Author's note: As this is the last chapter, I want to thank everyone who's read this! I hope you liked it and would love to hear from you if you did! Or, for that matter, if you didn't, though I don't know why you'd have read this far if you didn't like it.

Special shout-out and thank you to my wife, Windsett (read her fanfiction, she's on this site!), who was my beta reader and number one fan, and who put up with me bouncing ideas for this fic off her for the last seven or eight months and taking notes on the plot points when I was rabidly coming up with stuff while driving.

And a question for anyone who cares to drop me a line - the sequel to this is finished, do you want to see chapter posted in the near future, or do you want to let this one settle a little?

CHAPTER 12

After the first three days, Taffyta stopped being afraid that the C.L.A.W. van was going to show up outside her door at any moment. After five days, Candlehead stopped by to tell her she could race again. And after a week, Taffyta accepted that indefinite incarceration, at least, was off the table. If they were going to get in any more trouble, it probably wasn't going to be something catastrophic.

Still, the trouble they were in was enough. Vanellope hadn't let her race for five days, despite the fact that the randomizer had picked her for the roster for every single one of them. She'd also made it clear that King Candy wasn't welcome to visit Game Central Station, let alone any other games. The two of them had had to sit with her and go through their plan step by step, and Vanellope had brought Surge to look at the code that King Candy had written to alter the randomizer, so that Surge could go check to make sure that it actually wasn't there.

That was the last time Vanellope had spoken to Taffyta for weeks. When they were on the roster together, Vanellope pretended she didn't exist, and Taffyta didn't try to make amends. At least, not anymore. At first she'd tried apologizing, but Vanellope had just looked at her coldly and turned away. So she didn't bother now—she just kept her head down and raced.

The other racers didn't know exactly how to act around her, but they didn't know the whole story. Even though they followed Vanellope's lead at first, it didn't take long for them to get bored and started treating her normally again.

Not that it made her feel any better. She'd screwed up. Her and King Candy had both screwed up. And Taffyta knew that so far, they'd gotten off pretty easy and that she shouldn't complain; she shouldn't even think about complaining, and the only thing she should be was grateful that nothing more had happened than house arrest.

"But this is like, the total worst," Taffyta moaned. It was just after arcade close and she'd gone straight home. As usual. She'd been banned from Game Central Station too, and even though the other racers were being nice to her during arcade hours, the power of Vanellope's glare if any of them approached her to ask if she wanted to hang out had been enough to send them hemming and hawing in the other direction.

So she'd gone home and flopped down onto one of the strawberry poufs in the living room. With her arms and legs splayed in opposite directions, she said, "You'd think that we like…I don't know, that we did something really bad—"

King Candy glanced over at her from the kitchen table, where he was fiddling with one of Pink Lightning's side mirrors. It had broken off today in a crash with Rancis and had a dent in the normally smooth finish. She could have fixed it herself, but it was something for him to do besides sit around and listen to the sound of go-karts on the breeze. "Like take over a game and reprogram it?"

"I wasn't going to say that."

He chuckled humorlessly and didn't say anything else, and Taffyta went back to staring at the ceiling.

Then someone knocked on the door.

Taffyta shot up and opened the door so fast that she almost tripped over her own feet. She blinked at who she saw standing outside and her face fell. "Oh," she said. "It's you."

Surge Protector gave her a flat look and replied, "I have better things to do, too."

"Do you?" King Candy asked from behind her.

Surge's expression seemed to get marginally more testy. Reaching up to adjust his glasses, he said, "I would, if the two of you hadn't gotten it into your heads that you needed to mess with this game's code. Again."

"Now, Surge, you don't have to drag Taffyta into it," King Candy drawled.

With a sniff, Surge said, "You're right, I don'thave to. You already did. Now, let's see here, I have the results of my investigation right here…" He held up his clipboard, squinted at the paper on it, and then flipped to the next page. Then he flipped to the page after that. Taffyta crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the door frame, an exasperated expression on her face. Like it wasn't enough that he was here, did he also have to take forever to get to the point? "Oh, here it is," Surge said. "Now, based on information given to me by the relevant parties—"

Taffyta glanced over her shoulder at King Candy, who rolled his eyes and said, "That'd be me, Surge, and you know, I remember writing out the code for you, so maybe you could, I dunno, consider spitting it out?"

