Black Valentine

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Chapter 1: To Build a Better Bat Trap

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"Whatcha doin', Stinkbrain?" asked Vanellope, bounding up to where Ralph was fussing with his mailbox. Dr. 'Eggman' Robotnik knelt beside him fiddling with a screwdriver and some sort of computer parts at the back of the mailbox.

"Building a trap," replied the wrecker.

"With your mailbox as bait? What? Going to catch a mail-eating monster?" She gave him one of those squinty-eyed looks.

"Nope. Going to catch a mail-delivering monster."

Robotnik chuckled at the joke.

Vanellope gave him another look, but Ralph didn't see it. He was too busy watching Robotnik tinkering with what appeared to be some sort of triggering mechanism attached to the mailbox flap. And after a while he stepped back and put his screwdriver into his pocket. "Well that should do it. Let's test it," said Dr. Robotnik.

"Okay." Ralph said and looked down at Vanellope, who was still rather puzzled as to why Ralph and the scientist were booby-trapping a mailbox.

Ralph pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her. "Here. Go put this in the mailbox like you were delivering it."

"Okay..." she said warily. Vanellope walked up to the box, gave the mechanism on the post a glance, and then opened the flap.

Instantly there was a loud twanging noise, and instantly a large net had fallen over her and the mailbox, seemingly out of thin air. "Hey!" she squawked and flailed about the net.

"It works! Eggman, you're a genius!" cheered Ralph.

"I have an IQ of 300. That's well above genius qualifications,"snickered Robotnik.

"Get me out!" wailed Vanellope from the net.

"Just go to the edge and lift up that ring of weights. It's designed to catch a bat. Not a person," explained Ralph.

Vanellope stopped thrashing and did as Ralph instructed, and found that she could escape the trap quite easily.

"A bat?" she questioned when free.

Ralph reset the trap and locked it so it wouldn't catch someone else. "C'mon inside. Let me show you something." He thanked Dr. Robotnik and assured him that if he ever needed anything demolished, the doctor could call on him.

"I know I can count on you," Robotnik said, picking up his tools, stashing them into a bag, and sauntering off. "See you at Bad-Anon."

Vanellope and Ralph went into the house and Ralph pulled a box out from under his bed. Vanellope hopped up next to him as he opened up the box. "For the past seven years someone has been sending me these, one every Valentine's Day."

Peering into the box Vanellope could see a stack of handmade Valentine's Day cards, all gorgeously trimmed with lace and glitter and pink hearts. "Someone's been sending you Valentine's cards? Who would do a crazy thing like that?"

Ralph glared at her. "I think the term you're looking for is actually 'romantic.' Not 'crazy.'"

Vanellope giggled and reached for one. "You know I was just kidding you." She pulled it out of the box and opened it up.

"They get kinda mushy, so just be warned."

Vanellope read, and was stunned. She took out the rest of the cards, read each carefully, gasping at what had been written inside. Someone was definitely in love with Ralph.

Love poems, sweet nothings, sighs of longing, passions written out in red ink. In gorgeous flowery handwriting someone's heart had been spilled across these cards. Each was a work of amorous devotion and a testament to an unrequited love. And each ended with a sad mention of the unfortunate state of things, that the writer could not be with the man she loved, that she had to be content to love him from afar.

"I thought it was a joke at first. I thought the Nicelanders were being teasing me, so I just ignored it. But then another showed up the next year. And the year after that. I began to realize this was a serious thing. Who would put so much work into a joke?"

"Ralph, these are beautiful," Vanellope said in awe. Her cheeks had turned pink at the thought of some lovesick girl finding this the only way to connect with him. "So who is sending them?"

"That's what I'm going to find out."

"Wait. You said the trap is to catch a bat. You think there's a bat in love with you?"

"I think the bat is just the delivery boy." Ralph picked up one of the elaborate cards and read it to himself, a blushing smile creeping across his face as he did so.

"I thought about it a lot, after I realized it wasn't a joke. Possibly it was one of the Nicelander ladies. Possibly someone from outside the game. I could understand a Nicelander lady having this huge crush on me but fearing to let anyone know. You know how my relationship with them was. She'd be laughed or shunned right out of Niceland. So anyway, two years ago I set up a security camera and kept it running all of Valentine's Day. And then I did the same thing the next year. And that's how I found there was a bat delivering these Valentines."

"And there aren't any bats in Fix-It Felix, Jr., right?"

"Nope. So it had to be someone from another game delivering them."

"For seven years," mused Vanellope. "That's a long time. So you're going to catch this bat...and then what?"

"I've written a letter to send back to her."

"And it says...what? Stop sending me all these mushy cards if you can't be brave enough to meet me for real?"

"Pipsqueak, someday you're going to fall in love with someone, and I'm going to make sure that all this teasing comes back to haunt you," said Ralph. And then he put his arm around her and hugged her closely.

"I love you, Stinkbrain," she said hugging him tightly. "Don't ever change."

"Anyway, the letter says basically that maybe it's time we met and that perhaps we could get together. I'm willing to go on a blind date with her."

"That's really nice of you."

"Hey, Felix's got Calhoun. Ryu's got Chun-Li. Peach has Bison. Maybe there's some great love in my future too."

"Can I be the flower girl at your wedding?"

Ralph chuckled. "You can be the whole bouquet if you want," he answered and hugged her again. "Wedding," he snorted.

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Black Valentine continues in Chapter 2: "Without a Hitch"

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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.