In case I was unclear: This is the last "real" chapter of Action Replay; the next chapter is an epilogue to segue into this story's sequel.

So enjoy your fill of Choko, since she and her marvelous Codebusters are going to bid you all adieu soon lol

Disclaimer: Why must you taunt me with the knowledge that I don't own anything?

Skrillex's POV

The rest of their vacation went swimmingly.

Amelia didn't throw them out—she voided all of their fees and gave them eternal passes to DisneyQuest and its satellite arcade passes, as was due to the three losers who kinda helped save the day. Honey had sputtered and Choko had blushed and Skrillex didn't know what to say because wow, they hardly charged anything for Codebuster duty, this was incredible.

They used those passes and its discounts for great justice. There were dozens of satellite arcades to go visit, which meant hundreds of shopping trips, dessert runs, and clubbing, so much clubbing to quiet bass-heavy holes in the walls and giant crowded festivals that even Choko could go to.

Lots of others came with them on their adventures, like Viridi, Sonic and Lottie, and Mami, Junior and Wind Waker Link, and dozens of others. The Codebusters were still finalizing who would be part of which core—thank goodness the heroic bastards tended to be clustered from the same arcade or console network—and by hanging out with them, Skrillex got a better feel of who his juniors were, and how awesome they were.

Havok Engine above, he was helping found a new era and it was so exciting. He would look at Honey and Choko showing wide-eyed juniors how to bend reality to their cheat codes,

And then there was Elsie. Skrillex had dated Judy before, but those were hot tempered things in a relationship that quickly burned out. This was different, sweeter and more hesitant and he thought he'd never be able to get over how beautiful she was, even when covered in sweat and grime and surrounded by iridescent fire.

She loved fruit smoothies with boba and peanut butter cups, using the electric slide to get around instead of the crowded walkways, melodramatic Korean soap operas, nail art, and everything Disney. She had a deep well of patience that was easily emptied by parents being cruel to their children, judged people on whether or not they asked for help and how gracious they were while they asked. She didn't care for Breakin' A Sweat but listened to Summit whenever it came on Pandora, got cold when she was angry and hot when she was frustrated, and most of all, thought that Skrillex was an idiot for letting his thing with his ex drag on for so long.

Basically, he was falling head over heelies for her and judging by her fluttering pulse whenever he kissed her, Elsie felt the same way. It was like one of those fairy tale romances that Choko swore by with enough differences for Honey to approve, and Skrillex didn't really want to leave at the end of the week. He wanted to stay here, with Elsie and lead the Codebuster cores from a hub that glowed with bright blue light.

But the end did come, after long hours of play and coordination and dates. He missed his humble DJ Hero 2 and the people in his arcade, he missed the Red core and Joel and the other DJs and little Queen Vanellope. It was Saturday midnight, their time was up, and he filled with inventory with all the "please forgive me for making you think that I've been dead" gifts he could afford.

With one last run for hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls, the three had to leave.

He, Honey and Choko stood at a connection port to one of Disney World's wifi terminals, and they posed for yet another picture by Trolmir Fandov. The "Heroes of DisneyQuest", he called them, "and the World's Greatest Codemasters". Choko blushed and Honey held up a V for victory and Skrillex shrugged off the fame because that was just what they did.

Once Trolmir was gone, a bullet train arrived to take them to the Internet. Skrillex turned to Elsie and held her delicate world-changing hands, "This isn't goodbye."

"I know," she smiled past the wetness of her perfect blue eyes, and she pulled out a notepad, "Give this," a note covered in her flowing script, "to the helper at the terminal. She'll set you up with a good connection path back to your arcade..." Elsie then handed him another note, "And this is my number; Skype me sometime, pretty boy."

He kissed her one last time because he didn't know when he was going to see her again, and his sisters started singing that Owl City song and he and Elsie laughed against each others' lips. She escorted them onto the train, hugged him close, and then the door was between them and she was waving goodbye. Skrillex held her notes close to his chest to soothe ache, and watched her disappear into the tunnel.

He must've looked depressing, because Choko hugged him around the middle and chirped, "Don't look so sad, niisan! We can come visit Elsie-san after we go home and tell everyone that we're not dead!"

Home. He liked home. The train came to a swift stop and they entered what looked like an airport terminal, the windows illuminated with...their breaths were stolen by the lights. Rainbow spectrums glowed from behind the glass, color and static clouds of Internet activity and trending searches disrupted by what looked like endless arrays of pathways and...flying tubes?

