above them, and glacing up, he saw Dot smiling and crying silently. He reached out for her, still clutching Enzo to him in one arm, and as soon as her hand made contact with his own, he pulled her closer, easing her down into the hug.
"I'm just so sorry Dot," He gasped, looking at her with sad and humbled eyes. "I'm so sorry..." It was all he could think to say as he finally lost his resolve and began to weep. She was as much of a mother to him as she was a sister, and so when her small arms caught his enormous frame protectively, he hunched to cry on her offered shoulder.
"It's okay...it's okay." She whimpered, trying to form words despite the unified outburst that had taken all three of them.
There they were...the new Matrix family, all entwined and at the peak of a long-overdue emotional release. They took no regard of their location, or their viewers, but only of the comfort of really knowing that they always would have each other. Energy was thicker than data, and this realization had been of greater significance than the sum of their transgressions could ever be.
With cultivated care, Bob chose to interject, silently placing a hand on Dot's shoulder to draw her gaze up from her two distraught brothers. Drawing her hand away from Matrix, she pulled her glasses from her face and momentarily inspected the droplets of moisture on the lenses before using the back of her hand to wipe her eyes.
"I think we're all going to be better than okay," The said softly to her two siblings as if to state that it was due time for this moment to conclude itself.
"Yeah," Matrix looked to worst of the three, clearly not being a frequent or terribly attractive crier, his eyes having become puffy from the foreign act. "I think so," The large sprite's gaze turned to Phong, who observed him sternly. "I...I don't know how I'll ever earn your respect again, but know that I will."
Having resolutely decided upon this, the Renegade again drew himself up to his full height and forced himself to hold his head high as he surveyed the spectators that appraised him.
"Perhaps we should get you settled in," Bob suggested, staring sideways and upward at the newly-rendered game-hopper as he kept a brave face.
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"Ray," AndrAIa stood and stiffly gestured towards the door. "I...think you should go."
Tracer bowed his head, still putting his weight on the back of the chair on which he leaned.
"Please AndrAIa, just hear me out." He requested meekly, having lost his volley of fearlessness.
The GameSprite stood up and pursed her lips into a thin line.
"I would like you to leave now, please." The maladroit manner in which she spoke only gave the Surfr further reason to speak, by his own reasoning.
"I'm not asking a lot," He began, changing his placement in the room so that he stood a respectable distance from her, but still squarely in her direct line of vision and within arms reach of stopping her should she seek to pivot to the left or right to evade him. "Just listen to what I have to say and then, if you still want, I'll leave."
This woman was exhausted by the very thought of any further animosity sprouting up in her life, and so, crossing her arms and glowering at him, she replied: "Fine, Ray. I'll hear you out, but the nano you're done I want you out of this apartment."
Tracer nodded and began to realize that he had no idea what he was actually going to say to the sprite in front of him. All the ideas were there for him to verbalize, but he had neglected to organize them into something of coherence before seeking to present himself.
"Okay..." He clasped his hands together in front of himself as if it would help him think more quickly. "This isn't me just trying to hone in on you because Matrix is away. I mean, the whole thing that happened at the banquet doesn't really make a difference to it all. The only reason he even really got one up on me at all was because I had shut Baud down (Mouse and I had a fight about it and as per the norm, she got her way), and since Baud and I are one in the same I made myself a less capable sprite in disabling the stronger part of myself...if that makes any sense. If anything I had made myself weaker than a normal sprite by shutting Baud down," Seeing distaste in AndrAIa's expression, he moved on as quickly as his mouth would allow. "...but yeah...that's beside the point. I'm just trying to make it clear that it's not like I'm doing this to get back at Matrix or something. It's as much my fault for weakening my defenses as it is his for losing it."
He found it very awkward that she hadn't moved a muscle or changed her glance. It left him feeling unsettled - not his commonly confident self - as he tried to continue to state his case.
"Like I said, Mouse and I were havin' problems before," He paused and looked around the room for Baud, realizing that he'd set it down somewhere along the way without consciously realizing until now. "Like the whole thing with Baud. That fight was so random I almost can't believe it happened. She didn't want 'any distractions' while we were out, so she argued with me until I let her have her way and shut the spammed thing down. All I got out of it was getting to leave early..and we know how that went."
AndrAIa began to bite the inside of her cheek impatiently, not softening her expression at all.
"Okay, so I'll cut to the chase." He couldn't believe he was cracking under the pressure of her stare alone. "When I first saw you, I thought you were a rather attractive lady, and the fact that you needed saving only propelled me to be a proper gent and lend a hand. I figured we clicked pretty decently, and if it hadn'a been for Matrix, I'd have said something sooner. However, we had more important stuff to take care of and I wasn't going to put the moves on another fellow's girl."
"You mean like you're doing now?" The GameSprite interjected; Tracer tried to ignore this snappy little comment and continue.
"There was too much going on...even if you'd felt the same way it would've deleted Matrix to have you taken from him too. I knew things hadn't been easy for him and I wasn't going to pull his last lifeline out from under him. If Mainframe hadn't been a mess when we got back, and if I hadn't met Mouse, you and I would've had this conversation a long time ago." He said plainly.
"No, we wouldn't have." She replied. "I love Matrix and love is forever."
The male sprite took a step back from her and turned, shaking his head as if to both shrug off her harsh gawking and respond to her naïvety.
"Have you ever so much as kissed another sprite?" He asked, still turned away from her as his goggled eyes came to rest on Baud which now leaned against the wall by the main door of the apartment.
"No." She replied. "I'd never cheat on Matrix like that."
"Well if you've never known any love aside from Matrix', how can you possibly know that of all the Sprites in the Web, he is the only one for you?" He craned his head around to see her dumbfounded expression when she found that she had nothing with which to verbally parry. "I'll be on my way now." He stated, walking towards the door.
She watched mutely as he reached for his SurfBaud, but she didn't see his surprised expression as he tilted the object forward in his hand and revealed that the hole in the wall still remained. It had been cycles...surely that was time enough to get it patched up. Why had she left it? Slightly dramatically, he swung the transportation device under his arm, abruptly unmasking the blemish to her as well. He was fairly certain that she was fully aware of it, but he felt some need to reaffirm the events that had transpired in this room with a silent warning.
"If you should need me, just Vid." He commented, midway through his exit.
"Ray, wait." The aqua-haired sprite could hardly believe the words had escaped her lips, but as he turned, she knew she had to give him something other than uneasy silence. "Why are you doing this? Why now?"
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