Yay new chapter! Please review!

It had been almost a half an hour. Felix hadn't come back yet. Game Central Station was still relatively calm. The Sugar Rush Racers slept, the Nicelanders sipped root beer, other characters mingled, not much had changed. Ralph and Vanellope still sat in front of Hero's Duty, though they had migrated to a nearby bench.

"So, stinkbrain."

"Yes your royal cheesiness?"

"Um…nevermind. Nothing."

Ralph glanced over at the girl he had come to see as his sister. She had been trying to make small talk like this for the past twenty minutes. Something was wrong.

"It's not nothing kid. What's up?"

She started chewing on her hoodie straps.

"Come on Van. What's wrong?"

"Well…,"she began, words slurred by the strap, "why's Felix so freaked out?"

"Calhoun's stuck in her game. She could be deleted forever."

"Yeah but…I don't get it. He could get into big trouble. If he gets stuck in there, your game gets it too. Why would he risk that?"

"It's like…look at it this way kid, remember how we met? And how your game was almost destroyed?"

"How could I forget that?! I was nearly—it's the same thing, isn't it? You almost blew up in that Diet Cola volcano…just to save me."

"Yes."

"And Felix is doing the same for Sarge."

"Bingo. It's just the same. I couldn't stand to see my only friend after thirty years go up in code, and Felix can't watch the only person he's loved in twenty-nine years go up either."

"Twenty-nine? Wait, are you saying Felix was married before?" The licorice string fell.

"No. I mean his father. Fix-it Felix Senior."

"Felix had a father? A real life one, not just a backstory?"

"Mhmm."

"What happened?"

Ralph picked at his nails. "Promise you won't tell him I told you?"

Vanellope nodded. "Promise."

Ralph nodded back. "Okay.

"Twenty-nine years ago, before the Turbo Incident, back before most of the games in the arcade were even in development, my game wasn't known as Fix-it Felix Jr. here. It was just called Fix-it Felix. Felix's father, Fix-it Senior, was the main character of the game. He did basically the same as Felix does today, except when a player made it to the top of the final level, Mary gave him a kiss, I got chucked off into the mud, and Felix—our Felix—would say 'Good Job Dad! I wanna be just like you when I grow up!"

"So Felix wasn't originally a playable character?"

"No. He was never meant to be playable. But one night, there was a storm. The power was in danger of going out. Fix-it Senior took charge of the evacuation, but once everything settled down, he saw that Felix was nowhere to be found. He told me to take charge and make sure the Nicelanders didn't know where he went.

"He went back into the game. Soon, the Nicelanders figured out where he went and tried to follow. 'If he goes, we all go,' they said. I kept my promise to Fix-it Senior. I kept the Nicelanders in the station, much to their dislike. Just when it felt like I couldn't contain them, I saw the Fix-its running down the portal, Senior dragging Felix behind. The power kept surging, we knew it was only a matter of time before it cut out completely.

"Just before the y made it, Senior stumbled over something and fell. Well, they'd been running so fast that Felix kept going, right through the portal, and into the station. Before Senior could get to his feet, the power went out.

"When it came back on, all that was left of Fix-it Felix Senior was his magic hammer. Felix became the protagonist of the game, and it's been his ever since."

"Wait," Vanellope asked after she took a moment to process the new information. "How did the players not notice?"

"Hardly anyone ever made it to the final level, so no player ever saw Felix."

"What about the name change?"

"Felix is actually Fix-it Felix the Third. There was the original Fix-it Felix, Fix-it Felix Senior, then our Felix. It's complicated. But no one noticed."

"So Felix's dad just…disappeared? Gone? Poof?"

Ralph nodded grimly. "All except the hammer. That's how Felix became the protagonist."

"And that's why he's so nervous about getting Sarge back."

"Remember, I made you to promise to never tell."

"I know, I know." Tears welled up in her eyes. "It's just so sad…you mean his father's just…gone? No code left at all?"

"I'm not sure. There might be some, seeing as he was the main character, but none of us knew—or even know now—all that much about code building. So if there is, it's just floating around."

Vanellope nodded. "We're lucky."

"Why's that, Madame President Pufferfish?"

"If you guys had gotten unplugged, I never would've met you. I'da been stuck as a glitch forever."

They sat in silence for a moment. Vanellope put her head on Ralph's forearm. "You're my best friend Ralph."

"You're mine too kid."

"If anything happens…"

"I know." Ralph looked out to the Hero's Duty port. "I know."