CHAPTER 6

The way the light streamed into Game Central Station was really pretty, and Taffyta was feeling sort of bad that she'd never noticed it before. She'd only been coming here for fifteen years, after all. But GCS had always just been a place to pass through, not somewhere to hang out. Definitely not somewhere to stand around admiring the architecture.

These days, she seemed to be spending a lot of time there. Enough time to notice not just the nice way the light streamed in, but also how fast the scrolling electronic letters blipped across the signs above each outlet, the way the corners of the massive hall were spotless even though she never saw anyone cleaning, the chips and scratches on the benches lining the middle of the hall, and even the way Surge Protector clicked his pen in and out without seeming to realize he was doing it.

She'd gotten to know the Tapper's outlet pretty well, too. That experiment had been repeated a few times, each one maybe, possibly going incrementally better than the last. King Candy had gotten a root beer dumped on him by Tails last time, who'd then sped out of the bar laughing, his tails helicoptering behind him.

But she spent a lot of time in Game Central Station with him wandering back and forth. Even though when she looked across it from one end to the other, it seemed like they should be able to walk the length of the hall in five minutes—ten if they weren't in any hurry and eleven if they rode instead of walked up the escalators at the north end—it somehow seemed to take much longer, like GCS was a world to explore.

Right now, though, she was staring at the light falling to the floor in solid, luminescent golden shafts, illuminating the huge windows to a blinding glare haloed with fringes of brightness. And she knew King Candy was staring at her, because she could see him out of the corner of her eyes, watching her with his arms crossed over his chest. The gumdrop on his foot jingled as he tapped his shoe on the ground. She knew he was staring because she'd been silent for a good two and a half minutes now, and two and a half minutes to him when he was waiting for an answer was like a lifetime.

"You're not saying anything," he finally pointed out.

"I know I'm not," she said.

He chuckled. "Well, that was something." He sidled into her field of vision. "That's a little bit of an improvement."

She met his eyes. "There's no way we can do that."

"Ugh, Taffyta, why did I have a feeling you'd say that?"

Under normal circumstances, the conversation they'd been having would have freaked her out so much that she would have insisted they couldn't have it here. But their presence had an interesting effect on the other denizens of the arcade—as they moved through Game Central Station, everyone else moved away from them, like polarized magnets. The result was that there were few places more private than their bubble of space in GCS. Even in Sugar Rush, Taffyta guessed it was possible that someone might be eavesdropping. Not that Vanellope would do that. At least, Taffyta didn't think she would. It wouldn't be hard, though. A couple licorice wires, gummy bugs in the walls—

She shook herself. That obviously wasn't happening. But she was still glad King Candy had chosen to have this conversation in Game Central Station, where they were guaranteed not to be overheard.

"You probably had a feeling I'd say that because you just said something totally crazy," she replied.

"It's not totally crazy," he said. "Just—hoo-hoo—marginally crazy."

Looking around to make sure no one had failed to recognize them and accidentally come within earshot, she said in a low voice, "There is no way we're doing that. I wouldn't even know how to do it."

"Well, that part's easy—"

"I mean I wouldn't know where to start to even be in a place where we do that," Taffyta interrupted. "You're talking about going in the code vault, and there's no way in a million, billion years that anyone's going to let you near that."

He shrugged. "Well, you know, I do like a challenge."

With a helpless sigh, she said, "No. No way." When he looked at her, an eyebrow raised, she said again, "No! I'm serious. Even if I thought this was a good idea, which I totally don't, by the way, I can't help you get in the code vault." She looked back towards the light spilling in through the windows. "You're my friend, but I can't do that."

King Candy looked impatient. "Look, I'm not going to mess with anything."

"What do you mean? You just said you want to change the code on the randomizer!"

"Oh, well." He waved a hand. "Nothing important, I mean. You heard it yourself, most of your fellow racers don't even like that thing. You don't like it."

"That's not the point!" Taffyta looked around again to make sure everyone was still keeping their distance. Some toadstools from Super Mario Bros were sidling along the wall well out of earshot. Everyone else had pretty much ceded this side of Game Central Station to them. The emptiness made the hall look even larger than it actually was. A thought occurred to her, and even though it had nothing to do with—well, anything, she said, "It would be fun to drive around out here, wouldn't it?"

Bouncing on his heels, he said, "I used to do that. Surge hated it. Wait—hey, don't change the subject." He tweaked the brim of her hat. "Nice try."

