Disclaimer: Wreck-It Ralph and Ralph Breaks the Internet are the property of the Walt Disney Company. All other copyrighted characters are the property of their respective creators.

Author's note: This is the third in my series of 4 Wreck-It Ralph fics, the first two being 'Terminal' and 'Fallout.' I recommend reading those prior to reading this. :) I appreciate any and all feedback, and thank you for reading!

peripeteia: a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances

CHAPTER 1

Popcorn flew through the air and Jubileena screamed as kernels rained down on her. "You guys! Now it's in my hair!"

"Oh no, popcorn blizzard!" Gloyd yelled, flinging more popcorn into the air.

Several of the racers got a face-full of food and the kernels that landed on Candlehead's hat started smoldering, making the air smell like charred butter. "Five alarm fire!" Minty laughed. "All units respond!"

Swizzle sloshed his mug of root beer at Candlehead's face, dousing her candle and making her splutter and choke. "Hey!" she whined. "How am I supposed to re-light it now?"

With a grin, Swizz said, "Ask Bowser, he'd probably do it for you."

"Yeah right, he'll burn me to to a crisp!" she said, stamping her foot. Swizzle just shrugged and moved to toss more root beer at her, but she shrieked and ducked out of the way.

Popcorn flew again and the racers laughed and scattered. Taffyta darted out of the way, giggling, and bumped into Rancis, who yelped and pushed her playfully. "Watch it," he said, grinning at her.

Sticking out her tongue, Taffyta said, "You watch it."

Rancis stuck his thumbs in his ears and waggled his fingers, and Taffyta scooped some popcorn up to hurl it at him, laughing at the look on his face.

Closing time at Litwak's Arcade meant thirteen glorious hours of free time. Thirteen glorious hours of getting to do whatever you wanted without having to think about quarter alerts. Not that quarter alerts were a bad thing; after all, they had the best job in the arcade, but even if you had the best job in the world, you needed a break. After the Random Roster Race was held, all fifteen of Sugar Rush's racers had the rest of the night to do anything or nothing at all. As far as time commitments went, the race wasn't much of one. Five minutes tops around the Royal Raceway, at least that was Taffyta's personal best. If she was practicing, she could do it faster, but those were ideal conditions. Racing against fourteen other people, all of whom were trying to take you out to place higher than you, was a completely different story.

But none of it was personal. Off the track, they were all friends. Once a month, most of them headed out to Game Central Station for a picnic. They all supplied food—root beer and popcorn from Tapper's, burgers from BurgerTime, pizza from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and of course candy from Sugar Rush. Taffyta couldn't really remember exactly how it had started. It might have grown out of the gatherings that Ralph had started organizing, but, on the plus side, Sugar Rush picnics didn't have his disgusting burnt pie. Oh well. He tried—at least, Taffyta was pretty sure he was trying—but she wasn't interested in the third degree burns that you'd definitely get if you were within a certain radius of those things when they exploded.

There was a crackle of electricity and Taffyta jumped and screamed, dropping her handful of popcorn, as Surge Protector appeared next to her. Putting a hand over her pounding heart and breathing heavily, she snapped, "What's your problem, anyway? It's rude to sneak up on people like that!"

Surge glared down at her, adjusted his glasses, and clicked his pen open. Making a note on his clipboard, he said, "I'm going to have to ask you all to disperse."

Taffyta glanced around at her fellow racers, most of whom were now engaged in a full-on food fight. Gloyd had pizza sauce smeared on his face like warpaint and Nougetsia was wailing as Candlehead threatened her with a bottle of chocolate syrup. Taffyta sidestepped a trickle of root beer and put her hands on her hips. "This is a public place. It's our constitutional right to gather here."

"I'm not running a democracy, Miss Muttonfudge, and you don't have any rights here except the ones I give you," Surge said without looking up at her.

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, okay, whatever."

He nodded, looking satisfied, and stood there waiting. After a second, Rancis joined her, looking up at Surge with mild interest. "What's he doing here?" Rancis asked.

