Lines in the Icing pt. 2

Chapter 2:  Racing Preparations

The sudden start-up of our craft jostled my vision away from her and all of our eyes forward.  Aside from this hiccup, the ride passed as smoothly and uneventfully as any other connecting to Game Central Station.

The arrival couldn’t have been any less appalling.  Even before we left the transit tunnel, a stench worse than the entire Niceville Dump (Ralph included) choked everyone on the train and even caused a few to hurl.  “Oh, my land,” Felix cried, “what kind of game is this!?”

“Smells like what home used to be,” replied Ralph.

“Welcome to Tatooine,” Machelix announced, “where even the basic laws of hygiene and sanitation are hardly enforced.”

“Then it’s about time to bring some law to this lawless town,” Calhoun said, leaping from her seat with her rifle in the crook of her arm.

Machelix arose from his seat as well, laying a hand on Calhoun’s weapon.  “As impressive as your piece is, this ‘civilization’ has weaponry and armor just as advanced.  No one would look twice at you walking down the street.”

“And who are you?”  Calhoun moved away from Machelix and had her weapon trained on his head.  “I’ve never seen you around.”  The hand cradling the barrel of her gun went to her pocket and brought forth some handheld device.  “I’m not even getting an electronic frequency off of you.  You’re not from a game, are you?”

“Indeed I am not,” answered Machelix, raising his hands in surrender.  “My name is Machelix.  You may think of me as a programmer.”

“I’m more inclined to think of you as a criminal.  It’s programmers who created the Cy-Bug infestation, and it’s programmers who let them run wild without any way to truly eradicate them.”

I heard Robotnic shuffle in his seat and nervously mutter, “Not inviting her over.”

The same irking levelheadedness that Machelix had kept throughout the meeting remained even with a gun literally to his head.  “Not all programmers are built alike,” he said.  Again he touched her gun, but this time a surge of blue squares raced over it before the weapon returned to normal.

Instinctively Calhoun pulled the trigger.  Nothing happened.  Machelix’s head remained on his shoulders.  Twice more the trigger clicked, Calhoun inspecting her gun for the source of the malfunction.  “What did you do to my weapon?” she growled, glaring even more intensely at the one holding her gun hostage.

“I would rather have this intact for this procedure; and I think you would, too.”  Machelix maintained his grip on the rifle, took a breath, and said, “Copy.”  Another wave of blue washed over the gun.  Before our eyes he brought his still clenched hand away, pulling another rifle out of Calhoun’s!  He wasn’t lying when he said he’s a programmer!

He didn’t stop there.  Taking the new rifle, he began molding the metal as if it were clay in his hands:  the barrel he made flatter and more ovular; he ejected the ammo cartridge and threw it to Calhoun; the grips he altered for a more personal fit.  When he finished, he threw the altered weapon to his minion, Captain.  “Shuriken launcher,” he explained.  “I trust Captain’s accuracy, but I was looking for a way for him to apply the same power without the backswing.”  He gave a short demonstration, like throwing a small Frisbee backhanded.

With the renovation complete, he touched Calhoun’s gun and reversed the tide of blue that jammed it.  She took a quick assessment of her firearm, but she still looked far from happy.  She grabbed Machelix’s collar, held him up to her face, and said, “If you ever touch me or my gun again, I will strip you of your pistol, understand?”

The coolness finally started to crack:  a bead of sweat rolled down Machelix’s brow.  “Affirmative, ma’am.”

Calhoun threw her captive staggering to his feet.  She pointed in his face and said, “Let’s get a few things straight.  I trust you about as much as a hen trusts a fox with its eggs.  If you so much as move a pixel of this world out of place, I won’t hesitate to have you placed under arrest.  Do I make myself clear?”

Machelix’s other two assistants stood between him and his aggressor, while Felix went to Calhoun’s side.  “Uh, he’s actually one of the good guys,” said the construction worker.  “He knows about this world and can translate for us; they don’t speak English.”

“Well, I never said that.”  Machelix stepped between the bouncer and his sister.  “English is spoken here, only not by many locals.  The major language is—”

“Q-Bert-ese?” blurted Felix.

Machelix shook his head.  “I believe the dialect is called ‘Huttese’.  The Hutts are the major ruling species here.”

The alien we knew shouted from the doorway leading from the station.  Machelix returned a reply before turning back to us.  “I suppose we’ve kept him waiting long enough.  Alright, let’s head to the garage.”