Surge raised his eyebrows and flipped several pieces of paper forward. "You try to do your job right," he muttered in a tone that was clearly meant to be overheard. "As I was saying, based on the information provided, I performed a full examination of the code, and I found that…"

Taffyta didn't know why she was holding her breath. She knew what the outcome was, because King Candy had told her he hadn't done anything. She hadn't doubted once in the last few weeks that he'd been telling the truth, and she wasn't about to start now.

Looking a little disappointed, Surge finished, "…that none of the code had been altered in any way."

She glanced over her shoulder at King Candy, who debonairly twirled his wrist and gave Surge a sarcastic half-bow. "So glad to hear it. You know, with that long, dramatic pause, you even had me on the edge of my seat, and I was the one that didn't alter the code in any way in the first place. I mean—" He paused and gestured. "In the first place this time, not in the first first place, I suppose if you go that far back then yes, I did, but!" Clasping his hands behind his back, he said, "Point is, you should have just believed me this time."

Surge raised his eyebrows even higher, then took his pen out of his breast pocket and made a note of something on his clipboard. "Well, now I've heard it all. It's not like you have a track record of mayhem and destruction or anything."

Taffyta glared at him. "Are you done?"

Clicking the pen closed, he said, "Thankfully, almost. I have a message to pass along from Vanellope." At this, the sneer fell from Taffyta's face. If Vanellope was sending Surge to tell them something, that couldn't have been good. Surge adjusted his glasses again, then said, "She'd like me to let you know that you can feel free to leave this house. Both of you. And—" He shut his eyes briefly, as though in pain, or possibly eating something really gross. "—even though I warned her repeatedly that it's a bad idea, you're also allowed back in Game Central Station."

"Really?" Taffyta asked, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

She jumped back as Surge stuck his pen right in her face. "But do not pull another stunt like this again, or I'll fight much harder to make sure neither of you set foot there ever again."

"Okay," Taffyta squeaked.

Surge glared at both of them, then pulled the door shut himself before he walked away.

Taffyta let it slam in her face before she turned around to face King Candy. He looked unimpressed, but his fingertips were also glitching faintly, so she knew he wasn't as blasé about this as he was pretending to be. "I guess it's a start?" she said.

Making a noise, King Candy returned to his seat at the kitchen table. "Feels like there's an awful lot of starting and not much progressing to the next stage lately."

And since she couldn't argue with that, she didn't.

They went out the following night, taking Taffyta's kart for a spin and ending up out near Cereal Box Canyon. She considered letting him drive, but doing that probably would have just gotten both of them in trouble again. Eventually, they stopped at a petrified Rice Krispie Treat formation and sat down on it, surrounded by the dry emptiness of Sugar Rush's desert zone. Wind rattled through marzipan cactuses and in the distance, black licorice crows cawed as they circled the cliffs of the canyon.

"No good deed goes unpunished," King Candy snorted, picking at the cemented Rice Krispies. "Good for me, doing the right thing. I—what's the expression—tamed my demons? Look at that, the game-jumper didn't mess with the code. Big deal. We're still exactly where we were before."

Taffyta plonked her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her hands. "Not to be a Little Debbie downer, but I think we might be worse off. We still have the randomizer, and now we're like, really stuck with it. Plus no one trusts us."

"Right, wouldn't want to forget that little detail, hoohoohoo."

Even though it wasn't funny, she laughed. What else was she supposed to do?

Neither of them spoke again for a few minutes, Taffyta contenting herself with the sound of the wind and the crows, and the faint chug of a go-kart approaching. Wait, the chug of a go-kart? She stood up and shaded her eyes with a hand, squinting against the bright glare of the sun on the ground. A cloud of dust was on the horizon, coming closer and heading straight for them. Taffyta narrowed her eyes, trying to see who it was. And then her mouth dropped open, and she tugged at King Candy's coat to make him stand up too.

The two of them watched the approaching kart until finally, with a spray of crushed cereal and colored sugar, it screeched to a stop right in front of them. As it had approached, Taffyta had felt King Candy coiling tight with anger, and as soon as the driver cut the engine, he snarled, "Glitch, get out of my kart!"

Vanellope hopped out of the Royal Racer, plucking the gearstick out pulling her goggles off. "Your kart? Hate to break it to you, chump, but stealing it never made it yours. Sugar Rush doesn't have squatter's rights."

He clenched his fists, but Taffyta hit him with the back of her hand. "Be nice," she muttered. This was the first time Vanellope had spoken to her in weeks. Or spoken at her, for that matter. Taffyta wasn't sure if that had really counted as Vanellope talking to her.

