Heart of Darkness

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What's going on in this candy-coated heart of darkness?

~Wreck-It Ralph

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Chapter 1: The Rescue

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Gloyd eased his kart to the side of the road and unlatched the hood. He wasn't exactly happy with the performance of the new air filtering system he'd installed on the Kernel. Perhaps if he opened the intakes further...

He'd expected to do some tweaking to the system while the engine was hot, and had brought along his work gloves and a toolkit. And so he pulled on the gloves and opened the hood. But just as he was getting out a couple of screwdrivers, a tiny voice floated from the forest at the side of the track.

"Help! Please! Help!" it cried in high-pitched tones.

Looking over, he could see a candy-citizen running toward him, one of Taffyta's fans. Her heart-shaped face was all panic. Her dark eyes were open wide and ran with frightened tears. "Help me! Please, you must help!"

"What's wrong?"

"My sister! She's trapped in the river! Please will you come?" she whimpered, tugging at his arm.

Gloyd looked down at the terrified thing, tiny white hands gripping his wrist. "I'll do what I can. Where is she?"

"Here, this way. She's in the river."

The lollipop girl ran off into the forest, Gloyd following closely behind, and they soon arrived at the bank of what Gloyd recognized to be the Pink Lemonade River. The girl pointed at a group of gumdrops midstream. Amidst them another of Taffyta's fans clung to them, mewling like a scared kitten.

Gloyd appraised the situation. The girl was holding tightly to the slippery gumdrops, terrified of being swept downstream. The river here ran deep and fast. But as bad as her predicament looked, he also saw that he could rescue her. He ran back into the forest and tugged several licorice vines off of the ground, and then tied them together securely into a long rope. The first lollipop girl watched closely, wringing her tiny hands with worry.

He lashed one end of the licorice rope around a bank-side tree, and then called to the girl caught in the river. "Hold on! I'm coming for you!" He hurriedly took off his hat, jacket, and shoes, and then wrapped the rope twice around his waist before tying it. Turning to the other candy girl, he instructed her: "I'm going in after her. When I've brought her back to the bank, help me get her out of the river."

"Anything you say, Mister Orangeboar!" she squeaked.

Gloyd couldn't help but smirk at the mention of his name coming off the lips of one of Taffyta's fans.

Gloyd ran upstream as far as his rope would let him, and then he dove into the river of lemonade. Confidently he then swam downstream with the current and out to the gumdrops where the little lollipop girl was hanging on for dear life, clawing at the gum with her fingers to prevent being taken away by the rushing waters. "Grab onto the rope!" he told her. "I'm going to swim you back to shore."

He pushed the rope toward her and put his arm around her waist as she grabbed onto it. "Ready?" he asked when she appeared to have a good grip.

"Yes!" she whimpered.

"Let's go. Just keep holding tightly to the rope. That's all you have to do. Just hold tight to it. I'll keep your head up and move us back to shore."

And they did just that, following the natural arc of the rope as it gracefully swung them across the slightly cloudy pink water. At that point the other girl met them at the bank and pulled her twin to safety.

On dry land again, the dripping candy girl fell into her sister's arms, crying and shivering. "I was so scared!" she wept.

"I was too!"

They kissed each other and then turned to Gloyd. "You saved me," blurted the wet one, her voice tremulous. "Thank you, Mister Orangeboar."

"Please, call me Gloyd," he said modestly.

"Thank you, Gloyd. You were so brave."

He smiled. "I'm just glad I happened to be here. Otherwise you could have been in that river a long time."

"I might have drowned."

"Yep. Well you're safe now." Gloyd stood and nodded to them. "I'm getting back to my kart now. You girls be careful out here. You're a long way from town." And then he paused. "What are you doing so far from town?" he questioned.

"Oh, just out walking," said the first girl quickly.

"Well just watch your step. I won't always be around to rescue you," he grinned, and then turned to leave.

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The next day Gloyd went straight home after the Random Roster Race and pulled the Kernel into the driveway. As he came up the walk, he noticed that someone had pulled the broken tree branch off of the pavers. It had fallen in some rough winds a week ago, but he'd left it there, simply stepping over it, planning on dealing with it eventually. But someone had beaten him to it.

And on coming to the front door he discovered that someone was inside already. Entering, he called out: "Hello! Who's here?"

Immediately two figures appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, whom he immediately recognized as the two strawberry lollipop girls he'd helped the previous day. At least he could assume they were the two. The candy-citizens all looked alike. But why else would Taffyta's fans be here? One was wearing his apron, which he never wore himself, and she greeted him happily. "Gloyd! Welcome home!"

"Yes, welcome home," echoed the other.

"You're the girls from yesterday, right?" he confirmed.

"Yes," they both answered in unison.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, taking off his jacket and tossing it over the back of the couch.

"We wanted to thank you for rescuing me," said the one without the apron. "It was so brave and selfless of you," she gushed. "Most people would have probably said that I should just drown and regenerate."

"So we cleaned up your kitchen and cooked you dinner as a little thank you. It's what we can do to show our appreciation."

"Well that's very nice of you. I didn't know that you could cook."

For a moment the pair looked at each other, something of nervousness on their faces. And then the one in the apron said: "All candy-citizens can cook. How do you think we survive?"

Gloyd laughed, and then the apronless one led him to the table. "I hope you're hungry. We made lots of good food for you."

"Well thank you. This is a nice surprise."

The aproned girl dished out the meal onto three plates and then the girls sat down with him. Bravely Gloyd picked up his fork, unsure of what sort of taste the cooking of a candy-citizen would have, but on sampling it he found he liked it. And when he emptied his plate he even asked for seconds.

Through the meal the girls talked about what they had seen on their walk before the fall into the river, about the rescue, about the day's races, and about Gloyd's kart. "So what were you doing out in that area anyway?" he asked them.

"Oh, just walking. I guess we walked a little too far," said the aproned one.

"Yes. Too far from home."

"How did you end up in the river?"

At the question both girls looked rather confused. "We were trying to cross it upstream, where there were some logs fallen across the water."

"I was leading the way, and suddenly the log I was standing on just...just disappeared."

Gloyd laughed out loud. "Those darn double-stripe logs. They get everyone at some point."

"It's not funny," the girls pouted. "We could have been hurt."

"I almost drowned!"

Gloyd apologized. At least he'd happened to be there and was able to rescue the victim of the log's fickle existence. And as the meal drew to a close and the apron-less girl began to take the plates to the kitchen to wash, a sudden horrible realization hit him. Why hadn't he recognized it before? Every interaction with them had hinted at it. How could he not have seen it earlier?

Gloyd stared at the pair. "You're Evolved!" he exclaimed. "No wonder you didn't want to regenerate when you were caught in that river," he accused.

Evolved was a dirty word in Sugar Rush. Evolved was a crime. Evolved was a social sin.

"Evolved!?"

"You two have evolved! Oh sugar! You could be in so much trouble! I could be in so much trouble!" He stood up and subconsciously backed away from the table.

"We aren't Evolved," protested the one wearing his apron, her face looking guilt-ridden despite her protestation of innocence.

Her sister glanced at her, shock and guilt on her own face. "Sister..."

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"Heart of Darkness" continues in Chapter 2: "The Sisters' Secret"

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Wreck-It Ralph and all related concepts, characters, worlds, and events are property of Walt Disney Pictures. Original characters and story elements are property of E. Potter, writing under the pen name of Miratete.