They didn't dare come out of hiding unless it was nighttime. And as such, it was pretty hard to see, especially in the sea of junk they lived in, but there was no mistaking—
"No way," he muttered, running his hand over the smooth candy surface of the kart. He trotted to the next one, and the next. All three of them were identical, save for a few minor cosmetic details. He wondered if…
"Hey, c'mere!" he half-whispered. When he got no response, he meandered around the winding trails of junk until he found the only other inhabitant in the junkyard.
"Axel," he hissed.
Axel lifted his head up from his current task at hand—fashioning an oversized Jolly Ranchers wrapper into a bow tie.
"Yeah?"
"You're not gonna believe what I just found," Rally said, unable to hide the excitement from his voice.
"If this is another candy coon nest—"
"It's not a candy coon nest," Rally deadpanned. "Just c'mon."
Axel dropped his half-finished craft project and tagged at his twin's heels, following him back through the junkyard. Rally led him up and over a hill, into a sizeable pit, where the three racing karts were parked.
"Whoa," Axel said, face spreading into a smile. He skidded down through the junk, his hands coming to rest on the hood of the first kart he came to.
"What kinda candy is this supposed to be, anyway?" Axel said, rapping his knuckles on the glossy surface. "Suckers?"
"Yeah, I think it's the real long ones, y'know what I'm talkin about? Like, the ones that look like a horn?"
Axel turned his head this way and that, looking at the kart's construction. "Oh, yeah. What're those called, again?"
"Unicorn pops," they said in unison.
"Surely we could fix em up," Axel said excitedly, diving into the driver's seat. "There's enough stuff around here that I bet we could—hey, wait a minute." He'd noticed that, amazingly enough, the key was still in the ignition. He put a cautious hand on it.
"Should I?" he asked Rally.
Rally smirked and nodded.
Axel turned the key, and the engine screamed to life. His mouth dropped open.
"Can you believe it?" he said, turning his head to look at his brother, but Rally was gone. He scrambled into one of the other two karts, firing up the engine.
"Why would they throw these out?!" Rally yelled over the noise of the kart, forgetting that he was supposed to be as quiet as possible.
Axel put a cautious foot on the accelerator, revving the engine ever-so-slightly. Sounded good to him.
"No idea!" he hollered back.
Rally shifted the kart into drive, easing it up beside his brother's. Axel looked at him like he was a lunatic.
"Should we?" he said, waggling his eyebrows.
"We can't," Axel said. "We'll wake up the whole kingdom."
"Not if we just ride in em for a couple minutes," Rally reasoned.
Axel bit his lip, running his hands along the steering wheel.
"Y'know, it's usually me who has the stupid ideas," he said, grinning.
"I knew you'd see it my way."
They shifted the karts into drive and rocketed over the hill, bits of candy rubble kicking up in a spray of debris from underneath their tires. The path they made to walk through the junkyard was only one "lane" wide (they never expected to race through it, naturally), so they battled for the lead by running over and along the piles of trash.
Axel disappeared from view, going off in a seemingly different direction. But Rally knew the junkyard layout well. He was going to try and head him off at the dropoff area coming up—
Nyoom! Axel descended down a hill and past Rally in a flurry of cookie-earth crumbs. Rally blinked them out of his eyes and licked them off his lips, hunkering down behind the steering wheel, sneering. Now it was personal. He slammed the accelerator to the floorboard.
They made four laps around the junkyard before Rally had the sense to stop. He parked the kart beside the little lean-to that the two of them called home. It took Axel a good twenty seconds to realize he no longer had a competitor, but when he did, he double-backed and parked his kart, as well.
"I forgot how fun that was," Rally said, sighing.
"I know," Axel sympathized. "I just wish—"
Rally held up a hand. "Don't say it. I know what you're thinkin." After all, there had been three karts, not just two. If only they could find him…
"He woulda loved it more than me and you put together," Axel said sadly, stepping out of the kart.
