CHAPTER 1

Game Hopping

"Hey, Fix-It!" Vanellope called as the trolley was pulling up. She saw Felix up on the roof of the Niceland apartment buidling. The arcade had just closed and he and the Nicelanders were still on the roof from the last game.

"Oh, hi, Vanellope!" Felix called to her. "Ralph's on the other side of the building in the mud puddle if want him!"

"I don't want Ralph! I want you!" Vanellope told him.

"Oh, okay! I'll be right down," Felix replied.

"WHAT?" Vanellope shouted.

"I SAID I'LL BE RIGHT DOWN!" Felix yelled down from the top of the building.

"I STILL CAN'T HEAR YOU!" Vanellope screamed. Felix was beginning to suspect this was a joke.

"I SAID I'D BE RIGHT DOWN SO JUST WAIT THERE!" Felix screamed at the top of his lungs. The Nicelanders, in all of 30 years of their game, had never heard Felix scream like that.

"OH, OKAY!" Vanellope shouted up at him. Felix and the Nicelanders (along with the Q*Bert characters) got down from the top of the building. Felix made his way over to the trolley stop to see what Vanellope wanted.

"Now what can I do for you, little lady?" Felix asked her in his usual friendly tone.

"Could you come over to Sugar Rush for a little?" asked Vanellope. "We had some real amateurs playing today and they busted up our karts real good!"

"Why certainly!" Felix said. "Why don't you go get Ralph and we'll head on over?" Vanellope gave her cutest, giddiest smile and scampered off to get Ralph.

They made their way over to Sugar Rush where a few of the other racers were waiting. Vanellope was certainly right. Their cars were nearly totaled. "Oh, thank god, that repair guy!" Taffyta exclaimed upon seeing Felix. "Look what those idiot gamers did to my car!"

"Three of my car's wheels are gone!" Candlehead complained.

"Wait, Candlehead, I thought only two of the wheels came off," Minty Zaki said.

"Well, I got hungry!" Candlehead told her.

"Girls, its okay!" Felix said. "I got it covered!" He took his golden hammer from his tool belt.

"No, you gotta say it," said Vanellope. "Say the thing!"

"What thing?" Felix asked.

"You know! The thing!" Vanellope said with a big doofy grin on her face.

Felix sighed and gave an amused smile, "I can fix it!" he proclaimed, holding his hammer up. Vanellope made a little happy squealing noise.

"Okay, Vanellope," said Ralph. "Stop being royally annoying and let Felix work."

"Presidentially annoying!" Vanellope corrected him as she hopped up on Ralph's shoulder. Ralph rolled his eyes.

Felix got right to work fixing Vanellope, Taffyta, Candlehead, and Minty Zaki's cars. Using his magic hammer, he pretty much fixed them up in no time flat. "Okay, ladies, that should do it!" he said once he was finished.

"Oh my god! What was that, like three minutes?" Tafftya said in disbelief. "How'd you do that so fast?!"

"Easy!" said Felix. "My magic golden hammer!" He held up his hammer to show the girls.

"Ooooh, sparkly!" Candlehead said, mesmerized. "Where did you get it?"

"From my dad, Fix-It Felix, Sr." Felix told them.

"What do you do I your game, exactly?" asked Minty.

"Well, Ralph there breaks the windows to the Niceland apartment buidlings," said Felix. "And I fix them with my this magic hammer!"

"Wait," Vanellope spoke up. "It's a hammer that fixes windows. I just realized that makes no sense."

"We're an 8-Bit game from the 80's," said Ralph. "The same generation as a game about a gorilla throwing barrels at you and a yellow circle that eats dots! By comparison, our game is realistic!"

"Oh, that reminds me!" Felix said. "Tammy and I promised Pac-Man and his wife we'd meet up with him at Tapper's."

"Who's Tammy?" asked Vanellope.

"Sgt. Calhoun," Ralph replied. "Her first name is Tammy, short for Tamora," Suddenly, Vanellope burst out laughing. "What's so funny?"

"Tammy?! Really?" Vanellope said through her laughing. "A big tough drill sergeant is actually named Tammy?! That's like the least scariest name ever!"

"Anyway!" Felix said, trying to stop Vanellope from continuing her spiel. "I better get goin'!"

Felix headed off to Hero's Duty while Vanellope and Ralph stayed in Sugar Rush. Felix hadn't seen Calhoun all day; he was really staring to miss her. He was wary when entering Hero's Duty incase of any remaining Cy-Bugs. He glanced around and crept in. When he saw Calhoun from the back, he instantly calmed down. He knew he was safe when she was around. "Hi, sweetie!" he called to his wife. Out of nowhere, she screamed something and started shooting in his direction! "No, honey! It's just me!" Felix shouted, dodging every blast.

Calhoun immediately stopped shooting, "Oh, jeez, sweetums, you know you can't sneak up on me like that!" She walked over to calm down Felix, whose heart was in his throat as he was hyperventilating and shaking. "Sorry, sweetie! Just be more careful next time."

