"All right, Mr. Fix-it..."
"Just Felix'll do, sir."
"Yes, of course. Now - what we're looking for should be near Adorabeezle Winterpop's file, I think."
King Candy furrowed his brow as he leaned around Ralph to watch Felix drift through Sugar Rush's code, fidgeting with his glitch-proof bracelets as he tried to remember the layout Turbo had pulled them through while in control of Candy's body. "Let me see... the racer's files should radiate from Vanny's in roughly the order that they come up on the Roster Race board, so Adorabeezle should be fairly close to Vanellope and between, ah, Gloyd and Citrusella."
"Got it." Felix waved a hand, checking his red-licorice safety line for the sixth time as he scanned the areas between the data boxes. "Just a little file-patch?"
"Yes. It's even patch-shaped, I think - once we have a look at it we can determine where it goes and plug it in."
It had been a week since King Candy had been rediscovered as a true character of Sugar Rush and Vanellope von Schweetz's grandfather - a week since Ralph had found him lurking to watch his granddaughter race, since he had tried to explain his attempts at restoring his code and purging the still-embedded Turbo from his data.
A week of nervous candy people trying to match backstory memories of the king against Turbo's reign, wary sidelong glances, and Vanellope spending every night in East Niceland.
A week of planning how best to deal with upgrade data Turbo had never allowed to become part of the game in hopes that it would lead to a way to get rid of his presence for good.
The latter might have gone faster with a more experienced hand in the code, but King Candy was the only one who'd spent large amounts of time there - and he adamantly refused to enter the code proper, refused to even approach without Ralph or Calhoun to keep him in check should it go wrong, had stationed guards in the corridor with orders to repel him if he approached alone, and there was no one willing to argue with these precautions.
Just as well - while he still hadn't glitched proper since Felix placed the bracelets on him, he could still feel an occasional not-quite-painful bubbling deep in his code - especially as he peered at all that vulnerable data. He shivered now at the echo of Turbo's raging attempt to break free, and relaxed only when he became aware of Ralph's blocky finger resting on his shoulder.
"Okay?" the wrecker asked gruffly. King Candy winced a bit at the hint of a scowl as Ralph regarded him, then smiled weakly.
Ralph was only worried about Vanellope and the rest of Sugar Rush; they all had every right to be.
"All right. I'm all right, I mean."
"I've got it!" Felix called. He gingerly took hold of the patch in one hand and tugged the safety line twice with the other. Ralph immediately tightened his grip on his end of the rope, hauling Felix in so suddenly the handyman yelped and grabbed for his cap.
"Sorry, Felix." Ralph grinned sheepishly, helping Felix back to solid ground with a bit more care as King Candy stepped back to give them room. Once he was steady on his feet Felix grinned at the king, brandishing the bit of unconnected code.
"Well - here it is!"
He held it in both hands as Ralph knelt for a better look, and King Candy nodded with a little smile.
"All right then - open it up."
Once Felix tapped the shell to render it translucent, all three of them leaned in for a look at the data (King Candy lacing his hands behind his back to quell any temptation to touch).
"Hm. I'm afraid I don't know what even half of this means, you know." A grimace. "He never really explained what he was doing. But I think this-" he nodded toward a weave of code "-means a level. A few of them were altered, I think, and their workings looked similar."
"A level?" Ralph asked. "Like a track? Why would he mess with those?"
"I don't know, to lead them away from anything he couldn't cover up until he could get to it? And some of them certainly changed slightly after the reset. Be that as it may, I think we can plug this into the main track file."
"Seems like a lot for just a new track," Ralph mused as they watched Felix head back out into the code. "Not that I'd know."
"Well... there may well be new power-ups as well. Something for the bakery, perhaps. Easter eggs for Adorabeezle's character model." King Candy shrugged, stepping back a bit. "We'll just have to have a look once it's installed."
***
Vanellope and Calhoun were in the throne room when they emerged; Calhoun immediately came forward to greet Felix while Vanellope scurried to Ralph with a shy, wide-eyed look at King Candy.
"Did you get it, can we get... get Turbo out?"
"That's gonna take time and work, gumdrop," Felix said as Ralph lifted the girl onto his shoulder. "We don't really know how to quick-fix this."
"Fix, huh." Vanellope sniffed, looking at Felix's golden hammer. "Couldn't you just... do what you do?"
Felix shook his head as he linked hands with Calhoun, already heading for the doors.
"Afraid not, sweetheart. There are some cases where we just don't know how the hammer will interpret things - like before you reset the game and restored your code, I couldn't just try to fix you because... w-well it might've interpreted 'fixing' things as..." He faltered and cleared his throat. "And in King Candy's case, it might work - or it might permanently fuse the two character codes and whatever bug code is still there, especially since two regenerations didn't get rid of this."
