Catch Me If You Can

Vanellope hoped her little legs could keep up with how fast she was running. She nearly tripped and fell flat on her face. The little Butterscotch girl behind her was struggling to maintain speed. But Vanellope was not about to slow down. Especially when she was starting to recall what King Candy's tools were capable of.

"My lady, where are we going?"

"There's another exit down in the Fungeon!" Vanellope shouted into the hallways.

"How do you know?"

Yes, how did Vanellope know? It wasn't as if she'd used it to escape the last time she was here. And yet, somehow, she could picture it as easily as she could picture her own two feet sprinting through the halls.

And what surprised her even more was that she knew exactly how to get there from here.

Both girls slid to a halt as two CLAW guards popped out of the revolving halls - which was something that Vanellope did not know about - and pointed two spears towards them. "Don't make another step unless you want a part of you permanently deleted!"

Vanellope froze in complete and utter shock as she realized that the tips of their spears were made out of the exact same device that was almost used on her. She and the Butterscotch girl took small steps back, keeping their hands locked together. And when they turned towards the other direction, two more guards appeared out of nowhere.

Vanellope's glitch, which seemed to be out of commission for whatever reason while she was there, started back up again, and before any of those CLAWs could get close to her, she made her escape. But unfortunately the little Butterscotch girl didn't. She was still trapped in the circle of death.

"Little girl!" She called out. "Stay there, I'll come and get you-!"

"No, my lady!" Was the response she received while the CLAW guards moved closer to their prey. "You have to run as far away from this place as you can."

Vanellope's lower lip quivered. "But I never got to hear your name..."

The Butterscotch girl gave a weak smile. "Camilla. You may not remember me now, my lady, but soon, you will. Now please find the others and leave-!"

And the last thing Vanellope heard was a digital crushing noise, making her wince a bit. Looking back, a cloud of yellow pixels burst into the air. Vanellope felt like she was glued to the floor for a split second before she witnessed the CLAWs turning towards her.

Swallowing the hard lump in her throat, Vanellope turned around and bolted down the dim halls.

"What's going on in this candy-coated Heart of Darkness?" Ralph asked in a low and threatening tone. His anger wasn't directed at the racer he was questioning, but he couldn't have hid it from any of them.

Taffyta looked down and took in several deep breaths, as if her talking was drawing out more energy from her than she actually had. "King Candy, he... he said he thought he made some ground-breaking discoveries. I don't know what he was talking about, but he told me that I couldn't leave this prison until he tested out his theory."

Felix felt sick to his stomach as he thought about how coincidental that they hadn't found that cy-bug Calhoun was talking about. He didn't know what in the world King Candy would have done with it in this game, but if it required his own people to be put in prison, it couldn't have been good.

This game was starting to feel less and less safe the longer they stayed.

"Where's Vanellope?" Ralph asked.

"If she's not here, then she's probably in..." Taffyta's eyes grew wide. "Oh my glob... you guys gotta get me out of here!"

Ralph knew keeping her there and trying to interrogate her further wouldn't have helped. She was just a child following orders, he assumed. Just like the rest of the children. Besides, his stomach actually twisted when he considered the consequences of leaving her there with the rest of the victims.

As if on cue, the sound of a rifle firing echoed down the halls. Then frantic steps hurried their way.

"Take cover!" Calhoun yelled at the three of them.

Ralph instinctively shielded the much smaller man behind him and the entire prison shook as a bomb went off in the distance. Calhoun was thrown off her feet and onto her face. Debris and pieces of the walls flew towards them, and Ralph felt one of them cut across his upper arm.

But the effort she made to quickly get rid of those horrors was futile. When she dared to look back, both insect hybrids were free now. They were only a few feet away from the crowd, and they did not seem at all thrilled to be near them.

Calhoun's grip tightened on her weapons. "Let's book it!"

Ralph's hands gripped onto the prison bars and with a surprising amount of required strength, he pulled them apart. "Come on, kid, let's get out of here!"

Taffyta lost her balance and fell onto his palm. Throwing her over his shoulder, he turned, grabbed Felix's hand, and ran. This dungeon was so much longer than it seemed while they were searching for Vanellope. It was almost as if the walls expanded and added more curves to their path. And then they each stopped one by one when they entered an area that was pitch black.

Torches on the walls lit up one by one, revealing a seemingly empty hall.

Felix moved forward. "What are we waiting for?"

"Felix, look out!" Ralph shouted.

And as soon as he made a step onto one of the checkered squares on the ground, a shrill alarm went off and an enormous saw blade flew out in front of him, just barely missing him by a hair.

And then various traps opened up from the walls, the floors, and the ceilings. Saw blades made of sharpened candy corn and spears poked out from all directions. But only after a certain amount of time.

This seemed like yet another mini-game, where one couldn't have sped their way through it without a plan. A very dangerous, sadistic mini-game. Whoever designed this had a very sick sense of humor.

"I'll go first." Calhoun said.