One of the people milling through the terminal smiled and walked up, "First time travelers?"

"Yeah..." He handed her Elsie's note,"We need to go to this IP address?"

The helper read it, then herded them to one of the disembarking booths. She entered a series of numbers onto a computer and Skrillex would've paid more attention had he not been so captivated by the auroras and nebulae glittering just beyond his touch. So that was the Internet, biger and brighter than he even he understood. Choko pressed her hands to the glass and he didn't know if her eyes were turning blue or just illuminated by the great beyond, and Skrillex suddenly wanted to explore endlessly through the colors with Choko and Honey until the Internet ceased to be.

But first, home. The helper looked at them, then grinned, "Normally for business I'd just send you three home on a boom tube-" at that moment, someone took off in a tube and rocketed through the color clouds "-but something tells me you'd be better off driving there on a main data highway. Do you three have transportation?"

Skrillex and Honey looked to Choko, who nodded, "I think I can summon the Codemobile from my inventory."

"Great," the helper printed out a page of directions and gave it to Skrillex, "Follow this and you should be at your destination by the day's end. Have fun, and stay away from the Deep Web; that's an ocean you'll never swim out of."

The disembarking doors opened, and with joined hands they walked out of the wifi port down a hallway to an entrance to the Internet. Boom tubes flew over their heads and an iridescent road appeared beneath their feet once they hit the "ground". The Codemobile was summoned, the three sighing with relief at the familiar comforts, and Choko asked as she revved the engines, "Where to, Sonny-niisan?"

Skrillex looked at the directions; it simply said "Follow the road." He grinned, then leaned back as Choko started down the path into the sea of colors, "Back home, baby doll."

Honey's POV

Honey had never been on a road trip before.

Their misadventure in the iTouch didn't count, DisneyQuest was a resort stay, and for all her times in the Codemobile, that was for death defying missions. So as Skrillex rigged the radio to play OC Remixes and Choko oohed and aahed at millions of boom tubes and other travelers and light speed connections going on around them, Honey felt a surge of joy.

This is what she had craved when she'd been cursed to be a glitch—freedom, going 99 down an endless speedway with her loved ones by her side and 360 degree color to make up for the darkness of the Void.

Beaming to the technicolor sky, Honey looked out the edge and saw numerous little portals of light flash by; where those other entrances in and out of wifi connections? What were in them? Possessed by overwhelming curiosity, Honey asked, "Can we make a quick stop?"

"What for?" But even Choko's question was tainted by curiosity—what was a road trip through somewhere new and exciting without stopping to actually see what the Internet offered. There were highway signs indicating the different servers and wifi ports that were hidden in the Internet's glory,and Choko hesistated, "Shouldn't we drive back home immediately?"

The path branched into those alternate connections, and Skrillex grinned, "With you driving, we'll be home in no time. And considering that Vanellope is probably going to kill us when we go home,we might as well see the Internet instead of coast through it, right?"

"Exactly what I was thinking, Sonny boy," Honey looked up and read one of the highway signs, "'Mad Hatasmic' server entry for Team Fortress 2 on our next left." Honey blinked, "I've never been in there, let's go see."

Choko took a detour into Team Fortress 2, and into the first grand adventure in their road trip.

"What country you from," Honey roared as she gunned down some nerd's team with a machine gun, "And do they have hats there?!"

"W-What?"

Choko was wearing as many ridiculous frilly hats that her head could support, and blew up an entire building with enough dakka to overload a COD server. "What isn't a country I've ever heard of before!"

Skrillex was wearing his Mad Hatter tophat with fifteen grenade pins in the sash, "Do they have hats in What?"

"W-What?!"

"Hats, motherlover, do you have any?!"

They eventually got booted from the server because apparently it was bad form to kill people over something as stupid as hats. Choko grinned as they drove away from TF2, "I kept one~!"

And it was a glorious Triboniophorus Tyrannus/little squid thing which sat neatly atop her bun, Honey was proud of her little sister's fashion sense.

"Is that Super Smash Bros?" Choko slowed down from her sub-sonic coasting, interested in what the signs were telling her.

Skrillex peered up at the sign and nodded, "Yep; we ought to go there, Captain Falcon was talking about rumors of Nintendo shutting down the Wii's wifi either at the end of this year or in 2014."

Dammit Nintendo, another point for SEGA in Honey's books...or not really, since SEGA died out of first party development. Choko pulled into the portal and Honey watched as Metaknight flew Meta Ridely over a growing explosion. "My mod, we're never going to leave again, are we?"

