Good Prevails ((Twixie))
((Remember the ending drabbles? This is one of those!))
The Records Room was dark.
It sprawled, too. In terms of interior design, it wasn’t much; players weren’t meant to come here, so it was simply one big circle of cold grey walls waiting for a texture, with a row of glaring spotlights perched on the roof. But inside was the history of Sugar Rush, told in gold medals and fast karts.
After all, you couldn’t expect a racer to keep EVERYTHING in their little candied cottage in the Victors’ Village. They could keep what they wanted, obviously, but all those trophies and medals and old karts had to go SOMEWHERE. And here they were.
The floor was a sea of trophies and glimmering gold, strewn fathoms deep in towering piles of lucre. They crunched under Twixie’s feet, as she kept moving forward, and more than once she had to steady herself as a treacherous trophy skitted from beneath her shoes. Every so often, the light from her hat darted through a thousand shattered scraps of glass, surrounding a chocolate-coin base. Those had been the pods in which the great karts of history had been stored. She looked for them, perhaps submerged in mountains of vainglory, but they appeared to be vanished from sight.
The flame on Twixie’s hat was the only light she had. The rest, she noted, had been ripped out - the spotlights that were meant to surround the room had been torn off and tossed to the floor. There they lay, sad and shattered. Twixie was careful as she stepped round one: the top of it managed to come up to the top of her marshmallow headgear.
The radio on her hip squawked, and she jumped, eyes wide and the top of her hat flaring.
"Mallowtoff! Do you read?"
"I hear ya! Litwak’s nana!" She shivered, fingering the device hooked just above her skirt. "Ya nearly gave me a code-spasm!"
"Roger." The taciturn tones of Sergeant Calhoun snapped tersely from the radio, coated in a layer of static. "You’re sure you don’t want to leave this to us?"
That came out softer. Twixie’s face hardened in response, and she brought the radio to her mouth, keeping her voice quiet.
"Nuh-uh." She shook her head, still casting her uncovered eye on the gilded sea. "I’m her buddyguard.”
"Alright." The soldier’s voice resumed its professional tone. "But we’re handling the bug. You just find where she is and get her out of there, roger?"
"Roger." She didn’t know who Roger was, granted, but she guessed all these fancy military words were his doing. She had to admit, she liked this. Going out on a Real and Actual Mission, to take down-
A light snapped on, and she whirled around.
She could see two spotlights, glowing infernally from beneath a slumping sea of gold. They shone up, casting a hungry glare on the cold, featureless wall in front of them.
Well, near-featureless.
Adorning the wall, in an ornate gold frame, was a picture. The canvas was slicked with deep reds and rich pinks, and the subject cast an imperious glare on the entirety of the Records Room. It was the look of the man who owned the place, in more ways than one. It was a picture of Sugar Rush's All-Time Greatest Racer, and the fact he'd had it painted rather than put up on a screen indicated he knew it'd REMAIN that way.
It was King Candy. Twixie’s eyes narrowed.
The marshmallow catapult on the other side of her belt was yanked from its holster, and in one swift movement a flaming ball of sugar smacked the King square in his smug sneering grin. The flame hissed, melted marshmallow oozing down the canvas, before billowing out and spreading. In a few seconds, the whole picture was aflame. The regal drawing-room and its lush, thick pinks peeled away, crackling, and fell limply from the scalding frame.
Twixie smirked, at her own little victory in a room full of them, and turned lightly on her heel. She faced the two floodlights, the two burning-hot suns drowned beneath the gold and the ocean of darkness-
-which had pupils.
She had a second, exactly, to scream and jump aside before a set of jaws bigger than she was snapped down on the empty air, oozing a jet-black ichor – it smelled of petrol – and full of too many teeth, bunched tightly into rows and fighting for space. Some of them appeared to be trying to leave the mouth entirely. Through the tiny gaps between them, she could see a pair of twitching mandibles, lurking behind rosy pink cheeks like a knife in a bushel of candy-floss.
