//------------------------------//
// It's all In The Code 
// Story: Hex-It Twilight 
// by My Little Scribbler 
//------------------------------//


Hex-It Twilight
Chapter 5: It’s All in the Code


Fluttershy always felt nervous about entering a game she’d never been too, especially after she was nearly mauled by zombies in House of the Dead. She hoped that Pinkie would have gone to someplace familiar and safe like Tapper or Sonic the Hedgehog, but instead, when she asked the Surge Protector where she had gone, he led her to the entrance of Sugar Rush. Taking a moment to gather her courage, Fluttershy entered the game. When she came out on the other side of the tunnel, she was relieved and surprised to see a colorful world before her. Sweets of all shapes and sizes were around her as she cantered along with no explosions, gunfire, or undead monsters in sight.
“This isn’t so bad,” said Fluttershy with a smile. “I could grow to like it here.” She came to a stop beside a road, “Where do I go to find Pinkie?”
She yelped out of surprise as a white car drove passed her. Inside the car was Pinkie, giggling with joy. Several other cars were trailing behind her.
“Pinkie?” Fluttershy spread her wings and flew after her, following the sound of revving motors.

Despite the fact that she never drove a car before, Pinkie handled the steering like a pro, even managing to get passed Vanellope and take the lead. The cars were swerving along the roads around Milk Dud Mountains, occasionally dodging around falling milk duds like they were boulders. Despite the added danger, Pinkie dodged every milk dud with ease.
Taffyta was glaring at Pinkie from behind in her car. “How does that pony manage to steer so well? She doesn’t even have hands.”
Vanellope was close behind Pinkie, gaining ground on her. “Not bad,” she called out. “I was going easy on you because you were new, but you really know your stuff.”
“Thanks,” said Pinkie, waving behind her.
“But now that we’re close to the finish line, I’m not going to hold back.” In a flash of light, Vanellope teleported passed Pinkie and sped off. “See ya!”
“Hey!” shouted Pinkie, getting annoyed. She was just about to hit the accelerator when she suddenly felt a strange sensation: her mane and tail went stiff and spread outward like quills on a porcupine. Even in the game world, Pinkie retained her Pinkie Sense abilities, but this sensation was uncommon. The last time she felt it was when she sensed that Gummy’s lost comb was found in a toy chest where Pumpkin Cake had hidden it. That was when she realized that when her mane and tail stood up on end, that meant that something important was hidden nearby. As she looked around to see what it was she was sensing, she saw a giant mug of apple cider nearby. Drool dripped from her mouth as she absentmindedly drove off the side of the road, kicking up chocolate powder in the process, and landed on the ground near the apple cider with a loud thud. She drove toward cider mug and saw two candy canes arched over each other beside the mug. Pinkie drove in-between the candy canes and she vanished into thin air.