It took a while to fight their way back out, Skrillex's glasses broken and Choko missing a tooth and Honey discovering that her Final Smash was bringing down the Chaos-damned Death Egg on everyone's heads.

The Sonic in this game was kinda cute too, but as Choko drove them out, Honey felt pride in the fact that half of her inventory's bounty was for her Sonic and her Sonic alone.

"Azalea's Dolls!"

"OC Remix!"

"Azalea's Dolls!"

"OC Remix!"

"If you two don't shut up right now, we're going to the next Manifesteange Metamorphose temps de fille online store and I will force you guys to help me try on every dress they offer!"

"I suddenly want to go wherever you're going Sonny darling, have any ideas?"

"None at all Honey face, the choice is yours."

Honey giggled as Choko and Skrillex slipped on the frozen pond and fell flat on their faces. Honey had spent the first few days of her post-glitch life frantically running around, so mere objects such as frictionless ice were no match for her feet. And since Club Penguin was a frozen wonderland, this was not the first time she skated along ahead of her flailing siblings, nor the last.

Spinning around like an Olympic skater, she back tracked to help the two to their feet, then skated directly into a blockade of dancing penguins. "What the-" Honey's eyes widened as they began to speak, and she groaned, "Great I found the 13 year olds on this server."

"Eh? どうした？(Doushita?)" Choko carefully toddled up but Honey covered her eyes from the marvelously decorated blockade. "Is it E-rated?

Skrillex looked at it before face palming his bright red nose, "Nope, and someone's gonna get in trouble."

Honey snapped her fingers and the giant array of dancing penguin swastika bots singing "}{41|_ }{17|_3R" were wiped from the landscape. At least they mixed it up and brought in some leet, it was always good to see variation in stupid teenage boys.

Honey lost track of all the games they stopped by, and time meant little to the perpetual lights that blended in the Codemobile's headlights. The only stillness the three encountered was at an edge of the Deep Web.

It was a obsidian-colored lake, a random sinkhole in the heights of the Internet, and it smelled ancient. Choko slowed down by the lake's glassy shores so they could step out and peer in, and Skrillex skipped a chunk of pixels across the surface; it skipped five times before sinking in and Honey knew that it wasn't coming out again.

Choko seemed to fold in on herself, and Honey pulled her away from the Deep Web. "Do you think anyone lives down there?"

"People who live in places that are unliked to the Surface Web we're currently standing in." Skrillex counted on his fingers, "They live and work in like...the Silk Road, or Tor, or the Hidden Wiki." He narrowed his eyes, "Some places are totally innocent, like private connections and deactivated blogs that shelter people who live down there...but there are a bunch of places you are absolutely forbidden from going to."

"なぜ？(Naze?)"

"Because you're our little sister now," Honey glared into the depths, "And I don't think the people down there would appreciate us burning the Deep Web to the ground if you got exposed to the sickos down there."

Choko quickly drove them away from the lake, and Honey bid it a heartless farewell; call her mainstream, but she preferred the glowing lights on their iridescent road than whatever beckoned below.

"I'm An OP Glitch" rang out from the stereo, and all three wore oversized sunglasses. Not a word needed to be said due to the majesty of their swagger. Not even characters from the Pirates of the Caribbean games could match the amount of swagger they were radiating.

Choko then gasped, "Is that an online Starbucks?!"

They squealed and nearly crashed into a few other travelers in their quest for overpriced coffee goodness.

With cups marked as "Sailor Ceres", "Twipz" and "Dreamcast Darling", they rode on into the storm of colors and connectivity, leaving behind trails of dango dust and pure swag.

Choko scrunched up her nose like a rabbit at the sight of their busted tired, and Honey soothed, "Don't worry, we're almost there." They had been driving and exploring all day, and Honey felt both nervous and giddy at the idea that they were just another jump away from home.

"I know, I just hate resetting pieces of my car, it screws up the speed and sugar levels." They had to wait for 15 minutes until the Codemobile was to Choko's standards, and sat down on the roof to watch everything else fly by. A mighty metropolis of a console network was thrumming behind them, lights glittering in the gauzy pink and blue sky, and Choko sighed, "I do like the view though."

"We should come back," Skrillex was folding and refolding the note that held Elsie's number, "Just take off one day—with permission of course, Suri is going to skin me alive once we get home—and explore."

