And here's another chapter! I'm SO SORRY about not updating quickly, but the second I started writing, my creative juices took a nose dive off a skyscraper into a pile of broken dreams. And THEN I had to go and get re-obsessed with Fullmetal Alchemist, and I'm currently watching and reading it while I'm writing this very sad and manic author's note. BUT ON WITH THE STORY.

Because of the events of the Big Damn Wedding, a pairing that was SO FREAKING OBVIOUS bumped it's premier up three chapters early. As such, I had to move games around to even out the too obviousness and the mandatory plot elements, and it's such a huge headache that I'm swearing off entire arcade-altering chapters until at least chapter 15.

Oh, and I have a question: would you rather have a game filled with so many characters, most of the game play revolved around defeating them so they could be used in-game, or a game with a smaller roster with the story mode going deep into their characters? (Spoiler alert: this is a big freaking question for events later in this universe. Answer honestly.)

Disclaimer: I don't own Sugar Rush (Disney), Sonic the Fighters (SEGA), DJ Hero 2 (Activision) or Star Wars Arcade (Atari).

Choko's POV

The call to action came when Choko was in the bakery, refreshing the frosting on the Codemobile. Looking up to see Vanellope-heika leading Skrillex-kun into the designing table, she finished up the mini-game and switched her hair color back from banana yellow to sweet bean pink. "We're bakery fresh and ready to roll out. What game needs help tonight, Vanellope-heika?"

"According to a mutant turtle guy—I think his name was Leonardo?—the Star Wars cabinet started glitching towards the end of the day." The violet-eyed queen shrugged, "They haven't said anything, but it wouldn't hurt to check on them. You never know when a game's set to crash."

Nodding in grim agreement, Choko jumped into the driver's seat as Skrillex-kun and Vanellope-heika piled in the back, Mr. Waddles absently chewing on the upholstery. "Silly piggy, you know that too many marshmallows are bad for a developing security pig."

Ignoring her friends' laughter—they simply didn't appreciate the immense responsibility that came with being a top-tier pig farmer—she raced across the candy-based hills, relishing the sweet wind flowing through the open cart. Dropping Vanellope-heika off at the castle so she could make her tea party with Ralph-san, Choko rode off towards the port of her game. "What do you think could've gone wrong, Sonny-kun?"

"Here's hoping it's not another AI issue; resetting noses is a messy business suited for the unfeeling." Skrillex-kun subconsciously wiped his nose and Choko giggled, prompting him to smack her upside the head. "But nothing you can't handle, brat. Just run over the competition."

Choko seriously pondered the costs and benefits of upgrading her Codemobile to be a battering ram on wheels as they entered GCS, nearly hitting a decorative shrub when Skrillex-kun tugged on her shoulder. Braking by the aforementioned shrub, she crossed her arms, "Sonny-kun, what—"

"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

He pointed at a nearby port and Choko's eyes widened. "Is that..."

"Yep."

"And is that..."

"Seems like it."

"And are they..."

Skrillex laughed, slapping his knee as he leaned back into his seat. "It's about freaking time! Somebody owes me money, and I'm talking big money." Glancing back at the port, he shook his head and thumped his forehead against Mr. Waddles' seat. "I'm sorry, but I just can't right now."

Blushing on behalf of her friend, Choko pulled up to the port and honked her horn. "Come on, we need to check out the space opera!"

Honey-chan squeaked and jumped in the air, resulting in a tangled pile of yellow and blue limbs. Pulling herself together, she stuck her tongue out at a laughing Skrillex-kun and turned back towards C. Sonic-kun. She smiled at him, rolled her eyes at Skrillex-kun making a fool of himself, and gave C. Sonic-kun a goodbye kiss before heading towards him. Not that Choko thought the berry-red hedgehog needed any more PDA, but who was she to judge in the arcane rituals of love. Giving Honey-chan time to settle in the Codemobile, Choko graciously ignored the past few minutes. "Ready to go?"

"Not a word, hipster chump. Not. A. Word."

"Sure, sure, it's not like everyone in GCS saw that or anything, I'll keep this secret to—OW! My foking plugs!"

