My own take on the battle between Ralph and King Turbug. Inspired by Fall Out Boy's "Centuries", and it's the most Turbo-ish song I've ever listened to. (Sorry I've been absent from WiR lately, I promise I'm not gone! I have a couple of larger projects I'm working on actually, they're just not ready for publishing.)

From Gold to Dust

Ralph hadn't been this petrified since he had faced the cybugs first-hand in Hero's Duty; it had seemed a miracle that he had escaped his own demise in that scenario, what with being outside his own game and running unprepared into one that happened to feature one of the more hostile settings at the arcade.

As he stood on top of Diet Cola Mountain, the tops of the crumbling Mentos stalactites barely supporting his weight, he thought would gladly take on a regular cybug over this, this...monster.

Turbo (if he could still be truly called 'Turbo' now) cackled madly in his new grotesque form, a mutant mish-mash of himself, his King Candy disguise, and the cybug that had devoured him during the Sugar Rush roster race. He was mostly cybug, though much much larger than any of the ones that Ralph had seen before. He towered Ralph by a good ten feet, his body painted in vibrant shades of violets, golds, and pinks. His face was the disturbing part though: his left eye was bright yellow, as it had been while he was still "just Turbo", while the right eye was of the more normal variety, white with a brown iris. The side of his face with the Turbo-eye was fleshy-colored however, like King Candy's; the right side, ashy gray. The two skin colors collided messily in the middle of his face, as if someone had purposely colored outside of the lines in a drawing book.

The teeth flashed white tips, razor sharp just like the claws he now possessed. Ralph could only guess what he would do with those if Turbo ever caught him.

"I must thank you, Ralph!" the laughing-mad game usurper mocked him as he inspected his new upgrades. His voice seemed two-in-one, his normal voice mixed in with a mechanical growl thanks to the cybug embedded in his code. "I'm more powerful than I ever was before thanks to you bringing those killing machines to my game!"

No, no this wasn't supposed to happen! Ralph cursed the day he ever stepped foot in Hero's Duty; thanks to him, Vanellope and her entire game would die.

Vanellope...he had brought her nothing but pain it seemed...some 'hero' he turned out to be for her.

"Now everyone shall bow to my greatness, worship me!" Turbo continued his spill, a large claw raking out to the rotting land of Sugar Rush.

"Your greatness?" Ralph raised a brow as he backed away from his larger-than-life enemy, trying to plan a course of action. "You really think anything you've done is worth people falling at your feet over?"

Turbo growled, his teeth shining even under the darkening sky. "I have done the impossible, Ralph! I have defeated death! I fooled the entire arcade for decades while I hid under your noses, strategically and stealthily secured my livelihood by solely master-minding a takeover of this cavity-infested game, and now I am alive again even after being fused with a monster who should've killed me! If that isn't proof that I'm the greatest being in all creation, I don't know what is!"

He's completely insane, Ralph thought to himself as he chose his words carefully. "Turbo, listen, I'm not...okay, you're right, I can't really deny that those are pretty impressive feats you accomplished." Ralph circled slowly around the perimeter of the volcano, the cybrid watching his every move like a cat with a mouse. The wrecker would have thought it humorously ironic that he, one of the larger characters in the arcade, was now suddenly a pipsqueak compared to his foe. Was this how the Nicelanders felt when he wrecked their building? "But you hurt, and killed, a lot of people! They didn't deserve that! The twins, RoadBlasters, Van-"

"SHUT UP!" Turbo's posture read that of a wild dog ready to pounce at any sign of movement, his wild eyes fixated on his chosen prey. "I don't care for those clowns, they were all in my way in my path to the top! I will not be forgotten, Wreck-It Ralph!" He stomped a heavy claw into the Mentos; Ralph held his breath, fearing that the whole thing would cave in with him on top of it still. "I refuse to be cast away in the shadows of people's minds! I'm the greatest racer ever! People swarmed to my game, fought for a turn to give me a taste of their attention, and I will not give that up!"

"You idiot, Turbo, you really think the gamers remember you, outside of the older crowd? Nobody remembers TurboTime anymore!"

That was the wrong thing to say.

Turbo's jaw widened to its full extent, an extra pair of teeth showing themselves now. A throaty roar sounded as he galloped to where the wrecker stood. Ralph panicked for all of two seconds before crying out and leaping out of the way, Turbo having too much momentum to stop himself in time before crashing into volcano's rim.

