On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the steering wheel arrived. Mr. Litwak had no idea where it had come from, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth - he just assumed he had an anonymous wealthy benefactor with a passion for racing games.
Besides, this was one less game he'd have to unplug for good. It always broke his heart whenever he had to get rid of a game, especially one as long-running and beloved as Sugar Rush, and he'd already had to scrap one of the original twin cabinets for it (lost to a large Coca-Cola from Subway that one of those two rambunctious game-hogging boys had carelessly knocked onto the control panel - he'd hit them with a week-long ban for that one). Deep down, he'd secretly hoped for some sort of far-fetched miracle like this.
But when the arcade re-opened on Friday, the regular Litwak's patrons noticed something was amiss.
"Hey, where's Vanellope Von Schweetz?"
"Isn't she usually always one of the racers?"
"Every time I've played, she was…"
Nobody thought too much of it at first - as far as Mr. Litwak knew, Sugar Rush just used a random number generator to determine its daily roster of playable characters. Which ones came up was entirely a matter of chance.
But then days became weeks. And as the Christmas break period drew closer - a time of year that always saw a spike in business for the arcade - Vanellope still wasn't coming up in the roster.
Litwak remembered that this had happened before. For a long time, in fact. Vanellope hadn't been playable for the first fifteen years he owned Sugar Rush - not up until the summer of 2012, when that weird King Candy character had mysteriously disappeared. At the time, Litwak had chalked it up to a small glitch that had worked itself out eventually.
Now, though, that glitch seemed to be back. And players were noticing. Litwak and his employees were pulling fewer and fewer quarters out of Sugar Rush at the end of every day - $8 on Friday, $6 on Saturday, a measly $3 on Sunday.
"She's the best one!" Litwak overheard one dismayed child gripe as she sulked away towards Hero's Duty. "With that teleporting power of hers? What's the point in playing if you can't choose the best racer? Otherwise, it's no different from any other dumb ol' racing game."
"I know," her friend grumbled. "And she's like the princess, isn't she? Like, the main character? It's like if they made Mario Kart without Mario. Who does that?"
There's some very odd things going on with this game, Litwak thought. New tracks showing up out of nowhere, unresponsive controllers, and now this? He'd have to bring his maintenance guy in to look at it on the first Friday after Christmas. He hated the thought of sinking more money into fixing the game than it was worth, but he just couldn't bring himself to unplug it again already. Old softie that he was, he'd always had a dopey fondness for those cute little racer characters.
Which was kind of silly, he knew. After all, it's not like they were alive, right?
"Man, Vanellope, you should see how they've got this place decked out for the holidays!"
Ralph was slouched on his favorite seat in Game Central Station, the one right in front of the open outlet where Asteroids used to be. The light that streamed through the open holes, though, was nothing compared to what was hanging from the cavernous ceiling of the power strip. The Surge Protector, stuffy and bureaucratic though he may be, had a surprising flair for festive decoration every Christmas season, and always festooned the building with strings upon strings of blinking lights and tinsel, holly wreaths and silver bells. At the far end of the atrium stood a dazzling sparkling Christmas tree, fresh-cut from the forests of Paperboy. The hundreds of game characters that came and went throughout the hub couldn't help craning their necks (if they had any) to take it all in.
"Well, show me, ya big doofus!" Vanellope giggled. "It's a hologram call!"
Ralph snorted. "Oh right! Duh!" Clambering to his feet, he held his BuzzzTube communicator up at arm's length, so Vanellope's holographic image could get a clear view of the entire atrium.
"Wow!" she breathed, her light-projected eyes all aglow. "Now that's what I call a buttload of holiday cheer! Hey, who's playing Santa this year?"
Ralph sat back down. "Zangief volunteered this time. Shoulda seen the look on the Angel Kids' faces when they sat on his lap. 'Since when does Santa Claus have a Russian accent?'"
