Blue sparks had been dancing along Vanellope’s body all night, giving her a very restless sleep. But Ralph had insisted on rising with the sun so that they could move on through another few towns. Trotting along behind him, she yawned loudly and readjusted her wings beneath her cloak.
“Are we there yet?” she whined. “My hooves are getting tired.”
“No we’re not there yet,” Ralph replied, looking back at her. “Why are you so tired, anyway? Did my snoring keep you awake?”
“No, it was my amulet,” Vanellope admitted, her tiredness causing her to almost let her secret slip. “It broke yesterday and now it keeps sending sparks along my body. It’s really annoying and it kinda hurts.” And yet she’d put it back on, if only to keep up appearances.
“So why don’t you take it off?” Ralph asked. “Surely somepony like you wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep something on if it was hurting you.”
“It hides my true identity,” she admitted, mentally kicking herself for letting her secret be known. “If I took it off, I’d probably lose it.”
“But don’t you have pockets?” Ralph prompted. Vanellope facehoofed. She’d completely forgotten about that! And she’d used them last night too.
“Thanks for reminding me. My sleepiness must’ve fried my brain,” she smiled, and placed the malfunctioning amulet in the pocket of her cloak. Instantly, the sparking sensation stopped although the coat-changing sparks didn’t. Her wings were gone, though, which was a good thing.
“You’re from a cloud city, aren’t you?” Ralph figured, noting that Vanellope was walking gingerly.
“Yeah, my parents were both pegasi and there’s a unicorn somewhere in my family tree,” she lied. “I got the powers of a unicorn and the cloud-walking ability of my parents.”
Ralph nodded, clearly happy with this explanation, and Vanellope breathed an internal sigh of relief.
“Well, there’s quite a long walk until the next town so do you want me to carry you?” Ralph offered. “It’s no trouble and that way, you won’t be slowing me down.”
“Okay,” Vanellope smiled, and levitated herself into the air and onto the large pony’s back. Now she could feel his muscles moving beneath and, she had to admit, the power contained there made her giddy with excitement. With Vanellope draped over Ralph’s back like a pony-shaped set of saddlebags, the duo continued on and through a further few towns before they came across some commotion.
At the sound of a squawk, Vanellope pricked her ears up and looked up at the sky- right at the flaming phoenix diving for her! Squealing, she flailed her hooves and landed on her back on the ground next to Ralph. She was now faced with a dilemma- how to roll over onto her hooves without Ralph seeing her wings which had reappeared on impact. But luckily, he was too busy facing off against the flaming bird.
By the time Vanellope finally managed to scramble to her hooves, Ralph had chased off the large phoenix and was watching it fly away. But at seeing the glinting piece of jewellery in its beak, Vanellope dug around in her pockets and realised with a sinking sensation what the jewellery was.
“Come back here with my amulet, bird-brain!” she called after the bird, running after it into the forest beside the road. At least the spell was changing her appearance randomly, but she still had hopes of getting her amulet fixed.
“Why do you need it anyway? Isn’t it broken?” Ralph huffed as he easily caught up with her.
“I wanna get it fixed,” Vanellope replied. This running was really waking her up and... oh no. Her wings flickered onto her sides and began to flutter as she picked up speed. It didn’t help that she had the urge to jump into the air and follow the phoenix to its nest.
“Oh, so I guess we’d better get it then,” Ralph figured, and galloped ahead to catch up to the bird or at least follow it to its hideout.
Vanellope ran until she hit a branch and went tumbling over it, landing hard with her cloak flying over her head. She sniffled at the scrapes on her legs and laid her head on the ground, feeling like every part of her was broken now.
“I got it!” Ralph called, breaking her out of her misery as he crashed through the forest towards her. Vanellope made sure to cover her wings with her cloak and beamed as Ralph came towards her with the amulet clasped in his mouth.
“Thank you,” Vanellope beamed at him, taking the amulet in her magic and shoving it back into her pocket. “You’re my hero.” She noticed that Ralph looked surprised at that admission, although she had said it to many a pony who helped her back at home.
“Really?” he asked, blinking in shock. “Does the amulet really mean that much to you?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I’d probably be dead or imprisoned by now if I didn’t have it.”