Rally nodded. "Yeah. For sure." He hopped out of his kart, again running his hand over the handiwork. It made him remember Blue Throttle, his old kart from back in the day. He pursed his lips.
"So," Rally said, "should we hide these, or…?"
"Who's gonna find em?" Axel said. "Nobody ever comes out here."
"That cookie dude, to dump the trash," Rally reminded him.
"Surely he won't come out this far," Axel said, shrugging. "I think they'll be all right. And as much as I wanna take this thing for another spin, we better not."
"Yeah," Rally agreed. "We already made too much noise, I think."
"It's all your fault," Axel grinned.
Rally punched his brother in the arm, and none too gently, either. "Shaddup."
The two of them went back to their own devices, Axel with his candy wrapper bowtie, Rally with his prowling (he was looking for some flat pieces to make replacement roof tiles for the ones Axel had broken, which was a long and stupid story). But both of them knew where they'd rather be, and that was back behind the wheel, navigating those karts.
If only their little bro was there to share their bittersweet joy.
{*}
The light clicked on in Vanellope's face. She thrashed her head over and looked at the clock on the nightstand. Three-something AM.
She threw the comforter over her head, only to have it yanked back down.
"Vanellope," Sour Bill said, "it's been brought to my attention that there is a…disturbance."
She sighed audibly. "Good grief. This late at night?" She hopped out of bed, rubbing at her eyes. "What kinda 'disturbance,' anyway?"
"There have been several complaints that—"
"This late?"
"Yes, that there is some kind of commotion going on in the junkyard. Sounds like kart engines, they say."
Vanellope crossed the room to her chest of drawers, grabbing up her hooded jacket, her pleated skirt, her stockings. "All right, we'll go investigate. Just lemme throw these on." She bounded off into her en suite to change.
{*}
"Whoever's racing at three in the ding-dang morning is gonna have an earful from me," she said, hopping into Frankenkart, Sour Bill sitting beside her. "And maybe a faceful. Of my fist."
Wynchel and Duncan followed close behind her on their motorcycles as she and Bill sped out of the castle. Vanellope doubted they'd be of any help, but Sour Bill had suggested it, and she supposed it wouldn't hurt for them to tag along.
"Don't they know they can't do that?" she said to Bill, turning her kart onto the road that would lead them straight to the junkyard. "They're bound to wake at least a few of the districts up with all that noise, sheesh."
"I don't know, Vanellope," Sour Bill said, shaking his head.
They reached the junkyard entrance, and immediately, Vanellope noticed what looked like fresh tire tracks going every whichway along a makeshift path.
Wynchel and Duncan idled their motorcycles alongside Frankenkart, apparently noticing the same thing Vanellope had.
"There's definitely been some racing going on here tonight," Duncan said.
"Well, whoever did it's probably long-gone," Wynchel said, "but we'll take a quick look around, anyway."
"That's kind of the whole point of coming out here," Vanellope whispered to Sour Bill. Sour Bill actually laughed a little at that.
Wynchel and Duncan took it upon themselves to take the lead, and Vanellope was too sleepy to argue. She puttered behind them as they drove at a snail's pace, stopping every once in a while to shine their flashlights around. Vanellope took her own flashlight and shined it this way and that, for no real reason other than the fact that she was bored. She didn't expect to see anything.
Except she did.
"Did you see that?" she said to Sour Bill.
"I did," he said. "It looked like a pair of eyes. Might've just been an animal, though."
"Yeah…" Vanellope said, but it didn't look much like an animal to her. "Go to the right up here, guys."
They all went in the direction Vanellope had thought she'd seen something, stopping more frequently to check their surroundings. Eventually they came to a dead end, but they weren't disappointed in their findings.
"Well," Duncan said, dismounting his motorcycle, "looks like we found the karts everybody heard out here."
"But these are Swizzle's old karts," Wynchel said, coming to stand by the other donut, shining his light on first one kart, then another.
