Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“It’s been so long since we’ve had a BREAK,” Pete sighed as he flopped down onto a bench. “Touring is fun and all, but we’re driving driving driving, all day, and never get to stop and just have fun !”

Gerard looked up from his comic book. “Well, I might be able to help with that. Umm Mikey, where was that arcade we used to go to? Lincolns’?”

“It was Litwak’s, and yeah, I think it’s around here somewhere,” Mikey said as he adjusted his glasses. 

“Let’s do it! Get everyone, and pull over when you see Litwak’s! Warped Tour can wait,” Pete responded enthusiastically. 

Thirty minutes later, eight adult rockstars stood in front of a children’s arcade. 

“Wait…where’s Bob?” Joe muttered sleepily (they shouldn’t have woken him up for THIS).

“He didn’t want to come, said something about germs and little kids. We don’t need him!” Gerard responded. 

Together, they all walked in for what seemed to be an afternoon of laughter and fun. Little did they know, they were in for so much more than that.

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The New Jersey Gang (also known as American rock band My Chemical Romance) looked around expectantly. “It’s so much smaller than I remember,” Frank points out.

“I spent so much time here, I know every game inside and out.” Gerard boasted as Mikey nodded along. 

They wandered through the room, looking for somewhere to trade their bills for quarters. Mikey walked right to the back and returned with a bathtub-sized amount of coins. “Let’s do this!”

Ray marched right up to one game, which seemed to have a candy-like design and a video screen with racers. “Hey, what’s this one? I don’t remember it.”

An old man appeared out of nowhere, scaring Patrick and startling Joe into waking up a little more. “Oh she’s new, just got her a couple weeks ago! It’s called Sugar Rush , you should try it.” He seemed unconcerned by the gaggle of adult men with no kids in sight.

On his suggestion, Ray took eight quarters (wow, two dollars for one play, no wonder he wants us to play this one!) and inserted them in the game. Selecting the character Vanellope von Schweetz, he began to play the brightly-colored game. 

Andy couldn’t help but notice the absurdity of two whole rock bands of men huddled around a game created for little kids, but he didn’t have much time to dwell on the thought. The power in the entire building went off, shutting down the games and causing many kids to groan from disappointment.

That is, all the games but one. Sugar Rush filled the room with an ominous, pink-tinted glow, and began to get brighter. It shook under Ray’s surprised hands, and the light became blinding.

Suddenly the room became completely dark, but when their eyes adjusted, the guys realized it wasn’t Litwak’s.

Pete broke the silence. “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in New Jersey anymore.”

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The place they found themselves was unlike anything they’d ever seen. They were knee-deep in mud, watching an empty race track lined with stands. The people in the stands were cheering- wait, people? Were they people? Patrick squinted and wiped at his eyes because he could have sworn they weren’t people, they were gumdrops ? He must be either going blind or going crazy. 

Turns out he wasn’t crazy, or at least he wasn’t the only crazy one. Frank spoke up first, “Are those…gumdrops?”

Before anyone could comment on Frank’s observation, Joe cut in. “Um, that’s not all. This isn’t mud,” and before anyone could argue, he stuck two fingers into the mud and put them in his mouth. “Try it, it’s fudge.”

Nobody did, partially because they didn’t believe Joe enough to eat mud, but mostly because they were too busy marveling at the world around them. Because the longer they stood there, the more they noticed things. It wasn’t just the fans and the mud that were made out of candy, it was everything .

The racetrack was hardened sugar, the barriers were candy cane, the mountain was a waffle cone. Their brains couldn’t comprehend the sheer magnitude of the sweets in front of their very eyes. Just as it couldn't get any weirder, one of the racers drove by.

The one racer in the lead was followed by 5 right on its tail. The tiny go-karts, just like the world around them, were made out entirely of candy. But just to add to the confusion, they were all driven by children . 

The thought crossed Patrick’s mind that they were all in some mass-hallucination. Maybe Dominos put the wrong kind of mushrooms on their pizza, maybe the New Jersey gas was putting fumes in the air, maybe it was some group mental illness from spending too much time together - a folie à deux situation, perhaps. There was no way this whimsical world was real life, that’s impossible.

Before he could suggest this to the group, Ray spoke up.

“Guys…I think we’re in Sugar Rush .”

Chapter Text

Nobody spoke. Nobody wanted to confirm nor deny Ray’s theory, because it was just too much to take it. Gerard was the only one who seemed more excited than scared, a huge grin covering his face.

