Kahan 5
Vanilla Turtles
Chapter 2 Gaining momentum
The game day had ended and Junior was excited to see his new friend, you could tell because he ignored Luigi carrying a large cake to get to SR faster. He had gotten directions from Sonic who was pretty much the park ranger of Game Station. Junior reached the portal and hesitated. What if she wasn't there? What if she forgot? What if she never wanted to be his friend in the first place? Thoughts akin to these ran around in Juniors head before he remembered what his dad told him when he was nervous about facing Mario for the first time, "You'll never get anywhere with 'what if' if you don't take any chances you won't have one when you need it."
Junior told the 'what if's in his head to shut up and jumped through the psychedelic portal. Junior liked candy as much as the next kid, but the assault on his senses from the new surroundings was like a slap to the face from King Calamari himself. The first shock to his system was the bright neon and pastel landscape, the bright sunlight wasn't helping either. Being a koopa he had a sensitive nose and with the wind blowing in his direction it was like he had snorted 50 different flavors of fun dip.
He shut his eyes tightly before slowly opening them again to get used to the harsh colors. He would get over the smells with time. Junior surveyed the sugar frosted landscape looking for any sign of Vanellope, heading in the direction of a large crash was probably his best bet. Junior stomped his way through a candy cane forest that smelled like sugar and mint toothpaste had a pungent child.
Another crash came and Jr could hear Vanellope's voice, "It's still too weak, that one barely even made it to the top!" Jr stumbled into a field of green apple grass where Vanellope was trying to make adjustments to a candy catapult, further away a big guy in overalls was punching a wall of rock candy to get a chunk the size of Vanellope. The wall gave a bit repeating the crashing noise Jr had been hearing. Jr walked over to the medieval military weapon and saw the problem immediately.
"There's too much friction on the ropes for it to go fast enough syrup for brains." Vanellope looked up from her machine with a confused expression.
"What do you mean friction? And when did you get here cookie-dough face?" Jr had to hold himself back from touching his face self consciously.
"I mean they're held in place by wood, well peanut brittle, which makes the ropes catch and slow down. And I just got here, you probably didn't notice because I'm practically a ninja." Jr tried to get into a pose that made him look sneaky but just ended up looking off balance.
Vanellope laughed, "Nice pose Ermac, but do you know how to actually fix my catapult?" Jr puffed up with pride,
"Of course! You just have to replace the holders with something smooth that won't stick." Vanellope smirked,
"That's easy!" She turned to look at Ralph who had just finished collecting projectiles. "Hey Ralph! We're going to need jawbreakers too!" The large man dropped the rock candy,
"You've got to be kidding me! I just broke through a wall of rock ten inches thick! Why would you need jawbreakers?" Vanellope put her hands to the sides of her mouth,
"For parts dirt magnet!" Ralph trudged toward Vanellope looking annoyed before noticing Jr.
"Oh, that's what Vanellope meant by porcupine turtle."
Jr pouted and glared at Ralph, "I'm a koopa meathead!"
Ralph rolled his eyes, "I know, I just didn't realize that Vanellope was describing you, she wasn't exactly detailed." Ralph gave Vanellope an annoyed look toward the end of the sentence.
"Hey! I'm not vague, you're just too stupid to form mental images!" Vanellope quipped, Ralph started to form a retort when Jr decided to add his own snarky comment,
"With his intelligence we should be impressed he can form words."
Ralph threw up his arms, exasperated. "Gah! You two are like gremlins that only turned horrible on the inside!"
Jr stopped snickering and became confused, "What's a gremlin?" Vanellope glitched to his side,
"These weird little monster things we saw in a movie we got from WiFi, they started out really cute but became goblins that pranked a bunch of people and caused havoc in general."
Jr's expression changed from confused, to pleased, then irritated. "I'm not cute! I'm a fire breathing beast!" To prove his point Jr breathed out a small fireball that ended up burning half of a marshmallow bush.
Vanellope glitched over to the bush and started giggling, "You only burned half, I guess you'll have to practice s'more!" Jr blew a large razzberry at her, sending out sparks.
"That is enough!" Ralph used his thumb and index finger to hold Jr's mouth closed while he stamped out a few surviving sparks, "Breaking a building or two is fine but I draw the line at setting a kingdom on fire!"
Ralph dropped Jr down in front of him and Vanellope glitched to her new friend's side, "It's a democratic society stink brain uh doi!"
