Hello there once again, my very under appreciated readers!
This is the sequel to Action Replay, after a very long but much needed hiatus that involved me working for the first time in a hellhole of a restaurant, getting confirmed, and losing the plot and character list for this story.
As a result, this story has no outline, and will probably deviate into fun madness; glad you're all gonna be here for me screwing up along the way, that does my self-esteem good.
So without further adieu...here we go.
Disclaimer: I don't own the copyrighted material within this story
...the opening cutscene of Sugar Rush: World Circuit played, fully orchestrated music lilting from the stereo speakers, and Stan Litwak shook his head, "You got me; the new game looks great."
More handshaking, more pictures, and Stan got to sit down in the brand new seats. His eyes widened at the insane amount of characters and race tracks presented,all the bells and whistles firing off like a finely tuned engine, and he grinned as he started up a game, "The kids are gonna love this."
...and deeper within the game, Vanellope opened her eyes, and marveled—
Vanellope's last day in her original game went out in a blast. All of the racers and NPCs buckled themselves down and watched as the landscape made mobius strips in the sky as they downloaded into the new game. Then people got sucked through the wormhole, racing faster and faster through an event horizon of glittering chrome. Choko once spoke of the tunnel that rose before her 'death' in the iTouch, and when Vanellope smacked through the end of the download stream, she wondered if this is what Choko meant.
But this was far from the Void, this was Sugar Rush: World Circuit and it was beautiful. Vanellope sat upon a throne of carved butter mint, reinforced with etched sugar plating that glowed iridescent through the towering windows. Sugar Bean Castle was bigger and better than even the version in the previous game, everything HD and glittering, everything sparkled in Vanellope's eyes.
She looked down and wiggled her gloved fingers, admiring how the thick candy cotton fabric was pre-broken to her exact grip. Her new white and mint racing suit was sleeker and more deserving of a presidential queen than a glitch-turned-princess, and with a hollow jolt, Vanellope felt a multitude of changes slot themselves neatly into her brand new psyche.
She had breasts, she had longer legs with hips to support them, she was fifteen years old and she marveled. This wasn't like the night when the racers coerced Honey into stretching them into eighteen year old models, where they were children piloting artificial adult bodies. This was a change to the recipe of Vanellope von Schweetz—she was older than before and how was she supposed to describe the sudden changes to her likes and interests, her fears and disgusts, everything that made her her? The memories of literally ten minutes ago were years away, viewed through rosy Coke bottles and fond embarrassment of her earlier misadventures, and she trembled at the idea of no longer being her game's pipsqueak monarch. Weren't adolescents whiny, lovestruck idiots who made Taffyta look like a symbol of well-behaved modesty? What would Ralph say about this change, or Calhoun or the princess club or her friends, and the fact that she...she liked this change, liked being able to look back and being able to look forward from a different point of view?
But then the outside world beckoned, and her curiosity kicked to life in her eternal engine; she had time to figure out this new maturity in between doing what she did best. The halls and race track of Sugar Bean Castle were expansive, and Vanellope already tasted the sweetness of racing in her home. Outside the vaulted ceilings and wall-length sugar spun windows was the rest of Sugar Rush, and Vanellope froze.
She knew that the game was set up so that there were six or eight racers to a circuit cluster, and that her own game had all the clusters available at launch, but this...a clamor rose from the horizon as everyone rushed towards their places for the select screen, the lemon drop sun illuminating hundreds of racers in a world so expansive, Vanellope didn't know where to look first. To the west, to the rest of her circuit where the Taffyberry Swamps and Peanut Butter Panhandle beckoned? To the east, where Downtown Dango City and Pockygawa District battled for dominance of the Japanese Circuit? To the south, where smoking Mount Kanake rose from the blue raspberry sea with the rest of Oceania? To Africa? The Americas? Europe? The rest of Asia? The rest of Sugar Rush itself?
Vanellope could see everything from Sugar Bean Castle and wanted to weep because she had the honor of being queen of this endless earth. But there was no time to cry, not when the player was ready to race and she had to take part in certain cutscenes. The story of the game was quite simple: a grand racing tournament that stretched around the globe, headed by young Queen Vanellope and her merry band of subjects. Choko and Marizpanne—Marizpana, she was Marzipana Docefruit now and Vanellope needed to recall everyone's names despite the roster being around 200 or so—got sent into the international circuits but that was no matter, just another excuse to race.
Her Royal Racer and her homemade Candy Kart summoned into existence at her desire to get her royal rear down to the starting lines, and she hopped into the latter; it would do her good to ground herself with a firm reminder of where she'd come from. The game was just so large now, and as she sped down the marbled road to the horizon, she wondered if her new mindset would keep herself from getting lost like a twelve year old candy brat on her first day of racing.