She landed with a thud and a skitter of clinking medals. She was sprawled on her side, and ached. In that same moment, she heard the cacophonous clangs of an entire trophy mountain shoved aside, and the whirring of a thousand mechanisms inside a craning, snaking neck. She could feel his breath, hot like an engine, singing the air above her.
She stood up, and turned around, slowly. Her hands were in the air. The frill on the back of King Turbo’s collar twitched upwards and out, like the neck of some territorial lizard. He watched her, in silence, with yellow eyes that seemed to have burned their sockets hollow.
“Kid! What just happened-“
King Turbo screamed, a high-pitched flanging noise like nails being run down an eardrum. Twixie took two hurried, clinking steps back, nearly falling down the pile, but before she could do anything else the King’s claws were at her belt. Two fingers snatched away the radio, the voice, HER voice, and crushed it like an insect. In more ways than one.
He panted, his back – how far back did his back go? Twixie couldn’t see past the heaving shoulderpads, clad with iron spikes, and she certainly couldn’t see his cerci – moving up and down like an ocean wave. His vents hissed, and his wings lifted up to allow a burst of acrid, evil smoke to pollute the air around them. He ran a hand over his helmet, and blinked a few times. It seemed like he was trying to pull himself together.
“Hoohoo! TWIXIE! It’th-it’s been a long TIME, dear!”
“I’m here fer the president.”
She wasn’t going to talk to him, if she could help it. She wasn’t going to listen to him. Everyone in Sugar Rush had learned – she as much as anyone else – what you could be turned into if you listened to him.
“Well, that’th just PRECIOUS. You’re, hoohoo, you’re a BAD enough DUDE ta save the PRETH~ident, right~?”
He sneered. His head was bigger than she was – she noticed, not without a shock of fear flashing through her, that he could probably fit her in his mouth. His lip curled, and his thick, wet tongue pressed against the back of his teeth like a straining dog on a leash.
“Oh, she’th FINE. Better than she’ll EVER be! Although REALLY we’re counting EVER, ahoo, on-on the MINUTE hand if you thee what I’m SAYING, hah!”
The King stretched a long arm out to a trophy-pile a few feet away, a few dozen pinions and pistons whirring in his joints. His head span with a few clicks, without his neck moving at all, and he cast his eyes on the kart-pod adoring the top, like a slightly-slanted hat. The glass dome was fogged, with exhaled breath, but she could see the slumped little figure inside. She didn’t seem to be moving, but every so often the dome was lit up with a bright blue flash.
“RUN to her. I DARE you. In FACT, hoohoohoo, I’ll RACE you!”
He smirked, and steepled his claws.
“Or ACT~ually, maybe I’ll just KILL you.”
Twixie ran for the dome, whipping the catapult out of her holster, before a leg like a tree-trunk slammed down and nearly impaled her through the skull. She staggered back, falling, and before she could get back up a clawed hand snatched her, talons prodding painfully at her back. The ground fell away and a cavern of jaws opened up, and she could count the spinning blades at the back of King Turbo’s throat.
“WAIT! Ya CAN’T!”
And suddenly, she stopped. The King’s eyes narrowed, flashing yellow at her perceived insolence, and his jaws snapped shut like a bear-trap. She had a reprieve, however small.
“And why NOT~?”
…why not? She hadn’t thought of that part. But Twixie was good at thinking on her feet – even when said feet weren’t actually touching the ground – and her brain whirred for an appropriate answer.
“’Cuz…V-Vanellope’s been outside! Outta the game! She was at Fix-it’s wedding last week!” She stared into his yellow eye, as curiosity flitted through it. “Ya-ya can’t wipe EVERYONE’S memories!”
“And who sayth I HAVE to?!”
Twixie stayed where she was, as the King kept his clamped hands in place, but the rest of him straightened up imperiously. She could see all six of his towering legs now, and his face loomed over her like some freakish-looking moon.
“I’m now the motht POWERFUL, VIRUS in the ARCADE! Ahaha! I can take over any game I WANT! EVERY game I want!”
“And how’re you gonna do that?!”
