Ralph made short work of the gate leading to the playing field. "Wow, this armor stuff is great!" he smiled as he shook out his hand. "Alright," he mused, "she said 'follow the compass'. What compass?"
As if on command, a mini map popped up in the center of his visor. A dot with a cone was exactly in the middle and a compass needle pointed north-east. When the villain rotated himself, the needle rotated too. He moved 'til it was pointing due "north".
"I'm comin', Kid," he huffed, "just wait for me." The man threw down the board and after a few shaky seconds was able to head off in the direction indicated.
Vanellope slumped in the seat of her kart, exhausted from crying so much. She had taken refuge in a little cave she had found in a slot canyon and this seemed like a good place to hide. It was secluded, it was quiet… ish, and the soft glow of some moss in the back was kind of comforting.
"Sarge was right," she croaked. "Love is a battlefield and I lost the war. Why did the programmers hafta make me a kid?!" She hopped out to sit on her back spoiler. "Why does life have to suck so much?" she sniffed.
Absentmindedly, the girl started to tear up chunks of the wafer fin and threw them at the bits of moss. A thunk was heard and she got down to investigate. She discovered that she had knocked down a mossy chunk of the wall. Sighing and staring at the ground, Vanellope was just about to sit on the fin again, when the rock glowed brightly and dissolved. Her pupils shrank as she realized that the rock wasn't a rock. It was a cy-bug egg and she had hatched a baby. "Oh boy," she squeaked, trying to inconspicuously slide back into the kart.
Unfortunately, she kicked a small stone and it clattered behind her. The baby bug turned towards the sound, spotted her, and flew at her face. The racer shrieked, glitched out of the way, and landed awkwardly in the kart. "Ow," she groaned. The bug leaped into the air again and she grabbed the closest thing she could: the gear-shift. Vanellope pulled it out, swung clumsily, and knocked her assailant to the side. "Alright, Bug Butt," she growled as she climbed onto the back of the vehicle, "come at me!"
The creature jumped a third time and she swung her make-shift bat.
Thwack!
It went sailing and hit the back wall. Alas, the impact of the attack shattered her weapon and only means of escape.
"Oh, no! Nonono!"
She dropped the useless item and frantically searched for something, anything else to defend herself with, but there was nothing. A burst of light at the back of the cave alerted her to the awakening of several more babies. She was doomed if she stayed any longer so she grabbed the emergency pack she had hidden under her seat since her little World Tour escapade: a bag of Starbursts and a slingshot. The girl threw herself out of the cave just as the swarm started consuming her kart.
The ravine she was in seemed to go on forever in either direction, but she could see the bleak sky above her so she started to glitch-climb up the walls. It seemed like hours later (but was only several minutes) when Vanellope shakily pulled herself out of the chasm, clutching her sides to keep the contents of her stomach where they belonged. She flopped to the ground, gasping, until a mechanical screech reminded her that she needed to keep moving.
The exhausted child sat up, fitted a candy in the slingshot, and fired straight up. A pink streak of light whistled as it sailed up and exploded in a shower of sugar particles. Vanellope heaved herself up and shambled away, occasionally glitching to put more distance between her and imminent death.
Ralph looked around as he flew through the air, looking for any sign of his missing friend. Just below him he could see the start of a very narrow canyon so went to investigate it. His blood turned to ice when he discovered tire tracks heading down the path. What worried him most was that the tracks would disappear for a bit and reappear further along. "She must be glitching to get through here," he said. "Now, how do I work the radio?"
Again, as if on command, his helmet acted on it's own and on his visor 'calling HQ' popped up.
"Wreck-It!" Calhoun's voice came crackling over the intercom. "Good to hear from you, soldier. What's the situation?" The Bad Guy gulped as he tried to push away his mounting fears. "I'm not sure," he replied. "I found tire tracks leading into a canyon and I'm sure they belong to Penellope's kart. Have you found anything on your scanners?"
"Negative," she sighed. "She's in that area but that's all I can tell you. Yer just gonna hafta keep looking. Good work." Suddenly, something exploded far off in the distance. The giant whipped his head in the direction it had come from and realized it was coming from the top of the chasm. "Are any of your men nearby, Sarge?"
"Negative, Wreck-It. They're all still several kilometers behind you."
He climbed back on the hoverboard and rose into the air. In the sky were the glittering remains of a pink something. "I don't know what a kilometer is, but I think I found her," Ralph sighed in relief. A tiny yellow explosion confirmed his hunch. "I'm goin' in!" Activating the stealth mode, he charged at the swarm of bugs that were spilling out of the ravine.
