Might be until Monday before I get to update again, I'm going out of town but will work on this as much as possible while I'm gone. Sorry!
Save Me from My Dark Side
Chapter Twenty
Day Five of Turbo's "Imprisonment" in Sugar Rush...
Something was sitting on his chest.
Turbo's slumber was slowly ruined as the reality of the situation grew. At first, he only just cracked his eyes open and then they widened up when he saw the small flicker of fire floating above him glowing in the otherwise dark room.
A scream ripped out of his throat before he could stop himself. What was odd was that the fire itself screamed and Turbo jerked his arms up to forcefully shove whoever or whatever was sitting on him off of his chest and then wildly scrambled out of bed. He thought in the back of his mind that he had been doing a lot of falling out of bed lately as he made a mad dash for the light switch on the wall by the door.
Now that the lights were on and he could see, Turbo's narrowed yellow eyes pierced the oversized green ones that were looking at him from underneath a brown and pink cupcake hat, the owner of which had repositioned herself in the middle of the bed.
"Wow, your eyes really do glow in the dark!" Candlehead exclaimed with amazement.
He smacked the front of his face in frustration.
"What the hell are you doing in here?" Turbo demanded angrily.
When her jaw dropped upon hearing the not-so-kid-friendly curse, Turbo glared even harder.
"That's right, I cussed," he snidely stated, his arms crossed in front of him. "And if you don't explain yourself, you'll be hearing a lot more."
Candlehead apparently had the attention span of a goldfish cracker and she pulled her mouth back into an exaggerated grin, jumping off the bed to go stand in front of her ex-king.
"You're coming with me to the Ice Cream Mountains!"
Turbo simply stared at her with an unblinking look of confused annoyance. Candlehead's mouth was wide open in an anticipated smile, innocently oblivious to the man's feelings on this sudden announcement.
"You want me to what now?" he asked her dryly, the lack of enthusiasm apparent.
"Go to the Ice Cream Mountains with me!" the green-haired girl repeated with her hands raised high above her head as she hopped excitedly in place. "We need to get some more ice cream for the Anniversary Party coming up soon!"
Anniversary Party...he remembered those, getting chocolate cake and ice cream and other such gifts from the various racers and NPC's in Sugar Rush. He would throw a large party but he would notably keep his distance from the children while they had their fun. If he remembered correctly, the party should be coming up on...
He counted up in his head that the last day of his two-week stint was going to be the day of the party. Suspiciously, he wondered if that's why Rosie had sentenced him to that certain amount of time in the first place, no doubt suggested to her by Vanellope. He felt tricked somehow and that only made him more peeved.
"Oh, is that so?" Turbo asked the bubbly child with a fake smile. "And how is it that I got nominated to join you on this important mission?"
"Vanellope said you had to," she informed him gleefully and his smile developed into a scowl.
"Why do I have to?" he wanted to know, pointing at himself with both thumbs. "Why can't one of your little friends go with you?"
"Are you nuts?" She crossed her eyes, stuck her tongue out and twirled a horizontal finger beside her ear in the "crazy" gesture. "I need adult supervision up there! What if I get my kart stuck in a snow drift, or if an avalanche happens?"
Turbo's breath hissed out slowly between clenched teeth, his eyes shut as he tried to keep his temper in check. Okay, so if the glitch herself had said that he had to go, it was obviously a royal decree. And regardless of how he felt about being ordered around by a pint-sized imp, he wasn't in the mood to make things more difficult just because he didn't want to be alone with the resident blabbermouth fetching ice cream.
"Okay..."
She inhaled deeply to start shouting about how excited she was to go on a trip but Turbo threw his hand up in a "stop" gesture, causing her to pause in mid-gasp.
"But...you are not going to annoy me with constant talking, singing, humming, whistling, steering wheel tapping, or anything else that you think would be considered fun," he insisted, counting off the list on his fingers. "Understand?"