"We just made these the other night," Vanellope said, hopping out of Frankenkart, Sour Bill in tow. "What the heck? D'you think somebody could…be…"
She trailed off. Her flashlight beam came to rest on a small shack, well-built, but definitely constructed by amateurs. It reminded her of the place she used to live, in Diet Cola Mountain.
"Somebody lives here," she said, taking a step toward the structure, but Sour Bill grabbed her by the jacket-sleeve.
"Careful," he said. "Let Wynchel and Duncan look it over."
But before anybody could do any looking over, two figures burst out of the lean-to, making a mad dash for the karts. Running, however, was apparently not their best skill. Wynchel and Duncan had them chased down, tackled, and cuffed before Vanellope had time to react to the situation.
Maybe those knuckleheads really do know what they're doing, Vanellope thought as she crept closer to the intruders.
She shined her light on their faces and wanted to scream. But she wouldn't allow herself to do that. She bit her lower lip, hard.
She looked down to Sour Bill. "How—how are there two more Turbos?" she half-whimpered to the green candy.
Despite their situation, the Turbo on the left laughed. "Didja hear that, she thinks we're Turbo."
"Not quite," the other one said with a smile, "though this really aint the time for jokes, is it?"
They definitely didn't have the same voice as Turbo, that much was true. So, at the very least, the original was still rotting away in her dungeon and hadn't escaped. That made things ever-so-slightly better.
Wynchel and Duncan hauled the two men up to their feet, and Vanellope got a better look at them. They looked like Turbo, but…not. She didn't spend a long time analyzing the minute details of Turbo's facial bone structure, but she could tell that these two goons were different-looking.
"Who are you?" she said, her voice sounding braver than she actually felt.
"Should we tell her?" Not-Turbo asked the other Not-Turbo.
"I dunno."
"I'm pretty sure the jig is up."
"Looks like it, huh."
"Will ya go easy on us if we spill?" the Not-Turbo on the right asked her.
"Go easy on you?" Vanellope said. Now it was her turn to laugh. "Yeah, right! Not if you were working together with Turbo, I won't." She crossed her arms, inadvertently shining her light in Sour Bill's face. She uncrossed her arms, muttered an apology, and shined it back on her perpetrators.
"You want em in the dungeon, right?" Wynchel said.
"Yeah," Vanellope said, then after a second of thought, added, "Separate cells, though.
The donut cops grabbed a criminal apiece, shoving them into their respective passenger cars attached to their motorcycles. With shaky legs, Vanellope climbed back into her kart, Sour Bill hopping in alongside her.
"So who do you think they really are?" Vanellope said as she drove.
"I haven't a clue," Sour Bill said, "but they look enough like Turbo that they must be from the same game, at least."
"I know…you think they helped Turbo…do what he did?"
"I don't know."
"Me either."
They drove the rest of the way back to the castle in silence.
{*}
There was so much commotion that it woke Turbo up from what passed as a good night's sleep those days. He used to stand on his helmet to see out the little window at the top of his cell door, but he opted for one of those peppermint-encrusted chairs instead, The Glitch be damned.
"You could be a little gentler," he heard a voice say. Wait a second…that voice…his breath hitched.
"Axel?" he called out.
"Turbo!" two very familiar voices shouted back.
"No talking," Wynchel growled. He popped the dungeon light on, and Turbo could see that it wasn't just Axel, but his other brother, Rally, too. He was happy to see that they were alive, but he definitely wished it were under different circumstances.
"How'd they find you?" Turbo yelled, but before they could answer, Wynchel and Duncan had thrown the twins into separate cells, one to Turbo's left, the other to the right.
"We found your friends," Duncan sneered.
"Fuck you," Turbo spat in response.
"You watch it, or we'll see to it that Fix-it aint allowed back down here," Wynchel warned. Turbo narrowed his eyes at them, but he kept his mouth shut. They wouldn't fall back on their word, he knew that.
"Does he mean Fix-it, as in Felix?" Axel piped from his cell.
"Felix comes to see you?" Rally yelled.