With a huff, King Candy crossed his arms across his chest. "I will if she is."

"I don't have to be nice to you," Vanellope said, putting her hands on her hips and looking bored. "Kinda one of the perks of being president."

King Candy's eyes narrowed. "So what, you drove all the way out here to rub salt in the wound? I'm not allowed to race, you've got my kart, and you're going to be a snotty brat about it?"

Vanellope's expression remained unimpressed and she glitched from the kart to the space directly in front of them. Her reappearance made King Candy jump and glitch a little himself. "Nope," she said. "That's just a bonus for you, King Cavity." His fists clenched again, and Taffyta wished she had the cachet with Vanellope to tell her to take it down a notch. Not that Vanellope would have listened to her even if she did.

But, to Taffyta's surprise, Vanellope looked just an itty bitty, tiny little bit chagrined. "Actually," she said, "I came out here because…" She paused, looking between the two of them. The expression on her face wasn't exactly friendly, but it wasn't the cold hostility that Taffyta had gotten used to the last few weeks. "Well, I have a proposal for you, Turbutt."

One of his eyebrows shot up. Twirling a wrist and extending his arm, he bowed in exaggerated courtesy and said, "Well then, pleasthe, propose away, President von Glitch. I'm all ears. You know, as your loyal subject."

"Loyal subject, yeah right," Vanellope snorted. Then, she hesitated. Had the nickname actually gotten to her? Taffyta was surprised—none of the invective he hurled at her ever seemed to faze her.

King Candy straightened up and studied his fingernails. "Gotcha! Presidents don't have subjects. Oh, glitch, you're a royalist after all, hoohoohoo."

"What's the proposal?" Taffyta butted in. The two of them sniping at each other could go on all day. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration. But it could definitely go on longer than Taffyta was willing to let it.

Both of them looked at her, then at each other. Vanellope cleared her throat. "Kind of a two-part deal, actually." She held up a finger. "First part—after much deliberation and consulting with my cabinet and panel of experts—"

"A halitosis-ridden oaf, a do-gooder doofus with some spray-painted hardware, and a 3D-rendered psychopath are a pretty pathetic cabinet," he cut in.

"Hey," Taffyta hissed.

He glanced at her. "Ralph and Felix are kind of growing on me, though. I guess, you know, us old-timers have to stick together."

Vanellope's lips were pursed and her eyebrows were raised to her hairline. "Are you done?" Without waiting for an answer, she went on, "Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by the peanut gallery here—we're going back to the Random Roster Race."

Taffyta almost choked in surprise and King Candy rocked back on his heels. "What?" Taffyta squeaked. "You are? But…why? You kept saying you didn't want to! You—you yelled at us and said the randomizer was fair, and—and that the Random Roster Race was keeping people out—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know what I said, but geez, Taffyta, isn't it like, the hallmark of a great leader to admit the error of her ways, or whatever? Something like that. And by the way, you totally deserved to get yelled at." Vanellope looked at the way they were both staring at her and blew a raspberry. "Fine, if you really wanna know…I got to thinking about the other racers, and how they didn't want to practice, and how totally not cool that was. We have the best job in the arcade, and they were taking it for granted." At King Candy's smug look, she rolled her eyes. "And it had nothing to do with anything you said, King Game-Stealer."

With a snort, King Candy said, "Keep telling yourself that, glitch."

Taffyta leaned into the line of sight—more like the line of glare—between them. "You said you had a proposal, Vanellope. That wasn't really a proposal…"

"Oh, yeah. That was more like an edict, I guess, huh?"

"Again," King Candy muttered, "presidents don't issue edicts…"

Ignoring him, Vanellope said, "But yeah, I guess that was part two of why I came out here." She stopped talking, and the silence stretched out longer and longer, until Taffyta started wondering if Vanellope had had some sort of mental glitch and forgotten why she was standing there.

"And?" King Candy said. "You didn't drive all the way out here in my kart just to stand there and gawp, right? You really could have used your hunk of junk kart for that, instead of ruining the upholstery on mine." He raised an eyebrow. "Better yet, you didn't have to come out here to tell me at all. You could've just had a little shindig at my castle, right? Sorry, your castle. Much as it painsth me to admit."

Vanellope glared at him but still didn't speak. It had been a pretty low blow, even for him, to go after her kart. Stealing and wrecking it had definitely not gotten Taffyta any points. Vanellope's kart was like, the nearest and dearest thing to her heart. Everyone knew not to say a bad word against it, even if its design was kind of, uh, questionable.

