Salutations, my friends! I'm finally free from being a live-in nanny (dat college money) so I'm trying to get back into the swing of things for this story. And coming up is a game that was supposed to be shown already, but fits best here because...reasons, I guess.

For some godawful reason, this chapter took me FOREVER TO WRITE. Idk why, I had the plot figured out before I started the last chapter, but good lord, this was definitely a fruit of my labor. And then I had to go diving through movie themes on YouTube, and you can definitely tell where that influence came in. Hopefully it tastes more like delicious pomegranate and not like failberries.

Disclaimer: SCREW THE DISCLAIMER I'M TOO TIRED TO BE WITTY. Just assume that I don't own copyrighted material from Disney, SEGA, Activision or Capcom, ok?

Choko's POV

Choko poured green tea into Bubblebetty-chan's waiting cup, wishing to wean the girl off of her unsweetened sugarplum tea addiction. The poor dear's normally light pink skin was turning purple, and Tobikomi knew that any parallels to her Before state needed to be kept to a minimum. The other former palette swaps agreed, and they were all seated in Choko's tea room, sharing vicious gossip and snack recipes. "Is it true that you saw Sour Apple-chan and Minty-chan sharing a banana split?"

"You bet your pocky I did." Pollipop-chan smirked as she held up the official back stories of the racers. "I'm the one who got them to stop fighting after the reset, but I didn't think that tricky foe-yay subtext was part of their programming!"

The assembled group giggled wildly, before Marzipanne-chan leaned in closer. "More importantly Polli... what kind of toppings did the banana split have?"

"It was apple-infused caramel over butter pecan and wintermint chocolate chip ice cream, and I even saw butterscotch coated peanuts sprinkled on the whipped cream!" Choko gasped as everyone squealed, and Pollipop-chan sipped primly at her sparkling tea. "I bet you five coins that by the end of the week, they'll be..." Everyone held their breath, "holding hands between races."

The pigs outside jumped as all the girls in the tea room erupted. Choko was ready to start regulating the betting pool when her Action Replay began to buzz under her obi. Groaning, she motioned for her friends to not yell embarrassing lies and answered, "This is Choko to whoever's calling, is there a problem?"

"Sorry china doll, but Ryu just showed up at my game saying that his game glitched five minutes ago."

Rolling her eyes as her fellow racers made oogaly faces at Honey-chan's voice, Choko left to start getting ready for work. "I'll be at your port in five minutes. Spread the message to Skrillex-kun for me?"

"Loud and clear; the loser's counseling the Tekken Tag 2 fighters to stop being so serious, so I'll go rain on their parades. Honey out."

"It must be so glamorous, going all over the arcade and meeting new people." Lemonetta-chan and Bubblebetty-chan sighed dreamily, eyes sparkling with wishes of adventure. "But it also seems like a lot of hard work. Do you ever wish things had gone differently?"

Choko paused as she zipped up her uniform. She may have lost most of her free time and position as High Secretary, and her tea room had seen far too little company in the past year. By all means, a normal Sugar Rush girl would've been fed up with the high demand. Shaking her head, she turned to face her friends and wiggled her fingers. In an instant the table refilled and prettily drawn invitation cards to their racing successors from Sugar Rush 2000, Sugar Rush: Candy Craze and Sugar Rush GP. Choko smiled at their excited faces. "No, I think this is exactly what I've been meant to be."

Choko swerved the Codemobile to a stop in front of Honey-chan and Skrillex-kun, nothing with appreciation that they liked her expert handling. Not that she was a compliment fisher like some people—certainly not Taffyta-chan, where did you hear that?—but it was nice to see that flashy moves still rang in the code of rather cynical programs. "Where is Ryu-san?"

"He went back just a second ago to keep the problem from spreading." They jumped into the backseat and Skrillex-kun rubbed Mr Waddles' ears, eyes fixed on the port to Street Fighter II. "We also ran into M. Sonic and the Chun-Li from the other SFII. They're clean as far as they know."

Honey-chan casually leaned against Choko's chair, but the young racer could feel the protective concern radiating from her friend like the heat from a sweet seeker. It made her feel safer as they entered SFII, but Choko still felt uneasy; there was nothing visually amiss with the game. "Sonny-kun..."

"There's nothing explicit in the soundtrack..." But Skrillex-kun stood tensely, before yelling at the assorted group of fighters, "What kind of glitch is going on here?"