"No, wait!" Ralph said. But Calhoun proved herself to be quite skilled in the art of timing. She waited for the saw blades to disappear into the surfaces, and stepped forward. She didn't appear nervous, but Ralph assumed she had as much of a storm going on in her heart as the rest of them.

She hopped, ducked, and skid her way towards the hall, and made it without a single scratch.

"Move slowly." She emphasized loudly on the other side. "This ain't a place to be stupid."

Felix turned to Ralph and grabbed his hand. "I'll go next."

Ralph shook his head. "No, no, no, bad idea."

But Felix wasn't about to step down. And Ralph watched with so much anxiety in his chest as Felix timed each of his moves. Once or twice, he winced when he watched Felix almost bust his head open on one of those traps.

If they made it out of here alive, Ralph was going to have to have a talk with the person in charge of this horrific contraption.

Ralph released a long sign of relief once he saw Felix appear beside Calhoun. He must have been holding his breath the entire time because he felt his own lungs desperately gasp for air.

Ralph gently lifted Taffyta and looked her in the eye. "Sorry about this, kid."

She was much too tired to protest, so Ralph stuck her in the front of his overalls and made his way across, being even more cautious due to his size and his own clumsiness.

When he locked eyes with Felix, he saw that the handyman was wringing his hands in anxiousness. Even Calhoun looked uncertain that he would be able to make it.

He seemed to be doing pretty well, until he felt something unexpectedly poke him in the side, causing him to become distracted. He looked down at his side where he felt it, but didn't catch it in time. It didn't hurt; it felt like someone had jabbed him in the side, which would have felt similar to a gentle tap to him.

"Ralph, look out!" Felix screamed.

In his haze, he didn't see the blade drop down from the ceiling and almost hit him. But he moved his head out of the way in time. Though his steps seemed to be out of sync with his carefully planned movements. He felt a scrape against his leg, but that was as far as the injuries went.

He wasn't too worried about it, because Felix had a magic hammer. But that small stab he felt earlier concerned him. Especially since he didn't see what it was that he was stabbed with.

He made it towards the end and Felix wrapped his small arms around his leg. "Oh my land, don't ever do something so dangerous like that again!"

Ralph almost laughed at the statement.

Calhoun rolled her eyes. "Let's shake a leg, lover-boy, this place ain't done with us yet."

...

Vanellope tried her best to glitch her way out of the guards and the threats that lurked underneath the yellow brick surface. The correct way came to her almost as easily as basic intuition. Her feet seemed to have a mind of their own and took her to places that she could have sworn she never saw.

Good thing there was more to her code than being a potential racer. Even if she didn't know where she was going, she could count on the numbers that defined her being to take her there.

And she did manage to keep ahead of them, thanks to her special ability. At least this castle didn't nullify her glitching power. Which didn't actually make any sense to her, since it practically made her invincible.

Something caught her eye while she made her way through one of the castle rooms. She thought she might have been seeing things after her pixels had been scattered so many times, but her entire body froze.

She turned her head to gape at a portrait that didn't seem like it belonged there. Maybe it wasn't real at all, but Vanellope trusted that she was of sound mind and body when she cast her full attention on it.

It was of a little girl wearing the biggest, pinkest dress she'd ever seen. The girl was smiling, her black hair done up in a fancy style, with small pieces of candy aligning her bangs and the strands of hair that hung at the sides of her face.

And it took her a second to register exactly who was in that painting. It was like looking into a mirror. A completely different mirror that didn't show what was present, but what was past.

"There she is!" The Claws snapped her out of it as they stampeded towards her.

Vanellope counted on her quick reflexes going forward because now she was much too bewildered to focus her glitching.

...

"Move it or lose it!" Calhoun yelled as she moved ahead of the group. Well, it was easy for her to say that. She wasn't over six hundred pounds and much too tall for this place.

Why was it that everywhere Ralph went, he always had to duck down wherever he walked? It was almost as irritating as trying to hold basic objects with his huge hands.

But that was the least of his worries. The side of his body where he was poked started to sting. And he didn't want to waste time looking down at it while they were still in pursuit.

They climbed up a steep, spiral staircase, were they could see much brighter light on the surface. Ralph made his way ahead of the group, wanting to clear the area of enemies before Felix even got close to the surface.

And then he was met with a tiny body slamming into his leg.

"Ah-!" A little girl shrieked.

Ralph looked down. "Vanellope!"

She shook her head out of its dizziness. "Ralph! Felix!" She stood up and started making her way back down the staircase. "No time for catching up! We gotta go back!"

"What?!" Everyone shouted.

"Just trust me! I know another way out of this!"

...

They all reluctantly followed her back down the staircase of death, while Ralph was trying his best not to fall forward and crush everyone in front of him. The wound on his side was growing in pain. He hissed and stopped in his tracks as his hand reached up to the area near his ribcage. When he pulled it back, he saw a tiny bit of blood.

"What...?"

Felix came up to him. "Ralph, are you okay?"