"Oh," Taffyta said with a smirk. "He says we can't be out here. I was just planning on ignoring him."

With look of shock and an indignant huff, Surge dropped his arms to the side. His clipboard snapped against his leg and he glared down at the two of them. "This isn't a joke. I'm an authority figure and—hey!" He stopped and shot Taffyta a disgruntled look, having presumably just caught her silently opening and closing her mouth in imitation of him. "This behavior is unacceptable—you're causing a disturbance and I'm getting complaints, and—" A half-eaten hunk of pizza crust sailed through the air and connected with his head, knocking his glasses askew.

Taffyta and Rancis erupted into fits of giggles and a buzz of electricity sparked along the wire on Surge's head. As he fixed his glasses, he demanded in an aggrieved tone, "Whatever happened to all the manners you learned when you were staying with the Fix-Its? Do you have to act like such a pack of feral children all the time?"

Taffyta laughed with glee. "What do you expect? We are kids!"

Rancis raised his glass of root beer. "Here's to being the coolest nine-year-olds in the arcade. And definitely not needing manners."

Clinking her mug against his, Taffyta replied, "Yeah, who'd want to be like, a boring, lame adult?"

With a sidelong glance at Surge, Rancis said, "Gross, you'd have to care about things like keeping your voice down and cleaning."

She made a face, even though she actually did keep her house clean. Come on, just because she was a kid didn't mean she was going to live in squalor. "Eww, and going to bed at a 'reasonable time'—" The air quotes were for Surge's benefit, "—and eating vegetables."

"The worst," Rancis said, taking another swig of root beer. "How do you even stand it, Surge? Then again you're pretty much the most boring person I know. You're the most adult adult I've ever met."

Flipping her hair, Taffyta put a hand to her mouth and said in a mock-conspiratorial tone to Surge, "He doesn't mean that as a compliment."

"Really," Surge said sarcastically. He ducked a jawbreaker and scribbled something else on his clipboard, an aggravated look on his face.

Okay, so maybe they were a little out of control, but what did anyone expect? Everyone needed to blow off some steam. Sugar Rush had just spent a couple days out of order with a sticky power-up button which had brought back all sorts of terrible memories of the previous year when they'd been unplugged, homeless, and hopeless. When Litwak had slapped that Out of Order sign down four days ago, Taffyta had huddled in her kitchen, too nauseated and scared to move, and completely convinced this was it. They were going to get unplugged for good this time. There was no deux ex machina spare part waiting on the internet to save them (Ralph had called Vanellope to check). King Candy had found her there, knees drawn up to her chest, and sat down next to her. He'd leaned against the cabinet and just patted her on the knee without saying a word.

Luckily, whatever had been wrong with the button had only taken some WD-40 to fix. Still, it had freaked all of them out—Candlehead had spent the entire time in Game Central Station because she'd been so afraid the plug was going to get pulled without warning—and they were maybe a little more exuberant than they normally would be. Didn't Surge get that? Rancis might have been onto something about Surge being the most boring person he knew.

Suddenly, something made Surge perk up, which probably meant bad news for them. Taffyta looked for an escape route as he waved and yelled, "Sergeant! Over here, if you have a minute!"

Taffyta followed the direction of Surge's gaze to see Calhoun walking towards them. Uh oh. Not that she wasn't always happy to see Calhoun, but this situation could go either way. Minty and Crumbelina, after all, were now covered from head to toe in pink frosting, and they were doing their best to cover most of the surrounding floor with it, too. Taffyta gave Calhoun a bright smile. "Hi, Tamora!"

Calhoun returned the smile. "Hi there, Taffyta. What are you kids up to?"

"Oh, nothing much, just having our monthly picnic. Want some pizza?"

"Felix and I already ate, but thanks, sweetie."

Good thing, because most of the pizza was now covering Jubileena. Surge was watching this exchange with a progressively more slack-jawed expression, until finally he cleared his throat and said, "Sergeant, maybe you wouldn't mind doing something about this? You have some kind of residual control over them, right?"