To her credit, she only got lost around the Double Dipped Zone that melded between Crumbelina and Adorabeezle's levels, because the Cool and Crumbly Circuit was an odd mishmash of frozen and pastry desserts. All of the game's circuits led to a central hub in the form of a massive airport like the wifi port outside of Litwak's. Vanellope looked around at the swarms of characters, no one noticing her in the rush of international spices and sweets and costumes, so many people were in their "national costume" clothing options so Vanellope could see just how different the Thai racers were to the Austrian, the Polynesian to the Columbian, the Ethiopian to the Sugar Rushian.
She spotted King Candy and remembered that he was the other racer sharing the Sugar Bean Castle level; each level had two racers, and she smiled at the idea of racing ol' King Gramps on the next-gen speedway. Sidestepping a group of North American racers unabashedly changing into their racing suits in the middle of the chaos, she followed the signs towards the Triple Trouble Circuit loading bay.
Vanellope, Taffyta, Rancis, King Candy and two new racers—Seronade Lemontwist and Reina Scattercup—made up this circuit, and she was excited to meet and greet the newbies; would they be friendly and down to hang out, or more focused on competition? In a corner by the Japanese loading bay, she spotted Choko; Choko got a design upgrade, her bun bigger than ever and covered in cute little hair clips and her national costume being a frilly wa-lolita kimono. And she was older too, a plump thirteen year old speaking Japanese at the speed of light to her white-haired companion who Vanellope registered as Odango Mochi-Mochi, one of Choko's early concept designs who finally got her own chance to play.
All six of the gathered teens were squealing and gesturing and hugging, and Vanellope grinned behind her glove. Was that how she looked with King Candy and Ralph? Shaking her head at her past self, she continued on to her loading bay, and spied Taffyta shooting the spearmint with the rest of their circuit mates. Taffyta's racing scarf was perfectly oversized, Rancis's hair curl was more flamboyant than ever, and the two new racers were laughing and joking with the rest of them without the awkward new candy smell. They were perfect, her team was ready to go and Vanellope—
Vanellope watched as another Vanellope laughed at Seronade's joke, and what was going on? The other Vanellope looked just like her, right down to the minty tiara and scuff on her right shoe toe, and Vanellope felt her stomach drop as it had with Virus-Van. Did something go wrong in the downloading process? Was there supposed to be doubles of the racers? Should she go talk to Choko about this, she was right down the hall and the little code master surely knew better than Vanellope's frazzled self.
The other Vanellope spotted her, and as gracefully as a woman twice her senior, she bowed away from the loading bay without drawing attention to the shocked monarch standing struck in the doorway. But once Reina was teasing Rancis, the other Vanellope grabbed Vanellope and dragged her further down the hall to the "maintenance only closet door"/one of the hidden niches to access the game's inner coding.
Vanellope was silent as her doppelganger pulled her farther away from the cheerful chaos of the hub down narrower and darker corridors, as her mind was still processing the fact that there were two Vanellopes and her gut was screaming at her that this was horribly wrong. But when they marched through a room that only bore a wall length mirror, Vanellope struggled, "L-Let me go! What is—who are you?!"
The other girl swung Vanellope against the mirror and the material felt like thick jello, sickly molding along her back. Dark hazel eyes bored into their twin's, lacking any cheer as the other girl simpered, "I'm Vanellope von Schweetz, and it's time to take out the trash."
Vanellope choked out a scream as the other Vanellope charged and rammed nto her stomach; she sank through the mirror and her throat closed up as the thick mirror gloss swallowed Vanellope from the chin down. It was cold, wherever the mirror opened up to, and Vanellope heard a vague "Only once more" from around the rushing in her ears before the other Vanellope reached out and pressed Vanellope paralyzed head through the mirror.
Vanellope fell, and this time it was just like the tunnel from Choko's story, because the light at the end of this tunnel burned Vanellope's code until the zeroes and ones froze and shattered.
Vanellope woke back up in the hub, ignored by the masses of racers assembling in their loading bays. She was uninjured, despite the deeply set cold in her wire frame, and looking around, it was as if the entire incident had never happened. King Candy came out from a side corridor and quickly helped Vanellope to her feet with a worried, "Did thomeone knock you down, Vannie? Where'th your choker?"
"U-Uhh..." And now she was half as eloquent than her twelve year old self; Vanellope suppressed a decidedly teenage tantrum at the changes she didn't like in herself and certainly around her. "There was a—"
The game hummed into proper life and King Candy exclaimed with a flick of a large ring pop, "We're late for the thelect thzcreen! Quickly now, before the player notithes thomething!"
