"Why are you doing this? What do you want from me?!" the demented racer shrieked hysterically.

The child gave no answer. Its shadowy figure was barely visible in the gloom, the two white orbs it had for eyes remaining ever bright and curious. Quizzically tilting its head to the side, Turbo felt another hot wave of indignation wash over him.

How dare this child mock him! A clattering of footsteps and wild howling laughter travelling down the hall announced the arrival of his pursuers and his ire was replaced by a hollow sense of dread. The painful burning in his throat and lungs served as a reminder of his pitiful state and the blood pounding in his head caused flashes of dizziness to take hold of his mind.

This hallway was a dead end and the small girl composed of shadows would calmly watch his grisly end. Turbo clenched his teeth and waited for death.

O.o.O

The lone racer looked out over the cliff toward a simple looking town next to a vast expanse of dark sea. Stone walls bordered the town; open only toward the coast and a small path leading into a densely packed forest. Fine mist clouded around the racer, but below the cliff a heavy blanket of fog swathed the entire valley.

What had brought him here? After his near fatal defeat in Sugar Rush, he knew he would be hunted down if he stayed in the arcade, so for the third time, Turbo did the unthinkable.

He left the arcade. It wasn't as difficult as some of the other characters would have believed. After all, Litwak's arcade supported Wi-Fi and after jumping onto a laptop someone had brought with them, it was just a short trip to the World Wide Web. Now he could take over nearly any game that existed!

Turbo would have preferred to find a decent racing game, but something inexplicable had drawn him to a game called 'Quiet Coast'. If he was going to find the code vault anywhere in the game, he should start by looking in town.

Descending the steps carved into the cliff side, the fog became thicker and thicker until Turbo could barely see a few feet ahead of him. He'd have to be careful here; until he could recode the game to recognize him as the player character, he wouldn't respawn after dying.

His foot slipped and he went skidding down several stairs until he stopped at a junction where the stairs folded around to descend the other way. Shakily pulling himself up and away from the precariously high edge, the chalk white racer silently cursed the little brat and her oversized friend that had forced him to flee the arcade.

Not that it was the first time he had to hide from everyone else. After his failed attempt at hijacking Road Blasters, the cursed game that had dared to compete with his title of being the greatest racing game ever, Turbo had hidden out in one of the games expansive worlds until he got the idea of taking over Sugar Rush Speedway.

After obtaining the combination necessary to gain access to the code vault, it had been quite simple to usurp the half pint in charge and erase the other characters memories to turn them against her. Until Wreck-It Ralph had helped her...

There were no more incidents traveling down the cliff and Turbo eventually reached the forest floor. Fog swathed the area and the dirt path was barely distinguishable from the carpet of leaves and pine needles. There were no sounds of woodland animals, just Turbo's own footsteps as he followed the winding path and the occasional gust of wind to send the branches creaking.

Every tree that loomed in the distance was a menacing silhouette and the pale racer found himself jumping at any unexpected sound. He hated feeling so powerless. Before that fateful day in Sugar Rush he had been the unopposed monarch and number one racer, with only a helpless, universally disliked glitch of a little girl who had anything to say about it. Even that paled to the power he had when he was fused with that cy-bug and he could have taken over any game he wanted. That absurdly strong wreckster from the fix-it game had been batted about helplessly like a cat toy by his powerful cy-bug form. Where had it gone wrong?

The crackling of leaves underfoot caused him to snap out of his daydreaming and freeze in his tracks. A shadowy figure made its way through the fog and the muffled footsteps became louder as the figure drew closer.

"He-hello? Is anyone there?"

A young woman with short brown hair and a roundish face became visible through the gloom, her arms kept tucked in and wide eyes constantly darting about. Her eyes widened even further and she quickly took a step backward at the sight of the ghostly pale racer, then she visibly relaxed.

"Oh, y-you must be a visiting character, right?" The jittery young woman quickly glanced over her shoulder. "At f-first I thought you might be o-one of them."

Turbo wasn't quite sure what to make of this strange girl who seemed to be terrified so badly by her own game. Still, if he was going to recode the game, it would help to know exactly who she was.

"Are you the protagonist of this game?" the racer inquired.

"Y-yes and my name is Rita." She couldn't look the pale character straight in the eyes and was nervously tugging at the sleeves of her red shirt to further cover her wrists.

"I'm looking for m-my sister and I'm s-sca-scared she might have gone into town." Rita continued, her mouth quivering and looking as if she were on the verge of a sobbing breakdown.

"I, uh, have to get going. There's something I'm searching for." Turbo muttered awkwardly as he tried to slide past her.

Rita tugged at her sleeves again and sneaked another glance over her shoulder.

"O-of course. If you're going into town, be careful." Rita stared mournfully down at the ground. "Plenty of characters visit. They don't remain very long..."

Turbo hastily tried to back away from the strange girl, only for her to lunge forward and grab him by his jumpsuit.

"Please, if you see my sister, bring her back safely!" the hysterical woman sobbed into his chest. "She can't face them on her own!"

The pale racer quickly shoved her off, his only though being to place enough distance between him and the clearly mentally unstable individual as possible.

Composing herself once more, the bundle of nerves of a protagonist wiped the moisture away from her eyes with her sleeves and looked abashedly toward the ground.

"I-I'm sorry..." she quietly apologised. Walking away in the opposite direction Turbo was headed, she threw one more remark over her shoulder as she disappeared into the fog.

"I hope you find what you're looking for."

Continuing down the path again toward town, the lone racer bitterly muttered under his breath, "No you don't."

The trees eventually thinned out and Turbo found himself facing a massive stone wall that encompassed an old fashioned town with small sturdy houses and cobblestone streets slick with rain water. A large sign to his left read: Welcome to Little Salt! A town you won't soon forget!

The narrow entrance way and bumpy streets were clearly not designed with vehicles in mind so what was a character whose entire purpose was racing doing here? Something inexplicable, something unexplained drew Turbo to the gloomy little town and his answers lay ahead.