"Yes and yes," Turbo called hastily, seeing the agitated expression on the cops' glazed faces. "It's complicated, I'll tell ya later."
Duncan dusted his hands off, like the twin he was just handling was some kind of filth. "Now that that's all taken care of," he said. "Time to go home and get back in the bed."
"You can say that again," Wynchel said, nodding. "We got, what, three hours before the arcade opens? I need some more sleep under my belt."
"The three of you better not be too loud," Duncan said as he headed for the door. "If you wake anybody in this castle up…I don't wanna know what President Vanellope'll decide to do with you."
Wynchel seemed to think that was really funny, laughing as he and Duncan turned off the light and shut the heavy dungeon door behind them with a finalizing thud.
Turbo wasted no time starting in again.
"Where were you guys this whole time?"
Axel and Rally took turns filling Turbo in on their lives for the past few months, how it was to live in the Sugar Rush junkyard.
"So I guess your code went back to normal, too," Turbo said, more to himself than to his brothers. He'd seen them with his own eyes, he knew it had.
That was yet another tough decision he'd had to make when revamping the Sugar Rush game code. It had been so tempting to make his brothers fellow racers like him, but doing that would open up a whole other can of worms, in terms of rewriting game binary. So, he'd played it safe, doing some copy-pasting and creating simple candy citizen meshes for his brothers to hide behind.
"Yeah," Rally said. "Good thing we never did go to very many of those Random Roster Races, huh? We woulda been outed in front of everyone."
"One second, we were our gummy candy selves, and the next—not so much," Axel said. "We knew…somethin had happened. So we got the hell out of there."
Turbo nodded, though no one could see him do so. "Makes sense. When The Glitch crossed that finish line…"
He trailed off. He was so mad at himself for not being able to write the code to stop The Glitch from causing a game override, in the extremely unlikely event that she crossed the finish line in a kart of her own. Her doing so would cause a huge shock to the system, and it'd either undo all of his hard work, or crash the game entirely. The former had happened, and he still didn't completely understand why, but there was one glaring certainty: he had failed.
"I guess it set everything back to normal, huh?" Axel said.
"Apparently," Turbo said moodily.
"At least we're alive," Rally, ever the optimistic twin, chimed in.
"For now," Axel said.
"Nah, The Glitch thinks she's some kinda special snowflake, so instead of princess, she's calling herself a President," Turbo seethed. "She won't execute us, if that's what you're thinkin. A life sentence in here, maybe, but she won't kill us."
"Maybe we can get parole," Rally said.
Turbo rolled his eyes, but he was actually smiling, just the tiniest bit. It was such a relief to see his brothers among the living, albeit locked up alongside him, that he couldn't be completely angry.
Very, very angry, yes. But not completely angry.
{*}
"Felix, perfect timing," Turbo said, practically breaking the handyman's spine in a bone-crunching embrace. He held Felix out at arm's length. "I haven't slept a wink, I've been thinkin so much, I've got a ton on my mind, I—"
Felix put a gloved finger over Turbo's mouth. That shushed him.
"You're keyed up something awful," Felix said. "Did something happen?"
"Hey, that is Felix!"
"You can see 'im?"
"Nah, I can hear 'im, though!"
"Little bro really wasn't lying!"
Felix's eyes widened. Turbo nodded stupidly, as if that explained everything.
"I know you can't—uh—wait," Felix said, detaching himself from the racer's grip. "Just—wait a second."
Felix took a step out into the main dungeon hall. To his left and to his right, two almost-identical faces grinned at him from their cell windows.
"Oh my land," Felix muttered.
"I'm so glad you and Turbs could make amends," Axel said. "Sure, he's a homicidal criminal—"
"—but he's a loveable homicidal criminal," Rally finished.
Felix's face was ghostly pale. "Why are you—how did you—"
"Finally get captured?" Rally said. "It was all Axel's fault."
"Don't you even lie, this was totally your fault!" Axel yelled back.