Twixie made sure to look appropriately horrified and awestruck. She still had the catapult in her hand, and the other reached towards her inventory for a marshmallow. If she could just keep him talking…
“Well firtht, ahoohoo, I shall patch inta the HIVEMIND in Hero’th DUTY! I’ll, I’ll take co~MMAND of the SWARMTH with~IN, hah, and show them how ta es~CAPE their GAME!”
“Oh no!”
“Oh YETH!” Turbo grinned, bringing his head back down to her level as his hindquarters slumped. “MEAN~while, hoohoo, I’LL be out patching ANY connection ta the INTER~net – and I know ‘em ALL, I ass~URE you – ta make sure NO-ONE escapeth! Not from MY KINGDOM!”
“But ya can’t DO that!”
“WATCH me!” Turbo gave a giggly little cackle. He seemed to be looking somewhere else entirely. Twixie felt something soft in her wandering hand, and with a quiet little pinging sound she pulled it from her inventory. She placed it into the catapult, and aimed.
“THEN, I shall-“
She fired. The flaming confection burned a fierce green, arcing upwards like a signal flare, and hit him square in the eye.
Turbo screamed. A cheery voice, everywhere and anywhere in the world of Sugar Rush, announced the powerup like it was a normal day at the races.
MALLOWTOFF STOPTAIL!
Twixie was dropped unceremoniously onto the pile of gold, even as it slid back and away from under her. King Turbo’s hands slammed onto the ground, tossing loose trophies and medals into the air, and his cerci lashed like a pair of bullwhips. He tossed his head like a raging horse, blinking his bloodshot eye rapidly as his mandibles forced their way past his cheeks.
“hhhhhcchhchYOU’LL DIE FOR THAT, KID-“
A hailstorm of bullets tattooed themselves into his armor-plated side, ricocheting off and hitting the sleek grey wall. Still, it was enough for him to turn around, and even as he did so Sergeant Calhoun was tossing aside the SMG and whipping a plasma rifle from her back. Her eyes had a feral glint.
“MALLOWTOFF! Get Vanellope out of there and head for the exit point!”
The bug screeched, slamming a hand down as the soldier rolled out of the way. She fired a heavy slug of plasma into his shoulder and blasted a deep hole into one shoulder-pad.
Even as the sergeant worked, Twixie fired a marshmallow at Vanellope’s glass cage and watched it explode into a shattered crater. The girl inside glitched loose, in one big desperate spasm, and reformed from frizzing binary into a sprawled heap on the floor. Twixie grabbed her arm and hauled her up, running for the door.
“C’MON! We gotta get goin’!”
They ran up the pile, the featureless grey sliding doors up ahead of them. The sergeant followed, taking the time to blast any kart she saw into pieces as she sprinted behind them. The air was clogged with the smell of gasoline, and petrol oozed in slick streams down the trophy mountains.
“Whatcha doin’ THAT for?!”
“Look!”
Turbo had his King Candy face back on, and his cerci were glowing blue. Twixie heard an intense thrumming sound, getting faster and stronger, as the glow poured up the contours on his carapace and along the wires draping from his neck. They lit his eyes up blue, and his jaws opened wide as the lines on his face glowed fiercely. She could see what looked like it had once been the Sweet Seeker gun on the Royal Racer, there in the back of his throat.
“MOVE!”
Twixie ran hard, before Calhoun shoved her through the doors. Vanellope fell through alongside her. King Candy’s maw spewed searing blue flame-
And the doors slammed shut. A second later, there was a BOOM.
…when Twixie looked back, ears ringing a shrill scream through her skull, she saw the dent in the steel doors. The explosion had almost ripped them out entirely.
“Well, it’s as good as a beacon.” Calhoun watched the doors, levelly. “If we need to, we can go in there and finish him off afterwards. You alright, kid?”
Twixie looked at the doors, and at the princessident, wobbling her way to her feet. She fingered the medal under her jacket – a prized possession, after saving the game from Polybius all those months ago.
“Never better.”