One of the beefier men, Guile-san, trudged forward with a sheepish expression. Blanka-san was pulled along with him, the former grumbling, "I kinda...I don't know, we're just stuck together."

Honey-chan sighed, hands on hips. "Looks like you fused your hit boxes together or something. When did this happen?"

Guile-san went off into a long-winded explanation that Choko felt go way over her head, but her battle game-born friend seemed to understand. Looking around, she noticed that the timer for the stage was still going. Skrillex-kun followed her gaze and began to pale. "Oh no..."

Honey-chan turned, started by his quiet exhale. "They were having time friendly fights when Guile managed to lock Blanka to his avatar and knock him unconscious. Talk to me Sonny boy, what are you seeing?"

Skrillex-kun walked up to Blanka before slapping him soundly across the face. He was suddenly pulled to the unmoving behemoth's side, and the timer counted down to three seconds. "Blanka's not knocked out, he's dead! And that means—"

The game timed out and Guile went into a victory pose before freezing. Skrillex-kun glitched violently and Choko wanted to scream, but then the world collapsed upon itself before she had time to make a sound.

Honey's POV

Honey had experienced game disasters before.

Sonic the Fighters was a well-built game, even if they forgot to code in the American title into their programming, and despite being a glitch stuck in a hellhole, the Void was solidly concrete. Yet for all that jazz, their console was a video game console, and she'd ridden out blackouts, short circuits and game crashes with grace. As much grace as a static block of pixels could, anyway.

Then again, even if your game got turned off unsafely and the power was cut to the game environment, you didn't die in the darkness as long as you were in your home game. And as she came to in the sightless landscape, she knew that she was very far from Kansas at the moment. "Sonny! Choko! Can anyone hear me?"

Her voice didn't carry in the stifled air, and she shakily raised her Action Replay. It's light illuminated her body but nothing else, and she sank to her knees. The miniscule, ever so fragile cartridge strung around her neck like costume jewelry had a direct link to the energy supply of whatever game it was in. SFII was still plugged in, so it still glowed like a Christmas tree star, and it was keeping her alive in the powerless game-crashed underworld.

Heady with the knowledge of her survival, she ran her fingers over the subtle markings in the cartridge's surface. "Honey to Codebusters, are you alive out there?"

…

…

…is this what her Sonic felt for eleven years?

"Honey-chan!"

Honey nearly fainted with relief but kicked the weakness in her code to the curb; she had a mission to finish. "Glad to hear you hon. Are you in one piece?"

"Oh Honey-chan! This is so m-much different than when Mario-san's game crashed!" Her little child voice seemed so much smaller in the void, and Honey crushed the seeds of despair tighter in her mental fist.

"Don't worry dearest, that was because it was a scripted crash. This is a bit more catastrophic, no big deal." Honey began to walk forward because if she had time to worry, she had time to get moving and get working on fixing the problem. "I can promise you that I've seen this before. It's just a little scary because we're foreign data and the power for the game environment turned off."

"The p-power! B-But—"

"Choko, listen to me. Our Action Replays are linked to the game's power supply, so we're not going to die. Besides, do you think Skrilly would let you die in such a mainstream manner? That hipster god modder's probably dealing with the problem right now."

Choko began to giggle over the feed and Honey prided herself in keeping the girl from crying. Amy was younger than Choko but didn't have Turbo trauma ready to cue the waterworks. A small pulse of life beckoned under her feet, and Honey picked up the pace. "You still there little sister?"

"Yeah." The darkness was cramming itself in Honey's ears, and she strained to hear the muted reply. "I can't anything in here; how are we supposed to fix the glitch?"

"Well, we can't have a death trigger restart the game, since that's waaaay too much obligation for a non profit organization like ours." Honey swore she saw a light in the far distance, and pushed her legs to the max. She just had to imagine it was like sixteen years ago, back when she and her Sonic ran circles around the Void to stay in shape and keep from going insane. "We gotta find Princess Skrilla, he might have some good ideas."

Honey didn't hear Choko's reply, as something came out of the darkness and wrapped a cold hand around her throat.

"Honey-chan? Honey-chan, can you hear me?"

"—1000 0101 1101 0110. Activate /localreset Sonny Moore aka Skrillex."

"Sonny-kun! Oh, are you going into computer mode?"

"...hzzzzzzt. Sorry babydoll, I was reconfiguring myself after I got handcuffed to Guile and Blanka. Damn glitchy arcade fighting mechanisms."

"Well, I'm glad to hear you're alive! But have you hear from Honey-chan? She was just on the line."

