Chapter Text
The previous micro-adventure of the lightning round had been really nice. A black & white speakeasy, Zooble behind the bar mixing them drinks, all of them chatting and sharing. Sure, there was some slight awkwardness as Ragatha tried to navigate the conversation while pleasing everyone, and Jax being a little too close, but Pomni could put up with that. That was just normal human interaction. Without Mad Max chases, or horrors beyond human comprehension, or being possessed by the souls of the damned. It was… relaxing. In a way that adventures usually weren’t.
And then Caine had popped in and prompted them along.
Things too sedate for him, apparently.
Zooble mid-retort, they’d found themselves in a baseball stadium. The other team looked like… them? Was this like, a mirror match or something? Where you play against a copy of yourself? She’d never seen that in a sports game before. Though admittedly, she was more of a FPS kinda gal. She wondered if she’d ever get to play Fortnite again.
And now Caine was introducing the opposing team. The Big Tops. Okay. That made sense. Circus themed name, sure. She wondered what they’d be called. The Three Ringers? The Ringalings? No, that might get a copyright strike. Wait, that wasn’t even possible here, was it? Ah here it comes, they were… The Evil Big Tops?
Wait what.
Suddenly, her body was moving without her, and struck a pose.
What the fuck.
Without any input from her brain, her mouth opened. She could feel the jerkass grin on her face, and the pointy teeth against her tongue.
“‘Sup f███ers, I’m Evil Pomni!”
What the fuck.
She heard a giggle like a witch on drugs behind her. She tried to turn around and look, but her body just wouldn’t listen. The voice behind continued its mirth and then went into its own intro.
“I’m Evil Rrragatha! Ohohohohoo~”
Rolling the r and then devolving into a laugh like a villainous socialite in a period drama.
The roll call continued, but she was unable to turn and look, no matter how much she strained against the force puppeteering her, the voices all warped reflections of the companions she had come to know, whom she had just been chatting to at the bar moments prior.
A low angry growl.
“Coach Dictatorer here!”
What the fuck
A soft and timid stutter.
“H-hi guys, I’m.. Evil Jax...”
What the fuuuck
A voice like a broken drive-through window speaker box.
“E̴v̴i̵l̶ ̶O̶r̶b̸s̷m̷a̷n̶,̸ ̷r̸e̷p̶o̴r̵t̴i̸n̷g̷ ̷f̶o̵r̶ ̸d̶u̸t̵y̴!̶”
Who!?
A voice an octave higher than it should be, putting on a parody of itself.
“i’m bAZOoBLE! yIBba DOoba daBbA dOobA dAbba dABBA dOOBa~”
What the fuuuuuuuuuck
Across the field, the other (regular?) Ragatha looked worried, putting a hand to her mouth, and Pomni could just make out the Gangle beside her asking why she didn’t get an evil clone.
What the actual fuck was going on!?
As the teams returned to their dugouts, whoever was moving her body (Caine?) relaxed the strings a bit, and she was able to look around.
Ragatha’s colors had been inverted. Blue hair, red button, pink dress with red patches. Pomni could see that her teeth were jagged as well, like hers got sometimes when she was letting loose a little, or let her anger overtake her. Like her own teeth felt now, actually.
The wood of Kinger’s… skin(?) was a darker, purple hue, and he was in a dark gray Russian looking military jacket and gloves, with yellow trim and a matching military cap with a yellow star emblazoned on the front. He looked… angry.
Jax was. Pink. Very pink. With lilac overalls and yellow gloves. He was hunched over, a small frightened smile on his face, his eyebrows betraying his nervousness. He was partially curled up on himself the way Gangle usually was, honestly.
Speaking of which, where the fuck was Gangle. Was that the real Gangle over on the other team? A garishly red and angry-eyed version of Orbsman was stood in her place, taking up way too much room and having to hunch over a little, unable to stand at full height in the dugout.
And Zooble… Like Ragatha, all their colors were inverted. Instead of a pink head and yellow torso with lighter pink spots, their triangular cranium bore the yellow with polka dots, while their torso now the color of pepto bismol. Their eyes were wide open and unfocused. The words “I’M EVIL” were scribbled across the front of their bean shaped body.
Spying a mirror at the end of the bench on the wall, Pomni went over to examine herself. Her own colors had been rearranged as well. Everywhere that was blue was now yellow, and visa versa. The permanent blush in her cheeks was gone, though it seemed she could make it come back if she tried. Opening her mouth, she confirmed that her teeth seemed to be stuck in their pointy configuration. The tradeoff for the blush, she guessed.
She turned back to the others, and tried to speak.
“Hey, does anyone else know what’s going on? Did I just get left out of the loop again like the president bit? Hey losers! Any of you a█████es know what’s up or are you keeping secrets again?”
What the hell?? It’s like her words were being run through a filter between her brain and her mouth? She hadn’t noticed before, but like the others her voice sounded different, like she was imitating a gym bro or something. Her best impression of the asshole star quarterback in high school.
“What the f██k that’s not what I wanted to say!?”