Vanellope giggled into her hand. "I don't know why you didn't do it again, Chumbo. Remember that, two years ago when you were tossin' out presents and you knocked down the tree? That was the funniest thing ever!"
"I'm glad you thought so," Ralph chuckled. "Two feet over and I woulda nailed Eggman right in the noggin. He wouldn't have forgiven me for that so easily…"
Vanellope snickered, then let out a huge squeaky yawn.
"Had a long day, huh?" Ralph grinned.
"About usual," Vanellope said, rubbing her eyes. "Y'know how it is. While you lucky ducks got time off, there's kids over in Japan and Australia who can't wait to get their Slaughter Race on!"
"Well, then, you oughta get some sleep before your next big mission, shouldn't ya?" said Ralph. "The nastiest li'l ragamuffin in Shank's squad can't afford to be fallin' asleep at the wheel, now, can she?"
With a big stretch, Vanellope smiled. "That's you, Ham-Hands, always lookin' out for me. Yeah, I think I will catch a few Z's while I got the chance, now that you mention it. Hey, have fun at Gene's Christmas Eve party tonight, okay?"
"You got it, sister," Ralph beamed. "I'll save you some cocktail shrimp in Felix's freezer for when you come visit next month!"
Vanellope bounced, barely able to contain herself. "Only 32 days away! I'll see you before you know it! Catch ya later, Duke of Hurl! Merry Christmas!"
Ralph laughed. "And glad tidings to you, Sergeant Snot-Sleeves! Take care of yourself, okay?"
Vanellope giggled again. And then, with a beep, she was gone.
Ralph slumped in his seat, slipping the communicator into his pocket. He sat back and watched the arcade residents bustle past, no doubt each of them with some sort of big Christmas Eve plans to attend to.
Indeed, Ralph had plans too. That party started in less than an hour. But somehow, he didn't quite have the energy to get off his seat and get ready yet.
He wanted to go, for sure. He was grateful to Gene for the invitation, and he couldn't wait to sample Mary's always delicious Christmas cookies. After all, it wasn't every day that a lug like him gets invited into the penthouse for a genuine party. Who would ever think to invite a lousy bum who lives on a pile of bricks?
No, his lethargy had nothing to do with the party. It had everything to do with the familiar feeling of ennui that he always experienced whenever he got off the phone with Vanellope. Only this time, it was stronger than it had been after any of their conversations from the last four weeks - because for the first time in six years, Ralph was about to experience Christmas without his best friend.
It still hurt. Just as he'd told himself it would. It was nothing he wasn't prepared for, from the moment he'd seen Vanellope disappear up those steps into Slaughter Race to live out her dream. But he didn't know how much longer it would hurt for. He didn't know how much longer he'd have to deal with these sudden swells of aching emptiness, as if one of his arms had been cut off.
In his mind, Ralph replayed the conversation he'd just had. Vanellope had shared her harrowing tales of missions she and Shank had gone on in the past week - hijacking big rigs, running flaming oil tankers off highway overpasses, the whole works. Ralph had updated her on how he'd bluffed his way through another book club meeting and how the rest of the arcade had yet to acquire a taste for his patented Burnt Pie recipe.
He hadn't told her about how furious Calhoun had been when he returned to the arcade alone, and how she'd barely looked at or spoken to him since. He hadn't told her how Felix kept looking at him funny, as if worried he might have some sort of breakdown at any moment. He hadn't told her how bummed out all her former fellow racers were now that she was gone, how Taffyta was still blaming herself, how Rancis never seemed to talk to anyone anymore, how Candlehead was still asking Felix every day when Vanellope would be coming back…
He hadn't told her about his constant doubts about whether he'd done the right thing. About the daily battle he was having inside his own head, the inner shouting matches he kept having with… well, call it his conscience, he supposed. That little voice in the back of his brain, that kept getting louder and louder every day, begging, pleading with him to reconsider what he'd done.
The voice that he instinctively forced himself to ignore every time he heard it.
