I'm sorry it took so long for this to get written and posted; to be honest, I kind of lost my inspiration! But it came back, so here's the next chapter. I hope it meets your Bill of Approval. Thanks to all my readers, followers, favoriters, and reviewers. You guys truly inspire me to keep going!
While I was uninspired to write this story, I took the liberty of writing a couple of one-shots, which I invite you all to read and review as well. One shots are not things I've done a lot of, so one of them is kind of short, but I would like to think that they're written well, so if you guys could drop me some reviews on those too, that would be spectacular and very much appreciated! Once again, thank you guys oh so very much. I really do love each and every one of you.
I do not own Wreck It Ralph and the characters, just my OC Lemona Lime and her baby, who is not born yet. Now, please enjoy reading Chapter 9 of "This Shouldn't Be Happening," and once again, I'M SO SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG FOR ME TO UPDATE! PLEASE FORGIVE ME!
Chapter 9
Time continued to pass quite rapidly, and soon Lemona was into her thirtieth week of pregnancy. By that time, she was still suffering from insomnia, which left her feeling exhausted all the time and extremely thankful for the little amount of sleep she actually managed to get. Once she actually managed to drift off, if something happened to awaken her, she usually opened her eyes feeling cross at having the little peace she managed to receive taken away.
That was what she felt when a loud, rumbling roar penetrated her subconscious one morning before the sun was even fully up in the sky. A moan escaped her lips, and she sat up in bed, gazing around the cave, trying to find the source of the noise. There were two reasons for her doing this, the first of them obviously being that she wanted to stop whatever was making the racket so she could try to fall asleep again.
The second reason was less clear because her brain was not quite functioning properly due to the fact she'd just woken up. There was another emotion that was slightly overpowering the annoyance, and through the fog of her mind, she thought she could identify it as inquisitiveness. The sound that had disturbed her seemed oddly familiar, though she couldn't determine where she'd heard it before.
Once she'd taken the time to look around the cave, Lemona determined that the sound was not coming from inside. "What do you think it could be?" she asked, directing the question at the child inside of her. Turbo was a much deeper sleeper than Lemona, something she often found herself growing jealous about, so she knew that he couldn't hear any of what was going on. A swift kick that was much harder than the first one she'd felt nine weeks before was the only response to her question, and though it had hurt a little, a warm smile flooded onto Lemona's face.
The noise seemed to grow louder with every passing minute and Lemona traced its source to somewhere past the cave. After swinging her legs over the bed's side and allowing her feet to lead her to the force field, Lemona pressed her hands against it and looked out at the landscape that was so close and at the same time so far away. She could somewhat remember her previous yearning to be out there again, but now that she knew just how good Turbo was, she had no idea why she'd ever wanted to. The cave was no castle, but that didn't really matter. However, as much as she had gotten used to the cave, she knew that it would not be the ideal place to raise a child, and so for that she was a little thankful that they'd be moving into the castle, though the two parents hadn't determined when to allow their plan to unfold.
In her state of reminiscing Lemona's now almost fully awake brain had almost forgotten about the noise that had caused her to wake up in the first place. Suddenly it got so loud that it caused the ground underneath her bare feet to shake. For a moment all she saw was blue as her body transformed into binary, but in a flash she was back to normal, and she kept her gaze fixed on what was in front of her.
Out of nowhere, a number of things flew past, kicking up dust from the ground. They were speeding by too fast for Lemona to be able to tell what they were, and in shock, she jumped back. Though her heart rate had increased dramatically from the surprise, she found herself pressing her face up against the force field again like a child who had awoken to the first snow fall of the year. She wanted to know what was making the sound that seemed so familiar.
The things that had raced past the cave suddenly returned, and as they slowed to a stop, the noise was killed. They appeared to be some sort of vehicles, and while they were all made out of junk food, each seemed to have a different theme and a slightly different shape. "What are those called?" Lemona mused to herself, a slight frown creasing her face as she tried to concentrate on waking up her mind. "I know I've seen those before."
Suddenly her eyes rested on the front of a vehicle that looked like it was all made of chocolate and peanut butter. A dollop of chocolate ice cream rested on top, and seeing it made an alarm go off in Lemona's head. They were carts. They were the things that she had worked on fixing and building parts for before Turbo had come back. If that scoop of ice cream hadn't been able to help her remember, she wasn't sure what would have. She was the one who had put it on top of the cart in the first place.
