Unwanted revelations

Every single person at the Royal Raceway – from the sentient candies lining the bleachers, to the racers, to Vanellope and Turbo – seemed to draw in a collective, mortified breath in perfect unison. Thick silence clotted the air, all sound somehow muffled after the jumbotron's announcement. And through it all, the stylized icon of King Candy never gave so much as a flicker on the board, smiling down at the assembled crowd with a too-good-to-be-true jolly smile.

Turbo couldn't do anything except stare and glitch, frantically grappling for something that resembled comprehension. What had he done that the other avatars hadn't? He'd just tossed his coin into the winner's cup like everybody else, and then…King Candy had shown up.

King Candy. The evil former monarch of Sugar Rush, a fragment of scrapped coding run amok, the person responsible for dethroning Vanellope and reducing her to nothing but an outcast and a glitch. A regular recurring player in Turbo's nightmares, returning to warp and melt and leer night after night. A character who had been dead for quite some time. Why was his name up on the board? And why in the world had it happened after Turbo had thrown in his token? It just didn't add up.

Remember remember remember…

"I knew it!" shrieked a high-pitched voice. Turbo spun around to find that the hot-pink strawberry girl, Taffyta, had one hand clapped against her chubby cheek, while the other jabbed an accusing finger in his direction. "I knew it! I knew he looked familiar!" she screeched. "That's Turbo, the creepy sicko who took over our game and erased everybody's memories!"

Her words crashed into him as if she had dealt him a physical blow, and his limbs exploded into glitches. "Wh…what?" he choked out.

Candlehead began to cry, and Crumbelina di Caramello placed a comforting hand on the other girl's shoulder, glancing fearfully at Turbo and cringing when he gaped back. Rancis Fluggerbutter shouted, "That psycho! I thought he died! H-he's back to kill us all!" Adorabeezle Winterpop, Jubileena Bing-Bing, and Minty Zaki all screamed and attempted to hide behind their karts. And the Sugar Rush denizens in the stands had become jumpier than a bag of popcorn in a microwave; many were even attempting to break for the exits. To Turbo, the whole thing looked like a flurry of fingers pointing at him, a dull roar of people telling him how awful he was, and he couldn't understand why.

Vanellope snatched the cuff of his sleeve and yanked him aside, and being as stunned and near-frozen as he was, he hardly noticed that he was being dragged along behind her until they had ducked into a corner, away from everyone's prying stares. She gazed up at him with pleading hazel eyes that made her look, if anything, more freaked out than he was. "Turbo…"

"W-what's going on?" he stammered, his voice distorting as a violent glitch tore up his body. "Why d-does it say K-King Candy?!"

"It's – it's probably just some weird mistake in the code!" she answered desperately, trying to pull her mouth into a strained parody of a smile. "King Candy was on the roster before. It's just a coincidence that his name popped up when you – "

"No." His lips wrapped around the lone syllable, interrupting her failed reassurances, and she stopped up short.

"No? W-whaddaya mean, no?" she asked. A very slight quiver had crept into both her eyes and her voice.

"You're lying to me…aren't you?"

It was like he'd only truly accepted the truth after speaking the words, and it must have shown on his face, because Vanellope took notice. He watched as a swallow moved down her suddenly pale throat.

At about this time, Felix, Calhoun, and Ralph hurriedly approached them, having managed to make their way through the panicked racers and civilians. Felix immediately rushed up, exclaiming, "Turbo! Oh, my land, I'm so sorry you had to go through that! Never fear, it's just a little malfunction, we'll get it all sorted out…"

"No." This time Turbo's voice was much more solid, tainted with anger around the edges. His pupils roamed across the four people gathered around him, the people who had saved him after Turbo Time had been unplugged, the people who had been withholding information from him since the very beginning. "Don't lie! That had something to do with me, didn't it?! His name only went up on the board after I threw in my coin! What's going on here?! Why does it say King Candy?!"

