(A few people have been asking and yes I must clarify that Turbo does indeed have a lisp in this fic, but I choose not to write it. Why? Because writing the "th" sound for every "s" gets redundant. However, it is very pronounced and will be written when he gets REALLY mad. XD "VANELLOPE VON STHCWEETZ!" As I stated in my tumblr there will be no Christmas chapter, but I may write a separate Christmas oneshot if people are interested.
Also please see my deviantart Cryssy-miu for adorable collaborated art me and the ever famous fillyblue have been working on based off the fic.
Next chapter almost entirely focuses just on Felix and Turbo.)
People could say what they wanted about him and most if it would be true, but Turbo did shelter the brat for ten years.
Each day as King Candy he'd check on the pixie to make sure she stayed twenty feet away from any go-kart, and to check to see if she was alive and well. It was often difficult to find the girl and he seldom ever did when she retreated back into her volcano.
But there was one day the racer would never forget.
No matter how strong the defenses of the programming, viruses would always be a threat to any game. Both of his games were no exception to that rule. A virus could attack any time, and its severity depended on how efficient a program's spyware was.
One particular week, a dangerous malware attacked the arcade. Most games were automatically protected and suffered little from it, Sugar Rush included. Being as paranoid as he was, Turbo hacked back into his game and increased its defenses. If any character showed the slightest little pixel problem during arcade hours disaster would strike.
And if he glitched, it could corrupt King Candy's disguise and expose who he was.
While other games would have considered the drastically increased protection a little over the top, he only found it necessary to keep his plans in order. The increased spyware protected all of Sugar Rush. Except for one thing.
"Your highness!"
"Not now, Duncan. Can't you see I'm busy?" The monarch stood at the side of King Candy's white, glossed car and smiled, giving it a rub with a cotton candy rag. His guards were right; cotton candy did prove to be an excellent absorbent.
"It's the glitch."
Turbo tutted in annoyance, "Let me guess, the little cavity is in the bakery, is she? You know the drill, Duncan. Oh, and don't be afraid to use those clubs on her. The little freak could use some discipline."
"She's sick."
The racer paused in mid-rub, his bushy eyebrow raising as his face hardened. "What do you mean she's sick? Characters don't get sick, they get viruses! And the game's spyware is as hard as a jawbreaker. Nothing could get past it."
Turbo crossed his arms and pushed aside his confectionery servants as he made his way to his surveillance chamber. Hidden, tiny video cameras littered every inch of the kingdom with the exception of the bakery. The guards he had assigned for that area covered everything else.
Icy, brown eyes targeted a particular screen, where it showed the striped forest of candy cane trees. Bunched under a tall tree, trying to shield herself with her hoodie was the little pixie. Every few seconds her body went into spasms of glitching; much more severe than he remembered them to be.
The harsh spectrum of colors that made up the child's body seemed to have utterly drained; the pigments of every square inch of her paler and sicker as the malware ate at her coding. The virus (which Turbo didn't even need to do research to figure out) she had was eating at every, last remaining figment he had left of her coding.
The increased spyware was designed to protect every program in the game, but since Vanellope was now a glitch and all but completely detached from the main system, she was now no longer considered part of the game. She wasn't protected, and she'd die shortly.
"Sire, should we put her in the Fungeon again?"
Turbo should have said yes, and had he known of the miseries the brat would put him through in the future, he probably would have said yes. At this time, the racer's mind, although tainted with darkness, had not completely given to insanity yet, and killing the child wasn't in his plans. As long as she didn't give him reason to kill her, he'd keep his promise to King Candy.
"That won't be necessary."
Turbo walked briskly past his guards and down toward the chamber of codes.
For the child whose program technically made her his daughter, ungrateful brat she was with all he did for her. Numerous chances to kill her and he never even attempted it. He had given her several warnings and the time in the Fungeon was intentionally brief (until eventually he realized he needed to keep her imprisoned forever). It would be a tedious job, but he'd probably be able to destroy the malware before what remained of the child's coding was eaten completely.
It was uncomfortable, to say the least, sleeping with your head against a wall and a rather heavy, warm munchkin in your arms, but Turbo didn't complain. He didn't sleep very well, and to be honest, he was glad he didn't drift off into a sleep deep enough to dream. He wasn't ready to tell Vanellope about her father yet, and if she had to find out by dream...
The racer cracked a stinging eye open to the light and gazed down at the sleeping girl. She was cradled in his arms, and he didn't even remember putting her in this position. Last night was a blur of tears and emotion.
