CHAPTER 5

Taffyta skidded into her parking spot at Sugar Rush's outlet. Well, okay. No one actually had assigned spots, but everyone knew this was her spot and if they parked here, they'd be hearing from her. It was the best spot, closest to the exit, ideal for the social butterfly who didn't have time to walk an extra, oh, twenty-five feet.

It was hard not to scoff at herself. Social butterfly. Right. She hadn't done more than exchange pleasantries with her fellow racers in days.

She shut off her kart and sat in it for a second, listening to the creaking from the cooling engine. Her heart was pounding. Then she craned her neck to look at Turbo, who hadn't moved from his perch on the back of the kart. His fingers were still curled around the back of her seat and he looked mildly shaken. Big surprise; there wasn't much to the rear of her kart, it was all sleek curves down to the tires, and she wouldn't want to sit back there. But she'd tried convincing him to ride in the front, and he'd just said, "Taff, this is undignified enough. Please."

At the time, she hadn't been sure if he meant riding on her kart or the ordeal they'd had to go through for him to take this visit outside Sugar Rush. She still wasn't.

"Ready?" she asked.

If her heart was pounding, she couldn't imagine how he felt. Not that he'd ever show it. "Yeah, sure," he said nonchalantly. Then, after a hesitation, he added, "You're sure the alarms are turned off?"

"Yeah," she replied with more confidence than she felt. Vanellope had said the alarms weren't on right now, but only stepping through the outlet would tell. It was pretty easy to imagine the kind of attention they were going to draw strolling through Game Central Station, the last thing they needed was for alarms to start going off.

Only one game had given him permission to enter its doors. The others had unanimously refused. Furiously, in most cases—not that Taffyta had been around to see that firsthand. Obviously. But she'd seen Ralph and Felix heading for Sugar Rush Castle and followed them, then refused to leave until they'd told her how it had gone.

"Well," Felix had said. "It, uh, it could have gone better, I suppose."

"What does that mean?" Taffyta had demanded of Ralph.

With a shrug, he'd said, "It was kind of Felix's thing. Figured people'd be a little more likely to listen to him, you know. Not being a bad guy, and all."

"Okay," she'd said, whirling to face Felix again, "so did it go, like, bad, or something?" The look on his face answered this pretty unequivocally. Great. Just great. Sulkily—like it was Felix's fault?—she added, "Why would you want to help King Candy, anyway?"

Jiggling his hammer in his belt awkwardly, Felix had replied, "Turbo and I go way back, I guess. You know he was our neighbor, back when we all got plugged in?" Taffyta hadn't. "Not that that ever seemed to count for much with him."

This hadn't answered her question. The confusion must have shown on her face, so Felix had just sighed and shrugged. "Guess it's just something I've learned around here lately—sometimes you have to give folks a chance." He'd paused, then added, "But—jiminy jaminy, the rest of the arcade does not feel that way." He'd taken his hat off then and rubbed at his hair tiredly. "They got awful upset. Sorry, Taffyta, I know that's not what you were hoping to hear."

Shoulders slumped, she'd asked, "So, did anyone say yes?"

Felix and Ralph had looked at each other. Who would have thought they were such drama queens?

Standing at Sugar Rush station, Taffyta fingered the zipper on her jacket, watching out the outlet exit into Game Central Station. Characters were walking past, blissfully unaware of the variable she was about to introduce into their lives. "People are going to stare, you know," she said without looking at Turbo.

"I'm used to people staring. People are drawn to greatness, you know."

She turned around and raised her eyebrows at him.

Flicking a wrist, he added, "Okay, so they're also drawn to car wrecks and political scandals but hey, can't it be a little bit of both?" Binary ran up his body from his feet to his white and red helmet. "Shall we, then? I'd hate to keep my adoring public waiting."

Taffyta couldn't help laughing a little. "Yeah, let's go. How bad can it be, right?"

At least Vanellope had been telling the truth about the alarm on Sugar Rush. When Turbo waved a hand across the threshold between Sugar Rush and Game Central Station, nothing happened. Er, well, that wasn't exactly true. A few NPCs from Street Fighter caught sight of him and immediately bolted away, shouting something that sounded like 'game-jumper loose.' Turbo glitched again, this time all the way to King Candy, and said, "Off to a great sthtart already, hoo-hoo." With a little hop, he crossed fully into Game Central Station, standing outside Sugar Rush for the first time in more than six months.

She followed him, watching as other characters spotted him (or heard the yelling) and gave their outlet a wide berth. The walk had never seemed longer, but King Candy seemed to let every panicked look and every glare roll off him. But then Chun-Li shouted, "We don't want you here, game-jumper!" and she saw him flinch. It was just a little, but it was there, and then after that, it was like a filter had been yanked away from her eyes, and she couldn't help seeing how much this long, brutal walk was taking out of him.

