X-Turbo lay on the track in the exact same place he'd been before. He was sprawled out, staring vacantly at the sky. He hadn't had the will to do anything. Even his rage had gone out of him. He felt utterly dead.

A strong wave hit the side of the track and broke him out of his defeated trance. He scrambled away from it and cringed as the spray hit him. He couldn't help being terrified of water after what had happened to him. Even the memories made him shiver…

It had been their sixth day in the arcade. He'd been exploring Thundercrash's factory with the other racers, none of them with their cars. (The machinery had been turned off, because that would not have been a smart move if it hadn't). They'd come to a split part of the track, one road going under the flooded part of the factory, the other above it. They'd been on the upper road looking over the water when they'd spotted a long, thick cable dangling from a hole in the ceiling. Flux had made a crack about whether it was possible to jump onto the cable from the road, which Nova had shot down as unlikely.

God, he'd been such an idiot. He'd still been hyper over, well, everything, because they'd been new and awesome and he was in love with it all. He'd believed himself to be the invincible star, capable of anything, and had yet to learn of his predecessor. Plus, he loved to prove the twins wrong, so like a moron he'd leapt right over and caught the cable without even thinking about how he'd get back to them. Instead of being impressed by this feat, Flux had exclaimed she was only joking and covered her mouth, Nova had yelled that he was an idiot and Axel had demanded to know how he was going to get back (while Napalm kept Lightning from copying him). He couldn't even remember how he'd started to answer before he'd slipped off the cable and plunged into the murk.

He remembered sinking under the freezing, foul water, the dirt stinging his eyes as his lungs screamed for air. Delta had dived in to save him, being the only racer who'd learned to swim in the days since their arrival. Turned out he was a born natural. He'd managed to get X-Turbo to land, then they'd taken him back to his apartment. Flux had found a blanket and wrapped him in it, Napalm had got his fire going, Nova had tried to calm him and Delta, Axel and Lightning had made him hot chocolate.

His friends. It was like a sick joke: before he'd been furious at Delta, but now his life was in danger and he felt so terrified for him. Delta might have been obnoxious, but he still cared about X-Turbo. He'd saved him from drowning and baked him those cookies. He hadn't had to bake him the cookies, but he'd done so because he'd wanted his friend to feel better. They might not have been alive long, but they were a close bunch. They had the old Turbo to thank for that. Finding out about him had encouraged them to have each other's backs, so if the arcade turned out to be against them they'd always have Time City.

Now what did he have, though? Nothing. He stood up. Damn it, this wasn't him! He didn't mope around feeling sorry for himself while everything went to hell! He felt a burning restlessness, a sudden urge to do something, even though he knew there wasn't anything. He couldn't sit around in misery any longer! He decided he'd at least explore the track. He couldn't go left, because the track twisted around and made a loop-de-loop. He could go right if he climbed over the ALF, which was exactly what he did. He jumped down at the other side, then caught sight of something in the middle of the track ahead.

A car.

It resembled Behemoth, except like the track it was completely untextured. Even its wheels were bright white and lacking any detail. X-Turbo staggered towards it, at first believing it to be a mirage. He ran his hand along it and the canopy popped open on its own accord. He climbed into it, finding its keys were already in the ignition. He turned them and brought the car to life. Screens popped up, one bearing the vehicle's name:

DEBUG CAR

'Debug Car'? What the heck was that for? The dashboard had a different design to the one in his real car. There were a couple more switches than he remembered there being, and none of them were labelled. They were also arranged differently. Great, so which did what?

He noticed another screen labelled 'stats'. All the cars had programmed stats, but this car had stats he could adjust. Weird. Why would that be? He got the feeling somehow this car was meant for something more than racing. What, though? He tried to figure it out. De-bug. Did that mean 'getting rid of bugs'? As in, programming bugs? Well, that made more sense than it fighting monstrous insects (as entertaining as that looked in his mind). The car was meant to test the game's mechanics and physics. Maybe it had adjustable stats because they'd been testing which combinations worked best.

He set the stats to Behemoth's:

Body – B

Boost – C

Grip – B

He turned the car and set off across the track. The car had restrictors on, so it took him a bit longer to clear it. The car was a lot more uncomfortable than Behemoth and bumped him around. If he had much of a backside left, it would've been sore. The track had no line, so he stopped when he reached the other side of the ALF.

So, if the car was meant for testing, then could the track also be for that? Yes, that too made sense. This was the track they'd used the car to test the gameplay on. Neither the car nor the track were meant to be used in the main game, which was why they were located on the edge, pushed to one side. Their code must have been left in by accident. The armless ALF must also have been accidentally leftover. Maybe it was an earlier version of ALF they'd replaced with the one at Rush.

Which switch turned restrictors off? He flicked a random one, only for the car to judder and make a crackly, broken sound. A glitch rippled through it and hit X-Turbo, who let out a static cry as pain shot through him. Whatever function that switch had performed was one removed from the game. Were the others the same? He didn't want to risk it. He didn't want to sit in a car that hurt him, either. He got out and sat beside it.

What could he do…

…He could drive over there, couldn't he? Drive across the bottom of the ocean?