Choko let them settle their differences through the standard beating-the-filling-out-of-each-other, and patted Mr. Waddles on his blocky head. As she had helped C. Sonic-kun bring Honey-chan to life, she saw his devotion and pure adoration of her first hand, and was resisting the urge to throw them a giant tea party in congratulations. Skrillex-kun was right, it was about darn time!

Maybe it was the leftover cheesecake from Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It-san's wedding, maybe it was proximity to Mr. Waddles' cuteness, but Choko let herself sigh about a certain blue-suited hero on her way into Star Wars' port. It was a silly pipe dream, it would never happen as long as she was a twelve-year-old Sugar Rush racer, but she absolutely envied how Honey-chan was smiling out the cart's side, it was just so—

A TIE fighter blasted the earth from out beneath them, Choko glitching in her efforts to keep them from smearing on the ground. While her friends screamed and flailed, she accelerated into the darkness, their models evaporating into vectors. Suddenly the ground wasn't ground so much as free-floating space, and the Codemobile rocketed into the distance as Skrillex-kun screamed, "WE'RE GONNA DIE!"

"Now now Sonny-kun, I'm sure—"

"Look out!"

A swarm of TIE fighters appears literally out of nowhere, and Choko upshifted. For some reason she couldn't quite define, she had a bad feeling about this.

If racing around in Crazy Taxi was crazy, then using her cart as a spaceship was out of this world. Following the lead of what she assumed the good guys were doing, she made a quick barrel roll out of a TIE fighter's fire, Mr. Waddles shooting lasers at any enemy starfighter that dared come near her precious Codemobile.

High-fiving her pig, she threw her spacecart into reverse. Honey-chan untangled herself from the desperate hold she and Skrillex-kun were engaging in, and began to twitch. "Choko."

Mr. Waddles took out an enemy TIE fighter as Choko charged her weapons bay.

"What are you doing?"

A Death Star loomed in the distance, and Choko grinned; surely there would be answers there!

"Choko!"

Choko charged her pocky javelin, and taking a page from Vanellope-heika's move set, swung the spacecart around.

Skrillex-kun handed Honey-chan a microphone. "STAHP!"

The sound wave coupled with the launched javelin destroyed the entire armada of TIE fighters looming behind them in a large flash of vector-generated explosions, and Choko cheered as little pieces of light rained down on them. "Yay, new personal record!"

Mr. Waddles oinked happily as a group of X-wings circled around them, light glinting from their wire-frame models. One of them spoke through a speaker, "Hey, you guys are the Codebusters!" Immediately the others began a huge swirl of gossip and excitable chatter that made Choko blush; she'd never really interacted with fans before, beyond saving them from cool and unusual glitchy doom.

The more developed X-wing, most likely the player avatar, came to Choko's side. The cockpit opened and hello, she didn't know the main character was a blue-eyed blonde. "I'm Luke Skywalker, miss. Do you think your friends could help us?"

Choko giggled and blushed, and oh god she was NOT doing this again! She wouldn't allow it! "Well, since you asked so nicely..."

Luckily Honey-chan came to her rescue, and Choko swore to never make fun of her excessive PDA as long as they were in this game. "We'll be happy to help anyone who helped take down the evil empire!" They fist bumped. "Do you know what's wrong with your game?"

TIE fighters screamed out from the darkness, firing shots and it was just plain rude to interrupt people with a well-timed attack. Luke-san yelled out as he snapped his cockpit shut, "When we were downshifting the enemy AI for the end of the day, something went wrong!"

Skrillex-kun grabbed Mr. Waddles and pulled out his headphones, static flying from manically large eyes. Slapping the headphones on the pig, he transformed Mr. Waddles into a pig-stereo android, and blasted a sonic cannon blast towards the TIE fighters, jumping on to the back of an X-wing "Foking enemy foking AI in a FOKING ARCADE GAME!" He flew off towards the Death Star, leaving a trail of devastation behind.

One of the pilots coughed. "Is he always this...enthusiastic?"

Honey-chan grumbled and jumped into the shotgun seat. "Between getting his butt kicked and sticking his giant nose in private business, I guess he can be chaotic good on a goody day."

