And we are back! I'm writing half of this in the airport terminal/on the plane back to California and the other half back with my cats back home; it was a good summer break, hard and honest work, and while I'm gonna be depresso over leaving my family and coworkers behind, I'm really missing home :D
And what better way to celebrate that than another TTMD chapter?
Disclaimer: Do I seriously look like I own the copyrighted material? Really?
...Vanellope shivered, and pulled herself back together. She needed all of those things and a bucket of butter mints, but she had the whole day on her own; World Circuit got installed before opening hours and gamers were bound to half-riot over the new game until closing hours. And it wasn't as if she'd never survived a dim wasteland with a psycho out for her blood or anything, either.
But this time, she didn't have time to scream and throw up and hide like she did the last time, and she wiped her eyes dry and adjusted her racing scarf. It was time to test drive this downgraded cart, this ugly new game, and this wishy-washy trap called being fifteen years old.
Vanellope swore she felt her hair rustle, and decided to force her way through the NA-C Circuit's bubble; she'd wanted to explore earlier, and if these black haired girls wanted to come and sour Queen Vanellope von Schweetz, President of Sugar Rush's monkey milk, they were going to have to race her for it—
Within the murky bubble, Vanellope's eyes adjusted to suddenly being in HD again. The sugar sparkles and sunshine were back to full glory, and she swerved across a golden brown sugar beach in shock. This was the Paradice Cream Pier, the Disneyfied race track tumbling through an oceanside amusement park to the thrill of beach lovers and soft serve aficionados, and Vanellope's heart froze at the terror of never being back to someplace she could 100% be safe in.
Shaking her head free of the chill, she trekked across the beach and parked in a tangle of cabanas and fruit smoothie stands. This track belonged to Aerielle Softswirl and Pommy Smootherlain, and while she'd love to meet the two, she swore she could smell cookies and cream on the summertime air and she was certain that neither of the two had that for a default flavor. The two racers in question sped by and kicked up pomegranate scented sand, quickly chased by an assortment of international racers and Taffyta. Taffyta looked so gleeful, shooting taffy bombs at her competitors from her upgraded Pink Lightning, and jealousy gripped at Vanellope until she forced with down with all the grace her queenly body possessed.
NPCs cheered from their stands and wow, this looked no different than the game Vanellope had awoken in. Was she going crazy? Vanellope dared to get out of her cart and slink between shadows of the cabanas to look upon the NPCs closely. They were ice cream based, cheesecake based, Taffyta's own strawberry taffy lollipop people and—
Vanellope narrowed her eyes because they flickered. In fact, they were almost gray-tone in comparison to Aerielle and Pommy's screaming fans, like the time attack ghosts Vanellope would train against. The taffy people faded out during a fan wave and a chill rose up in Vanellope's throat. "That's right," she exhaled as she hid once again from the game camera's view, "I'm the ghost now, so they're the ones who look..." Incomplete, inconsequential, immaterial to the long run when compared to the rest of the vibrant colors. "...wrong."
They were wrong because she was on the wrong side of the mirror and that wasn't fair. Gritting her teeth, she stalked back to her cart to find a new hiding place, and her breath misted as she spotted the black haired psycho sitting in her cart. From afar she was adorable, singing "I'm in the queen's cart, vroom vroom!" with her large dark eyes and her delicate hands wrapped around the steering wheel. But then the music glitched from the California-certified BGM to something too cutesy and sinister to be allowed, and Vanellope hightailed it just as the black haired girl shot forward.
And wreck it all, but this was the second time someone chased Vanellope down in her own cart!
Ducking between the scenery and risking exposure to the camera, Vanellope headed to where she instinctively knew where any and all back up carts would be for the NA-C circuit. She just knew that Aerielle had a special edition upgrade cart that would be unlocked if she won the World Circuit Cup 5 times, Vanellope didn't even know where that information came from but it was true.
She came upon Aerielle's little condo by the edge of Sugarland Park and kicked in the door. That was rude beyond all belief but the psycho was just on the edge of her peripheral and Vanellope didn't want to know why the scent of iron was infusing itself in the air. But she found what she needed, a ice cream cone variation cart that was built for sugar boosts, and just as the psycho crashed through the hut's door, Vanellope kicked the cart into gear.
One of the level's alternate tracks curved just ahead, and Vanellope shivered with delight as the cart sped over the perfectly paved pomegranate pathway. And the level was beautiful, everything fruit-toned and vibrant as NPCs screamed on their thrill rides of choice. Memories of sneaking into NintendoLand with Ralph made Vanellope's heart clench, but the chill of the psycho's stolen cart roaring behind her kept Vanellope on track.
Up ahead was the main pier, the crowd of active racers making loops on the roller coaster. Knowing that the camera's eye would spell suspicion and death, Vanellope avoided the Soft Serve Screamer and skidded off the road towards the Smoothshine Wheel. The boardwalk groaned beneath 1st place, and she hoped that she wasn't visible on the race roster.
