The Man in Charge

King Candy was displeased as he sat in his throne in the dimly lit room of his castle. The team of misfits made it through the candy corn maze. After all of Candy's efforts to make it inhospitable.

"Curses!" He shouted, tossing a half-eaten pastry out into the hallway. "I was sure those crows and their candy arsenal would take them down!" He sat back and rubbed his forehead. "I'll have to think of something bigger."

Sour Bill appeared in the entrance to the hallway.

He cleared his throat. "Your Candiness?"

"What?!" The king tossed his hands in the air. "What is it this time, my humble servant? Can't you see the wheels in my head are turning?"

"Apologies." Sour Bill's tone never changed no matter who he was talking to. "But one of your subjects has just arrived."

King Candy raised his brow. "Which ones?"

The one Sour Bill was referring to stepped out of the shadows with her head hanging low. She bowed her head before him.

"Your Grace."

The grin on the king's face was not that of happiness to see her. He rested one leg over the other and sat with his hands folded over his lap. Sour Bill appeared at his side, with an expression of worry on his green face.

"Taffyta. I see that you've neglected to capture the glitch."

Taffyta's lower lip quivered, though her face was almost completely hidden beneath her platinum hair.

"Yes. Forgive me for my incompetence. She wasn't the only one there."

"No excuses." King Candy spoke abruptly after her. "You had only one job and assistance from the others. What have you been doing the whole time? I give you the resources you need for this one simple task, and you just blow it! I would have been better off asking the crows!"

The pink racer didn't have a response.

Candy sighed and slumped against the large throne. "Time and time again, she's managed to avoid you and the rest of the racers. There's fifteen of you and you all have functioning vehicles. Tell me how that's even possible!"

"Um..." Taffyta began. "We do have insight on where her location might be. Your Majesty."

That caught the king's attention. He rose from his chair and came over to her on spindly short legs.

"Where?"

The pink racer looked up with hopeful eyes.

"We saw her and the other two making a trip to Diet Cola Mountain. We're not sure if they're still there, but while we were out searching the place, we saw them hanging out there. It's like they've made it into a safehouse, or something."

The king pondered on her words. Throughout the entire lifespan of this game, he'd fought tooth and nail to capture the glitch and once he finally did, she'd slipped through his fingers.

She had a few tricks up her sleeve, just like the king, himself. But knowing there was a location she frequented would make things a little bit easier. What was he to do with this information?

Go after her and reveal himself out in the open?

Or possibly something else.

King Candy grinned and spun back around to face his throne, where his crystal ball was sitting beside it.

"Fantastic. Maybe there's some use for you after all." He told her. "Now about your punishment..."

Taffyta's head perked up. "I can still be in the race tomorrow, can I?"

King Candy pondered on the idea.

"Of course! You've already bid your winnings to save a spot in it. I would never go against our game's program. You know that."

Taffyta looked uncomfortable. King Candy thought for a moment and decided what the consequences would be.

"Sour Bill!"

The green candy straightened up.

King Candy looked down at one of his other servants. "Escort miss Muttonfudge downstairs. And make sure she's comfortable in her new living space. She's going to be there for a while."

Taffyta was speechless and her face was shocked. Sour Bill did as he asked, but instead of dragging her like how Candy's other subjects usually were, she walked beside him peacefully.

King Candy was still irate about having to do the rest of the work on his own. What was the point of having servants if none of them could do what he asked?

"If you want something done, you have to do it yourself." He said out loud. "Except I am not going out there. Not just yet."

He made his way down the long and empty corridors, where the marshmallow torches were the only sources of light. The sound of his steps bounced off the walls. He'd walked through these hallways over and over again for as far back as he could remember.

And each time felt like a treat. Not everyone had accomplished as much as he did within a game. And not everyone had been rewarded so greatly for doing so. King Candy felt as though he had earned this castle as fairly as any character could have.

This whole entire game was his magnum opus. And he couldn't have been prouder of himself.

...

The garage had been expanded to account for the newest addition. Over the course of several hours, the large insect had grown three times its size. And King Candy was surprised to see that yet another guest had arrived in its cage.

A tiny egg was right beside it. Then another. Then another until the population had become too large for its small quarters. The insects were tame underneath King Candy's command. But not with everyone else's.

The king had to find replacement Butterscotch repairmen after they'd accidentally come too close.

"How are my flittering little vermin this fine afternoon?"

They all twitched and writhed. They were still bound to the ground with ropes and chains. King Candy activated a button against the wall nearby a work table. The wall behind them opened up to the outside world. The insects were trying to leap out of their holds, but they couldn't.

King Candy hopped over the crowd and chose the two smallest ones. He cut them loose.

"Today's going to be a big day for my youngest shining stars. You are going to take a big leap out into the real world!" He spoke to them out loud and with his mind. "Find that little defective girl and her two friends. Make it known that no one will usurp the rightful ruler of this game."

...

Ralph had an unexplainable ominous feeling in his chest. He couldn't put a name to this sensation that overcame him, but on instinct, he knew that it wasn't good. He knew that something had happened without knowing specifics.

He looked over at Vanellope, who had been sitting in her sponge cake bed, her eyes boring into the ceiling of her shack. She wasn't showing visible signs of pain as far as he was concerned. She just looked like every bored, restless child.

"So, Chumbo, how'd you end up here of all places? This game doesn't have a hero-villain mode. Just me against the world." She asked him.

Ralph sat down and stared up at the dripping peanut brittle spikes.

"Well, funny story, actually."

He began to tell her everything beginning from last night. Boy, was it such a short time ago. After everything he and Felix had been through, it felt like it had been weeks, or months.

She listened closely, her face shifting in line with each story detail. He told her about Gene and the Nicelanders, about the thirty-year freeze between himself and Felix, and how he'd finally snapped after the anniversary party.

