II
Dominus
She saw how he did it too, or she figured it out that is. That wasn't until after the humiliation, after the failure, after the wretched loss—third place. Absolutely unforgivable. Third place and below was for complete failures, completely inept racers. To add insult to injury it was to that stupid child?! No this was all wrong. She ground her teeth, her blood boiling at astronomical levels as she sat in her kart, watching everyone gather around the usual victor of Vanellope and the new Cottonuget. He had to have cheated. She did recall a few points in the race where he seemed to have disappeared from the trail of racers behind her. She decided to backtrack a bit, falling back to the track and retracing her steps, specifically looking at the spots where he vanished. Sure enough she found tracks going off of the main course, in fact she found multiple spots where this phenomenon took place. She was dizzy with excitement; he was ensnared now, he was doomed.
This didn't make any sense however—the racers were tracked as they moved. The matrix's grid highlighted their every move on the screens as they raced. This wasn't right, how did he cheat the grid?
It didn't matter, in fact all she wanted now was revenge. Taffyta put on her fake smile and greeted everyone again later that cycle, studying each and every one of them to make sure they didn't know anything about this travesty. No one seemed aware of anything strange, Vanellope too was acting oblivious. How was this possible? She needed outside confirmation.
She decided to pull together two of her closest acquaintances, two fellow racers by the name of Candlehead and Rancis. They both seemed to expect Taffyta's frustration at her loss and silently waited for her to vent—but were all but calm when she explained to them that she knew Cottonuget had cheated. Naturally they demanded evidence; (Or moreso Rancis, Candlehead wasn't very bright and being the sweet thing she is, simply nodded along) cheating was a big deal after all. She told them to drive out to three different locations, to look for tracks going off the main course, the ones that she witnessed herself. They reluctantly agreed and disappeared in a rush to find the trails while she put the second part of her plan into action. She needed to take and question Cottonuget on his strange win. So she drove off, looking for Cottonuget at all of his usual haunts—it didn't take long to find him. He was just on the edge of the Candy Cane Woods, his outfit almost camouflaging him into the backdrop. He seemed to be working on something inside of his kart when she pulled up, surprise darting across his face as he turned and saw her.
"T-Taffyta?" he said, putting his hands behind his back. A tool of some sort, tinkering some illicit machination in his kart surely. She turned off her kart, sitting for a brief moment in silence. She craved this moment, lusted for it. He was going to get his for her humiliation.
"What-what do you want?" he added, gradually becoming more and more uncomfortable with Taffyta's silence.
She got out of her kart, lightly brushing herself off. Her one qualm with racing was that the airborne sugar dust and the like would often dirty her hair and outfit. Originally this didn't bug her too much strangely enough, yet as time passed it began to really eat at her sometimes. Winning races with a dirty image was below her, she was far too pretty for that, far too perfect.
Shaking off the tic she quietly she approached him, taking off her helmet; her footsteps crunching the rock candy fragments rhythmically. She got up close, merely inches from his face. A very strange air encircled them that moment, one that Cottonuget was almost certain housed a malevolence of some strange sort. He was disastrously right. And while she tried with every fiber of her being not to show her sheer animosity for him likewise, her absolute disgust for him—her pretty face was a sickly blank.
His face was red now, he knew what he did.
Before he could mutter another word, she slammed the side of his face with her helmet. He crumbled before her, curling up in a hurt ball. His dull moaning only drove her deeper into a frenzy.
"Wha-what did—" before he could finish she stomped on the side of his face.
Lucky for her he wasn't wearing a helmet. He seemed somewhat stunned and froze up for a second. She lost control briefly, a fraction of her madness slipping out, slamming her helmet down on his skull a few more times. By now there was blood—purely virtual effect, no one here actually bled—all over the place. Some splattered onto her perfect hair, onto her face, onto her outfit. She couldn't win looking like this. She gritted her teeth once more among a million times and gazed down at him in pure fury. She had no doubt cracked his skull with those last blows, but just as she hoped it wasn't fatal. If it was fatal, the matrix would simply regenerate him. She couldn't have that. She needed to keep him on the brink of death so that he couldn't be regenerated, yet he also could be subdued. It looked like with his unconscious body before her, she had obtained that.
With that she drove off, quickly trying to find Rancis and Candlehead. She told them to meet up with her when they were done. Sure enough they were together at the main stretch of the track. Taffyta quickly drove up, shouting over her kart for them to follow her. Both were understandably confused, Candlehead even muttering an inaudible, "What?"