He rolled his eyes when she continued to stay in her frozen mid-gasp position, her face starting to turn red from lack of oxygen. "You can breathe."
She blew out a hard breath and panted for a while to get air back into her lungs. Turbo had a bad feeling this was going to be a loooong trip.
Candlehead's kart, the Ice Screamer, was one of the heavier karts in the whole game and it certainly showed when trying to get it up the mountainside. A few times, Turbo had reluctantly been forced to get behind it to give it an extra boost when one of the tires got stuck in some slush. It was freezing up there and he cursed himself for not thinking to ask around for a coat. Teeth chattering and his arms hugging him in a feeble attempt to get warm, he kept his eyes frozen on the little flame that somehow managed to stay lit on Candlehead's hat.
At last, he told himself he was being ridiculous with this pyrophobia of his and stuck his palms out towards the fire in order to get even the tiniest amount of heat radiating off of it. It wasn't much but it was better than nothing and he eventually felt some life creeping back into his fingers.
"How much further do we have to go?" Turbo asked grumpily after about an hour of driving.
"If you want chocolate, we have to go to the very top," Candlehead informed him in such a cheerful manner that it almost made her passenger want to abandon ship and scream curses at the top of his lungs. "Vanilla's on the bottom, then Rocky Road, then Cookies-and-Cream, then-"
"All right, I understand!" he interrupted her harshly, rubbing his palms together quickly to try and help generate some more heat. "Doesn't this thing go any faster?"
As if he had just spoken the magic words for things to go from bad to worse, the kart suddenly started slowing down until it at last came to a stop. The purring of the engine died down into a quiet hum and then gradually nothing was to be heard. Turbo mentally punched himself in the face for opening his big mouth and then sneered down at the candle-topped driver as she tried to helplessly stomp on the gas pedal.
Candlehead hesitantly turned her head back with a large nervous grin on her face and her eyes were filled with anxiety, her hands fiddling with the steering wheel aimlessly.
"Um...I may have forgotten to..." She gulped, her voice getting smaller as she talked. "Um...fill up the syrup tank?"
Sugar Rush didn't have gasoline...instead the karts ran on a variety of syrups: chocolate, maple, honey, or one of the many fruit flavored ones. Turbo's already angry eyes only narrowed into an even angrier appearance, his teeth gritted and his fists clenching the sides of the kart.
"You...forgot...to what?" he said, forcing each word out slowly and as quietly as possible. If he hadn't been concerned about starting an avalanche, he would have screamed it at her. "How...is that...possible?"
She shrugged helplessly and Turbo was so livid he couldn't even look at her anymore. He jumped off the back of the kart and ranted under his breath for a good five minutes, pacing back and forth in the Rocky Road slush that they were surrounded by, kicking at a few of the chocolate chunks that were showing through. Finally he stopped and he stormed back over to the little girl who was still sitting unusually quiet in her seat.
"Out of all you kids, I get stuck with the one too stupid to remember to fill up her own syrup tank," he muttered in a low voice, his teeth still clenched together. He'd rather be up here with Gloyd slamming ice cream snowballs at him, Crumbelina checking herself in the mirror, or even Taffyta doing nothing but bitch at him for anything she could think of. At least, they wouldn't have run out of fuel.
With anyone else, that comment would have hurt their feelings. Candlehead was...well, not the brightest candle on the cake, so she didn't seem to process the statement to its full intent.
"Sorry!" she piped up. "It could've happened to anyone!"
"Yeah, anyone dumb enough to not check their bells and whistles," he mumbled some more and he crossed his arms again as the chill wind began to blow.
She cocked her head to the side in confusion. "The Ice Screamer doesn't have bells and whistles on it."
Turbo had to walk away again, not believing the situation he was in.
"This is just turbo-tastic!" he called sarcastically out to no one in particular. "I'm stuck in the freakin' Ice Cream Mountains with a kart that doesn't work and a kid with the brains of three jellybeans!"