Vanellope reached for another Starburst as the last one dissipated. The light they gave off was enough to attract the now fully grown candy-coated bugs so she was using them as a distraction, hoping to buy herself enough time to get away. It was a good plan, but she was running out of candy already and all that glitching had drained her. It was all she could do to hold her shape together. Hopefully someone would see her signals and rescue- save- HELP her.
As she frantically searched the satchel for more ammo the desperate president didn't keep an eye on her surroundings and tripped over a large rock. She threw out her hands to catch herself but it was no good. Vanellope crashed to the ground, ankle and both wrists throbbing. Free of the thrall of the sweets in the sky, the cy-bugs swarmed towards her.
The child curled up in a ball to be a much smaller target and screamed at the top of her lungs, "RALPH!"
BOOOOM!
Faster and faster Ralph flew, desperately raking the ground with his eyes as he searched for the tiny girl through the hazy, ashy air. There! He could just make out her little figure running haphazardly and shooting more of the colored lights. As soon as he saw her, searing pain burned through his head and blinded him. "AAAAUUUGGGHH!" he screamed as he futilely clutched his helmet.
The wrecker lost control of the cruiser and plummeted to the earth. It felt like something hot was trying to push it's way through his brain. Because he was powerless to stop it, the something surfaced in front of his eyes in the form of a vision. Two scenes were superimposed on each other: Penellope standing alone and surrounded by cy-bugs in a darkened Sugar Rush and in a place that can only be seen in a nightmare. "No! Not her! It's my fault; take me instead!" he cried out, unsure if he was really speaking or if it was in the dream.
Reality filtered through the pain and Ralph knew with every bit of his code that this was the nightmare that had haunted him for so long, brought on by this memory. This time, though, he could and would do something. His sight cleared and he wrestled the cruiser back under control seconds before he became a metal plated pancake.
Back on track, the villain sped towards the mass of mechanical insects and jumped to the ground when he was right above them, fist first for a mighty ground pound.
BOOOOM!
Slowly, the Bad Guy rose up from the crater and cracked his neck, fierce snarl on his lips. "I'm gonna wreck it!" he shouted. As he punched every bug that made the mistake of getting too close, one thought was constantly present in his mind: protect Penellope.
The ground shook as something landed and if she had been standing Vanellope would have been thrown down by the shockwave. She tried to peer through the dust cloud, but there was nothing there. She heard someone shout "I'm gonna wreck it!" and her heart stopped. Was Ralph really here?
The cloud slowly drifted apart, but there was no one. In the face of danger, she must have imagined she heard her hero and now she was gonna- Waitaminute! A cy-bug spontaneously exploded! More and more bugs disappeared in a burst of slime and slowly the outline of something came into view. An invisible soldier was beating the monsters down with his fists!
The girl pushed herself up with some difficulty into a sitting position. "Thanks for joining the party, Space Cadet!" she hollered, which distracted her savior and allowed the bugs to overwhelm him. "Aw, skittles... Hold on!" Biting her bottom lip against the zing of pain, she fired a green Starburst immediately followed by an orange and then another pink one over the hoard.
The soldier flickered and became visible. He threw off the mesmerized cy-bugs, ran to her, and scooped her up. Immediately she could tell he was in bad shape: his helmet was dented, he was limping slightly, and somehow the bugs had gotten through his body armor and sliced his shoulder to ribbons. Red plaid peeked out at her, and if she had any doubts as to the identity of her rescuer she wouldn't now. "You came back for me," she croaked. It was hard to tell, the sound was all garbled, but she thought she heard him say "Always".
Vanellope wriggled up to his uninjured arm to make sure they were in the clear and ducked back down, shivering. "Ralph! We got company!" Ralph skidded to a halt and, still clutching the child, reached up to grab the large metal disk on his back. He threw it like a Frisbee and put a massive hand over her eyes as they continued their escape. "What was that?" she yelled over the whistling wind. "Beacon," was the distorted reply.
The land sloped downwards and at the mouth of the canyon a ship was waiting where some other marines motioned for them to hurry and get inside. They were barely in when the ship took off, the squadron firing at the docile mutants. Ralph carefully sat on a bench, still holding Vanellope with one hand and trying to take off his gear with the other. A mousy man came over to help, whimpering something about "shoulda known something would get broken".
The girl gasped in horror: the blow that dented the helmet had damaged Ralph's face and now he had a huge bruise blooming over one eye and cheek and a very bloody nose. The giant wiped some of the blood away with the back of his wrist and smiled a small smile. "Don't worry, Kid. I'll be fine."
He frowned, opened his mouth to say something else, and decided against it. Penellope didn't need him yelling at her now. That could wait 'til they got patched up and she was safe at home.
Now that her adrenaline rush was gone, fatigue blanketed Vanellope and she struggled to remain conscious. She hauled herself up, kissed her hero's good cheek, and, with a whispered "Thank you", fainted in a flash of blue pixels.