Shooting a glare at Surge, Taffyta said, "We weren't doing anything wrong, Tamora."

"Of course not." Patting her on the head, Calhoun said, "Surge, sometimes you have to let them spread their wings." She clapped him on the shoulder hard enough that Surge stumbled. "Lighten up."

"Can they spread their wings somewhere besides in front of Paperboy?" he demanded, glaring at Taffyta. She stuck her tongue out at him.

When Calhoun glanced around at their picnic—okay, food fight—she looked down at Taffyta and said, "You'll help Surge clean this up, right?"

"Excuse me?" Surge's mouth dropped open. "Help me? They can clean it up themselves!"

Gloyd and Adorabeezle ran by, shooting frosting out of piping bags, and Calhoun gave Taffyta a stern look. "Taffyta."

"Ugh," she groaned. "Fine."

Surge muttered something that sounded vaguely like 'thank you' and stalked off, sparks fizzing off his head. Calhoun looked like she was trying not to smile as she said, "If Surge tells me you did a good job, how about you and I go Cy-bug shooting in Hero's Duty sometime soon?"

Clapping her hands together in delight, Taffyta said, "Yes! We haven't done that in forever! Don't worry, I'll do like, the best job ever. Thank you, Tamora!"

With another smile, Calhoun said, "No problem, kiddo. Don't give Surge too hard a time." She looked around at the chaos and her smile faltered a little, and as she walked away, Taffyta thought she heard her mutter to herself, "Show them you trust them, but establish boundaries, show them you trust them, but establish boundaries…"

Once she was gone, Rancis rolled his eyes at Taffyta. "Oh, great. Now we have to clean up? Why do you have to be such a suck-up all the time?"

Tossing her hair, Taffyta replied, "I'm not sucking up. King Candy says I need a good female role model."

"Oh, King Candy says." Rancis laughed. "Big deal, you always sucked up to him too."

She just made a face at him. "Let it go. That was a million years ago."

"Seven. You're right, you stopped sucking up to him after we all found out he was actually Turbo."

This didn't even deserve a response. Putting a hand on her hip and raising her eyebrows, she said, "Are you going to help me or what?" Though he grumbled about it, he started picking up pizza boxes. Taffyta bossed the rest of the racers into listening to her and pitching in, too. Within fifteen or twenty minutes it was…well, not clean, but at least not as much of a disaster zone as it had been. Root beer was still dribbling between the tiles but what was she supposed to do, mop?

As Taffyta dumped an armful of empty popcorn containers in a garbage can, she caught a glimpse of Surge watching them like a hawk, making notes on his clipboard every now and then. It was tempting to accidentally-on-purpose spill some leftover root beer on his shoes, but…she really wanted to get in that target practice. There was something really satisfying about shooting Cy-bugs. Maybe it stemmed from the fact that her best friend had been eaten by one.

The fun had pretty much been sucked out of the picnic by that point. The racers began drifting away in pairs and trios to fill the rest of their nights. Taffyta could practically see Surge praying that whatever entertainment they chose wouldn't be in GCS. "Nice job killing the party, Taff," Rancis said.

"Hey, I get to go shooting with Tamora, so it was worth it."

"Yeah, I guess you have a point," he said, sounding jealous. "It's pretty cool how you guys do that. I wish she'd take me shooting." Taffyta smirked and managed to resist the urge to tell him it was because she was adorable and charming. The two of them started walking back towards the Sugar Rush outlet, Rancis holding a bucket of popcorn that he'd salvaged. As they walked, he took a handful of popcorn and stuffed it in his mouth. "Oh hey," he said, his voice muffled by the mouthful of food, "did Vanellope tell you about TobiKomi last time she was here?"

