Welcome back to Action Replay!

This is a sorta important note, because I'm starting college again, so I'll be updating this story every two days from now on. Just letting you all know.

Anyways, on to the next adventure!

Disclaimer: Disney owns Sugar Rush, SEGA owns Sonic the Fighters, Activision owns DJ Hero 2, and Namco currently owns Ms. Pac Man

Skrillex's POV

He stretched his arms up over his head, leaning back against the cupcake chair. Choko and Honey were talking to Queen Van about...baking tips, or something, and he was getting antsy to go out and fix whatever was bothering Ms. Pac Man. That console was pretty close to the rhythm games, and whenever he was idling about he could hear frustrated gamers beating up on her console. Which was pretty foking terrible, because then they showed up to his game all upset and mixed like a three year old toddler drunk on vodka and Red Bull. And nobody should have to deal with that.

Getting out his Mac, he played around with a track he was mixing—say what you will about producing music as opposed to DJing on the turntables, he was a master at both—before jolting out of his seat when a certain black haired brat decided to sneak up on him. "Woah, you jumped like a foot in the air! You were almost an average height for a second!"

"Go get KO'ed, pixel princess." He checked over his Mac for damage, sighing in relief when he found none.

"Big talk from a stick in the static; you actually gonna walk in a straight line today?"

"Go roll down that track in SMB without falling off and then we'll talk."

Choko then grabbed them both by the ears—fok that hurt, didn't she see the plug in his ears?—and more or less threw them in the Codemobile, waving goodbye to a giggling Queen Van. The whole lot of Sugar Rush racers were babies, they were foking adorable, and as Choko started up the engine he earmarked his track. Best not to lose track of that one in the rush of all the music he liked to create for bonus tracks.

Honey stretched out, flipping his undercut, and giggled behind her gloved palm. "You hair is as long as mine, Sonny boy."

He glared at her twin tails thumping against her back.

"And your hair is almost as pretty as mine, too! Just needs a little trim and a good washing. You must grease it up with like...do they grease up the turn tables, or does that screw up the music?"

He sputtered as Choko sang from the front, "Somebody needs a makeover!"

"Ooh! I have really good moisturizer for your face, and we can work on your roots once we've done that!"

"Taffyta-chan has the best strawberry shampoo out of any Sugar Rush console, and Snowanna-chan has even better conditioner."

"Dude, I need to meet up with them, because my hair is drying out from kicking so much butt lately."

"Oh, then we need to talk to Rancis-kun, he has this fluggeroil serum that is just marvelous~!"

Skrillex groaned and thumped the back of his head against his seat. Yes, they were adorable and really good at manipulating code, but did they both have to be girls?

Ms. Pac Man greeted them outside of the game, her bow shifting as she paced with worry. "Oh, I'm so glad you're here! Mee Mee told me how you Codebusters saved her game, do you think you can do the same for me?"

"We'll do the very best we can, Ms."

"Oh, it's Mrs. outside of gaming hours, dearie. Pac finally proposed after all those years of chasing, but that was ages ago." Skrillex found it a bit hard to understand her under her heavy wakkawakka accent, but the little dreamy lilt her voice took on at the end was more obvious than any blaring synth. "Still, I should show you the problem I've been having. Quickly now, on the tram."

They piled onto the little pink train—of course it was pink, between Choko's hair and Honey's lip gloss, he was going to turn pink—and sped into her console. As they approached their stop he pulled out his Mac and checked the GCS inventory of background music, listening to the normal run of Ms. Pac Man's sound effects. He snorted; they sounded pretty pink, too.

More importantly, the noise coming out of the game was just a little...off compared to the sounds in his laptop. The train came to a stop and he put his equipment away, falling into step with the rest of the Codebusters. Choko spoke up first. "Ok, Mrs. Pac Man-san, what is the...problem..."

"...oh my."

"It's been like this ever since two days ago, and we may not be the most popular of games anymore, but people have noticed!"

"...ah, I can see why this is a problem."

"Is it always like...this?"