Honey smiled at the idea, waving to the boom tubes and other travelers making their way across the Internet. Just her, Choko and Skrilly, making good time into tomorrow, she might even bring her Sonic, Elsie and whatever boy Choko finally got around to holding hands with too.

And since they were kinda starting a big Codebuster expansion pak, they would have to travel all over the world, because the Green Core was from Germany and the Silver Core from Brazil and the Pink Core from Osaka, and dozens of more in the pink and blue spaces in between. Honey imagined all the games they could go to from the Internet alone, let mega arcades like DQ and Tobikomi GiGo, and let alone little homes with the hand held consoles and single-platform cities where endless promise laid untapped.

Choko read the throughs flitting across Honey's face, and grinned, "We're going to be traveling a lot now, aren't we neesan?"

Honey slung an arm around Choko and Skrillex, "You bet your bun we will."

Their road trip was just beginning, and as they started back up to the final stretch to Litwak's, Honey couldn't wait for what was ahead.

Choko's POV

The iridescent road ended and they were at the wifi port of their home's computer room. Choko shook as she banished her Codemobile and fixed her hat. They were home, after so long and so much adventure they were home and what were they supposed to do now?

Honey-neesan looked ready to explode, and Choko hoped that C. Sonic-kun was alive and well since he was about to get the kiss of his life. Skrillex-niisan fiddled with his glasses, guilt allover his features, and Choko grabbed onto both of their hands. "Are you guys ready, mina-san?"

They nodded, and they walked up the steps into the terminal.

The people present froze as if captured in an ice cream storm, and Choko winced when some looked close to tears. Clearing her throat, she weakly greeted, "こんばんは？(Konbanwa?)"

Roll-chan broke through the crowd, blue irises tiny pinpricks in her eyes, before shrieking, "CHOKO!"

And then people were surging forward, pulling the three into the Computer room where everyone dropped what they were doing and screamed for the Codebusters who had cheated death. Choko was being hugged by Roll-chan and Mee-Mee-chan and her other sleepover friends, being cried on and yelled and and thanked over and over for being alive, and she smiled past the burning in her eyes.

Her poor loved ones, spending 5 days in hell because of a stupid series of events. She hugged back as hard as she dared, breathing in their familiar scents and grounding herself in home instead of in DisneyQuest or the Internet or at the heart of her Action Replay—

She gasped, before yelling at her siblings, "We need to add ourselves back into our games!" Even though a traitorous part of her demanded that she stay within the realm of glowing glass and endless blue stars, Choko missed her old Sugar Rush, missed her friends and the candied sakura trees and racing, she missed racing something fierce.

Skrillex-niisan was currently being crushed by a sobbing Sora-kun, and he weakly nodded, "Sora, I love you, but can you please take me home before the wine and dine?" Sora-kun laughed and carried him towards the arcade console room, Choko getting the same treatment with her friends and Honey-neesan getting dragged by C. Amy-chan who was babbling about C. Sonic-kun and how he was going to be so happy.

So happy, Choko was so happy to be back home, and when they flooded GCS with cries of "Look who is back," Choko met Vanellope-heika's shocked gaze, and cried along with her, bleeding away the very last of her adventure's tension and shame.

Choko floated in her game's code well, holding the cluster of programming that compromised her entire being. Her return to Sugar Rush had been rushed—Vanellope-heika had seen the empty space where Choko's coding had been, and agreed that the sooner she poured herself back to where she belonged, the better. And she was amassing an impromptu party at Mount Pockyama; everyone would be there from all three rooms, even Megaman-sama missed her during the week, and they were going to celebrate the Red Core's return home.

So why did she hesitate?

She remembered how her friends had wept for her, how Skrillex-niisan's friends had yelled for him, how Honey-neesan—oh Glico above, poor C. Sonic-kun! His gray eyes had been devoid of life in the second before he saw his soul mate, and watching them fill with surprise, suspicion, fear, delicate hope and finally joy beyond words...Choko cried even harder at the sight. She cried because she'd never find someone like that, never feel the same emotions that shone from her neesan when she hugged her beloved, never anything like that because she was young and fell in love with whomever passed her by.

She cried because she was so happy that they were together again, that Honey-neesan could show C. Sonic-kun all the wonderful things she'd gotten for him and tell him about all the marvelous things they'd done. She cried because they were finally home and she was going to tell her racers about their future sequel and they were home, they were home, Choko was home and she desired.