"Huh?" Taffyta asked. "What's an TobiKomi?" And why were they talking about Vanellope? Taffyta still hadn't forgiven her for getting the game unplugged and ditching all of them. Considering what a hard time Rancis had just been giving her about Calhoun and King Candy, Taffyta was tempted to return the teasing in kind, about how much he'd sucked up to Vanellope after the reset. But then they'd have to get into an even longer conversation about Vanellope, and Taffyta didn't feel like doing that.

With a smug expression on his face, Rancis said, "It's the company that makes Sugar Rush."

Giving him an exasperated look, she said, "Um, the one that Litwak said went out of business years ago? That was like, kinda the whole reason Vanellope ended up leaving the game, remember, genius?" And going Turbo, though no one ever seemed to call it what it was. Seemed kind of hypocritical to Taffyta, personally.

Rancis looked even more smug. "So that's a no, she didn't tell you? I mean, I guess I'm not that surprised, you guys weren't really on the greatest terms when she left."

What a know-it-all. "So what did Vanellope tell you about this Toby thing?" she snapped.

"Not 'Toby.' TobiKomi. They did go out of business, but Vanellope was telling me about how she watches for any Sugar Rush news on the internet." He paused to look at her, apparently under the mistaken idea that she was going to be like, super impressed by this. Big deal, Vanellope paid attention to the news now. Woohoo. "Anyway," Rancis said snottily, "she saw that somebody bought the company and they're back in business now."

She just stared at him, her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised. "So?"

Rancis didn't wilt under the force of her indifference. Give him credit, she supposed. Then again, Rancis had enough affection for himself that it would take a lot to convince him that he wasn't always as amazing as he thought he was. "So nothing. I just thought it was interesting. At least if the game breaks again, Litwak will be able to order a new part."

"I guess," Taffyta said. It would've been nice if Rancis had shared this information a few days ago. Honestly, until the last week, she hadn't been particularly concerned about the game breaking. Without Vanellope around to break it, what was going to go wrong? The rest of them had always been playable characters. They'd spent their whole entire lives being player controlled, and to do what Vanellope had done that day last year was unthinkable. You did not, not, NOTtake control away from the player, under any circumstance. The chances of something similar happening seemed slim to none with her gone.

Not that she was going to say that to Rancis. That was the sort of thought that she shared with King Candy and no one else.

Taffyta scooped some popcorn into her hand and popped a few kernels into her mouth. "So Vanellope's all up on the latest news now, but she only bothered to mention it to you. And anyway, she only comes to visit every few months, when her server-thing updates, so any news is old news by the time it gets here."

"Jealous that she told me and not you?" he asked gleefully.

She scoffed. "Yeah right."

They arrived back at the outlet and hopped into their karts. Taffyta punched the starter on hers and yelled, "Race you back!" It totally wasn't fair; Rancis was still fiddling with his seat belt, but you didn't win by playing fair. He shouted something but she was already careening into the dark tunnel between Game Central Station and Sugar Rush and there was no way he was going to catch up. She flashed a victory sign over her shoulder just before the dark of the tunnel enveloped her.

Crouching low over the steering wheel, Taffyta pulled her hat off her head and then tucked her arms in. Warm wind in the tunnel whipped through her hair and she let out a yell of happiness, just before headlights in front of her blinded her for half a second. She swerved out of the way of the oncoming train, shifting and gunning it so her kart climbed halfway up the curved wall of the tunnel. NPCs on the train stared up at her, open-mouthed, and she just grinned and shifted again.

Within another minute, she shot out of the tunnel and onto the Rainbow Bridge. Sugar Rush. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in the arcade or anywhere else in the world that was as beautiful as her game, and no one was ever going to convince her otherwise. The Kool-Aid Sea sparkled in the distance under the bright lemon drop sun. Cotton candy haze clouded the summit of Diet Cola Mountain and the trees of the Candy Cane Forest glinted over the pink taffy swamps. Sugar Rush Castle and the road leading to it glittered, the slopes of the hill blanketed in gleaming lollipop trees.

