In Sheep's Clothing

What the four didn't realize as they'd been chased helter-skelter throughout the map was that King Candy wasn't just the ruler of this sugar-encrusted kingdom.

But also that his abilities to control the land, to see all that had taken place on the surface, stretched beyond that of any programmed monarch. He wasn't only the figure in the shadows, observing unsuspecting characters as they wandered in and out periodically.

He was the map. He was the crows that harassed the 8-bit programs back in the corn mazes. He was the uni-candy-corn that spotted Ralph and Felix as they traveled obliviously through the fields.

And now, he was the newly-evolved army that was waiting in the depths under the map. With this power, he could achieve anything he wanted. With this power, no game character - or human being - could take from him what they already had years ago.

He stormed into the throne room where his kart was sitting cold and empty, fuming over his failure to capture them. To capture her. She had always been the threat and would continue to be, despite all of his attempts to bind her.

"Be gone with you!" He snapped at his servants. They did as he asked and once he was sure he was alone, he shed his outer layer after becoming much too uncomfortable with it on. He could only maintain this persona for so long before his pixels started resisting.

When he was in his normal state, he liked being in spaces devoid of all light. With the only glow coming from the all-seeing crystal ball right beside his throne. The only thing that limited his sight was that scheming, defective little creature, Vanellope. It was like she was keeping an invisible cloak around them.

She was more powerful and dangerous than he could have ever predicted, and she didn't even know it. She didn't even know why.

"No worries!" He chuckled anxiously to himself. "She will be dealt with fairly soon... and those... imbeciles..." He clasped his hands together. "I should have gotten rid of them as soon as they barged in through here! No! Now's not the time to dwell on things!"

He focused on the crystal ball, completely clouded on the inside as if it were thinking as much as the king was.

"I still have a race to win... AH-!"

He'd fallen out of his own throne, and the code of his being started to malfunction.

Calhoun felt as if she'd been babysitting all four of these riff-raffs.

She'd been "entertaining" herself after Felix went after his displeased lover by listening to this peculiar conversation between Vanellope and Taffyta. At first, it started off as an inane chitchat about meaningless things.

Vanellope asked Taffyta about why she looked the way she did, why she sounded the way she did, and why she had such a bad attitude all the time. Taffyta rolled her eyes and responded to each question with snark in her voice.

And honestly, if Calhoun were being pegged with so many of those questions, she'd answer the same exact way.

But then it became interesting when Vanellope asked the question, "Why can't I be a racer like you?"

Taffyta shot back with, "Because you're a glitch, Vanellope."

The outcast scoffed. "Well, thanks, Captain Obvious. I meant why am I a glitch?"

"How should I know?" Taffyta's voice lowered and she turned the other way.

"Come on, Taffyta, you've been inside the castle. You probably know more secrets than I ever will. Now spill the flipping-flapping beans!"

And Calhoun's ears instantly caught onto the talk and her eyes followed Taffyta's body language when she spoke. And Calhoun knew from experience that an uncomfortable shifting usually meant guilt, or a secret about to be revealed.

For a split second, she considered retrieving the boys to have everyone gathered while Vanellope interrogated the girl. But the more sensible part of her mind told her that she couldn't, because she knew exactly what was keeping them occupied for an hour. She'd been in that situation before.

Once.

"I have nothing to say to you, glitch." Taffyta turned away, crossing a leg over the other and folding her arms across her chest.

Vanellope wasn't about to back down. She marched right over to the platinum blonde racer and had her hands on her hips.

"Why'd King Candy lock you in the Fungeon?"

Taffyta barked a laugh. "You really don't know anything, do you?"

"That's why I'm asking!"

There was one comment that Vanellope made earlier that Calhoun couldn't stop pondering.

"Vanellope."

The girl in the mint sweater took her attention away from Taffyta to gaze up at the tall lady.

"What did you see in the castle?"

And to this, Vanellope sat back on the ground and stared forward, holding her head in her hands and taking in a deep breath, like she was still trying to believe her own eyes. Calhoun knew that look all too well.

And she shook her head. "You wouldn't believe me."