The tram completely emptied, our caravan moving from the sandstone station out into the blazing sun and sand of a desert city.  Aliens of all shapes, sizes, dresses, and stenches milled about in the central plaza like flies around a sewage drain.  It hardly mattered whether I knew what they were up to or not; nowhere this repulsive but thriving could be called anything but a cesspool.

Walking through the street only confirmed my suspicions.  Street vendors offered questionable foods (some offerings still wriggling from their display hooks), half the “people” carried themselves as shifty-eyed criminals, and finding decent footing without stepping in literal shit was tricky at best and hazardous at its worst.  Why would anyone actually want to come to this overgrown litter box sand castle?

“Come on, the racers’ cantina is this way.”  Machelix took over the lead and directed the group towards another open doorway.  As the larger ones entered inside, I noticed the sweat drops mixed in among the footprints.  Either those villains were athletic lightweights (doubtful) or the desert was really hot and my hat afforded me more shade than I realized.

In the cantina felt so much better regardless.  Being out of the harsh sun with some kind of cooling for the drinks (something told me they weren’t root beer) kept this section of hell livable.  The bartender had a human enough shape from the neck down.  His head, though, resembled a backwards motorcycle seat.  I wouldn’t mention the irony, at least not to his face at the top of the “seat”.  Machelix stood next to Sebulba, both of them looking at some hologram to the side of the doorway; I thought it wise to grab a drink while I still could.  “’Scuse me,” I told the barkeeper as I slid into a stool, “what do you have on tap?”

The bartender looked away from the glass he was cleaning and tapped the table.  I thought he was saying “Money first,” but when I looked down I saw a few buttons on the table built into a console within the table.  Etched at the top was the word “Options” with several others beside each of the buttons.  The one I noticed next was “Subtitles”.  I hadn’t seen an options menu in a game at the arcade since DDR got plugged in, let alone one with an option like that.  As soon as I pressed the button, a blue light turned on next to the button’s other side.

Seeing the light, the bartender said something in that weird local dialect.  As soon as he started, white words appeared like Tapper’s customers on the bar:  ‘What’ll it be?’

“What do you have?”  White words appeared for my speech as well, except the letters I didn’t recognize, not even if they were backwards.  Probably they were from the local alphabet.

The returning string of words read, ‘We have Twin Sun Cola, Baroonda Beer, Ando Prime Alter-Ade, Mon Gazza Spiced Rum, The Aquilaris Classic, and Podracer Punch.’  The barkeep shrugged and added, ‘I don’t name the stuff, just sell it.’

I thought about what the names meant before finally deciding on “Two parts cola, one part beer, one part rum, please.”

“One Jabba the Hutt for you, and the regular tall Classic for you, Machelix?”

I hadn’t even noticed that the leader of this escapade had slid into the stool next to me while I had ordered.  He spoke to the bartender in their language, a word simply translated as ‘Yes.’  When the bartender turned to fill our orders, Machelix swiveled around to face me, leaned on the counter with his cheek on his fist, and pressed the Subtitles button again.  “Man, wish they had installed those things in more places; might not have had to learn the language.”

“So you weren’t lying about being here before.  Unless you altered the code around here.”

Machelix must have picked up on the accusation in my tone, because he replied, “No, nothing like that.”  He drew back his sleeve to show a weird device around his wrist and going under his glove.  “This thing wasn’t built to alter code or memory, only the shape and number of objects.  Basic functionality.”

“How did you freeze Calhoun’s gun, then?”

“Well, there is that.  There was a freeze state I used to hold her gun in place.  If she had fired while I was copying the gun, both of them might have exploded like a podracer in Arch Canyon.”

“A podracer?  Is that what we’re racing, some kind of shuttles?”

A grimace crossed Machelix’s face.  He chuckled and asked, “You don’t know what a podracer is?  Oh, boy, are you in for a treat.”

Our drinks arrived at that time, and he took a long swig as soon as his was set down.  I was a bit more hesitant, given the consistency of mine.  Was the color because of the spices in the rum or the rust on the “casks”?

“Better drink up quickly,” suggested Machelix.  “As soon as I finish preparations, we’re heading to the garage.”  With that he took another long drink, stood up, and carried his cup over to the hologram projector.  What preparations did he have to make?  Something about the race, or…

My thinking was interrupted when Ralph took a couple empty stools beside me.  “What was that about?” he asked, hiking a thumb at Machelix’s back.

I shrugged and replied, “Explaining what happened with Calhoun’s gun.”

“You mean the glitching?”

