A Bittersweet Journey

Chapter 2: A Meeting with The President

Finally, evening arrived, and it was time for all the racers to rest for the day. As soon as everyone had packed up and started to head home, Jubileena ran to talk to Vanellope.

"President Vanellope!" Jubileena yelled, running up to her.

"Yes Jubles?" said Vanellope playfully.

Jubileena felt like groaning as soon as she heard that nickname, but she didn't, since she did not want to disrespect her ruler. She just got straight to her question, forgetting all the nice ways of asking it that she had thought of earlier that day.

"President Vanellope, I'm wondering… why exactly did King Candy disappear, and what happened to the palette swaps and—"

"Ah… my dear subject… that's a very good story indeed, but it might take me a while to tell it to you."

Vanellope and Jubileena started to walk together towards their homes, and Vanellope commenced her story:

"Once upon a time, there was a race game called 'Turbo', and the main character was a guy called—"

Jubileena interrupted. "Oh… I know that story! King Candy once told it to us!"

"Of course he knew that story, " Vanellope said. She tried to make a scary face. "He WAS Turbo!"

"Come onnnnnn…" Jubileena said, "That's sound like some lame horror story Crumbelina would tell at one of her sleepovers…"

Vanellope looked a bit sad hearing about Crumbelina's sleepovers, as she had yet to be invited to one. However, her expression quickly shifted to a more insistent one.

"I'm not making this up!" she professed, "After his game got unplugged, Turbo disguised himself as King Candy and took over Sugar Rush! He then went into the code and tried to delete me so that he could be the best racer in the land. But he epically failed to do that, so he locked up everyone's memories instead,"

"So THAT's why we all forgot you were our ruler…" Jubileena uttered in awe.

"Yeah, so anyways, things probably would've stayed that way… with King Candy ruling us and all, but this cool dude named Ralph showed up one day and changed everything!"

"Ralph?"

"Wreck-it Ralph, from Fix-it-Felix Jr. You know, that game with the handyman who fixes the building that's wrecked by this big guy…"

"So what did Wreck-it Ralph actually do? Wreck everything?" Jubileena laughed.

"No. Long story short, he realized that I was supposed to be a character in this game. He helped me build this awesome car so I could race in the Random Roster race. During that race, when I was neck-in-neck with King Candy, but I made him start to glitch, so he revealed himself as Turbo!"

This story was more intriguing than Jubileena thought it would be.

"How did you guys reset the game?"

"Basically, Ralph and I crushed Turbo, and I drove my car across the finish line, which reset everything to how it's supposed to be!"

"So… how exactly did that cause Citrusella and Nougetsia and Torvald and Sticky to disappear?" Jubileena asked.

Vanellope thought for a moment.

"To be honest, Jubles, I don't know. It's likely that when King Candy went into the code, he created them. He probably wanted to make the competition bigger so that I'd be more afraid to enter the Random Roster race or something."

Jubileena was saddened by her words, but Vanellope immediately tried to comfort her.

"I know that you and Citrusella were best friends. Just the thought of losing my pal Ralph makes me feel glum. In fact, once I almost did lose him, when we were fighting King Candy," she said, thinking of when Ralph was falling into the Diet Cola Hot Springs, "But I saved Ralph, so I'm sure that if you want to save Citrusella and your… our palette swap buddies, you can."

Vanellope's optimism made Jubileena's despair become hope.

"Thank you…" she replied, "Do you know how King Candy got into the code?"

"My pleasure, dear subject. And nope, though Fix-it Felix would totally know. He managed to put those guys from Q*bert into the code of his game so that they wouldn't be able to die there. I think both our games are made by the same company, so you can probably get into our code the same way he got into his."

"Okay… thanks for telling me, your excellency." Jubileena smiled.

"No problemo," said Vanellope.

Jubileena headed home. She decided that tomorrow, she would venture into another game for the first time, to ask Fix-it Felix about getting into the code. She knew that would help bring Citrusella back.

(A/N: Thanks for all the support you gave me so far, my lovely readers! I really enjoyed (trying) to write in Vanellope's voice. Hopefully I didn't go to far xD.)