If she said anything, he'd deny it, so she just walked next to him and tried to let it roll off her, too. He was braver than her, though. By the end of the walk, she was staring at the ground, wishing she could sink into it.

But finally, finally, they arrived. They stopped outside the outlet and looked up at the name scrolling across the electronic board. Tapper's. The one game in the arcade that had agreed to let Turbo visit.

When she'd found out, the first thing Taffyta had demanded was, "What? One game, and it's not even Fix-It Felix Jr.?!"

Felix had grimaced, then said, "Gene wouldn't hear it, Miss."

"Gene? Who the heck is Gene? You're in charge of the game, aren't you? It's named after you!"

With a chuckle, Ralph had said, "Ouch, Gene wouldn't like hearing that."

Shooting the wrecker a look, Felix had said to Taffyta, "No ma'am. Gene's the mayor of Niceland. And head of the Homeowner's Association. I'm just the super. Any game decisions, well, they have to go through him."

After she'd gotten over the first rush of unhappiness, she'd asked sullenly, "So why is Tapper letting him in?" Felix and Ralph had both shrugged and said they didn't know. But Taffyta thought she did. She remembered when Tapper had tried to be kind to her, when she'd been sitting alone at the bar after listening to her fellow racers regale a crowd of transfixed listeners with stories of how horrible King Candy had been to them. He'd slid a root beer across the counter to her and said, "You know, whatever he turned into, Turbo was still one of us."

At the time, she hadn't wanted to hear it. She'd walked away, angry and sad and feeling let down and betrayed by everyone but most especially by King Candy. Now, staring up at the pixellated Tapper's scrolling by every few seconds, she felt nothing but gratitude for him. Maybe she should pay him back for that free root beer.

The station with its little train was mercifully empty, and the two of them boarded one of the cars. It started with a jerk, trundling through the tunnel, gathering speed as it went. King Candy and Taffyta sat across from each other. He couldn't sit still. His fingers were fidgety, drumming on his legs or picking at the lapel on his tailcoat, and he was tapping one of his feet so fast that the motion was practically blurred.

She smiled at him. "You're not nervous, are you?"

"Pfft." He met her eyes and gave her an easy grin, leaning back against the seat. "Moi? Of course not."

This was such an obvious lie that she just grinned back at him. Her mouth was as dry as sour apple sand and her palms felt gross and sweaty in her gloves. For a second, she wished they could turn back, but the trains didn't turn back, they only brought you on to your destination.

With a screech of brakes, the train slowed and pulled into the station at Tapper's. It rocked from side to side over the old tracks, and Taffyta grabbed at the side of the car, afraid, for one stupid second, that she was going to get bounced out. Then the doors popped open, and with a nervous laugh, she pried her fingers from around the pitted plastic of the train car and followed King Candy to the platform.

They looked at the door to the bar in silence for a second, and then King Candy debonairly offered her his arm. "Guessth I'm your escort to this five star establishment this evening, Miss Muttonfudge."

She giggled, hearing it come out much higher than usual, and tried not to feel faint.

When they stepped through the door, the bar went completely, dead silent. So quiet you could hear a pin drop quiet. The sea of glares almost made Taffyta back out, despite all of her resolution and everything she'd said to Turbo.

Maybe this had been a stupid idea—maybe the arcade wasn't ready for him. But what if they were never ready? Was he supposed to stay trapped in Sugar Rush forever? Granted, that's what he'd done to Vanellope, but…Vanellope had given her blessing for her former tormenter to visit Game Central Station.

Well, blessing wasn't the right word. Permission. Grudging permission.

She tightened her fingers around King Candy's arm, not knowing if it was more for his benefit or hers. Then she stepped across the threshold of the door, feeling the tiniest amount of resistance from him. He followed though, and the bar seemed to get, if possible, quieter. Every single eye was on them, unfriendly, accusing, and the message couldn't have been clearer: Get out, you're not welcome here. And it occurred to her that by stepping in here with him, she was tainting herself further. She was further associating herself with a monster who most of these people would never forgive. This seemed clear, suddenly, so clear that she wondered how she'd never seen it before. These people would never, ever forgive him.

The scrape of a tankard across the bar broke the silence. Tapper had been the first to move, sliding the mug he'd just filled across the bar to Luigi. "Anyone else need a refill?" the bartender asked, his voice sounding unnaturally loud.

