A.N: Beforehand, forgive my naming conventions. I should never be consulted to name a newborn, or a pet, or anybodyXD.
Chapter 1 sets a lot of things in the story, so I hope you enjoy! Please read and let me know what you think. I also want to add that the word 'game mates', and Turbo's favorite flavor of pie, I got from xxaemiliusxx, whose fanfiction and characterizations I love.
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Chapter 1
Tapper leaned his head on his palm, and watched his patrons with a slight, tired smile. It had been a hectic day. He'd handed out more food and drinks than he could keep track of, and with his limited cutlery supply, he was also a continuously-running dish washer; barely keeping up with the influx of orders. It was TurboTime's fifth anniversary, the Most Popular Game in the Arcade (also known as 'Litwak's Favorite' and 'Cash Machine'), and everybody was celebrating.
In front of Turbo and the Twins was an enormous cherry pie with 'Happy Anniversary, Turbo Racers' frosting across its warm surface. The heavenly smell filled the whole shop - Mary Niceland's pies really were something else.
The Twins - Rush and Vel, were all big smiles and blushing faces, thanking everybody and wishing them the same success. Turbo just basked in all the attention, grinning his wide, in-your-face yellow grin and posing with Fix-it to Gene's camera, his trademark thumbs up half-obscuring the shy handyman's face. Tapper chuckled to himself at how Turbo's eyes kept flitting to his favorite pie; Pacman was loitering too close to it.
Sonic was discreetly planting firecrackers underneath all the chairs, a particularly big one under Eggman's. Tapper kept trying to catch his eye, glaring knowingly, but Sonic was either too engrossed in his latest prank or just pretended not to notice.
"Now, please Turbo - look this way! A portrait of the greatest racer the arcade's ever seen!" announced Joe Niceland, lifting up his Polaroid. "This is going up on your Wall of Fame, Tapper!" said man smiled and nodded his approval.
Grinning widely, the twins latched onto Turbo's arms, one on each side, and smiled for the camera.
"Get off, losers! He said greatest racer!"
"You wouldn't even be a racer without us!"
"This is for Tapper's Wall of Fame, not your stupid photo album!" He tried to pry them off, but they clung on stubbornly. Rush stuck out his tongue and Vel bumped his helmet against Turbo's playfully.
The picture indeed ended up being taken with all three of them after all, and a grumbling Turbo went back to his precious anniversary pie, plucking the kitchen knife out of Mary's hand without a thank you to make the celebratory slicing himself while the twins looked on innocently, identical smirks across their faces. Pacman was staring at the pie with a look so disturbing Ralph had to shift away a couple good feet. As he did, something brushed past his heel, feather-light. He started, and looked down to barely glimpse a spiky ball of blue fur crawl soundlessly under Turbo's seat.
"Um, Sonic, what're you doing down there?" he asked a bit nervously, and a bit too late. A hissing sound and a spark of orange ignited underneath the racer's chair, and the long thread looping all around Tapper's shop caught the spark, with the fireworks starting right under Turbo's seat.
The very un-turbotastic shriek that followed could have made gamers' hair turn white. Firecrackers shot off all around the shop till one could see nothing except explosions of color and fire spits. The noise was deafening. Within three seconds, everyone was screaming and tap dancing across the wooden floorboards.
Tapper stood still amidst the chaos, a grim expression clouding his dark blue eyes. He had not forgotten Dr. Eggman's story - no, stories - told to him over the past weeks; indeed, the hedgehog had a reckless streak, and an attitude to go with it. He was very popular - the arcade's baby, if one could call him that, and everyone loved him, but no one seemed to be doing anything about his blatant disregard for rules. His own game mates definitely had no control over him.
Sonic zipped through the counters and booths like a kid on Christmas morning, roaring with laughter and hollering, "Yeeaaah! Dance, everybody! DANCE!"