"I wasn't!" she protested, grabbing her hat and pushing it back up. Then, she grinned at the idea of him peeling out in Game Central Station, doing figure eights and skidding in circles, with Surge looking on disapprovingly and trying totally futilely to stop him. She could just picture the glee on his face, the unbridled joy. Then, looking at him, she sighed. Maybe she had been trying to change the subject. "I haven't tried talking to Vanellope yet. She might agree to go back to the Random Roster Race."

"You know she won't," King Candy said flatly. "Haven't you noticed how obnoxiously stubborn she is? She'll insist on sticking with the randomizer until she drives—pun intended, hoohoohoo—the game into the ground."

Taffyta shifted uncomfortably. "I don't think she would. She'd notice. Vanellope's smart." When he scoffed, she said, "She is. And she cares just as much about this game as any of us do."

"Does she?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Of course!" Taffyta spluttered. "She's the princess! Er, president, I mean."

Rolling his eyes, he said, "Right, whatever she wants to call herself. She also spent fifteen years as an outcast—yes, yes, I know, no need to say it, because of me, and I'm not proud of it, blah blah blah, but the point is, well, I'm not sure the depth of her feelings for Sugar Rush are as, you know, profound as yours or mine are."

She opened her mouth to respond, then closed it. He had a point, not that she really wanted to admit it. Maybe King Candy was comfortable with what he'd done to Vanellope, but Taffyta definitely wasn't okay with the role she'd played in it. Admitting that Vanellope still held the whole game at arm's length was just another knot in the tangle of guilt that Taffyta carried around with her all the time.

But…maybe he had a point. If Vanellope didn't love Sugar Rush as much as Taffyta and King Candy did, then maybe she'd let the players bleed away until it was too late to do anything. Maybe it was their duty to the game to fix it themselves.

Or maybe not. It still seemed like a terrible idea. Still, she sighed and said, "Okay. So go over it again. What do you want to do?"

With a grin, he put his fingertips together and said, "I knew you'd come around."

"I'm not coming around."

He just smiled. "So. We know that the gamers are abandoning Sugar Rush, right?"

"I don't think abandoning is the right word," Taffyta said uneasily.

He waved this away. "Our—your—popularity has taken a nosedive. Well, not you specifically, Taff, you seem as popular as ever, you know, when you're on the roster—" This wasn't exactly true, as Vanellope was still by far the most popular racer in the game, but it was nice of him to say. "—which, hoo-hoo, brings me to my next point." He stopped and cleared his throat. "Why are the gamers leaving Sugar Rush in droves? No new game's been plugged in, right? We're not malfunctioning, we're not glitching. So what is it?"

"The randomizer," Taffyta said quietly.

"Exactly," he said. "The randomizer gives every racer a chance to be on the roster. Which sounds all well and good if it's you, or Candlehead or Minty or Snowanna or even the glitch, I may not like her but I supposthe I have to admit she can race. But if the racers are, oh, I don't know, Torvald, or Sticky, or Nougetsia? And what if all four palette swaps were to be on the roster at the same time?"

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Probably even fewer gamers would be playing. The recolors get chosen the least, anyway."

With a calculating grin, King Candy said, "And at that point it would behoove the glitch—"

"Vanellope."

"—to admit that the randomizer's a terrible idea and abolish it. Go back to the Random Roster Race."

On the other side of Game Central Station, a group of people was pointing at them. Others seemed to be directing traffic so that no one came anywhere near them. It was too far for her to see who any of them were, but she was pretty sure at least a couple of the Crazy Taxi characters were down there. Maybe that wasn't too surprising. It went without saying that none of the other racing games in the arcade had wanted Turbo anywhere near them, but they'd been dealing with it in different ways. No one had seen the Finish Line racers in days. It seemed like the denizens of Crazy Taxi were taking a different tack and actively stirring up resentment.

King Candy's eyes flicked in that direction, then back to her, and she crossed her arms over her chest. "Yeah, all of that makes sense," she said. "But that's not the part I have a problem with. It was the other thing. The way they were all going to be on the roster at the same time."

With a shrug, he said, "Oh, that'll just require some minor—hoo-hoo—coding."

"Yeah. That's where I'm sort of getting hung up."

Putting a hand on her shoulder and steering her towards the escalators, he said, "It'll only take me a few minutes; I'd be in and out of the code vault before anyone even knew it. The code's simple, exactly what I did for yours, only I'll probably have the algorithm ping them at a higher percentage, we want to make sure they're really getting chosen a lot, and at the same time—"

Taffyta stopped in her tracks, arms still crossed. "It's not the amount of time it's going to take you. It's the fact that you want to go in the code vault at all. I mean, even if I thought we should do this, how am I supposed to sneak you in there?"

"Well, I hadn't gotten that far yet."