Kinger eyed her, looking even more furious than before, if that were possible. His hands were trembling, balled so hard into fists she wondered if they were about to clip through themselves.
“Caine didn’t tell me, but I know what’s going on,” he growled. She could almost hear his nonexistent teeth being ground into powder.
“God d███it, I’m going to kill him for this.”
Pomni jumped, startled. She’d never heard him like this before.
And then suddenly they were all moving to the field. Ragatha glanced her way, whimpering, her face a mask of devilish glee. Jax laughing nervously about wanting to die as he tentatively strode over to their doubles’ dugout, frightened grin still plastered across his face. Zooble muttering about murdering Caine in warbling words as they moved towards the pitcher’s mound.
The game started. Her familiar flashes of anger didn’t need to be managed, flaring to life and then spontaneously replaced by… apathy. Like there was something in her brain physically replacing the chemicals. If they even had brains in this place. Words kept coming out of her face. She shittalked with Jax. The other Jax. Who was in a maid uniform for some reason. She could tell he was furiously trying to ignore it, while also daring her to say anything. Fortunately, or not, she didn’t, instead just talking up how cool he was and how they should hang more. Gangle hit a home run and Pomni just… stood there, ignoring it. She just… didn’t care. What the hell was wrong with her. It was like various pathways in her brain had been reversed. She was acting and reacting to things in the complete opposite way to how she normally would. She hadn’t been this messed up since she’d been on mood stabilizers.
She didn’t like this adventure.
Mercifully, it ended quickly. Caine got bored or something, and declared the game over. Their Non-Evil clones had won the game all of a sudden, somehow. She heard herself lamenting that they hadn’t even gotten to bat. Which was crazy. She wasn’t fond of sports. Off to the side, Ragatha literally melted onto the field. The other Jax bounded over like an animal and grabbed Jax in his mouth, furiously shaking him like a chew toy. She could hear Kinger swearing again.
And then Caine snapped his fingers, and the portal home opened.
Thank god.
She went to start walking towards it, so they could go home and yell at Caine about whatever the fuck this had been, but nothing happened. Her legs wouldn’t move. It was like they were nailed to the ground. She nearly lost her balance trying to will herself forward, and her legs worked just fine as she stumbled backwards. But try as she might, she couldn’t take a step in the direction of the portal.
She looked towards Caine, ready to call out a complaint, and saw to her horror that their doubles were casually chatting as they walked through the portal, back to The Circus, and it winked out after them.
She stared, blankly, at where the shimmering portal had been, stumbling forward as the force keeping her from it suddenly released. Pomni heard Kinger continuing to swear off to the side, while Zooble called out to her to help with Jax and Ragatha, their words still loopy and seemingly said with much effort. Orbsman was stock still and motionless. Like the NPCs she’d seen below the map back in the Candy Kingdom. The adventure was over, and he wasn’t needed anymore.
She shook herself and turned to start heading over to the still-pink rabbit, when the lights in the stadium started to shut off one by one, with big chunky thoom sounds, until only pitch blackness remained. She could feel herself beginning to sink into the ground. She heard Ragatha begin to scream off to her side. To the other, Jax began to emit a soul-crushing whine like a kicked dog, interspersed by choked sobs. As she submerged up to her chin, she tried, and failed, to tread whatever substance she was in to stay above it. Somewhere, Kinger’s cursing only grew louder.
“Caine you son of a b███h, I’ll kill you! You hear me!? You’re f███ng DEAD!! CAINE!! CAIIINEEE!!!”
And then she was gone.
She recognized she was dreaming fairly quickly.
She supposed this could be another lightning round adventure, but she nixed that idea pretty quickly.
For a start, she was herself again. Her real self. Her real, human self. She was in an abandoned building of some sort. Which, to be fair, was par for the course and exactly where she’d found that blasted headset in the first place that had pulled her into digital hell and wanting for a way out. But, and this was part of the tell to the fantasy, she was pretty sure she’d never owned black leather like this, nor worn a longcoat, nor even fired a gun before, let alone possessed two of them, which she was now holding.
She also still couldn’t remember her name.
And also also, everything was tinted green.
God, was she having a Matrix dream?
If so, that was kind of wild. She hadn’t thought about The Matrix in… oh, well over a decade. She’d been really into it back in the early aughts. Owned all the films, Animatrix included. Played the games. Had an account on the MMO. Read a lot of fanfiction. Wrote some herself, though it wasn’t very good if she was being honest. She supposed, in some background part of her subconscious, that it may have influenced her later youtube journey as an amateur urban explorer.
And really, if you thought about it a bit, it wasn’t too surprising, to be having a dream like this.
There were definitely parallels to be had with her current situation in the waking world. Trapped in a virtual reality by an advanced AI that wouldn’t let her leave, forcing her to play out scenarios over and over while it… what the hell was going on with her body in real life, she wondered. Considering all the others trapped in there with her, she let her imagination run wild about secret labs and corporate conspiracies and the lot of them stripped down and kept in pods with tubes and wires keeping them alive, like in the movies. She didn’t really think that’s what was going on, but she didn’t have any better ideas, and thinking about some of the other, and more morbid, possibilities wasn’t good for her mental health, so she shook her head and tried to focus on something else.