Taffyta thought again of that time Tapper had shown her sympathy in those first months after Sugar Rush's reset, when life had seemed terrible and she'd spent half her time wondering if she wasn't a bit of corrupted code herself. She hadn't been grateful then because the last thing she'd wanted to acknowledge was how much King Candy had meant to her, not when she'd just seen him revealed for who he truly was. She'd spent so much time convinced she hadn't meant anything to him and hating herself for the fact that she could be upset about that instead of everything else. The game-jumping. The re-programming. The locking up their memories. The trying to delete Vanellope. All of it.

But she was grateful now as she marched up to the bar with King Candy in tow. "Could we have two root beers please, Tapper?" she said with a brightness that she didn't feel. Even though she couldn't see them anymore, she could still feel the glares of every other bar patron boring into her back.

"Two root beers, coming up," Tapper said in the same tone of voice he said when he served everyone.

Someone scoffed behind them and a chair scraped loudly on the floor in the silence. "I'm not drinking at the same place he is," a voice said, and Taffyta couldn't help turning around. Ken from Street Fighter was standing up, and the rest of the characters from his game followed suit. Then another table got up and left.

Taffyta was wondering with a sinking feeling if the entire bar was going to empty out, but then, suddenly, she heard, "Hey! Hey, guys, over here!" Turning, she saw Jubileena waving wildly from the bar in the back.

A fierce rush of gratitude flooded her. When she needed them most, her fellow racers were there for her. Taffyta grabbed her root beer in one hand and King Candy's arm in her other and pulled him towards the back bar, which was like a beacon of safe harbor. He barely had time to snatch his root beer off the bar and follow her.

Jubileena, Snowanna, Adorabeezle, and Gloyd were sitting around the table, and Jubileena was scooting over to make space for the two of them when they arrived. Snowanna and Gloyd pulled up to neighboring, recently vacated chairs. Then, for a long, awkward moment, nobody said anything. Taffyta realized she'd sloshed a bunch of root beer over the side of her glass onto her gloves.

"Um," she said, and then put the root beer on the bar.

Now that they were standing there, Jubileena looked like she sort of regretted calling them over. But after a second, she motioned to the two empty chairs and said, "Well, sit down."

Another group of characters walked out, and then three of the ghosts from Pac-Man. "Get out of here, game jumper," one of them hissed.

King Candy raised an eyebrow and smiled a little, then sat down in one of the empty chairs and steepled his fingers on the bar. "Stho," he said. "It's been awhile, hasn't it, kids?"

Gloyd and Adorabeezle looked at each other nervously. "Yeah," Adorabeezle said with a swallow. "Yeah it's, um, been awhile."

Sitting up straight, Snowanna asked bravely, "So what are we supposed to call you now?"

"Taffyta calls him King Candy," Jubileena said.

He glitched a little. "That's perfectly fine."

Something hit the wall behind Taffyta's head and she screamed and jumped. A slice of greasy pizza was sliding slowly down the wall, and she watched as it unpeeled and plopped onto the floor with a splatter of sauce. "Did any of you see who threw that?" she demanded.

Gloyd looked around the bar, but Taffyta could see as well as he could, and no one looked any more like the culprit that anyone else. Any of them could have done it. They obviously all hated King Candy. Had she been expecting anything different? Well, yeah, if she was being honest—she hadn't expected food to be thrown at them.

Clearing her throat, Snowanna said, "At least they had bad aim."

King Candy chuckled, and Snowanna looked nervous. Taffyta took a long sip of root beer just for something to do, because this was totally not the triumphant moment that the really stupid, childish part of her brain that she couldn't shut up thought it was going to be.

"So, um," Gloyd said. "You race today, Taffyta?"

Like he didn't know. Every single one of them knew who was on the roster every single day, especially if they themselves weren't on it. "Yeah," she said. "I kicked Adorabeezle's butt, as usual."

Adorabeezle scoffed but didn't deny it, and King Candy flashed a grin at Taffyta that made her beam. Even if he couldn't race, at least he seemed proud of her. That was something. She couldn't tell if he was less miserable since Vanellope had decreed that he could leave Sugar Rush. This experience definitely wasn't giving him anything to be less miserable about, but he seemed cheerful and unconcerned that every single person in the bar outside of their group (and Tapper, of course), without exception, was glaring at him.

Jubileena eyed King Candy. "Sort of weird without you out there, Tur—er, King Candy." Then, she looked panicked that she'd said anything at all. "I mean, uh, that is—" She grabbed at Snowanna. "Don't tell Vanellope I said that, I didn't mean bad-weird, just…just different-weird."

With a small shrug, Adorabeezle offered quietly, "It's not a crime to admit there were lots of big changes after the game reset."

"Not bad changes," Snowanna added quickly.

