Choleric
Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the arcade
Not a character was stirring, not even a knave.
The games were partying, happy for the break,
Unaware of the event they would involuntarily partake.
It would start in the game with the villain who wrecks,
Said villain would soon face a reality he'd have to accept.
Ralph tossed and turned in his small shack as he began drifting off to sleep. Right as he felt his consciousness about to slip, a sudden crash was heard at the brick pile behind him. Ralph immediately sat up in shock and slowly made his way to inspect the damage.
"Hello?" He carefully surveyed the smoldering brick pile. "What was that?"
"Oww…" A small ghost whimpered as her two siblings slowly made their way out.
"Pinky? Inky? Blinky?" Ralph remarked in confusion, "What are you guys doing here? The Christmas party ended hours ago."
"Eh? Oh!" Pinky exclaimed in surprise causing Blinky to smack her and Inky to speak up.
"Tonight Ralph, we are not just the Pac-Man ghosts, but we are the ghosts of Christmas three!"
"Oooh~!" Blinky and Pinky howled ominously.
Ralph looked at them in disbelief. "Uh…huh. Well I'm going to go back to sleep. Go bother Q*Bert and them, next block over."
"Wait-Wait! We're specifically here for you Ralph!" Pinky protested. "We have to show you something important!"
"Important? Like what?"
"Like how much you mean to all the people you care about! This year Ralph, you are to receive the gift of 'Life Appreciation'!"
"…What?"
Blinky floated over to him and spun around him quickly. "There. We have now made it like you were never programmed."
Ralph blinked, "Wait what? WHAT?!"
Inky nodded, "This is so you won't feel under-appreciated any more." He grinned knowingly.
"Under-appreciated? I don't feel-"
Pinky giggled, Ralph's words falling on deaf ears. "We'll be back once you learn your lesson!" She winked at him as the three ghosts disappeared.
Ralph tried to grab at them only hitting air. "What lesson?!"
Ralph searched the brickyard for the pac-man ghosts but his search turned up empty. He decided to retire back to his shack home, but it was oddly missing. "Hey!"
He ran his hand through the place where his home originally was to no avail. He then stepped back and noticed a lot more was missing than just his new house. His stump, as well as Q*bert and friends' block, we all gone as well. Ralph was about to head straight over to the Pac-Man machine to get the new events straightened out when he heard a loud chime in the air.
"Quarter alert? In the middle of the night?"
He readied himself in his usual position, but his familiar word bubble never popped up. Ralph tried shouted his lines, but it was no use as he was sure the in-game camera never panned over to him in the first place.
"That thing's always been useless anyway." Ralph thought. He looked over and saw Felix in position, ready to go.
"I can fix it!" He said proudly, seemingly unaware of the issues that were popping up.
Ralph just shrugged and prepared to climb the building only for his arm to phase through it.
"No no no no no!" He panicked as he desperately tried to grab onto the escape ladder. "Am I glitching? Is our game broken?" He tried a couple more times, but felt no jolts of code disruption. The revelation did nothing to soothe his fears however.
Ralph looked out and saw Felix climbing building still oblivious to what was going on. "Psst! Felix! Hey Felix!" He tried to loudly whisper, but Felix kept going, completely ignoring him.
The ducks came out and started pecking the windows and dropping bricks onto the building.
"Fix it Felix!" The nicelanders complained.
Ralph blinked, confused at the new sequence he didn't recall being part of their code.
Felix did his best repairing the windows, but the player for this round turned out to be rather inexperienced and the game ended quickly. Once the 'Game Over' screen faded away and the player left, the Gene walked out of the building to meet Felix, who had taken a nasty fall due to an unexpected duck.
Ralph walked over to them "Hey guys something weird is-"
"That wasn't the best of games Felix." Gene said sharply, crossing his arms at the repairman.
"I have to admit, that duck took me by surprise there." Felix rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "I can't say I can blame the player for that."
"The player? Or you? Need I remind you Felix our entire livelihood depends on you; unfortunately."
"I'm awfully sorry Gene, them ducks scare me something fierce. I'll do better next time, I promise."
"See to it that you do. I'm afraid I'm going to have to dock you pay."
Felix frowned. "A-Are you sure? That's the third time this month and…"
"If you have time to complain then you have time to do better! Can you even remember the last time you won a hero's medal?"
Ralph clenched his fists. "Hey! That's enough-!" He tried to force Gene to turn around, but his hand passed through him too. His eyes widened.
Felix rubbed his arm, "Well umm…"
"I thought so." Gene sneered. "You know Felix, we know you're the hero of the game and all, but that doesn't matter much if you never win. I overheard some of the tenants talking about moving to the Mushroom Kingdom!"
"I'm sure that's just…talk. Don't go worrying yourself none."