“Wait, you’ve seen it before?”  Now Ralph had my full attention.

“Yeah, I know someone who, erm, has a glitching problem.”  That last part he leaned in and whispered.

This was the first time I heard about any glitches in the arcade.  “Who are you talking about?”

A rare glint of genuine happiness entered Ralph’s eye when he smiled and said, “Vanellope, Vanellope von Schweetz.”

Now that name rang a bell.  “From Sugar Rush; yeah, I know her, the tomboy princess.  The glitching is a recent occurrence, right?”

Ralph shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I never went to Sugar Rush before… you know, that.”

“Maybe that had something to do with the glitching,” I suggested.  “Not you, but Turbo, when he messed with the code.”

“Hey, yeah, that might be it.”

“So how has she been?  Still racing even with her ‘condition’?”

“Yeah,” Ralph answered with another chuckle.  “You can barely keep her out of the driver’s seat.  The kid’s a natural.”

“What’s this about driving kids?”  Knute walked over and sat on my other side.

“Sugar Rush,” I replied before finally taking a swig of my drink.  The beer and spices were assertive, but they weren’t aggressive enough to mask the sweet cola.  “You were there for an exhibition race once or twice, weren’t you?”

“Heh, yeah, those kids really were something.  In the racing department, I mean.  And speaking of racing, any idea when we’re getting behind the wheels in this game?”

I shook my head.  “No idea, and something tells me it won’t be wheels we’ll be working with.”

“Who told you that?”

I looked to Ralph and replied, “Machelix hinted at it, and this doesn’t seem like the world that would have cars.”

Knute nodded in agreement.  “What do you think we’ll be racing instead?”

“He called them ‘podracers’.  Know anything about them?”

Both Ralph and Knute shook their heads.  “Looks like we’re about to, though,” the latter said, pointing to Machelix coming back our way.

He dropped his empty drink on the bar, added a few coins to the melting ice cubes, and turned to the open part of the cantina.  “Alright, preparations are complete,” he announced.  “If you would all follow me into the next building, we can all get situated for the races.”  The sounds of shuffling seats and groans of getting up filled the cantina.

Once the ball started rolling in that respect, he turned to us again.  “So you know another racer?”

“Vanellope von Schweetz,” I replied.  Ralph had made a “don’t tell” sign, but I hadn’t seen it with Machelix in between us.  Instead, I saw him put his hand to his face.

“With a name like that, I’ll guess she’s found in Sugar Rush?”

“She’s glitched,” Ralph gruffly replied.  “She can’t leave her game, and there’s nothing you can do to change that.  So leave her alone.”

“Wait, wasn’t she Calhoun’s bridesmaid or the flower girl at her wedding…?”  That slight slur in Knute’s speech… I looked to my drink and noticed that the contents were significantly shallower than before.  It wasn’t like I could pay for it, but it was still mine.  At least I would have kept my mouth shut after holding my alcohol, especially after the way Ralph defended the girl.

Either way, Machelix ignored him; the way his nose twitched he must have written off the outburst as being a result of the alcohol.  With a cough he turned to Ralph and posed this question:  “What if there is something I could do to fix her?”

Ralph nearly leapt out of his seat.  “What’re you getting at, spikes?”

“I did say I was a programmer, didn’t I?”  Even without seeing it I could tell he wore that same swaggering smirk.

I had to call him out on this one.  “You said that the thing on your wrist only alters the looks of something, not fix glitches.”

Machelix turned to me, and sure enough he wore that damn smirk.  “Let’s just say there’s someone else here with the proper tech who also owes me a favor.”

Another snap of his fingers summoned his Captain behind him.  “Go to Sugar Rush,” the master commanded his minion, “and locate this Vanellope von Schweetz.”  Feeling Ralph’s angry glare in the back of his head, he added, “Make sure you don’t make contact, but leave her unharmed.  When you’ve located her, open a portal to the shop.  I’ll meet you there.”

With a nod, Captain vanished from the spot.

Turning back to us Machelix said, “My two associates will lead you all to the garage.  You all can take your pick when you get there, and I’ll speak with their owners.”  Like his minion before him, Machelix also left but by way of the door.

I downed the remainder of my drink that Knute left me and stood from my seat.  “I’m just gonna see what he’s up to.  See you in the garage.”  Quickly I left the cantina in pursuit.  It might’ve been lousy of me to leave Knute with the check, but he was the one who had the majority of my drink.

