Phase I, Level 9: Departures

Awaking suddenly and in searing pain, the doctor clenched his hand over his heart in an effort to steady the glitching code. When had he fallen asleep? No, it wasn't sleep... it was a blackout. He was nearly out of time. Glancing about himself to get his bearings and recall where he was he noticed he was still in the the safe little nook of the motherboard, sheltered from the activity around himself, and Candle was still beside him - asleep with her head on his shoulder. Ah yes, now he remembered... the last thing he recalled before blacking out was kissing her; he couldn't resist a smile of self-satisfaction at the fact.

Groaning with the effort it took, he sat himself up straight and nudged Candle with the arm that wasn't clutching his chest, so as to wake her. Stirring from her slumber with some adorable moaning sounds to accompany, the sleepy racer blinked and yawned a couple times before speaking. "Mmm, I didn't know kissing could be so TIRING!" Evidently she had taken his black out for a nap and followed in her own shortly after.

Ignoring the thought to point out that the sudden 'sleep' was probably much more likely due to their poor health than to their kiss, the doctor got straight to business and addressed the groggy girl in the most serious of tones.

"Candle, I need you to listen to me very closely and do everything I tell you to. Will you promise me that?"

Tilting her head and cocking an eyebrow in confusion, she asked, "Why?" as all young children are in the habit of doing.

"There's no time to explain! Will you please just promise me?" There was a sense of urgency in his request that prompted the girl to nod her head in agreement and furrow her brow in apprehension.

"The good news is that the exit is only just up ahead!" He began, pointing to the exit that was in view from their hideout, but still probably a ten minute walk away. "The bad news is that I won't be able to escort you there."

Before he could get another word out, Candle barraged him with more questions. "What! Why? Are you hurt! Do you need help? I can go get someone right away!"

"Shhh, Candle, calm down, it'll be okay; just listen to me, alright?" He coaxed, taking her hand in reassurance. "Once the lights have stopped flashing all about, you must run as fast as you can, straight to that exit, and don't stop until you're back in the game. Once you're there you can stop to catch your breath, but you must get to the Princess - I mean, Vanellope - and tell her what I'm about to tell you. Got that so far?"

She nodded that she had, but the look on her face told him that she was a little preoccupied with her concern for himself. Which, while touching, wasn't going to help the game any. Forcing himself to look more composed, he swallowed his pain and tried his best to continue his instructions without gasping for breath every other word.

"You must tell Vanellope that the game is being reprogrammed, and the process is still in the gathering data stage. She must instruct everyone to fix any damages they can find with themselves or in the world of Sugar Rush, so that the programmers will be more likely to keep it around during the re-write phase. Anything that's broken or disabled now will most likely not make it into the new version. That is why it is IMPERATIVE - " At this, he cupped her face with both his hands so she was forced to look directly into his eyes - which she had been avoiding as her eyes had been darting every which direction in her state of worry. " - that you get back to Sugar Rush and cross the finish line on the next race so that your code is reset. Promise me you'll do that!"

Tearing up by this point, Candle responded, "But what about you? Won't you be there at the next race to remind me?"

Biting his lip as he contemplated how best to put it, he finally decided that there was no good way to do so and he should just be blunt. "No... I won't be coming back."

"Wh-why not?" she stammered, starting to lose composure.

"I no longer have my avatar code, and with the unstable state that Sugar Rush is in, I will be unable to regenerate one."

"So after the reprogramming is done, I'll see you again?" Candlehead asked hopefully, daring to smile at the prospect.

The doctor hesitated at this. In all likelihood, with a software upgrade at this stage in their life - after twenty years of existence - hardware updates wouldn't only be plausible - they'd be necessary. The chances of their using the same chip was essentially nil; his days as the doctor of Sugar Rush would be over in a matter of minutes. Unable to bring himself to say this, however, he muttered a rather quiet "maybe..."

Perhaps nobody gave this girl enough credit; for she picked up on his fib in a heartbeat. "You're lying!" She exclaimed, then burst into tears.

Unable to bear the sight of her crying, Muffin Man embraced her in a tight bear hug - ignoring the thrashing pain it caused him to do so.

"Listen to me, Candle... I gave you most of my code when you were injured. So as long as you're around, I'll still be with you... so please, promise me you'll cross the finish line... for BOTH our sakes, hm?" As he finished his plea, he held her out at arms length so she could see his begging puppy-dog face. In a game like Sugar Rush, EVERY avatar needed one of those; and they were very seldom ineffective.

Red-eyed and runny-nosed, Candle whimpered as she nodded her agreement to the promise.

"There. That's a good girl!" He praised, smiling in reassurance before his face contorted in another wave of pain. "One last thing..." he said, placing a hand to her belly, where it began to glow blue.

"W-what are you d-doing?" She inquired nervously.

"Apologize to Miss Vanellope for me... I will not be able to return her glitch to her. As it would be a waste to lose this revolutionary piece of code, I am now giving it to you."

"W-wait! Don't go!" She pleaded, but her cries were muffled as he pressed his face up against hers and kissed her one last time. By the time she'd finished the last syllable, he was gone; simply faded into nothingness.