Calhoun sat beside her, weapon at her side. "Try me."

Vanellope bit her lower lip and shoved her hands in her pockets. Taffyta's eyes were big and curious as she waited for Vanellope to reveal the information. But as she opened her mouth to speak, her pixels began uncontrollably phasing in and out of existence. "W-woah! W-what's h-happening?"

Calhoun got to her feet and decided she didn't care what she'd see when she went over to get Ralph and Felix. This was more important.

...

Felix bent down to Vanellope's level as she was sitting on the ground. "Do you know why you have these 'hiccups', 'Nelly?"

"N-nope!" Vanellope winced in pain a bit as her pixels spread and came together. "It just h-happens whenever it w-wants! B-but never t-this bad!"

Ralph reached down to his injury, where he could feel that awful tingling numbness like a leg falling asleep and being shaken awake. He lifted his overalls to check on it. It glitched at the exact same time Vanellope did.

Felix was still analyzing Vanellope, but Calhoun caught him looking down at it.

"All good, Wreck-It?"

His first instinct was to retort with a "why do you care?", but the Bad Guy particles in him were mellowed out, somehow, and he said to her, instead, "Yeah. I'll live."

Calhoun turned back to Vanellope.

"What really boggles my mind is why your king is so heavily invested in capturing you. What good is it to permanently delete apart of you? What does he get out of it?"

Vanellope shrugged. "N-no idea." Then her eyes lowered and her head hung slightly. "But... he did s-say that there was something about my mind that mattered to him." She reached up to her forehead. "I d-don't know what that loony bird meant by that, but he seemed pretty ticked off about not getting what was in there."

Calhoun's eyes narrowed in thought and she directed her attention to Taffyta. "What happens if Vanellope becomes a racer?"

When Vanellope asked this, Taffyta clammed up and sneered at her, but at the insistence of this tall space marine, Taffyta cleared her throat and answered, honestly, "She'll be added to the roster."

"Don't see what's so bad about that."

"King Candy said..." The blonde girl continued in a weakened tone. "... that the players would see her glitching all over the place. And then they'll think the game's broken."

Felix and Ralph both felt their chests clench, as if someone reached in through their sternums and grabbed them by the heart.

"Then the game will get unplugged..." Felix said.

"And..." Ralph lowered his head. "She can't leave the game." He closed his eyes and his fist tightened. Then he straightened his back and spoke firmly. "We don't know that. The gamers could love her, glitch and all."

Calhoun didn't agree, nor did she disagree. Being new to the arcade, she had yet to experience the joys of malfunctioning game codes. Those that have existed since the beginning had the best of luck that they were still operating, after decades of running nonstop.

Felix's expression said that he wasn't too sure, because he was always the more cautionary individual, especially when it came to codes. His eyes shifted between Vanellope and Ralph, like he didn't know whose side he was on.

"Ralph..." He began, softly. "What if it's true?"

"Then..." The big man said. "We'll stay with her until we figure out a way to fix her code."

"But what about our game?"

In the beginning of this escapade, Ralph was more than willing to drop their game like a hot potato in search of better, but seeing how concerned the thought made Felix right now made him reconsider.

If he truly wanted to become a hero, he couldn't have been that selfish. But the thought of Vanellope being left here, without a place in the game and on the run from this increasingly-hostile kingdom, made him sick to his stomach. That wouldn't have made for a hero, either.

There was no winning either way.

He raised his hands up almost in defeat. "I don't know." And ran them through his wild hair with a heavy sigh.

Calhoun knelt in front of the little girl. "But you can control it, can't you?"

"S-sometimes!" Her blue pixels erupted every so often. "But r-right now... I f-feel like I can't even c-control my own words."

The soldier looked back at Taffyta. "Is there anything else you want to enlighten us on?"

"Uh..." The pink racer looked down at the ground. "Just that... I don't think King Candy was meant to be here."

Everyone sharpened their attention.

"Keep talking." Calhoun said.

Taffyta shook her head. "That's it. I swear, I really don't remember anything else."