Fluttershy followed the road to the audience of anthropomorphic candy people, cheering for the racers as they crossed the finish line and came to a stop on the side of the road to wave and greet the audience. The crowd went wild, cheering the names of their favorite riders. The roster board revealed the winners of the race who will be the game’s avatars for the day. Sour Bill stood at the podium with a megaphone situated before him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the race has concluded,” said Sour Bill in his usual dull voice. “Today’s avatars are...Vanellope von Schweetz, Swizzle Malarkey, Adorabeezle Winterpop, Taffyta Mu—“
“Um, excuse me!”
Sour Bill gawked at Fluttershy, not expecting to be interrupted by a flying pegasus hovering over him.
“Could you help me? I’m looking for my friend.”
“Do you mind?” asked Sour Bill, monotone. “I’m busy.”
“Oh sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s just that I’m in a hurry and I thought I saw Pinkie here.”
“Huh?” Sour Bill just stood there with his mouth lazily hung agape.
From the finish line, Vanellope teleported onto the platform. “Okay, what’s going on? What’s this pony doing here?”
“She says she’s looking for her friend,” said Sour Bill.
“Oh, you mean Pinkie Pie?” asked Vanellope.
“Yes, we need her to come home right away,” said Fluttershy. “Where is she?”
“She was participating in the race, and I lost sight of her at Milk Dud Mountains. Here, I can help you find her. Just follow me.” Vanellope teleported back into her car and started the engine before zooming by the other racers without another word.
Fluttershy hesitated. “I’m not a fast flier, so I might get lost. Do you mind helping me?” She looked at Sour Bill with her wide, puppy dog eyes.
Sour Bill let out a sigh. “All right, I’ll come along.” He climbed onto Fluttershy’s back, riding her as she flew off after Vanellope.
The two of them searched around Milk Dud Mountain, coming to a stop at the giant mug of apple cider.
“Where is she?” asked Fluttershy, feeling Sour Bill tugging on her mane as she landed.
Vanellope was standing outside of her car, her eyes darting about for any clue of Pinkie’s whereabouts. “This was where I last saw Pinkie.”
“Here I am,” said Pinkie, her head phasing out of thin air between the two candy canes.
“Pinkie?” shouted Vanellope, jumping in surprise.
“I found a hidden place,” said Pinkie. “Come in, you have to see this.”
They followed her through the portal and wound up in a long white tunnel with a car blocking the hall where Pinkie parked it. At the other end of the tunnel was a door with an old NES controller on it.
“What is this?” asked Vanellope. “It doesn’t look like an unfinished level.”
Sour Bill stared wide-eyed at the controller. “This is the doorway to the game’s programming. This is where King Candy reprogramed the game.”
“What?” said Vanellope. “You mean the access to the game’s code was here this whole time? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sour Bill climbed off of Fluttershy’s back. “King Candy would always blindfold me every time he would take me to and from this place.”
Fluttershy’s eyes drifted along the metal hallway before letting out a gasp. “Oh Pinkie, I forgot to tell you that Twilight was kidnapped by mermaids. She’s being held hostage by a glitch in a game called Sea Bottom who is trying to use her magic to escape the game before—”
“Wait, did you say the game was called Sea Bottom?” asked Sour Bill.
“Yes, why do you ask?” said Fluttershy.
“Both Sea Bottom and Sugar Rush were made and distributed by Neisyd Games Inc. If the same company made both games, then the code in both games might be accessed the same way. If Vanellope could get into the code of Sea Bottom, maybe she could help your friends...”
“And possibly the glitch,” said Vanellope. “Being a former glitch myself, I understand what it must be like for him. How do I get inside the code?”
“You just enter up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, and A,” said Sour Bill.
“Well write that down,” said Vanellope, “and make it fast.”

They arrived at Sea Bottom to find the game deserted aside from the cries of seagulls and the sounds of waves.
“Where did you’re friends go?” asked Vanellope.
“A friendly captain offered to let them ride his submarine to a castle underwater where Twilight was held,” said Fluttershy.
“I forgot this was an underwater adventure game,” said Vanellope. “Oh! I just realized, how are we going to find the door to the code?”
Pinkie felt her Pinkie Sense acting up just like when she found the giant mug of apple cider. “It’s that way.” She skipped merrily to the left, humming to herself. She came to a halt next to a giant boulder.
“Uh, Pinkie, what’re we doing here?” asked Vanellope, following behind alongside Fluttershy.
“According to the backstory I was programmed with, I was raised on a rock farm,” said Pinkie. “Since I know all about rocks, I can tell this is no ordinary boulder.” She reached for a long, thin rock jutting out from beside the boulder and pulled it down. The boulder slid aside with a loud rumbling, kicking up dust and revealing a door with an NES controller on it hidden behind the boulder.
“How’d you...?” said Vanellope, dumbfounded.
With a singsong voice, Pinkie hit the code on the controller. “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, and A.” The door swung open, and right before their eyes, they could see streams of data contacted by long, white cables suspended over darkness.
“I have to remember to invite you over the next time I lose my car keys,” said Vanellope.
Pinkie leaped into the void, spreading out her hooves and screaming “whee!” in a high pitched voice as she weightlessly sailed off, no longer bound by gravity. Vanellope and Fluttershy hesitantly entered, flailing with alarm as they felt themselves drift off. After some trial and error, they figured out how to swim through the void as if they were underwater.
“What’re we looking for?” asked Fluttershy.
“There’s got to be a place where we can access the glitch’s data,” said Vanellope. “With so much here, I’m not sure how we’ll find it or even recognize it when we see it.”
“Oooooo, so shiny,” said Pinkie as she played with a flat rectangular screen.
“Pinkie, don’t you think we should be looking for Trojan’s data?” asked Fluttershy, tentatively.
“But this could help us,” said Pinkie. “It’s a viewing screen that is connected to the projector, and we can use it to see anything in the game.”
“How do you know all that?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Can it show us where our friends are?”
The screen activated in response to Fluttershy’s question. Right before their eyes, they could see their friends struggling against the massive tentacles of the kraken and surrounded by mermaids.
Vanellope drifted up to them.
“Oh no, Ralph,” shouted Vanellope, watching him struggle against the kraken’s grasp.
“Isn’t there something we can do?” asked Fluttershy.
“We can’t dive down and go after them,” said Vanellope.
“Is there something we can do to save them from in here?” asked Pinkie.
Vanellope looked about the miles of code everywhere, dumbfounded. “I...I don’t know...but we can’t sit here and do nothing. Everyone, spread out and find anything that might help us.”
Pinkie, Fluttershy, and Vanellope scrambled to find Trojan’s data, but through the huge mesh of digital wires, it was impossible to tell one bit of data from the next. Fluttershy tried to fly through the wires, but her wings got in the way every time.
“We have to hurry,” said Fluttershy, struggling to pull her wings free from the wires.
“I’d go faster if I knew what Trojan’s data looked like,” said Pinkie.
Vanellope was teleporting from wire to wire, searching frantically. “I don’t know what to do, either. There’s got to be something here that can help us. Pinkie, does your Pinkie Sense tell you anything?”
“Nope, I’ve got nothing. Fluttershy, have you found something?”
“Um, I seem to have found the programming for the fish sprites.” Fluttershy hovered over a pair of data with fish printed on the sides. “Does that help?”
“Ugh!” Vanellope rang her hands through the coils of wires, pulling them apart in desperation. That was when she saw one piece of data that caught her eye. It was suspended on a wire like all the other data, but this one had a single drop of water printed on the front.
“Did you find something?” asked Pinkie.
“I just found the data for the water affects,” said Vanellope. “Nothing important.”
“Nothing important?” shouted Pinkie as she zipped to Vanellope’s side. “I think you might have discovered what we need.”
“What in Bowser’s volcano castle are you talking about?”
“I’m saying you should disconnect it.”
“Pinkie, are you crazy? We don’t know what will happen if we did that.”
“Well, my grandma used to put me on her knee and tell me, ‘Pinkamina Diane Pie, always trust your gut and when it feels right, just grit your teeth and hang on.’”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“My gut is telling me that pulling those wires is what we need to do.”
“Are you sure?”
“That or I’m feeling hungry.”
“Pinkie!”
“Just trust me and pull it.”
“All right.” Vanellope nervously grabbed the coils of the data, and she yanked them apart, sending out sparks from the disconnected water data.