Gloyd leaned forward. "But none of us like the randomizer."

"Ugh!" Jubileena said. "No way. I hate that thing! I used to be on the roster almost every day. Now…" She shrugged.

"Yeah," Taffyta agreed. "Trust me, I know." No one hated the randomizer quite as much as she did. Obviously. It hadn't made any of them go Turbo, like she had three months ago.

King Candy watched another group go, and Taffyta saw them mouth something at him that you couldn't say in Sugar Rush. "So," he said, turning back to them. "Let me get this straight. None of you like the gl—Vanellope's little randomizer experiment. Have any of you actually said anything to her about it? Maybe, I don't know, here's a thought, told her to go back to the Random Roster Race?"

"Oh, no," Adorabeezle said. "We couldn't do that."

"Why not?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Because." Adorabeezle looked at the others for help. "We just can't."

Another glitch ran down his arms, and King Candy leaned an elbow on the bar. The others leaned back, like they were afraid to get too close. Taffyta snorted to herself. Of course they were afraid to get too close. They were still afraid of him. He smiled. "I sthuppose it's because of the way poor little Vanellope was treated for, how long was it again? Fifteen years?"

Snowanna blanched, Jubileena's eyes filled with tears, and Gloyd looked like he wanted to crawl under the table. Elbowing King Candy, Taffyta turned to him and muttered, "Maybe this isn't the best time?"

King Candy gave her a half smile and sat back in his chair again, then ducked as something whistled through the air and narrowly avoided his head. Root beer splashed everywhere as a tankard hit the wall and he spluttered as it drenched his head. The other four racers stared, wide-eyed. Taffyta was sure that if they hadn't already been regretting inviting King Candy and her over, then they were now.

Wringing root beer out of his bow tie, King Candy said, "You know, I'm starting to think that I'm not really welcome here." Kicking the root beer mug away from his foot, he added, "Just a feeling, of course. So, popcorn anyone? Think I might get some."

"Maybe we should just go," Taffyta said. It felt like admitting defeat, like being in fourth place and just close enough that you had a shot at getting third, and then falling short.

He looked at her, then nodded and stood up, shaking root beer off his sleeves. "Nice catching up," he said casually to the other four racers, and then, with a flash of a smile, added, "I'm still getting that popcorn."

It was hard to watch his passage to the other side of the bar. The characters that were left inside glared at him, making rude comments that they didn't even bother to keep the voices down for. There was a bounce in his step, though, and when he came back, tossing popcorn into his mouth, he said, "You know, I used to eat this stuff all the time. Used to be the best food in the arcade, well, not that BurgerTime isn't pretty good but there's just something about this fake butter flavor, don't you think?"

"Um," Adorabeezle said, then didn't go on. No one else added anything. Snowanna and Jubileena met her eyes but didn't quite meet King Candy's, and Gloyd didn't even look up.

Taffyta sighed. "See you guys on the track tomorrow." Then, she turned towards the door, King Candy at her side. The minute they exited, the noise inside went from funeral parlor to sports arena. She heard the garble of him glitching behind her, and when she looked at him, Turbo was staring back at her, his yellow eyes containing a multitude of emotions—resignation, amusement, and a complete and total lack of surprise. She sighed again, and didn't say anything more.

"It could've been worse," Turbo said.

Taffyta snorted. "Yeah, a mob could have come after us with pitchforks."

He chuckled. "See? Nice to hear you being so positive, Taffyta."

Against her will, she giggled, said, "Oh, be quiet," then stretched her legs out so that her shoes knocked against his helmet. He was stretched out along the front of her kart, which was parked at the top of the Rainbow Bridge. The view was fantastic, one of the best in the game, and Taffyta stared out over Chocolate Town, past Sugar Rush Castle to Diet Cola Mountain, until her eyes reached the sparkling Kool-Aid Sea, far in the distance.

Stretching his arms out, Turbo put his hands under his head and crossed one leg over the other. He jiggled his foot and said, "Think Tapper will let me come back?"

"You didn't do anything wrong," she said. "Why wouldn't he let you come back?" Like she couldn't think of any reasons, but it made her feel better to pretend like that had all gone really well.

He tilted his head backwards to look at her. "I dunno, I caused a…shall we say, disturbance? Tapper's not big on anyone upsetting the zen in his bar." He tossed a piece of popcorn into his mouth. "Think I'll get a cease and desist letter or something?"

"No," she said vehemently. "I'm sure Tapper will let you come back. That is…you do want to leave the game, again, right?" Maybe he didn't. Maybe that had been such a disaster that he'd rather stay in Sugar Rush and be miserable all the time. She grabbed a fistful of popcorn and tried to stuff too much of it in her mouth at once, dropping it all over herself. Stupid. Then her eyes started stinging. Even stupider. Why did she have to be such a crybaby all the time?