“But why?” Ralph prompted.
“I’ll tell you when we’re further away from my home,” Vanellope promised him. “Or when we’ve gotten to know each other a little better.”
“Okay,” Ralph shrugged, and trotted out of the forest with her. Vanellope followed him with a new admiration for the strong buck- anypony else probably would have let the phoenix get away with it. But this buck had a good heart, probably one that was made of gold. She smiled at him, trying not to get too caught up in her thoughts, and followed him into the town where there was quite a good deal of crashing going on.
“Monster!” a mare called upon seeing the large buck. Ralph sighed, folding his ears back as he looked at the ground in shame. But Vanellope wasn’t afraid of him- rather, she decided to stand up to him.
“He is not a monster!” she yelled at the mare, stomping her front hooves onto the ground with a surprising amount of ferocity.
“He’s the monster who destroyed Pleasantville, isn’t he?” the mare asked, looking to Ralph for confirmation.
“He what?” Vanellope wondered, blinking in confusion. She looked to Ralph, who looked like he’d been kicked.
“This monsterpony you’re travelling with destroyed the town of Pleasantville a few years ago,” the mare explained. “He was banished to the Everfree Forest and who knows how much that place has corrupted him?”
“Ralph is not a monster,” the smaller pony said firmly. “Would a monster chase off a phoenix and then hunt it down to get back something precious to a mare he just met a few days ago?”
Ralph looked at the two mares in front of him, especially the one defending his honour. As she described every good deed he’d done for her, from fighting the phoenix to carrying her on his back when her hooves got sore, he felt hope for the first time that maybe somepony other than his brother saw him as a kindhearted stallion rather than a rampaging monster.
“Well, I suppose you’re not all bad then,” the mare grudgingly admitted to Ralph. “However, as mayor of this town, I can’t let you come through here. The townsponies all fear him and his presence will cause riots.”
“Is that what all that commotion’s about?” Ralph wondered. The mare nodded solemnly.
“Before we go, do you know of anypony who could fix a broken appearance-changing amulet?” Vanellope wondered.
“Well, Twilight Sparkle could do it but she lives all the way over in Ponyville and she’s probably out adventuring with her friends,” the mare replied. “You might bump into her but I don’t think Celestia would approve of a monsterpony going into her faithful student’s home, even if he is as good as you say he is.”
“Sorry I’m preventing you from getting your amulet fixed,” Ralph apologised to Vanellope as they walked away from the town and into the forest. If they couldn’t go through the town, they’d have to go around it.
“No, it’s okay,” Vanellope assured him. “I don’t want a judgemental pony fixing my amulet anyway. I can wait for it to be fixed but I don’t want you to feel like a burden.”
“I already feel like a silly pony for even thinking that anypony will ever see me as a good guy,” Ralph admitted, looking at the ground as he walked along sadly.
“I see you as a good guy,” Vanellope assured him with a bright smile. Ralph only glanced at her before returning his solemn gaze to the ground.
“Hey now, don’t go all sad on me,” Vanellope frowned, zipping around to stand in front of him. “You are a good guy, Ralph. You’re helping me when nopony else would. Would anypony else stop for a small pony who could barely even walk on solid ground? And everything I said to that mare is true- you’re a good guy, at least to me.” She’d been poking his chest with a hoof every few seconds to punctuate her points, and now she wrapped her forelegs around him in a hug. This was the most pony contact Ralph had had with a pony other than his brother in years. So it took him some time to remember how to hug back.
Vanellope froze at feeling Ralph’s hooves settle around her back over her wings. She did not want him to ask questions if he could feel them, and surely he did.
With the hug out of the way, the two ponies continued on through the forest feeling lighthearted, confused, and slightly conflicted. Ralph was glad that a pony who’d once been a stranger to him was showing such kindness towards him. At the same time, he was confused- why did Vanellope have wings and why was she hiding them? Should he ask her? Should she tell him? The confusion led to silence which seemed to stretch on forever, or until hunger made itself known. Vanellope giggled at the sound of her grumbling stomach, and then they both began laughing and fell into more of a companionable silence as they made their way towards the next town.