"It's hard to hear through these when we're wandering through anti-electricity interference. But to be on the safe side, keep listening."

"Hai. Do you know where we are?"

"My console commands don't work on anything expect myself, since we have to reconnect the electricity flow to the game world. Out of all the glitches we could've seen today, we got the one that would've killed anyone without an Action Repla—"

"Sonny-kun?"

"Garughack!"

"Sonny-kun?!"

"..."

"...oh dear."

"Ok Pockystix, you need to stay focused. There's no electricity, if you drop your Action Replay you die, and both of your teammates have dropped off the grid. Nothing you can't handle."

…

"Who am I kidding, this is a disaster! And the other team is busy in Joust tonight! I just need to find the code well, it always spawns in a game. Even if the power goes out, or Virus-Van tries to murder us all, I need to—oof!"

"..."

"Oh, 済みません (sumimasen)! I didn't know that the game characters would spawn in a state like this."

"... ..."

"I didn't catch your name...?"

"!"

"!"

Skrillex's POV

He roared back into life as Choko screamed over his Action Replay. Glowing a dangerous blue, he ripped through the darkness to her side, dragging her away from the danger. They crash landed somewhere in the darkness, and the blue faded as his wounds took dead center.

"Sonny-kun!" Choko was at his side, and he could see her lit up by their cartridges. Hopefully she couldn't see him, because he wasn't feeling too pretty at the moment...he struggled to sit up but she gently pushed him down. "横たわってください (Yokotawatekudasai), I need to make sure you're ok."

Skrillex grinned in the darkness, before turning his head towards the ever expanding nothing. "Honey's still...out there, kid. You gotta save...her too."

"But what about you?" Her eyes were just so large, and he needed to erase the fear there because he could feel something skulk their way.

"I'm a physical god...r-remember? I got this." He gripped her shoulder with his clean hand, sealing his stomach with the other. She levered him to his knees—FOK FOK FOK—then to a careful stand against her shoulder, and he could smell the chocolate conditioner in her hair "The sooner we get H-Honey, the s-sooner...we can go home. But in c-case something happens...promise me you'll..." He was too tired to continue, but she laughed into the dark cotton surrounding them.

"We'll go slowly, and tuck that Action Replay under your jacket." She paused, then sent a silly little smirk his way as she led them away from the approaching danger. "This time only I'll permit your usual fashion style."

He needed to focus on self-healing commands and keep himself from dying a pathetic death, but he let himself laugh at that.

Since their voices carried like an under-supported alto riff on mute, Choko filled the eerier silence with aimless chatter. Not only was it pretty hilarious—that Gloyd kid scaring Jubileena so badly that her screams caused a cherry pie avalanche was just so Joel—but it soothed the viciously terrible ache in his code. /numb area stomach regardless, Skrillex began to play with his music player. It didn't hurt to have a little music to keep their minds off of the danger lurking in the nothing.

Darling Choko had little knowledge of the great movie soundtracks, and he blew her little eardrums out with glorious John Williams, letting her play with his lightsaber to the tune of Star Wars. Setting his music player to auto, he let Choko move on ahead so he could clutch his chest in privacy.

/numb area fullbody wasn't cutting the job, and Honey was nowhere to be seen. Honestly, he should have never touched Blanka; he should've thrown Choko and Honey back into the Codemobile and let Mr. Waddles get them the fok out of Street Fighter II. Speaking of which, where was the little pig? Skrillex grimaced as his hands kept getting wet, and fell flat on his face.

"Sonny-kun!" Choko helped him away from the jutting piece of...Skrillex felt along the edge with a good hand. Together they mapped out a large rectangle with a curved dome made of a less dense material. Choko gasped as she felt the top of the dome, and her Action Replay strobed as she bounced around him. "Vanellope-heika described this to me before! It's the code well, we can restart the game and find Honey-chan!"

Skrillex sighed; he hated breaking bubbles of people other than Honey and Joel (and Suri, Pixie, Fro, David...the DJs were not safe). "Then it has a lock that only this game's specific Action Replay, or in this case Game Genie, can open." Damn skeleton key cartridge limitations; what was the use of an all-purpose game modifier if you can't use it when you really need to?

She took the bad news with plucky grace, letting him lean back on her delicate shoulder. "That's ok, we need to focus on finding Honey-chan anyway." Her short legs eased their pace and Skrillex relaxed just a little bit.

