Wow thanks for all the wonderful reviews guys! You are all turbo-tastic! Hopefully this chapter isn't boring, I swear something more action-oriented happens later.

Save Me from My Dark Side

Chapter Two

"Turrrrboooo...Turrrboooo."

The racer stirred in his sleep upon hearing his name. He cracked his eyes open and turned his head towards Rosie, who was sleeping soundly beside him in her pink nightie. It was pitch black in the room but he could tell she was sleeping because of her breathing pattern. Huh, he could've swore she'd said something. Deciding he had been simply imagining it, he sighed deeply and closed his eyes again, snuggling back down in the blankets.

"Turrrboooo...Waaaake uuuuup."

Turbo popped his eyes wide open, definitely hearing something that time. Carefully sitting up in bed as to not disturb his wife, he concentrated on listening for the voice again. It had been but a whisper, crackly in nature, but it had been loud enough to wake him up. Why didn't Rosie wake up? Surely she'd heard it if he'd heard it.

"He-hello?" he asked quietly, his own voice sounding like a yell in the quiet room. "Someone there?"

No one answered. He felt a trickle of fear crawl down his spine. Was someone in their room? Who would want to break in? Granted, it was a nice house but he had never once dealt with intruders back when he had the big house in TurboTime, and that had been a small mansion.

"Tuuurnn on the liiiiiightsssss."

Like hell he was going to turn the lights on!

"Rosie?" he said shakily, reaching his hand down to rub her shoulder in attempt to wake her up. "Rosie, someone's in here!"

She didn't answer, just pulled the covers tighter to her and sighed in her sleep.

"Tuurrrbooo...weeee miiiiissssed youuu..."

He tried to swallow but found his mouth was too dry to accomplish even that simple feat. The voice had this creepy unnerving echo to it, like it was more than one person talking. The only other thing he could hear was the sound of his heart banging in his eardrums. He gripped tightly on the edge of the blanket, sweat beading on his forehead.

"All right, who's there?" he asked, trying to sound braver than he felt. "Who are you?"

"Awwww, yoouuuu foorrgot aaabout ussss?"

Lightening flashed outside the window (when did Felix's game have lightening in it?) and that's when he finally saw them standing at the foot of the bed. His eyes nearly came out of his head and every nerve in his body went numb. A paralyzing fear overcame him.

"No," he gasped as he recoiled in horror. "No, you...you're dead!"

They were both drenched in blood, large blackened wounds on their faces and arms where they had tried to defend themselves. Their purple suits were ragged and worn, their helmets cracked in places. They both wore identical sharp-toothed grins plastered to their decomposing faces and their glowing eyes were staring blankly towards him. The only difference in the two was that one's head was slightly crooked at an unnatural angle, implying that the neck had been broken.

"Thaattssss riiight," they spoke in unison as they slowly crept closer to the bed. The sound of their stiff muscles creaking as they walked was gag-inducing. "Youuu rememberrrr now. Youuu KILLED ussss!"

The color from his face drained and he found himself unable to bolt from the bed as if someone had chained him down to it, his eyes glued to his former competitors. They shuffled closer to the bed, their menacing grins never fading.

"Aaaand now..." They both pointed at him with a twitching rotted finger. "Weee willll kill YOU!"

They both floated slowly off the carpet, mouths open to show off all their teeth, and with arms outstretched they rushed at him.

Rosie jerked up from her sleep when she heard the blood-curdling scream next to her, blinking in confusion. All she could see in the dark was Turbo's literally glowing eyes, a look of absolute fear in them as they stared blankly ahead of him, him having popped up to sitting position in his sleep. Quickly, she reached over and jerked the chain on the lamp beside her to lighten the room up.

"Good God, champ, what's wrong?" she asked worriedly, putting a hand on his back and realized he'd soaked sweat right through his t-shirt and he was shivering like he had the death of cold.

"Where, where'd they go?" he stammered, twisting his head around the room frantically.

Before she could ask for clarification, Turbo leaned over the bed to look under it and then over the foot of the bed. He slid out of the covers and went over to the bathroom, grabbing the door handle and swinging it open with force and examined the inside of it. When that room was clear, he jogged to the door that led to the hallway and looked around out there. He seemed confused to not find anything.

"They, they were just h-here!" he was insisting as he finally sat back down on the mattress, the fearful look still present in his eyes. He was shaking like a leaf and his breathing was on the verge of hyperventilation.

"Who? Who was here?" Rosie asked crawling out of the covers to scoot up closer to him.

"The twins!" he spat out, darting his eyes around the room as he said it.

She started when he said that. "Ted and Teddy?"