Heaving a deep sigh, she took her hat off and ran a hand through her hair, then immediately regretted messing it up. She needed a mirror but the bathrooms were all the way at the other end of the hall. "We'd have to create an insane diversion, and Vanellope's not stupid. As soon as something weird started happening, she'd want to know where you were."

With another grin, he said, "I like the way you're thinking, Taffyta—we just need to figure out what kind of diversion we need—"

But he stopped when she held out a hand. "We can't. We'd never be able to pull it off, and even if we could, I just…I really can't help you get into the code vault."

If he was disappointed, he hid it well. She was disappointed in herself, somehow. Wasn't she supposed to be helping him? That's what she'd set out to do. That's what she'd told him she was going to do. And it wasn't a bad plan, exactly, it just…well, it definitely betrayed all the trust she'd built with Vanellope, for starters. And then after that, the rest of her fellow racers. She couldn't do it, or let him do it, or have anything to do with planning something like this.

Okay. So she'd have to disappoint him. Big deal! Well…it was kind of a big deal. But it wasn't like friends never disappointed each other. Like, just the other day, Candlehead had wanted to climb trees in the Candycane Forest, and Taffyta had said she had other plans and couldn't go. The reality had been she didn't want to; those trees were sticky and gross, and the last thing she wanted to do was get trapped at the top of one. But Candlehead had looked crestfallen and Taffyta had felt bad. Not bad enough to change her mind. Sometimes you just had to hold your ground and…and make your friend feel bad.

"You don't seriously think we could pull something like that off…do you?" she asked.

King Candy arched an eyebrow. "Didn't you just say you can't help me?"

"Yeah," she said. She was just curious. On the face of it, it sounded totally crazy. How could the two of them possibly orchestrate something like that? Just starting to think about it made her head hurt. There were so many variables, so many things to go wrong. So many ways they could get caught. "But like, for the sake of argument. Do you?"

He narrowed his eyes in thought, staring into the space just above her shoulder. "Well let's see. The code vault's guarded, yes?"

"One guard," Taffyta said.

"Were you supposed to tell me that?" he asked, his smile sly.

Wrinkling her nose in chagrin, she said, "Probably not. I think there's cameras, too."

"Anything less and I'd be disappointed. At least I know they take me seriously, hoohoohoo." His look of concentration returned. "Okay, so." He bounced from his heels to his toes and back. "For me to get into the code vault, we need to take care of cameras and one guard. To satisfy your curiosity, yesth, I think we could do that."

She nodded slowly. Then, realizing she was actually thinking about it, she forced her mind off that track and gave him a stern look. "Well, just because we could doesn't mean we're going to."

King Candy opened his mouth to respond, a flicker in his eyes that might have been the start of a glitch but might have just been a glint of determination. But then, before he said anything, he shut it again. It was another moment before he said, "Well, do you want to try running up the down escalator again, or have you had enough of that for today?"

It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Was he annoyed? Hurt? Disappointed? Or none of the above? Taffyta knew he understood that going in the code vault was like, mission critical, do not allow. Maybe he was just thinking about how he'd get in for the sake of thinking about it? It still wasn't something she wanted to encourage; it would, after all, be all too easy for someone to overhear them and totally misunderstand, and think they were for real planning a code vault break-in—

"Hey, you two look guilty."

Taffyta jumped and let out a tiny scream, whirling around only to see Wreck-It Ralph standing there, his hands on his hips. "Oh!" she said. "Um, hi. That's weird, Ralph, why would you say we look guilty…uh…"

King Candy glanced at her, glitched to Turbo, and then looked to Ralph. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that, Ham Hands. Aren't you trying to reform yourself into a good guy?"

"Nah," Ralph said, his gaze shifting to Turbo. "I'm good with the bad guy thing. Being bad doesn't mean I have to be bad, you know?"

"Nope," Turbo said unconcernedly.

"Maybe you should come to a Bad Anon meeting." Ralph rolled his eyes. "I doubt it would help, but with you, it's definitely not going to hurt."

Making a face, Turbo said, "Isn't Bad Anon that lame kumbaya, hand-holding group that Clyde from Pac-Man runs?"

"Yup, that's the one," Ralph said.

With another glitch, back to King Candy, he said, "Well, I'm glad you found your zen, Ralph. I think I'll pass, though. Doesn't—hoo-hoo—seem like my scene, if you know what I mean."

By this point, Taffyta's heart rate had slowed. Ralph wasn't suspicious of them, he was just giving them a hard time, like he always did when King Candy was around. With a snort, Ralph said, "Yeah, that's for sure—it's definitely not your scene, but I don't think that's as cool as you think it is."