She wanted a soul mate, she wanted to race, and she never wanted to make her loved ones believe that she was dead ever again. The memory of a virus biting off her head made her shudder, and she knew that if put herself back in Sugar Rush, that last desire was bound to be lost.

And maybe if she just stayed in her Action Freplay, she could live forever, race forever, and find someone who could be her C. Sonic-kun, or her Elsie-san.

And maybe that was a horribly selfish, power-hungry idea and she needed to get her head out of the stars and back on the cocoa-dusted ground.

Choko curled in on herself, paralyzed because she wanted back in her game but she wanted to stay in her cheat console cartridge. She was Choko the racer and Choko the Codebuster, and how was she supposed to make peace between them?

She looked down at her Action Replay and asked for solutions to all the problems in her life.

She smiled as it gave her one.

Choko was a racer and a Codebuster, Sugar Rushian and Action Replay oriented, and she cheated death twice in the past five days. She had her nakama and she had her abilities and she had her endless 元気 (genki) to get her through whatever problems were in her way, to achieve whatever she wanted.

Oh, such a change from the shy, pedantic secretary of last year! Choko giggled at herself as she began to glow bright gold. She had been so afraid then, frantic over which honorific to use and nervous that she wasn't up to the job. But she was, she had grown, and all of Sugar Rush's code sang along with her as she cheated her way into a win-win situation.

She was a racer, so her code was in Sugar Rush. She was a Codebuster, so her code was in her Action Replay. Choko could do both and die wherever she wanted because if she wanted to be immortal with her niisan and neesan and all her bright eyed juniors so they could save the day for the rest of forever, then there wasn't a force in this gaming world that could stop her.

Choko emerged from her game with a big fat grin,and Honey-neesan and Skrillex-niisan had identical grins because they too figured it out.

When Vanellope-heika asked what was so darn cheerful, Choko merely hugged her dear friend close and chirped about the lemon drop sun and how good it felt to be home.

Vanellope's POV

Vanellope watched people she had mourned laugh and tumble about in her kingdom, and didn't know if she should keep crying.

It seemed silly to cry, now that Choko and the Red Core weren't dead. They weren't dead, they were just really lazy and slow and horrible people and yes, Vanellope loved the glow in the dark hoodie Choko had gotten her from DisneyQuest, but she was still grounded! Vanellope, Suri and Dr. Eggman had firmly grounded their errant roster mates for the foreseeable eternity; it was well done, and their not-dead friends had the grace to not argue.

And she guessed it wasn't their fault, not with the story they had told. Vanellope sat and listened to Choko's voice spin a tale beyond Vanellope's wildest daydreams, of cheating death and mega arcades and defeating a viral invasion and racing through the Internet. There was a permanent blue sparkle in her friend's eyes, like the edge of tomorrow, and Vanellope was just so relieved that she was here for Vanellope to see it.

Everyone was celebrating now, Vanellope sitting on Ralph's shoulders so she could see the mass of people stretch all around Mount Pockyama to the blue raspberry sea. The entire arcade was partying in Vanellope's game, the Codebusters doing a trick to keep the influx of electricity from tripping out the surge protector, and Vanellope was so proud of them for even knowing how to do that.

Her little Codebuster idea had grown into a world-wide organization, the people in it powerful enough to stop a programming error in its tracks and save millions of characters, and Vanellope broke down into tears again.

Ralph brought her down and hugged her, concerned that she was falling to pieces again, but she laughed and smacked his shoulder. "I'm happy, you dolt," she grinned and wiped her tears away, "Now let's go party!"

And so they did, dragging Choko and Honey and Skrillex and the Blue Core and everyone that could fit on Ralph's shoulders into the heart of the chaos. These people were her friends, her loved ones, and the last bit of grief in her heart was obliterated.

As it should've been; the Codebusters were here to stay, and she could count on them to save her day.

どうした？ (Doushita?): What's the matter?

なぜ？ (Naze?): Why?

こんばんは！(Konbanwa?)

元気 (Genki): in this context, energetic moxie

And that's basically the resolution of Action Replay—they came home much different than they had been at the beginning of the story, figured out how to cheat death into the Minus World, and have spread the Codebusters all around the world.

… *sobs* my babies are all grown up!

It was a good run for them, wasn't it? And even as the next entry will be the epilogue that ends Action Replay and shifts the focus of this story universe to another character, rest assured that the Codebusters are here to stay. Expect more shenanigans, especially with the epilogue's foretelling of Through The Mirror Darkly.

So yeah...see you then :3