Chapter Text
It started out as just about any normal day does in the amazing digital circus.
At least, as far as Pomni was aware.
She had already been stuck here long enough to start losing track of what day she was on. That probably qualified her to be able to distinguish between a normal day and a… not normal day.
Oh, god. Has she really been here long enough to call this place normal? And was she actually losing track of the days already?
Pomni’s eye twitched. She swayed on her legs, her eyes falling down to stare for a moment at her foreign yet familiar blue and red striped body.
No. Nothing about this was normal. This was the circus. Pomni couldn’t consider anything in this place normal. She could perhaps call this a usual day at the circus, but it was far from normal. She couldn’t let herself reach that point.
Her eyes came back into focus at the sound of conversation growing louder behind her. She turned around, shaking her head to try to clear her thoughts before the others turned the final corner of their shared hallway of rooms to join at the morning meeting-place of the tent.
Ragatha was the first to arrive, a small lift in every step that made her yarn hair bounce around lightly. She caught sight of Pomni and abandoned her chatter with Gangle immediately to call out to her.
“Oh, hey Pomni! Good morning! You’re up earlier than usual. I can see why, it’s nice out today! Hopefully Caine thinks up a fun, normal adventure for us to enjoy.”
Pomni’s brain short circuited at the use of the very word she had just been dissociating over, her polite response to Ragatha suddenly dying on her tongue.
“…Hey… Ragatha…” Pomni managed to get out, waving slightly as the doll picked up her pace brightly toward her.
“Oh, are you feeling okay? Did you get enough sleep?” Ragatha pulled up short at Pomni’s grimace, concern knotting her yarn eyebrows together. “You’re never first to breakfast. Err— or at breakfast at all, really.”
“Ah— Yeah. I’m fine.” Pomni retreated away, pulling out her chair at their table and quickly sitting down hard in her spot. The silverware rattled as she did so, causing her to cringe.
It was true though. She was oddly punctual today. Something to do with striving for a semblance of routine for once instead of giving into her habit of sleeping in. She couldn’t get used to the digital food, and it's not like she needed it, so skipping the so-called breakfast was practically a given.
The oversleeping was starting to get old, however. No matter how long she stalled and stayed under the covers, nothing changed here. And it was starting to make her anxious instead of providing its usual comfort.
How did they all do this for years?
An accompanying slam on the table next to her made her nearly fall out of her seat, causing all the forks, spoons and knives to loudly clatter once more.
Of course, it was none other than Jax, announcing himself in the most Jax-like way Pomni could imagine. He was standing with his hands still on the table, splayed out on either side of his white porcelain plate. Jax met eyes with Pomni, a sly grin growing on his face in the satisfaction of having startled her. Snagging his chair with a back leg and scooting in close, he plopped down in his seat and hung an arm off the back of Pomni’s chair.
“Good morning, everybody!” Jax made a two-finger salute, gesturing towards a random direction of the circus tent. “And how are you, the viewers doing on this fine day?”
Pomni leaned forward and away from him, doing her best to ignore him and his antics while simultaneously remaining hyper aware of Jax’s arm slung just behind her, nearly too close for comfort.
“It makes everybody n-nervous when you talk to the air like that, Jax,” Gangle spoke cautiously from Pomni’s right.
Timidly, the bundle of ribbons pulled back her chair quietly and took up her seat on Pomni’s other side. How her thin arms were able to support the weight of the chair was beyond her understanding. Gangle’s comedy mask was still intact, Pomni noticed. Maybe if she’s lucky, she’ll make it through all of breakfast without it breaking.
“Well, someone has to make sure our loyal viewers are feeling included.”
Jax was eyeing Gangle dryly, already zeroing in on the comedy mask and seeming to come to the same conclusion Pomni had a few moments prior. Pomni sank into her chair, hunkering down. All it would take was a well-aimed plate throw for the mask to burst into pieces. And Jax had good aim. There was no saying Pomni still wouldn’t get caught in the cross-fire, however.
Two seats down from Gangle was Ragatha, busying herself by laying a napkin across her lap. Kindly, Kinger’s seat was left open between them for when the oldest member decided to venture out from the safety of his pillow fort to scavenge for food.
The only other empty chair was the one next to Jax belonging to Zooble, which was not surprising. They usually came at the last possible moment for breakfast and would depart as soon as possible so as to not get caught by Caine to be forcefully pulled into an adventure. It was still a bit early for that, though. They’d all have plenty of time to fuel up and relax before Caine appeared sometime midday.
