Warnings: C̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶e̶l̶o̶p̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶T̶u̶r̶b̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶m̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ None

As soon as Vanellope entered through the main doorway of her castle, Sour Bill dropped the broom he'd been absently sweeping with and shuffled up to the girl.

Catching his wide-eyed look of worry as the green candy shuffled closer, Vanellope took a bracing breath. She held her hands out in front of her. "Look," she started, "I know what you're gonna say, and—"

"Miss President, where have you been?" Bill said. "We've been—hold that thought." He crossed the room, stopping at a low table. The table didn't have much function other than to hold a potted lollipop plant atop a spun-sugar doily, but that was where Sour Bill had laid the walkie-talkie. He'd been far too nervous to carry it around with him, choosing instead to do some scarcely-needed sweeping. He picked up the device and held down the call button.

"Wynchel, Duncan? Are you there?"

"Yup." Duncan's voice. "Anything new?"

"President Vanellope just came through the front. Call off the search."

"That's kind of a good thing, 'cause we were runnin out of places to loo—"

Duncan's voice faded away as Sour Bill turned the volume on the device down, then completely off. He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry to be so forward, miss, but you've had all of us worried sick. What with Wreck-it Ralph barging through here earlier…we didn't know what had happened." He moved his jellybean hands up and down once, which Vanellope took to be a shrug. "Honestly, none of us thought you were still in Sugar Rush, but we've looked everywhere nonetheless."

"Well, Ralph did kinda kidnap me, I guess," Vanellope said. "But he had good reason to."

Sour Bill gave her a look of horror.

"Sounds terrible, I know," she said. "But he really did."

"I think you'll have to explain that to me," Sour Bill said, "but I suppose it can wait. You've only got a little more than an hour before the arcade opens. You ought to rest up while you can."

Vanellope nodded, tugging her ponytail taut. "Yeah. Think you're right. But I promise we'll have a meeting after the arcade closes, and I'll explain everything. Guess we'll have to push back the Random Roster Race a couple hours."

Sour Bill walked with her, nodding at her words, refraining from voicing any input.

"I hate to do that, but this is kinda more important."

The rest of the walk to Vanellope's bedroom was silent. Just outside the door, Sour Bill asked, "Is there anything I can get you, Miss President?"

She rubbed his shiny, bald head in appreciation. "Nah. I'm fine."

But 'fine' wasn't exactly the best way to describe her, at the moment.

{*}

The meeting room in President Vanellope's castle was about halfway full. Every Sugar Rush racer was in attendance, as well as Wynchel and Duncan standing vigil at the entrance and Sour Bill at Vanellope's side.

Vanellope whistled through her fingers to call the meeting to order. She took a shaky breath and began.

"Okay, guys," she said. "We've got some important stuff to talk about today. You guys know about Ralph and Felix busting through here the other day, right?" There were several mutters of affirmation, though by the looks of things, it was news to a few characters. "We'll talk about that first, I guess, to kinda get that out of the way. But there's…I hate to say it, but there's something more serious than that going on."

So she told the story as best she could—she not being in her right mind at the time of the events, she had to rely on Ralph and Felix's version of the ordeal.

"That's not even the thing, though," she said, after a few people voiced outraged at Ralph and Felix barging in and doing something so brash, sending the whole game into a frenzy. "They did it for my own good. Trust me, I'd be just as angry as most of you guys are right now if they didn't have a good reason for it."

Then came the part she was dreading—telling her friends-slash-subjects about the Cy-virus.

The news was not taken well.

"Are you serious?" Taffyta wailed.

Vanellope nodded. "Yeah."

As Taffyta's eyes welled with tears, Candlehead piped up. "How do we know if we're infected?"

Vanellope sighed. "That's the thing. You don't know if you're sick until someone sees you snap. I hate to worry you guys any more than I already have, but…apparently I've been sick for a long time. And I had no idea."

Taffyta grabbed two fistfuls of tissues from the box on the table and blotted her tear-streaked face, staining the white cloth with gunmetal gray and apricot. "So we could be sick?"

Though she doubted it would do anything to help, Vanellope closed her eyes for a brief moment in an attempt to calm herself. It didn't help much. She opened her eyes again, eyes focused on a knot in the wooden table. "It's possible."