"Th-they wanted to k-k-kill me," Turbo continued, his eyes getting wet as he looked down at his hands. "For r-r-r-revenge."

Rosie frowned at him and wrapped her arms around him in a sideways hug. "Baby, it was a bad dream," she told him softly. "They can't hurt you."

"B-b-but it...it was...so real," he whimpered as he leaned into her embrace, resting his head against her chest and curled his legs up to his stomach.

She kissed the top of his head and held him there while he finished shaking off the aftershock of the nightmare. They had never discussed the twins' homicides, though he'd practically come out and told her that he was in fact a murderer. Rosie never asked him once about the details, not caring to hear about something he'd done so long ago when he wasn't even acting like himself. Resting her head on top of his and rubbing his back soothingly, she felt him start to breathe more calmly.

"You want to talk about it?" she offered gently.

Turbo's eyes grew big as the memory slapped him in the face.

Turbo listened to Teddy laugh. He sat there for a maybe a minute, his mind growing more blank as he did. He ripped the shift-change stick out of his car and hopped out. Teddy didn't even see him coming until he was nearly on top of him. He quit laughing.

"Whoa, wait, what the hell are you doing?" Teddy asked right before Turbo jumped into the car with him and started beating him with the stick. "Stop it, you'll kill me!"

"Shut up!" He kept hitting him in the face, over and over. Teddy was desperately trying to protect himself to no avail.

"Turbo, stop, please! I'm begging you, stop!"

Turbo closed his eyes and forced it back in his mind's cluttered basement, then shook his head at Rosie's question.

"No," he said decisively, his eyes closed as he tried to relax. "You don't want to hear about that."

That was his way of saying he wasn't ready to relive it enough to give a verbal account. Rosie wasn't going to press the matter, knowing it was a highly sensitive subject. She gave him another kiss on his head.

"You know you come to me about anything, okay?" she wanted to make sure he understood. "Love you."

Turbo smiled in spite of his mood. He never got sick of hearing that. "Love you too."

She paused a minute before she decided to add, "You know, I used to wake up screaming from bad dreams too. They were always about you."

He shouldn't have been surprised but it still hurt to know that even in her sleep she couldn't escape the pain she'd felt from losing him so many years ago. He hated himself for believing that lie Teddy had told him, about her dying in RoadBlasters when it got unplugged due to her having run in there to stop Turbo from doing something stupid. He had never seen her in there of course, as she hadn't gone in, but still the both of them spent a quarter of a century thinking that the other was dead.

"What did I do in them?" He dreaded asking but he felt he needed to know.

Rosie swallowed, the memory of the nightmare making her sad all over again. "Well...normally you would be dying and just out of my reach. And you'd be screaming at me why I didn't stop you from...you know...doing what you did. You always disappeared into bits of code before I could get to you."

She felt her throat tighten just thinking about it but she forced herself to calm down since, obviously, he was alive. Turbo felt sick to his stomach. He used to have similar dreams about her as well, where she'd be screaming for him to save her but he couldn't. Those had been the worst. Both of them had also had good dreams about each other that were happy and peaceful, but those had been almost worse than the bad ones since, when they woke up, reality had returned and their beloved was no longer with them.

"I had those too," he said just above a whisper.

Rosie sighed and gave him a squeeze. "It always helped me to take quick cold rinse in the shower," she suggested, raking her fingers through his short hair. "Might help calm you down or at least get your mind off it."

The cool water hitting him felt like heaven, helping wash away the remnants of the nightmare he'd had and bringing him back to reality. It still shook him at how real it felt, everything from the texture of the bedsheets to the sound of the voices he heard.

The twins, damn, he hadn't given much thought to them in a long time. He could still see the terrified looks on their faces when he'd beat them to death, right after coming back to TurboTime from RoadBlasters. Even Teddy, who was never afraid of anything had been frightened in his final minutes of life. Ted's death had been quicker, having snapped his neck after knocking him out and stealing his uniform so Turbo could escape into the Grand Central Station. Ted hadn't been that bad of a guy, admittedly, but he had to go too...couldn't chance any witnesses.

Oh but, Teddy. He had always hated Turbo, even though he had never done anything to deserve it. All he did was win races all the time and Teddy grew so bitter and jealous that he hacked into their Code Room and altered Turbo's code to make him slow down. Afterwards, no one wanted to play TurboTime anymore because no one could ever win the game and moved on to RoadBlasters instead. According to the little jerk, he had gotten the Universal Code from the RoadBlasters driver, Rocky, who Turbo had run over multiple times when he crashed the game.

Ah, Rocky and his damn better graphics and faster car and rock music. Rocky, who had humiliated him by beating him in a race at Turbo's own track. Rocky, who had assisted Teddy by being the provider of the Universal Code.