Then the music snapped from a moderately soft "Princess Leia's Theme" to a deafening "Halloween Theme", and they both screamed as they felt something wicked come their way. Luckily Choko was as good of a foot racer as a cart racer, and she took off running in a random direction. Skrillex felt his hasty code patches tear open, and he hoped that Choko's chocolate scent would cover the disturbing amount of iron dribbling into his shoes.

He couldn't see the bastard in the thick nothing, but the music slowly morphed into "Every Breath You Take", and that wasn't as comforting as it should've been. Choko wrapped an arm around his waist when he faltered and oh crap. "Sonny-kun!"

"No worries...I'm alright." She searched his stomach with a feather-light touch but it hurt terribly. Her hands weren't much smaller than his, and they were dark blue in the faint light. Suddenly nauseous, he sank down to a fetal position because being on his knees just wasn't going to work. "W-We need Honey. Her code's the weakest.." Choko bit her lip and he knew what she was thinking. Either make a run for it and find Honey before their knife happy stalker found them, or stay with a downed DJ. He smiled and held her hands, ignoring the slight squelch they made against his. "Just go, I c-can hide."

She turned away, probably fighting back the urge to cry, but then she looked at him with an expression straight from a horror movie. "Play dead and hide under your jacket if our new friend comes looking. I'll get Honey and the Codemobile, and then I'll come back for you, ok?"

"Ok..." She guided him to make a sad huddle on the ground, pain leeching into his nervous system even as he /numb part fullbody. He looked up to see Choko hold her Action Replay under her chin, and her eyes were lit up with a dangerous blue. "H-Here, take this." He handed her his music player; Havok knew she needed the audio cues more than he did.

She smiled her thanks and tucked stray hair behind his ear before facing the darkness. Her sweet expression melted back into that dark determination, and her voice buffered against the choking black.

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for money I can tell you I don't have gold coins on me, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a short but successful career of racing and code manipulating. Skills that make me a nightmare for mean stabby people like you. If you let my friends and I fix this game crash that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will BLEED YOU LIKE A STUCK TRUFFLE."

Skrillex watched her go with eyes full of wonder, and prayed that their attacker didn't dare to touch her precious Codemobile.

Choko's POV

"The Planet Krypton" echoed darkly in her little bubble of sensation, but Choko hardly cared about the acoustics. All she cared about was that Skrillex-kun was bleeding out in the darkness, and she felt the blood he was trying to hide. But how in the name of Sugar Rush was he supposed to hide 15 stab wounds in his small torso?!

Her hands were still sticky, and she felt a strange comfort in clenching her fists. Honey-chan never replied, so either she was worse off than Skrillex-kun or dead. And if after all the trials and tribulations that girl went through, she was just to die at the hands of a faceless monster in the middle of a crashed game, then Choko was going to break the arcade in half. Starting with the entity that changed her music to "Psycho".

A cold hand bragged her hair and son of an onsen geisha, he ripped out her scrunchie and bow! Kicking outwards, she stabbed her pocky chopsticks into a hand that was tugging at her throat, and ducked under his retaliation swing. He didn't make a sound the entire time, and it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

She could just barely make out the attacker's form, a hulking figure with monstrous speed and power. He smacked her hard across the face and she hit the ground, scrambling away when he tried to stomp her into a fine jelly. Blinking away angry static stars, she sank her Action Replay into his thigh and raged, "EXTERMINATE!"

The figure disappeared into the anti-electricity spectrum, and she held her cartridge close. Her cheek ached and her hair was getting in her eyes and she wanted to go home. But Honey-chan and Skrillex-kun needed her to be strong, and she pulled together all the inspiration that the kunoichi in her imported movies had for herself.

Walking into the dark, she released nervous steam by fiddling with Skrillex-kun's music player. Endless music categories flashed in its small screen, from glitchstep to cartoon themes to video game music? She scrolled down to find that Skrillex-kun had downloaded the complete score of Sugar Rush, both Japanese and international versions. The familiar notes of her original theme brought a smile to her lips, and she quietly sang the J-Pop influenced lyrics to the nothing around her.

A small glow to the far left caught her eye, and she raced off to see if it was Skrillex-kun or Honey-chan or whoever populated this underworld. She gasped as she came upon the figure. "Mr. Waddles!"

Her security pig was jumping around the Codebuster, whose hazard lights cast a small halo of light. She tried petting him but he jumped out of her hand, oinking hysterically and flashing red. Bringing up his stats, she paled; he had only half a heart keeping him from dying. Further inspection of her cart revealed terrible slice marks in the fondant letters, marshmallow seats ruptured with stab holes and chunks of cookie torn from the wheels.