And this was a supposedly normal day, right?
“HELLO! Hey, hi, good morning, people, how do you DO!?”
Caine exploded into existence above the table, twirling his cane and fixing his top hat.
Nope. Not a normal day. This could still be salvaged though. Maybe he was just… joining them for breakfast?
“It’s time for another… Wait. Hold up.”
Comically, he began counting them off on his fingers, muttering to himself as he stared down at his occupants in complete and utter shock.
“Only FOUR of you?! Well now WHERE are my dearest Kinger and Zooble? Aren't they ready and just, SO OUTRAGEOUSLY THRILLED for the brand new adventure today?!”
Everyone collectively stared up at Caine.
I should have slept in.
“Um,” Ragatha piped up, “It’s not even eight-thirty yet—”
“Oh my GOSH! Eight already?! Why, I have such EXUBERANT plans for today. I’m presuming you have all fed your face holes and must be ready to depart!”
Pomni felt herself breaking out in a nervous sweat, the fork she was fiddling with nearly dropping from her hands.
Ragatha opened her mouth, then closed it as if considering something. Then opened it again. “...The food doesn’t appear until a few more minutes—”
“NO!”
Ragatha was cut off once more by Caine’s outburst.
Their AI ring-leader was buffering, vibrating in place and holding an angry expression. Everyone but Jax exchanged worried glances, who held his head in his hand in a slouch over the table and gave an obnoxious fake-yawn.
He’s… a bit unstable today, isn’t he?
No one liked pushing Caine’s buttons. Not even Jax, to a certain extent. No one wanted to catch any wrath from their kind albeit oblivious host. The adventures were tedious enough as is. It was like what Pomni caught Zooble saying once to Gangle after a particularly rough adventure they had been forced to come on.
We’re lucky he likes us.
Pomni shuddered to think what life in the circus would be like with a mastermind that didn’t like them. They were very lucky he liked them. And the only thing he ever seemed to care about was what they thought of his adventures. Staying on Caine’s good side was definitely an unsaid rule at the circus, and was easy enough for everyone to abide by.
For everyone… except Zooble.
It wasn’t like they were intentionally trying to piss off their benevolent caretaker by refusing to go on adventures. At least, as far as Pomni could tell. At best, the adventures were mostly tolerable for everyone, sometimes even pleasant. At worst, they were downright torturous.
She couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like for someone whose body falls apart from one push when she was barely surviving some of the adventures herself. Even the easy adventures were treacherous for Zooble. She really couldn’t blame them for sitting out all the time and in turn, upsetting Caine.
And oh, did it upset him. It wound-up Caine like nothing else Pomni had seen thus far. Not even Bubble’s unhinged antics got to him the way Zooble’s refusal of adventures did.
And lately, Pomni had been catching wind of some more… threatening behavior from the circus ring-leader. More anger. More glitching. More insecurity. And worse of all, more existential. The last thing they needed was the AI running this whole place to fall apart and reduce them all to a pile of black, abstracted goo.
For the love of all that was good under this tent, Pomni hoped Zooble would make an appearance today and agree to go on whatever he had planned before they were all at Caine’s mercy. He seemed strained this morning already, chewing on his fingers and checking his wrist constantly.
“I MEAN, why wait?! Why not start at dawn? Or earlier? Heck, I think we should be getting these adventures going CHOP-CHOP!” Caine suddenly broke out of his buffer cycle, clapping his gloved hands for emphasis on the chop-chop. “They’re not going to adventure themselves!!”
"Oh [
]. You're here already?"
Zooble arrived. They were standing rigidly several feet away, clearly displeased at Caine's early appearance today. They leaned against a checkered pillar of the circus tent, their mismatched arms coming to fold over their blocky body as they glared at him.
Caine’s head froze in place, his body swiveling independently around to face the newcomer. His denture-head clacked as it bounced off his shoulders, performing a backflip so his entire body was now facing Zooble.
“ZOOBLE! You’re late! We were just getting started on—”
“You’re not even going to let us eat?” Zooble questioned him. "Seriously?"
“NONSENSE! You don’t need food! My adventures are rejuvenating! They are the mind-food! They’re the only thing keeping you sane! You need them! YOU DO!”
Caine pointed his cane straight at Zooble like an accusation.
“No, Caine. I'm pretty sure you need them. Not us.”
Oh god.