But instead of snapping something back at him, she looked away and scuffed the toe of her shoe on the ground. "I had a question for you, Turbutt, if you must know."

King Candy looked intrigued, but suspicious. And he had a point, even if he hadn't said it in a very nice way. Why had Vanellope come all this way in the Royal Racer, when she had a whole garage-full of karts to choose from? "Ask away," he said.

"Ah, man, I really think I'm going to regret this," Vanellope said. "It's not like you ever did anything to deserve it." She drew herself upright and stared him straight in the eyes. "Do you want to race again?"

There was a silence so profound that Taffyta almost thought she could hear the announcements from Game Central Station. Everything seemed to stand still for several long moments—not a single black licorice crow cawed, the wind died, and the train that made its way around the desert was silent and nowhere to be seen.

King Candy glitched, his form obscured in a scree of red binary, before he fought control back. "What?" he asked, his voice strangled.

Holding a finger up, Vanellope said, "We never race on the same days and you can only be out there every four days. Oh, and no glitching. You race as King Candy or you don't race, got it? Anyway, glitching's my superpower."

His mouth had been hanging open slightly, but he snapped it shut, still staring at her. Then, he said, "Every two days."

She narrowed her eyes. "Three. Take it or leave it, King Cavity."

With a hard swallow, he nodded.

There was another moment of silence, and then Vanellope nodded curtly. "Okay, good." She chewed at her lip, then pulled out King Candy's scepter. "Guess you'll need this to drive, huh?" Without warning, she tossed it, and he snatched it out of the air. Drawing it close to his chest, he stared down at it, his eyes still wide with disbelief. Vanellope put a hand on her hip. "Man, and here I thought you'd be a little bit grateful. Don't you even wanna drive that antique?"

His fingers closed tightly around the scepter, but for another moment, he didn't move. Then, drawing in a deep breath, he let out a crow of inarticulate joy. With three bounds, he landed in the seat of the Royal Racer, jammed the scepter into place as the gearstick, and started the engine. It roared to life and he wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel. His eyes were gleaming with joy, and Taffyta realized, suddenly, that the ache in her cheeks was because she was grinning too.

Then he took off, the kart leaping into motion and streaking across the desert until he turned on a dime and came racing back, tracing figure eights on the dusty ground and sending up clouds of multi-colored sugar dust. His face was alight with fierce happiness.

Turning to Vanellope, Taffyta clasped her hands in front of her chest and said, "Thank you. Thank you." Her voice came out sounding choked, but for once, the tears preventing her from saying anything else were happy ones. The Royal Racer caught her eye again, and she paused to watch it zoom by, a white blur of sparkle and dust.

Vanellope was twirling her goggles around her finger. "Yeah, sure, whatever. Hey, I saved this one for you as the mildly more reasonable one between the two of you—there's one more condition. You guys don't get to just get let off the hook for being colossal dum-dums." Taffyta tore her eyes away from King Candy. Nothing Vanellope said could ruin this moment. "You're gonna be doing a little community service with Surge for the next few months," Vanellope said, sounding gleeful.

"Community service?" Taffyta asked doubtfully. "Like what?"

"Oh, I dunno, hopefully picking up dog doodie or something. I'm sure he's got something really gross for the two of you."

At any other time, this probably would've upset Taffyta. But not now, not when her best friend finally—well, it was kind of melodramatic, but like, kind of had just gotten his soul back. "Okay," she said. "I guess that's fair enough." Vanellope nodded, and there was silence for a minute. Then, Taffyta said, "Can I ask you something, Vanellope?"

"Shoot."

Taffyta's eyes followed the Royal Racer. "Why are you letting him race again? After everything we did? Why?"

Vanellope shrugged. "Because I'm your benevolent ruler. And his too, unfortunately."

"You know, he's right about how none of the stuff you're saying is really part of a democracy."

"Pfft." Vanellope waved a dismissive hand.

Taffyta raised her eyebrows, unable to believe this. "Seriously? That's it? You were feeling nice? You haven't talked to me in like, three weeks!"

The other girl stuck her hands in her pockets. "Yeah. I mean, you did deserve that."

"You said that already."

"And it's still true." Vanellope cocked her head. "If you really wanna know, I heard some gamers wondering about where he was. And then I started thinking, right? He must be miserable. And not just because he can't race now—because he's got his whole future, the whole rest of time, to not race." She stopped and looked at Taffyta. "That's where the whole me-being-a-benevolent-ruler thing comes in. I couldn't do that, not even to him." For a second, she watched King Candy, and then she turned back to Taffyta. "Look, we're never going to be friends, me and him. But I think in some, like, creepy way, we kind of get each other. When you're a racer, you feel it in your code, and no matter how big of a jerk he is, he's still a racer."

