GremlinPrescott: Yup she's back! :D
apple: Yeah I know for sure I would've reacted like that for real lol
The Lizard: Ha y'know I wasn't even thinking about dysphoria and whatnot when I did that scene, but yeah I can see it now! I guess that's pretty much what I was doing anyway and just didn't know it. I know it's not really the same thing as what you were talking about but eh. And yes I was definitely going down an anti-Bella route with this lol. I'm glad you find it all somewhat realistic.
Mystic Nightfury: Gene can't really die unfortunately, he'd just respawn like if Ralph or Vanellope were to "die". But I have plans for him. So many plans that I'm not sure which to use lol.
That Guest Person: I always love reading your lengthy reviews, they always make me grin. I'm so glad that I managed to make this fantastic, unrealistic scenario have a sense of realism to it. And yes I agree with what you said about soulmates. Sure, have stuff in common, but you're still two very individual people with unique life experiences and ideas so of course things will clash. And yeah, I know nobody really wants to see Gene again but he IS the villain so he kinda has to show up lol.
Ellie: lol "story-you", that made me laugh. Though that's pretty much literally what Blondie is lol.
One More Turbo-Tastic Day at a Time
"So," sighed Ralph as he eased back into his oversized armchair, "you think Lady Go Go is responsible for everything?"
'It's more than just me thinking it. I got evidence, just not enough to one hundred percent prove anything.'
Crash had needed to tell someone he could trust about what he and Burn had pieced together the other day. He wanted to tell Bobby, but he feared that he would get upset at Go Go being accused of something as severe as attempted murder. Ralph had been his only option, having gotten closer to him than the other members of the Core Four, or anyone else in their movie-verse in general.
"You did tell a convincing story," Ralph had to admit. "Kinda surprised you guys found her out in the Real World. That's what's confusing me."
'Someone had to have helped her. She was trapped in that concept art place, right? She'd have needed outside help to get out of there, but who?'
"I don't know," the wrecker shrugged helplessly. "The whole thing's more complicated than when Turbo took over Sugar Rush. At least THAT was relatively straight forward."
'I just wish I could tell Bobby about it,' the blue racer said regretfully. 'He might be able to get Go Go to 'fess up since they're friends and all.'
"Not to sound like a goody-two-shoes, but honesty is probably the best policy. What if one of us knew something about your brother and kept it a secret?"
'I'd be pretty upset,' Crash sighed, rubbing between his eyes with two fingers. 'I just want to solve this puzzle, get everything back to normal and move on with our lives!'
"What puzzle, bro?"
Crash tensed up immediately upon hearing Bobby gallop into the room and then leap onto the unoccupied couch. He had a bag of chips with him, popping it loudly open and then tossing the salty snacks into his mouth.
"We havin' some kind of secret discussion in here or what?" he asked with his mouth full.
Crash watched on in slight disgust at the mess Bobby was unintentionally making; it didn't bother Ralph any, he was used to living in worse conditions after all.
"Uh, no, no secret discussions here," Ralph said with a short cough. "Right, Crash?"
'Nope.'
"Oh good, because I hate secrets," the hippie-soldier remarked casually before tilting his head back to dump chip crumbs in his mouth. "I mean gee what kind of friend keeps secrets from each other? Makes everything soooo much more complicated."
Bobby had been acting out a bit in the last couple days since they had visited Go Go. He'd go from being sad and mopey to being over-the-top annoying like he was now. It was obvious he didn't really understand why she had to be so dramatic about her apparent permanent exit from the movie-verse; then again, if he knew the truth...
Crash swallowed and glanced at Ralph with uncertainty. The wrecker only nodded his head towards Bobby, silently hinting that he needed to talk to him. With a reluctant sigh, Crash held his hands together as if to give himself some much needed support and said,
'Hey, Bobby? Uh...I know you're still in a funk about Go Go, but we really need to talk about her.'
He didn't respond at first; in fact, Crash thought he might be purposely ignoring him. Bobby licked the chips' cheesy residue from his fingers before wiping them on his shorts, all while Crash cringed at the unsanitary gesture.
"Nah, I don't think we do," he finally said as he balled up the now empty chip bag and tossed it perfectly into Ralph's trash can.
'Well I do,' Crash insisted, deciding he might as well get straight into it as opposed to beating around the bush. 'I think I know the real reason she has to keep herself hidden like she is.'
"And how would you know THAT? You talked to her for like five minutes tops."
'I didn't have to talk to her,' Crash continued, nervously looking over at Ralph to help him keep his nerve. 'I found something in her bathroom when I was in there and-'
"Dude, you sneaked around in the lady's bathroom?"
The racer let out an aggravated sigh. 'It's not like that...'
Ralph groaned. This was taking too long. "Bobby, what Crash is trying to say is that he has some evidence that might prove that Go Go is the one who caused the accident at the race that resulted in Burn nearly killing Turbo's wife. Why, we don't know, but it does seem fairly-"
"WHAT?!"
