Save Me from My Dark Side
Chapter Seven
There was no way he was going home right now. Turbo couldn't bear the thought of walking in his front door only to be subjected to more sorrowful looks of pity from the missus. To think, she'd actually given him a proud smile earlier when he left with Ralph to go to...he didn't want to think about it. It had been naive and imbecilic of him to think that he could possibly be accepted anywhere.
He scanned the game titles flashing overhead above all the available portals in Game Central Station. This was his first trip alone here since he'd rejoined society. Part of him wished to have at least one person accompanying him so he wouldn't feel like such a loner walking through, but the other part of him desired to be alone. Turbo began to walk, his mind laying out a mental map of the Station as he did so. He hoped Litwak hadn't done any rearranging with the older games or else he was going to be quite lost trying to find the one he was searching for.
His mind was so focused on his present task that he jumped when he heard a very enthusiastic, "Hiya, Turd-o!", from behind him.
He stopped in his tracks, hissed his breath out slowly through clenched teeth in aggravation and twisted his head around, recognizing that voice anywhere. Vanellope, President of Sugar Rush, was accompanied by her friend Candlehead and they were both giggling about excitedly like they had both just had tablespoons of sugar injected directly into their veins.
"Whatcha doin'?" the raven-haired girl asked rapidly as the two of them began to bounce around the older racer. "Where's Rosie-Posie at, she still needs to come by and see the castle!"
Turbo was embarrassed to catch himself shrinking back from the flame on Candlehead's hat and covertly blew it out so she wouldn't notice it right off the bat. Glancing about the Station, he noticed that even more attention was being drawn to him now that the little annoying candy brats were making themselves at home circling him like buzzards. He rolled his eyes and rubbed his forehead.
"You idiots are making me dizzy," he said flatly. He timed the two girls' skipping patterns to determine when to make his move to escape this entrapment he was in and managed to slip by without a problem.
The girls noticed of course and skipped along after him, much to his ever-growing dismay.
"Don't you toothaches have anything better to do?" he asked lowly, not bothering to turn his head to address them properly.
"You mean batter?" Candlehead snickered, meaning like cake batter.
Turbo was reminded of his days as king, blasting out candy puns like they were going out of style, and it irritated him more than it should have to have that time of his life brought back up. He had been busy enough reminiscing about his days at TurboTime, he didn't want to start dwelling on Sugar Rush memories as well, even though those were a lot fresher in his mind.
As fresh as baked bread, he added mentally then groaned when he realized he was already reciting food-themed euphemisms.
"Where we goin'?" asked Vanellope.
"We are not going anywhere."
"But we're bored!" Candlehead whined, throwing her arms up above her head.
"Yeah, we're waitin' on Stinkbrain to come back from his bore-snore meeting."
Ha! BORE-SNORE meeting? If she only knew!
Although, apparently she was unaware that Turbo had gone to the meeting as well, so the fact that Ralph had kept it a secret won him some bonus points.
"And you have chosen me to be your evening's entertainment?" he asked in feigned excitement. "I'm so honored."
Vanellope could hear the sarcasm in his voice. "Boy, someone's being a grumpy gummy bear!" She let a smirk slide through when she added, "I thought being married would mellow you out more."
"Don't you mean marsh-mellow?" he commented snidely under his breath.
Candlehead giggled but Vanellope blew out a raspberry.
"You know, I was going to say if you were nice you could come to the Anniversary Party we're in the process of planning, but if that's how you're going to be then..."
He stopped paying attention to her before she finished her sentence, for at long last, he found the game he was looking for and it was right where he thought it would be. A sense of nostalgia came over him, a good kind this time. Many an afternoon had been spent here in the old days, a relaxing destination after a long day's work. Turbo couldn't have the kiddies follow him in there though, so thinking fast he turned around, pretended to see something in the distance and then pointed, saying,
"Oh look, there's the big guy now!"
The girls simultaneously spun around, peering into the crowd of people behind them. They didn't see anyone or anything resembling Ralph in the least.
"Where, I don't see him?" Vanellope asked after a good full minute of looking then turned back around to talk to Turbo again. "Hey, where'd he go?"
"Hey! Who blew out my candle?!"
Officer Bob from A.P.B. was programmed to catch criminals. It was his job, his life's passion to punish evil-doers, lawbreakers, hooligans, troublemakers, etc. However, the criminals in his own game were not real baddies of course, after all they were only doing what they were programmed to do as well. Sure they had sour attitudes and liked to pull pranks of an extreme nature at times, but who doesn't do that from time to time? There was no challenge for Bob to be in charge of arresting people that weren't even truly bad. Those guys were his friends after all. No, he longed to catch real criminals, that is if any existed within the arcade.
