"Hey, Big V! Heads up!"
With a startled glitch, Vanellope leapt off the hammock and hastily tried to dry her tears without anyone noticing. Pyro, Felony, and Little Debbie had just burst into her little corner of the garage, all three of them wearing expressions of utmost exhilaration.
"Oh, uh, hey guys," Vanellope squeaked, trying to sound casual and inconspicuously wipe her nose at the same time. "What's the big haps?"
"Got another crew of wannabe edgelords outside tryin' to jack Shank's ride!" Little Debbie said eagerly. "Butcher Boy overheard 'em say they just registered their accounts this morning! There's no way they're gonna get past us! Ready to rock their worlds?"
Keeping her back to her coworkers, Vanellope stuffed her half-medal down the front of her hoodie and rubbed the last of the tears away. "Yeah, I'll be right there, dudes! I just, um...woke up from a power nap and I gotta clean the eye gunk out, y'know? Go on ahead, I'll catch up!"
"WOOOO!" Pyro screamed, pumping both fists in the air. "Let's crack on, fam, this is gonna be bonkers!"
And the three of them bounded away to their cars. Not one of them even seemed to have noticed that Vanellope had been crying.
Vanellope straightened her hoodie and trudged toward her car. It was a challenge to make her feet move; her stomach seemed to be filled with lead.
I'm just gonna have to tell Shank, she thought as she wrenched the driver's side door open. Shank will understand. She wouldn't want me to be unhappy either.
And as she considered the very real possibility that she could be back at Game Central Station within a few hours, that she could be spending the holidays with Ralph and Felix and Calhoun and all her friends after all, she felt a warm fuzziness spread throughout her digital body. The thought of Ralph's beaming face at the sight of her showing up a month early swam before her in her mind. She couldn't help but smile at it.
Which she supposed was beneficial. After all, you can't pwn n00bs with tears in your eyes.
"Are you sure this is gonna work?"
"Dude, I saw Pewdiepie do this once. How hard can it be to jack a stupid car?"
xXm3m3l0rdXx returned his bolt cutters to his inventory as he and his friend StoneKoldKilla237 wrenched open the door to Shank's garage. The uncustomized avatars would've been indistinguishable if not for their nameplates. Sneaking as well as their jerky running animations would allow, they crept into the semidarkness, melee weapons at the ready.
"There it is!" squeaked xXm3m3l0rdXx, swinging his crowbar at nothing in his excitement. Sitting before them, against the back wall of the garage, cloaked in shadow, was Shank's legendary wine-red muscle car, the Holy Grail of Slaughter Race.
"Oh man, you weren't kidding!" StoneKoldKilla237 gasped. "We're gonna be the richest kids on the whole server with this baby!"
And then a voice cut through the darkness. A husky, teasing sort of voice.
"Isn't it past you boys' bedtime?"
xXm3m3l0rdXx hastily stowed his crowbar. "Oh, sh-"
VRRRRRMMMMMM.
The garage lit up with six pairs of headlights as vehicles revved to life all around the hapless avatars. They'd been caught off guard by Shank's entire crew - Pyro in his tricked-out school bus, Felony in her souped-up roadster, Little Debbie in her towering 4x4, Butcher Boy in his intimidating horned behemoth, and the newest addition to the team (no doubt the result of some weird nostalgic cross promotion), Vanellope Von Schweetz in a brightly decorated convertible.
And there in front was Shank, smirking malevolently as she gripped the steering wheel of her fiery crimson muscle car, long wavy hair cascading in front of her glinting mischievous brown eyes.
"I think you weasels need to learn a thing or two about respecting private property," she grinned.
Cursing incomprehensibly, xXm3m3l0rdXx and StoneKoldKilla237 made a hasty run for it as Shank hit the gas, nearly splattering them against the back wall. They scrambled back outside into the garish yellow sunlight, clipping through each other all the way, desperately mashing the controls that would seat them safely into their own beat-up junkers.
But before they could accelerate, a loud VOOP drew their attention. Vanellope's candy-green car had literally just teleported in front of them in a cloud of blue pixels, blocking their path.
"Going somewhere, Diaper-Babies?" Vanellope intoned.
The would-be car thieves continued to freak out, their shrieks an unintelligible tangle of mic-clipping static. They didn't even notice Felony tearing out of the garage.
"What the f-"
RATATATATATAT. The gatling gun mounted on Felony's hood riddled the two cars with bullets, turning the trunks into metallic Swiss cheese. A good third of xXm3m3l0rdXx's vehicle health vanished.
"Haul!" StoneKoldKilla237 screamed. "HAUL!"