"Oh."
"At any rate," King Candy said slowly after a moment, "we think the blocked patch we just plugged in opened a new track, most likely near Ice Cream Mountain. We're going for a look, to see if anything else is open. Would you... like to come?"
"Would I!" Vanellope beamed, nerves pushed aside as she nodded fervently. "I can't wait to try out a whole new... I mean, uh, as President it's my, hehe, duty to have a look, make sure it's solid, and all."
"Right. Duty." Calhoun pursed her lips to hide a grin as Vanellope cackled again. "All right, Cavity Queen, you drive Wreck-it, Fix-it and I'll go on the cruiser, and von Schweetz..." She paused and frowned, looking at where the white royal kart had once been parked. It was now hidden in a garage beneath the castle, neither Vanellope nor King Candy entirely comfortable with its presence, and King Candy had not touched a kart at all since his first regeneration.
"He can ride with us," Vanellope said slowly. "Like Felix did once." She gave the king an uncertain look before clearing her throat and straightening. "Just... yanno, behave. No.. backseat driving or... anything."
King Candy smiled tentatively and nodded.
"Best behavior. Thank you, Vanellope."
***
The ride to Ice Cream Mountain was the most awkward Ralph had endured since having to take a tram alone with Gene in the first days after the Sugar Rush incident. Both Vanellope and King Candy rode in perfect silence, though occasionally Vanellope perked slightly as she often did when about to speak and King Candy occasionally made a similar motion beside him.
This was going to drive them all crazy before everyone was fully comfortable. So much for Sugar Rush being his sanctuary from the intermittent awkwardness of him and the Nicelanders readjusting to each other.
At least it was a comparatively short ride, especially with the way Vanellope drove. Ralph and King Candy both sprang from the kart before it had fully stopped; Vanellope soon followed, and within moments Felix and Calhoun were landing beside them.
Below, the new track gleamed in all its twisting, dipping, hairpin-curved glory. Vanellope danced with delight, awkwardness forgotten as she squealed.
"Oh! Wow! Look, look, look at it! Look at those jumps! Look, the point of the nut slices, I gotta be spot-on, and then right into that double-hairpin, wow!" She giggled, turning to face them. "And... and... it's a track no one's ever raced on... we're all gonna be perfectly even with no one really knowing all the dips yet, not like the rest of 'em, and ohhhh isn't this great?" She danced in place a moment more and then, before anyone else quite realized what she was doing, leaped to slide down an ice cream drift for a better look.
After a moment Ralph laughed, shaking his head.
"Well, guess we better follow her."
Once down at the track they gathered at the start line, peering down the neat expanse. The surface appeared to be made of ground chestnuts, and it was lined with puffs of whipped cream topped with various powders - brown cocoa, pink strawberry, a green powder smelling oddly of leaves.
"Wonder what it's called?" Felix asked after a moment.
"White Chestnut Way," Vanellope and King Candy replied in unison. They glanced at each other a moment, then started walking along the track for a better look, unconsciously falling into matched step.
"Seems like I should know something else, though," Vanellope said thoughtfully. King Candy nodded, stopping his walk along the track to pace instead; Ralph watched the familiarly exaggerated turns a moment before shaking his head.
"Yeah? Like what?"
"I'm not sure," King Candy said thoughtfully. "It's there, but not quite-Vanny?"
Vanellope had gone to one of the larger mounds beside the track, blinking.
"What's this?"
They hurried over to see. The whipped cream was mostly hiding what looked like a block of isolated code; a sweep of Ralph's hand cleared the fluffy confection away, and they could see a vague shape inside.
As if they'd rehearsed it, Vanellope and King Candy reached out to touch it. It flashed, and they all stepped back as the coding fell away to reveal a figure around Vanellope's size.
A little girl with bobbed brown hair curling around her cheeks, wearing a fluffy white hat with a dusting of cocoa brown at the top and a sort of shawl secured by a large bow under her chin. They could see chestnut buttons securing her knee-length coat and low boots, and leaf-green eyes blinked at them as she woke.
"CONGRATULATIONS! YOU'VE UNLOCKED COCO MONTBLANC!"
Vanellope and King Candy's eyes had glimmered oddly - exactly as the racers' had when their memories were unlocked - and they murmured the name alongside the announcer's booming tones.
Then the girl - Coco - stumbled, and both of them (along with Felix) were moving to help her.
"Oh my starbursts," King Candy finally said. "He was locking out other racers."