"Oi! What took ya so long!?" Kitty hailed as the Fix-Its, Jake, and Sonic appeared in the terminal waiting area.

"Long story." Sonic replied, surprisingly un-energetic. Jake mumbled a half-hearted "T'cha." in agreement.

"What the heck happened to you fellahs!? First international airport experience whooped ya good, seems!" She laughed in an understanding manner, as if all her international trips were just as eventful.

"Man... Love bites." Jake muttered.

"Wha-at?" Ralph teased in an unbelieving tone, "Thought you could have any blond you wanted!?"

"Yeah, that's just it... she wasn't. Apparently the dudettes with blue hair are immune to my irresistible charms! Total bummer, dude... it was gorgeous! Like the sea on a magical sunrise..."

"Uhh..." Ralph responded, speechless. He'd never seen Jake so dejected before.

"All passengers for flight #1337 should now board." An announcement sounded over the loudspeaker.

"Oh! That's us!" Felix informed with a bounce, oddly the most energetic of the crew. Ralph eyed his friend suspiciously. Despite his usual upbeat countenance, something was abnormally cheerful in his manner; you'd think getting interrogated alongside your wife for an illegal firearms transportation was the most exciting feeling in the world with an expression like that. Something had to be up. "What are you so happy about?" Ralph asked with a knowing grin.

With a sudden force of urgency that almost made Ralph wet himself, Calhoun interrupted, "RALPH! What about my guns!? Where are they!?" Felix looked a little disheartened at his wife's deliberate interruption.

"Oh don't worry, sergeant, I've got your 'babies' safely packed away in the plane." Ralph assured.

"BABIES!? Who said anything about babies!?" The girl looked like a deer in the headlights at this point, which Felix seemed to notice. He simply cleared his throat before saying, "How about we all just get on the plane like the announcer said?"

The others in their party heartily agreed and made a beeline for the boarding line, leaving behind the rather confused party of Ralph and Kitty.

After a few rounds of relishing the thrill of racing again, Vanellope began to put more effort in observing her players rather than racing, which resulted in a quite a few wipe outs, but since wasn't being controlled by the player, that wasn't such a big deal. It was the same three she had seen the first day Sugar Rush had been plugged in at their new location - wherever the heck that was.

The primary player was of typical gamer appearance - male, lanky, bespectacled, and pale as a ghost from lack of exposure to the sun. Sometimes the other male would sit at the second set of controls and play as well, though he was significantly more dark-skinned and had a rather thick accent that made him hard to understand. From the words she -did- gather, he was the money bags behind their purchase of the Sugar Rush cabinet, and often reminded the others of that when they teased him with a long spiel of how his father was a 'Maharaja' or something or other like that. The last was the only female of the party, and she was the only one whose nationality Vanellope could immediately place. The girl was Japanese - she could feel it in her code. She was nearly constantly scribbling on her notepad - pictures of some sort that she would show the other other two occasionally. Sometimes the dark one with the funny accent - by this point, she was starting to think this 'India' of which he often spoke was his hometown, so she figured she'd call him 'the Indian' from now on - would also scribble on a notepad, but he wasn't drawing pictures like the girl was; he was writing things that looked vaguely similar to words, but were completely unreadable. No, it wasn't because she'd never learned to READ. She was programmed to be able to read in both Japanese AND English, thank you very much! She could pick out an English word every now and then, but even though the letters were all from the English language, there was apparently no rhyme or reason to it.

'Great... we've been picked up by a ragtag team of weirdos...' she reasoned to herself, snapping back to attention when she was nearly crushed by a falling gumball. Aside from general observations about the game, Vanellope hadn't heard any other sort of useful tidbits, so she returned her attention to racing until the trio had their fill of gaming.

The crew was in a relatively chipper mood as they all headed back to the castle after a long day's racing. It had felt so good to be behind the wheel all day like old times had been at Litwak's, they momentarily forgot their distresses of game damage and missing characters.

It was all returned to the forefront of their minds all too soon when a police truck sped up behind them and lurched to a stop as it reached Vanellope. "President! We found Candlehead!"

"You did!?" Vanellope and Taffyta exclaimed in unison, "Where!?"

"No time for that!" The cop exclaimed, "She's in hysterics and won't listen to any of us; she demands an audience with you, President Vanellope."

"What about me?" Taffyta asked, momentarily hurt that Candle wanted to see Vanellope before her. She went unheard, however, and Vanellope simply made orders to have the best guest bedroom prepared, a feast fixed, and Candle brought to the tea room.

Vanellope had thought bringing the traumatized girl to the cozier tea room as opposed to the opulent throne room would have helped to calm her down, but it was still quite a long time before the girl was able to talk, let alone recognizably, so great were her sobs and lamentations.

When the mint-haired racer had finally managed to mitigate her misery and start speaking coherently, she related the conclusions of the Muffin Man, and his instructions on how to prepare. The president was quite glad to have this information, and was beginning to think Candlehead finally calm enough to eat some much needed food and go to bed, but that notion went right out the window when she asked the question: "So where is Muffin Man now? Didn't he come back with you?"