For a long moment, Taffyta just stared at her. Then, a smile spreading across her face, she said, "I think you more than kind of get him, Vanellope."

"Gross. Don't even say that. Kind of is all I can take."

Taffyta turned away, unable to keep the bright smile off her face. Then, she took a deep breath and turned back to the president. "Vanellope, I'm really sorry—"

But Vanellope waved a hand, and Taffyta stopped talking. "Yeah, yeah. I get it. Apology, apology, blah blah blah. Accepted. I think." She stuck her hands on her hips. "You know what the best apology would be, Taffyta? If you don't make me regret letting him race again."

"I won't," Taffyta said, clasping her hands again. "I won't. I know I'm not like, a model citizen, and neither is King Candy, but you'll see."

Vanellope laughed. "Sure, Taff." She snapped her goggles around her head. "And you're welcome. Now, since I am your beloved president, do you mind doing me a favor?"

When King Candy stopped his kart in front of her, Taffyta couldn't help bouncing up and down on her heels. "We get to race together again!" she squealed.

He glitched fully to Turbo once, hopped out of the kart, and glitched back. Then, he looked around. "Speaking of…where'd your kart go?"

With a dismissive wave, she replied, "I let Vanellope take it back. She's going to leave it in the town square for me." On a normal day, well, really on any other day, she never would have let Vanellope, or anyone else, drive her kart in a million years. But this definitely wasn't a normal day. Excitement got the better of her again and she jumped up and down a few times, a huge smile on her face while she clapped her hands. "Can you believe it, though? You get to be a racer again!"

His hand rested on the seat back for a moment as he stared at his kart. Then, he looked at her, his grin matching hers. "Guess that means you're ready to be out of contention for first place every three days."

"Ha, ha, very funny," she smirked. "You better get used to second place." He laughed, and for a minute, neither of them said anything, just reveling in the moment. This was…like, the most amazing thing ever. Okay, maybe not ever, probably the most amazing thing ever was the day that her and King Candy had become friends, or set themselves on the path to becoming friends. Gumdrops, what was it, thirteen years ago? It was incredible how far they'd come. This man had begun as her rival, then become her mentor, and then finally her friend, and she loved him fiercely. Seeing him happy was as good of a feeling as getting first place in a race. It may even have been better.

Hugging her arms around herself tightly, she said, "I can't wait for our first Random Roster Race. Do you think it will be tomorrow? Who do you think will get on the roster? I mean, both of us, obviously, but I mean, who else, and—" Suddenly, a dark thought wormed its way into her head. "But…what if we were wrong? What if the gamers leaving had nothing to do with who was on the roster at all?" she said, twisting her fingers together. "What if they don't come back?"

King Candy took one last loving look at his kart, then turned to her. "They'll come back," he said.

She looked at him in surprise. Three months ago, when the virus she'd brought back from Extreme EZ Living 2 had almost destroyed the game, he'd said exactly the opposite. "Do you remember when you told me that there wasn't any point in having hope? And in being optimistic?"

Arching an eyebrow, he replied, "Oh, what, because I couldn't accept that gamers might get bored with RoadBlasters and come back to TurboTime, and if I was just patient, everything would eventually be fine?"

"Er…yeah," she said.

He cracked a small smile. "Well, here's the thing, Taffyta. It turns out—and I know you're really going to have trouble believing this—but listen, it turns out that once in awhile, I'm wrong about thingsth."

"No," she said in mock surprise, making him chuckle. Impulsively, she grabbed his hand and squeezed tightly. "So, don't tell Vanellope I said this. And I only mean it like, figuratively, but even if you're not actually a king anymore, at least you're going to rule the racetrack again."

Squeezing her hand in return, King Candy grinned. "What do you say we take a spin around the Royal Raceway? You know, get some practice in—hoo-hoo, for you, obviously."

Taffyta smirked and replied, "Uh huh, not for you, the guy who hasn't raced in six months?"

In answer, his grin just got wider, and he jumped into his kart. Taffyta clambered onto the back and held on as he took off across the desert. As her hair streamed out behind her, she closed her eyes and listened to the roar of the kart. The best life in the arcade, all right. She wouldn't trade it for anything.