Turbo was, quite frankly, getting tired of being unable to leave without Felix's company. Sure, he didn't mind spending time with him, but Turbo was used to hanging around others. And besides, Felix was too nice to go to any of the fun games.
"Can we go somewhere fun? Today's the day the arcade's closed," Turbo whined when he found Felix standing on the balcony with a mug of coffee.
"Turbo, I know you've been cooped up in the penthouse since Vanellope found you but I've been hard at work all week and I need a rest," Felix told him softly. Turbo sighed and leaned over the balcony railing, staring out at the green expanse of Niceland. An expression of longing and deep sadness came over his face as he thought back to those days of staring out at his candy kingdom, and back even further to staring at the racetrack in his own game from his penthouse window.
Seeing this, Felix left him standing on the balcony as he walked back into his penthouse. Turbo never noticed him go, too caught up in his own thoughts. Before, he'd either hear the roaring of the crowd or Jet and Flash's engines as they tore around the track practicing, or he'd hear the music of Sugar Rush. But now, all he heard was silence. And then he heard a new sound- Felix's voice.
"Turbo," the handyman said to him, holding a gleaming golden medal in his hands in front of his chest. "Maybe all we need is a symbol that I'm responsible for you. If you're wearing one of my medals that I've engraved a special message on, everyone'll know that I've allowed you to wander around on your own and then you won't get in trouble." Turbo took the medal from Felix, their hands brushing as they did so, and smiled at the engraving on the back of it.
"If found getting into trouble, return to Fix-it Felix Jr."
"And you think this'll work?" Turbo queried, hanging the medal around his neck.
"Let's go ask Surge," Felix suggested, and Turbo grabbed his hand before remembering his manners and simply walking by his side down to the station and from there out of the game where Surge appeared at the presence of Turbo's code.
"Morning, Felix. Taking your charge game-jumping?" the surge protector asked, his clipboard at the ready to jot down the details of where they were going.
"Well, no, but I've come to ask you a question about that," Felix revealed. "Surge, would it be okay for Turbo to go game-jumping on his own if he had a sort of pass for it?" Turbo removed the medal from his neck at this and showed it to the blue man, who hummed thoughtfully.
"Okay," he nodded with a smile and a slight laugh at Felix's wording. "Are you sure you're willing to clean up his mess, though?"
"Yes," Felix confirmed with a nod of his own. "I accepted Turbo as my responsibility back when he was found."
"Well, don't be surprised if he's dragged to your game port in the first five minutes," Surge warned him, and disappeared back into the grid.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Turbo muttered at the space where he'd been standing.
"And I thought Ralph hated that guy," Felix commented with a laugh. "Okay, Turbo, you go have fun on your own and please don't get into any trouble. I trust you."
"I'll try," Turbo promised. "Kiss me goodbye?"
"Someone might see," Felix replied, honey glows colouring his cheeks.
"You always used to kiss me goodbye," Turbo reminded him. "Remember? I'd stay over and as soon as the arcade opened you'd kiss me goodbye at your game port."
"Yeah but that was before," Felix corrected him. "If I was seeing you off from my penthouse, though, I might be open to kissing you."
"Maybe tomorrow, then," Turbo decided. "I'll see you, Felix. Probably soon if this first game-jump goes the way I think it will."
"Don't go back to Sugar Rush," Felix urged him.
"It's like my home, Felix. I lived there for so long that not being there, much as I love living with you, makes me feel more than a bit homesick," Turbo told him. "I have to go back, Felix. So don't be surprised if I'm back soon."
"Try not to kill each other, then," Felix sighed.
"I don't think we can kill each other in that game," Turbo laughed. "Pretty sure she'll try, though." Felix smiled at him and watched as the former racer walked across to Sugar Rush's outlet in one of his new tracksuit outfits, this one a red one. His medal gleamed in the station lights.
Inside Sugar Rush, Turbo took a deep breath of the sugary air. He'd really missed this place.
The ex-racer walked along the rainbow road, sugar crystals crunching underfoot, and by the bottom regretted not bringing Skittles with him. But, he reminded himself, that little glitch would only try to take him off him. And speaking of little glitch...
"Hey, what are you doing back in my game?" she snapped, glitching in front of him and glaring at him. It was just his bad luck that they were the same height.
"I was homesick," he replied truthfully.
"Hope you haven't come back to steal the throne," she sneered at him.
"Why would I want that?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest defensively.
"Where'd you get that medal from?" she demanded, jabbing at the medal around his neck. "Did you steal it from Felix?"
"No!" Turbo almost growled at her. "Why would I steal from him?"
"Because you're just a bad guy," Vanellope huffed. "Freckle candies don't change their spots."
With that, she pushed him with a surprising amount of force for such a little girl. Turbo fell back onto the road, landing hard on his rump. He growled at her and got up, taking a swing at her. When his fist connected, Vanellope glitched, taking them to Diet Cola Mountain.
The president of Sugar Rush glitched around her enemy, punching him where she could, and he retaliated with his own fists. He headbutted her and, when their heads connected, he instantly regretted doing so without a helmet to protect his skull. He staggered around, dizzy from the blow to the head. Vanellope grabbed him, meaning to hurl him into the boiling hot diet cola, but stumbled from her own dizziness. They both fell into the hot springs and burned.
Turbo came back first, lying on the peanut brittle, and so saw Vanellope's blue code when her body flickered back into existence beside him. He noticed a very familiar pattern in her code, but he couldn't believe it at first. This wasn't possible, it just couldn't be!
"Huh, so you do come back from the dead," Vanellope figured, breaking him out of his realisations. "Hurts, doesn't it?"
"You've come back from that death before?" Turbo asked. Vanellope nodded, getting up and dusting invisible dust from her outfit.
"Oh yeah, plenty of times. See, life for a glitch is pretty terrible. I had no friends, I was virtually worthless, so I went through a period of trying to kill myself. I was pretty dark for a while there."
"It must've been terrible," Turbo sympathised. If what her code said was right, he wanted to start treating her better.
"What's with the change of heart? Did part of you come back wrong when you just died?" Vanellope frowned, wringing the cola out of her wet hair.
"No but I found out something," Turbo informed her. "I think your game was modelled off mine."
"And what makes you think that?" she asked. "My game looks nothing like yours. I mean, sure, it's a racing game, but there've been plenty of racing games."
"Your code has my code in it," he revealed. "I saw it when you were coming back to life. It's like you're... coded from me. Like if my code was mixed with someone else's code to make new code."
"No," Vanellope gasped when she made the connection. "You can't have treated me like that if you're... no, I can't accept that."
"I didn't know, okay? And if I had known, I probably wouldn't have treated you like that. I thought you were the greatest racer so I got rid of you."
"My dad was a greater racer than me," Vanellope said quietly. "He was the greatest racer ever but in my backstory, he died."
"And then I brought him back to life because I arrived," Turbo continued. "I'm... I'm your father."
"Guess that explains why you can't die in this game," Vanellope sniffed. "Go away now, I need time to think and get used to this idea."
"Can't I stay?" Turbo asked. "It's my game too, in a way."
"You can stay in the game but don't go anywhere near the castle," Vanellope allowed. "After what you did last time you lived there, I don't trust you there."
"Fine," Turbo nodded, and got up to walk out of the mountain. Vanellope walked behind him, her head no doubt whirling with the same thoughts his was.