Sonic, Tails, Ralph, and Vanellope had arrived at Game Central Station and immediately knew that something was wrong. Upon entering, the four found that the whole station was entirely deserted. Nothing was damaged and everything was intact, but not a single program was around.

"What happened here? Where is everyone?" Ralph asked.

"Gone for their games." The surge protector said as he appeared from a tiny blue spark. "When that hedgehog came through the portal, everyone evacuated for the safety of their games. The surge sensors went crazy and alerted me that they detected a virus coming into the station."

"Where did he go?" Sonic asked.

"Into Hero's Duty."

"Come on, then! Let's go the creep!" Vanellope insisted, rolling up her sleeves, stomping towards the game.

"Whoa-whoa-whoa! Hold it right there, princess." Ralph said, pulling on the hood of her light blue sweatshirt.

"That's president to you, Stinkbrain! Let me go!" She resisted, sputtering into light blue binary.

"You're not going anywhere except back to Sugar Rush, where you're safe, kid."

"No! I'm going with you guys."

"I don't want to lose you!" Ralph yelled.

"Wh-What?" She stared, wide-eyed at his outburst.

"I care about you too much to let you be deleted. I almost lost you at the party. I'm not letting that happen again."

"But what about Flash?"

"I care about him as much as you do, but it's too dangerous for you to go in there."

Vanellope drooped her head low, staring at the ground.

"Vanny, look at me." Ralph said softly.

She lifted her head enough to look at his face.

"Promise me that you'll stay in your game."

Vanellope paused a moment, then nodded.

"Good."

She jumped onto his shoulder to give the wrecker a hug. He returned the embrace before forcing himself to part.

"Please bring Flash back." She said.

"Promise." Ralph said.

Vanellope hopped down to the ground from Ralph's hands and looked back at him before running for Sugar Rush.

"Alright...Let's go." He said.

"Right." Sonic and Tails said in unison.

The trio entered the portal for Hero's Duty and boarded the large tram.


The world of Hero's Duty had become a battlefield. Swarms of cy-bugs buzzed all around the atmosphere and along the ground, fulfilling their destructive programming, consuming and becoming whatever weapon or armor they eat. Soldiers everywhere were scrambling to fight them back. Among them were Sgt. Calhoun and Fix-It Felix. Calhoun was shooting plasma rounds at incoming cy-bugs, while Felix hopped around, searching for a sign of Nega Flash.

"Vollmer! How much longer until the beacon is charged and ready!?" She inquired.

"Less than five minutes, Ma'am." The soldier answered.

"I can't find Flash!" Felix shouted as he landed next to Calhoun.

"Darn! He could crash this world at any second."

Sonic, Tails, and Ralph had pulled into the Hero's Duty station. Upon exiting the tram, they were awestruck by the mayhem that was taking place.

"Sweet Mother Hubbard!" Ralph exclaimed.

"Cy-bugs are running loose too? Can this get any worse?" Sonic asked.

"Guys!" Felix called out to them.

"Felix!" Ralph called back.

The group met up with him and Calhoun.

"What's going on here?"

"Cy-bugs broke loose after the arcade closed. The beacon needs to charge so everyone is trying to hold them back. What's going on with Flash? Why is he acting like a virus again?" Calhoun asked

"First off, that wasn't Flash. At least, not anymore." Ralph said.

"What do you mean?" Felix asked.

"That...thing is the virus that infected Flash. The virus split from him by gaining strength from the code that Flash absorbed at the mansion party, making him and Flash two different people." Sonic explained.

"If that's true, then...where's Flash?" Felix asked.

Sonic and Ralph had a sad look on their faces.

"Flash...was deactivated." Said Ralph.

Tails, Felix, and Calhoun were shocked.

"Oh my land..."

"Not permanently. We can still reactivate him, but Nega had the code room locked, probably to keep us away from his code."

"And that room is going to stay that way!" Shouted a familiar voice.

The five turned their attention to the source of the voice, which came from Nega.

"You!" Sonic yelled.

"Nice of you to join me to witness the destruction of this game!"

A cy-bug flew up behind Nega, about to devour him, but Nega blasted it to bits using his palm laser without looking at it, leaving behind scattered binary. Cy-bugs all around noticed Nega and began to swarm around him. Nega smirked and blasted the surrounding cy-bugs, one by one. A few cy-bugs would gang up on him and tackle him to bind him, but he would break free with little effort.