"No, but they always end up here!"

"...that's not good."

"Do you think we're going to be unplugged?"

"Um..."

"...well, the music's holding together pretty...nicely."

"Yes...that's always a good thing."

Choko's POV

Choko had never been so thankful to have a 64-bit computer processor.

They were floating...well, not above the maze of Ms. Pac Man but they sure weren't in it. Honey-chan was trying to talk to the ghosts but they were stuck in their maze, an invisible wall appearing just as they had entered. Apparently that wasn't supposed to happen, but between an invisible stage and no hit detection, Choko wouldn't be surprised if the cast of Mortal Kombat came in dancing in a conga line.

Hanging out with Marzipanne-chan had done things to her sense of humor.

But she digressed; they had a job to do, and Mrs. Pac Man-san needed to complete the level before they could patch the game. The...whatever Mrs. Pac Man-san was, was currently leading Skrillex-kun through the darkness, explaining how the boundaries of the maze turned into warp tunnels. Choko sighed and carefully walked through the empty stage, kicking at the nothingness. It was far too similar to the Void she had once been trapped in for her liking. Even though her memory had just been restored, she could never forget how the darkness had swallowed her whole.

She walked up to Honey-chan, who was talking to the orange ghost named Sue-san, and Choko noticed how she too was uneasy in the dark. "Do we have anything useful?"

"Sue here says that the whole mess began when one gamer beat the game all the way to the very last kill screen." Honey-chan tugged on a ponytail, shuffling her feet. "Maybe the game's in a loop around this setting?"

"Maybe, but then why would the other kill screens load before this one?" Skrillex-kun was back, arms out in front of his body; poor thing must be completely blind even with his glasses on.

"Then maybe not a perfect loop. Mrs. Pac Man, you said that sometimes other stages would load before this one?"

"Yes, sometimes glitchy junior stages would pop up, but not always." Mrs. Pac Man-san circled the small group, wailing, "At least with Pac's game it's a single kill screen, but here you have a whole mess of them! Oh, we're going to be unplugged for sure!"

Choko stamped her foot. "Not if we can help it, Mrs. Pac Man-san!" She wandered around the edge of the box holding in the ghosts, running her fingers against the invisible wall. "You said that the boundary turned into warp tunnels. Why is this still stable?"

"This is a separate part of the game, where only the ghosts can enter." Sue-san was yelling past the invisible wall holding herself and the other ghosts in. "The entry to the code well is even in here."

Choko's mind went away from the scene back to Sugar Rush, where Vanellope-heika had shown her everything she knew about their game's cheat cartridge. "...wait, I think I know how to fix this!"

"How?"

Choko grinned and turned back to Skrillex-kun. "What do you know about debug mode?"

Honey's POV

Honey flexed her fingers, before smashing her fists against the invisible wall holding back the ghosts. She devolved into pixels (it's ok just breathe, you're in control and the darkness isn't the bad place) making the wall burst into static, melting away as she regained control over her sprite. Everyone cheered and she blushed, holding down her burst of pixlexia. "Let's roll out, Codebusters!"

She led the team into the holding cell, Sue opening the code well with a few motions of the giant joystick hidden behind a frilly pink curtain. The code for Ms. Pac Man was much simpler than that of Sonic the Fighters or Sugar Rush, and Honey didn't even want to think about DJ Hero 2. With the ghosts hovering and Mrs. Pac Man wakkawakka-ing out a warning, they floated down to the flickering programming boxes. "Ok, we all have our Game Genies?"

"Yeah."

"Ok, so Choko said to go into debug mode...so glad Sonic showed me how...ok we got the sound test. Sonny, what's the right combo?"

"We need two main themes, five #16 sound effects, two of #2, and then the game over track."

"...kay I got it. Choko, what do I do?"

"We don't want a factory restore because that's too risky; it took us three months to get our memories back after Vanellope-heika deleted the virus. What we need is to break the loop fixated around the kill screens."

"Ok, then we should have Mrs. Pac go back to level 1 in debug mode and beat it that way?"