The sun remained a harsh fixture in the sky, but not as harsh as the stench of boiling sewage and crap that assailed my senses.  Holding my sleeve over my nose, I looked around for Machelix.  That suspicious character couldn’t have gotten far.

Farther down the street I spied him just entering a rounded sandstone building.  I ran to catch up with him, keeping my other hand on my hat to prevent it from blowing away.  It had been a while since I ran down a perp, but at least this one wasn’t trying to escape.  He wasn’t even trying to disguise his actions, as far as I knew.

I kept close to the outside of the building when I got there, but as soon as I peeked in the doorway a two-note tone gave away my entrance.  Machelix and some pudgy winged thing looked my way.  “Gooddé da lodia,” the flying alien said to me.  I started to think that phrase was some kind of greeting.

Machelix turned to the other, said something in their mutual language, and said to me in plain English, “He’s just curious about the business I’m conducting.”

“Ah, what a shame,” answered the airborne alien.  “I thought you had brought me another customer.”

“Afraid not, Watto.  Besides, I don’t think he has a trugget to his name.”

“What would that name be?” this “Watto” asked, looking at me with an uneven stare over a short drooping snout.

Standing fully in the doorway I replied, “Nick O’Nemus.”

“While we’re on the subject of names,” Machelix added, turning back to Watto, “where is Qui-Gon Jinn?”

“Ah, yes, the Jedi.”  Watto picked up a device from the overly-crowded counter next to him and tapped it a few times.  “Hmm, he isn’t due in my shop for a few more races.  Probably stopped at Skywalker’s home in the meantime.”

Annoyance crossed Machelix’s face with the news.  “That’s a shame.  He didn’t happen to leave anything here, did he?”

“Hmm, well… as a matter of fact, he did.”  Watto picked up another device from the counter.  “He forgot to take this when he last left.”

This device he handed to Machelix; instantly his mood lightened with a smile on his face.  “Thanks, this is just what I needed.  Tell Qui-Gon I’ll give it back to him when I’m done with my business.”

“Ha, promise me you’ll buy a part next time you stop by, and you’ve got a deal.”

“Well, as long as you’re happy, I’m happy.  In fact, let me take you up on that offer right now.”  As if he were the owner of the shop, Machelix led Watto through the door in the back.  He threw a glance my way to say “follow”.  Begrudgingly I did.  What was he up to this time while his Captain hadn’t returned, and how did it involve me?

The scents of rust, evaporated gasoline, and motor oil drowned out the rancid odors from the rest of the city (thankfully) when I stepped out to the back of the shop.  Heaps of scrap metal constructed into all sorts of shapes surrounded me but left enough of an aisle to pass through on relatively clean and open sand.  “What is this?”

“Podracer junkyard,” replied Machelix.  “Most any wrecked podracer ends up here or at one of the other scrap part dealers’ shops.”  He glanced to Watto, shrugged, and grimaced, embarrassed to admit the shop dealer’s competition.  “Starships, sand transports, and other vehicles can find their way here as well when they’re junked.”

“You can say that business is ‘booming’,” Watto added with a chuckle.

The situation was far from humorous.  “Assuming that the majority of this is podracer wreckage, these crashes are frequent?”

“Seriously, Mac, where did you find this guy?  He asks more questions than an inquisitive Jedi.”

Machelix shrugged and replied, “Not really sure; he was hanging out at a villains’ meeting, but he seems more like a correctional officer or a private investigator or something.”  The punk was almost as good an investigator as I was.  “There’s been a recent development and he’s… ‘assisting’ me on the case.  So were the villains who were at the meeting.”

“Villains meeting?  Is that where Sebulba went?”

“What do you mean, ‘assisting’?” I asked.  “I still barely believe there’s even a scheme going on.  You could’ve just gotten that scrap of metal here and warped it to your needs with that thing on your wrist.  This could all just be a way to kill us all off and have it written off as an accident!”

The lightheartedness left Machelix’s face faster than a ghost from a powered-up Pac-Man.  He glared at me with hardened blue eyes and growled, “Alright, I’ve put up with your crap up until now, but I’ll be damned if I put up with this.  What will it take for you to believe me?  You have Robotnic’s word about mine and my Organization’s character, you have my experience with this world, and you have my associates and I risking our existences in this race as well.”

“You can leave.  Go on, get lost.  We can handle this ‘problem’, if there even is one, without your deathtrap scheme.”

“Nothing, then.  If you won’t have my assistance with the big picture dilemma, then I’ll settle for doing some bite-size good.”  Roughly he passed by me back towards the shop’s rear entrance.