SPIKES!

Nega curled into a ball and large purple spikes protruded from his quills. The spikes shot from his back and impaled the circuitry and armor of a large number of nearby cy-bugs, destroying them instantly.

"Ha! These are the most dangerous programs in the arcade!? Please! I don't even need to try." Nega laughed.

Every remaining cy-bug attacked him at once, piling up over him, trying to devour him as they were programmed to do.

VOID!

Everything went still for a moment before all the cy-bugs were forcefully ripped apart into the singularity of a large black hole. The black transformed back into the form of the viral hedgehog, who began to absorb the code of all the cy-bugs he destroyed, growing stronger with each byte.

Sonic decided to act now. He sprinted toward Nega, while he was busy and homing attacked him with as much force as he could muster. The attack was successful and strands of code broke free from his body, scattering around the air. Some of the code left the game. Nega tumbled to the ground while Sonic landed safely.

"That's strange. Was that the code the belonged to the other games?" Tails thought.

"How rude! Attack a guy while he's absorbing code. Now, it's my turn." Nega said.

"Uh-oh. Better change to my Fighters programming." Sonic thought.

Sonic's pixels scrambled and readjusted themselves for a quick moment before Nega flew at Sonic at a high speed and punched him across the face. Sonic tumbled on the ground before hitting the wall of the tower.

"Sonic!" Tails shouted.

Sonic got back up to his feet with only a few scratches.

"Don't worry! I'm okay!" He assured.

Nega was surprised.

"Hey! Why didn't you die!? You don't have any rings!" He demanded to know.

"I switched to my Fighters programming. Now I don't need rings to survive as long as I have health." Sonic smirked as he rubbed his nose.

"Then I'll beat the life out of you!"

Nega ran towards Sonic, about to punch him again, but then was punched by Ralph with his enormous wrecking hands.

"Thanks, Ralph." Sonic said.

"Don't thank me yet."

Nega flew across the battlefield before slamming onto the ground. He growled in anger before immediately getting back on his feet.

ROCKET!

Nega transformed into a purple rocket and soared high into the sky.

"What's he doing?" Sonic asked.

CUBE!

"Oh, boy!" Ralph said.

Nega was falling down above both Sonic and Ralph as an extremely dense cube. The two ran to get out of the way, but when the cube impacted, it caused a huge shockwave that almost blew away Tails, Felix, and Calhoun and ran Sonic into a boulder and Ralph tumbling across the ground. The crater that Nega created with his cube form had dissolved into code and Nega began to absorb it.

"Sonic! Ralph! Are you guys okay?" Tails asked.

"This guy is tough! How are we gonna beat him?" Sonic asked.

"He seems almost invincible." Ralph stated.

Tails thought for a moment before getting an idea.

"Do you have the Chaos Emeralds?" He asked.

"No. I left them back in the Special Stages and we don't have time to go back to our game and win them."

"Hmm...Well...I have a faster idea, but we'll have to break some rules."

"With the situation we're in, I think we don't have a choice." Ralph noted.

"I'll go back to our code room with Felix and hack the game so that you have all the emeralds."

"Brilliant idea. We'll keep tall, dark, and viral busy." Sonic said.

Nega suddenly emerged from the ground as a purple drill, sneaking up on the three.

"Here's Negy!"

"Go! Quickly!" Ralph shouted.

Tails began running back to meet with Felix.

"Where do you think you're going, Miles?" Nega asked.

He shot palm lasers in his direction, but Sonic intervened by homing attacking him from behind. Nega grunted from the sudden force.

"Alright, hot shot. You'll be first."

Tails found Ralph, Felix, and Calhoun taking refuge in the deployment unit for the soldiers.

"Felix! You've got to come with me back to my game!" He said, urgently.

"Wh-Why?" He asked, surprised.

"We have to hack the game to get something important."

"Really? Isn't that sort of risky, Tails?"

"We don't have many options to work with. We need to do it."

"Alright. If you say so. Tammy, will you be safe here alone?" He asked Calhoun.

"Go on, you two. I can take care of myself." She answered.

Tails spun his twin tails and lifted himself off of the ground.

"Grab on, Felix." He said, reaching his hand out.

Felix jumped and grabbed hold of Tails' hand and the two flew off into the portal and back to Game Central to reach Sonic the Hedgehog.

"It's hopeless! Why bother trying!? The arcade is mine!"