"Give it up, Turbo!" Ralph dared to trash talk him over his shoulder, jogging away from the monster. "Nobody will ever respect you or give you the attention you want! Know why? Because we'll all fight you! You're no better than the rest of us, your life depends on the gamers feeding you quarters as much as everybody else's!"

"I said for you to shut up!" Turbo's face was crackled with red code shining through it, his wings fluttering atop his spiked back. "None of you could ever do what I did!"

"That might be true, but look around you!" Ralph shouted as he waved his arms out towards the rest of Sugar Rush, which was steadily becoming less and less of its former glory. "You say you worked hard for this game, well now it's going to disappear! Why couldn't you use those skills you brag about for good! You can't even race in a body like that!"

"I don't need a car, when I can run you down as I am!" Turbo growled angrily, curling into a ball and rushing himself full-speed towards Ralph's position. The wrecker dodged out of the way just in time, looking back to see Turbo crack some of his insectoid shell. A shiver of red code slithered there, the mutant screeching in an inhumane manner.

"Looks like someone's losing steam, your majesty!"

The cybrid heaved his large frame up, the red glitches more sporadic now. One eye, the King Candy one, had turned completely red now, making him look even less like either of his former identities. "Don't pretend you're better than me," Turbo snarled, his voice sounding even more like a broken machine than before. "You came here looking for glory too, did you not? You wanted that precious medal...wanted to be loved and adored by all, right? We're not too different, you and I, why don't you see that?" His sneer was the face of nightmares, something Ralph would never get out of his mind.

"You're right. I did want those things," Ralph was forced to admit, "but I don't need it anymore! I'd rather have friends who care about me for who I am, than be surrounded by fakers who only like me when I do certain things!"

"Friends, eh? Too bad you won't need them when you're all dead!"

Ralph thought he could dodge the impending attack again, but "third time's a charm" theory failed for him. Turbo slammed the Mentos again right before he took off for a run, the wrecker falling and slamming hard onto his side. Though injured, Turbo still possessed a high ability for speed, snatching the man up with one claw. Ralph grunted as he struggled against the entrapping claws, then gasped as he saw the widening jaws get closer to him. He was tossed inside the gaping mouth like a candy mint, but he refused to be dinner for the madman.

Ralph's large hands pressed up against the roof of the beast's mouth, his feet planted along the bottom row of teeth. The second set of teeth's gears screamed angrily as they failed to be able to do their job, and Turbo let out a painful screech as his mouth and teeth began to crack. He might have been bigger than Ralph, but his wounded body was no match for the wrecker's strength. He wound up plucking Ralph out of his mouth before he could rip his skull open, squeezing him tighter than he had earlier. Ralph's body ached from the stress of pressing against the powerful jaws, crying out at the suffocating grip he was in.

"That's how you want to play?" Turbo spat, his teeth dripping with saliva and his pupils nothing more than tiny dots as the wild cybug code continued to override his original. "So be it!"

Any strength Turbo had left in him went towards flapping his wings open, soaring the two high above the volcano. Ralph shouted in protest, but the usurper only laughed.

"Prepare to die, Ralph!" he cackled even as he was dying himself. "Unlike me, you will be forgotten, like that pile of garbage you call home! No one will ever remember you other than the fool who wanted to be loved and adored so much, that he ruined his so-called best friend's game!"

"No, that's not what happened, that's not what-"

"Speaking of your friend," Turbo interrupted him as he used his other claw to force Ralph's head in the direction of Sugar Rush's exit, "how about we get a front-row seat to her own death? Good riddance, worthless glitch!"

Ralph's heart went to his throat as he saw the tiny teal dot that was Vanellope being surrounded by the much larger dots that were cybugs. Tears sprang to his eyes; what had he done? She was going to die because of him, when he was supposed to be saving her. "NO! Vanellope!"

Turbo's evil laugh resonated once more. "It's game over for both of you!"

The wrecker choked back a sob, his mind clouded with the overbearing sense of guilt and failure. If only he could have knocked those Mentos down! He wished Turbo had managed to break them himself, even though he could've easily flown to safety to avoid the lava...

However, the cybrid had still managed to help deal some damage...

With a determined, steely look in his eye, Ralph grit his teeth and swallowed. He was not going to let Vanellope die for his mistakes.

"No," he stated in a chilling voice, turning his head enough to shoot one more glare in Turbo's direction. "Just for me."

At that, he used all his strength to press against Turbo's claws, the damaged cybrid's strength failing to hold him at last. Ralph sailed downwards towards the volcano, not looking back at his sworn enemy.

He was going to die a hero for his best friend. That's how he wanted to be remembered.