He was glitching pretty severely now, all of his careful training discarded in the emotional heat of the moment, but his words weren't so garbled that they were unintelligible. Everyone knew what he was saying, and his desire to finally get answers couldn't possibly have been misunderstood.

Calhoun stepped forward, her face pulling into the same grim expression that he imagined it must have held before a major battle. "Listen, kid, we're just as surprised as you are – "

"Will you just tell me the truth already?!" He hadn't meant to sound so hysterical, but he couldn't help it anymore; he had accepted their lies for so long that his need for the truth was now unbearable. "I'm not stupid! I know that you've been hiding something from me since I first got here! What is going on?! Why have you all been treating me so strangely?! What is it that you're not telling me?!"

Glitch glitch glitch. He was panting as he finished his rant, unable to squeeze any of the almost painful tension from his muscles.

Calhoun looked somberly at Felix, who looked at Ralph, who looked at Vanellope. At last, the little girl came towards Turbo, her enormous eyes downcast. "Let's take a walk," she told him, her voice flat and strained.

Turbo glitched again as an inexplicable pang of terror jolted through his chest. "But…what about the race?" he asked.

"Hey, there's…there's races every day." Her lips didn't even twitch; she was far beyond smiling at this point. "We need to talk, Turbo."

He sucked in a deep breath, reached out, and curled his fingers around hers. He had never held hands with someone before, but right now, he desperately needed something to clutch to and to keep him grounded in reality. "Okay."

"Vanellope…" started Ralph. "Are you sure you wanna do this?"

"It has to be me," she replied, defeated, but never faltering. "After all, this was all my idea in the first place." She began to walk away slowly, devoid of her usual energy, still hand in hand with Turbo. "I'll meet up with you guys back at the castle."

Vanellope and Turbo traveled in silence for several minutes as they left the Royal Raceway. She was despondent, refusing to make eye contact with him, and he was practically trembling with the anticipation of what he was about to hear. Whatever it was that had been kept from him, it clearly was not a good thing. But the occurrences at the racetrack today had made him positive that it was something that he needed to know.

Finally, she spoke up. "You told me you dreamed about King Candy. What else have you been dreaming about?"

Turbo paused, frowning. "Uh…I've had nightmares about Turbo Time being unplugged. And ones about being pulled into a bright light that burns me. And the other night, I dreamed that we were both racing, but then I started attacking you for some reason…"

Vanellope didn't say anything. She didn't have to – for once, he could see perfectly on her face what she was thinking. And what she was thinking was that she'd known what he was going to say.

He glitched.

"…They're just nightmares," he said, as if he'd never suspected that they might be anything more. "They don't mean anything."

"Oh yes they do. They're not just nightmares…they're memories."

She stopped up short, angling her head to look at him for the first time since they'd left the Royal Raceway. Tear tracks descended down her cheeks, and the sight made his legs go weak – she was crying, actually crying! "I-I don't know how to tell you this, so I'm just gonna say it. Turbo Time and Road Blasters weren't unplugged because they got old or weren't popular anymore. They were unplugged…because of you."

He stared. She had spoken clearly enough and he'd heard her, but what she was saying…made no sense at all. Was she implying that he had done something to Road Blasters and his own cabinet that had gotten them both unplugged? He couldn't have done that…surely he wouldn't have…

"You got jealous of Road Blasters. Really, really jealous. So jealous that you left your own game to try to put yourself in the new one. But you made the software get corrupted, so it was unplugged, and then when the gamers saw that you were missing from your game…"

His last night in Turbo Time flashed into his head: brooding in bed, scheming up ways to prove to the arcade that he was better than anything in RoadBlasters. But that doesn't mean that I…! He shuddered, scarlet binary flickering up his spine.

"After this game was plugged in, you came in and took over it," Vanellope continued miserably. "You reprogrammed everything so that I was just a glitch and you were the star. And you locked up all of our memories so we never knew that anything was wrong…"

No.

"Except you had to make yourself look like you belonged in this game in order for us to believe it..."