"That's not the point," Ralph started again exasperated, "The point is that if BJ here hits something he's not supposed to, Sugar Rush or at least a chunk of it will be flambeed into nonexistence. And if it's not fixed in time the players will notice." Jr stopped rubbing his snout angrily now feeling like an idiot. If a chunk of the game was damaged or missing it could interfere with the races and maybe even make winning impossible for players. And if that happens Litwick would think it was broken and unplug it! Then Vanellope would disappear or worse, hate him.
"Alright, alright, we get it no more fireballs. Can we please get back to the catapult now?" Vanellope said impatiently, Ralph sighed and grumbled something that sounded like 'Fine'.
Jr followed them back to the siege weapon before it hit him, "Why do you even need a catapult? I didn't think you had enemies."
Vanellope's expression turned somber, "Sugar rush has only one enemy, the Bitterunners." She whispered the last part before taking on a more dramatic tone of voice, "They're big grey vultures that eat the non candy inhabitants of Sugar Rush. They hunt by hiding in clouds until they spot their prey, then they swoop down and grab you so quickly you don't even have time to scream before they devour you whole! Once swallowed you're trapped in their impenetrable stomach, while it's boiling stomach acids slowly and painfully melt you into juice!" Jr had met a lot of monsters but this one sounded like it came out a nightmare, getting eaten sounded horrible before but the new description of what happened after made it a lot worse.
Jr was about to ask how to kill them when Ralph piped up, "Quit scaring the poor kid and tell him what we're actually using it for."
Vanellope rolled her eyes and groaned, "But that's way more interesting than what we're actually doing."
Jr caught on and internally kicked himself, of course it was just a story. His siblings used to tell him a lot of scary stories like that until he wised up, he really should have seen this coming with Vanellope. Ralph looked down to make eye contact with Jr, "We're trying to hit those big swirly lollipops on that hill, we would take turns and whoever hits the most with the fewest tries wins." Jr was listening, he was just scheming at the same time and might have missed a word or two.
"But if it's for lollipops then how are you gonna game over that thing?" Jr pointed to the empty sky causing both Ralph and Vanellope to turn and look. Jr quickly scooped up some chocolate mud and hurled it at Vanellope, making her stagger a bit. "Fooled ya!"
A half second into Jr's maniacal cackling he found his open mouth filled with mud courtesy of a miss Von Shweets. The following mud fight ended about thirty minutes later with all three covered in mud, especially Ralph who after being ganged up on half way through for trying to use the catapult was buried up to his shoulders in fudge. The battle ended because the opponents could no longer tell their adversaries from their weapons.
"Can I be dug up now? I think there are gummy worms in my overalls." Ralph seemed, at most, annoyed by the insects where as any normal person would be having a panic attack. But Ralph had lived in a dump, so something like this had probably happened before.
"Whatever you say Captain butt belch!" Vanellope mocked saluted and picked up a candy cane branch to use as a shovel.
"That's a new one madam gerbil face." Ralph had been saving that one.
"B.J. said it yesterday and I've been wanting to use it." Vanellope stuck the branch into the ground near Ralph and started to dig.
Meanwhile Jr felt a sense of pride bubble up inside him, Vanellope had used his phrase and even credited him! "Come on lazy McLoser pants I can't dig Mr. Fat Folds out on my own!" Vanellope teased playfully,
"I can see that noodle arms!" Jr jabbed before starting to dig with his claws. When Ralph got his arms out he was able to pull himself out the rest of the way, and once they had their demolition expert back Vanellope and Jr were ready to fix the catapult. It wasn't hard once they actually started focusing, and it only took a few minutes to complete.
Jr walked home still covered in chocolate, he had a big smile on his face that only changed shape when he yawned. He had spent all afternoon having mud fights, joking, playing tag and shooting a catapult. So it was no surprise how tired he was, but he didn't care how tired, dirty and admittedly sore he was, he had had more fun in one afternoon than he had all year. He was happier than he could remember being and he was three-quarters of the way home before he figured out why. He wasn't lonely anymore.
Authors note:
Yay Jr is happy! He has a real friend for the first time! you probably have a few questions again so here are some answers:
NO Bitterunners do not exist, Vanellope was just trying to scare him.
Ermac is a green ninja guy from some fighting game I forgot the name of.
King calamari is an octopus like boss from mario.
Despite Bowser's hard headedness he can still give good advice, it's a parent thing.
yes Jr and Vanellope get together but that is many chapters away and they will not be lovey dovey because that would contradict their personalities and I'm bad at romantic stuff.