"I had...I had a dream," the munchkin had whispered as her tears stained his white jump suit. Turbo's pale hand stayed on her back, occasionally giving it a subtle pat or rub.
The racer knew every detail of the dream but decided to play it oblivious. After all, since he didn't have any dreams yet, he wasn't sure if Vanellope knew they could see into each other's subconscious mind.
"Yeah, I rather figured. What about, Pixie? Was it...a bad dream?"
"No," the girl mumbled, squeezing out further tears. "No, it was a great one! And that's...that's what I just can't understand. Someone was holding me.
"I thought m-maybe it was Felix because he does that some time, but it didn't sound like Felix. The figure was too thin to be Ralph. He...wasn't much bigger than me. His voice was too whispered f-for me to really hear who it was, but he talked funny."
Turbo's heart stopped and his grip tightened on the child in fear. He and King Candy had the same speech impediment: a lisp. It was one of the things that made taking over his body so easy since he had similar mannerisms.
"Well...maybe it was me holding you." Turbo cringed at the words he spoke. The thought of him cuddling and rocking the pixie made him want to gag, but it was better she thought it was him than her dead father.
"Maybe...but it just felt so comfortable and familiar. As if I really knew the person and they really knew me. A-and I was so sad when the dream ended."
The racer shut his eyes. "Well, it's late now, kid. Just get some sleep."
"Stay with me..."
Sigh. "Fine."
Turbo's bloodshot eyes drifted back down to the little child. She nestled close into his jumpsuit, continuing to breathe gently. At the very least she seemed a little more tranquil.
Maybe it was the events from the night before, but Turbo didn't feel the urge to shove her sleeping form to the floor or out a window like he usually did. Instead, the racer stood with her and calmly slipped her back onto her bed, even absently tossing a fold of her covers over her back.
The racer made his way back out to the balcony and rested his chin in his arms. What was with him and balconies? It always seemed to be the place he chose to do his soul searching; the present and the past. Felix was always able to tell when something was wrong with him simply by how he stood on the balcony to the Penthouse.
"Can I get you anything for breakfast?"
The racer spun around, his gaze falling on the small, slick-lime form at his feet. Sour Bill. The tiny morsel of candy wasn't giving him a look of hate; just his typical, dead-pan, Sour Bill expression. Sour Bill was probably the only one that knew who he was and didn't hate him in this game.
"Yeah...thanks."
Without another word, the candy waddled off toward the kitchen. Nothing else to do, Turbo followed suit behind his old friend.
It was strange how docile Turbo felt, and how it even showed in the peacefulness on his face. His golden eyes didn't simmer with hate and every facial expression wasn't a glare or a sneer. No, he felt genuinely calm.
"Sour Bill, can I ask you something? What do you remember of King Candy?"
The little candy glanced up from where he was preparing a stack of pancakes. His lime-eyes rolled. "It was only a few months ago; my memory isn't that bad. I remember everything when you were King Candy."
Just as Turbo thought: he didn't have any memory of the real King up until Turbo took over his avatar. Doubtlessly, the rest of the characters would probably give the same story. They'd remember Candy as this fake-sugar-sweet monarch that hid his true malice, as opposed to the original, loving and kind hearted king that no one would ever remember.
Turbo wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disheartened that Sour Bill didn't remember anything of his old friend. It would have been a little more comforting having someone to talk to that knew what was going on. Then again, confessing would be good practice for when he had to finally spill the jelly beans to the daughter of the man he killed.
A tiny, squeaky yawn came from the doorway. There stood Vanellope, in her bedraggled state, with the ruffled nightgown, bed-head and everything. She stretched up onto the balls of her feet. Turbo hoped it was a trick of the light, because a brief ripple of blue and static flashed through her.
"Morning, Munchkin," the racer muttered, slightly agitated. "And how did you sleep?" (Certainly better than he had propped against a hard wall).
The pixie seemed to sense his annoyance and looked shamefully at the floor rather than try to crack a joke to lighten the mood.
"Your pancakes, President," Sour Bill said tonelessly as he plopped a stack of blueberry pancakes in front of the child.
Turbo watched her as she ate, observing her every movement. The girl didn't dive into her food with her usual vigor, but rather quietly picked up the fork and twiddled it in the plate.