Gene ignored him. "Hmph, I can't say I blame them. Who doesn't want a hero like Mario? At lease he isn't scared of ducks." Gene sighed. "But we're stuck with you Felix. We bake you pies and give you medals just for you doing your job. Tell me, is that fair?"
"B-But that's what's in the code. They're all things I need-"
"You need? We need you to win Felix! You have one job and you can't even do that!"
Felix rubbed the hammer at his belt, looking down.
"Well, tomorrow's another day." Gene shrugged as he walked back into the building., not giving Felix a second thought.
"Felix!" Ralph argued, "You're not just going to let him say all those things about you are you? You know none of that is true."
Felix just walked into the building slowly and sadly.
"Felix! You can hear me right? FELIX!" Ralph shouted only for Felix to close the door in his face. "That's it." Ralph growled as he headed for the tunnel to Game Central Station.
He wasted no time jumping into the tram. "When I find those little rainbow blobs I'm gonna-" He stopped as he realized the tram wasn't moving. "Oh come on!"
Ralph wiggled the cart, trying to get it going, but eventually gave up as the action was getting him nowhere. He got out, kicked the tram, and headed for the tunnel. Before he could walk in however, he stopped and slowly stuck his arm in fully expecting to be stopped by an impassable wall. He was more than a bit surprised when nothing happened. "Huh. I'm not glitching after all." He remarked as he ran for the station. "So what in Niceland is happening to me?!"
Ralph eventually arrived in Game Central Station honestly a bit surprised, and relieved, that the place wasn't burning down to the ground due to raining fire and brimstone. He shrugged off the blessing as he made his way to the Pac-Man console.
However, before he could reach the gateway he saw Clyde heading out. "CLYDE!"
The floating orange ghost stopped. "You don't need to yell now. I'm right here."
Ralph blinked, "You can see me?"
"I'm a ghost, I can see lots of things." He remarked casually. "So who are you? A glitch who found his way around the code-confines? A game-jumper who met his untimely end? A paradox character who isn't supposed to exist in this reality?"
"You…see a lot of things don't you?"
Clyde somehow shrugged. "Been around for awhile, you tend to get used to it."
Ralph shook himself out of curiosity, "Clyde, it's me! You know, Ralph? The villain from Fix-it Felix? A regular at Bad-Anon? You know me right?"
"Fix-it Felix has a villain? I thought that game was just overrun by the Duck-Hunt refugees. So I'm guessing you're a dummied-out character?"
"What? No! I'm supposed to be there! I've been wrecking the building for 30 years! You know? Wreck-it-Ralph?"
He thought for a moment, "Oh let me guess, my siblings paid you a visit didn't they? It is that time of year."
"You *know* what's going on? What did those living skittles do to me?!"
"Have you been feeling under-appreciated lately? Like ready-to-give-up-on-your-game level of under-appreciation? It's a little prank they like to pull at Christmas to show characters how much their games need them."
"A PRANK?! THIS ISN'T FUNNY!" Ralph roared, although Clyde was the only one to flinch from the volume.
"It's only temporary… Ralph was it?" Clyde replied. "Once you learn your lesson they'll reset your code. Don't worry."
"And what is it with this 'lesson' garbage? I don't need to learn a lesson! I already know my worth in my game, I learned that was the whole Turbo incident!"
"You were involved in the Turbo incident? Did he crash Roadblasters in your reality too?"
"Well…yes. But I'm talking about the other incident." Ralph paused as the thought just occurred to him. "…Which you don't know anything about because I don't exist here."
"Huh. Seems you had a busy year. I guess they forgot to unschedule you for this season."
Ralph glared at him. "You ruined my life due to a PAPERWORK ERROR?!"
"Calm down, calm down. You're not the only one who's gone through this, I've placed my bet on Zangief for next year. Besides, give it a night and everything'll go back to normal."
"Why can't you make it normal now!?"
"It's up to my siblings really. The default time is about twelve or so hours, lesson learned or not. If I were you I'd just sit back and enjoy being a ghost. It's not something that happens every day after all."
Ralph raised an eyebrow at him. "Have you been hitting Yoshi's fuzzy stash or something?"
Clyde suddenly blinked in and out of his 'vulnerable mode'. "H-How did you know?"
"Forget I asked."
Ralph boredly sat around the station waiting for his "Christmas Lesson Time" to end. He observed the various characters skittering around the station, none of which had yet to notice him. Multiple characters had ended up passing through him at certain points and he finally stopped grimacing at the site. It was only when Luigi walked by hosting a vacuum cleaner on his back that Ralph decided to get up and move.
As he was clearing Luigi's path that he came across the small corner that Q*Bert and his gang were inhabiting. He tried to say something, but fell short as he realized it would be in vain anyway. He felt the sharp pangs of guilt as he realized that without his existence they never got to experience the joy of a new game to call 'home'. He quickly turned from them and walked away.