"Quieten down," Duncan said, without looking up from his newspaper.
Felix looked back to Turbo. "I thought they were…well, for lack of a better phrase, I thought they were…dead."
Turbo looked at his shoes. "Well, honestly, I had my doubts after I…after everything that happened. Whether they were…still alive, I mean."
Felix looked Axel to Rally, then back behind him to Turbo. He walked back into Turbo's cell, gripping the racer's hands, grinning like an idiot.
"This is great!" Felix said. "You must be so happy to see they're alright, I know I am. I can't imagine what you're feeling right now. Relief, I bet."
Turbo shook his head. "No, ya don't get it, they were better off where they were, in the junkyard, not trapped in this hell hole. They didn't do anything, but surely The—surely Vanellope'll think they were my accomplices." He shook his head again. "They weren't."
"They'll get a fair trial," Felix assured him.
"How, though? How?" He was getting frantic now. "There's no proof. It's my word against everything else. There's no way. There's literally no way to prove they're not…guilty."
If Turbo was the crying type, he might just have to bawl a little right then. But instead he felt a familiar rage grow within him.
Felix seemed to sense this. "Hey, calm down, calm down, it's okay," he said. "I'll talk to her. Or maybe, I'll talk to Ralph, and have Ralph talk to her. Or…something. We'll get this situated, don't worry."
"I'm sure she won't be very eager to do me any favors," Turbo mumbled.
"Then I won't mention you," Felix said. "I'll tell her this is all my idea."
Turbo shut his eyes, sighed. "You trust people too much, y'know that? How do you know I'm not lying? How do you know my brothers aren't as terrible as me, how do you know they don't deserve to be down here?"
Felix looked him in the eye. "I can tell when people aren't being honest," he said brightly. "It's in my code."
Turbo sniffed. There were no tears, but his nose was still running like a faucet. He supposed that was the compensation for not showing open weakness. "Is not," he said.
"Well, it is, too," Felix said. He planted an audible smooch on Turbo's cheek. "Promise me you're not lying and I'll believe you."
The corners of Turbo's mouth twitched, wanting to smile, but being a little too angry to actually do so. "I promise," he said. He knew he sounded like a sap, but he couldn't help it when he was around Felix. He never could.
"See, that wasn't hard at all," Felix said. "Don't you worry, I'll talk to…hmm…somebody about this," he said. "And we'll see what I can do."
"You'd do that?" Axel yelled.
"For us?" Rally called.
"He's just as big a sweetie pie as ever," Axel said.
"Turbo, you better not mess shit up with him this time," Rally said.
Felix honey glowed at the twins' kind words, laughing under his breath.
"I'm seriously trying not to mess shit up with him this time," Turbo called back.
Felix shook his head, grinning. "You just put it out of your mind and stop fretting about it," Felix told him, clapping Turbo on either shoulder. "I'll do my best to take care of it."
He made his way to one of the peppermint chairs and took a seat. "I sort of came down here for a reason," he said.
Oh, no, Turbo thought. Here it comes. He winced. He sat down on his strawberry wafer bunk across from Felix, heart thundering in his chest.
"I saw Tamora the other day," Felix said. "And boy, was that awkward. You'll love it, though." He laughed.
Turbo breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah?"
"Oh, yes," Felix said, grimacing. "It's not that she's exactly mad at each me, but…"
As Felix told his story, Turbo couldn't help but feel the tiniest trickle of relief within him. Felix was a Good Guy, the goodest Good Guy in the whole arcade. His words carried weight and merit. Plus, he was pretty sure The Glitch liked him, since she was best pals with Wreck-it. Maybe…maybe his brothers really would get out of their dungeon cells. If not, well…maybe Felix could negotiate a lesser sentence, or something.
He was kind of lucky, in a twisted way. Occasionally.
Author's Note: This chapter took a little longer to write than the others because I didn't want it to get too serious. In general, I wanted this to be a lighter story, but I think this works, too.