OoOoOoOoOo
It was not an unusual scene for some of Tapper's patrons to complain to him about Turbo's less-than-perfect personality. Whether it was his obsessiveness or his attention-seeking among other traits, Tapper as always listened quietly, but neither agreed nor disagreed. How could he? Different personalities aside, Tapper could not imagine what he would do with himself if he did not have people come in daily to simply fill his life with…well, life. To acknowledge his presence; to make him feel like he was wanted. Although he never thought of himself as particularly affectionate or extroverted, not being visited or having friends who'd confide in him was an unbearable thought. Tapper hardly ever left his game if he could help it, so people just had to come to him. An empty shop was utterly unacceptable.
At least Turbo had his twins. Tapper, on the other hand…was the only character in his game.
During arcade hours, Tapper's job was to serve incoming clients as fast as he could before they got impatient and angry enough to throw him out of shop. The game would spawn 'characters' for him to serve, but there was always something off about them.
They would come in through the doors, bark orders, gobble them up and walk right out without even looking back.
When his game was first plugged in, Tapper had tried looking for them after Game Over. He would turn his game upside down, but they simply vanished by the time the arcade doors closed for the night. Tapper knew each of their profiles like the back of his hand. Whenever that quarter was pushed into the console slot, and those characters came through his doors, they did their programmed job without a hitch. And though he recognized each and every one of them every single time his game was played, none of them ever gave any indication of recognizing him.
He tried everything. He gave them names to call them by. They never answered, even when his throat was sore and his spirits in the gutter by the time characters from other games came in for a drink late after hours and looked him over in confusion and worry. Tapper never talked about himself.
Day after day went by, and the protagonist's frustration became unbearable. In rising desperation and recklessness – foreign and so unlike himself, he started calling out to his in-game patrons during gameplay, because they always disappeared beyond the doors if he waited just one moment after game was over. Sometimes, he would push his luck and stand with them for a moment even after serving them what they asked, hoping for any response at all before the gamer would think anything was wrong.
Then came one day when he ignored his gamer's controls altogether, grabbed one of his game patron's shoulders and shook him hard, demanding he look at him for once in his life. The odd man – with a profile that looked oddly like Tapper's himself –pushed the hands clutching his shoulders off with barely an annoyed grimace and continued inhaling his food, not even looking up. Tapper didn't relent. He seized the man's head and forced him to look up - to look him straight in the eyes. To be thought malfunctioning for not moving with the gamer's commands was nothing compared to any kind of connection he could achieve with his own game mates right then - hell, Ralph's less-than-warm connections with his own was better than being completely ignored like this!
When he lifted that one patron's head to look into his eyes, the glass he'd been holding in his other hand slid from his shaking fingers, and crashed on the wooden boards, spraying water across the rich brown surface. Tapper stood there for a long time, hollow and devastated.
He never tried to make contact with his in-game patrons again.
OoOoOoOoOo
Tapper considered himself lucky – very lucky, that his game did not get unplugged on that fateful day when he went against the gamer and tried to look at one of his patrons. The gamer had apparently gotten bored with the 'lagging' and walked away, then a short while after, another quarter was inserted. And Tapper wasn't one to wallow on distress. In that short intermission he had calmed down just enough to do his job again, as efficiently as he was programmed to do. And no one from the other games need know anything. They knew better than to ask him, anyway. It was unspoken knowledge that the arcade's Tapper was very private, and talked very little about his personal life. To Tapper, that was not a bad thing at all. His happy customers were what mattered, and he made sure to keep them that way. If there was one he feared, it was loneliness.
A busy work day and an even busier night was a small price to pay, as long as his life was filled with friends, even if they were not from his own game. All in the nature of his code, he could only assume. His programmers were lazy and heartless, he thought, to make him to be dependent on others and yet give him no game mates of his own.
Well, humans are imperfect, after all.
As Time started on its job of healing, the shock and bitterness over his predicament started to ebb, and not a day passed from then onward when he was not thankful for his game being safe, stable and plugged in. He still had no game mates within his own home, but the day the arcade had become his world, all its inhabitants were his friends. It took a while to realize it, but for a long time afterwards, he was genuinely happy; the happiest game character in Litwak's Arcade.