With that, he began to walk off downhill in the direction that they had come from. Candlehead watched him for a few seconds then called out,
"Hey! Where are you going!"
"Away from here!" was the grouchy answer. "You can stay up here and freeze to death if you want."
"But..what about my kart!" she hollered back in concern. "What if someone steals it?"
Turbo stopped and turned his head to the side only enough for her to see one of his glowing eyes.
"No one's going to steal your stupid kart! There's no one up here except us! Besides, it's out of syrup, remember?"
He had a point but she still didn't feel comfortable leaving it up here in the mountains all by itself. She sighed and patted the steering wheel sadly before hopping out and running after him.
"Wait, don't leave me up here!"
Thirty Minutes Later
Turbo was about to really lose his mind. The flame on Candlehead's hat had been blown off by a strong gust of wind and she'd been whining and sniveling about it for the last fifteen minutes. She was about three feet behind him so it wasn't like he could really tune her out either. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. He spun around to face her, his eyes glowing madly and hissed,
"Will you shut up already? You're driving me nuts!"
She blinked and stared at him like he was a crazy person then asked, "My feet hurt, can we sit down?"
"No, we are not sitting down!" he growled, his fists clenched at his sides. "I want to get down from here ASAP!"
Candlehead started picking her feet up one at a time as if to try and relieve some of the pressure from them, and Turbo thought that if he didn't at least let her rest then she would start complaining about that. Not wanting to hear anymore whining, he pointed firmly at a giant pink sprinkle that was supposed to be part of the landscape, wordlessly instructing her to sit on it.
She did as she was told and rubbed her legs with her hands to soothe the muscles. Turbo figured he might as well sit down too so he waved a hand at her to scoot down further so he wouldn't have to sit close to her. He crossed his arms around himself and slouched on the giant sprinkle, turning slightly away from the child and staring out ahead of him at the outward view of Sugar Rush with a set of still glowing mad eyes.
"I bet you wouldn't be mad if you were stuck up here with Missus Turbo," Candlehead pouted softly.
His eyes flashed and he snapped his head back at her. "If I were to come up with Missus Turbo, I would have been the one driving and I would have been smart enough to check all my fuel, so this wouldn't have happened."
He opened his arms up to their full extent and waved around him to demonstrate that they wouldn't be stuck in the mountains if he'd been in charge. Candlehead hung her head down sadly.
"I said I was sorry," she said quietly.
"Well, that just makes everything hunky-dory, doesn't it!"
Turbo seethed for a few more minutes, trying to ignore the chill in his bones. He heard sniffling coming from his left and he turned to see that Candlehead was wiping her face of the sugary tears that had started flowing down her cheeks. Not being completely made of stone, the adult of the two felt a pang of guilt at being responsible for making her cry.
"Will you stop that? Your face is gonna freeze."
"What do you care?" she asked in a trembly voice. "You're a big meanie."
It was a childish insult, but it seemed to be enough to make him soften up some. She was right, he was being pretty hard on her. She was only nine and a not overly bright one at that, so it shouldn't have been a surprise that she would have overlooked checking the syrup tank before going off on a big adventure.
"Sorry," he begrudgingly stated, shifting his weight to get more comfortable. Sprinkles aren't the cushiest of seats. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly a fan of kids."
"Why?"
For such a simple question, it seemed to bother him and that only aggravated him more.
"I just don't, that's why."
Candlehead wiped her nose with the sleeve of her pink jacket, making Turbo cringe in disgust and look away again.
"You have to have a reason," she pressed him.
He sighed in annoyance, his breath showing as fog in the cold air. It took him a few moments to respond, collecting his thoughts and thinking of how to word it to where she would understand.
"Once upon a time, there was this really cool guy who was the star of the best game ever made."
"Was the cool guy you?"
"Do you want to hear the story or not?"
Candlehead shrank back and put her hands in her lap quietly.