Everyone thought Turbo had tried to take over RoadBlasters; that wasn't the case at all. He had went there to crash it on purpose in order to save his own game from becoming obsolete. He had to ensure that TurboTime stayed plugged in and the only way to do that was to kill the competition.

Unfortunately, it backfired and both games went under.

Yes, he was a murderer. Did he regret it? Sometimes. Okay, Ted's anyway since, again, he wasn't that bad. The other two...they ruined his life. Turbo felt his fists curl up just thinking about it. He would have still been Litwak's most popular game if not for them. His name would not have been dragged in the mud and become a euphenism for the horrors of game-jumping if not for them. He and Rosie wouldn't have been separated for so long if not for them. He wouldn't have had to commandeer Sugar Rush if not-

"Champ, you okay in there?"

Rosie's voice knocked him out of his thoughts. How long had he been in there? He realized he was freezing now from the formerly refreshing cool water and he shut it off, wiping the excess off his face and reaching out for the towel to dry off. He slipped into a fresh white tee, boxers and red pajama pants, turned the bathroom light out and went to go lay back down.

Once back under the covers, Turbo rolled up on his side and pulled Rosie closer to him to spoon and held her there almost like she was a shield from any potential nightmares that might occur that night. He thought for a brief second to get it off his chest about the twins but he dismissed it before the thought even finished crossing his mind. No need to drag her into his darkness.

She would be afraid of me if she knew what violence I was capable of...she'd hate me.

Rosie scooted back so she could snuggle better, her arms tangled up in his as he held her. She could feel him breathing where he had rested his face against the back part of her neck. Eventually she felt him drift off, hoping that he'd stay asleep, and she finally let herself go back to sleep as well.

Rosie didn't even stir when he got up a couple hours later. Using the light dimmer on the wall, Turbo lowered the glare on the recessed lighting so it wouldn't hurt his eyes from exiting a pitch black room. He proceeded to sleepily tromp his way down the stairs, scratching his back and yawning as he did so, and stopped when he reached the beer fridge. He opened it and squinted his eyes a bit when the brighter light inside hit him, reached in and grabbed a beer from the shelf and then closed the fridge door. He hadn't been able to fully to go back to sleep, still restless from the nightmare about the Ghost Twins.

Beer would make it better. It always had before.

He popped the cap and pressed the bottle to his lips, tilting his head back to allow the contents to pour down his throat. He finished it faster than he thought he would, quietly placed in the garbage so it wouldn't make noise, and went to grab another one. After popping the cap from that one, he stared down into it as the liquid inside swished about gently, as if it were telling him that it was his best friend and it would never hurt him. He thought about this past week and how humiliating and hurtful it was to be treated this way, like he was a monster. Maybe he was. He clenched the bottle in his hand and proceeded to guzzle it down.

Two would enough...for now.

The Early Years

It didn't take long for Turbo to get drunk. It never did. Beer was the next best thing after racing and winning trophies because where the beer was, that's were other people were. Turbo would practically drown in beer just to stick around longer and not be so damn lonely, talking to everybody that walked by whether they wanted to talk back or not. Of course, he didn't really realize that he WAS lonely because...well, when that's all you know, you don't see it as anything unusual.

Most everybody thought he was annoying (the guy could chat your ears off) but dang if he didn't throw a good party. The only reasons people came over was one, the parties because they were usually wild and he did have a nice house; and two, the after-hours races were fun to watch even if Turbo did win 99.9 percent of them.

He didn't do this every night...drinking and partying that is. Some nights he'd stay at home alone with his trophies, shining them up, rearranging them in their display cases, reminding himself that he was worth it. He might have come across as prideful about winning, but shit when that's all you have to live for, anybody would come across as prideful. Trophies were his security blanket. Anytime he felt the least bit of self-doubt, all he had to do was walk into one of his Trophy Rooms and instantly feel better. Vain? Perhaps. But they were all he had.

That and beer.

Didn't he have any friends? More like acquaintances, but that's kinda the same thing, right? Girlfriends? Oh, let's not get started on those. He definitely liked the ladies but they didn't exactly like him back. Not all the time, anyway. He'd been slapped on more than one occasion trying out a new pick-up line and if he was lucky enough to get one in bed with him, it was because either he was drunk or they both were. They never hung around too long afterwards. They were only there for the party, you know, or at least to brag that they slept with Mr. Most Popular Game. Half of them he couldn't even remember.

Regardless, he lived in his own little fantasy world that he was just as adored amongst other game characters as he was with the real-life gamers. An ego fed by false friends and golden idols were the core of his early life. Not that he saw it that way. If people didn't like him, they wouldn't have anything to do with him, right?