It had been three days since the day Lemona had had her corrupted code fixed. She no longer lived in the Black Liquorice Forest; now she lived in a workshop that had apparently been deemed hers by the programmers before they'd tried to delete her and everything to do with her. It was a nice, quaint place, and Lemona found that she enjoyed her new jobs of gathering candy and building pieces for carts. But Lemona found that she was very lonely. The only people that came to visit her were Vanellope and sometimes during closing hours, Vanellope's friends from the other games, Ralph, Felix, and Calhoun. Even though Vanellope had hosted a banquet to celebrate Lemona's sweetness, nobody else had decided to trust her.
She had been right in the middle of polishing a hood ornament she had made out of a Life Saver when she heard the cry of "Oh Fudgesicles!"
Setting the ornament and the rag down on her work bench, Lemona went outside to find one of the other racers on the track outside her home. It was hidden by a bunch of Fuzzy Peach trees, so she assumed that the racer had no idea she was watching him as he turned off the engine and jumped out, pulling his hair in distress.
She debated turning around and leaving him to his troubles. After all, he didn't like her. But then she decided that that would be the sour thing to do, and she had decided three days ago that she wasn't going to be sour anymore. So taking a deep breath, she called out, "Hey!"
The brown-clothing clad child whirled in her direction as she walked towards him. "You!" he gasped, taking a step back. "What do you want, you sour glitch?"
Lemona's eyes narrowed in response to the horrible nickname. That was what the other racers had taken to calling her ever since the day of the banquet. "You know, I was going to ask if you needed some help," she snapped, unable to keep herself from getting angry as she continued to speak, the sarcasm flowing out of her mouth like poison. "But you seem to have everything under control, so you know what? Forget I even tried."
She turned around and was about to return to her previous tasks when suddenly the boy called out, "No, wait!"
Lemona didn't know why, but she paused and turned back once more, to see that the boy no longer had the rude expression on his face. "I'm sorry," he admitted, running a hand through the curl in his hair. "I'm just worried about my cart. It's overheating, which is causing it to fall apart, and I've got a race in an hour!"
Interest now peaked, Lemona walked closer to get a better look. Sure enough, the entire vehicle appeared to be melting, creating puddles of chocolate syrup on the ground. Tentatively, she felt the warm hood, and when she pulled her hand back she had a sticky brown coating on her skin.
"Hmmm…I think I've got an idea," she said, wiping her hand off on her skirt and not really worrying about the stain that the chocolate would leave. Once her hand was as clean as she could get it, she dashed back into her workshop, returning after a couple of minutes with a sander, a spray can of jaw-breaker hardening spray, and a pail of chocolate ice cream. First she took the sander and began smoothing out the melting chocolate frame. "This'll fix the form of the cart," she thought to herself, "and get rid of the lines from where the chocolate's been running." That took a while, but not nearly as long as the next step, which was spraying the entire vehicle with the jaw-breaker spray. Lemona felt incredible thankful that her programmers had given her such good eye-sight, as that allowed her to find every little crevice and ridge, which were plentiful on the cart. She knew that she couldn't miss a single spot, and by the time she was finished, she had almost used up the entire can of spray.
Finally, she opened the pail of ice cream, took her ice cream scoop out, and grabbed the biggest scoop of ice cream she could fit on the scooper. Then, in a motion that wasn't very graceful, she plopped it on top of the cart's hood with a wet splat. If Lemona's thinking was correct, the frozen treat would keep the cart's temperature balanced and prevent it from getting too hot. "There," she said briskly to the boy, whose mouth was open so wide that Lemona was tempted to tell him that he was going to swallow candied fruit flies if he didn't close it. "Good as new."
The boy hadn't moved for a while, continuing to gape at his cart, which looked brand new. "Wow!" he finally managed to gasp out, turning to Lemona. "It looks amazing! How can I ever repay you?"
He stepped forward and extended his arms as though he wanted to give Lemona a big hug, and Lemona knew that wasn't a good idea because of her glitch. Stepping back, she held her hands out as a warning. "No touching. And don't worry about repaying me. It's just what I do. No big deal."
"No big deal?" repeated the blonde boy incredulously, gesturing back to his cart. "Are you kidding? It's a HUGE deal! You saved me, big time! I really owe you!"
Lemona chuckled, and shoved her hands in her pockets, trying to remain modest, though she could feel her face beginning to warm up from the blush that was forming. "Well, if you really want to pay me back, you can go and try to win that race that's supposed to be starting in five minutes."
Being reminded of what time it was made the boy's eyes go wide again, and he cried out, "Oh yeah!" as he jumped into his newly fixed cart. He started up the engine, but before driving away, he turned to look at Lemona one more time. "I'm really serious. Thank you. What's your name again?"
"Lemona. Lemona Lime," responded Lemona, having to raise her voice to be heard over the roar of the engine.