Felix nodded swiftly. "Um…are you ready to go to Tapper's?" he asked, his voice shuddering.

"Oh yeah! That was tonight, wasn't it?" Calhoun remembered.

"Hey, Tammy…" said Felix.

"Hmm?"

"Is it okay if I cry?" Felix's teeth were chattered as he spoke.

Calhoun sighed and said, "Go ahead."

After around fifteen minutes, Felix was able to pull himself together enough for them to be on their way to Tapper's. They –like Felix said earlier –met up with Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man as sort of a double date kind of thing. Felix said it was just to be neighborly, but Calhoun was sure it was just another futile attempt of Felix's to get her to be more social. Futile being the key word. She always told him that she wasn't the most pleasant person to be around in social situations. People always seemed a little terrified of her.

When they finally got out of Tapper's, Felix invited Calhoun to come back to the Fix-It Felix, Jr. game with him. Calhoun agreed as long as she didn't have to talk to those Nicelanders. She said it was because they were too overly cheerful when really it was because she was just a tad jealous whenever one of the lady Nicelanders got too friendly with Felix.

Calhoun was happy to have some alone time with Felix once they got back to his game. However, the Nicelander, Mary, who was coming outside to see Felix, impeded this happiness (for Calhoun, at least). "Oh, Felix!" Mary called to him. "Could you fix something for me?"

"Oh, you know I can!" said Felix, in a friendly tone. "What needs fixin'?"

"Just an old necklace I have," she replied, holding out a silver necklace with a snapped chain.

"No problem!" said Felix. "I can fix it!" He reached for his hammer, but something was wrong… It wasn't there. His heart stopped. He felt all over his tool belt, yet came up empty. He bit his lip and forced a smile as he said, "Well, ain't that just the darndest thing! I seem to have misplaced it! I'm sure I just left it on my nightstand or somethin'! Sorry 'bout that!"

"Oh, that's just fine, Felix," said Mary. "You can fix it tomorrow! I don't want to intrude on your time with Ms. Calhoun." She went back into the apartment building and as soon as she was through those doors, Felix began to silently freak out.

"Yeah, well you just did," Calhoun said in response to what Mary said.

"Oh lordy, where did it go?!" Felix cried as he seached his tool belt again.

"Felix, what's the matter?!" Calhoun grabbed him trying to calm him down.

"My hammer is gone!" he shouted. Calhoun shushed him.

"You said you just left it in your room!" said Calhoun.

"That was a lie! I didn't want her to start to panic!" Felix admitted. "Without that hammer, this game's as good as unplugged! I just had it when I was back at Sugar Rush! Then I went to your game and then Tapper's. And if someone picked it up… Oh my land! It could be anywhere!"

"Calm down!" she shouted at him. "Like you said, we can't let the others in this game know about this or else they'll start panicking. So you have to stop worrying about—"

"Stop worrying?!" Felix shouted hysterically. "How am I supposed to stop worrying!? I'm nothing without that hammer! My entire character hinges on that thing! It's the whole point of the game! Ralph breaks the windows and I fix them with my magic hammer and…Yeah, Vanellope's right, that does make no sense. But it's still the point of the game! I need it or else they'll think the game's busted and we'll get unplugged, and we'll al be homeless and —" Calhoun slapped him to snap him out of his hysteria. Indeed it worked.

"Sorry, honey," she said. "You know how much I hate doing that."

"It's…fine, I sort of like it."

"What?!"

"Nothing! My point is, we gotta find that hammer!"

Calhoun thought for a moment until coming up with a plan. "Okay, I've got it! You said you were in Sugar Rush earlier, we'll go there and you retrace your steps. Think back to what you were doing and where you were. If it's not there, we'll search in my game. It might have fallen off your belt when…you know, that thing happened. If not there, we'll check back at Tapper's."

Felix smiled at her and said, "You're so smart! Where would I be without you?" Calhoun smiled back at him.

"You would be dead," she said bluntly, referring to the whole Cy-Bug invasion of Sugar Rush. "Alright, let's move it!" She and Felix ran off to Game Central station. Suddenly, Felix had a terrifying notion.

"What if I dropped it in here?" Felix inquired. "You know, goin' between game? Jiminy, anyone could've picked it up!"

"Stay focused, sweetie," said Calhoun. "First Sugar Rush, then Hero's Duty, then Tapper's, and if we can't find it any of those places…"

"We start panicking?!" Felix freaked out for a split second.

"Well, yeah, I guess that would be appropriate," she said. "But right now! We go to Sugar Rush!"

"Right! Okay! How about I go to Sugar Rush and you go back to your game and look?"

"Good thinking, sweetums!" she said before she took his advice and headed back to Hero's Duty. Felix always loved it when she would talk to him in her stern drill sergeant tone, but still refer to him as "honey" or "sweetums".

Felix hurried off to Sugar Rush, praying his precious hammer would still be there. He took a deep breath and went into the game.