A.P.B. had been plugged in several months earlier than RoadBlasters had been in 1987, so he had known Turbo only slightly before he had done the unthinkable and game-jumped during arcade hours, effectively crashing the rival racing game, killing everyone in it, then causing his own game to go under. Officer Bob thought he had finally found a true criminal for him to be obsessed with. Turbo wasn't even a villain, he was the protagonist of his game, yet he had by his own free will caused a path of destruction and ruined lives with his pride and jealousy. It was almost too good to be true for the policeman. In fact, he thought it shame that the bastard had died because he wanted to see him punished for his crimes the way that he should have been.
Since it was all-around assumed that the racer had died with his game, Bob instead had to focus in his intentions on preventing the rest of the population from even thinking about copying his actions. He would go around, whispering nonsense to people about how he'd overheard him talking about wanting to abandon TurboTime and join up with RoadBlasters in an attempt to take over it, defending himself by saying,
"He was drunk when he said it, you can't believe everything a drunk says. How was I to know he was being serious?"
Unknown to most, it was Bob that started using the term "going Turbo", as a joke amongst in his own friends, and it spread like wildfire from there. Soon everyone in the arcade was saying it and thus a legend was born. Horror stories popped up about seeing the dead racer in the night and ghost tales were told to cast him as a power-hungry monster. It didn't take long before everyone fell into the trap of "remembering" Turbo as being an egotistical jerk the entire time they knew him.
Well, not everyone. Of special note, that little twat girlfriend of his never fell for any of it. Oh, Bob loved harassing her when he saw her, asking if she'd found any new murderers to date, or if she realized that she was just as bad as he was for not stopping him from game-jumping that day, or telling her she must not have been that special for him to just leave her like that. Sometimes he'd get the reaction he wanted and she'd cry about it, but most times she would sit there with a stony look on her face and tell him to go to hell. That always made him laugh.
But that was then and this was now. Turbo was alive and actually had the nerve to live amongst the rest of them as though he were normal. Officer Bob had been so livid when that fool Fix-It Felix, Jr. had stupidly allowed him to live in East Niceland, which had been Bob's home when the offer to live there became available. He had left along with a couple of his old friends, refusing to live anywhere near a murderer.
Bob had been watching silently from the side as he observed the racer getting booted out of certain games, becoming a laughing stock everywhere he went, his spirit breaking every day, and the officer derived great joy from this. It served him right, to think that he could just waltz back into society and things go back to the way they were. They say crime doesn't pay and that maniac needed to learn that. He had thought to join in on the festivities, but he opted to sit back and observe for a while until he decided to make a move. He had to plan accordingly.
Currently, he was sitting in Tapper's at his usual spot enjoying a fresh beer when he saw Turbo walking in...or rather creeping in. He looked like a whipped dog, his eyes looking about to make sure the room was clear of anyone that would want to readily kill him and then wisely took a seat at a booth that was close to the exit. He looked exhausted, like he'd had a bad day (what else was new?) and Tapper went up to him.
Like, Peter Pepper at BurgerTime, Tapper didn't have a problem with Turbo being there. He remembered all the good days when he'd come in there and get everyone in a party mood, livening the place up, or having Tapper send shipments of liquor to TurboTime so he could have a party there instead. He may have been annoying at times but he had for the most part been a stand-up guy.
"How's it goin', Turbs?" the barkeep asked him, getting a clean mug out from under the counter.
Turbo sighed wearily, resting his face in his hands. "Go ahead and give me two."
"Must not be goin' well," Tapper observed, having answered his own question upon hearing the request.
He pulled another mug out and filled both of them up, putting extra foam at the top because he remembered that's how the racer liked it. Tapper decided it best to leave him alone and turned around only to see Officer Bob strutting along the side of the booths, a hint of mischief teasing his eyes. The mustachioed bartender own eyes flashed and he stepped out, putting a firm grip on the policeman's shoulder.
"You start something, and I won't hesitate to throw you out...again," he warned him in a low growl so no one around would hear him.
Bob dismissively waved his other arm at him with a "pfffft!" and removed the other man's hand from him.
"Relax, Taps, is it illegal to have a friendly chat?" he grinned slyly.
Tapper's glare hardened but he stepped back away from him. "That better be all it is or I'll be suggesting you find a new pub to visit. I didn't tolerate harassing the patrons then and I won't now."