No, he hadn't told Vanellope any of this. Because he knew it'd wreck her to know. He knew it'd jeopardize her happiness to know just how much they all missed her. He didn't want her to feel like she had to sacrifice her dream just to please him. He wasn't going to be that selfish anymore.
Yes, it still hurt. But some things were more important. Somehow, in spite of everything, in spite of the constant pleas of that mysterious voice in his head, Ralph instinctively knew that letting Vanellope go was the right thing to do. It was like it was written into his very code.
With a heavy sigh, Ralph got to his feet and slunk off towards the outlet that led to Fix-It Felix Jr., absentmindedly raising his hand and brushing the wreath that hung over the grounding prong as he entered. He tried not to think about three Christmases ago when Vanellope had tried for ten minutes to jump high enough to reach that same wreath herself, then been so proud of herself when she finally did it.
He still had to wrap her present. But what was the point in doing it now, really, when she wouldn't see it for another month?
Vanellope tucked the communicator away inside the pocket of her hoodie and scootched back into the center of her hammock, eager to get whatever amount of rest she could. It wasn't much of a bed, but then again, Shank's garage was the closest thing she had to a house these days.
As she got comfortable in the hammock, she cuddled up with her new favorite toy - a ratty old stuffed gorilla that she'd pulled off the front radiator grill of a player's 18-wheeler she'd run off the road last week. The plush animal was dirty, with matted hair, and it smelled funny. It reminded her of Ralph.
She rolled over, and her eyes came to rest on her car - a real full-size car, electric sugar green just like her hoodie, which Felony and Little Debbie had customized with the heavily-inked visage of a frightening candy-coated flaming skull. It was lightning fast and the envy of every Slaughter Race player who had the misfortune to cross her.
But driving it had taken some getting used to. It didn't handle quite the same as her old vehicle, that lopsided candy kart from Sugar Rush that Ralph had helped her build all those years ago. One of the many things Vanellope was anticipating in her visit to the arcade next month was getting to drive that old fudge-bucket again. Ralph had assured her the racers were keeping it safe in the castle's garage until then.
Deep down, Vanellope wished she didn't have to wait another month. A big impatient part of her wanted to visit Game Central Station right now, to see the Christmas lights in all their festive glory, not just as a hologram. A wistful pang shot through her stomach. This was the first Christmas in six years that she'd be spending away from Ralph.
Not that anyone would be able to tell it was Christmas just by looking outside. Slaughter Race looked the same as it always did - hazy, hot, and smoky, its streets lined with broken glass and hollowed out corpses of cars. It wasn't the kind of game where the developers thought of decorating for the holidays.
Not like Sugar Rush.
Exactly once a year, it snowed all across Sugar Rush. The playful minds at TobiKomi had taken advantage of the in-game clock to slip in a few holiday-themed Easter eggs. Every Christmas day, the entire game world became dusted with shaved ice snow, which fell from the mint-green heavens for 24 hours and turned every track into a festive winter wonderland. The players never got to see it, what with the arcade being closed on Christmas and all, but it had been a joyful treat for Vanellope and her friends every year.
But not this year. This year, the only thing Vanellope would see falling from the sky was flaming police helicopters.
She turned over in the hammock, clutching her gorilla and trying again to find a comfortable spot. It was getting harder and harder to do.
Don't think about it, she reminded herself. It's just nerves. It's not how you really feel.
But every time she told herself, she believed it a little less. Staring up at the ceiling, listening to the rumbling of souped-up engines and machine gun fire outside the walls, her mind drifted unbidden to the thoughts that it had been landing on more and more frequently with every passing day. Thoughts arisen from the back of her mind, as if from some pesky inner monologue, a constant voice trying to steer her down its own path.
When Vanellope had first driven through the mean streets of Slaughter Race, it had felt like just what she needed to pick herself out of the same-old-same-old rut she'd found herself in back at the arcade. There were no tracks in this game! She could go wherever she wanted! The wide-open sandbox was hers to explore freely!