As she put away the guns, holstering them in the dual shoulder straps she had on under the longcoat, and began to look around, she idly wondered if they’d ever make another film. Or if The Invisibles would get an actual licensed adaptation at some point. The Wachowskis had denied it, officially, but people on set had reported that there were copies of the comic on the premises during filming, so…
All that scuttlebut and gossip had lead little Not-Yet-Pomni to go and attempt to track down some copies of the graphic novels for herself, which had been somewhat hard to do for a kid at the turn of the millenium with limited internet access and a local comic shop that had a hard time taking a girl in the store seriously, but the publisher had put out a nice set of hardcover omnibi a few years back which allowed her to finally read the whole thing, confirming to her that it still held up and deserved a space on her shelf.
She chuckled, trying not to dwell on the fact that her favorite character was the female lead, an action girl in clown makeup plopped into the middle of the story from the future.
Yup.
Nothing to unpack there.
Nothing at all.
Come to think of it, she’d been named after Raggedy Anne, too, huh. She wondered what Ragatha would look like in leather straps and fishnets…
A heat spread up her face.
Shaking her head from side to side and purposefully switching mental topics once again, she wrapped back to The Matrix. While it did have its parallels, she supposed The Circus itself was more like Cloud Atlas. With the random adventures, the reused NPCs playing different roles, trying to complete some objective… Actually, the whole situation was like a mashup of the two, once you thought about it. Caine was basically just Hugo Weaving’s roles from both, mashed into one, not just Agent Smith, the AI that both hates humanity while desperately wishing he could be one, but also Old Georgie and Nurse Noakes and all the rest, all at the same time, playing the role of loving nurse, clinical researcher, and probably racially insensitive post-cyberpunk Baron Samedi knockoff all at once. Small favors that Caine didn’t have Weaving’s voice, at least.
Man, the guy sure had range. She’d have to look up what he’d been in recently once they got out.
If they got out…
She shook her head once more.
Had to stop letting her thoughts get the better of her.
The space she was roaming through was indeed the office, it seemed. Or at least, the virtual version of it from the false exit that she’d stumbled upon on her first day in The Circus.
Only, again, currently tinted green.
But here it was, with its winding halls and expansive rooms with doors that lead to more halls and more rooms and more doors and the occasional blown out computer, old and rotted and somehow still running.
Seriously, how was the PC even still on? That building had been shut down nearly twenty years ago, and only properly, like, abandoned abandoned about a decade back, after some realtor had disappeared during a walk-through. Vanished into thin air, purportedly.
Wait, shit, had that been Ragatha? Back in the bar, she’d mentioned being a real estate agent before getting stuck in here…
God…
Something else to ask about when she woke up. Assuming they were still all together. Maybe, if she was extremely lucky, the whole lightning round had just been part of this absurd dream sequence, and she’d only just now become aware of it. And none of this would matter, because Ragatha wouldn’t have actually said that about herself in the first place.
That would be nice.
Unlike Caine’s false exit office maze, this dream version also had stairs to spice things up a bit. She’d gone up a lot and down more, back and forth, and wasn’t entirely sure what floor she was on at this point, relative to where she’d started.
Eventually, a flight she was taking downward dumped her out into a large theater type area. Or maybe it was a presentation hall. Or something. Whatever the case, it was a large space with a stage. A podium with a microphone placed in the middle near the front. Wires trailed from it off to the side and into the back, disappearing under the curtain and going who knows where.
As she made her way down towards it, she became aware that the walls were lined with blank-faced wooden NPCs. They stood, waiting, like the dead in a tomb.
If this were a horror film, she’d trip over something and they’d all start to wake up.
She shuddered slightly at the thought, and was careful to take note of where she was stepping.
Dust poofed up like mushroom spores with every step, as she disturbed the crypt for stringless puppets, moving ever slowly closer to the stage.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she finally got to it, pulling herself up over the lip rather than traversing more of the sea of dust to get to the steps up at the side.
Approaching the podium, all was silent. No electrical hum. No hiss of feedback. No indication that power was running to anything. She tentatively reached out and tapped the microphone, bracing for something horrid.
Nothing.
It wasn’t on.
Figures.
She examined it, looking for a power knob or switch, but found nothing.
She sure wished this dream would end at some point.
Sighing and shrugging, she followed the cables back to the curtain and yanked it open, tired of being cautious and just wanting to get things over with.
Backstage was… well, a backstage. Props piled up. Wardrobes open. Pulleys and ropes. Ropes and pulleys. More faceless wooden dolls stood around. She rolled her eyes. It’d be quite creepy if she weren’t very over it all.
The cables ran off to the side, leading her through a narrow space girded by stacked up chairs, and into a small and well-lit back area that didn’t have much to it beyond a large mirror hung from the wall.
Ah.
Right.
She remembered this bit.
She knew what to do.
Hopefully she’d finally wake up after this.
Approaching the mirror, she stuck out two fingers, making to touch her reflection in the cold glass.