Finally, Frank couldn’t take Gerard’s loopy smile anymore, and smacked him. “What are you doing , we’re all going crazy and you’re HAPPY?”

Gerard couldn’t believe Frank didn’t get it. “Don’t you guys understand? I’ve seen this movie before, I know what to do. This isn’t some Monster-fueled daydream, this is an adventure .”

“Movie?” Andy asked hesitantly, “I thought Sugar Rush was a game.” Everyone stared at Gerard, waiting to see how he’d justify his madness.

“Exactly. We’re in a video game, so how do we get out? How does every protagonist in every movie, book, and TV show get out?” The group just stared at him blankly. “C’mon guys, y’all are as big of nerds as I am! You have to play your way out. We have to play Sugar Rush .”

The thick silence was pierced by an uproar of applause coming from the distant stands as a racer crossed the finish line. Gerard waited for a response, hoping he didn’t sound as crazy to them as he did to himself.

Finally, Mikey spoke up. “Guys, I know it's insane but…I think Gerard’s right.”

Pete looked over at the track. “I trust Mikey. If he thinks that’s what’s best, then we should do it.”

“They’re right, it’s our only chance,” everyone turned to Patrick as he concurred. Ray and Andy both nodded in agreement.

Frank rolled his eyes but mumbled out a “Sure, I guess it can’t get any more crazy than this.”

Joe just looked up, mouth full of fudge, and shot a thumbs-up.

“Well,” Gerard said solemnly, “I guess we’re doing this.”

Chapter Text

Before anyone could fully comprehend how insane what they were doing was, they made their way to the finish line of the race. On their way, they saw even more candy wonders that they would remember for years to come.

Finally, after a long trek through the most amazing landscape any human had ever seen, they made it to the finish line. Frank immediately grabbed the nearest car and jumped in, breaking off the gingerbread side mirror as he did. Some of the others followed suit, with poor Joe choosing one that had gone under Fanta Falls and was covered in a layer of gross stickiness.

“Yuck!” he yelled as he jumped out and tried to wipe the sugary syrup off himself.

Unfortunately, Joe’s outburst brought some unwanted attention to the boys.

“WHAT are you dOing here?” A pretentious British accent sneered at them, out of nowhere. They looked around, confused, trying to find the source of the noise. “I’m down HERE!” They looked down to see a short man wearing a crown, cape, and holding a scepter. “ExcuuuUse ME! WHAT are you doing in MY kingdom?!?”

The guys couldn’t help but snicker as this tiny man tried to boss them around. Gerard, though, took it as seriously as a heart attack. “I’m sorry, um- sir. We were just brought here, against our will, and we’d really like to leave soon. If you’d… let us?” This only made Frank laugh harder, falling out of his car in the process.

The short man did not appreciate Gerard’s groveling any more than he appreciated Frank’s blatant disrespect. “That’s IT! I, KING Candy, will not just sit here and TAKE this ABUSE. You freakish giants are TRESPASSERS in my land. For that, you will be JAILED!!”

All Patrick could do was pinch himself and hope to wake up from this strange, stressful dream. But before he could begin to wake, a menacinging gumdrop spear-herded him off the track. The seven others around him, he could only share a look with Pete and wonder how they’d get out of this situation.

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Pete could tell from Patrick’s face he was scared and confused. But a sharp prod with the spear got him looking back ahead, down the road that eventually led to a sickly-sweet castle. This world no longer seemed like a sugary paradise, but rather a colorful dystopia. 

Before they knew it, the sound of a lock clicking echoed through the dungeon they’d been shut in. It was a dark room with one small window on the far side, bars sending striped shadows over everyone’s faces. Frank and Joe both paced back and forth anxiously as Andy simply sat in the corner and closed his eyes. Soon Ray and Gerard were conversing in one corner as Mikey, Pete, and Patrick were getting into a heated argument.

“Maybe we could pick the lock?” Ray whispered to Gerard.

At the same time, Patrick shouted out “NO Pete, you’re not going to seduce the guard!! You either, Mikey! He’s a gumdrop, and he’s a dude!”

“Never stopped me before,” Pete wiggled his eyebrows and smiled. Patrick just sighed.

Without warning, Andy rose from his silent meditation. The room got quiet as he walked over to the wall with the window. With one single kick, he knocked the entire thing down. Everyone stared, mouth agape.

“What?” he asked. “It’s just gingerbread.”

With that, everyone ran out through the crumbling hole, sprinting down the road they were so recently prisoners on.