He left out the scene about his first kiss with Felix. That part brought him too much agony. He was still lamenting about how he'd forced himself onto Felix when the little handyman wasn't ready. Felix may have been less shy about how he felt about Ralph, now, but that didn't stop Ralph from feeling guilty.

"Wow," Vanellope said, quietly. "Those guys must really hate your guts."

"You don't know the half of it." Ralph flopped on his back. "So, long story short, I ended up in Hero's Duty, grabbed the medal, and-"

Vanellope giggled at the name of the game.

"I hope you washed your hands after you got that medal." She snickered.

Ralph rolled his eyes. "Very funny, kid. To answer your question, I came here by complete accident."

Vanellope came over and laid beside him.

"You know, you and I aren't so different, Admiral Underwear."

Ralph turned his head to her. "Yeah, kid, I guess you're right."

"Well, once I get my kart and you get your medal, we'll be where we want to."

There was something else that was on Ralph's mind since he heard of Vanellope's story and saw the incident with the racers.

"Why didn't you run away? Why do you stick around here if those racers don't treat you like one of 'em and your king's a nut case?"

Vanellope sat up.

"I already tried that, but I can't. There's some kind of force field around the exit. I guess my 'little specialty' keeps me from taking it somewhere else."

It still didn't register in his mind that she could look like a racer and have the determination within her to be a racer, but be reduced to living off the grid like this. It was like she didn't even exist in the game's database. But how could she have never existed in this game, yet still be physically present?

Glitches and hiccups in a game happened every so often, he knew, but those things were gone almost as soon as they came. Vanellope was something else. She may have had a glitch, but it wasn't quite the same.

"How'd you end up with that glitch thingy, anyways?"

She shrugged.

"No idea. One day I woke up and I was spinning out of control. Then all the racers turned against me. Told me I was just a mistake and I was never supposed to be here in the first place. Then I was on the run from them forever. Well, until King Candy caught me."

She shivered even though there was no draft in the room. Ralph looked at her with concern.

"What did he do to you?"

Vanellope shook her head. "I don't wanna talk about it. Let's just say I was lucky I glitched-teleported myself out of there right after."

Ralph has heard of stories about rulers and the kinds of horrible torment they could have brought to their captors. Physical suffering, mental breaking, or something far worse. He hoped he didn't have to find that out for himself, or that she would have had to relive the event.

"What if this racing thing doesn't work out?" He asked her, just because he was wondering what her response would be.

"It has to." She said with finality. "It's been my dream to be a real racer. I can feel it in my code that I was meant to do it. If I couldn't be a racer, then I guess I really wasn't supposed to be here in this game." She shoved her hands in the pocket of her sweater. "Maybe I'll just find a new game to crash."

The wrecker had an idea.

"You could always crash over at our place."

Vanellope considered his suggestion.

"D'you think your cranky old neighbor, Gene, would let me?"

Ralph waved a dismissive hand. "Bah. Don't worry about him. He'll get over it. He'll definitely treat you better than he ever treated me, that's for sure. The rest of the gang would gladly welcome you, kid. Felix and myself included."

A smirk appeared on her face. "Well, I'd hate to impose on the time between you and your boyfriend."

Ralph's face turned red.

"Ah, geez, there's no keeping secrets from you anymore, is there?"

"Nope!" She chuckled. "You said that you and Felix didn't talk for years and years. Why did you guys get together now?"

The same question Ralph had asked Felix had resurfaced. Felix didn't present him with a satisfactory answer, and Ralph knew he should have put this topic to rest. They were together, now. Everything else was irrelevant.

But maybe it wasn't, and though Ralph didn't want to feed this uncertainty of his, he couldn't help but wonder.

"I don't know, guess the time seemed right." He answered her.

"Well, you two are really good together." She said. "I hope you have the decency to invite me when it's time to..." She wrapped one of the strings on her sweater around her finger. "... tie the knot."

Ralph almost choked.

"Okay, kid, I think all that frolicking through the candy fields has made you a little loopy." He stood up and put his hands on his hips. "Isn't it past your bedtime?"

Vanellope rolled her eyes. "Geez, you're starting to sound like Other Dad."

His face showed discomfort at the implication she just gave. But why did he shy away at the possibility? He and Felix were a couple now, weren't they? Or was this just another incident of being caught up in the moment?

Ralph shook his head. No, Felix has showed so much affection towards him, not just since the night before, but for years. And Ralph had been too bitter and too caught up in his own loneliness to pay any attention to it. He remembered Felix calling out to him from his apartment window and the pie left out on his stump with a little note attached to it.

Even since the beginning.

Why would Felix break the rules and follow Ralph to the depths of the unknown if he didn't love him? Maybe it was too soon to put a name to their interactions, but that didn't stop Ralph from hoping. Or from waiting until both he and Felix were ready.

And he'd just realized what Vanellope just referred to the two of them after she fell asleep against his arm.

She called them Dad.

Ralph stared up at the ceiling dreamily as he thought about how much his life had improved in so little time. He didn't used to believe in miracles, but seeing how this little girl had warmed up to him and how Felix had felt for him, after he'd shown them both his true colors, made him reconsider.

He gently laid Vanellope onto her bed and sat on the opposite end, waiting for Felix. And he'd been waiting and waiting for what felt like hours for the little handyman to come walking through.

And the bad feeling he had earlier was starting up again after Felix didn't return.

AN: I changed some things because I want some action and peril in this part of the story. And I cleaned up some things with the writing and dialogue. I want some more fluff and I feel like even though their relationship is complex, it doesn't have to be too complex. Things are heating up around here.

Don't worry, Felix is fine.

For now...