A/N: Chapter five, yo! Things are taking a darker tone as we move closer to the truth.

How is everyone doing? I'm sorry I haven't updated this fic in forever, lots of stuff happened that prevented me from doing so. I had this chapter half-finished ages ago, but I wasn't happy with it, so a cut part is being moved to later in the story and this chapter finally has an ending.

Figured I might as well bring this fic to a close (hopefully soon) in honour of the second WIR movie being announced, and the film's anniversary last month. Enjoy!

Chapter Five – I don't know (I really don't)

Felix was flummoxed, "This makes no sense… what would cause such a drastic change in him?"

"He's just a dumb troll, who the hell cares?" falling quiet, Vanellope then murmured, "…King Candy found him."

"What!?"

"I told you, Candy has eyes everywhere! He caught Ralph on his own and messed with his head." She kicked her cake mattress, dissolving into angry tears again, "…and now Ralph's not my friend anymore. He sided with that doodie-head over me!"

Felix had been slowly rebuilding the kart, "He can't have done something so awful with bad intentions… could he?"

"Our world isn't as black and white as we'd like to think. As much as I'd like to imagine Ralph was that much of a thoughtless sack of drivel, he could easily have been manipulated. From what we already know, this Candy's a real nut." Tamora put her gloved hand on the younger girl's shoulder, "Is there maybe something the wrecker said to you that could explain what the King did to him?"

"I don't know… I was pretty mad." She gasped, "Is Ralph gonna get in trouble because of me? I didn't want him to leave, s'just I'd confided in him an-"

"…Yes?"

"…I thought he was someone I could trust. I told him the one thing I remembered…" she looked down at her hooves, "…But I can't tell anyone, or else bad things will happen. They already have!"

Calhoun knelt down before her "Vanellope, we need all the information we can get in order to help Ralph. You want that, don't you?" the young faun nodded, tearful once again, "But we can't do that unless you tell us what's bothering you."

"Okay… I kinda did something really bad – at least, I think I did. But everything's still a blur after that point."

"You have a memory?"

"Yeah… I'm standing in a drawing-room of the sugar cube palace, and I'm crying. It's weird, because I'm wearing a hooded robe. I hear King Candy's voice, he's angry, and suddenly all the lights go off. A single lamp lights in the corner, and there's a little bed next to it, with sheets covered in blood. At my feet is a little girl like me lying in a big puffy dress, with lots of blood and a scarred nothingness in place of her facial features." Vanellope was shaking, all traces of the confident would-be racer dampened.

Felix put a hand to her wobbling shoulder, the other sorting through the leftovers of the half-rebuilt cake-mobile, "Seems like there are strong memory spells at work, too." Suddenly intrigued with the kart-parts, he picked up the GPS from the dashboard. It wasn't like the racers needed a satnav; they knew the tracks off by heart. But it made sense that they would need some kind of tracking system, for the quick place-changing on the race roster and if any of them fell away from a racetrack – It clicked within him.

"My homing field!" he exclaimed, jumping up with such glee some might have thought the sugar-air was getting to him.

"You'd better start making sense, short-stack."

He whipped his scepter out from his wide sleeve, "My homing field – I placed a homing field on Ralph at the start of our quest so if we ever got separated I could find him. It, uh, pretty much acts like one of the trackers in the karts, but it's a spell." He rubbed an exhausted hand to his face, "It also repels other magic – though I didn't tell him for his own safety – so I don't see how his disappearance could be magic-related, but I'm willing to believe anything." The magic orb took on a pale red hue when he twirled its' handle.

Vanellope wiped remaining tears from her face, and though her voice was still hollow, childish hope had never abated, "What's the new colour for?"

"It indicates Ralph's life force, which the homing field latches onto, beaming a constant signal. The closer we are to Ralph; the stronger the signal's colour becomes." Placing the glowing red thing back within his cloak, he announced, "He's still alive, and within the Sugar kingdom… but the only way we'll find him is by going out into the open."

Calhoun, also exasperated, said, "But that's giving the king what he wants."

Felix felt the warmth of a heart still beating within his enveloped arm, reminding him of why he had begun his quest in the first place.

"Ralph has been captured, and that's my fault." At her protests, he held up his hand, "No flex on this one, ma'am! I owed that poor soul a life debt and when I take my eye off the ball for one second he vanishes!" Angry at himself and in his first true steaming rage in years, he felt like breaking down, "Some friend I am…"

"That's nonsense and you know it, soldier!" Tammy growled, rubbing the bridge of her nose in annoyance, "You're the best friend a person could ask for. Nobody else would take such chances on Ralph, or the kid, or me! You're the one ray of sunshine in an otherwise dark world."

"The laffy-taffy vine that pulls us out of the nesquik sand!" Vanellope exclaimed.

"Yeah… that was one time- Look, we won't get anywhere leaking like a bunch of lemons. Now it's probably dark out, and that's our best bet at finding Ralph."