"I'm Rancis Fluggerbutter," was the last thing the boy said before driving off and leaving Lemona thinking that that boy didn't think she was a sour glitch anymore.
After that, Lemona had quickly become more popular. Rancis had spread the word to all his friends about what had happened on the track, and soon Lemona had found she was as busy as she'd ever been.
The flashback was enough to make Lemona remember the names of the other children she now saw in front of her. Swizzle Malarkey. Jubileena Bing-Bing. Candlehead. It had been so long since she'd seen any of them, now that she thought about it. What were they doing here now? Had they only just realized that she was missing? Or maybe they didn't even know she was missing; maybe it was just a coincidence that they were in that particular place in the game.
But Lemona quickly realized their purpose when she heard Jubileena speak to the group. "Guys, he's not here."
"I seriously doubt that he's even in the game," grumbled Swizzle. "He's been gone for like, eight to nine months now. Surely we would have seen him by now if he was still here. Why are we still looking?"
"Well, you know how paranoid Vanellope is about him not being locked up in the fungeon anymore," Candlehead spoke, her voice not sounding as light and airy as Lemona remembered it had been. "And now that we've just learned that the person we thought was Lemona is really a copy, she's really getting scared."
"That's another thing!" Swizzle exclaimed, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Why do we care if Turbo and Lemona are together, wherever they are? We all knew that Lemona was a sour puss, why are we bothering to get her to change and be sweet like us? It's impossible!"
"No, it's not." Now Rancis was speaking, and Lemona was shocked at how serious his tone of voice was. She also couldn't help noticing that he was staring down at his cart as though he was remembering something. Lemona wondered if he was having the same flashback that she'd just experienced.
"Lemona's not just sour; she's got a sweet side just like all of us. But you remember just as well as I do what happened the last time Turbo and Lemona worked together." Rancis spoke again, his baby blue orbs filled with concern. "We may not have been with Vanellope when it all happened, but we most certainly heard about it. And we can't let that happen again. We have to keep them away from each other."
Lemona let out a cry and backed away from the force field, now feeling her own eyes widen with fear. They wanted to take her away from Turbo? The father of her child? She couldn't let them do that!
"Can they see me? Can they hear me?" Lemona wondered, clapping a hand over her mouth and praying that they couldn't. It didn't seem like they had so far, as she was practically standing right in front of them all and they were all acting like she was invisible. "Maybe the force field is like one-way glass," she thought. "Maybe the entire cave is invisible from the outside." Even if her assumptions were accurate, she kept her body stiff and her hand over her mouth to ensure that any noise she made was muffled. Even the child inside of her seemed to lie completely still, not kicking and shifting inside the womb.
Lemona didn't want the people that she had once thought were her friends to take her away from the one person she actually cared about as much as the baby inside of her. If they thought that it was a good idea to keep her and Turbo apart, then they were sadly mistaken. It wouldn't make her happy, and it most certainly wouldn't make Turbo happy. Possible images of the horrific fate that would surely befall her if she was discovered began flooding Lemona's mind, and they wouldn't leave, not even after the four racers had gotten back into their carts and driven away until Lemona could no longer hear the engines that had been the cause of all this fear.
She didn't even realize that she had started quivering like a leaf until Turbo came up behind her and wrapped her up in his arms. "My dear, sweet little lemon cake, whatever is the matter?"
"They…they were here," she managed to choke out, and she knew by the way she felt Turbo's body stiffen and his grip tighten around her waist that she didn't have to explain who 'they' were. "They…they were looking for us…They know I'm gone."
Turbo hissed a foul curse word, but Lemona was too distraught to be bothered by the extremity of it. "They…" she began to talk again, but by that point her body glitched, and once she was back to normal, she was sobbing. "They want to take me away from you…"
"There, there," Turbo whispered, the sound of his lisping voice oddly comforting to Lemona. "They're not going to take you away. We're going to stay together, all three of us. You, me, and our beautiful child."
As if in confirmation, the mentioned child smacked Lemona again, and the motion brought out a smile on her lips, even though she was still crying. Seeing that she was beginning to cheer up, Turbo kissed her cheek tenderly, and then, after his lips had left her face, he brought them to her ear so that he could speak again. It wasn't a whisper, it was a quiet statement, but it was powerful enough to make Lemona's blood freeze over with anticipation.
"I think it's time we go to the castle."
Please remember to read and review! Thanks again guys! Sweet lemon meringue pie, you guys are the greatest, and I really would like to know if you think anything needs to be changed or if you like this story just the way it is! Let me know what you think of my writing! Stay sweet!