Seriously, go watch "A Knight's Tale" if you haven't already. You will not be disappointed.
Chapter 3: Losing His Skittles
Turbo gritted his teeth as he raced to the bakery followed by Wynnchel, Duncan and the Bear Claw guards. He was fuming. Not only had the glitch disobeyed his orders to stay away from the kart factory, but she so rudely interrupted his spa therapy just as he was starting to get comfortable. Ohhh, was she ever in trouble now.
Speeding up, the racer got to the kart bakery in record time (37 seconds) and screeched to a stop at Beard Papa's booth.
"King Candy!" the bearded guard acknowledged nervously, saluting. "I wasn't sleeping, I swear!"
Turbo didn't buy it for a second. "I'll deal with you later. Where's the glitch?"
Beard Papa pointed a shaky finger to one of his monitors. "S-she's at the far end of the factory, decorating her kart."
Turbo turned to his security force and commanded, "We'll go around to the other side and ambush her there!" He drove past Beard Papa and circled the factory until he found a large garage door and halted. He and the others got out of their vehicles and Turbo began to type in the password to open the door. T-U-R-B-O. No one's EVER gonna figure this out! he thought as he pressed the buttons.
The garage door rose up and Turbo stomped into the room, pointing angrily at Vanellope. "Hold it right there, glitch!"
But that wasn't all he saw.
Turbo stared in shock and confusion at the huge character beside her. "And Wreck-it Ralph?!" I thought Wynnchel and Duncan got rid of him! Not only that, but it appeared that the two of them had trashed the bakery.
"Uh-oh." The wrecker, who was holding a bag of icing, aimed the bag at Turbo and his guards and squirted them in the face.
"Oooh!" Turbo cried, falling backwards. His head smacked the floor but thanks to his helmet (which he was still secretly wearing under his guise), he didn't feel a thing. Unfortunately, he was temporarily blinded by the icing that got in his eyes. Ew, pink icing! It's so un-manly!
As he sat up and wiped his face, he heard Duncan ask him, "Are you hurt, sire?"
"No, he just glazed me, hoo-hoo," Turbo replied with a chuckle, proud of the pun he made. Then he remembered about Ralph and Vanellope, so he pointed at the duo in the kart and barked, "Get them!"
"Gang way!" Ralph yelled, pushing off with his massive hands and rolling the kart through a window.
He was able to take comfort at least in knowing that Vanellope didn't remember how to drive. Turbo ran back to his kart and drove after them. As he passed Beard Papa again, he shouted, "Stop in the name of the king! That's me!" He and his guards pursued the criminals around giant gumdrops and on twisty paths in the direction of Diet Cola Mountain.
There's no way they can outspeed me… Turbo thought. They're not even driving, really! Ralph will tire out sooner or later. He lost sight of them as they went around a curve. But when he made the same turn, they had completely vanished.
He slammed on the brakes and stood up, lifting the goggles off his baffled eyes. "Where'd they go?" he asked. "They should've just turned…" There's something very familiar about all this… Furrowing his brows, he turned to the donut cops and seethed, "Find that glitch, destroy that kart! She can't be allowed to race!" He sank back into his car and, with an aggravated cry, rode away.
As he drove by the overturned C.L.A.W. truck, he yelled at the Bear Claws, "You're all useless!" After that, he ran over a chocolate bunny and some Peeps on his way back to the castle.
Turbo stormed down the hallways, heading for the war room. He was so tense that he didn't feel like admiring the stain-glass windows in his image or the giant paintings of himself on the walls.
At least he still had some time to come up with a plan; Vanellope was probably re-learning how to drive. But he had a feeling it wouldn't be long before she remembered her coded skill.
He unlocked the door to the war room and went inside. He took down a map of Sugar Rush off the wall and laid it flat on the table in the center. "Now where are you hiding?" he murmured, tracing the paths with his finger. The map was marked with X's where he'd sighted Vanellope as well as notes about the different areas. He grabbed a stick of feathered cotton candy and dipped the wooden tip into a bottle of Red No. 5. Turbo marked the spot where Ralph and Vanellope were last seen, then continued to stare at the map.
He was in such concentration that the sound of Sour Bill's voice nearly made him jump out of his second skin. "Remember what I said about plans backfiring?"
"Not now, Sour Bill, I have my own problems to deal with!" snapped Turbo without looking at him.
Bill walked up to him and suggested, "Shouldn't you be overseeing the reconstruction of the racetrack?"
"Sour Bill, this is kind of important," Turbo said matter-of-factly. "Now that the glitch is working with Wreck-it Ralph, I need to come up with a whole new strategy!" He grabbed a spare sheet of rice paper and quickly sketched a crude representation of Ralph. "His strengths lie in his hands, of course, so we should avoid them at all costs."
"Wait, we?"
"Yes, I need you to distract Ralph so that I could hit his weak points!" clarified Turbo. "We just need a way to pick him up and throw him off somewhere very high!"
Sour Bill noted, "That sounds like an oddly specific plan…"
"Meheheh, but it's a good plan, right?" Before Sour Bill could respond to that, Turbo drew more illustrations on the page and explained, "Alternatively, since you're small and fast, we could let him chase you while I sneak up from behind! And then we'll trick him into jumping off a cliff!"
"And…how exactly are we going to do that?"
Turbo put a hand on his chin and pondered. "Perhaps the racers could help as well. They could prove to be a formidable army with their karts…" Yes…like an army of sweet, lethal cherubs.