The entire room burst into an uproar. Taffyta wasn't the only one crying anymore—at least three others joined in with bawling of their own. Gloyd Orangeboar removed his pumpkin-shaped cap and raked his fingers through his hair, mouth contorted in a grimace. Rancis Fluggerbutter appeared to be hyperventilating. The candle in Candlehead's hat burned a confusing blue color. In the back of the room, Wynchel and Duncan exchanged knowing looks.

She didn't blame them for reacting the way they did, but Vanellope had had enough of this craziness. She needed to bring the room back to order. She balled her hands into fist and rapped on the desk—bang bang bang.

The room quietened down to a few scattered mutterings. All eyes were on her again. Scared, damp eyes that looked to her for answers she didn't have. She swallowed.

"I understand how you feel," she said, using all her willpower to keep her voice from cracking. "Trust me, I do. I went through exactly what you were going through right before the arcade opened. But just know that Sergeant Calhoun has promised me that they're working on an antivirus."

"Sorry, but that's not really all that reassuring," Taffyta said. "We could be walking around killing people and we wouldn't even know it, do you realize that?"

"Yes, Taffyta, I realize that," Vanellope deadpanned. "But for right now, that's all we got."

Taffyta slumped into her chair, dissatisfied. After a few beats of silence, Swizzle Malarkey raised his hand.

"So…is there anything we can do about this? To help, I mean?"

Vanellope looked to Sour Bill for an answer. He mumbled something in her ear. She nodded.

"For now, I think it's best if we don't leave the game," Vanellope said, repeating Bill's suggestion. "That way, if any of us…get out of control, whoever we…y'know…get out of control on…can respawn. If we lost it on somebody outside Sugar Rush…" She shook her head. "I don't think I have to tell you that they don't come back."

"What about r-racing?" Adorabeezle Winterpop said, half-shouting from the end of the table. "If we go crazy while the a-arcade is open, we could…y'know."

She didn't have to finish her sentence. Everybody in the room knew that if something happened while the arcade was open, their game would be unplugged. Not only would they be homeless, but they'd be exposing anyone who entered Game Central Station to the tendencies of the Cy-virus.

"There isn't anything we can do," Vanellope admitted with a shrug. "We just have to keep doing what we're doing."

"Did they happen to say anything about when this antivirus would be ready, or…?" Snowanna Rainbeau, sitting directly at Vanellope's right, said.

"They're thinking they can have it ready in two days."

Finally, a tiny shred of good news that she could tell them. More murmuring sounded throughout the place, but it was far less upsetting than the time before.

"I know this isn't the best situation," Vanellope said, "but the people at Hero's Duty were really confident that they could find a cure, so…let's just try and keep our heads up, okay?" She sighed. "Meeting adjourned, I guess."

One by one, the racers trickled out of the room. Wynchel and Duncan were the last to leave, following behind Vanellope and Sour Bill.

"That could've gone better," Vanellope mumbled as she and Bill walked through the castle hallway.

"I think it went as well as it could've," the green candy responded. "You had to tell them. At least that's one less thing for you to worry about."

"Yeah," Vanellope said, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets. "I guess." But she didn't feel any less worried.

{*}

"You know," Officer Barnes said. "I think I'm a little bit proud of you."

Turbo looked up from his novel. He'd finished the first one Barnes had given him, and now he was reading another one by a different author. It was a cheesy romance novels, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

"Why?"

"I can't believe how good you did earlier," Barnes said. "I really thought you'd go bonkers. Try to run away, or something. But ya did good." Barnes gave a nod in confirmation.

Turbo took the corner of the page he was on and rolled the gritty paper between his thumb and forefinger. "Well. Don't think it didn't cross my mind."

"Figured it did," Barnes said with a kind smile. "Didja get too freaked out? With the needle, and all? You afraid of em?"

Suddenly the corner of the page Turbo was fiddling with became extremely interesting. He averted his gaze and shifted his attention to the task at hand.

Though he'd like to say nothing in response to that, Turbo knew he needed to say something, or else the bombardment of questions would never end. Like many things in his life, he just needed to get it over with. "I guess," was what he managed to say.

"Don't feel bad about it," Barnes said to him, "lots of people're that way. Needles never did bother me, personally, but lemme tell you what—"

Right about then was when Turbo tuned him out. He'd become quite good at that—ignoring people.

But his inner thoughts were a different story. They kept coming whether he liked it or not, and though he tried to think of something else, his thoughts always floated back to something unpleasant.