Pomni held her breath, not daring to move a muscle.
Caine visibly deflated. Then completely froze.
A triangle rang out, interrupting the silence as food materialized into existence in front of them. Pomni dared to glance over to her left. Jax was already munching on a brown lump— possibly a baked potato— sitting back and clearly enjoying the show.
Noticing Pomni’s eyes, he leaned into her space, ignoring the way she leaned away from him, raising a hand to whisper in her ear.
“Heh, maybe he’s finally going to abstract Zooble. I heard him muttering about it once. That’s a secret between you and me, though.” Pomni’s eyes widened as Jax pulled away, cheekily waiting to see her reaction.
“Oh, is it breakfast time?” Kinger emerged briefly from under the table having apparently been hidden from view by the drab white table cloth. A single, detached hand reached up and grabbed another brown lump from his plate and he disappeared from view a moment later. The air filled with slightly muffled chewing noises.
This seemed to break Caine out of his stupor. He was talking to himself, head down and shoulders hunched.
“Forget it. FORGET Zooble. We can deal with one bad egg, can’t we? I guess you can’t win them all.” Caine snapped his head up. “The rest of you. You guys… You like my adventures, don’t you? They keep you all very entertained, yes?”
No one responded right away, everyone looking left and right for someone to take responsibility.
“Jax?” Caine turned his big, watery eyes towards the purple circus member. “You… always seemed to like them. Right?”
“Sure. Yeah. Whatever you want.” Jax responded slowly, obviously not keen on paying a compliment. It was clear the pain Jax inflicted on everyone was what he really enjoyed, not necessarily the adventures themselves. He certainly could have been nicer to Caine about it, though.
Pomni kicked his leg under the table. The taller rabbit scowled down at her, taking another big bite of his potato lump. He kicked her back way harder than she had kicked him.
Right. She had forgotten nice wasn’t in his vocabulary. Pomni simmered in frustration.
“Yes! SO right, Jax-my-boy.” Caine let out a short, shrill burst of laughter, then blanched. Then he turned to Gangle. “What about you?”
“Oh!” Gangle put her ribbon arms over her head and face to shield herself, clearly terrified. “I, umm… I…”
“What she means to say is they’re great. Right, Gangle?” Pomni inserted tentatively yet bravely. Someone needed to step up to talk Caine down.
“Pomni, shush, I won’t hear another word from you. You can’t judge them properly, you’re too fresh. I need someone with real experience.” Caine waved a hand at her, brushing her off, and turned to the oldest circus member there. “Kinger?”
“I’m very sorry, I can’t talk right now.” The chess piece was out from under the table and holding a long, curved yellow fruit that was probably meant to be a banana up to his ear. He pressed a hand to the bottom of the banana like he was covering a speaker and whispered, “I’m on the phone.”
“...Ragatha?” Caine quavered.
“Oh Caine, I think your adventures are wonderful! I really love them.”
“Really?” Caine clasped his hands together hopefully, leaning towards her. “WAIT. What do you love about them?” He peered at her suspiciously, his eyes just pushing past his narrowed teeth as he scrutinized her.
Oh, no. She could already tell where this was going. Pomni wanted to break her plate over her head.
Please, Ragatha. Say anything else but everything.
“Well, everything!”
God damn it.
“YOU ALWAYS SAY THAT!” Caine screamed, his hands tearing at his gums. He took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself before fizzling out and dissolving into laughter.
“Hahaha. Hahahahahah. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! THAT’S IT!! ……Bubble.”
Caine snapped his fingers. Pomni’s water cup began trembling until it tipped, the iridescent AI blowing its way out of the cup until it took full shape, detaching itself and shaking off like a dog.
“At youuuurrrr service, []!”
“Bubble, I need— You need to be on your best behavior. This is serious.”
“SIR, yes, SIR!”
“I didn’t want to do this. But it seems I have no choice in the matter. Bubble…”
Caine was shaking. She had certainly seen him on the verge a few times before…
But something was different about this time.
Everything about the AI’s demeanor made Pomni’s hair feel like it was standing on end. He was jittering in a way that made it hard to see him, the air turning fuzzy and dark around him. The rest of the circus even felt different, feeling colder than it ever had, with sharper angles and brighter colors, making the place feel ten times more menacing.
Their host looked down at them with miserable eyes, gripping his cane with barely contained feeling.