"Anyway," Turbo continued, his eyes glazing over a bit as he spoke. "All the kids liked playing his game and he became really popular as a result. They all loved him and he thought he'd never have to worry about losing his job because...well, popular games don't get unplugged unless there's a technical issue."
"Yay, I won again!"
"I'm never gonna quit playing this game!"
"TurboTime's the best!"
"It's my favorite!"
"Turbo's the coolest!"
"Hurry up, we want to play next!"
"I wish I had enough quarters to play all day!"
It was a bittersweet memory, recalling all the happy smiles on the kids' faces as they won first place, getting excited watching the little 8-bit pixellated avatar taking his place at the top of the trophy stand and declaring his all too familiar catchphrase. A lot of the kids liked to repeat it back which had always made him chuckle.
He had a lot of regulars that played almost every day or at least every time they came in, and he got to know a few of their names as a result, slowly getting attached to them. He remembered his usual highest scorer was a shrimpy orange-haired kid with big baby blue eyes and face full of freckles named Henry. He probably had kids of his own by now.
He felt his eyes water up but he shook his head to make himself quit. He wasn't even really talking to Candlehead anymore, it was mostly to himself.
"Then one day, this new game showed up and it was better than his in every way. Better graphics, music, gameplay, everything. And all the kids forgot about the guy and they didn't want to play his game anymore. They all abandoned him to go play with the new one because it was better. And he got really sad because there was a chance that his game would get unplugged since it wasn't popular anymore."
Turbo's voice got softer the more he spoke, the sadness replacing the anger he initially felt. It had felt horrible watching everyone slowly quit playing his game and move on to bigger, better things. He had felt so...worthless. Unloved. Betrayed.
"But the kids didn't care about that, they just wanted to have their fun. They left him high and dry, and it wasn't too long before nobody played his game at all. After that, he decided that if that's how kids were going to be, then he didn't want to be friends with any of them anymore."
He didn't have anymore to say about the subject and sat there quietly, his head down and his eyes closed to the world as he remembered the past. A few seconds ticked by and he felt a tiny pair of arms hug him from the left. Turbo looked down and saw Candlehead, who he had almost forgotten was sitting beside him, looking at him with big sympathetic eyes.
"I would've kept playing your game if I had been a real kid," she said quietly. "Everybody deserves to feel wanted."
She said it with such honest innocence that he felt his heart warm up and he had to turn his face away to wick a tear from the corner of his eye.
"Thanks," he whispered. "Even though I'm not sure why any of you are being nice to me."
"Why wouldn't we be nice to you?" she asked curiously.
"Gee, maybe because I erased all your memories, brainwashed you into thinking I was your king, and made you forget your real ruler?"
She didn't comment right away then finally said, "Well...when you were King Candy, we all thought you were this nice old guy. Even if you didn't want to hang out with us, we still liked you. When the game reset, we even told Vanellope that you were never mean to us.
"Besides, we're kids," she pointed out. "Kids forgive stuff easier than grown-ups do."
Obviously. Here he was with someone that was a victim of his code tampering and being sweet to him, and out there in Game Central Station was a large population of folks that hated his guts when he didn't even do anything to them. Maybe...maybe kids weren't all that bad. After all, they never did anything to him to deserve his nasty behavior.
He cleared his throat and stood up, stretching his back out as he did so.
"All right, kiddo, let's go get some syrup for your kart."
Candlehead brightened up and jumped to her feet. "Really?"
He shrugged nonchalantly. "Well, yeah, otherwise we'll never get to the top later and get that chocolate ice cream. Of course, we're not walking back up here, we're enlisting some help on the trip back."
"I really am sorry about running on empty."
A small smile spread on Turbo's face and he waved the comment off. "It could've happened to anyone."
He started walking off without her and he heard her trotting after him, then felt her little hand grab his sleeve so that she could keep up with his faster pace. He didn't shrug her off.