Something was wrong. Something was off in her eyes, and it wasn't just emotion from last night's events. There was something deeper than her memories starting to return. Turbo couldn't place it, and it bothered him.
"Anything on the agenda for today, Pixie?" Her little agenda was normally bursting with things she wanted to do with him, and most that – other than his glitch lessons – he could care less about. Truthfully, he'd do whatever she wanted right now. Anything to keep from thinking about it.
"No, I didn't really have anything in mind," the munchkin mumbled, more in favor of playing with her food than actually eating it. "Glitch training if you want it."
Glitch training wasn't a bad option, as long as they didn't return to that puffy, pink paradise of fluffy, bunny nightmares. He had enough bunny frights already with that little vermin constantly tormenting him.
Jello Jungle; it was just a step up from Marshmallow Meadows, and far from exciting-at least to him. What could possibly be adrenaline pumping about a race track of soft, gelatinous molds? Wasn't the munchkin ever going to give him some sort of challenge?
"Jello Jungle," Turbo deadpanned, "where the biggest danger here is being suffocated under a mound of gelatinous goop." He shot the child a glare. "Seriously, Pixie? This is ridiculous. And why did you have to bring your stupid smore?!"
Said 'smore' was behind the raven-haired girl, sitting obediently like an angel and stalking the racer with its icing-dot, blue little eyes. Oh great. So Turbo did have to deal with evil bunnies again. Wonderful.
"I know you're impatient to actually get on the road, but we gotta get that glitch under control first!" The pixie walked in a synchronized step with her little, fluffy pink shadow towards the entrance of the race track.
The racer hissed, his usual bitterness returning. "If you can get it under control, I don't see why I can't. And you've done nothing to help me with it. It isn't anymore under control than it was when we started these stupid 'lessons.'"
The child gave a furious scowl and spun to the racer. What an ungrateful brat. "I've done as much teaching as I can do! There's only so much I can do to help you with your glitch, Candy-cane Man."
"Candy-cane Man?"
"The stripes," Vanellope jested with a smirk. She walked alongside him, up to where they had set their cars at the entrance.
"I know it's been a long process, but we need to make sure you're glitch-less before I add you in the game. If you're on the track for real and you glitch over a cliff, or the racers see you glitch..." She paused. Oh, the irony.
Turbo had stopped walking, and the child turned to him. The glare of contempt was gone as he merely blinked at her. "Add me in the game?"
Vanellope stared at him as if he had sprouted three heads, her arms falling to her sides. She shook her head and rolled her eyes to the sky. "Uh...doy? What do you think all these glitch lessons have been for, for fun? Believe me, my definition of fun isn't to spend all day teaching a whiny racer that tried to ruin everyone's lives how to fix their glitch!"
Vanellope's insults and sarcasm didn't even touch him as he kept repeating her words in his head. "You want me to be a part of the game?"
Softness touched the pixie's eyes as she gave an awkward, quiet laugh. "Well...yeah. I mean, what'd you think I was gonna do with you? Throw you back into the Fungeon? I mean, you can't even leave this game now, so we may as well make some good use outta ya!"
She folded her little arms and cocked her head to Turbo's car. "But like I said, we can't put you anywhere as long as you're glitching." She snapped her fingers and adamantly pointed to his car seat.
Baffled and without a word to say, Turbo silently complied. He adjusted his steering wheel and turned to the child.
Both candy engines started in sync, letting off twin clouds of edible dust as they sped through the jungle of translucent, wobbling molds.
Everything was going well for the first few moments as they raced steadily down the road. As unappealing as this namby-pamby jelly park seemed to be at first, Turbo had to admit the unbalanced and soft roads were fun, rocking him back and forth like a ship on the water.
"Jello Jungle is a track that's barely used anymore!" Vanellope shouted over her engine. "Gamers look at it and think it's lame just because of its name. It's actually really fun and the best place to practice, because..."
When she drowned out, Turbo merely figured she grew tired of trying to scream over the engines. That's when the ice cold, wet slop catapulted from the air and landed on his car and him, whipped cream and vanilla filling his nostrils.
"Ah!" The racer yelped and swerved rapidly back and forth, fighting to wipe the dairy treat from his eyes. The mound of cream weighed down his car, causing him to both slow and jerk around on the track.
From only a few feet in front of him, Vanellope continued down the road in laughing hysterics.
"BECAUSE THIS PLACE HAS POWER UPS!"
Turbo's eyes narrowed, a feeling welling up in his chest.