It wasn't so much the needle. Yeah, it hurt, and yeah, it was sharp and pointy and gross, but as far as pain went, ha ha, he'd felt worse. Nah, it wasn't the needle that had set him off. It was the onslaught of all those horrible memories that hurt. A part of him, some niggling little shred of his being, kept telling him that karma was a bitch and he'd gotten what was bound to've come to him. All of his bad deeds had finally caught up.

He had died, and died, and died again, only to respawn in the same place he'd just been. But what about all those people in TurboTime? And Road Blasters? Did they get to respawn? Or did they just get to die once, and only once?

Had he died enough deaths to account for all the people he'd killed?

"Ah, but anyway, I'll quit my jabbering," Barnes said. "I'll hush and let you read. That one's a goodun. It's got a real 'what a twist' ending. You'll see."

It was just as well that he stop talking, because Turbo hadn't been listening, anyway. Maybe Pops had a point. Maybe he should read his book, try to get his mind off things.

But he kept reading the same paragraph over and over again because he couldn't concentrate on the words. He slapped the book shut. Actually, he kind of felt like throwing it across his cell, but he thought better of it. Instead, he tucked it into its home, underneath his pillow, and put his head on top of it.

Sleep seemed to be his only escape. But one could only do that so much. A lot of his time was spent daydreaming, which was often about terrible things. To be honest…he was kind of looking forward to the so-called "community service" he was doing. It got him out of his cell, and anything that got his mind off things was refreshing, no matter what it was. Maybe one of those girls would come around today and make him do something.

And on that note, they kept saying it was that Sergeant lady's job to do that, but she'd yet to come to the holding cells. They said she was "busy," but Turbo seriously doubted that. He wondered if something was going on.

Now that someone other than himself knew about the goings-on in Sugar Rush, he was wondering if any of those goody-goodies were trying to do anything about it. He couldn't imagine them not poking their noses in places they didn't belong. And weren't Wreck-it and the Glitch friends? That probably meant Fix-it was friends with her, too, so he imagined they were going to try and help her. Heh. They were in for a rude awakening.

Before he knew it, Turbo fell into a light sleep wrought with unpleasant half-dreams. He was awoken by a voice shouting at him.

"Up and at em! Time to go to work!"

It was Katie's voice, and even though she'd just sent him reeling back into a bad place earlier that day, he was pretty glad to hear it. It meant he was getting out of his cell for a little while. Which was a lot better than napping.

He rolled his head over and looked out his cell. Accompanying Katie was Adams, who'd apparently swapped her coke bottle glasses for a much more face-flattering pair of cateye frames. With her being there, too, that probably meant more car-washing for him. But, hey. He'd take it.

He hopped out of his bunk and plunked his helmet on his head. Barnes rounded his desk with the cell keys, unlocking the door and cuffing his prisoner. He handed the key to Katie, and the three of them headed out into the hall.

"So what're we doing today?" he asked them. He tried to put more life into his voice than what he was really feeling. He used to have to do that a lot when he was still King Candy. Old habit, he guessed.

"Nothing!" Katie said brightly.

"Katie said you had a rough morning," Adams elaborated. "We thought we'd let you, uh…take it easy. Just this once."

"We're going to Adams's garage office to hang out," Katie said. "It sounds super boring, but I promise it's not."

"I've got movies," Adams said. "And snacks, I think."

Katie leaned down to mutter in Turbo's ear. "She'll make us play one of her lame board games before it's all over," she giggled.

"I'm not deaf," Adams fired back. "My board games are not lame. They're edu-tainment."

Katie stuck her tongue out and mimicked a puking sound. Adams pursed her lips.

"That's okay," Adams said with faux cheer. "I bet Turbo, here, likes learning. He seems like a pretty smart guy."

See, this is what I'm talking about, Turbo thought. Getting my mind off things. Look at me go.

In a rare moment of generosity, Turbo said with a shrug, "I'll do whatever." Which, he wasn't lying. Anything was better than staring at the ceiling of his cell, brain fraught with nightmarish flashbacks. Even an edu-taining board game…whatever in fresh hell that was.

{*}

The movie Adams put in for them to watch was called, Kevin and Jimbo Take Over the City. It was meant to be a comedy in the first place—that's what Turbo was gathering, anyway—but it was so horrendous that it became funny in an unintentional way.