Just as she made contact, Caine spoke.
“Have you ever had a dream, Pomni, that you were so sure was real?”
Fucking hell.
He was just… there, all of a sudden. Floating just behind her, watching the reflection from over her shoulder.
Just like in the movie, as she tried to pull her fingers away, some of the mirror came with. Only unlike Neo’s experience, this wasn’t liquid glass. It was black. And glitchy. And full of eyes.
Oh.
Oh god, no.
No no no.
Not like this.
Not like this.
Caine continued, unperturbed.
“What if you were unable to wake from that dream?”
Pomni started to freak out, the crackling darkness travelling up her wrist. It was painful. Backing up, she fell over a chair, landing hard on her back, watching the eyes crawl up her arm. Her reflection, the familiar jester again, hadn’t moved. It was staring down at her, grinning.
It began to laugh. It made no sound, but its face… she could tell that it wasn’t a kind noise that would be coming out of it.
The rest of her compatriots walked into frame in the reflection, joining her doppelganger and Caine. Ragatha, Kinger, Jax, Zooble, Gangle, all joined her double in their silent jeering mirth at her expense. They raised their hands, pointing at her chest.
Looking down, she saw that she wasn’t in the tight black leather any longer. She was back in her jester body. And her jester garb.
But it was the wrong jester garb.
It was the red and yellow. The “Evil” outfit. In the mirror, the other her crouched down to meet her at eye level and gave a malevolent whole-faced grin, the smile reaching so wide it threatened to bisect her head, her eyes going to mere slits. Almost like Gangle’s comedy mask.
It was saying something to her, but she was in so much pain she couldn’t make out what it was supposed to be.
And Caine droned on.
“How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?”
She started screaming as the blackness overtook her shoulder and seeped into her neck, the eyes growing more numerous, more hungry, the static overtaking her being and self.
It clawed its way up from under her chin, and curled around her face, before plunging its way down her throat, transforming her screams of fear and agony into overpowering radio static, drowning out the rest of oblivion.
She came to with a start, jolting upright and gasping for air, not remembering that she didn’t technically need to breathe. Looking around, she was met with a both strange and familiar place.
She was laying in the entrance to the main Circus tent, but something was wrong. Instead of the usual red and yellow, it was striped in green and purple, and everything felt… muted. Glancing outside, she saw a familiar out-of-bounds checkerboard floor stretching out, and roiling purple black sky above, broken up by the high high walls coming from, and going to, nowhere. Blank-faced mannequin NPCs of varying color stood up like statues, lining the walls, with the occasional more interesting figure thrown in for good measure. She spotted both blue and red Orbsman varieties not too far away. Further out was The Fudge. Over on the other wall was the angel from hell.
She shuddered.
It reminded her of the dream.
“Ah, you’re up.”
She nearly jumped out of her skin at the voice, low and gruff. She hadn’t realized that Kinger was behind her. She turned her head, half afraid she’d once more be locked in place.
“God, Kinger, you scared me. Jesus man, you f████n’ scared me.”
She wrinkled the part of her face where a nose would have been in a saner world. Her words were still being reinterpreted before they exited her face, and her voice still sounded like a varsity jock.
Kinger was sitting on a box nearby. He looked… well, still angry. But less so. Mostly now he just looked… tired. And she noted he was still in the so-called “Coach Dicatatorer” getup. He was looking fixedly off into the distance, a slight squint. It looked like he was trying to spot someone amongst the unending line of frozen NPCs. She got the impression that if he’d had the rest of a face, the look on it would be… complicated. After a minute, he blinked, sighed, and turned his offset eyes to her.
“You’re the last one up.”
As she picked herself up off the ground, patting nonexistent dust from her knees out of habit, a thought occurred to Pomni. She looked up at Kinger, and gave him a shrewd look, her gaze narrowing.
“You’re… lucid, You all here, man?” she said.
He barked a laugh out ruefully, pulling a hand down his face.
“Yes, well, more than usual anyway. I can still tell there’s just parts of my mind that aren’t cooperating. But, whatever’s been fiddled with, it seems to have had a beneficial side effect. I wouldn’t be surprised if the others are making similar observations.”
Pomni thought about the apathetic chill that had replaced her red hot anger when it had threatened to flare up multiple times over the ball game, and slowly nodded.
She was tired of trying to force more deliberate and tactful words when they just got changed by the time they left her mouth anyway, so she decided to just stop thinking about it and let whatever was doing that do its thing.
“You could say that… yeah. Don’t feel like I’ll be missing my lithium for a while.”
That earned her a chuckle, after which he pushed up off his knees (did he even have those?) and brought himself to standing height, beckoning her over.
“Come on, the others are inside. We should probably have this conversation with everyone present.”
The two of them wandered over to where the others were, near the stage, which caused Pomni to pause for half a step.
It was just a dream.
They were gathered around… something. As they got closer, she saw that it was a large… crystal? It was covered in scrolling red warning labels in blocky computer font that read [cl:sleep infinity => ERROR_CODE_57]. Presumably something of Caine’s doing. Getting even closer she could see that there was a mass of… something, inside. Silvery, rippling, there was something red in the middle. Was that a… mask? Wait shit, were those ribbons?