He would have laughed at that if he could. Yes, drive, immersed in the freezing expanse of water. The water at Thundercrash slowed them down, and that was just stagnant floodwater. How bad would turbulent seawater be? And what if the car couldn't take it? It already felt as though it was about to come apart. He imagined the canopy breaking and gallons of seawater crashing down on top of him and – no! Fear overwhelmed him and paralyzed him in place, extinguishing the fiery feeling that had burst inside him.

That wasn't going to work.

XXX

Bar Infinity was Delta's hangout after the arcade closed. It was part of the scenery in Big City Rush, on the fourth path of the part when the cars dropped into the city. He was hunched over the bar with a half-drunk glass of Popsi.

Nova stood outside. She was sure the ranting from 'X-Turbo' was just his reaction to the race, no matter how fierce it was. If she could get Delta to talk it out with him, maybe he'd come around and stop acting like an idiot. It was worth a shot. It had to be better than letting it slide and doing nothing, because then the situation would only worsen. She went in and sat beside her brother.

"Hey, Del. You okay?"

He nodded and greeted her warmly enough.

"Hey, Nove. I'm fine, ish. You?"

"Could be better, I suppose. I'm here 'cause I wanna talk about you and Turbo."

Any sense of warmth left Delta in a finger snap.

"I don't get what his problem is!" he cried. "First he freaks out at me, then he's been acting like a big jerk all day. He's lucky I didn't knock his head off when the arcade closed! I'm still asking myself why I didn't, to be honest with ya!"

Nova couldn't say she blamed him. She'd been angry at 'X-Turbo' herself for the way he'd treated Delta and for what he'd said at MTM. As far as she believed, he'd turned back on everything they'd said at the beach, and convinced himself that to stop having problems with his friends, he had to stop having friends. Which, frankly, was on a punch-in-the-face level of stupid. He had to still feel emotional over what went on between him and Delta. His emotions were messing up his thoughts and making him come up with crazy-stupid solutions.

"What went down between you two before the race last night?"

Delta shrugged.

"I was bored, so I thought I'd rib him like we always do. He wasn't so funny this time, though."

"Why not?"

Delta shrugged again.

"I dunno. He wasn't laughing or even smiling as much as he usually does. Or at all, come to think of it."

So, X-Turbo had been feeling pressured, and Delta had tried messing with him without thinking anything of this. No wonder X-Turbo had gotten angry. The only way to stop this from occurring in the future was to get Delta to realise X-Turbo had been too upset.

"Do you think you should've maybe left him alone, then?"

Delta didn't get it.

"What do you mean?"

Nova made a frustrated sound. She was so, so exhausted and at the end of her rope with X-Turbo and Delta, as well as upset by what 'X-Turbo' had said at MTM. She didn't mean to get sharp with Delta, but she couldn't help it with the way she felt. He was so dense sometimes! If he wasn't this dense, the fallout would never have happened!

"Think about it! He wasn't acting like his usual self, so he was obviously in a bad mood! You shouldn't have tried to get him going when he wasn't giving anything back. You should've left him alone! I mean, look how it went for you!"

Delta scowled at the memory of X-Turbo punching him, but Nova was determined to make him understand and continued, "Pushing at him just made him angrier and even more of a jerk. It doesn't help that he didn't tell us his real feelings and tried to be a tough guy about it, but hey. That's just who he is, apparently. The rest of us are gonna have to roll with it and work out how he really feels. Think about it from his point of view. He was under a lot of pressure to prove himself – maybe too much pressure. Anything could've set him off, then. Jokes especially…"

Delta's scowl softened as he thought about it some more, but he couldn't completely see what she meant in regards to X-Turbo's feelings.

"He still couldn't expect us to let him win."

"I know. He didn't. But he thinks everyone out there hates him, so he got it into his head that winning would make him a hero and change that. Think how you'd feel if Drift was a psycho and you had to prove yourself."

That worked. Delta's eyes widened as he realised how that would make him feel, then that X-Turbo had felt exactly that way.

"I guess – yeah. That'd be – no, I see it."

He was really thinking about it now. "You might be right. I should've thought, I should've recognised that he wasn't up for banter. I gotta go think about this some more, but then I'll go and find him maybe…"

He left. Nova sank over the bar, suddenly looking tired. She massaged her forehead.

"Y'alright, Nove?" asked the bartender, an NPC named Angelo.

She wasn't. She had a thumping headache. She cared about X-Turbo and Delta, a lot, and being caught between them was stressful beyond belief. It didn't help that she couldn't get over what 'X-Turbo' had said at MTM. He couldn't be serious about no longer wanting friends. He'd looked serious, though, and sounded it, which was what hurt the most…

"I don't know. Turbo said some crazy things today, stuff I don't wanna repeat. I don't know what's come over him…" She sighed wearily. "It's all that stupid race's fault. Whoever thought it was a good idea needs to be slapped. And I swear if that other Turbo was in front of me I'd choke the life out of him." She mimed doing so for a moment, then slumped. "You got anything with lime in it?"

Angelo poured her a drink.