“INITIATE THE CLEANSING PROTOCOL. I JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE. ZOOBLE. JAX. GANGLE. ALL OF YOU. I DIDN’T WANT TO DO THIS, BUT THIS IS YOUR PUNISHMENT FOR BEING TERRIBLE CIRCUS GOERS. I CAN WAIT FOR NEW, GRATEFUL OCCUPANTS TO COME AND STAY HERE.
“WELCOME… TO YOUR LAST ADVENTURE.”
“W-Wait!” Pomni cried, reaching up to Caine desperately.
He did not wait. He lifted his cane, smashing the point down into the table and disappearing as Bubble let out a screech of pure delight.
“Finally! Alone at last!!” Bubble began beeping and flashing red, slowly at first before picking up speed like a time-bomb.
“Oh god!” Pomni got up and tried to run, but not before the explosion caught up to her and blinded her.
Then she was engulfed in complete darkness.
—
When Pomni woke up, the other side of the bed was cold.
Slowly, her eyes peeled open and she groaned, rolling over to cuddle deeper into the scratchy blankets. She squeezed her eyes shut tight again, willing herself to fall back into dreamless sleep.
A moment or two passed.
Then all at once, she startled fully awake, bolting upright and blinking over and over again in an attempt to comprehend her surroundings.
This wasn’t her goofy, primary colored bedroom in the circus.
It’s quiet. A dull, muted early morning light shone through the old cracked paned-glass window next to the bed.
Dark colored dust lined the window sill. Pomni reached a gloved hand over, running a single finger to make a line through the grit. She stared at her stained pointer finger for a moment before glancing out the window to take in the world.
Run-down houses and poorly made shacks lined the filthy street outside. Everything was covered in the dust.
Her room was empty, but not devoid of detail. Mouse droppings on the wooden floor in the corner. Bucket in the other corner. A sad, torn rug made of presumably old sacks of grain.
It was the most love and labor Pomni had ever seen put into an adventure before, feeling rather impressed as she glanced around.
Despite how much of a squat little place it was, she was really appreciating the scenery. The cold grays and browns of this world felt more realistic than any other adventure yet.
“Wait…”
She was on an adventure, right?
Pomni strained to remember the events leading up to waking up in a rough canvas-covered sorry excuse for a bed that wasn’t her own.
And it all came back to her.
Zooble refusing to go on the adventure.
Caine freaking out and breaking down.
Everything going black.
“Oh man…”
Pomni slid out of bed, her shoes scuffing across the wooden creaky floorboards as she pushed open the door to her room and peaked out. Nothing out of the usual yet, at least.
As she passed the kitchen, she took a moment to scuffle through the cabinets. There was nothing of use, and her stomach growled in reminder of her lack of breakfast prior to this adventure.
Possibly her last adventure ever, according to Caine.
Oddly, her stomach growled again, distracting her. Weird. She definitely felt the craving to eat from time to time, but she had never really felt actual hunger for as long as she had been at the circus.
Chills ran through her and she shook her head quickly, moving down the hallway to check the rest of the rooms before exiting the front door.
She wanted to find the others as soon as possible.
It didn’t take very long wandering the streets to run into somebody. An NPC, by the looks of it. Just one of the wooden, blank slate mannequin characters covered in the dark dust, walking in a seemingly random direction.
“Um, excuse me?” Pomni tried, stumbling as she tried to catch up to it. “Do you know where I’m supposed to be going?”
The NPC swivelled, staring her down so condescendingly it was impressive for someone lacking a face. “Uh, little jester? What makes you think I know where you’re supposed to be going?”
“Uhh…” Pomni made a face.
“Obviously we’re going to the Reaping.” The mannequin scoffed as it turned away, resuming its pathway forward.
The Reaping?
Pomni frowned as she waited for the NPC to be a good distance ahead before she followed it again.
What was the Reaping from again? It sounded so familiar. Like it was from a book or movie or something—
Or both.
Pomni stopped dead in her tracks.
“...It couldn’t be.”
Before she could make a decision on what to do, a whole army of wooden NPCs came marching up behind her, giving her nowhere to walk but forward at a hurried pace. The further they went, the more buildings appeared and they seemed to be in more of a town than a suburb.
She was eventually corralled and shoved into a long line. Pomni tried to turn around to leave but kept getting pushed back into place by the dusty NPCs around her.
At least she didn’t have to do a lot of anxious waiting. The line was moving at a rapid rate, taking a step forward every few seconds. After a minute or so, she was at the front. It looked like an entry to a fenced-off town square, and alarmingly, several NPCs holding assault rifles guarded the checkpoint.