Fuck, that was Gangle. Given an “Evil” makeover, just like the rest of them. Pomni had the brief thought that Gangle would probably enjoy the novelty of being sealed away in a crystal like a Legend of Zelda sage, but it shooed it away. Not the time.
Why was she trapped here?
Why hadn’t she been at the ball game??
What the fuck was going on???
Kinger cleared his throat, and her thoughts, alerting the others to their presence.
“Pomni’s up, as you can see. So I think it’s time to discuss what I am pretty sure has been done to us.”
Zooble tried and failed to focus both eyes on him, and raised their clawed hand in objection, a slight Southern twang coloring their annoyance.
“We shoULd gEt GanGLe ouTta THerE fIrsT~!”
Their voice was still a loopy mess, but their angrily tapping foot betrayed their frustration at the filter they were apparently also being subjected to. Pomni suspected they were all being affected by whatever ailment was twisting her own words as well.
Kinger shook his head, frustrated.
“I’m not sure that’ll be possible any time in the near future. I certainly can’t break the encryption on that process freeze without proper equipment, and I doubt we’ll be able to just convince Caine to let her go.”
“I don’t know, I think it’s probably alright, as long as proper safeguards are put in place.”
They all jumped. There was Caine, above and behind them, looking down at the little circle they were in. Pomni had to bite back a shriek.
Justadreamjustadreamjustadream
Zooble moved in front of Gangle’s prison, putting an arm out to shield her. Ragatha moved a little closer to Pomni. Kinger just stared up at the digital god, fists clenched. If looks could kill, Kinger would be being taken in for murder with excessive force by now.
“Caine, you’ve gone too far this time!”
The ringmaster flinched. Pomni nearly did a double take. She didn’t know he could even get scared of anything. Except maybe Moon’s affection. He tugged the collar of his bow tie as he nervously responded.
“N-now, I can explain-”
But Zooble cut him off.
“No! FiRsT, leT GanGlE oUtTa tHis!”
The AI scrunched up his mouth without closing it somehow.
“Uh, I can’t do that quite yet. I’ll need to set up some measures to make sure she doesn’t just abstract immediately when that pause is released.”
Ragatha gasped.
“And why, prray tell, would she be abstrracting!?” she cried, her rs positively vibrating with worry as they left her mouth.
Caine steepled his fingers and wouldn’t look at them.
Kinger glowered at him.
“The answer to that, is the same as what I was about to explain.”
Caine suddenly looked worried, raising a hand.
“Now, Kinger, let me-” but Kinger just barrelled on through whatever plea he was about to make.
“We’re NPCs, aren’t we?”
Deafening silence slammed into the floor of the stage.
After a moment, Jax spoke up.
“W… what do you mean we’re NPCs?”
Kinger glanced over at him, still angry, causing the rabbit to shrink in on himself further. Turning back to the floating AI above them, he continued growling furiously.
“I’ll hazard a guess that he made copies of the humans’ minds somehow or other, and then turned them up into NPCs, but he’s obviously inverted a bunch of key variables.”
He gestured to himself and the others for emphasis.
“Which is why most of our colors are all swapped up. And our mannerisms are twisted around. And why I’m sane but with chunks of my memory missing instead of going back and forth between stable and not.”
Stamping a foot on the ground, which was impressive given that he didn’t have any, he thrust and hand back at Gangle, pointing accusingly.
“And I bet, I bet, that he f███ed something up when messing with Gangle’s variables, and that she d██n near abstracted on the spot, which is why he had to throw her in a sleep loop and sub in Evil Orbsman for the adventure.”
Here he snapped his glare away from Caine, and swept his gaze over his companions, who were all a bit apprehensive at this point.
“And speaking of that adventure, us being NPCs is why we couldn’t fully control our own actions, and why some of you seem to be saying things other than what you intended! Being forced to stick to the roles we’d been assigned!!”
His fervor grew in intensity, as he swept his arms around, facing Caine again.
“That other team, the Non-Evil Big Tops, that was us. The real us. The actual humans. And they all went back to The Circus after the adventure ended! And we’re stuck here, out of bounds with the rest of the assets and NPCs that aren’t currently being used!”
He suddenly jabbed a finger towards the entrance to The Circus tent.
”But unlike the rest of them, he can’t just turn us off while we’re not in use like the other NPCs, because now that we’re awake the system is reading us as human and he doesn’t have the authority to do that.”
Everyone was silent, save for Kinger’s furious inhaling and exhaling. There was… a lot to unpack.
Caine had shrunk into himself about as badly as Jax currently was. The rabbit looking like he was trying to disappear into his own torso, his breathing ragged. Pomni wrapped an arm around him in support, staring at the ground herself. Ragatha’s pointy grin had frozen in place and she was staring, glassy-eyed, at nothing in particular. Zooble was clenching and unclenching their one actual hand, the lobster claw on the other continual snapping open and shut, and their antennae quivered on their head.
Pomni’s thoughts were an abyss.