Captain stood there next to an open portal constructed of dark energy.  Most likely it showed up while I confronted its boss.  It must have said something that only Machelix could hear, because he said, “Good, then this will be an isolated incident.  I’d hate for anyone to think I was up to no good.”  He looked back to me once and whispered something else to his minion before both of them walked through the portal.

Watto fluttered up beside me.  “Give him a second chance,” he said.  “He’s a good customer for an outlander.  I have great faith in him.”

I still didn’t know whether I could trust Watto or Machelix, but I’d rather be killed without respawn than to sit back and let that punk deface the innocence of Sugar Rush.  Tugging my hat more tightly on my head I ran through the portal.

For the first time since leaving Game Central Station, pleasant scents flooded my nose.  Baked goods, fruit-flavored sugar, and all shades of chocolate surrounded me, all of these ingredients built up around me like the walls of a cathedral.  Or a palace.  Machelix and Captain (the latter holding a sheet of paper) stood facing me a ways away in the glow from a candy glass window.  “Welcome to Candy Land Castle,” Machelix announced, “and by extension Sugar Rush.”

He looked to Captain and said, “You know what to do.  Have Lieutenant assist you with the heavy-lifting.”  With a gentle pat on the back he sent his minion through the portal again.

“What was that all about?” I asked, hiking my thumb at the portal.

“I can’t be everywhere at once,” Machelix replied, “so I sent Captain to gather the parts for my podracer.  A real engineer doesn’t race with a rental.”

Whether I could believe that story was debatable.  I turned towards the portal to follow Captain, but Machelix spoke up again before I could pursue my suspicions:  “Go on, follow the minion back to the world of hardened villains rather than his boss in a world of innocence unfit for combat.  See how that sits on your conscience.”  Even with his sarcasm, I couldn’t deny his point.  I turned from the portal just as it started to close.

Smugly smiling, Machelix ushered me down the hallway.  “Shall we, then?”

“Shall we what?”  Machelix turned around, and there stood a girl barely half his height with candy stuck in her hair like so many barrettes.  She looked up at us with big brown eyes, rocking back and forth on her feet with her hands stuck in the pockets of her mint-green hoodie.  “Shall we what?”

Machelix smiled at the sight of her.  “Ah, Miss von Schweetz, I presume?”

“Maybe,” she replied, leaning at the waist to one side.  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Indeed, I am not.  I am here, though, about a problem you have.”

The kid’s sweet face soured with worry.  “Problem?  What problem…?”

Machelix knelt down to her level.  “I was made aware of your, erm, glitching problem.”  She stepped back and looked like she was about to run, but Machelix added, “It’s okay, you can think of me as a doctor.  I’m here to help you.”

“But I like my glitching,” Vanellope insisted.  “I can finally control it.”  She blurred with the same blue squares I had seen when Machelix froze the gun before reappearing beside me a split second later.  Twice more she moved like this before returning to her initial position.  “See?”

His smile started to strain, but Machelix held it.  “Yes, I would imagine that a harnessed glitch is useful; but as long as you remain glitched, you can’t leave this game.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m going to have to leave here any time soon.  Ralph already destroyed all the bugs, a-doy.”  And I thought Machelix’s personality was grating...

“On the contrary, that was just one swarm,” he informed her.  “All it takes is one bug to breed that kind of chaos, and one bug is the least of what we’re dealing with.  We believe that Turbo’s coming back, and we need your help.”

Vanellope folded her arms and regarded Machelix as suspiciously as I did.  “Yeah, right, like you need help from a kid.  I might be one, but I’m not stupid.”

“It involves a race, a big race.”

“A race?  Really!?”  Stupid, maybe not; but gullible, perhaps.

Machelix smiled anew and answered, “Yes, but it’s not here.  It’s in another game.  And the only way for you to participate in this race is if I fix your glitched state.”  When he saw her face droop, he leaned in closer to her ear and added, “I don’t have to delete your glitch to do that, though.”

“What?  Really?  But—”

Machelix chuckled and placed a gloved finger to her mouth to silence her.  “A glitch is just improperly handled code.  All that has to be done is reintegrate that code properly into your system.  You’ll be more stable while still having the desirable effects.”

Vanellope’s eyes remained as wide as donuts.  “You can do that?”  A hint of suspicion lingered, though, when she asked, “You’re not just sweet-talking me, are you?”