Honey's POV

Honey didn't like space. Not that the night sky in HD games wasn't beautiful to look at from a graphically limited perspective, but this blank darkness was too much like the void she went crazy in. Between that and Choko's psychotic driving, it boded very ill for any dream of become an astronaut.

"Choko, watch out for those enemy fliers!" Honey grabbed on to her seat for dear life as they made a barrel roll past a group of TIE fighters. "I'm out of my element here, what do I do?"

Choko bit down on a sugar dusted lip, gunning down the enemies with well placed pocky. "We need to infiltrate the enemy and take them down from the inside. This is just assorted candy compared to the main course."

Honey clutched on to her Action Replay, the blue keeping her grounded in zero gravity. "I assume the enemies are coming from the Death Stars, but they keep getting blown up too much to be an enemy base."

The Codemobile boosted past exploding vectors. "Wait—Luke-san said they tried to downshift the enemies. Surely there's a set enemy spawn point if they can manipulate the enemy behavior during normal game play when the code is most dangerous..."

Honey punched a TIE fighter in the face because she could. "That's right; when we went to Minecraft I got my mirror to do matches through a direct access point to that part of the console." Snapping her fingers, she expelled a burst of golden static to cause a TIE fighter to plow into his friends. Sucker. "And my Sonic told me that there's all sorts of places where the code is sensitive to manipulation. It's part of the reason why our Action Replays work outside of the code matrix."

Choko grinned and blew a squadron of enemies to bits, and Honey caught the glow-stick like remnants. "So if we blow up the enemy spawn point where the code hurts the most..."

"Then we can end this endless game and fix the code!" They high-fived and avoided being exploded. "Use the radio to alert Luke-san and get directions. I'm needed out here to keep the enemies from overflowing, but if you could be nice enough to do the heavy lifting?"

Honey manipulated the gumdrop dials and Luke Skywalker's voice crackled over the freshly baked stereo. "This is Red Five."

"This is Candy One, requesting location of enemy spawn point so I can kick major butt, over."

"It's twenty clicks to the general left. It's isolated behind a breakable vector wall, you can't miss it."

"ありがとう (Arigatou), Red Five. Candy One out."

Choko smiled. "I didn't know you consciously knew Japanese."

"What can I say, being a Codebuster has been a learning experience. Now let's go end this madness early; it's taco night back at the console, and I'm not going to let Nack use up all the corn tortillas."

Just like Luke said, the real Death Star was behind a beautiful array of vectors. Honey actually felt bad for Choko destroying it, but once an angry swarm of TIE fighters came shooting out the sentiment drained away. Stupid enemies trying to blow everything up, no wonder the evil empire was rightfully taken down. "Can you get me into the Death Star?"

"Oh Honey-chan, ye of little faith, do you think so little of my driving skills?"

"To be fair, you usually race on a track..."

"ONWARD!" Pocky exploded the vector models, chocolate and pieces of light whipping past their faces. The engine beneath their seats revved up and Honey could feel the power Choko lovingly baked into their cart. Gripping harder on to her cheat cartridge, Honey's eyes widened as Choko flipped them upside down to eliminate a group of starfighters swarming from below.

Choko giggled as they survived the attack, and Honey tried to relax. She was on a mission into deep enemy territory, she couldn't afford to freak out over the void. Seriously, she needed to get over it before Choko or Skrillex got themselves into a situation needing her fighting expertise and she was too busy going 'eek a dark scary place like the one where I watched my best friend/boyfriend/soul mate lose his mind'.

Thinking about him learning how to smile again—thanks to Choko, of all people—helped Honey get a grip and prepare herself. Choko flew into the Death Star, the surface more opaque than the space stations Skrillex was probably savaging at the moment. "Ready, Honey-chan?"

Honey narrowed her eyes. "If I die...tell Sonny he can have my eyeshadow." With that she launched herself into the glossy metal of the station, bringing her fists down in a blaze of static. The metal imploded with her impact and she face-planted in the spartan interior, thanking Chaos that she hadn't brought back her pigtails yet; scrunchies were deceptively painful in crash landings.