Ralph had considered returning to his home game, but he quickly changed his mind when he remembered that the nicelanders had taken to treating Felix like garbage in his absence. Yet another guilty pang stabbed at his heart. It was then that he noticed two candy characters running home to…
He sighed. "Sugar Rush."
What could've happened to Vanellope in his absence?
Against Ralph's better judgement he crossed the portal to Sugar Rush. He wasn't completely sure how his morbid curiosity trumped his common sense, but he did know when it came to Vanellope, he just *had* to be there.
He wandered around Sugar Rush quietly, careful to avoid the racing tracks (though, he supposed it didn't matter too much if he stumbled onto one). He kept his gaze up on every candy cane tree, but still no sign of her. Ralph half wondered if, even without him, things still turned out alright here. That Vanellope somehow reset their code by herself and that their game wasn't almost destroyed by cybugs.
The end to those thoughts came quickly when he saw King Candy's familiar Royal Racer quietly zoom past him. Ralph just shook his head and kept going, but what he didn't notice was King Candy throwing an aside glance in his direction.
Eventually Ralph reached Vanellope's old hideout in the still standing Diet Cola Mountain. He sighed as he entered in through the hidden passage. "Vanellope? Vanellope are you here?"
His answer came with Vanellope walking through the passage, her arms full of disgarded candies and cookies she had picked up from the ground. She ran over to her bed and excitedly started putting them up like little Christmas decorations.
She smiled proudly. "Merry Christmas to me!" Her eyes faded a bit. "And only me."
Ralph looked sullen. "Kid, I'm sorry. This isn't how things are supposed to be. If only I was here I-" He put his hand on her shoulder causing her to glitch.
"Ye-ow!" Vanellope jumped back at the sudden jolt and looked around. "Hello?"
Ralph pulled his hand back just as quickly in surprise. "Kid? Can you hear me?"
Vanellope continued to look around. "Is someone here? Hellooo~?" She called out.
Ralph put his hand on her shoulder again. "Vanellope!"
Vanellope tried to see who was behind her, "H-How'd you know my name?" She blinked as her pixels distorted and through the haze she realized she could see someone else standing there. "Who are you? A ghost?"
"Vanellope you can see me!" He tried to grab her in a hug, but she scrambled herself away from him and ended up falling through him.
"Look Booger Bear, I don't know who you are, but you picked the wrong holiday to come by. It's Christmas, not Halloween."
"Vanellope-!"
"And that's another thing! How do you know my name? How long have you been hanging around me? You're creepy!" She kept trying to poke him only for her hand to go through. "This is kinda cool though." She stuck her whole arm in and wiggled her fingers. "Hahaha!"
"Would you stop that and let me explain?"
"I'm listening."
Ralph paused for a moment, "Oh, you…trust me?"
Vanellope shrugged, "It's Christmas. Plus your story might be interesting."
"Well, it's kind of hard to explain, but I'll try…"
Meanwhile, King Candy paced around his throne room. "Thour Bill!"
"Mmmyes?"
"Do you believe in…ghosths?"
Sour Bill blinked slowly. "…Huh?"
"Nevermind!" He shouted. "I'm heading to the code vault! Bring my licorice rope!"
Sour Bill responded with a heavy sigh. "Yes your Majesty."
King Candy readied himself accordingly at the controller gate, punching in the code as Sour Bill tied the rope around him. As the gateway opened he wasted no time plunging in.
"Now leths see here…" He floated around in the subspace. "Ghosth or not you still have to have thome code buzzing around…aha!" He exclaimed as he noticed a bug-like light jumping around. He plucked it out and brought it to his face. "Oh, I know exacthly what to do with you…"
Ralph and Vanellope started making their way up the rainbow bridge to the portal to Game Central Station.
"But Ralph! Why do we have to rush?"
"Because we don't have much time! If we're going to make things right we have to do it before the night ends and the ghosts change everything back to normal!"
"Then why do you care? It's not like it's your problem!"
Ralph stopped for a second and looked down. "It's not fair for you. Things shouldn't be like this! If things turn out like this because I'm not here then why shouldn't I try to change that?" He looked up with a grin, "It's not like I'm not here now!"
Vanellope smirked, "I'm sorry was that supposed to make sense?"
"Hush you little crumb-nugget."
"Aye-aye General Deep-fry!" She saluted him as they reached the portal gate. "Ok, you do realize I can't go through there right? Glitch and all?" She gestured to herself.
"I know, I know. Just wait here and I'll get Clyde to get Felix and Calhoun for me. He owes me."
"For the whole mix-up? I didn't think favors included usurping a game's entire monarchy."
"It does when I ask for one. Now just wait here while I-OOF!" Ralph hit an invisible wall and bounced back. "Eh?" He placed his hand on the portal only for a sparking wall to materialize. "Oh no…"
"Oh YESTH!" A figure called out as he drove up behind them. "Going somewhere glitches?"