It was an archaic feeling, and one almost forgotten from his days in Turbo Time, and spending his evenings with Felix at Tappers or the Penthouse. The feeling he got when he hid Felix's hammer on him as a joke, or chased the twins around the track and lightly bumped them with his car:
Playfulness.
The racer darted into a power up, suddenly sporting a large, gumball canon. He smirked as he took aim.
"Have some candy, you rotten little gobstopper!"
How strange that these words were spoken in such drastically different situations; from the top of a mountain in the midst of a battle intended to the death, to shouting them to a little girl in the kitchen in the midst of a grappling and candy fight. And now they were being said back on the race track in the middle of a match where for the first time, it didn't feel like it mattered if Turbo won or not.
Vanellope squealed as the multi-colored gumballs bounced on the road beside and in front of her, narrowly missing her car and rolling into one of the jello molds instead.
"Oh yeah? Have a BUNNY!"
"A what?"
The racer yelped as a pink, squishy thing was tossed onto his car. The squishy thing unrolled, revealing itself to be Marsha. The bunny sat on his hood with its haunting, unblinking blue eyes. Turbo stared back for a moment, caught in the freaky thing's trance.
With a grunt, he shoved Marsha aside and let the pink thing fall with a squeaky bounce into his lap.
"Oh, that's it—you're going to get it now!" He loaded the deadly and sweet ammo back into the gumball canon and prepared to target the child with the spherical, rainbow bullets.
The pixie's car in front of him continued to move in a steady straight line, but Vanellope had all but taken her hands off of the wheel as she stared into the distance with blank, chocolate eyes.
"Oh you're going to get it now, you wicked little monkey!"
"Oh really? You gotta catch me first, Admiral Nose Honker!"
"PIXIE!"
"I assure you, my precious little Vanilla bean that when I do catch you, I'll tickle the sprinkles right out of your hair!"
"VANELLOPE!"
Vanellope was jerked out of the state of familiar nostalgia by the screeching sound of Turbo's tires, and the sudden red mass she was about to crash into-that she was dimly able to see through some blue static.
Wait, static?
"Pixie! Teleport or something!"
Vanellope shook off the remnants of voices and static. She closed her eyes in concentration; teleporting now took little to no effort what-so-ever, but the munchkin's form didn't do much more than flicker blue. She couldn't teleport.
Pins and needles riddled her coding, causing the girl to clutch to her head like the many times Turbo had done in his car.
The child screamed as the front of her car bounced heavily off a flower-shaped jello mold and sent her ricocheting off a few more before she barreled down a cliff.
"VANELLOPE!" Turbo could only watch with golden eyes as wide as dinner plates as the girl went off the steep cliff. He shut his eyes and waited for some sort of sickening thud and for him to disintegrate into coding, but nothing happened.
There was the sound of a harsh 'boing' and a little squeak from below, but other than that, no fatal squelching of engines or the sound of anything breaking.
Wincing, the racer reluctantly peered over the edge of the bouncy road and blinked down, gaping at what did meet his eyes.
Both the child and her car were safe and sprawled out on top of a gelatinous, strawberry-red castle top. The glitching girl tiredly held up a hand and gave him the "okay" sign.
Without a second thought, Turbo jumped out of his car and let himself delicately descend down the steep cliff (it was hard to though; jello provided little leverage).
"Well that was quite the fall." The racer attempted to hide the rush of panic in his face when he remembered what caused the child to fall. She had been thinking about King Candy again.
"Yeah," Vanellope agreed. She crossed her legs and sat with her back against her upturned car. "Good thing the jello caught me."
Her code had ceased flickering, which didn't answer any questions. It just provided more. Was the memory so strong it just interfered with her code?
"What were you thinking of?" Again intentionally playing it stupid.
A distant look came to her chocolate eyes, sad and longing. Turbo felt his innards twist a little. He eased himself into a sitting position next to the girl and looked at her.
He didn't like it when she got this way. As enjoyable as he always assumed her misery and suffering would be to him, he found that, to his annoyance, it caused him little pleasure. All it did was remind him she was getting closer and closer to figuring things out, and he wasn't at all prepared to deal with that when the time came. He didn't want to go back into the Fungeon.
He didn't want her to know what happened.
"I was..." The child licked her lips. "I was just thinking about my dream, I guess." She shrugged. A smirk came to her lips as she looked up at him. "I guess the rest of glitch training will be put on hold for when we get our cars back up those stupid cliffs."