Sour Bill's eyes widened slightly. "But they're only children."
Turbo waved his hand dismissively. "They'll live," he stated casually. "Besides, they can always regenerate."
The diminutive servant considered this for a moment, then asked, "So what's your strategy concerning Vanellope?"
Turbo raised a finger to respond, but he furrowed his brows and closed his mouth. Lock her in the Fungeon for a million years? Feed her to the Devil Dogs? Shave off her hair and use it to polish my trophies? Well I can't do any of that stuff until I capture her. "Hey, what about the glitch-proof steel? We would be able to make loads of weapons for the children to use against her!"
Sour Bill stared at him sternly. "…Weapons. …Really."
"Aheheheh…" Turbo waved his finger a bit, then his face slowly turned to a frown. "Darn it!" he wailed as he collapsed on the table, his face smearing the dye. "Okay, I admit it! I'm not sure what to do until we finally have them in custody! I mean, Vanellope and Ralph—oh why RALPH?!"
"…Should I be concerned? … About you?"
Turbo peeled his head off the desk and rubbed the red dye off his face. "Nevermind. We'll come back to this as soon as Wynnchel and Duncan return with the criminals."
He never knew that waiting could be so torturous. The worst part had to have been the thoughts that kept looping in his already-paranoid mind: The glitch is in the race. She has a kart. Ralph is helping her. Time is running out. My lie will be exposed. What will happen to me? I could leave. I could find another game. What if that doesn't work?
Turbo continued to pace in front of his throne while Sour Bill fanned him with a lollipop off to the side. It had been nearly an hour since he ordered the donut cops to find Vanellope. What was taking them so long? Maybe Ralph got the better of them…
As soon as he heard the door open, his head snapped up and he gasped softly. "You've found her! Tell me you've found her!" he said urgently to the cops.
To his utter dismay, Wynnchel shook his head solemnly.
"You didn't…?" Turbo's last bit of sanity escaped in the form of a hopeless laugh. "Go! Leave me," he commanded, lowering his head in defeat. He heard the door shut, but he was still trying to come up with last resort plans. It was then when something Ralph had said earlier came to mind:
"I'm not leaving without my medal!"
Turbo raised a bushy eyebrow thoughtfully. Perhaps that was it. Without a word, he stomped through the curtain behind his kart. Certain that Sour Bill was following him, he went to the elevator at the end of the hallway and got in.
As they descended, Sour Bill commented, "I'm having Déjà vu…"
The racer ignored him. When the elevator stopped and the door opened, Turbo stepped out and walked up to the NES controller. Desperate times call for desperate measures, he thought, taking out the napkin with the cheat code.
He looked at it once, then proceeded to press the buttons on the controller while Sour Bill tied the licorice rope around his waist. "Up, up, down, down…" He muttered the rest. "Start." The vault opened up and Turbo tucked away his napkin, a sense of nostalgia sweeping over him. "Oh, the code. It's the sweet lifeblood of the game," he said mystically before diving in.
Turbo drifted around the dense cluster of code boxes, searching for one in particular. "Where are you? Let's see…" he muttered to himself, twirling to get a better look at them. "Stadium… Jumbotron… Aha! There it is!" Turbo grinned and pushed himself towards a small purple box. "The winner's cup."
He double-tapped the box and it opened, revealing a bunch of smaller boxes with coin symbols interconnected with threads. He spun the group around and said, "One of these is not like the others. It's you!" He pulled out the box with a medal symbol and smiled. "We're going to give you a nice new home."
He floated up to his favourite box of all, the giant one labeled "KING CANDY". He double-tapped it as well, opening it to reveal the tangled mess of code. He placed the medal box inside, which snapped into place. Almost instantly, threads connected it with the character box. Blue pixels gathered around Turbo's neck before solidifying into a shiny gold medal. "Success!" he cheered with a giggle. I guess I could've done this before after all!
He yanked the rope and Sour Bill began to pull him back out of the code room. As he did so, Turbo told him, "Sour Bill, I'm going out. You're in charge of the castle until I get back." When he got inside the hallway, he locked the door and untied his rope.
Sour Bill glanced at the medal around the king's neck and said, "Is that…?"
"Wreck-it Ralph's medal, yes!" Turbo responded, smugly buffing it on his coat. "I realize that a physical attack on him would be most futile, even with super-weapons. Instead, I plan on returning this to the old brute in exchange for leaving us and Vanellope alone."
Sour Bill asked carefully, "Forgive me for asking this, but why didn't you do that in the first place?"
"It did occur to me," replied Turbo defensively. "But I wasn't going to reward him for game-jumping and all the trouble he'd caused at the track." Though if I did, we probably could've avoided all this…
Then Sour Bill tilted his head curiously. "That reminds me. Something you said to him back at the castle…"
"Hmm? Yes, what was it?" Turbo muttered, heading back to the elevator.
"You asked if he was 'going turbo'."
The racer froze. Uh-oh…
"I was just wondering what you meant by that."
Turbo masked his unease with a smile and walked into the elevator with him. "Just a term referring to anyone who dares to break the rules."
Think about it: if Turbo had just given Ralph his medal when he asked for it, Ralph would go back to his game without anyone missing him, Vanellope wouldn't be able to race, and he wouldn't die in the end. Stupid Turbo. -_-
(Of course, then the Cy-bugs would still destroy the game.)