Ralph lowered his hand and covered his wound with his arm. "I'm fine, let's go."

Vanellope led them down a hallway that wasn't filled with various traps - there was the possibility that those traps were only put there for the adults' inconvenience - and towards a dead end.

"Kid, what are we doing here?" Ralph demanded.

"Please tell me there's another way out!" Felix whimpered slightly.

"Cool your jets!" Vanellope told them. "I know what I'm doing."

Her hands searched each individual brick, looking for the exact one that would help them make their escape. "It's gotta be here somewhere..."

But it was no use, because it was no longer there. Of course it wasn't there, it would have made things too easy. Ralph handed the sleeping body of the pink racer to Felix and pushed Vanellope out of the way.

"Step aside, kid." Though he was in pain, he gave the wall the hardest punch he could have given it. But just like the wall from the other prison, it was unscathed.

Ralph stumbled back, completely dumbfounded. "Kid...?"

And a snooty, villainous voice called to them from behind. "I'm so glad you all decided to drop by, but you seriously didn't think I would let you leave so early, did you? We haven't even had dessert, yet!"

King Candy was dressed in darker colors, with black gloves over his slim hands and a long red cape trailing behind. On both of his sides were two Claws and his trusted police officers.

Ralph stood at the front of the group and shielded everyone else behind him with one large arm. "Back off, Candy. I don't know what your twisted idea of fun is, but we ain't sticking around to find out."

King Candy cackled. "But Ralph, do you really want me to demonstrate to you how much power I actually have? It's not just the castle I control, but everything in this very game acts on my behalf. Sugar Rush is my canvas, and I have all the art skills."

"What are you doing to your people?" Calhoun spat out, her weapon aimed at the opposing forces. "Why are you planning to do with those mutated cy-bugs?"

Candy sighed. "Great, you've ruined the surprise. If you really must know, I'm mainly... improving the humble citizens of my domain. I'm giving them a chance to become something bigger. Better. And stronger." He looked at Ralph. "Something that you of all people should appreciate, Mr. Bad Guy."

Calhoun had her finger on the trigger. "You sick, son of a-"

"Now, now," Candy waved a hand. "There's no need to be hostile. Especially when there are children present." He turned back towards his battalion. "Dispose of them, and leave the glitch to me."

Vanellope boldly stepped forward. "What did you do to my memories? Why do I remember being in the castle when I've only been here once?"

Candy paused, was quiet for a second, and turned around. "What did you just say?" Vanellope didn't say a word. "Forget keeping her alive. I want all of them off of this property and out of my game's database!"

The guards stepped forward to do what they were told, but Ralph refused to move. Despite Felix tugging on his arm and telling him to get out of the way. In the time it took Vanellope to feel helpless, she just remembered that she had a unique ability.

And had an idea.

"Quick, everyone, hold hands!"

"What?!" Ralph said.

"Now's not the time for a sweet embrace!" Felix shouted.

"Just do it!"

Ralph held her right hand and Felix had her left. Calhoun locked hands with Ralph and held Taffyta in one of her arms.

Vanellope took a deep breath, cleared her mind, focused all of her energy, and before anyone could stop her, all of the pixels in her body dispersed into the air. Her eyes were closed when she'd done it and when she opened them, she saw daylight and the air around her was less moist and musty. She looked down and saw that she was standing on a ground made of frosting.

And turned her head up to see that the others were gathered around her. She breathed a sigh of relief and held her hand to her chest. "Thank the code! I didn't think that was going to work!"

Felix looked traumatized. "L-let's not do that again, if we can avoid it."

Vanellope nodded. "Let's get out of here before they come back."

But before they could travel any further, Ralph dropped to his knee, crying out softly in pain. His hand held his side.

Felix rushed to his side. "Ralph, you're hurt."

"I'm fine!" Ralph tried to stand up, but it stung too much. It wasn't agonizing but he didn't have the energy to move as fast as they were before. "I'm fine..."

"No you're not!" Felix grabbed his arm. "Show me."

"Felix-"

"Ralph-!"

Felix yanked his hand away and nearly passed out from the injury he saw. There was a tear about the size of his handy hand in Ralph's overalls. It was bleeding profusely and made Felix feel physical pain in his own body.

It was like any ordinary cut he'd seen, but the difference was that Felix could see some of the pixels around the area fizzle and phase. He looked up at Ralph, completely shocked, and the wrecker turned his head in shame.

"I'm sorry," He spoke softly, breathing heavily through his nostrils. "For everything."

AN: Vanellope has the shining and it helps her see the history of the castle O.o. (Not really, but can you imagine?)

Anyways, I'm taking my time with this because as of tomorrow, I'll be starting a new job. And I'll be taking classes to qualify for my Master's. So yeah, I'll be having my hands full.

Also, I saw an interview with Jack McBrayer, and he is basically a carbon copy of Felix. Sounds the same, acts the same, looks the same. Pretty sure he is just Felix in real life. It's quite humorous.