The Sugar Rushers were entirely of the understanding that they were the King's first line of defense against monsters like the glitchy faun that roamed his land. This was long after racing was a military operation, a force for good protecting the candied citizens of Sugar Rush. Now it was a joke, the pastime of children, but those children did not forget the warrior heritage this great sport had once endowed on their people.

That's why they were, at this moment of our hero's dire peril, out joyriding in the middle of Royal Raceway high on pixie-sticks.

"It's not like Candy ever cared about us staying up past our bedtimes." Taffyta said to a jittery Rancis, "He's too busy prancing about in his stuffy old castle"

Rancis had every right to fear the King's ire. They all did. But right now he was more scared of being preyed upon by the faun-girl and her 'new friends', as Sour Bill had bluntly put it.

As the gang moved away from the raceway into a swirled and marbled junkyard, they recognized a vile shape seen moving behind the ever-constant lollipop brush.

After telling them of her secret, she had run away. Something within her – an understanding ingrained within her Faun side – told her to escape, because she'd only end up hurting her friends like she'd hurt Ralph.

It had been ridiculously easy to slip out the warp while her allies – captors, her brain told her – were formulating a plan. She'd sent the wrecker away, so it was her responsibility to bring him back.

Slowly driving her lackadaisical pedal-power kart out the clearing, she found herself near the junkyard where her sorry excuse for a kart had been built. She heard voices, and her kart's noises were a dead giveaway, so she made the rest of the journey on hoof, pushing her kart along with her. Surely her fellow racers would know something?

"Hello, fellow racers!" she announced walking out of the brush, hoping to sound more confident than she actually felt.

Taffyta feigned a look of mock-surprise, "Oh! We were just coming to see you." "We were?" a quick elbow jab into Rancis' gut "Of course we were. Haven't you heard? There's monsters in the forest!" Playing her part well, Taffyta placed a quickly shrugged off hand on Vanellope's shoulder before side-eyeing the terrible kart. "We wouldn't want you to get hurt, and well, we didn't know where you live. Your home isn't next to the raceway like the rest of us." She could tell her words cut deep.

Sniffling, Vanellope said, "Then why don't you guys go home if you're so worried?"

"We're in the line-up for tonight's roster race!" Candlehead exclaimed.

Vanellope had completely forgotten about the race. The one she was meant to crash. Knowing that Felix would have her real kart fixed in no time, and maybe she could sneak it to the raceway without her friends knowing, she replied, "Oh yeah? So am I."

All three racers laughed an empty laugh, and Taffyta gave the shoddy wheel of the kart a small tap with her foot. The atmosphere had become suddenly dark, "No offence, but we can't let you race. Not in this cruddy kart, not ever." She flicked her used lollipop stick off to the side, grounding it into the chocolate dirt.

Vanellope's eyes glowed anew with anger, curtly asking, "Why won't you let me race?" her body thrummed with a turquoise-coloured energy, lightning wisps of light making themselves known through her limbs.

"King Candy's orders." She had more used sticks, this time pulling them from her pockets and flicking them in her glitching opponent's face, "A no-good homeless faun that isn't even fit to be a pet." *Flick* "A glitch who'll cause a pileup if she ever gets on the track," *Flick* "A kid with absolutely no money to pay her way into the day's roster." *Flick*. The child in question had backed up and away from her kart during this exchanged, curling smaller with fear in her eyes. The energy was ever-constant, making her blip in and out of visibility. *Flick*, "Face it. All the primitive kart parts in the world aren't going to help you earn your place on Marchpane street! You're a useless nobody who'll never be a racer." Flick. The last stick was thrown with a shove, pushing the girl into chocolate mud. She teleported back behind her kart, terribly afraid and at a loss for words.

Swathed in what Vanellope first though was the sunrise, Taffyta chuckled nastily as her sidekicks tore apart the swiss-roll mess. Another kart gone, she realized. She had cried so much already; she couldn't bring herself to lose it in front of her enemy.

The golden aura highlighting the edges of the strawberry racer expanded, lifting her ever so slightly. Taffyta soon noticed her predicament, and tried toeing the ground in vain, whatever levitation magic she was in being strong enough to keep her immobile. Her face contorted in anger as she got the attention of her goons.

Vanellope, torn away from staring guilelessly up at the floating racer, looked over to the natural entrance to the junkyard. What she saw made her happy and terrified.

A/N: And… cliffhanger! Just to be a dick, here's another, more powerful one. Can't believe it's been about 3 years since I started writing this. *Evil laughter* I could've posted this on this fic's 3-year anniversary in a few days but meh.

I'm intending to cross-post this to AO3 at some point, taking the opportunity to get rid of the random typos that appear in like EVERY CHAPTER because I'm a better writer than that, I just don't notice some typos until after chapter has been published.