Shaking the emeralds out of her eyes, she looked around the corridor. Various stormtroopers and technicians were looking at her like she was radioactive—she blamed the vectors lights still stuck to her uniform—and she grabbed the nearest flunkie. "Take me to your leader before I defenestrate you into an active starfighter battle."

Never say that she wasn't diplomatic. A platoon of stormtroopers escorted her into the heart of the station, pale light from the vector-metal illuminating the fear in their faces. Ah, they were aware of the enemies going crazy and not happy about it; maybe she could pull a revolution and take down the baddies from the inside instead of just punching everyone.

Absently wondering how her Sonic was doing, she came to a halt in front of a prison cell. "Guys, I said 'take me to your leader', not 'throw me in jail so my friends can blow everyone to Chaos'."

"Don't worry, these guys are clean." A dark-haired girl in white came out of the prison cell and Honey admired the size of her hair buns. Maybe she should start experimenting with hair models. "Wait, aren't you a Codebuster?"

"That I am, Miss..."

"I'm Princess Leia, even though technically I serve no purpose in active game play and can't be reached normally." Honey knew those feels, it sucked to be added in by a programmer then be dummied out. "I suppose something went wrong with our game?"

"Yeah, TIE fighters are overflowing and trying to take out anything that has a vector." They started walking down the hall, heading to who knew where. She needed to catch up on her Star Wars movie info, maybe she and Sonic could watch a DVD in the computer room. "Before we can get into the code well and fix the enemy AI code, we need to stop them from the inside, which so happens to be here."

"Ah, smart decision. The throne room data is somewhere around here..."

They wandered the halls; the stormtroopers either were forbidden from directing them to the evil Emperor, or they didn't know themselves. Considering the data limitations in such a classic game, Honey was leaning towards the former. On the bright side, it was nice to talk to a girl her age. "So you've been stuck in this Death Egg—I mean Death Star, forgive me and my SEGA logic—ever since it got turned on?"

"More or less. Luke keeps trying to get me out of here but every time he just...fizzles into vectors and his knowledge of me resets."

Honey froze, because oh god it was the void all over again. "The same thing happened to me, expect my friend Sonic had a Game Genie and could remember my face. Even then I was trapped for sixteen years..."

Leia smiled sadly, and Honey wanted to blow up the Death Star and beat the proof of her existence into every person in this arcade. How many other characters were trapped in a void, dummied out by design or dastardly turbo-caused destruction? This was BS, this was pure chaos, this was the reason she became a Codebuster in the first place! Holding her Action Replay to Leia's face, Honey grinned a very predatory grin. "It's your lucky day, princess. I'm Honey the Cat, and I'm here to rescue you!"

The Evil Emperor of Evilness was cackling in his throne room, and Honey frowned. Wait, wasn't he introduced in Episode V, which came out after this game? Sure, technically he was around during this part in the time line—for some reason Nack really didn't want to talk about the prequel movies, and she had the feeling he made up everything before Episode IV—but why was he in the Death Star at all?

Leia shared her confusion, and she grabbed on to one of the stormtrooper's blasters. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"Ah, Princess Leia, I see you're looking beautiful as ever. Well, as beautiful as a dummied out piece of garbage code can be, I suppose."

Woah, that was uncalled for. Honey raised her fists and let her wings glitch on to her uniform. "You don't exist in this game, you're very dummy-phobic, and who's to say this isn't the first time you've played around with the enemy code? This is an old game, nobody outside of the characters will notice the enemy AI acting up, and even then they could learn to see it as natural."

"Very good, Honey the Cat, but that's to be expected from someone as prestigious as a Codebuster. Be that as it may, however, a mere glitch can't possibly defeat me" The bastard stood from his throne and all the stormtroopers raised their weapons. "Stand down, you meager programs, and kneel before your emperor." Electricity crackled from his fingertips, and he was too detailed for an 80s game, too programmed for an enemy that didn't fly and oh god.

Leia's eyes widened and she shifted her grip on her blaster. "Before his memory reset again, Luke told me that there were 3 Codebusters. Do you think your friends can help us out?"