Only now that she was living here, she found that wasn't exactly the case after all. As a member of Shank's crew, her territory was confined to just one area of the massive game map. There was plenty more of the city to explore, of course, but that was for the players to see, not NPCs who had to carry out specific player missions.
And not that Vanellope objected to getting dirty - heck, how many chocolate mud puddles had she and her fellow Sugar Rush racers played in over the years? - but even she had her limits. Ralph hadn't been kidding about the smog. She hadn't noticed initially, but over the first few weeks, her little digital lungs, accustomed to the sugary-sweet air of her native game, were protesting more and more against Slaughter Race's grungy, gooey atmosphere. Every morning she woke up coughing.
That is, on the mornings she even got any sleep to wake up from. The skewed day-night cycle in Slaughter Race meant that nights only lasted around thirty minutes at a time. And that alone was barely enough time to get any rest - but then there was the noise. You literally couldn't go two seconds in this game without hearing a shootout, a car crash, a cacophony of explosions, or a gaggle of pre-teen players cursing up a storm over the in-game voice chat. Vanellope knew this game was rated M for Mature, but c'mon, have a little decency…
And that was the part she hadn't anticipated at all. In a game meant for adults, a game loaded with racing and shooting and blowing stuff up real good, there wasn't a single NPC her own age anywhere. No one to go to the playground with for a game of tag, no one to sprawl out on the floor and draw pictures with, no one to stay up late with making blanket forts and telling spooky stories - no one in Slaughter Race cared about any of that junk.
She had Shank and her squad, sure. But they were all about customizing their cars. It was practically all they ever did in their free time - what little of it there was between missions, because there were literally thousands of people playing this game at all hours of the day. Vanellope was amazed she'd managed to go these past three minutes without Pyro shaking her awake, telling her it was time to play scrublord to another level 1 newbie who thought they could make off with Shank's coveted muscle car again...and again..and again...
But c'mon, she thought, trying instinctively to drown out these pangs of doubt, it's not THAT bad. You're not REALLY missing anything back at that lame ol' arcade, are you?
She didn't want to wait for an answer.
Rolling over, Vanellope hugged her gorilla tighter than ever. An uncomfortable lump was forming in her throat. She started to quiver and glitch again, her body desperate to move, to do something. In six years, she'd never lost control of her glitchy ability this bad. She chalked it up, as she'd been forcing herself to do for a month, to just the stress of adjusting to her new home. Because that's what Slaughter Race was now. Her home.
…But hadn't it started earlier than that? Hadn't it started the day Sugar Rush got unplugged?
Her mind drifted, as it so often did these days, to Sugar Rush. Memories that rose automatically to the forefront of her mind - that exceptionally tough Random Roster Race where she and Rancis had tied for ninth, and agreed to swap off throughout the day as playable characters. The playful trash talk she always shared with Taffyta, neither of them truly meaning any of the nasty things they said. The time Candlehead had come to her in tears, lamenting that she'd lost her candle somewhere in the recesses of Peanut Butter Bog, and Vanellope had helped her wade through the stickiness to find it, because she knew how much it meant to her…
The epic climb up Soft-Serve Summit that Adorabeezle had challenged her and Swizzle to. Gloyd's annual Halloween pranks, and the year he'd scared Minty practically out of her socks by filling her kart with gummi spiders. Jubileena's goofy rhyming cheers that she made up to encourage everyone. Snowanna's funky little victory dance that she did every time she won a race. The time Crumbelina invited everyone over to her massive house for a sleepover, and how they'd all taken turns doing cannonballs into her luxurious caramel jacuzzi…
And the Palette Swaps, as they called themselves...Citrusella Flugpucker, Nougetsia Brumblestain, Sticky Wipplesnit, and Torvald Batterbutter, whom the developers had thrown into the game almost as an afterthought, with the lowest stats, least likely to make the roster. They'd come to Vanellope for advice, practically in tears, desperate to learn how to be better racers, and Vanellope had spent a whole week teaching them skills like how to drift and when to best utilize a Sweet Seeker power-up. They'd been so grateful for everything she'd taught them…
Sour Bill, her lovable little right-hand grump, whose glum expression hid what Vanellope knew was a genuine fondness and respect for her every time he brought those trophies out at the end of a race. Wynnchel and Duncan, the donut policemen, who were always up for an impromptu game of Cops and Robbers around the castle grounds…
And then there was Felix and Calhoun. They were the cutest couple Vanellope had ever laid eyes on. She was so honored to be chosen as the maid of honor for their wedding, even if it did mean wearing that stupid poofy pink dress again. She appreciated how they always took time out of their busy schedules to make it to her Random Roster Races, cheering her on from the top box right alongside Ralph…
Ralph.
