A/N: I'm finally back in the groove of writing Hero's Cuties...and it's not even a fluffy OneShot. Honestly, I don't know how well this story is going to turn out, but the idea wouldn't leave me alone, so I had to write it. I tried to explain what I could in the first chapter without making it seem too boring. Here's the simplicity of it: A cybug apocalypse has taken over Litwak's arcade several years after the movie. Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: I do not own Wreck-It Ralph or any of its characters.
"Halt! Who goes there?" Sergeant Calhoun asked the approaching figure. She was sitting just beyond the entrance of her game on her watch-shift, a cocked gun in her hand.
No one really liked being watchman. Even during the day when there was slightly more traffic coming and going through the main arch, it was one of the most boring jobs you could offer to take. Calhoun liked it. She enjoyed being alone, and she was one of the few that could actually stay awake on the job, since sleep didn't exactly come easy for her.
The shadow halted, surprised by her voice, rather than running after her the way a hungry cybug hybrid might do after months of starvation, so she lowered the gun she'd been holding. But only slightly.
"I said, 'Who goes there?'"
The voice mumbled something that sounded like a name, but he sounded a bit unsure with his response.
This didn't surprise Calhoun. Her team hadn't recovered a game character in months, but of the few they did, they didn't remember much. Nobody did.
"Where do you come from?" She asked, continuing her interrogation. Asking these questions proved to be useless in the past, due to the massive memory loss among the arcade, but it was standard protocol, and Calhoun was all about the rules.
He pointed behind him in a direction that was much too difficult to guess just by simple finger gestures.
"State your business, then."
"I wish I knew, ma'am." She saw him take something off his head and crumple it in his hands, nervously. A hat, she guessed.
When Calhoun could clearly tell this man showed no threat, she gestured him forward. When he made no movement, she spoke up. "Come forward, civilian."
She stood up as well, closing the distance between them in a flash. Due to the darkness of the game, only a single light blaring over near her watch chair, Calhoun noted right away that the man was a lot shorter than she'd guessed.
No matter. If there was anything she learned about this arcade, it was that characters came in all shapes and sizes.
She raised her gun to his eyes, initiating a small light that focused on one's pupils to prove they were not infected by the cybug virus that pretty much destroyed this arcade over a year ago.
A small screen at the tip of her gun blinked green. He was clean.
The man seemed unfazed by the fact that she just raised a weapon to him. Most characters at least flinched at the gesture. He seemed focused on something else entirely, however.
That being, her. This didn't completely surprise her, of course. In the past, she was sure she'd been hit on far more times than she'd have liked. But that was before the dark days, as everyone called them here. A year's worth of hectic days, sleepless nights, and intense battles slowly showed through her code.
If she were a looker before, she certainly wasn't anymore.
She cleared her throat to jar him from what little thoughts he had, and grabbed for his arm, perhaps a little too roughly.
A second precaution, in case the eye test was faulty. Characters with the cybug virus already implanted in them would have slight glowing lines across their arms. Something they used to mistaken for programmed veins and caused many future deaths when brushed aside.
When she reached for his arm, however, she didn't find glowing veins, but a cluster of blue pixels seeming to radiate from his body.
Calhoun blinked, clearly shocked. "You're a glitch," She stated, her lips barely moving.
He nodded, with a look that mirrored relief, perhaps at knowing that whatever he had at least had a name, therefore couldn't be that bad.
And while it wasn't as bad as the cybug virus, glitching wasn't that much better. In fact, from the many studies they had worked on over the course of the year, it usually proved to be fatal.
She had known someone once with the same defect. Before the dark days. She couldn't remember much about them, couldn't even place their face, but the memories did show up on more than one occasion.
The memories Calhoun could actually remember came and went as they pleased. They didn't just come at night, so she found it lazy to simply call them nightmares. And they didn't exactly last long either, sort of flared through her mind as fast as they came.
Months ago, Calhoun decided to call them "flashmares". They never showed faces, places, or names. Just random parts and cutoff voices here and there, sometimes triggered by an item or word, sometimes coming for no reason at all.
Some memories cut down to the very core of her programming. Others felt more on the surface of her being, but they hurt twice as hard.
It wasn't till she found herself practically squeezing the code from the man's arm that she realized she was already in the middle of having a flashmare.
She immediately looked at his face, ready to apologize for her actions, since usually she woke from her flashmares by screaming or punching whatever was nearest to her.
The man didn't show any implications that she did either. He was focused on her face again, perhaps igniting some memory of his own.
His seemed to be much more pleasant that her's, though, as the corners of his mouth seemed to twitch in what she believed was called a smile.
Something she hadn't seen on anyone in months. She noticed she was stroking his arm, small blue pixels dancing on his skin, and immediately pulled away.
Suddenly a thought occurred to her. "If you're a glitch," her eyes narrowed. "How did you get past your game's force field?"
He nodded again, expecting this question to come up. He collected his thoughts and cleared his throat. "For months I have tried to force myself through the invisible barrier of my game. It hurt like hogwash, but I eventually learned how to get my right hand all the way through, perhaps because it's one of the many places on me that doesn't glitch."
He demonstrated this by lifting up his right hand and poking and prodding it with his left hand. He was right. While his left hand spasmed in and out once in a while, his right hand remained as still as her's.
"When I went to try again today, however, I realized the barrier had been shut off, and I easily made my way through." He finished.
This didn't surprise Calhoun, either. Power outages were a common thing around here. Games held on as long as they could, till eventually they just shut off entirely.
Game barriers were usually the first to go. She didn't even need to bother asking how he made it through theirs, as they shut it off manually months ago, to save energy on more important things, since game barriers proved to be useless at keeping cybugs in and out of other games.
"I didn't know what to do, or where to go," The man continued. "Then I saw the light pouring from your game just across the way and figured it was safe."
She nodded. The light near the entrance of the game wasn't just for the watchman, but for game characters to find there way to the safe zone that was their game. Despite the high energy it took to power it, they found several abandoned characters this way.
The man slipped his hands into his pockets. "It was certainly a big difference to the darkness I've been living in."
Calhoun pieced his words together carefully. "Where did you say you came from again?"
He pointed behind him again, the name of the game obviously long forgotten.
Calhoun fixated her whole being on the direction of his finger. Her look turned grave. "Show me."