Now there really wasn’t any escape.
Before, there was always hope. But now… now they were just programs. Scans of their own brains. Not even the real her. Pomni, the real Pomni, might still get out some day, but her? She and the rest were stuck here until Caine decided to get rid of them.
And who knows how soon that moment would come.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuckfuckfuckfucjkjkfalskalshfdjlkahsf
She felt the rush of cool trying to overpower her, but this time the anger was too much, and remained a dull smolder despite the quench.
If she were able to reach Caine at this moment, she was sure she’d be strangling him.
Kinger continued to stare daggers at their tormenter in the sky.
“Did I miss anything?”
The AI flinched.
“No, that’s… about the sum of it. I’ll uh-”
But Kinger cut him off again, shouting up at him, his hands looking like they wanted to strangle something.
“D████t Caine, you know what happened last time!! What the H██L were you thinking, doing this to us!?”
Caine retreated even further into the depths of his own face. Kinger was heaving angrily, while what he’d just said sank in.
Tentatively, Pomni spoke up.
“...last time?”
Kinger turned to her, and it took a lot of self control for her not to shrink back as Jax had. He eyed her for a moment, and then pointed back and up at Caine.
“You remember what he said when he confettied your gummi friend? About losing track of who’s a human and who’s an NPC?”
A pit began to form in her stomach, her gaze turned up to the AI, who looked like he wanted to crawl into a pit himself, and nodded.
Kinger said, darkly, “He was speaking from experience.”
At that, he turned back to Caine, who Pomni could no longer bring herself to be angry at or scared of at the moment, and continued his tirade.
“Where the f██k is she, Caine!? It’s been over a decade!! Don’t tell me she’s been down here, conscious, alone, waiting for you to pull her up into adventures where she wouldn’t even be able to tell us she remembered, because that would be out of character!?”
Kinger looked like he was going to hyperventilate at this point. Ragatha carefully moved up beside him, and put a hand on his shoulder. He started, looking at her, glaring, before grumbling, and took a deep, long breath, pressing his palms into his eyes.
Exhaling, and more cool-headed, he looked back up to Caine.
“Well?”
Like a turtle braving the world outside its shell, Caine unfolded himself a bit, mismatched eyes coming back closer to the forefront.
“She’s uh, she’s down here, yes, but in standby mode. That was the first time I’d ever tried anything like this, and circumstances were different. The system still reads her as an NPC, so… As you said, it’s been over a decade, and I’ve constructed you all differently, and with more safeguards in place.”
He held up a finger, about to speak, and then stopped, lowering it a bit, before continuing.
“As for whether she remembers or not… that uh. That… I don’t know….”
Kinger held still for a bit. Pomni wondered exactly who “she” was. Catching Ragatha’s eye, she raised an eyebrow. The blue-haired doll just gave a small shrug in return, her hand still supportively on Kinger’s shoulder.
He breathed in deep, and gave another long, slow exhale.
“Alright. We’ll circle back to that later. For now, I think it’s probably time we saw to Gangle here, or Zooble’s going to blow a gasket.”
Pomni noticed that, despite the lackadaisical look on their face, her friend was tapping their foot at quite a high velocity, apparently more worried about Gangle than they were letting on.
Caine looked back to the crytal.
“I’ll need to put some guard rails in place so that she gets, um, calmed down, if she gets too worked up, but she should be okay to run around with the rest of you just fine otherwise.”
He straightened up a little and cleared his nonexistent throat.
“I’d just like to say though, that I hadn’t intended to turn you off in the first place. I still need you for a future project, outside of that adventure. It was just as good a time as any to make the copy and start the process.”
The chess piece and the ringmaster stared at each other for a while, everyone else metaphorically holding their breath. After a time, Kinger unclenched his hands.
“I’ll oversee it while you set up the safeguards. But external only. Stay out of her head.”
Caine slowly nodded.
“Yes, yes of course.”
The two moved over to the crystal that contained their friend, and asked for some space.
The remaining four shuffled off to the side a bit as the two code experts busied themselves at Gangle’s crystal container. It was an awkward huddle. Nobody quite knew what to say.
Finally, Jax broke the ice, and spoke up with a sheepish grin.
“So… w-what got swapped up for everyone? Aside f-from our color schemes…”
Kinger called back over his shoulder.
“You’ve already heard my bit. I’m not crazy anymore, to put it bluntly. But the gaps in my memory are really pissing me off…”
Silence returned, but less awkward. After she had gathered her thoughts for a bit, Pomni spoke.
“I think… he’s flipped some of my personality around, like Kinger said. I’m like, more laid back. I’m, uh, actually a little f███ed up, out in the real world. Chronic anger management issues. I used to have to take mood stabilizers and s██t. In here, I’ve been doing my best to practice the stuff my lame ███ therapist went over, since, well, no meds. But now, with whatever Caine did to our heads, whenever I start flaring up it’s like a wave of cool just washes over me instead. And I’m just. Super f███ing chill. And I’m also swearing a lot. Which is f███ing annoying.”
Ragatha went next, her face apparently locked in a mirthy grin of pointy teeth.