The other racer snorted and flopped back against the bouncy castle. He stared up at the twenty foot drop and sighed, not looking forward to climbing it.
"Hey, where did our pet go?"
"Our pet?" Turbo scoffed. "That sugar coated vermin is no pet of-" He was cut off as a pink fluff ball randomly landed on his stomach, causing him to grunt.
"There she is," the munchkin grinned cheekily. She reached over to take her blinking marshmallow into her own arms and buried her face into the soft treat's whipped cream fur.
"I bet I could whip up a good fire," Turbo suggested. He smirked. "I've never had a smore with pink marshmallows before."
Vanellope cried out and angrily held her bunny away from the racer, shooting him a dagger-like glare. "Oh don't you dare! Stop joking about eating my bunny."
"I don't recall ever telling you it was a joke," Turbo said ominously, and hid a snicker as the munchkin squeaked and scooted away from him.
"Putting up with Marsha is a lot easier than putting up with you!" In the spur of the playful moment, she tore a piece of jello clean off the castle and hurled it at the racer.
Turbo's eyes narrowed and darkened, blazing little slits of wrath targeting her through the jello goop in his eyes. The gelatin fell from his face with a wet slop, and the racer remained calm and silent as he didn't move a muscle.
Then his arm shot out, grabbing the pixie's leg. She screamed and fell on her face, but the little minx kicked her way out of his grip and danced across the gelatin roof top of the castle to avoid his grabbing hands.
"You little brat! When I get my hands on you, you're dead!"
Turbo wobbled on unsteady legs to reach the brat. He didn't have much experience with moving on jello; not like she had. Every second of his time was spent on the track, and although Turbo had visited every track in the kingdom, the self-proclaimed best racer wouldn't stick around a place as pathetic as Jello Jungle.
Down on his knees, Turbo hopped across the jello bricks to try and reach the evil little pixie. The energy was back in her, it seemed, as she leaped out of the way of his grabbing hands. The blank look of yearning misery was gone as well, at least just for this moment as she delighted in teasing the racer and glitching every time he grabbed for her.
Finally giving up on trying to make a grab for the little munchkin, Turbo merely sat back and watched as she bounced across the castle.
"Hey Pajama Boy, check this out!"
The pale racer watched the girl perform a series of flips. One ended with a bounce that was a little harder than it should have been. The child flew back a few feet and landed headfirst in a jello mold. Her tiny legs kicked as muffled squeals were heard inside the goop.
A few moments passed with more squealing and shouting and Turbo shook his head, a smile on his lips.
They sat at the chocolate dinner table at the end of the day, engorging on dinner that was none other than baked goods and candy.
"Vanellope, darling, please don't eat the table."
The tiny pixie hung there off the side of the structure with her little, chipmunk-like teeth clamped down onto the table. She scraped off some chocolate bark with her teeth and licked her lips, grinning.
Turbo examined past the failing sternness in the king's eyes, easily able to see the true look of endearment and love far more than the racer had ever seen for anyone, and more than the racer was sure he himself ever had for anyone.
"Who in your life did you care about, Turbo?" King Candy asked his friend.
The racer's head shot up, not expecting the sudden question. He stared at the kind man for a few moments, and the otherwise emotionless look on his face became tinged with sadness.
In the beginning, before Turbo locked the memories of his friends forever in his mind, the reminder of the ones he used to call friends and even family always caused proverbial needles to stab his heart.
"I don't have friends or family," the racer said harshly.
"Did you?"
Gentle, twin faces of equal paleness and a certain, bright eyed and affectionate handyman flashed through his mind for a fleeting moment, before he shoved them aside. "Yes." That was the last time he'd allow himself to think about them again.
King Candy's silver brows creased with sympathy as he tutted softly at his friend's misfortune. He looked to where Vanellope was now laying happily on the floor and coloring.
"I love all my subjects, and the little racers. Oh, they're my beloved children as well. But no one could I love more than my darling little Vanellope."
Turbo was silent, watching the little pixie as she drew them all together as the family she thought they were in her innocent little mind.
He couldn't comprehend the kind of love King Candy must feel, because Turbo had never loved a child, and he probably had never loved the people that were in his life more than King Candy loved his daughter.
"To love a child—there's nothing more amazing, Turbo. And the wonders children can do for you... When you love a child..."
Golden eyes silently studied the munchkin, showing no reaction as she looked back and smiled at him.
"...You'll never be alone."