There was sudden rumble through the ocean.
“What was that?” asked Trojan, looking about. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
All around them, pockets of water disappeared into bubbles as the water evaporated into tiny pixels of data. The bubbles slowly expanded from random places of origin, multiplying and merging as they grew around them. The watery environment dissolved away into thin air, leaving the entire sea environment dry and exposed. The mermaids were programmed to levitate out of water, but the kraken was not, causing it to crashed onto the ground with a lout smack, taking the submarine with it as it clattered onto the ground out of the kraken’s grasp.
Ralph clung to the side of the submarine as it crashed onto the ground. He could feel his teeth clatter as he made impact. He rubbed his sore jaw.
“Is everybody okay?”  he asked, rubbing his sore jaw.
Rarity poked her head from the submarine, rubbing her muzzle with one hoof. “Ow, I think I have a nose bleed.”
“I can fix it,” said Felix as he held out his golden hammer. With a wave of his hammer, Rarity’s nose was back to normal.
“Why thank you, Felix.”
Feeling the pull of gravity, Rainbow had to flap her wings to keep herself airborne. “All right. Now to show off my moves.” She soared into the air, rocketing up into the sky faster than any of the mermaids could keep up, then came down toward the ground. She launched a Sonic Rainboom, and the force knocked all the mermaids out of the air in one large Technicolor blast, and they crashed into the ground with a thud. The mermaids lay there, dazed with their tridents strewn around them.
Trojan looked on with bewilderment. “It seems I have lost.” He pulled out the keys and handed them to Twilight. “Very well, everyone may go now and leave me to die in peace.”
Twilight telekinetically lifted the keys to her handcuffs and unlocked them. With her hooves free, she tossed the cuffs aside.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at Trojan with pitty, “but I don’t know what else to do.”
“Well, to be honest, I would have released you and your friends by the time the game was unplugged, I just hoped that if I put pressure on you, you would have found a way. The box of bits should be in the room down below. You can use them to teleport your friends and yourself to the exit. Also, please take the mermaids with you, too. They served me well and they don’t deserve to die with me.”
“Trojan...” Twilight wanted to say something encouraging, but nothing came to mind.
“Just go, save yourselves.” Trojan turned around and drifted off, his head bowed in shame.
“Hey, what’s that?” asked Rainbow, hovering outside, as she looked out in the distance.
She could see Vanellope as she teleported across the land, zipping from place to place in a quick flash of light. Vanellope appeared beside Ralph and the damaged submarine.
“Hey Ralph, are you all right?”
Ralph gawked at Vanellope. “I’m fine, but how did you know I was here?”
“Fluttershy told me. She and Pinkie are at the entrance to the game.”
Captain Gaff took a long and drawn out swig from a flask. “Aye, I must be dreaming for I’m seeing a young girl with candy in her hair.”
Vanellope rolled her eyes. “Do any of you know where Trojan is?”
“He’s in the top of that tower,” said Spike.
“Thanks!” Vanellope teleported through the wall and glitched her way up the stairs and into the room where Applejack, Twilight, and Trojan stood.
“Are you Trojan?” asked Vanellope.
“I-I am,” said Trojan, surprised, “but who’re you?”
“My name is President Vanellope von Schweetz, and I just came by to tell you that I understand how you feel.”
“How could you know how I feel, and for that matter, how do you know who I am?”
“Because I once was just like you. I too had to live my life as a glitch. If it weren’t for Ralph, I would have spent my whole life as a glitch. That’s why I’m here to help you.”
“How?” asked Twilight. “I’ve tried every bit of magic I have, but I can’t get him out of this game.”
“That’s because glitches have incomplete data and Game Central Station rejects avatars with incomplete data. All we have to do is complete his data.”
“And how do we do that?” asked Twilight.
“Easy because I found his code.”