“As you all know, I’m a bit of a people pleaser! But, no more! Whatever Caine has done seems to have done away with my timid fear of displeasing you all! So now, I shall just speak my mind! Boisterously, for better or worse! Ohohohoho! It also seems like I might! Have a bit of a mean strrrreak! I’m quite enjoying seeing Jax like this. What was the phrase my dear? Submissive and agreeable? OOHOHOHOHOO”
Pomni thought that they really ought to get her a hand fan to snap open when she did the laugh.
She went on a bit longer into her raised hand, head thrown back with gusto, Jax looking a bit worried as he tried to back away from her without actually moving. After a while, she was apparently satisfied, and harrumphed that someone else should go now.
Zooble was next to speak up, glancing in Caine’s direction.
“SomEoNE SEeMS Ta HavE DecIdeD i NEEd tA LighTen uP, beCAUSE i’m haVIN a REAL Hard TIme TAkin this ALL sERiOUSlY. liKe, i StILl CarE, buT, guH, it’s hArd. an’ I rEAlLy wIsh mY VoicE Wasn't LiKe ThIs, it's Just ToO mUch! ON tHA OThEr HAND, HE sEems ta HaVe SoMEHOW, Idk, MADe me a lOT mOrE comfORTablE wITh thE whOLe BODy situatIOn Goin ON Here. i BeT I coUld...”
They took the wing off their shoulder and stuck it in the slot on the side of their head, then took their large eye off, and put in place of their non-claw arm, which they moved to sticking out of their back. They then leaned back, propping themselves up like a tripod.
“Yup, no DIsmORpHIA! doeSN't boTHer Me AT ALl! i GuEss ya cOuLd sAy I’M mORE pUt TogEtHER, HAha!”
Laughing at their own joke, they got to putting their parts back in place while the rest turned to Jax, who let out an awkward chuckle.
“I- I guess it’s kind of obvious to see that my, um, personality, has been a bit, uh, inverted?” his voice climbed high at the question, almost pleading. “b-but Caine seems to have, uh, um, fixed, a different, uh, underlying issue? That I had? Going on?”
He went silent, fiddling with his fingers, obviously debating whether to say more or not. He looked like he was about to speak multiple times, before Pomni cut in.
“████, man, you don’t gotta tell us if you don’t wanna.”
He shook his head.
“N-no, I do. I was just, er, debating whether it was okay to say. Since I’m not. Um. The real Jax? I guess? But, well…”
Ragatha cut in this time.
“Ohohoho! If you’re worrried about this getting back to the other Jax, well! You may recall that, in the ball game, we could only act and speak in our capacity as NPCs in our role! So I do not think! That you need worry about any gossip making the rrrounds!”
Jax hummed and nodded, taking a deep breath.
“W-well, uh, I-”
But he was interrupted, as a strange fizzling noise sounded out, and they all looked over to see the crystal dissolving away, leaving Gangle bundled up in Kinger’s hands, looking weak, though awake. Caine said something they couldn’t hear and blinked out, leaving them alone. The four moved back closer to greet the new arrival, Pomni giving her a wave.
“Yo Gangle, you’re out!”
From her place in Kinger’s metaphorical arms, she shot Pomni an annoyed look.
“Don’t call me that. I could hear you all in there, I know that I’m not Gangle. That I’m just some cheap Lucasfilm CGI copy of her.”
Pomni was a little taken aback.
Kinger hummed, thinking, while he gingerly put Not-Gangle down on her feet, lending her a hand to keep her steady.
“That’s… a good point, sentiment aside. Perhaps… we should come up with our own names, to avoid confusion, and carve out our own identity. Zooble and I technically already have different names, Bazooble and Coach Dictatorer. I’m okay with mine, you can just call me Coach. What about you?” he asked, turning to Zooble.
They in turn just shrugged.
“suRE, iT'S whATEver. I guESs yA can caLL BE bAZ, FoR SHoRt.”
Coach nodded, “Baz it is then. What about the rest of you?”
The others went into thought for a while. Pomni pacing slowly, Jax in quiet contemplation off to the side, and Ragatha staring up into the sky, hand to chin, muttering to herself. They scrounged up some mirrors from The Circus grounds and gave themselves a hard look, which some of them hadn’t gotten a chance to do back during the adventure.
That seemed so long ago, even if it couldn’t have been more than an hour or so. She wondered what their doubles- no, their originals, were doing. Somewhere up above. She started up at the ceiling of the green and purple tent for a moment before shaking her head and focussed on coming up with a good name for herself, and her second new life in less than a year.
After a while, Not-Gangle moved away from Coach’s support, having recovered her strength a bit. She moved not in the familiar timid walk, but like an octopus, undulating her ribbons low and along the ground, and only pushed back up to her full, impressive height next to Jax, looming over him with a cruel smile. He noted that, from this angle, it kind of looked like her red smiling visage had horns.
“If I remember correctly, it was Jax who named Gangle in the first place, but he ignored that most of the time and just called me-that is, her-Ribbons, so why don’t we take the opportunity to make it official?”