Vanellope's eyes began to burn as she remembered all the good times with Ralph. The belching contests at Tapper's, smashing up that car in the bonus level from Street Fighter II, long nights spent out-boogying the competition at Dance Dance Revolution...and the view from the top of Niceland Apartments, where she and Ralph could see the entire arcade. And the knowledge that if he hadn't blundered into her game six years ago, if he hadn't been the first person in her life kind enough to help her, she wouldn't have had any of these memories at all…
Here we go, Vanellope thought bitterly, as she glitched more spastically, her anxious body flashing into a mess of blue pixels. The old back-and-forth routine again.
It was practically a daily occurrence at this point. She hadn't told anyone about it, not even Ralph, because she kept telling herself this was something she needed to work out on her own. But it really was like her brain belonged to two different people these days, two distinct voices in her mind, both arguing opposite sides of the same issue.
Did you make a mistake? she thought.
No I didn't, she counter-thought, because wasn't this my dream? An exciting new game with no boundaries?
It had been her dream...sort of. At least, from the moment she'd set foot in Slaughter Race...less than 24 hours before she'd made the decision not to go back to Litwak's.
Your dream was to race with Taffyta and Rancis and all them, the other half of her brain protested. That was all you ever wanted for fifteen years. And you had it. Why'd you give it up? Because you were bored?
Vanellope breathed hard through her nose, as hard as the metallic-scented air would allow. This was a very good question. One she didn't have a particularly compelling answer for.
C'mon, it wasn't like I was bored with them! I was just tired of the routine!
So you ran away? she shot back at herself. You ditched your whole life and all your friends just to make yourself happy for, what, one day?
Her hands gripped her gorilla tighter than ever as she buried her face in the back of its grimy head.
Look, shut up, alright?! Ralph told me I'd made the right choice!
And then her brain delivered the finishing blow.
Yeah, 'cuz Ralph wants you to be happy - and you told him that this is what you wanted. Is it?
Vanellope winced, blinking her eyes hard. The dam was about to burst. The memories seemed to be playing all at once - her fellow racers, Felix, Calhoun, Ralph...how they'd always been there by her side…
...And then, as if someone in her mind had turned on a movie screen and forced her to watch, she remembered how it felt six years ago, the first time a player had selected her as their avatar. The joyful elation of being chosen, the thrill of being in the driver's seat and coursing across the track in tandem with the player's controls, the warm full-up feeling that came from the sight of that little girl's smiling bespectacled face when she crossed the finish line first...and the knowledge that she, Vanellope, had helped a player win, for the first time in her life, after everyone had always told her she couldn't…
And now she really couldn't. Because nobody in Slaughter Race cared about playing as her. It wasn't even an option. She was an NPC now. Her goal was to stop players from winning, to stop them from enjoying the game. Shank called it "maintaining the challenge". But something about it had never felt quite right.
And as the tears flowed freely down Vanellope's cheeks, she finally understood why.
She clutched the half-medal around her neck. Parts of the words "You're" and "Hero" were all that remained for her to remember Ralph by. Ralph, who'd risked his life to help her realize her dream. Her real dream.
A shuddering sob escaped her lips as, for the first time in weeks, both halves of her brain agreed on something.
This isn't where I belong.