King Candy just shrugged. "I sthuppose I stopped being cool right around the time 8-bit went out of style, didn't I?"

Rolling his eyes, Ralph said, "Nice try. You stopped being cool when you got two games unplugged, bozo. I'd say you didn't help your case with this latest stunt, but really, you didn't have much lower to sink."

Raising an eyebrow, King Candy asked, "Does it count as my latest stunt when it was actually fifteen years ago, and I only got caught recently? I know fifteen's more than the number of fingers you've got, Ralph, but you are barefoot. You can feel free to use your toes, too. I won't be offended."

Anger flashed across Ralph's face, but then he held up his hands and said, "You know what, fine. You wanna be that way, I can just be on my merry way. Forget I even stopped over here."

And that set off alarm bells in Taffyta's head. "Ralph, wait!" Hopping up to grab his arm—how stupid, like she was going to what, stop him from leaving? Nine foot tall Wreck-It Ralph was really going to be slowed down by her, at a whopping three feet and sixty pounds? But he actually stopped. Probably used to Vanellope hanging off him. "Why did you come over?" she asked before he changed his mind and kept walking.

Ralph glared at King Candy. "Maybe another time, if you can get your creepy little friend to behave."

"No, seriously." She glanced over her shoulder at King Candy and gave him a meaningful look. There was no way Ralph had just stopped over here for a social call. Sure, she and him had sorta kinda become friends, a little bit, but not enough that he'd spot her from the other side of GCS and come over. "King Candy's just…joking. Yeah."

Ralph snorted. "You need to work on your acting skills there, kid. I know I look dumb, but I can tell antisocial behavior when I see it." He shot King Candy another dirty look and got a cool stare in return. "I shouldn't even bother, but the reason I came over was to ask him a question."

Taffyta motioned to King Candy—a motion that she hoped conveyed, you should apologize and be nice because we, and by we I mean you, need all the friends we can get in this place.

It probably didn't. In fact, if the way he was furrowing his forehead at her was any indication, she probably just looked a little crazy. But after a second, he looked at Ralph, adjusted his crown on his head, and said, "I suppose I could choose my words a little more carefully. I didn't really mean to imply that you can't count."

"Yes you did."

"Well, fine, but you know, not every joke's going to be a winner, right? We'll just take that one out of rotation…"

This was, Taffyta was sure, about as close to an apology as Ralph was going to get. And King Candy did look mildly contrite, though she knew that he was lying about the joke. He still thought it was funny. She could tell from the little twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Ralph put his hands on his hips and looked up at the ceiling, a long-suffering expression on his face, before looking back to Taffyta. "Okay, Muttonchops. I don't really buy it, but I can appreciate that you're putting in the work to train him. I already walked all the way over here, anyway." He put a hand to the back of his neck. "Here's the thing, you two." Then, he paused, seemed to think about what he was going to say—rethink what he was going to say, as in, maybe decide not to say it at all, and Taffyta felt her heart move somewhere into the region of her vocal cords. She felt certain that whatever Ralph wanted to tell them, it was a good thing. "We—I mean, Felix and me, oh and I guess technically Gene, I have to say that—we were wondering if you'd want to visit our game sometime. You know, check out how things have changed since, oh, 1987?" He paused and smirked a little. "The last time you were cool, King Puffy Pants, in case you're keeping track."

King Candy blinked, genuinely surprised. He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again and just stared at Ralph. All Taffyta could do was watch him, her lips pressed together while she waited for him to say something. Something hopefully nice, that wouldn't make Ralph take back what he'd just said. "Er," King Candy finally replied. Then, he cleared his throat and shook off some of the surprise. "Ralph, I'd be delighted to accept the invitation."

Taffyta clapped her hands together and couldn't quite muffle the squeal of happiness, which made Ralph look at her and grin. "Oh, thank you thank you thank you, Ralph, it'll be so awesome to visit another game!"

"Not that Tapper'sth isn't the height of fascinating," King Candy said, surprise giving way to a slow grin on his face. "But, well, I have to admit—it'll make a nice change to see something new. Old, I suppose, if you want to be technical."

Unable to contain her joy, Taffyta hugged Ralph quickly. He patted her head awkwardly and she skipped to King Candy's side, then grabbed his hand happily. Ralph shook his head, looking like he wished he wasn't smiling. Good to know that her enthusiasm was contagious, she guessed. "We always figured you fancy 64-bit racers thought you were too good for Fix-It Felix, Jr.," Ralph said. "Looks like the tables have turned."