"Look," Adams said through a mouthful of popcorn, pointing at the TV screen. "You can see Jimbo's eyes moving back and forth because he's literally reading off a cue-card. He didn't even memorize his lines."

Turbo reached into her bag of popcorn and helped himself to a handful. "I thought that was Kevin?"

Katie laughed. "Does it matter?"

In the movie, Kevin and Jimbo had decided to rob a bank. They had stocking caps pulled down over their faces with no eye-holes cut in them, or any other means to see where they were going or what they were doing. It was a frightening attempt at slapstick humor.

"This is making me feel secondhand embarrassment," Turbo said, but he was kind of grinning, anyway.

"Oh, no," Katie said, shaking her head. "We haven't even gotten to the best part. Kevin and Jimbo haven't gone to the aquarium yet."

The microwaveable snacks Adams had prepared had cold spots (except the popcorn, which was half-burnt), and the soda had lost the majority of its fizz—but for once in his life, Turbo wasn't complaining about it. It was better than washing vehicles, and it was tons better than being in his cell, alone and—he'd go ahead and admit it to himself—afraid. So he decided to keep his yap shut and his negative thoughts to himself.

Suddenly, Turbo had a thought. He waited until the end of the movie to say anything.

"Hey, you," he said, jabbing Adams with his elbow as the credits rolled.

"Hey, what?"

"I got a question."

"Okay."

"There's somethin I've been wondering," Turbo said. "What's your first name?"

Katie gasped. "Aw, you haven't told him yet?" She poked either of her cheeks with her index fingers. "Please tell him. I wanna see the look on his face."

"Nope," Adams said, crossing her arms. "Katie, don't you dare say anything."

"I won't," Katie frowned. "But you seriously need to. It's so cute. I don't know why you don't go by your first name, anyway."

"Because it's the most awful name I've ever heard," Adams said, rolling her eyes. "Whoever my programmers were, they must've really hated me."

"I won't tell anybody," Turbo reasoned. "Who would I tell?" He let out a dry little laugh.

Adams looked at the expectant faces before her. She sighed.

"All right, all right," she said. "My name is…my first name is…it's Eucalyptus, okay? There, I said it."

"You-ka-what?" Turbo said, brow furrowed.

Adams sighed. "See, this is why I hate telling—"

"I'm not making fun of it," Turbo said, which was only a half-truth. "Uh…pronounce it again."

"Eu-ca-lyp-tus," she said more slowly. "From what I can remember—from my programmed memories, y'know?—my mom's favorite animal was the koala. And, uh…they eat a lot of eucalyptus leaves. So…" She trailed off.

"It's definitely different," Turbo mused. But that didn't seem to make her feel any better about it. "Hey, my name's Turbo. What the hell is that about, am I right? And if ya don't like it, you could just shorten it."

"Like I haven't thought of that," Adams said sourly. "What could I possibly shorten 'Eucalyptus' to? Don't even think about it. There's nothing you can shorten it to. Nothing."

But Turbo did think about it, and it took him about two seconds to come up with something. "How bout 'Callie'?"

Adams's eyes widened.

"Adams, that is so cute!" Katie squealed. "You so look like a Callie. And we could be Callie and Katie, the Wonder Friends." Katie jostled Adam's shoulder. "Do you like it? You gotta like it."

"Actually, uh," she said, her entire face growing red. She lowered her voice to a murmur. "It's not that bad."

"Lemme just say," Katie said, her voice raising to a too-loud-for-such-a-small-room level, "that Callie is way better-sounding than Adams. I mean, not to hurt your feelings, or anything, but—"

"See what you started?" Adams—Callie—said to Turbo. "She's never gonna shut up about it."

"Let's put in another movie," Turbo suggested. "Drown her out."

"Yeah, good idea."

They watched Kevin and Jimbo Take Over Another City next. It was terrible. Delightfully terrible.

Author's Note: Here is my theory about movies and TV within the video game universe. They wouldn't have any way to watch stuff from the "Player's World," but...okay, here's a good example. If you've ever played the video game The Last of Us, the little girl, Ellie, loves reading comic books. The character you play as occasionally finds comic books for her to read while you're looting places. But they're comics that don't exist irl. Geddit? They exist in their world, but not ours. Uh...I didn't do a good job of explaining that.