"Choko's keeping the TIE fighters from spilling into the arcade, Skrillex went off destroying Death Stars..." Honey gulped and gripped tightly on to her glowing blue cartridge, wishing desperately for a Chaos Emerald. "I'll send for help but for now we're on our own."

Typing quickly on to the translucent cartridge, Honey watched as Emperor Turbo quickly eliminated the stormtroopers with a lightning storm fit for a boss battle. "You have a clean late for reprogramming, princess. Let me teach you the ways of face-punching and not-dying and we'll see if it sticks.

Choko's POV

Choko checked her text message as she spiraled to certain doom, and screamed loudly enough to destroy the windshields of the TIE fighters. There was a dummied out princess? There was a program that went Turbo behind the enemy AI glitch? And he was trying to murder said princess and Honey-chan for the evulz?!

"すみませんが (Sumimasen ga), I must be going! Try regrouping around that Death Star, I believe Sonny-kun and the other X-wing fighters would love to battle you!" Choko swung her cart around and sped towards the real Death Star, wishing a most spectacular and sparkly defeat for the TIE fighters; they even let her reply to her text without shooting at her!

Shedding a single tear for her most valiant opponents, she blated through the beautiful vector shield and pressed down on the gas pedal. The throne room was apparently at the heart of the space station, and if she gained enough momentum...

Vector particles sprinkled her hair as she rammed through the floors of the Death Star. She crashed through an ornate pair of doors and despaired over the scratches in her frosting. Perhaps if she had Swizzle-kun look at the damage, she wouldn't have to—

Choko barely managed to hop out of her cart before it was sliced in half by a bolt of lightning. Cake matter splattered on her cheek, and she slowly turned towards the source of the cart destroyed.

Honey-chan flew into a figure robed in black, and who she assumed was Leia-hime was shooting from an Action Replay/Game Genie/whatever the Codebuster cheat cartridge turned into-enhanced blaster gun. They were putting up a rather good fight, but he was shooting electricity willy-nilly, and another bolt vaporized one half of the Codemobile.

Years later she would look back on that moment and call the explosion a thing of legend.

"手前は私の車を破壊した！この野郎！(Temee wa watashi no kuruma o hakai shita! Kono yarou!)" She ran forward, jumped off of Honey-chan's head, and sank her fist into the heart of this unimaginable bastard! How DARE he destroy her beloved Codemobile! The one she built herself, the one she loved as much as her own racing cart! And for what, so he could take over and terrorize this innocent game?! That stank of Turbo, how did monsters like this man and Turbo ever come into existence?!

As a Codebuster, she was morally obligated to fix the coding of any game, including destroying those who so gleefully screwed around with people's lives! Turbo came in and erased her so he could lock her queen out of her own game, so he could parade around in her king's corpse! Who's to say this emperor could've done the same to this game, she didn't know what the real character cast was!

This emperor, he could've killed Leia-hime and nobody would've known because she was like Honey-chan, and he didn't know how much she suffered, how much she and her beloved suffered for sixteen years before Choko could come and fix them! He didn't care, he lorded their unfortunate natures over them like a racing flag!

He could've added his own army into the code like Mr. Litwak-sama's nephew adding Skrillex-kun to a game. But unlike Toby Litwak-sama, the emperor didn't care about the miracle of life, he didn't care that at the core of it all, Skrillex-kun was one malfunctioning code line away from self-destructing under the weight of a computer-generated program existing in an entirely different processor! He came so close to breaking in Minecraft, splitting apart like her precious Codemobile that this evil bastard so carelessly destroyed!

Did he know what it's like to be a GLITCH? Did he know what it looked like to watch someone LOSE their mind? Did he know about the NOTHING after death? Did he know what it feels like to be UNMADE?!

Choko inhaled a much-needed breath, and startled as she felt beserker tears spilling down her cheeks. Carefully wiping them away, she noticed Leia-hime and Honey-chan standing in a corner, their expressions so sympathetic that Choko kinda wanted to cry. The evil emperor was a misshapen mass beneath her and oww, her hands needed serious TLC.