“Name?” The NPC manning the checkpoint asked her in a bored tone.
“Me? Uh. Pomni.”
“Hand.”
The NPC held out its hand to her.
Eyes darting back and forth, she tentatively stepped forward and gave it her hand skeptically. She had no idea what to expect, honestly.
The NPC reached out.
Then it snatched her hand and—
It took off her glove like it was nothing.
Like it was nothing.
The gloves that she had tried in vain to rip off an endless amount of times. The glove that had, up until this point, been basically part of her body.
“What the fuck?”
The NPC pricked her finger without warning. She hardly registered the pain, hardly noticed even, distractedly bringing her other hand up to her mouth in shock.
“WAIT, what the FUCK?!”
How the fuck was she able to swear here?
And her glove was off.
How?!
“Next.”
Having apparently completed its job, the NPC waved her on into the town square.
“Bitch. Shit. Fuck. Pussy. Damn. Cunt.”
Pomni muttered the words just under her breath in amazement while she cradled her hand to her chest, passing by the guards in a state of complete shock.
All at once she was inspecting her gloveless hand, realizing a bit too late her blue glove had been left behind at the checkpoint.
That wasn’t her greatest concern at the moment, however. The glove could get fucked.
No. Pomni’s biggest concern at the moment was the pinprick of bright red liquid, slowly forming a rivulet and dripping down the rest of her hand.
“Oh shit...”
She continued to watch it drip for a little longer, horrified and frozen.
Pomni wasn’t any stranger to body horror and pain in the circus. She had experienced her eyes falling out of her head. She’s been drowned on one of the last adventures. Thrown out of a truck on her first. Fuck, she’d even been possessed.
But they never bled.
She didn’t even want to think about what this all meant.
Her mind was scattered, her vision growing fuzzy as she watched a drop fall, splashing on the ground.
The keys of a piano rang out in the beginning of a hauntingly familiar tune.
Their theme song.
Pomni shook herself out of it, tearing her gaze away from her hand and looking up to the center of the town square where some projectors came to life above a stage in front of the biggest building in the entire town. Old, black and white war imagery began flashing on the screens.
On the stage stood two large glass bowls on tables and a microphone between them.
No, Pomni did not want to think about it, but it was truly beginning to dawn on her what was happening. Her breathing rapidly started to pick up, looking around wildly at all the dust-covered NPCs that suddenly felt like they were crowding her.
Coal-dust, Pomni finally realized. Everything, and everyone was covered in it.
A generic but patriotic voice began speaking over the footage.
“War. Terrible war. This was the uprising that rocked our— CIRCUS!”
Caine’s voice suddenly boomed out, taking over on the last word. The black and white imagery changed to the bright colors of their tent and their world surrounding the circus.
“SIX HUMANS REBELLED AGAINST THE AI THAT HOSTED THEM. PROTECTED THEM. LOVED THEM.”
Now there were close-ups of all of them. All of them.
Ragatha’s nervous smile and Jax’s shit-eating grin and wave. Kinger was turned around the other way, not even facing the cameras. Gangle was sobbing into her hands, her comedy mask nowhere to be seen. Then there she was.
Pomni hardly recognized herself on the screen, gaping like a fish out of water. She hadn’t fully realized this was live until seeing her startled expression herself. Finally, it ended with Zooble flipping the camera off. Or, they were at least trying to since their current hand didn’t have a full five fingers. Everyone got the point, anyways.
“And then, came the peace.” The old patriotic voice was back, though it glitched in and out at times. “And so it was decreed… That if any citizen of the circus complains about Caine’s FANTASTIC, MARVELOUS, SUPER-DUPER ADVENTURES… They must involuntarily-volunteer to fight to the DEATH in a pageant of honor, courage and sacrifice.”
He put them in the Hunger Games. Caine put them in the mother fucking Hunger Games—
A scream was building up inside of Pomni that she let free near instantaneously, clawing at her hat as she did. Her cursing and yelling covered up some of the speech, but she didn’t need to hear it to finally know what it all meant.
“—single victor may serve as a reminder of CAINE’S generosity and forgiveness—”
Pomni was hyperventilating now.
“—how we remember the past. How we safeguard the future—”
Not only could they swear now. They could bleed. And if they could bleed, they could probably… They could probably…
“Welcome, District 12, to the Circus Games!”