Tires screeching, the two thieves pulled the best three-point turn they could with six vehicles continually bashing into them. Finally, they spotted an opening, and they were free.
"Oh no you don't!" Little Debbie shouted gleefully. "This party's not even half over!"
The chase was on. Shank's crew tore up the dingy orange streets in pursuit of the thieves, weaving back and forth across the white lines and sending every nearby player scurrying for their lives. Shank laughed out loud, tossing her hair back in the wind as she floored the accelerator. Vanellope kept up the rear, trying to maintain a smile as best she could.
"You take that one!" Shank called, pointing at the car in the right lane. "We'll take this one!"
Butcher Boy wedged his car in between the two thieves, forcing StoneKoldKilla237 against the concrete barrier; sparks flew as the player's uncustomized starter vehicle scraped and crunched the divider.
"You've heard the one about the bull in a china shop?" Butcher growled. "Here's how it feels to be the china!" And with a flick of his wrist, he swerved, wedging his vehicle's razor-sharp horns into the undercarriage of StoneKoldKilla237's car. Its back tires lifted up helplessly as the front bumper scraped the asphalt, sending up a blinding shower of sparks.
StoneKoldKilla237 pushed his car to the limit, bumper shrieking on the pavement in protest. But there was no escape now. Pulling up behind, Little Debbie punched a button beneath her steering wheel, and in perfect unison, three red-tipped rockets shot forth from her roof, scrawling smoky white trails above the highway. They struck the highway barrier, blowing it to smithereens and flipping StoneKoldKilla237's car end over end across four lanes. It landed upside-down, smoke billowing from every opening of the crippled vehicle.
Scrambling awkwardly out the shattered window, StoneKoldKilla237 hastily made a run for it - only to stumble smack-dab into Felony's car as it drifted to a halt right in front of him. Another chunk of health gone. One more hit and it was back to the title screen…
Felony coolly withdrew a small handheld device from her glove compartment, one that crackled dangerously as she fingered the button. "You promise to play nice from now on?" she hissed as she hopped from the driver's seat.
"Oh, c'mon!" StoneKoldKilla237 pleaded. "Don't tase me, bro!"
Felony rolled her eyes, then shot the taser. 500 volts ripped through StoneKoldKilla237's digital body. And with a final resounding CLANG, the player's avatar vanished in a puff of red particle matter, leaving only a pathetic chalk outline on the road.
"Poor scrub deserved it just for that worn-out meme," Felony chuckled. "What is this, 2007?"
xXm3m3l0rdXx wasn't having much better luck. He couldn't shake Shank, Pyro, and Vanellope. The engine of his car whined in agony as they all raced up the highway.
Pyro's mammoth bus pulled up on the passenger side, weaving like a hungry cobra. Pyro leaned out the driver's side window, goggles down, double flamethrowers at the ready. "You play with fire, lad, and you get burned!" he laughed maniacally.
xXm3m3l0rdXx's expressionless avatar face betrayed the panic in his voice. "Oh, you've GOT to be sh-"
FOOOOSH.
Vanellope instinctively flinched as Pyro shot twin tendrils of fire into the thief's car. She knew this was just a video game, but she still couldn't help feeling bad for the poor kids who crossed Shank's path like this. Did they really have to lay it on this thick? "Maintaining the challenge", sure, but what's the point of even playing if it's this impossible to win?
Not that Vanellope herself was completely without sin, considering what was in her glove compartment right now. When she'd first joined the squad, Shank had given her free pick of whatever weapon she wanted. She'd settled for the sticky bombs, since they felt the most familiar - they were the closest thing to Sugar Rush's trademark Sweet Seeker power-up that Slaughter Race had.
And as the chase turned towards an unfinished off-ramp, Vanellope knew the exact maneuver Shank was going to expect of her.
Still on fire, HP dwindling by the second, xXm3m3l0rdXx went flying off the highway into the sky, parts of his car's undercarriage clattering away into the wild blue yonder. Shank and Pyro skidded to a halt, tires screaming - but Vanellope shut her eyes and glitched, glitched off the highway and thirty feet down, to just yards ahead of where the thief was going to land. Popping the glove compartment open, she grabbed a sticky bomb and prepared to chuck.
With a bone-rattling CRASH, xXm3m3l0rdXx's mutilated car became reacquainted with the earth. The hapless and still smoldering player avatar barely had time to wonder how the heck this little candy-haired girl got in front of him so fast when Vanellope gritted her teeth and hurled the sticky bomb as hard and as far as her little arm would allow.
It landed on the thief's hood with a thunk.
And in the split-second before she detonated it, Vanellope heard the kid on the other end of the voice chat yelp, a pained and fruitless cry of anguish - a cry that no one who plays video games for fun should ever have to emit. A cry that was her fault.