Taffyta turned off her kart, "Follow. Me." She said, turning it back on and flying forward to make a quick turnaround. Rancis and Candle both shrugged and leaped into their karts, quickly following behind as they raced back to the Candy Cane Woods, back to Cottonuget's body. They had no idea what was going on, but soon they would be completely filled in. The situation that awaited them was one that would surely haunt their digital memory for some time.
Quickly they reached the edge of the woods, Cottonuget's kart still out in the open. Sure enough, in front of it was the unconscious body of his, a small puddle of "blood" around it. Candlehead shrieked and slammed on her breaks, Rancis following suit. Taffyta got out and ran up to the body, still out cold.
"What—what happened?!" Candlehead said, tears welling up in her eyes.
Taffyta turned to her, then to Rancis, a faint smile appearing on her face.
"Ta-taffyta, did you—did you do this?" Rancis said, meekly approaching the body. Neither of them were good with violence or brutality in truth.
"I simply punished the cheater," Taffyta said, kneeling down and brushing some of Cottonuget's hair to the side.
"Cheater?! What's this about? For the record we didn't find any tracks Taffyta!" Rancis replied, visibly frightened now.
Taffyta stood up, what magic was responsible for this? She saw them, she saw the tracks going off course. She didn't imagine it, and she certainly didn't lose to this moron for no reason. No, he cheated, no doubt.
"He must have—he must have gone back and changed them before you got there," Taffyta said, somewhat becoming more and more aware of how delirious she was on the moment. She felt almost at a high with the environment, the punishment, the judgment.
"That doesn't make any sense! If you lost the race to his cheating, and you just found him here and knocked him out—how could he possibly have gone out there, covered his tracks—then made it back here in time?! This is insanity Taffyta!" Rancis said, looking away. Apparently he couldn't face the body anymore, he couldn't face the cheater.
"If Vanellope—" Candlehead muttered.
Taffyta turned, her big blue eyes completely engulfing everything, "If Vanellope what? If she what Candlehead? Are you going to tell her?"
Candlehead went still, looking down at her shoes. Her face going a sickly pale. Rancis remained silent, still facing the distance.
"No one is saying anything, we're taking care of this. I don't race cheaters, and I race one enough on a regular basis anyway—that glitch bitch. Get me some licorice, it looks like he may be coming to," Taffyta added, nudging Cottonuget on his stomach with her foot.
No one said a word.
"Licorice now!" Taffyta yelled, making Candlehead and Rancis jump. With that Candlehead ran off and disappeared into the woods, some licorice vines were surely nearby for her to grab, or so she hoped. Coming back empty handed was not an option.
"Rancis, get his hands behind his back," Taffyta said, walking back to her kart.
"B-but the blood—" he stuttered, covering his mouth as he got a bit closer to Cotton's body.
"Now Rancis!" she said, taking out her helmet.
He reluctantly knelt down and pulled Cottonuget's hands back, clearly on the brink of tears. Just on time, Candlehead returned with a handful of licorice vine.
"What are we doing now?" she said, handing the vines to Taffyta who motioned over to Rancis.
"Rancis is going to tie him up and we're going to, well we're going to get rid of him," Taffyta said, a maniacal smile slowly growing on her face. Candlehead and Rancis froze, both slowly turning to Taffyta.
"What—what do you mean?" Rancis said.
"Just tie him up, then Candlehead help him move the body to my kart. We're tying him on and then we're going to the Sugar Deserts," Taffyta replied, putting her helmet on.
"The Sugar Deserts?! What in the world are we going out there for?!" Rancis exclaimed, his face becoming more and more horrified.
The Sugar Deserts were quite simply an end-line to the matrix. It was on the edge, far out beyond the eye sight. The land itself stretched and stretched until bit by bit, pixel and polygon by pixel and polygon, it faded into nothing. There, on the edge of the Sugar Deserts is an enormous chasm, a deep and virtual abyss that simply dove into nothing. There was nothing more vacuous, more terrifying, and more unsettling then the empty hollows of The Toffee Banks of Naught as they were so named. There, Cottonuget would rest. What better way to punish a cheater than to render him obsolete?
"Use your imagination, we're getting rid of this cheater, permanently," Taffyta added.
Candlehead and Rancis' faces went blank, the horror of the situation becoming all too real for them. They knew there was no turning back; there was nothing they could do. To worsen matters, they knew what would happen if they crossed Taffyta—they both understood this was the only decision. Rancis quietly tied up Cottonuget and with Candlehead's help, dragged the body to Taffyta's kart. After tying him on, they both got back in their karts. Taffyta smiled and started her own.
It was time, it was time to end this.