Raising an eyebrow, King Candy replied, "For the record, you were right. Ooh, do you see what I did there? Tables turning, record…" When this was met with silence, he waved a hand and sighed, "Why is it that no one in this arcade can appreciate a good pun?"

"I'd appreciate it if I heard one," Ralph said. A smirk flashed across King Candy's face.

"Attention. Attention," a voice said over the Game Central Station PA, cutting the conversation short. "The arcade will open in fifteen minutes. Please report to your games."

Ralph ran a hand through his bristly hair. "Well, Muttonchops, King Cavity, it's been real. Gotta get back to the salt mine, though," he said. He started to turn away, then looked at them again. His gaze seemed more probing than usual and Taffyta began to get nervous again. What if he thought they were up to something and not just idly talking about a hypothetical situation? Not that he'd even heard them. Had he?

Characters were scurrying out of games, running late from whatever assignation they'd been on and rushing to get back to their own before the first quarter alert. "Let Vanellope know when you're gonna come by," he said.

"I believe those are the terms of my visitation rightsth," King Candy said wryly.

Annoyance flashed over Ralph's face. "You don't like it, you don't have to leave Sugar Rush at all."

Holding up his hands, which glitched red for a second, King Candy said, "And of course I didn't mean to imply that those terms are anything other than completely reasonable."

"Huh." Turning his gaze to Taffyta, Ralph said, "You're in charge, Muttonchops. I hate to say it, but you're the closest thing to an adult between the two of you, so keep him in line."

"Attention. Attention. The arcade will open in ten minutes. Please report to your games."

"Yeah, yeah," Ralph muttered. Then, with a wave, he said, "See you two around. I'll give you a tour of the stump when you visit."

The wrecker walked away, covering the distance in one stride that would take Taffyta five or six. "I will!" she called after him, belatedly realizing that his suggestion to her to keep King Candy in line hadn't really been a suggestion at all—not to mention, it really had required a response. She felt like kicking herself. Her dumb silence had probably ratcheted up his suspicion of them a few notches.

Watching Ralph go, King Candy said. "Wow. I pride myself on expecting most things, but I didn't expect that."

Taffyta glanced at him. "You don't always expect the important things."

"Oh? Like what?"

With a smirk, she said, "Like how much you like me. No way did you plan for that when you—well, when you took over the game."

He gave a surprised laugh. "I—well no. That wasn't part of the plan, I have to admit."

Sobering, Taffyta looked away from him and twisted a strand of hair around her finger. "You didn't expect what happened six months ago, either. Ralph coming to the game, and Vanellope racing, and the reset. All of that."

King Candy snorted. "Now that's where you're wrong, my dear. I'd been expecting to get caught ever since I got to Sugar Rush. I just didn't plan for every eventuality."

She could feel his eyes on the back of her head, and when she turned back around to face him, his arms were crossed over his chest. "'Cause you can't plan for everything," she said.

His eyes narrowed a little. "What I think I hear you saying is that I can't possibly plan for everything were we to, oh, let's say, break into the code vault to alter the randomizer code?"

Why couldn't she be less obvious? The second he said this, she looked around furtively. Now, though, no one was paying attention to them at all. The few characters remaining were booking it from outlet to outlet. "Attention. Attention. The arcade will open in five minutes. Please report to your games."

"I wasn't saying that," she said, wondering if this was actually true. Maybe her subconscious had made her blurt that out about not always being prepared exactly because she was still thinking about it. And what a terrible, horrible idea it was. "But I don't think you can plan for everything, and what if we get caught? That would be, like, really bad. Ralph just said you can visit his game! You don't want to mess that up, right?"

Instead of answering, King Candy stared into the distance, as Sonic zoomed from Street Fighter II back to his own game. Taffyta thought she'd caught a flicker of…guilt on his face, but it was gone way too fast to really register it, let alone be sure what she'd seen.

"Attention. Attention. The arcade is now open. Report to your games immediately."

"You're not on the roster today, right Taff?" he asked. He knew her schedule as well as she did. This question was just a formality. She shook her head, and he raised an eyebrow at her. "What do you say we head back to your house, and I can tell you exactly how, if I were planning on breaking into the code vault, I'd do it in a way that guaranteed success and not getting caught?" When she gave him a flat look, he grinned. "Purely—hoo-hoo—hypothetical, of course. Just to see if I've still got the flair for pulling something like this off, you know."

The gleam in his eyes made her smile despite herself. "I'm pretty sure you do," she said.

He spun on his heel and bounced a few steps, then looked back at her and offered her his arm debonairly. Hypothetical. It was just hypothetical. Taking a deep breath, she walked forward and took his arm.