The fact that Honey-chan was propped against the bender was the only thing keeping Choko from having a rage meltdown to rival Virus-Van's.

Choko rolled her eyes; of course Skrillex-kun wouldn't be in the same general area she left him in. Then again, time and space had little meaning in a void, so no one could blame her for being very lost. Honey-chan was curled in the space between Mr. Waddles and the front door, and the glow of her Action Replay illuminated the dark bands around her throat.

The stalker had tried to choke out her dear friend, only relenting when Honey-chan played dead and Mr. Waddles drove up. Such a good security pig, but his bravery nearly cost him his own life! The steering wheel groaned under her grip, and was it just her or were creepy waterphone chords bleeding into her radio?

Mr. Waddles suddenly screeched and Ezaki Glico protect them, but the murderous fiend was in the backseat. Choko ducked under the knife swing, swerving the car around to dislodge his grip on the ruined upholstery. Liquorice lasers flared into the dark as her pig tried to save her from getting a new mouth cut into her throat. A cold hand tore at her uniform, and the fear in Honey-chan's eyes made Choko snap.

With a shriek worthy of any final girl, she judo flipped the stalker away, leveraging him up and over the windshield. Slamming on the brakes, she felt him tumble off the hood, and gunned the engine with a pedal-breaking stomp. Mr. Waddles let out a battle cry as Choko rammed the Codemobile into the monster, taking her speed up to level 11. No mercy for this やつめ (yatsume), no foking mercy! The headlights illuminated the dark figure against the locked dome, and Choko put everything she had into speeding up.

They crashed mightily against the dome, a golden Game Genie peeking out of the figure's form. But that didn't matter, what did was making the would-be murderer bleed like a stuck truffle. Choko backed up for a bit before ramming back into the dome, the jawbreaker coating holding firm. Each twist and crunch spurred her on, and Mr. Waddles focused his lasers directly on the disgusting monster turning into jelly on her grill.

The music changed to a rowdy and rather adult trap song, but Choko liked the beat. "くたばれ、きさま！ (Kutabare, kisama!) You—tried—to—KILL—MY—FRIENDS! And now I—have to—act—a—FOOL!"

With a final ram the Game Genie flew into the lock, and Choko was free to drag the evil man under her wheels and away from Skrillex-kun, who was...laughing? Poor thing must be suffering from blood loss! Handing the wheel to Mr. Waddles, she shook a finger, "And don't let up, honey. Oh, Honey-chan, if you feel up to it you can drive as well."

Honey-chan was also laughing silently, giving Choko a thumbs up. Smiling cheerfully, Choko jumped into the code well, sighing in relief as color and light surrounded her. Diving deeper, she floated by the code box maintaining electricity flow and pulled out a switch. And right before she turned the power back on, she swore she saw a strange purple box named disappear in a flicker of light.

Vanellope's POV

Vanellope met Ryu's guilty expression for a moment before sighing at the scene in front of her.

Everyone was in the infirmary again, with various members of games piling into the too small space again. Codebusters East was directing frantic friends and curious bystanders to great effect, but the three beds in the center of the room were still bustling with activity.

Honey was pouting because while she was clear to fight in the morning, Dr. Mario had the sad news that her voice would be gone for the rest of the week. The bad guys in her game actually had the gumballs to laugh about that, and Honey quickly put the good doctor to work by punching their lights out.

Skrillex was being yelled at by Suri, the leader of the DJs, and his friends weren't exactly helping. Listening in, Vanellope heard snippets of their lovely conversation:

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T PLAY UNTIL NEXT WEEK BECAUSE YOUR SYUSTEM NEEDS DEEP-CODE DEFRAGGING?"

"Bro, you dun goofed so hard—"

"WHY IS IT THAT YOU CAN'T DO YOUR JOB WITHOUT GETTING SLICED UP?"

"Come on Suri, it's not like he—"

"DO I NEED TO SEND A BABYSITTER WITH YOU TO KEEP YOUR BABY ASS SAFE?"

"Ooh, can I volunteer?"

"SHUT UP JOEL, I'M BUSY YELLING AT MR. I CAN ALTER THE UNIVERSE AT WILL BUT I STILL GET GUTTED BY A B-HORROR MOVIE FREAK!"