I wouldn't.

"So you found an abandoned character model in the code vault, and…"

I didn't!

"What are you saying?" whispered Turbo in a hoarse, shaky voice.

Vanellope winced, her gaze glued to the ground. It was a stupid question for him to have asked, anyway, because they both knew very well –

"Just say it." This time he was louder, not quite upset, not quite angry – more hysterical than anything. "Do it! Just say it already!"

"Okay, okay!" Her hands hovered in front of her face, anticipating a strike, or maybe she just wanted to shield herself from the blow of the truth she'd always. "Y…you were King Candy."

Turbo stumbled backwards dizzily, lost his footing, and staggered against the branches of a candy cane sapling for support. He didn't faint; how could he have fainted when his mind was boiling with enough horror to keep him awake for years? He swore that he could see the dark tide of information bubbling behind his eyes, taunting him.

You were King Candy.

You got two games unplugged. You murdered everyone in RoadBlasters. Jet and Set are dead because of you.

And that little girl over there, the one who you've been hanging out with and calling your best friend? You almost destroyed her code, you left her alone and ostracized for fifteen years, you ruined her life just to be the center of attention, because…

"You're wrong," he croaked, scrambling still further back from her, his incessant glitching almost causing him to topple to the ground. "It's not true…!"

"Why would I lie to you about this, Turbo?!" cried Vanellope. "I wish it wasn't true! I didn't want it to be true! That's why I never told you…!"

"It never happened! Never! You're lying!" he shouted, shaking his head back and forth rapidly. "I would know if that had happened! I would remember something like that!"

"Not if your memories were erased! And they were, okay?! I know, because – " She gritted her teeth like it was causing her physical pain to take this any further. "Because I did it! I was the one who decided to reset you!"

He felt faint, but he wasn't sure if it was because of the fact that his body was violently dissolving into static, or because of what she was telling him. His knees had suddenly gone weak, and acid churned up in his stomach. "W-wha…why would you…why would you…!"

"I was trying to help you!" she shouted. "We figured out who you were and I got my game back – but we thought you died after – you did, but you regenerated! And you came back and you were going to kill me, and all the grown-ups were ready to kill you, but I didn't want to, okay?! I wanted to help! Because Felix told me about before RoadBlasters when you didn't used to be evil, and I thought, maybe there was still some good left in you! But you were so screwed up that you wouldn't take any help from me and then the grown-ups went in the code vault and ripped you up and then I realized that if we just reset you…!"

No.

Turbo prodded his foot backwards, and it was a miracle that his shuddering legs didn't dump him to the ground. He squeezed his eyes shut as if that would block out the world, restore things to how they had been just a few short hours before, make it all go away…he couldn't possibly cope with this…

No, no, no…

Involuntarily, he clamped his hands over his ears. His teeth chattered, clattering together like a pair of castanets. He had wanted to know. He had thought that he wanted to know the truth, and now he couldn't take it back. Yes, the others had all lied to him, but all of a sudden he was starting to understand that they had cultivated those falsehoods for a reason. He wanted it back, he wanted to return to that comfortable sham of a life that he had been living for the past month…

Nonononononononono…

"You're lying!" he screamed, clamping his hands over his ears, desperately hoping to shut out the revelations. "That's not true! That can't be true! I AM NOT KING CANDY!"

"Will you just stop for ONE SECOND and LISTEN TO ME?!" she screamed back, fists balled up and shaking at her sides, eyes scrunched nearly shut. "I was HELPING you!"

"You lied to me!" he howled, his hands still firmly shoved against the sides of his helmet. Every breath he gulped down felt coarse and prickling in his lungs…was he beginning to hyperventilate…?

Chest heaving, body wracked with spasming code distortions, Turbo finally lost his balance and sank to his knees. If Vanellope was shouting anything else at him, he couldn't hear it. He pressed both hands against his face.