The exclamation startled the other two men. Bobby quickly sat himself up, turning his head back and forth between them with a dumbfounded expression.
"You guys think Lady G would actually HURT someone?" he asked them with a hint of anger in his voice. "Look, Crash-bro, I know you want to think that your twin is innocent and all, but throwing blame on G is really low!"
'I-I'm not just making this up!' Crash felt a tad sore that Bobby would think that he would make up a story like this just to break Burn out of jail. 'I found some kind of poison or-or something in her bathroom!'
"What the flip makes you think it's related to anything that happened with-"
'Because it smells like the same stuff that he drank before the race!' Crash's throat hurt from yelling, and he hadn't wanted to yell at all but it was too late for that now. 'Go Go gave a bottle of soda to Turbo's wife before the race but she didn't drink any of it because Burn wanted it more, so she gave it to him. After that, he started acting all crazy like he was on a high and didn't know what he was doing. Then I find this stuff in Go Go's bathroom and-'
"Shut up, Crash, I don't want to hear it!" Bobby actually had his hands pressed against his ears as if that would be enough to tune the racer out.
'No, I'm NOT shutting up! I know she's your friend, Bobby, but if she did something to my brother to make him hurt our sister-in-law, I'm going to get to the bottom of it!'
"Wait, 'sister-in-law'?" Ralph asked, not intentionally changing the subject. "So you think of Turbo as a brother now or what?"
'Well, yeah I guess...' Truthfully, that had just slipped out, but honestly he did think it would be nice for the three racers to be a family unit again, and a family WOULD include any spouses they might have.
"Excuse me, can we go back to the part where you were accusing G of attempted murder?!"
"Bobby, you have to admit, it sounds really suspicious," Ralph told him calmly.
"But she has no reason to hurt anyone! Much less any of you Turbo-bros. Turbros. Whatever!"
'I think maybe someone helped her, or maybe told her to do it,' Crash added. 'Because she really doesn't have a motive.'
"Because she doesn't have a motive AT ALL." Bobby quickly stood up, storming towards the front door. "I'm outta here, I can't believe you guys even brought this up!"
"Bobby, wait!"
Ralph and Crash cringed when the door slammed shut, a few of Ralph's small pictures falling off the wall (which were mostly colored drawings by Vanellope).
"Well THAT could've gone smoother," Ralph muttered as he stood up to fix his wall of drawings, trying not to crush the delicate picture frames.
'I feel so awful.' Crash curled his legs up to his chest. 'That's what I wanted to avoid, him getting mad. Guess it was bound to happen.'
Bobby threw a square pebble into the pixellated river that ran through Niceland; how dare they, the people he thought were his friends, accuse Go Go of something so unthinkably horrible! She would never even think of coming up with such a despicable plan, that was so out-of-character for her that it was almost laughable!
He watched the ripples in the water, which radiated in a square pattern as opposed to a circular one (not even water physics made sense in Niceland, it seemed). Now that he was calming down, he reflected back on what had actually been said.
What if it was true? And if it was, WHY? What reason would she have to hurt the TurboTime family? Sure, Turbo had been a little rude to her when they first met, but that had been way back when their movie was still playing at the theatres in the Real World! Nevermind that she didn't bring it up, at least not to him.
"Something wrong, Mr. Dunderson?"
Bobby jerked at the sudden voice next to his ear; all he had to do was turn his head to the right to come face-to-face with a standing Gene.
"Yo, dude, I never even heard you!" Bobby exclaimed, rubbing at his face sheepishly. Getting spooked by a Nicelander was pretty embarrassing, if he said so himself. "What you doin' out here?"
"I live here," Gene replied flatly. "And I like to take the occasional stroll since there's not much else for me to do, being all cooped up and not able to go anywhere."
"Yeah, well that's your own fault."
Gene rolled his eyes. "So I couldn't help overhearing all that yelling coming from Ralph's place."
Thanks to the unexpected scare, Bobby had momentarily forgotten about it. Now that it was brought back up, he felt his mood sour again. "I suppose not," he muttered as he picked up another square pebble to throw.
"Must be difficult to know that your good friend is harboring a secret evil side," Gene commented casually as he sat down beside Bobby. "Probably feeling betrayed right about now."
Bobby wanted to argue, even felt himself get riled up, but the urge quickly died. Instead he sighed and hung his head down in partial defeat. "If she DID do it," he said, "what would be her reason? She doesn't do anything just for the sake of doing it, like for the laughs. That's more my thing. Not that I'd try to kill people on a whim."
The last one almost felt like a shot at Gene, but the Nicelander pretended that it was a shot towards Turbo. After all, his trying to kill Turbo was doing the world a favor; it wasn't HIS fault that no one agreed with him.