An explosion took out the west side of the throne room, a large TIE fighter landing gently on the vector-covered floor. A large man in a dark suit—Darth Vader-san, if she was correct—and...Skrillex-kun stepped out, Mr. Waddles bouncing to her side. Skrillex-kun, dressed in a spacefighter uniform and wielding what looked like a thin silver thermos stepped forward. "The TIE fighters have stopped advancing, although they are still building up. If we access the code well now, we can halt the enemy AI bug." He blinked. "Umm, I take it you guys had fun?"

Honey-chan laughed faintly, gesturing towards Leia-hime. "Can we call in my Sonic? We have some other recoding to do, and he's familiar with dummied out characters."

Vanellope's POV

"So let me get this straight." Vanellope rubbed her temples. "Some emperor phony went turbo in Star Wars arcade and Choko kicked his butt into next week after he blew up the Codemobile, Honey met up with a dummied out princess and restored her to the game, and Skrillex became a general in the United Empire-Alliance for Saving Star Wars while Darth Vader taught him the ways of the force. Did I miss anything?"

Choko coughed. "No, I think that's everything. Did she miss anything, Sonny-kun?"

Skrillex was in a corner with Luke Skywalker, having a lightsaber duel. Darth Vader had explained that they disconnected the emperor's code from their game before shipping his sorry molasses to the Surge Protector, who sucked him into the floor. Vanellope really didn't want to know what the Surge had in mind for punishment, but after the Turbo mess, he probably had years of built-up rage towards anyone who screwed around with code for the evulz.

Princess Leia herself was reprogrammed with the help of C. Sonic and a group of people from the computer room with access to voice clips. It wouldn't do to have a commanding leader without a voice, after all. Vanellope personally approved of adding Leia, as hard-knocking princesses were a rare sight around the arcade. Not that she was really a princess anymore, but that was a whole 'nother level of code drama best suited for her little minions.

Speaking of which, "So Honey, I heard that something interesting happened by your port today."

Honey turned bright red, and Vanellope idly wondered if infusing red berries with honey would be as sweet as it sounded. Skrillex grinned as Luke and Darth Vader huddled closer for the juicy gossip. "Oh, I made some good betting money today."

"I will personally tear you a new butthole, hipster scum."

"You see, earlier today before our lives took another lovely dip in code chaos—"

"I DARE you to keep going, Sonny Moore."

"Just ask Honey yourself, Your Queenliness, or you could ask the other guy too—"

At that moment C. Sonic decided to come walking in, escorting a brand new Leia into the meeting hall. Honey started strangling Skrillex, Choko deliberately turned away from the drama, the Star Wars characters shared a significant glance, and Vanellope smirked into her tea cup. Her Codebusters were just too much fun sometimes.

ありがとう (Arigatou): Thank you

手前は私の車を破壊した！この野郎！(Temee wa watashi no kuruma o hakai shita! Kono yarou!): You destroyed my car! You bastarrd! Note here that instead of using "anata" for "you, Choko used "temee". Temee/temae is much ruder and confrontational, and as anyone who has ever read a Naruto fanfic knows, it more or less has the connotation of bastard. It's almost always used by males, but Choko is that mad to start breaking through the gender language barriers.

I honestly did not intend for a program to go turbo and start screwing up Star Wars. I actually had no idea where this chapter was going, which was probably why it took SO FREAKING LONG for it to be written.

Anyways, Emperor Turbo screwed up the game's enemy AI to be a douchecanoe. That's all there was, since I'm tired of using faulty AI but didn't really have a choice.

Princess Leia does not exist in this game, but it makes sense for there to be a dummy Leia. After all, she was the only important girl/potential love interest for the hero (remember that George Lucas didn't intend for Leia to be Luke's twin until Episode VI. He was going to have a random chick be his sister, but then Lucas morphed the two together, which is why we have the squicky incest undertones until the Big Reveal). Honey wouldn't have let any dummied out character stay a glitch after what she went through, and had her fixed up all nice and stuff.

Honey and C. Sonic forever.

Anyway, that's it for this clusterfok of a chapter. I'm going to try and get back into the rhythm for updates, because I have three more big arcade events to happen before this story ends. Review if you like :D