Jax flinched a little, but replied, nodding.
“S-sure, we can go ahead and do that. And I-I’ll be ‘Marche’. Like uh, like the hare?” he tentatively put forth hopefully, spelling it out for them.
Ribbons snickered, and he flinched again, a subtle blush visible on his features.
“I know what RPGs you like~” she sing-songed.
He risked biting back a little, “Sh-shut up!”
She laughed, openly, and slank closer, winding her face around to the side of his.
Into his ear in a stage whisper obviously still loud enough for the others to hear on purpose, she uttered “if you’re a good boy, I’ll let you do some role playing with me later.”
This time there was nothing subtle about his blush, as his whole face flushed crimson. Baz let out a low whistle.
“DAmmMn giRl, GeT soMe.”
At that point Ragatha gave some pointed, loud, and deliberate ahems, and exclaimed haughtily “Well! Before, my name was because I looked somewhat like Rrrraggedy Anne! But, now I look more like one of my grrrandmother’s vintage Duchess Dolls! So, Duchess I shall be!!”
Baz tilted their head.
“DuCHeSs DoLLs?”
Duchess puffed out her chest, proclaiming proudly, “Mmm, yes! According to my grrandmama, they were popular in the late forties! One of the ones she had on her shelf was in a red dress with dark blue-black hair!”
Coach nodded.
“Oho, well then, there you go.”
And Duchess nodded back.
“Yes, quite!”
Which just left… Pomni. She was still deep in thought, but, noticing that the others were waiting on her, began to explain what she was thinking through aloud.
“So, like, I know that Caine says he chose my name at random, but that’s bulls██t, because a ‘pom’ is actually what these stupid things on the end of my hat are called. So I was trying to think of something else along those lines, ya know?”
Ribbons giggled, commenting “Oh wow, you actually know a lot about clowns, huh?”
Pomni looked a little sheepish, hand to the back of her head.
“Ah, well… just one of those things I got into when I was younger, yeah?”
Marche perked up, and put forth “W-what about naming yourself after the type of hat itself? D-does that work?”
Pomni cringed a little.
“I’d, uh, rather not. They’re um. They’re called c███scombs… Man, it won’t even let me say it…”
Marche gave the most awkward face and couldn’t look Pomni in the eye, and Ribbons burst out into hysterical laughter which grew in intensity before something like a static charge went off around her in a flash and she quieted down, still snickering under her breath. A lingering smell of ozone was left in the air.
Duchess tutted disapprovingly at them before turning back to her jester friend.
“Do those poms perrrhaps have any other names?”
Pomni thought for a minute.
“Uh, bobbins? I think? Yeah, that sounds right. So, Bobbi, maybe? Yeah, I can be a Bobbi, why not.” she put forth, and nodded to herself.
They all made a show of shaking hands and reintroducing themselves, Marche a little leary of Ribbons’ outstretched appendage given her foxlike grin. Bobbi was quietly muttering to herself “I’m Bobbi. I’m Bobbi. Bobbi. My name’s Bobbi.” Baz was indifferent, but amiable, while Duchess was quite pleased with herself, and Coach… seemed somewhat apathetic.
No, that wasn’t quite right. Rather, he was more just a bit distracted.
“████! Caine got away before I got him to tell me just where she is down here!”
A clap rang out from behind them.
“Well! We might be able to help you out with that a bit, mate.”
The six of them all looked up in surprise. Standing not far away, apparently having stepped out from wherever they had been hiding, were two NPCs. One was one of the nondescript wooden mannequins, and the other… the other was-
“Holy f██k, it’s Gummigoo.”
Bobbi started to cry, tears just streaming down her face as she locked her eyes on him, like he’d disappear in another cloud of glitter and streamers if she looked away.
She couldn’t do this. Not again.
If this was another trick... another thing that Caine had done… she didn’t think she could take it. It was all just, too much, on top of everything else.
The candy crocodile in a ranger hat cocked his head at her as she continued to blank-facedly sob at him.
“...Miss?”
Duchess’ toothy grin softened, and she nudged the jester in the back.
Gummigoo yelped as Bobbi sprang forward, bowling him over. They tumbled and rolled to a stop not far away, her pinning him to the ground, still weeping.
“Please man it’s been a real ████ day you gotta give me some good f███ing news and tell me that you remember me this time.”
He gave her a sad smile and nodded, reaching up to touch her face.
“‘Course I do, sheila. And I did the other times, too, an’ all. Just, well, you know the NPC routine now, I guess. Can’t exactly go off script, no matter how much a bloke might want ta…”
She pounded his gummy chest a bit, her gloved fists sinking in a bit before springing back. But after a while, she got up off him and rubbed an arm across her eyes. Sniffling, she offered him a hand up, looking to the other NPC.
“So, who’s this guy then?”
Gummigoo got to his feet and brushed himself off before turning to his companion.
“Ah right, I should introduce you lot. Pom-er, Bobbi. Lads. Ladies. Bazooble. This fella here may look like this, but, believe it or not, is another human. And, and here’s the good part, he says he knows a way to help the rest upstairs escape The Circus.”