King Candy dragged Vanellope for a frantic moment before she shook off the offending arm and ran on her own prerogative. Screw the freaky Other Vanellope and the disgusting mirror that may or may not have been a fever dream brought on by the sugar sparkles of the new game, Vanellope was the Queen and she had a job to do!
But then right as she was to cross into the threshold of the loading bay, someone grabbed her again. "Again with the grabby hands!" she yelled as she swung around, "Who—"
"Stay quiet if you wish to live."
Vanellope's eyes widened as she watched yet another Vanellope enter the loading bay, her arm gripped by a...not quite Vanellope. She glitched at the overload of clones and thank mod she got to keep her special spark from the last game, because nothing else was familiar and safe in this brave new world. The not Vanellope flinched but kept her grip on the shift pixels, and Vanellope wished she could be like Honey the Cat and freeze people with her glitching.
All of the loading screen doors in the hub locked as everyone got ready for the day, and suddenly the entire environment seemed to dull with the lack of people present. The graphics degenerated from next-gen to 64-bit era, the colors sickly and near-monochrome, and Vanellope felt the chill rise up from her wire frame to permeate the entire environment. It was too much, between this and the clones and the not Vanellope's creepiness, and she demanded as she yanked her arm away, "What the milk dudded hell is going on around here?!"
The not Vanellope stared and her eyes were slowly swirling mints, "I will say this only once more: stay quiet if you wish to live."
Vanellope was glad that she was fifteen now; her twelve year old self would've screamed in rage at that, but now she knew how to bite her tongue and simply wish a very silent death on every extra Vanellope haunting this game.
The other led Vanellope back into Sugar Rush from the hub, and she watched poorly animated flowers pop into terrible resolution as they approached and recede back into nothingness as they traveled onwards. The glitter was long gone, and the circuits were encased in murky bubbles under a frozen black sky; how could Vanellope had ever thought this game was beautiful? It had been, but then the Other Vanellope had...Vanellope startled as the not Vanellope whispered, "How did you end up in here?"
Vanellope spat back, "Everything was fine until my evil twin appeared out of nowhere and pushed me through a mirror into this fungeon of a game! Where am I, is this really World Circuit? And who are you, and the other other Vanellope?!"
The other girl considered Vanellope with her swirling mint eyes, and Vanellope recoiled. Their features were very similar, but just off enough to make her palms sweat and her eyes skitter for more signs of difference to separate herself from the not quite clone. Thankfully, their hair was much different; Vanellope's hair was in her tiara and bun much like from her childhood, while the other's had her hair up in a high ponytail through her tiny crown. And their clothes were different saving the ankle boots, although Vanellope wondered if the pinched waistcoat dress, white paper cup petticoat skirt and striped leggings were her national costume outfit.
The choker around the other's neck wasn't on Vanellope though, and she narrowed her eyes, "King Gramps mentioned a choker earlier. But I'm not supposed to have one, don't I?"
The other smiled, "Smart girl." A dainty hand traced along the choker's peppermint pendant, "So you picked out the difference...yes, only a mirror Vanellope would own this choker, just as only a mirror King Candy would own a ring pop, and a thousand other trinkets for the thousand other mirrors."
Vanellope's mind blanked. "Mirror?"
Yet another rosy Coke bottle memory resurfaced, back when Pollipop had short hair and Choko had green eyes and their world was rotting beneath their feet. Vanellope had paid little mind to the cluster of coding that created the mirrors, only caring when Mirror Vanellope showed her how to defeat Virus-Van and save the day. She never did figure out where those dozens of mirror images came from, nor what happened to deleted player-made carts or a thousand other little promises that got lost throughout the year. But now she remembered a blank sky and murky mirrors holding Vanellopes that seemed to hold all the answers, and she exhaled in a cold rush, "I'm in the mirror."
The other nodded and the choker seemed to glow in the frozen air. "You're in the mirror, and you are in great danger here." She turned to survey the sickly lights thrumming in the hub's wiring, "The "other other" Vanellope is the Mirror Vanellope of this console, memories downloaded from the last—you've met her before, yes? She mentioned how fun it should be, now that we are in one game... but she refused to accept that this would happen."
"What would happen?"
The other led Vanellope further away from the hub, towards a useless space between the Cool and Crumbly and the Flavor Rush Circuits. "That your "evil twin" would usurp you once again, and yet another race to the death would start."