After a second, he sat up, turning to face her. His eyes flicked over her face, no doubt taking in the puffiness around her eyes and the way they were starting to redden with tears. "No one wants me out there, Taff. You know they don't. I know they don't. Sure, I want to leave the game again. But, you know, at a certain point, you sorta start wondering why you should even bother."

The sting in her eyes abruptly disappeared and she glared at him. "You should bother because…because…" For a moment, nothing came to her. But then what came spilling out was, "Because you're part of this arcade, too! No matter what anyone else thinks or wants, you are just as much a part of this place as any of them. And you know what, yeah. You did some pretty bad stuff." She drew in a deep breath. He remained silent, watching her. "But that doesn't mean you just roll over and say, oh well, I guess everyone hates me now, so I'm not even going to try. They're gonna treat you bad, and they're not gonna like you, not at first. That's like, well, that's like the fallout from going Turbo, right? That's the fallout from game-jumping, and taking over Sugar Rush."

"You forgot trying to delete the glitch," he said, his tone hard to read.

She clenched her fists. "You're the one who taught me not to panic and not to give up, even when you think you're done for and you lost. So don't you dare act like you're just going to lie down and die."

Binary crackled across his body, and he leaned an arm on his knee. When he'd reappeared in her life, she'd been terrified of his sodium yellow stare, burning with a level of intensity that he couldn't seem to tone down. Now she saw it all the time, because she'd started to see that his gaze was just as intense when he looked like King Candy. Somewhere along the line it had stopped being scary, and she realized, suddenly, that part of what was bothering her now was that lately, that intensity seemed to have burned down to almost nothing, so it was too low for her to see.

"Is that what you think I'm doing?" he finally asked, sounding surprised. "Lying down and dying?" Slowly, he took a handful of popcorn, staring at it for a moment while his hand glitched. Then, he put a piece in his mouth and chewed it, watching her with one eyebrow raised. "You know who you're talking to, right?"

Taffyta smiled a little. "It's sort of hard to forget with that big, dumb, dorky T on your helmet."

Looking nonplussed, he said, "I'll have you know this was pretty cool back in 1982."

They looked at each other for a minute, and then, impulsively, Taffyta hugged him. "So does that mean you're not giving up?" she asked, her voice muffled against his jumpsuit.

He patted her shoulder. "I'm definitely not giving up. Or panicking. Or throwing the towel in, or whatever you want to call it. I'm…I mean, this is putting it kind of lightly, but I'm pretty tenacious." When she leaned back, he glitched to King Candy and said, "Anyway, if you think thisth is me depressed, you should've seen me about seven years into my stint hiding in the bowels of Game Central Station. I was really a downer then, hoohoohoo."

That made her giggle, even though it really wasn't funny. Like, not funny at all. "So, do we pretend this day never happened? Start again tomorrow?"

Tossing another piece of popcorn into his mouth, King Candy said. "Sort of. See the thing is, you don't ever forget something, even if you don't want to think about it. You remember and you learn your lesson, and that's how you survive. Or at least," he said, tugging at the lapels of his coat and shrugging, "that's how I survived. Guess I didn't do too bad a job, don't you think?" He leaned a hand on the hood of her kart and turned his head to look into the distance, his gaze unfocused. Taffyta wondered what he was looking at.

After several moments of silence, he said slowly, "We need a plan."

She looked at him. Huh? "A plan? What…what kind of plan?"

Waving a hand, he said, "A plan to do something. Race again, preferably. Barring that…" He trailed off, then asked, "Got any brilliant ideas?"

A plan. Wasn't that exactly what she'd been doing, trying to come up with a plan? Except her plan had mostly consisted of begging Vanellope to let him race again and Vanellope predictably turning her down. That wasn't a plan. "No," she said, trying not to sound hopeless. "Even if Vanellope didn't hate you, you don't need to race. We have fifteen racers and the randomizer."

A slow smile spread across his face. "Fifteen racers and the randomizer. You know Taff, you're exactly right."

"Er, I know I am."

"And as a matter of fact—hey." Something seemed to occur to him. "Does the glitch really hate me? I thought we had something more like a rivalry going on, here."

"Maybe 'hate' is a strong word," Taffyta admitted. "She just seriously doesn't like you. But hold on—" She turned to face him, pulling her legs up underneath her. "What do you mean, 'I'm exactly right?'"

King Candy looked out over Sugar Rush again, that smile still on his face. "It means…well, it means I think I might have the beginnings of a plan…"