Bob simply widened that Cheshire cat grin of his and walked past him. Turbo had already downed his first drink and was steadily working on the second one when the policeman took up a stool next to him.
"Well, well! If it isn't my favorite parking offender!" Bob said, slapping Turbo on the back with a flat palm.
It spooked him to be unexpectedly interrupted and he slammed his mug down, coughing due to beer going down the wrong pipe.
"My apologies," the officer told him, leaning over to the side to grab some napkins for him to wipe his face off.
Turbo had almost forgotten about Officer Bob; he had only been around a few months before the RoadBlasters incident, but from what he did remember, the ginger-haired cop was a likeable enough fellow. He alsorecalled that he had a decent sense of humor, doing things like leaving fake parking tickets on the racer's car or flashing his lights at him like he wanted him to pull over. Rosie had always hated it when the two of them would be out riding around in the Station on their way to some other game's event and he would initiate a chase scene with the officer just for kicks, with her thinking that they were bound to run over someone. Needless to say, the two men had shared plenty of laughs before.
"Hi, Bob," the racer greeted him back after he got his face cleaned off. He glanced over at Bob's ever-smiling face and deduced that the officer wanted to talk.
"I, uh, saw Chief not that long ago," he mentioned casually, not really sure what to say. "I'm surprised Litwak pulled your plug. You guys started off really well when you got here."
Bob reached into his shirt's front pocket to dig out a toothpick, sticking it in between his pearly whites and making a show of using it like he always did. "Yeah, he didn't have much choice though. Some damn kid got too rough with the controls and messed up the steering wheel extension. My car kept leaning to the left more than usual and after enough complaints, we got the boot."
Turbo nodded in understanding, believing very much that if the stupid kids in the arcade had just kept on playing TurboTime then he wouldn't have had to worry about getting unplugged in the first place. He drank some more of his beer, trying to savor it before asking for another one.
"But enough about me, what's going on with you, Mr. Comeback Kid?" Bob asked, switching the subject. "Things been going kinda rough, I bet?"
The racer hung his head down, not much in the mood to talk about himself. "You could say that."
He didn't see the gleeful smile on Bob's face when he said that, who was now twirling his toothpick between his teeth like it were a lollipop.
"So that's why you came in here?" the cop asked, pulling off a great imitation of compassion as he spoke. "To drown your troubles away?"
Turbo nodded once half-heartedly before finishing off his mug and shoving it gently in front of him on the counter, then raised his arm up to snap his fingers at Tapper to get him to come give him refills. Tapper held up one finger to say "gimme one second, be right there" and hurriedly try to fill up an order for the group of various ladies that were sitting on the other end of the room.
Bob scooted his stool closer to Turbo and placed an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in towards him and whispered, "You know, if you really want to feel better, forget this watered-down junk." He motioned one of his hands over the beer mugs. "You need the hard stuff."
"Like what?" the racer asked, not sounding very interested.
"Oh just pick a poison. Whiskey, tequila, gin, etc. I prefer vodka myself," he suggested amiably, the mischief still dancing about in his eyes. "I can always let you have some of mine if you want to try."
Tapper come up to refill Turbo's mugs, shooting a piercing glare at Bob as if to remind him not to start anything. Bob just grinned at him and winked, acting utterly innocent. Once the bartender left, Bob patted Turbo lightly on the shoulder and pulled off him.
"Come on, I thought a risk taker like you wouldn't think twice at trying something new," the cop attempted to bait him.
Turbo wasn't very sure. It had been a long time since he'd had anything stronger than a beer, and even then it had been a long time since he had had just a beer. It was just last week that he'd had his first taste of the stuff in years.
"I dunno, Bobby, it's...it's kinda been awhile since I had any of that kinda stuff," he confessed slowly. "I don't rightly know if I could handle it anymore."
Bob chirped out a single laugh. "Ha! Gimme a break! If you could once, you can again. It's like riding a bike. Or a car, if you will."
Damn he missed that car. Little red baby with the white stripe on the side, spoiler in the back, and an engine that sang the most wonderful tune he'd ever heard.
Turbo shook his head of the cobwebs that were beginning to form and took a minute to gulp down one of his refills. He put the glass down and closed his eyes, using one hand to massage his forehead. The welcome dizzying feel of a buzz was starting to form and hopefully after a few more rounds it would be enough to make him forget this hellish day.
"Maybe later," Turbo said. "I'm not really up for it right now."
That was enough for Bob. He knew it would only be a matter of time before he cracked and would be begging for something stiffer. Bob smiled and patted the racer on the back again.
"Sure, whatever you want. Just find me when you feel like really forgetting your worries."