She'd spent the better part of fifteen years hanging out at the castle with King Candy, and when the game had reset seven years ago, she'd spent a few more months hanging out with him there in the fungeon. Following his…er…ingestion by a Cy-bug, and then death in Diet Cola Mountain, he'd been apprehended and kept there, unbeknownst to everyone in the game except Vanellope. Well, at least until Taffyta had gotten it into her head to go Turbo, run away to Extreme EZ Living 2, and come back with a virus. King Candy had saved first her, then the game when the virus had spread.

Eventually, Vanellope had let him out of the fungeon—and then, later, she'd let him race again, just never at the same time as her. Vanellope had scrapped the roster randomizer that she'd introduced and gone back to the Random Roster Race, and every three days, King Candy was allowed to take part in it. So six years had passed that way, and they'd all found a new normal.

Then Sugar Rush had been unplugged. Ugh, that was such a passive way of putting it, like it was just the their game's time to go or something. No, Vanellope had gotten the game unplugged through her own selfishness, and Taffyta knew full well that it was pretty rich that she was mad at the former president for going Turbo when her best friend literally was Turbo, but hey. She'd never claimed to be particularly pure of heart or free from hypocrisy.

Now Vanellope was gone. Had been gone for a whole nine months, actually, and it was funny how much those six years with her on the roster felt like the aberration. Once she'd gone, things felt…well, the way they had before. Was it a bad thing for Taffyta to admit that she didn't really miss Vanellope? Huh, probably. That was why she'd only ever say it to King Candy.

Her route home took her through Chocolate Town, around the outskirts of Gumball Gorge, and through Strawberry Fields, until she pulled into her garage at home with a screech of Pink Lightning's tires.

"Very dramatic. You didn't learn that from me, did you?"

Taffyta hopped out of her kart and pulled her hat back onto her head. "Nope, but I could've. You have a pretty serious flair for the dramatic, too."

King Candy laughed and leaned on the front of his kart with one hand. The hood was open and there was chocolate sauce streaked across his forehead from the oil pan. "Moi? How dare you, Miss Muttonfudge. Me, a flair for the dramatic?" He placed a hand over his heart and sighed.

Giggling, she walked over to join him. "What's up with the Royal Racer?"

His silliness evaporated as he put his hands on his hips and peered down at the engine. "Oh, nothing. I don't think. Well, nothing wrong, at least. She just seems a bit…sluggish, I just—did you see Jubileena pass me on Layer Cake Hill yesterday?"

"I pretended I didn't," she said.

"Hoohoohoo, thanks." Tightening a bolt with a wrench, he said, "You know, I used to just be able to code my own repairs. I suppose it's probably for the best, keep up my skills and everything." He cocked his head and stared critically at the engine, then looked at his hands, covered in chocolate sauce. "But it's so messy."

Taffyta perched on the door of the Royal Racer and said with interest, "I didn't know that. Kinda seems like cheating."

"Yes well, it also was probably the least questionable thing I did, so you know." He tightened another bolt. "I prefer to think of it as a shortcut, not cheating."

She watched him finish putting everything back together, and as he closed the kart's hood, she said, "Could you show me that? How you'd code a fix for whatever was wrong with your transmission?"

Wiping his hands on a rag and raising an eyebrow, he said, "It wasn't wrong. It just wasn't ideal."

"Yeah, yeah. So will you show me?"

King Candy flashed a grin at her. "You know, if you'd told me ten years ago that I'd be teaching you how to code, I would have…well, I would've wondered how my cover got blown first of all, and then how it was that we'd be discussing me teaching you coding so…blasély? Isth that a word? It's not, but, well, you know what I mean, and—" He stopped, put a finger to his chin, and then brightened, "Anyway, I'd have been surprised, to put it lightly."

With a pout, Taffyta said, "Yeah, everyone else would be surprised, too. People think I'm dumb."

"That's not what I meant." He tweaked the brim of her hat. "You know that I know how smart you are. Of course I'll show you, my dear." Then, raising his eyebrows, he added, "Did you do your assignment?"

She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Yeah, and I still don't really love you calling them 'assignments.'"