A cherry gondola was ready for boarding and Vanellope rocked the entire wheel with the force of her entry. But as the gondola rose she could see the psycho park down below and scour the pier on foot, and Vanellope sighed in relief. The crowd of racers sped by and Vanellope bit down a vindictive smile when the psycho was nearly mowed down by a blue-skinned international character. What's her face, Vanellope glitched as she tried to recall the racer's name. It was...Semolinda something other, and she broke character to look back at her almost victim but then Taffyta took first place again and Vanellope and her not quite clone were once again forgotten.
The psycho seemed so lost and helpless down there, fanning herself as her Oreo hat seemed to wilt under the summer sun, and Vanellope almost forgot why she was hiding from her. But then the wheel's sub-melody glitched into a cutesy nightmare as the psycho looked up and smiled too widely for her face. "I found you!"
Vanellope make sure that the camera was facing far away, and then gunned her cart. She shrieked as her cart didn't land on the intended cluster of umbrella but flat on the pier, and the boards gave way to a shockingly cold sea. Vanellope gagged on blue raspberry salt and couldn't figure out how to tear off the darn seat belt, until a plump little cheek and milky white teeth did it for her. A hot crunch and she was free, her forearm and hip gouged as the psycho decided to eat Vanellope. Vanellope brought up her legs and kicked away from the cart, and broke through the surface of the waves with a scream.
She had only a second to appreciate the sun on her face before the other girl dragged her back down again, getting another bite on the inside of her left knee. Oh Tobikomi above, Vanellope didn't want to die like this, to be eaten by a girl whose name she didn't even know, not before she got to life this new life and tell Ralph and Nilla Beanson and the princesses and the Codebusters sand her people goodbye—
Vanellope grappled with the psycho, heard pounding and triggering a wicked serving knife to poof into existence into the other girl's eye. The psycho convulsed and released Vanellope as the sea flooded with bitter cream, and the queen swam back to shore on the crest of a frothing white wave. Her left leg nearly collapsed under her own weight but she hobbled back to the pier and back to her own cart, hoping that Aerielle would forgive her fellow racer for losing her cart at the bottom of the pier.
Her cart stank of ozone and vanilla extract was gushing all over the cookie carpets, but Vanellope took it in stride as she drove away from the pier and back onto the mainland. With a ripple of glitched coding her injuries half-healed—such a wonderful discovery from the Bad Times, how her glitch could be of service for once—and she found an empty patch in the scenery to hide in. From her hiding hole she watched Taffyta win the race, the gamer surely pleased that he managed to beat second-place Semolinda and the home court characters. Taffyta accepted her gold coin, the gamer continued to the next level in the NA-C circuit, and the world lost its sparkle again.
With the disappearance of the taffy racers went the HD, the blue sky, the sun and the trees and the rides into monochrome polygon cardboard. Half of the mirror racers went to the next level while half lingered, and Semolinda looked around, "Seal oli veel üks tüdruk täna?"
Vanellope had no idea what that meant, but the cheesecake racer (Sernikai? It was Sernikai, right? She swore she knew this just fifteen minutes ago) only laughed, "Ci docierane nam zbyt wiele razy. Ci mylić z Pani Nona dla kogoś innego." Then Semolinda and Sernikai laughed as another racer—that was Nona, Nona...her name was now just Nona—smacked them upside the heads. They walked past Vanellope into another part of the dismal mirror world and Vanellope couldn't understand what they found so fun about this sham of an environment.
And they looked so happy, sharing jokes that Vanellope couldn't understand and maybe won't ever get to understand because she was bleeding precious vanilla into a hostile world and who knew, maybe the knife was poisoned. Vanellope was left alone and she wanted to cry again because her body ached and she didn't know where to go now.
But then she smelled cookies in the stifled air and she drove off, because driving while crying was a skill set that all fifteen year olds knew.
Vanellope found herself between the South American and South American Expansion Circuits, staring up at the void and resisting the urge to go full emo. Skrillex was once an emo princess, he joked that all of the Sugar Rush kids would become emo princesses one day and that if so, he'd take them out to buy black on black. And while black reminded Vanellope of dark chocolate and black licorice, which were totally not her base flavorings, she appreciated the sentiment.
The day was a blur of dodging the psycho and getting reminders that life was continuing on without her and sweet mother of monkey milk, did anyone notice that there was an importer in her place? The Other Vanellope was far too sickly sweet and pure evil to pass off as the real Vanellope, right? At least Choko or Nilla would know, they knew Vanellope's coding best, and Vanellope wondered if the imposter would notice that too and try to off her former and current secretaries.
If that happened, Vanellope swore as her gloved strained against her clenched fists, she was going to put the Other's head on a pike and race through all the levels in this blasted game with a brand new hood ornament. The rage made her ignition-happy and she sped off, making figure eights around murky domes and playing with the congealing blood on her hip. It smelled too sweet in the empty air and Vanellope worried that now she wouldn't be able to catch cookies and cream on her tongue.