"Not if we want to remind the game to function properly on its own."

"Well crap guys, that's the only way back to start. How did this loop start anyway?"

"Not many gamers come all the way to this point. I bet it made a closed circuit when the buggy stage got reached."

"Then how to we break the circuit?"

"What if we have her beat level this level in debug mode, spawning a dot map?"

"Why would we want that, hipster breath?!"

"Haven't you ever triggered your game's watchdog?"

"What's a watchdog, Sonny-kun?"

"A watchdog detects game errors and forces a reset of the game. Obviously these kill screens are an exception, since they "technically" work, but Ms. Pac Man says that gamers only come here before letting the timer run out and make the game start over at the beginning of the bugged loop. So this is the last "technically" correct level before the watchdog detects an error. So if we beat this level and overstep the boundary, we execute the error detection..."

"...then we break the loop of kill screens!"

"Oh Sonny boy, I could kiss you right now!"

"Oh you're too kind, Honey face, but save the romance for after hours."

Vanellope's POV

She held in a giggle as Pollipop applied a large slather of cocoa butter to his face.

Mrs. Pac Man had been there earlier, gushing over the Codebusters fixing her game and promising to spread the word to everyone. All three of the code masters had gotten large kisses from the lady, huge lipstick marks coloring half of their faces.

Skrillex had tried to bail afterwards, the little diaper baby, but then Honey had tackled him to the ground and yelled that a makeover was in order. That had called out all the other racers out of the candy cane woodwork, surrounding the poor DJ with various shampoos, leave in conditioners, and the dreaded nail polish.

Vanellope had challenged him to just try and escape, but he was way smarter than Ralph had been, and submitted to his fate. She knew there was a reason why she'd picked him in the first place.

Now he was in a pretty lavender robe with Honey and Choko rubbing in Rancis's premium fluggeroil serum into his roots, Minty and Sour Apple debating which shade of coral nail polish would go best with his skin completion.

Thankfully the two weren't fighting anymore—heck, they were best friends now, always having sleepovers with whomever they could pull into each others' tracks. Vanellope herself had gone to one, and she still had the apple red nails to show for it.

She helped Crumbelina pick out more jackets for Skrillex to wear, everyone of the opinion that he wore too much black. Even the black licorice bats from Gloyd's level were offended by how much black he wore. "Hmm, maybe this black cherry would go well; he does have this reputation to uphold."

"Nah, all the more reason to mix things up with apple green."

"Why not both?"

They laughed to themselves, and fell over in hysterics as Skrillex tried to make a break for it when Marizpanne pulled out her favorite flat iron. Adorabeezle and Taffyta held him down, Bubblebetty squealing that he was going to have the prettiest waves this side of the blue raspberry sea. "Somebody needs to get this on camera."

Honey then grinned a very evil grin, and Vanellope gasped. "Honey, what did you do?"

Nilla then ran forward, reporting that someone by the name of deadmau5 was right outside, apparently there to take Skrillex home after his makeover. Vanellope gaped at Honey, who was high fiving Choko behind the spa chair, and the Queen shook her head. These kids were right monsters, evil little cavities, and she loved every bit of it.

"Dude! You're prettier than a girl!"

"Go fok yourself, Joel! I am fabulous!"

Yes, that just happened. And I had too much fun writing it.

On the subject of Ms. Pac Man, that game has a series of kill screens from level 134 to level 142, the last of which triggers the programming's watchdog and forces a reset. Somehow the game had gotten stuck playing levels 134 to 141 on repeat, probably due to the game being pretty old and the kill screens being so buggy. But once they spawned enough dots for Mrs. Pac Man to eat and beat the last kill screen, they forced a reset and broke the loop, fixing the game. Pac Man only has a garbled split screen, making it a more creepy but much easily fixed problem as opposed to this.

Hopefully that wasn't too weird, I've been experimenting with writing only dialogue scenes. Blame my creative writing courses. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed, and please review and tell me what you think of Action Replay :D