“Trust me, with these tools…” (He took a second to show her the device on his hand and the one he took from Watto) “I have the ability to do nearly anything in these worlds, so long as they’re dictated by code.”

“He calls himself a programmer,” I added with a snort.

Vanellope speculatively raised an eyebrow at us before turning to Machelix and saying, “Alright, let’s do this, for the race.”

“Good girl.”  Machelix poked her on the forehead with the device on his hand; she froze with the same blue square blur.  Her arms extended outward, and her candy-cane-striped stocking-covered legs stood rigid beneath her brown skirt.  “And now for the tricky part…”  He took out the device he borrowed from Watto and inserted one of her fingers into it.  A few button presses later he moved back with it.  A red dot had appeared on the girl where the device had been; a blood sample.  Another touch from his gauntlet sealed up the slight wound and washed away the trace of blood.  Admittedly, that was pretty handy.

The borrowed tool must have been a blood analyzer, but could it also analyze code?  I couldn’t tell what he looked at, but he pressed a few buttons and slid a finger over the screen once or twice before saying, “Ah, there’s the problem.  My guess was right:  the position determination function has some extra code in it.  Let’s just make that its own method, and…”  Another screen swipe and more key taps he performed on the device until he walked to one of the walls and broke off a bit of compound sugar.  He stuck this shard into the sampler and typed another string of keys.  “That ought to do it.”  Once more he pricked her finger with the device and cleaned up the blood.

Before he unfroze her, the glitch squares arose around her again.  Instead of warping her, though, they lost their color and disintegrated.  “Problem solved.”

“What do you mean?  Was that the glitch?”

Machelix nodded.  “I reintegrated the broken position determinant as its own teleportation method.”

“What does that mean in English?”

He sighed and replied, “I made her glitch an actual method in her code that does the same thing.”

Why couldn’t he have just said that?  “What was with the white confetti?”

“My own special touch,” was all he said before unfreezing Vanellope.

She relaxed her rigid stance, blinked, and stretched out her stiffness.  “I hope it was worth it.”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?  Try it out, like you normally glitch.”

“Okay, then.”  She closed her eyes and balled her fists in concentration.  At first nothing happened, but then the color started to drain from her!  When nothing remained but a white statue, she popped into a sugary cloud!

I had Machelix by the collar in moments:  there were no lackeys of his to bail him out this time.  “What did you do to her!?”

“Hold on, hold on,” he pleaded, “We just need to know where she warped to—”

“Save it.  You’re going straight to the others and telling them—”

“Sweet mother of monkey milk, it worked!”  The excited shout echoed from the other end of the hall, from the throne.  There, Vanellope jumped for joy on the cushions!  She froze in mid-air, reappearing closer to us in a separate puff of sugar before the mid-air duplicate lost its color and popped.  Twice more she repeated the process until she stood next to us.  By that time I had brought Machelix back to the ground.  I couldn’t accuse him of anything now that the “victim” stood hale and hearty.  “I love it, I love it!” she exclaimed, squeezing Machelix’s hand.

He smiled down at her and said, “Glad you like it.  I call this power the Sugar Princess Escape.  It moves you like before, but you leave a clone made of sugar behind that disappears after a few seconds.”

The explanation worried Vanellope.  “But what about races?  What if it happens then?”  She raised a valid point:  a sudden car left in the road would throw off any driver.

Machelix stroked his chin before snapping with an answer:  “I know just the thing.  May I see your hand, please?”  He manipulated the piece of sugar from before with his gauntlet into the shape of a Ring Pop and handed it to her.  As she tried it on and admired it, he typed more on his other device before pricking her finger again.  “There we go, a ring pop switch.  When it’s blue raspberry flavored, you’ll produce the clone.  When it’s cherry, you won’t.  Taking a lick flip-flops the flavor.”

Rather than let her test that, however, he hurried things along.  “Alright, everything’s all set.  Let’s get going to the racetrack, shall we?”  He snapped his fingers, and Captain reappeared next to him on bent knee.  “Captain, you know what to do.”

The minion nodded, turned from all of us, and extended both of its hands, Another doorway of swirling darkness formed before it.  Vanellope darted through the portal without a second’s hesitation like the little ball of energy she was.  As for me, I was a little more cautious.  “Alright, Mac, I’ll give you this round.  But if you try to pull something else, I won’t hesitate to throttle you.”

Machelix snickered and replied, “Save the throttle for the race.”  He ushered his minion through the portal before he went through himself.  Taking one last breath of this delicious sugary air, I too left the land of Sugar Rush.