Her leg spasmed and Vanellope wanted to yell but that would just make the psycho come back for seconds. Instead she gunned it for the empty space back in the Sugar Rush Circuits to see if Nell had actually died or not. It certainly sounded like a game over, Vanellope didn't want to know what that wet sound meant but the memory of the psycho biting a chunk out of her arm gave her queasy ideas.
In the empty space there was nothing, not even the scattered mints, and Vanellope was so disgusted by everything that she drove through the empty space towards the stupid empty horizon. And it was all the same, the mirror world was hideous and freezing cold and Vanellope's heart burned with every sub-zero moment. The blood seemed to crystallize as Vanellope approached some sort of event horizon where the boundaries bent upon themselves into a matted curve. Air rushed between her wheels and Vanellope smelled the end of the world as it caressed her hair and ears.
Vanellope braked so that she wouldn't careen over the edge of a sudden bank, and at the bottom of the cliff was a turbulent black sea. Unlike Paradice Cream Pier's ocean, this one tasted ancient, and Vanellope shuddered until her blood froze creamy white against her ripped uniform and a pixellated cloud of frost left her lips.
One wave crashed against the cliff and the entire event horizon shook, and Vanellope stumbled backwards. But the sea pulled on her from deep within her coding, and she peered back over the edge. The sea lit up with diamond data on the wave crests before being sucked down into the primordial black, and Vanellope wanted to drop something in to see what would happen.
"Be careful; what goes in there never comes out."
Vanellope squeaked and whipped around to see Nell, her minty eyes spiraling and very much not eaten and digested by a psychopath. Nell smiled and took out a mint candy from her waistcoat dress pocket, before throwing it over the edge. The mint fell for far longer than the drop appeared before being swallowed in a flash of blue, and Vanellope flinched as the mint became no more. "What is that?"
"That is the Data Sea, one of the most precious parts of this game's mirror." Nell paused, eyes flickering over Vanellope's bum leg and frozen arm and hip, before squeezing her peppermint pendant. Vanellope hissed as an uncomfortable wave of heat rose up from her programming core, but then her injuries were healed and the blood melted away, some of it dripping to die in the sea.
Vanellope rubbed her hip to make sure the mesh was healed, before giving Nell an admittedly impressive side eye, "And I don't suppose that's all you're going to tell me about it?"
Nell laughed and it sounded weird, since her expression didn't change. "No, it's best for non-mirrors to be ignorant of the mirror's inner workings. Think too hard about it and you just might throw yourself into the Sea."
Vanellope flinched at the idea of being swallowed by the endless sea. Shaking her head free of freezing cobwebs, she pointed a finger, "Ok lady, we need to have a sit down. Not just a tea party but a real talk, because that psycho took a few bites out of me today like I was the main course and she's currently on her way for seconds."
"...yes, I suppose we do." Nell brushed pixels from her sleeves and the sea and the pendant around her neck suddenly went supernova. Vanellope covered her eyes but the technicolor aurora burned her eyes anyway and that was it, black was best and she wanted to dye all of her eyesore queen gowns into shades of goth. The glow went away and Nell shook Vanellope's arm, "We have a lot to discuss and not a lot of time, because we need to get you on the other side of the mirror immediately."
"W-Why?" And Vanellope's head was still aching with the burst of color and recession back into mirror-palette, because the mirror world seemed just a bit more tolerable in the absence of such light.
Nell's face was as smooth as dinner china, and her voice just as flat. "What are the full names of the Original 16 Racers?"
Vanellope furrowed her brows because that was a stupid question. She rattled them off, waxing eloquently over Taffyta's odd-tasting surname, and crossed her arms, "What was that supposed to prove?"
"That your racer recognition is failing." Nell counted on her fingers, "Emmareld Sourblossom is no longer Minty Zaki, Minty Fondantine is a mix of Minty Candlezaki and her European Cakelyn Fondantine naming, the former recolors have their own unique personas, and you forgot that Choko Pockystix exists."
"...w-what?"
Nell sighed as Vanellope sank to her knees, "It means that your physical memory is failing due to you being outside of your intended game environment. It means that your connection to Mirror Vanna's memory recovery has been severed. It means that the Other Vanellope can now access your memory banks and become you.
"And," the cold finality of her voice made Vanellope's heart freeze over, "it means that you are becoming a mirror program, and when she devours a mirror program, they do not regenerate."
Seal oli veel üks tüdruk täna?-Google Translate Estonian for "There was another girl today?"
Ty docierane nam zbyt wiele razy. Ty mylić z Pani Nona dla kogoś innego.-Google Translate Polish for "You lapped us too many times. You confused Ms. Nona with someone else."
And here we are! My track record for updating consistently is as shameful as ever! (I point fingers at scholarship applications and breaking up with my boyfriend of over two years, it's been a hectic time)
I promise that the next few chapters will get better, since this was a "blank" chapter from my half-remembered story outline. But I got to introduce some more characters, touch upon important concepts, and ponder what to call the Not Vanellope since she's not just a psycho, she's a looooooot more than that
Anyway, I hope you enjoy these pathetically tiny chapterlets, and hopefully I'll get another one done because school starts up October 2!