Vanellope wrinkled her nose at the cryptic talk, demanding concrete answers to build her new world upon. "Once again? What are you...and first of all, who are you, if there's my Mirror Vanellope and the...Other Van, running around?" She motioned with impatient hands, "You're not another mirror, are you? Cuz there were a bunch back when Virus-Van destroyed my game, but this and you don't feel the same at all." Vanellope winced a bit at how bratty that came out; she expected Taffyta or Sour Apple (wasn't her name Emmareld Sourblossom now? The roster list scrambled her thoughts for a brief, freezing second) or even Bubblebetty to be the gleefully mean teen, not herself.
"...Nell." Nell smiled anyway with her spiral eyes, "That's a good of a name as any, I suppose." And Vanellope felt some of the chill go away, replaced by the slightly uncomfortable warmth of the choker radiating into the stillness of the mirror world. A wind picked up around their ankles, and Nell hissed, "The race is already starting?"
"Well, I got shoved into here right as the player started up a game, so yes?" Vanellope shivered as the wind rose up to her waist, because everything else was absolutely still. Not even the flowers moved in the breeze, and the mirror world was so wrong to her tongue, her eyes, her coding, that she desired nothing but to get back to the other side. Back to Ralph for that matter, he would know what to say to make the growing terror in her throat go away.
The wind caught an edge of whipped cream flavoring, and Nell's voice was a dagger, "You need to run right now. Run and don't stop until the arcade day ends and I come find you." There was music now, lilting and light and nothing was more terrifying. "Talk to and be seen by one, not even the mirrors of useless NPCs, because if anyone else but myself or Mirror Vanna finds you, she will find you, and there will be nothing we can do to save you."
Vanellope shuddered blue pixels at the finality of her words, and looked around. "W-Where should I go?"
"Hello!"
She whipped around to see a black-haired girl around her age waving at her from the other end of the useless space. Her eyes were large and bright, her sweet voice ringing against the wind, "What's your name?"
"RUN AWAY FROM HERE!"
Nell's unholy shriek set Vanellope off, stumbling and terrified against a wind that reeked of rotten cool whip and molding cookies and faulted, unwanted glitching that made Vanellope wonder if her nose was bleeding from the Skrillex-patented pounding in her skull and the ozone searing her mouth. Her legs couldn't move fast enough to spare her from hearing the sound of ripping flesh and scattering mints and whatever just happened to Nell; it was wetter than she expected.
Vanellope found a downgraded version of her Candy Kart during her desperate flee, and kicked it into high gear away from this newest girl. So many black-haired girls in black and mint, Vanellope wanted nothing more than to change her hair back into red pigtails and wear poofy purple parachute pants. She could cite teenage rebellion or monarchical authority, anything to get a grip on herself, her new game and the mirror hell she was hopelessly lost in.
Swerving between the domes of the North America-Coastal and South American Expansion Circuits, she was relieved to find the air stale and still, no hint of wind or cookies and cream or any noise beyond her own panting. Swallowing past a dry and aching throat, she remembered the pull of the mirror and curled around her freezing heart. She needed out, she needed Mirror Vanellope to save the day again, she needed her friends back.
She shivered, and pulled herself back together. She needed all of those things and a bucket of butter mints, but she had the whole day on her own; World Circuit got installed before opening hours and gamers were bound to half-riot over the new game until closing hours. And it wasn't as if she'd never survived a dim wasteland with a psycho out for her blood or anything, either.
But this time, she didn't have time to scream and throw up and hide like she did the last time, and she wiped her eyes dry and adjusted her racing scarf. It was time to test drive this downgraded cart, this ugly new game, and this wishy-washy trap called being fifteen years old.
Vanellope swore she felt her hair rustle, and decided to force her way through the NA-C Circuit's bubble; she'd wanted to explore earlier, and if these black-haired not real Vanellopes wanted to come and sour Queen Vanellope von Schweetz, President of Sugar Rush's monkey milk, they were going to have to race her for it.
You read that correctly: there are around 200 playable characters in the "full" version of Sugar Rush: World Circuit. And yes, I will touch upon all of them, but not right now.
Right now, I want to touch upon Vanellope, and Vanellope, and Vanellope, and Vanellope, and the girl who certainly looks like Vanellope. And they're all 15 year old Vanellopes, which is a very fun age to suffer life threatening experiences in.
This story will be longer chapter-wise than Gratitude andmost of Li16F but much shorter than Action Replay, since brevity is the soul of wit or some other wise advice that I never actually follow through with.
If there's anything confusing about the names, or the concepts,or anything else, just shoot me a PM and I'll explain it to the best of not spoiling stuff for you.
It's good to be writing about Vanellope again, I have such big plans for her :D