Vanellope looked down at her hands. "King Candy said he wanted to get what was inside my head..." Her eyes widened. "Maybe that's why I c-can't remember, either! H-he's messing with our heads!"

Calhoun stood. "Think he's messed with more than just your heads, kids."

"What do you mean?" Ralph asked.

She turned to him. "Think about it. This diabetic sugar shack is a kid-friendly game where the only goal is to win. There's no real enemy here. Why would the game's ruler go through hell just to keep one racer out of the program?"

The area was silent as she continued.

"You're worth a entire whale more than you think, soldier. I reckon that tyrant's done crimes that go beyond trespassing to other people's games and hijacking the prize."

Felix stepped forward. "How do you know, ma'am?"

Calhoun was quiet for a moment, and then looked at him. "Why else would a king of a candy-themed go-kart game have mutated cy-bugs?"

None of them had the answers, but they trusted the marine. She'd seen otherworldly things that these vintage programs had never encountered until this very moment.

Vanellope stood up and her glitch had finally settled down. "All I know is that I was destined to be a racer. I feel it in my code. And King Candy kept bringing me back to erase my brain, or something! Maybe he... I don't know, feeds on it! On all of ours! Maybe underneath his puffy sleeves and tight pants, he's actually a vampire!" She shoved her hands in her sweater pocket. "If he's keeping me from crossing the finish line, then... maybe it'll do something big. Something that he doesn't want to happen."

Calhoun threw her weapon over her shoulder.

"Then let's go get what we came here for and put an end to this icing-topped nightmare."

The rest of the crew continued on, but Ralph stayed behind, still torn up inside. As much as he wanted to tell Vanellope to reconsider and keep a low profile, he couldn't. Not when he saw the spark in her eye when she knew she was getting that kart.

Not when he swore he would make it happen.

He could protect her from a clinically insane clown who put on the mask of a reasonable creature. But a game's unplugging was different. That was like trying to pull her from a black hole.

What was he to do? Vanellope's future depended on him. On the both of them.

He heard small steps approach him and looked down to see his lover by his side.

"Is everything okay?" Felix asked, his big eyes making Ralph's code tingle in a more pleasant way than his injury.

Ralph sighed and his arms drooped low to the ground. "What if we can't make it happen, Felix? What if her game gets unplugged and we can't save her? What if... what if the players don't like her?"

"Ralphie," Felix took the big man's hand in his own. "No matter what happens, we promised we'd look after her, right? And that's exactly what we're going to do! We can't just let her be a sad Sally while everyone else gets their fancy kart and a chance to become the best!" He held Ralph's hand up to his cheek. Well, he held his index finger. "We owe her that, at least."

"Right, but I still don't know, I mean... what if something goes wrong when we-" His voice trailed off. "Wait... what did you just call me?"

"Oh!" Felix's face tinted. "W-well, I thought I'd... that is... i-if you're okay with it."

Ralph grinned, and found it amusing that Felix was still shy after what they'd just done. And he admired that Felix wasn't ashamed even if he was bashful. That little man was something else, and it puzzled the wrecker how he'd managed to capture him before anyone else could.

He felt like the luckiest Bad Guy in the arcade.

He swooped up Felix and shared another passionate kiss, moaning softly against his lips. When he pulled back he said, "I'm starting to think that this little screwup of mine wasn't such a bad thing after all."

A short distance away, Vanellope had her hands on her hips and shouted,

"Barf me a river, Jeeves, let's hop to it! We don't got all day!"

AN: Whew, these past few weeks have been chaotic.

My job is taking up a lot of my time and so has my art and Sledge shots. I've honestly considered deleting my tumblr because it feels like so much work posting as much as I have with not as much payoff as I would've wanted. I know I don't have to post at all, but I really want to spread my art around.

Also, it irks me that my most popular posts are ones that aren't my own art. But thus is the Internet, I guess.

And then we found a lost baby kitten so I've been occupied taking care of it.

People have their grievances about authors writing one-shots, but I honestly feel like it's a much easier way to write. It requires less commitment than writing a full story.

I'll be taking more time to make art and story chapters, but I'm still devoted to these two and my stories about them.