It all made sense now. The cutoff in his memories; Vanellope's flashes of uncertainty; Ralph's aggressiveness and overprotectiveness; the fact that he had been forbidden from leaving the castle without supervision and had always been hidden away from the denizens of Sugar Rush. This was why King Candy's name had gone up on the board. This was why the other racers had freaked out when they'd recognized him. Turbo was the evil, deceitful, despicable King Candy. Just because he no longer remembered it didn't mean that it wasn't true.

The horrific crimes that he had committed were truly endless. Because of him, two game cabinets had been unplugged; Jet and Set had died along with Turbo Time; Vanellope had been turned into a glitch, and he'd tried to kill her, he'd tried to isolate and emotionally torment and murder his only true friend in the world! No wonder she often looked like she was expecting him to do something awful – she knew what he was capable of, and she had always known! And yet at the same time…

They had lied to him. They had lied to him! All of them, Felix, Ralph, Sergeant Calhoun, even Vanellope. They'd never told him about his past, and if it hadn't been for the Random Roster Race today, they probably never would have. Did they even care about his well-being at all, or all this time, they had only been stowing him away for their own safety, keeping him locked up without giving a thought to how he felt?! And Vanellope especially…she had said that she was his friend…she'd said…

He glitched. He couldn't fully grasp any of the thoughts pounding in his head. He didn't know what to think about the others, or what to believe about himself, and now he was past the point of being able to care.

Vanellope stared at him, her eyes aflame with desperation, breathing so hard that it was making her whole body rise and fall like the tides. She didn't reach out to him.

"You were just spending time with me because of this?!" he cried, his voice cracking and warping and hysterical. "You were just pretending to be my friend so that I wouldn't remember?!"

Her eyes flared even wider. "What?! Of course not! How could you say something like that?! I was the only one who really thought you could be good again, even after everything you did to me! I cared about you from the start! I saved you!"

"No you did not!"He could no longer hold back the screams, no matter how heartbreaking she may have looked as her face crumpled. The words were spewing from his mouth uncontrollably. "You were just trying to protect yourself! You kept me here because you didn't want other people to see me! It had nothing to do with how I felt! Well, I don't need to be a racer here! I don't need this game! And I don't need YOU!"

Darkness lingered at the corners of his vision; his body was dissolving into strands of static and binary code; and yet somehow, Turbo still managed to scrabble to his feet and bolt away from her. He could imagine that she was probably shouting for him and reaching out to stop him, that she was yelling for him to come back…but after a moment, he was no longer aware of any of that, because something else happened.

He heard the voice. It was the voice that had spoken to him in his nightmares and during the day, in his bedroom and in Diet Cola Mountain – the voice always urging him to remember. He had never heard it with his ears; this voice was only audible in his mind, because that was where it had been the entire time.

"That's right, we don't need them!"chuckled the voice that he now knew as King Candy's. It was a jolly, harmless voice on the surface, but underneath it was a cruelty worse than any he'd ever known, like candy wrapper surrounding a razor blade. It had never been so loud before, or so close, to the point where it even overpowered the sound of his heartbeat.

But Vanellope said that she wiped my memories…!

Yes, but a character's memories weren't as clear cut as save files on a game screen. Turbo knew enough about code to understand that when you were getting rid of something, actually deleting it often led to a lot of inconvenient errors down the line, so normally the offending items were just…detached. Separated. Left free-floating in the code without linking to anything.

But if you detach a memory, where does it go?

"We're fine on our own, and we always have been," the voice continued. "And do you know why?" Now Turbo was losing control of his own body. Blackness rose up, poised to crash over him, and yet he still felt himself running, running, running…he was in someone else's grasp now, there could be no doubt of that.

"Because together, we're the most powerful being in the arcade, and we can take back what's rightfully ours. The old king is dead…long live the new king!"

Turbo no longer knew if he was listening to King Candy, or to himself, or even if there was any difference left between the two.

And as the part of him that was still himself lost consciousness, he didn't have time to do anything more than give a weak, terrified little glitch…