Wincing, she moved towards the third bed, which was far calmer and a bit more surreal. Choko was in a middle of a tea party with Choko 2000, Choko Candy-Craze and Choko GP, all talking in fast paced Japanese. Choko GP in particular looked very unimpressed by what the original pocky brained girl had to say, and without a word she daintily set her cup down, glided over to Guile and leveraged him through a window. A faint "I deserved that!" managed to soften her expression, but not by much.

Shaking her head, Vanellope turned back to Ryu. "So do you know what tried turning my Codebusters into sliced cheese?"

"Not a clue, Your Majesty. But there are rumors that through truly unattainable means, a mysterious foe will come to...well, you can see the damage here." Ryu scratched his chin, before turning. "Hey Ken! You remember that scary story Dhalism likes to tell?"

"You mean the one about the dragon master creep who fights to the death?" Ken laughed, synching his movements with Ryu. "That's just a dumb story—do you really think that there's an OP fighting boss god skulking around our data? That's just a bad rumor that game magazine started!"

"Oh I know that feel." Vanellope snorted, adjusting her crown. "For years gamers tried launching Adorabeezle through a wall, claiming that there was a hidden bonus level filled with gold coins!"

Immediately a storm of stories about gullible gamers trying to break the game to gain some hearsay achievement swept through the infirmary, and Vanellope left them to their own devices. Ralph was waiting for her at his game, and while she felt a bit overwhelmed at times between being a queen and making sure that the Codebusters didn't die and racer-related drama, she wouldn't change a thing; this was what her life was meant to be, and no impossible prize could change her mind.

済みません (sumimasen): Excuse me

横たわってください (Yokotawatekudasai): Please lie down/stay lying down? (I know the ending is correct but I'm unsure for the verb. Google translate, don't fail me now!)

son of an onsen geisha: Onsen geisha had a very bad reputation for doubling as prostitutes, which was a connotation that spread to "real" geisha and Choko's inspiration. So she's saying a rather adult phrase here, but she's dealing with a murderer so it's justified.

Kunoichi: female ninja

Ezaki Glico: The company that created pocky

やつめ (yatsume): Bastard. Note that the ending me adds more negative connotation to the already rude yatsu.

くたばれ、きさま！ (Kutabare, kisama!): Drop dead, you (bastard)! Kutabare also has the meanings of "You're going down!", "Go and take a running jump", and a few four letter words I can'rt say without bumping up the rating. Kisama is a very rude form of you, having the meaning os bastard basically. As with temee, this is well-known to Naruto fans.

And that's it for the translations; on to the actual story content!

In Street Fighter II, there is a "handcuff glitch" with Guile. Basically, through a specific attack, you will both KO/kill the opponent and lock him to Guile. This isn't an issue if you can unlock the opponent, but if the time runs out and they're still handcuffed, the game will crash.

Because Skrillex locked himself to the pile, his foreign data accidentally caused the electricity flow to the game part of the game to turn off. All the native characters saw this as a brief blackout in their memories. But to anyone not linked to an Action Replay/Deus ex MacGuffin, this would be fatal because no electricity equals instant death. Remember that when you unplug without saving first.

The psycho murderer wasn't going to be in the chapter until I read an article on the SF wiki while listening to the Halloween theme (which brought in the many, many music drops in the chapter). This guy was referenced in movie as graffiti, and here's his debut in my cracked up universe: Sheng Long! Straight from the wiki: Sheng Long is a character once thought to appear in the Street Fighter game. He is regarded as the most famous character hoax not only in the history of Street Fighter, but in all of fighting games. The name "Sheng Long" was based off a mistranslation of "Shoryuken", found in one of Ryu's early victory quotes, "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance". The large amount of fans questioning the quote lead to a rumor spread by EGM that Sheng Long was actually a secret boss character fought under extreme conditions. The whole hoax would become one of the most famous hoaxes and video game legends in gaming history, spreading globally."

Everyone knows about this kind of concept. Some cool, invincible content that a friend of a friend once unlocked with a ridiculous list of requirements. All untrue, but some are so legendary that they begin to haunt the games they "originated" from...spooky, man. Good thing that Choko is a final girl straight from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and is trained in the arts of car-fu!

Yes, I used a Taken reference. And a Doctor Who reference, and a Buffy, Scary Movie, It's a Wonderful Life and various other references. That's the magic of being an author, you get to cram in all your favorite things down your readers' throats :D

I hope that you liked this chapter, even though the tone and plot kept making u-turns from where I wanted them to go!