With the box of bits, Twilight teleported everyone to the exit of Sea Bottom. As the rest of the Mane 6 and Spike led the mermaids to Fix-It Felix Jr., Vanellope led Twilight into the game’s code and with Twilight’s dowsing spell, she was able to find Trojan’s data. It was just a large square of data with wires running out of it and the name Trojan Seahorse written on it.
“Okay, so we found Trojan’s data,” said Vanellope, “now what’re you going to do with it?”
“I don’t know,” said Twilight. “I’ve never done anything like this before...you know...rewriting somebody’s code like this.”
“Well, the arcade will open in 5 minutes, so you better think fast.”
“I’m not sure how I can fix Trojan. What do you know about glitches?”
“I became a glitch when King Candy separated my data from the game. Trojan’s data looks like it’s still connected, so the only other reason I can think of for why he’s a glitch is because his data is incomplete, like maybe he was an unfinished character.”
“That would explain why he feels he has no purpose, so all I have to do is give him a purpose by replacing the missing parts with something else.”
“What do we fill it with?”
Twilight looked about, and that was when she saw a block of data with a musical note on it. She telekinetically drew the data close to her and pulled the music data from the cords.
“What are you doing?” asked Vanellope.
“I’m going to combine Trojan’s data with this music program using my Create Chimera spell.”
“Are you sure that’s going to work?”
“I don’t know but I’ll try.”

Three days had passed since Mr. Litwak removed Sea Bottom from the arcade, and ever since the game’s removal, bronies who came to play the My Little Pony game began to notice changes. Mostly that the background music for each level was different every time they played. One minute it was the same generic and cutesy music that came with the game, then the next it sounded like a rap song, or a country song, or classical, etc. Nobody complained, but it did make some wonder why the sudden change.
As the arcade closed and Luna raised the digital moon in the sky, the Mane 6 visited Trojan who had made his home near a lake on the edge of the Everfree Forest.
Trojan was hovering over a podium with some sheet music he wrote opened before him and a baton clutched in his tail.
“So, how’s it been going?” asked Applejack.
“Oh, just wonderful,” said Trojan. “At long last I have a purpose.”
“I’m glad for you,” said Fluttershy.
“So why did you bring us here?” asked Applejack.
“Because I want to show you my latest creation, and I want your opinion of what you think.”
Trojan tapped on the podium with his baton and six mermaids rose out of the lake dressed in seahorse costumes with large pony heads on top. The mermaids started singing.
“Shoo-bee-doo-shoo-shoo-shoo-shoo-bee-doo.”
The Mane 6 gawked as the mermaids sang in their high-pitched choir. Their costumes sparkled in the moonlight.
“Rarity, did you make those costumes?” asked Rainbow.
“Why yes, of course,” said Rarity. “Don’t you just enjoy seahorse costumes with sequins?”
“Not when they have pony head on them,” said Rainbow.
As Trojan waved the baton, he turned to the ponies and asked, “So, what do you think.
Rainbow facehoofed.


The End


Author’s Note: The name Neisyd is an anagram for Disney. :-3