"Aw, what the f-"
KABOOM.
The car exploded into a million pieces. Beneath the din, the familiar CLANG told Vanellope that xXm3m3l0rdXx had been completely obliterated.
And in her moment of empathy, Vanellope had forgotten the all-important final part of this maneuver - glitching away to safety at the last second.
The shockwave from the explosion flipped Vanellope's car clean over. Her heart leapt to her throat as she tumbled end over end, shutting her eyes tight as the vehicle crashed upside-down on the sidewalk, trapping her. Her face smacked the concrete. The headrest of her passenger seat landed on her tiny ankle with a sickening THOCK.
The pain was excruciating. It was like someone had jabbed a white-hot knife in her leg. Hissing violently, trying to hold the tears back, Vanellope clutched at her chest. She could feel her half of Ralph's medal under her hoodie, still in one piece.
Tires screeched all around her. Car doors slammed. Then the familiar sound of Shank's voice, higher than normal, panicked.
"Big V! You all right?!"
Trying her best to focus, Vanellope shut her eyes and glitched. In a flash, she was out from under the wrecked car, lying in a heap a few yards away. She gingerly got to her feet. Her ankle stung as she tried to put pressure on it.
Little Debbie and Butcher Boy each clutched one of Vanellope's arms as they helped her to a standing position. "Easy there, Big V," Butcher Boy said in a soothing tone, "you're bigger than your pain! Are your chakras still all in alignment?"
Vanellope coughed. "Yeah," she wheezed, "sure, whatever. I'll be fine...not the first wreck I've ever been in, let's be honest here…"
Shank laughed; Felony and Pyro smiled appreciatively. "That's the spirit, Big V," Shank said. "Love that confidence of yours. Awesome job back there, too - that'll be the last time those jokers try to mess with us!"
Pyro hooted in celebration. "'S bleedin' right, Shank! These mugs try faffin' around with these rides, they get pied off! That's how we do, mates!" he hollered, finishing with a celebratory dab.
Vanellope grimaced. Did that really just happen?
Shank whipped her sunglasses off her head and tucked them into the pocket of her leather jacket. "C'mon, team, let's all of us get back to the garage. We gotta get Big V's car back in top shape before the next wannabe comes knockin' on our door! Right, Big V?"
A pit welled up in Vanellope's stomach. She glanced awkwardly at the ground. Now was the time.
"Um, actually…" she began nervously. "Shank, there's, uh...there's something I gotta tell you."
Shank stopped and stared, curious. So did the other four drivers.
Vanellope tucked her hands behind her back, hobbling carefully on her sore ankle. "Look, you guys have been...um, great to me and all, but I've been doin' some thinking lately. Y'know, about the arcade and stuff? And, well...I just kinda feel like…" She knew this wouldn't be easy. "...I feel like I don't belong here after all," she spit out as fast as she could.
Shank cocked her head to one side. "What do you mean, Big V? Didn't you say this was your dream, to come to a place like this and look for new adventures and new challenges? And look at you, you've done great - you're a natural programmed racer! You practically put us to shame!"
Vanellope sighed. "Thanks, Shank, that means a lot comin' from someone like you, it really does...but I can't help it, I miss home. Back there, I'm a playable character! I'm workin' together with the players instead of blowin' 'em up! I dunno, that just seems more...rewarding to me, y'know?" Her eyes dropped to the pavement again. "And don't take this the wrong way, 'cuz you guys are...uh, cool and everything, but...I miss my friends. I gotta go back, Shank, I just gotta."
She glanced up at Shank, wringing her little hands in trepidation. "You understand, right?"
Shank closed her eyes. She seemed to be thinking very hard about something.
It suddenly occurred to Vanellope just how much taller and stronger Shank was compared to her.
"Well, Vanellope," Shank finally said. Her voice was heavier than usual. "I'm sorry you feel that way."
Vanellope blinked. Shank's expression was hard to read. She did seem a little disappointed. But there was something else in her eyes that Vanellope hadn't seen there before. Something cold.
And then she realized that the rest of the squad had strode up around her, closing in on her in a circle. She was surrounded.
An uncomfortable itchiness crept up Vanellope's back. "Um…" she murmured. "Okay, then, so...I guess I'll just be, ah...going, then? Is, uh...is that what's happening?"
Shank crossed her arms, squinting down at Vanellope.
"No. I don't think that's what's happening, honey."
Vanellope barely had time to react as she heard Felony click the button behind her.
500 volts shot through her tiny body, paralyzing her, seizing her muscles. She tried to scream, but no sound came out.
Then everything went black.