He wiped his forehead with the rag and tossed it onto a shelf behind him, then opened the door to the garage and held his arm out debonairly. "Oh, I dunno, it's kind of like going back to the good old days, isn't it? Remember when I used to teach you all my best moves? Well." He smiled slightly. "Most of my best moves."

Taffyta kicked the door shut behind her and the two of them headed into the house from the garage. "Uh, yeah, Your Majesty, that was like what, practically twenty years ago? Pretty sure we became equals right around the time I convinced Vanellope to let me add on that extra wing of the house for you to live in."

"Did I ever say we weren't?" He smiled crookedly at her. "They're still assignments."

That had been a fun conversation. For awhile, Taffyta had been asking Vanellope for a lot of King-Candy-related favors. A permanent place for him to live had been the final one—after seven months of him sleeping on her couch, and no sign that anyone else had any interest in letting him become their new neighbor, she'd requested an addition to her house. It had given him his living space, separated from the main house by a walkway. After almost seven years, it was hard to imagine not rooming with him. Having someone around was nice and they both knew to stay out of the other's way if they needed to. The arrangement just worked. Taffyta was secretly happy that no one had wanted him setting up a homestead near them.

As Taffyta hung up her jacket, King Candy asked her, "How'd your thing go?"

"It was good," Taffyta said. "You should've come with us. It was fun until Surge made us clean up. But, plus side, we made him really mad. I thought he might have like, a stroke or something."

"Hoohoohoo, that does sound fun," he said. "But, you know, you don't need me there. It's good for you to hang around with your friends."

Crossing her arms over her chest, she pursed her lips and said, "Um, you're my friend, dum-dum."

He snorted. "Well, when you put it like that."

"Come on!" Taffyta said. "You're my best friend in the whole arcade! It's weird not having you there."

King Candy grabbed the terminal that he was using to teach her how to code. Giving her a dubious look, he said, "Mm, I think it might be weirder with me there."

Ugh, he got like this sometimes. Refusing to leave the game, unwilling to go to Game Central Station, where he'd feel the full force of the rest of the arcade's dislike for him. She did a quick mental calculation. Was it the anniversary of anything serious? No, TurboTime had been unplugged in February, and the anniversary of Sugar Rush's reset was still over a month away. Just one of those days, then, which he'd hidden before the game had reset but hadn't been able to in the seven years since then.

Well, if he was having a bad day, then she kind of saw it as her job to make it better. Batting her eyelashes at him, she said, "Can't you come next time? For me? Pleeeease?"

He arched an eyebrow. "You have pizza sauce on your neck. I think I can skip the monthly GCS food fight. Please tell me you at least had it in front of Food Fight this evening?" Vigorously, she scrubbed at the crusty patch on her throat as he added, "Anyway, my presence sort of tends to be, you know, a mood killer."

"No it isn't." She sat down on the couch and he plopped down next to her, powering on the terminal as he did so. Taffyta watched the little screen light up, and then she said, "You can think it's stupid if you want, but I miss you when we're all out there."

"Watch out, we don't want to get too co-dependent here." When she didn't respond and just gave him an exasperated look, he said in a vaguely contrite tone, "Sorry. But listen, seriously, you don't need me around. You've got Candlehead and Rancis, I thought they were your best friends."

She shrugged. "Yeah, Candlehead and Rancis are my best friends, too. But like, you're not just my best friend in the arcade, you're my best friend in the whole world." She thought about that. "No, the whole universe."

For a second, he just looked at her. Then, reaching over to ruffle her hair, he said, "All right, all right. Fine. If it means that much to you."

With a smug smile, she crossed her legs underneath her and settled in for the day's coding lesson. But King Candy didn't speak for another minute. Instead, he continued watching her. "The whole universe?" he finally asked. "That'sth sort of…" But he trailed off.

"What?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Nothing. I'm just…you know."

"Touched?" she supplied with a giggle.