Poor thing - she was already malnourished enough from her two-day stint in the motherboard, and she was sobbing buckets by the minute, spending all her moisture on tears. With the state she was in, Vanellope would be getting no more information on Muffin Man, so she quietly exited the room and sent Taffyta - who had been waiting outside impatiently - in to comfort the grieving girl.

Summoning the closest palace servant, Vanellope sent orders to have the others feast in the dining hall - there's no way Candlehead and Taffyta would have the appetite for a feast anyway - and to have a plate of cookies and milk sent to the tea room for the two girls instead. Perhaps that wasn't the best thing to ask of this particular servant, as he happened to be one of the Oreo cookie guards obsessed with chanting his brand name at the front door. Ah well.

Spotting Sour Bill, Vanellope called out, "Sour Bill! I need your help! There's a lot to be done!"

"Yes, President?"

"I need every bit of documentation you have on Sugar Rush. We need to make sure everything's in order in the coming days! Bring it to my study, and get plenty of refreshments and pillows. Get any volunteers among the racers and personnel to come help go over the documentation."

Sour Bill simply nodded and turned to go do as she asked, but then she called out, "Wait! One more thing! Have my royal bed chambers prepared for two guests... Goodness knows Taffyta and Candlehead will need a good night's sleep more than the rest of us, and with the documentation to go through, I won't be sleeping at all tonight."

True word count for Departures: 2,497
True word count for story thus far: 36,147

A/N: I didn't originally intend for it to be this way, but I feel like this chapter was like a smack in the face of depression right after a giddy high of the bonus chapter last week... I blame it on the fact that I wrote that Rise of the Guardians one-shot over the weekend. Hey, if ya'll are ROTG fans and feel so inclined, you should check it out! It's my first hurt/comfort piece so I'm interested in feedback! It's:

"December Twenty-Fifth"

Yeah, yeah, I know, shameless self-advertising... so shoot me.
*Ka-CHACK!* That can be arranged...
EEP! I didn't mean it, Calhoun! Please don't shoot!

Q&A!

Q: frodo and sam! wtf are they doing there!?
A: Well, since the airplanes/airports basically represent the internet, why not? They're in LOTRO... xD Notice the subtle game references to the 'return home' ability and 'milestone' artifact...

Q: Only things I would change is that you're giving too much limited information. As much as I like how little that you're revealing, there seems like there's a bit too much to be answered, meaning that this story, if in the end everything was clear, would probably be at the length of around 20-25 chapters or even more
A: Yeah, so I know that wasn't phrased as a question, but I wanted to address all the readers with the answer on the story format... As I've strived to make it a lot clearer now, this story is meant to read more like a game... a roleplaying game in particular, where the plotlines there are notorious for being quite intricate and vague, revealing only little snippets at each level, with the majority of game play still being focused on the action. Now, I've tried to alleviate some of that by putting a lot of the action that isn't pertinent to the overall plot in these 'bonus levels', so that if your only concern is the plot, you can skip those chapters and greatly reduce the amount of reading you have to do. If you'll notice, we're only 9 chapters into the plot... the rest has been bonus, so how long you make the game is up to you - you can play the bonus levels or you can stick to the main story arc without bothering with the bonuses. And don't forget! Part of the gameplay is giving you time to figure out the clues so far and put together the pieces! Quite a few pieces were explained in this chapter, with breadcrumbs of information pointing to future revelations in later chapters. The reason for the limited information is that I'm not ready to tell ya'll yet... but no worries, it'l all be explained in time... and if by chance you do find plotholes, do let me know, as they won't be left as holes intentionally. (In the event those are pointed out, I will go back and edit, and post an alert in the next chapter indicating thus) And that inivitation applies for all my writing, not just this story... it's just that this story is revealing less than usual per chapter due to the roleplay game set up...

Q: why not try adding more Bonus chapters? :))
A: Hmm.. there's already a ratio of roughly 1 bonus chapter for every 3 cannon chapters, if I add anymore, the story may never get finished! xD Moving forward, I expect to spend a little more time on the cannon since things are beginnging to be set in motion for the wrapping up of part 1 and the commencement of part 2... but the great part about bonus levels is that I can keep adding as many as are wanted at the end of the game :D

Review Responses

Becky Blue Eyes - Yeah, I've been trying to use the separator to separate on more than just scene changes now - though I haven't gone back and made those changes to previous chapters... But yeah, trying to use them more to indicate passage of time as well, or major POV changes... though I still can't bring myself to use them EVERY time those things happen, or else there'd be SO many bars... xD

JustSomeAverageGuy - Haha, I considered putting more Ringwraith action in... but the chapter was so long already... and weren't you the one complaining about length just a minute ago? ;)

Everyone - REALLY glad ya'll enjoyed the bonus chapter! I was looking forward to writing it for the longest time! ...and I may or may not have dragged Sonic into this whole story just so I could write crack with The One Ring and him...