"You know, I hadn't told anyone this yet," Gene began, "but I did see her for a few moments before she ran off to the Real World." Bobby picked his head up to face him when he heard this. "Said she would do whatever it took to get out of this place and stay out. I didn't think it any of my business at the time, so I ignored it. But now, I'm thinking maybe Turbo or one of the others in that group found out her 'secret' and threatened to expose her. That would be a motive to hurt them, right?"
Bobby stared at him, his mouth agape. "How did you-"
"Come up with all that?" Gene chuckled and tugged on his tie smugly. "I just put two-and-two together and sewed up the loose ends. I'm an intelligent man, I can pick up on context clues and decipher a puzzle as well as any self-proclaimed Sherlock."
Bobby naturally wouldn't know that everything out of Gene's mouth was a lie; it sounded so good though and it DID make sense to him. If Go Go really was aiming to pick off the TurboTime family one-by-one, that would be the perfect motive indeed. She wouldn't want to get dragged back here to be a prisoner in the concept art world again, or prison if Mickey thought she deserved that sentence for stealing that paint and voice of hers, plus abandoning Disney World without consent. So maybe someone HAD found out her secret and maybe they HAD threatened to spill the beans on her...
"Ralph! Ralph!"
Vanellope's shrill voice carried over from the small train depot over by East Niceland. Bobby and Gene turned to watch her run towards Ralph's house, screaming the whole way.
"She's alive, Ralphie! Ralph, I saw Mickey just now and Turbo's wife is okay!"
She glitched herself inside the wrecker's home, her voice muted in the process.
"Oh man, that's awesome-tacular!" Bobby said with a big smile, not noticing the scornful look that immediately planted itself on Gene's face.
"Yeah just peachy."
Bobby hopped up to his full height, easily towering over the Nicelander now. "But snap, I wonder if Lady G knows," he suddenly thought out loud, his fingers tapping on his chin. "Crap, if she really did hurt her, I hope she doesn't try to do it again."
Gene perked up at this, his mind racing for an idea. This wasn't good, he couldn't have that blonde wench be alive! He should've known better than to think it was okay for her to be in a coma; should've made Go Go kill her in that hospital like he'd initially wanted.
"My goodness, you're absolutely right, Mr. Dunderson!" Gene spoke up in his most neighborly voice. "Maybe you can talk some sense into her. In fact, you should go immediately!"
"Well it won't take long to get to the GCS-"
"No no no." Gene waved his hands in front of him to quiet him down. "It'll be faster to use the teleportation hub in my penthouse. Not to mention more private, you know, so people won't get suspicious of you going out to the Real World."
Gene felt a wave of relief wash over him when Bobby snapped his fingers and nodded. "You're right, bromigo! Man, for a dastardly dude, you got a lot of smarts."
"Why thank you," Gene said with a forced grin, which was immediately replaced with a hateful glare once Bobby walked out in front of him. 'Idiotic simpleton', he thought to himself as he trotted after him in the direction of the penthouse.
Thankfully, no one was around when they reached Gene's penthouse. Bobby stooped down a bit to get through the door and was able to straighten back up once inside.
"Wow, sweet digs!" he complimented as he took a glance around. "If I was under house arrest, I wouldn't mind being stuck here!"
"I'm not under house arrest," Gene muttered, making his way to the martini bar. "Hey, how about a drink before you go? You look like a man who appreciates a good drink."
Bobby wasn't sure; he really wanted to see Go Go again, but- "Ah a little swig won't kill me!"
"That's the spirit. Just take a seat on the couch and I'll whip something up."
While Bobby made himself at home, Gene quietly rummaged through his cabinets, using a small stepladder for assistance. Whose idea of a joke was it to make everything too tall for the residents to reach? Blasted game designers. And blast that Go Go for not doing her job right in the first place. She'd pay for this.
He found what he was looking for quickly enough: sleeping medication. He sometimes took it for himself, just a small dose. Gene flipped on his ice crusher for a moment so Bobby wouldn't hear him crushing up the pills, and then mixed up the powdered dust into a drink he prepared for him.
"Here you are," the Nicelander said cheerfully while presenting the other man with his drink. He didn't pay attention to any thanks he got for his hospitality; he had to repress the urge to grin slyly as Bobby downed his drink. "Good, eh?"
"Yeah, you mix up a good tonic!" Bobby had to admit. He pounced off the couch and back onto his feet, taking a large stride towards the bright display screen of the teleportation hub, only to humorously fall flat on his face.
Gene sipped his own untampered drink casually before stepping over to check the man's pulse and breathing. Alive but out cold. Good, that's what he'd wanted.
"Too bad Mickey and the others took away my strength," he griped under his breath. Before, he would have been strong enough to help lift up the larger-than-life Ralph along with the other Nicelanders. No matter, he could still tie him up and gag him. It wasn't like he ever had visitors anyway, so they'd never notice the bound soldier in the middle of his living room.
"Now, let's see if we can fix this little problem of ours," Gene said mostly to himself as he dialed Go Go's phone number. "Hope she likes you as much as you do her, Mr. Dunderson, otherwise you're a dead man."