His fingertips garbled with red binary for a moment, and Taffyta saw his eyes flash yellow as the faint outline of a white helmet superimposed itself on King Candy's form. So, yeah. Definitely touched. These days, he only involuntary glitched when he was feeling emotional about something. She wouldn't make him say it.

Tapping on the terminal, she said, "So, where would I start if I wanted to like, make Pink Lightning accelerate fifty percent faster?"

Later, Taffyta woke up shivering.

Shivering? She'd fallen asleep with her blanket pulled up to her chin and her windows open to let the warm air of Strawberry Fields in. She was more used to waking up hot, sprawled over the top of her blanket, than cold. More than cold, freezing. Her teeth were chattering so hard that she couldn't see straight.

Her nose felt like ice and her first instinct was to pull the blanket up over her head. That wasn't going to do anything though. The problem definitely wasn't her, it was the temperature in the room itself—frigid, bitingly cold—more like the Frosty Mountains than her summery Strawberry Fields.

Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to slide out from underneath the blanket. The floor was worse than the air; it was like stepping on a block of ice. Her toes curled and she yelped, feeling off balance and just—strange, suddenly, the room seemed smaller, and she felt—different.

Her limbs were seizing and it was clear that the cold in the room was coming from the window. The gauzy white curtains were fluttering in a stiff, frigid breeze, and she minced her way over to the window to slam it shut.

And froze.

Taffyta's mouth fell open as she stood, one hand on the window, and stared outside.

Strawberry Fields was covered in white. Fluffy, white, cold snow.

"Oh, for Goober's sake," she muttered. Was something going on with the programming again? There hadn't been any problems since she'd brought the virus back seven years ago. The only person who would know would be King Candy, and that meant she had to ask him about this. He'd know. He knew everything, even though—

Something made her stop and think about that, and it was a feeling that seemed like it should have been foreign, but somehow… wasn't. The idea of King Candy knowing everything—that was a bit, well childish, wasn't it? Sure he was smart—brilliant actually, he was unquestionably the smartest person she knew—but that didn't make him infallible. Even if he knew what was going on with the weather (having spent enough time in the game's code, he probably did), it wasn't like he knew everything. It wasn't like he didn't make mistakes. Not just character mistakes, she'd never been so blinded by her affection for him that she couldn't see those, but logical ones too. He even messed up on the racetrack sometimes.

And she…hadn't ever really thought about it before.

That weird feeling washed over her again, which she wanted to attribute to the cold, except the room was quickly warming up with the window closed. It was warming up but it still seemed too small, and she still felt…unsettled.

Well, she needed to shake it off. King Candy would tease her—gently of course, he was never mean to her—and most of the time that was fine, but she wanted to…well she didn't want to look like this had scared her or something. In fact, it seemed very important, suddenly, that King Candy not look at her as just a little kid.

Taffyta took a breath and removed her hand from the window, then flipped her hair and turned towards the bedroom door.

There was a full-length mirror in the corner of the room that she spent a portion of every morning in front of, making sure her hair and makeup were suitably perfect before she appeared for the day's races. So she caught sight of herself.

And no question, she was a screamer. She wore her emotions on her sleeve. Everyone knew what Taffyta Muttonfudge was feeling every second of every day.

Still, by the standards of her screams, this was a pretty good one, a perfect mixture of shrill and high and piercing, it actually hurt as it tore itself from her throat.

There was a stranger standing in her room, a stranger in place of her, a stranger that…looked oddly like her.

Her scream cut off abruptly, and the figure in the mirror snapped her own mouth shut. Taffyta raised a hand to her hair, and the figure did too. Taffyta swallowed hard. The figure did too. Taffyta poked at her chest. The figure did too.

The woman did too.

She took a step closer to the mirror, her own blue eyes staring back at her in a face that was…sharper, older, on a longer and more graceful neck. And below the shoulders, her chest—well, there was no question, she had breasts, she had hips, she had a figure suddenly.

No wonder she felt unsettled. No wonder she felt different.

Taffyta Muttonfudge had grown up overnight.