Chapter Text

After a few short minutes of running (at the end of which most of the guys were more winded than they would have liked), they made it back to the racetrack. Slinking around the shadows, they watched the tiny child racers whiz by as the crowd cheered them on. A loud voice announced “Final Lap,” which just led to louder cheers. 

Pete stood in front of Gerard, making himself as tall as possible. “Okay dude, this was your plane. How do you suggest we get a car?”

Patrick and Mikey tried to come to his defense, but Gerard answered before they had the opportunity. “It’s simple, really. The top three racers all have to get out of the car when they win, right? While the trophy ceremony is happening, we’ll sneak onto the track and take their cars. After that, we just have to race and win! It’ll be easy.”

Everyone was silent until Joe spoke up. “Wait… maybe I missed something but did you say three cars? There are eight of us.”

Gerard just stood there and thought about it. After a few minutes of anxious eyes following his face’s every move passed, he answered the question. “I guess the other five will have to wait at the finish line. Maybe if we all cross at the same time, it will bring us all back.”

Ray was critical this time. “That’s a whole lot of ‘maybe’s and “if’s. Are we sure winning the race will even work?”

“No, we’re not sure. But it’s all we’ve got,” Andy announced. With that, the crowd erupted and the boys looked over to see the checkered flag fly up into the air.

Pete said what everyone was thinking, “It’s now or never, guys.”

They sneaked over to the empty cars. Almost as if they could read each other’s minds, Frank, Pete, and Patrick hopped into driver’s seats while the rest headed for the finish line. The awards ceremony was wrapping up, and people’s attention was starting to turn back to the racers. 

A small girl holding a silver medal and dressed like a candy cane noticed them first “HEY! That’s my ca-” but she was interrupted by three fateful words:

“READY…

…SET…

...GO”

Chapter Text

Frank slammed his foot on the gas, nearly snapping it off. This car wasn’t too unfamiliar from the go-carts he remembers driving at a friend’s birthday party one time. But by the time he’d figured the whole thing out, he felt a sharp Doppler zoom go right past his head, literally leaving him in the dust.

Pete wasn’t doing much better than Frank, just barely keeping up with the experienced, albeit young, drivers. 

Patrick was still stuck at the starting line, pressing the gas to no avail.

Eventually he figured it out, firing up the car with a loud rev, and shakily driving down the path. He could picture the scoreboard in his head, and it wasn’t looking good.

The finish line five, ran down the side of the track, hoping they had enough of a head start to beat the cars. Huffing and puffing, they were just barely avoiding the jelly-filled law enforcement. They had just given up hope when Mikey peered ahead and pointed to a muddy path. “Is-is that a shortcut?”

At that exact time, the first racer whizzed past them, and they all knew there was no time to find out. “We’ll take the risk!!” Gerard announced. Andy turned around just in time to see Pete drive past with Frank on his tail.

“FRANK!” Pete yelled over the roar of the engines, “PLAY DIRTY! HIT THEIR CARS WITH YOURS!!”

It may have been difficult to hear, but Pete was sure Frank got his message as he watched him ram into a gingersnap GT. Patrick, though driving, wasn’t even in their sight.  With one car gone, there were only 5 more competitors on the track, and Pete knew he had to eliminate all of them for Patrick to have a chance. He reached over the side of the track, praying he could drive one-handed, and snapped off a long branch of a rock-candy tree. “FRANK! GRAB THE OTHER END OF THIS BRANCH.” 

Once again, Pete was lucky Frank could hear him, as Frank grabbed the tree branch immediately. Two unsuspecting racers drove right into their surprise game of limbo, breaking their cars and sweeping them off the track. “3 racers left,” Pete thought.

Patrick was catching up, Pete could see him in his rear view mirror. But all three of them were behind the other three racers. Pete was really stressing about what to do, as the finish line was rapidly approaching. But Frank, in a moment of genius, threw a pop-rock grenade ahead of them. To this day nobody knows how Frank got the pop-rocks or how he knew they would explode like that, but it worked. Two of the racers’ wheels were blown off, and the third went spinning behind them. Things were looking good, things were about to work out!! They couldn’t believe home (or at least, Warped Tour) was so close after these few fever-dream hours. And luckily, the five walkers were waiting right at the finish line for them.

But how did they get there? To understand that, everything needs to be rewinded a few minutes. Mikey had just found the shortcut path, and they were running down it as fast as possible, blindly hoping it would lead them to the checkered flag. Only it didn’t. 

The path led them right to the mouth of a volcano. Dark liquid bubbled underneath bright white stalactites, spurting out like a whale’s blowhole every time a stalactite dropped in. This was the LAST place they wanted to be. The finish line shone in the distance like a symbol of hope long forgotten, a reminder of how far they were. “That’s it,” Gerard said. “I give up. We’re never going to get there in time, and Pete, Patrick, and Frank are going to get arrested at the finish line and it’s all my fault.”

Nobody consoled him, because they knew it wouldn’t sound sincere.

“Wait- I have a plan,” Ray announced. “Just follow my lead.” With that he started jumping around and shaking the volcano like a crazy person.

“What are you doing ?” Joe asked.

“Just trust me.” And they did. So they all started jumping around, just a bunch of grown men jumping on top of a volcano. Soon, Ray started to notice the white stalactites – which he guessed were Mentos – falling into the dark Coke. “Keep going!!” The reactions got more and more extreme, bubbling up until it was an unstoppable force. 

Before anyone could stop to wonder if it really was a good plan, the volcano bubbled over. But “bubbled over” is an understatement: the volcano exploded, launching a geyser of cola into the air, and the five men with it. They were catapulted into the air, and by some amount of dumb luck, fell back down into a marshmallow pit. A marshmallow pit only 500 feet from the finish line. 

So there they all were, standing at the finish line when the three racers crossed simultaneously. The flag rose, the crowd went wild, and they all closed their eyes and waited to be returned to Litwaks. They waited, and waited, and waited- But after all that, the ground beneath their feet was still fudge and the clouds in the sky were still spun sugar. After all that, the cheers of the crowd never turned back into the noises of the arcade. After all that, they were still in Sugar Rush .

Chapter Text

Dumbstruck, they all looked around at the technicolor sugary purgatory around them. “How did that not work??” Gerard bemoaned. “I thought it was going to WORK.”

Andy was the only one willing to speak up. “It’s okay, you did your best. It was worth a try.”

But as they stood there mourning the loss of their escape, one final car rolled across the finish line. Out jumped a little girl in a green hoodie.

“YOU!” She yelled in a nasally voice. “YOU ruined my car!!! It’s barely drivable!” She was marching right up to Frank, a single accusatory finger pointed right at his chest. Despite being one of the shorter guys in the group, she barely came up to his waist, making the entire picture ridiculous.

He was about to start arguing back with her when Ray stepped in between them. “I know you. I’ve seen you before. I chose your character in the arcade. …Are you Vanellope?”

Clearly pleased to have a fan, she blushed a little and twirled her skirt. “That’s right, I’m Vanellope von Shweetz. Who are you?”

“I’m Ray,” he said, “I’m from the outside world. We were sucked into this game by accident, and we’ve been trying to escape ever since. That’s why my friend Frank did uh- something to your car.”

Frank, reading the room for once in his life, piped up “Yeah, I’m sorry about that!!”

She clearly wasn’t ready to hear from him again, as her sharp glare got Patrick to lean over to Frank and whisper “Dude, not yet, just be quiet.”

Ray continued, “Is there any way you could help us get home? Everyone here has been hostile to us since we arrived, but we really just need help.”

“King Candy?” she asked. “Yeah he’s a big ol’- well, I’m not allowed to say that word. This is a family game after all.” She winked, though nobody could quite tell who the wink was for. “I could help you get home!”

“How?” Joe asked. 

“Well, I have this kind of superpower. I’m a glitch. It might help you get out. Here, everybody stand in a circle and hold hands.”

The guys felt a little awkward holding hands for each other, but they were willing to do whatever this bossy child told them to if it got them home. She filled the gap between Andy and Mikey, and closed her eyes really hard.

“Is something supposed to be happening right now?” Gerard asked.

Patrick responded “I think she’s concentrating.”

After a few more moments of silence, Pete shouted out “There’s NO place like home, there’s NO place like home!!”

Frank’s yell of “Dude, cut it with the Wizard of Oz references!” was the last thing any of them heard before everything turned to black.

They opened their eyes to see Litwak’s arcade once more. No time had passed, they were still all gathered around the Sugar Rush machine watching Ray turn the wheel. No sound ever again was as welcome as the video game beeps, and no smell as sweet as the moldy arcade carpet. But instead of finishing their round (it was two dollars after all), they all turned around and left. 

“I swear, I will NEVER take the tour bus for granted again!!” Pete announced loudly. While that statement didn’t stay true for long, he certainly voiced what they were all thinking.

Both bands would end up having long, successful careers. They sold thousands of records, played stadiums full of adoring fans, and changed countless lives. But despite all of that, not one member could quite forget that strange summer afternoon in 2005.