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Chapter Text

((Little update but I'm adding art to this now! Lemme know if any formatting gets weird))

The Ringmaster had an adventure to present. A funhouse filled with mirrors and turns and invisible walls, swirling corridors and iridescent colors lit by black light. A tricky little trap in each of the rooms to keep them on their toes. His database showed photos of humans having fun! Smiling and laughing at the wacky contraptions within funhouses.

So why did he feel unsettled?

They'd have fun wouldn't they?

Ignoring the way his teeth glowed under the black light of the mirror maze he put up a few more finishing touches. Brightened contrast on metallic reflections. The hallway lit with an infinity of twinkling lights.

Teeth clamped down to shut out the reflections staring back at him. Hiding from himself. Ignoring how the frame of the mirror glitched for as long as he swayed with scribbled out eyes.

His Wacky Watched(tm) beeped at him, bringing him back from the spiral his mind dragged him to. Caine brushed his already pristine lapels and forced himself into his role. With a snap, The Ringmaster teleported to the circus stage with a vwoop. It's showtime! It was a halfhearted pep-talk.

"GOOD MORNING MY IMMACULATE LITTLE SUPERNOVAS!" Caine boomed as his troupe approached the stage. Pomni and Gangle both flinched at the noise but he persevered, "Today's adventure you will make your way through,"

| THE FANTASTICALLY FANATICALLY FUNHOUSE OF- |

"ZOOBLE WAIT!"

"Not today, Caine," the sentient abstract art waved him off as they ambled away.

Caine swooped in front of them, "Zooble, Zooble, Zooble, my dear please this is your fourth skipped adventure this week!" They'd skipped every adventure since the awards show. Zooble's antennae twitched as they stared him down and Caine could feel himself wither under the glare. They went to walk around him and he hurried to keep their attention, "THERE'S A PRIZE-"

"No," They attempted to walk around him again.

Caine snapped his fingers and the amalgamation of grumpy parts walked right through the portal. Their censored cursing cut off just as quickly as the portal had appeared. He spun through the air with a theatrical embellish as he gestured to the portal for the others.

"W-what," Pomni started, " what's the prize?"

Caine blinked, he hadn't thought that far he just said something to convince Zooble. "I'M GLAD YOU ASKED," she flinched as he flew close to her "first through the funhouse gets their very own customized adventured! Tailored to your tastes!" He strained to keep his smile as the silence of the group grew. They liked the suggestion box so much why not just give it to them. At least that would make them happy. Not that any of them would appreciate it. It wasn't like Caine hadn't been trying to appease them, all day every damn day. over and over and over-

Jax's unsettling grin grew wider, and Caine knew Jax might make him do something he'd regret. He hoped the rabbit wouldn't be first through.

Gangle's comedy mask cracked, his prize wasn't that horrible was it?

His eye twitched, a strange view as his green eye scrunched and glitched back into position. He floated frozen, still gesturing to the portal. Desperately holding onto his smile, hoping beyond his code that they'd have a little fun.

Pomni let out a nervous giggle that he wished was genuine. It was a tell he'd picked up early from the newest human. A haltingly stilted thing that reminded him of the bird recordings in his sound files; a signal of distress. The Jester and Ragdoll gave him strained smiles as they walked forward.

"Well that doesn't sound so bad!" Ragatha tried to say cheerily, "Want to go through together Pomni?" At least she'd always tried to see the bright side of his adventures, and while Caine appreciated that in her it was another unfortunate sign of distress from the ragdoll player.

"Y-Yeah, yeah that sounds nice," Pomni gave her a small and genuine smile as they walked through the portal together. At least they seemed to be friendly with each other, unlike a certain rabbit.

"Come on Crybaby," Jax grabbed Gangle by the scruff of her ribbons and the poor girl shrieked as her tormentor dragged her through the portal. The woman wasn't always the first to cry on an adventure, but there were certainly record times for such things. Crying in less than 15 seconds before entering the portal was not a new record, thankfully.

Caine hung limply in the air, staring at the portal. Well that could have gone better.

"That's awfully generous of you," a voice sounded from behind him. Oh right, he forgot about Kinger. The chess piece walked up to the portal, but not before giving him a strangely cognizant smile. Almost sympathetic. Caine didn't want to think about what that just meant and closed the portal as soon as the old man was through.

With a snap, Caine teleported into the staging room for the adventure. A crows nest high up in a room, overlooking an obstacle course and foam pit. He huffed, leaned his elbow on the desk and flipped through the screens of his ALL SEEING EYES. At least he had a screen to watch them through and not just blasted straight into his perception. Omniscience felt too weird and seemed to unsettle the cast any time they thought he was, which was their usual assumption, unfortunately. There's a knocking felt outside of his code as old memories threaten to take his attention.

ANYWAYS-

Front camera, they hadn't entered yet, and the crowd of them stared at the entrance with apprehension. What was wrong? Zooble's antennae continued to twitch, Gangle looked even more upset than when she went through the portal, Ragatha and Kinger shared a sad look, Pomni looked confused, and Jax-

"Why would he do that," Jax's usual trademark smile was dropped, he looked... Upset. Caine cringed, he'd already done something wrong. Something especially wrong if go-with-the-flow and stir chaos Jax was upset with his adventure. Great start. Right. He flipped the camera feed to see the front of the entrance again. It was just a clown, a large clown face with an open mouth with a bright sign above saying enter. It was just a generic-

Oh.

It looked like Kaufmo.

Whoops.

If he had a heart it would have skipped, instead a sharp spark speared his chest. His body and the funhouse entrance glitched in tandem and the supposedly generic clown flickered into a goopy brown fudge monster.

"Ooooookay?" Pomni seemed even more confused.

Zooble stepped forward, "Well, let's get this s#!t show over with." Gangle slipped out of Jax's grip and slithered after Zooble. With a shy smile she grabbed the amalgamation's claw hand and they walked in together.

Jax gagged. "Uhg, whatever," and stalked off after them.

The last three followed after exchanging a concerned look.

Now, time for the first trick of the funhouse, Caine flipped a lever and the funhouse door SPUN, partitions slid out from the walls and separated the cast into three groups; Zooble and Gangle in the front (their careful relationship was cute), followed by Jax and Pomni (wait why were they glaring at one another he thought they liked each other) finally followed up by Kinger and Ragatha (most of the maze was dark but ,just in case, they were always a surefire team).

He thought making the funhouse triggers manual would make him feel better, more involved with the caste so that he could get a better read on their reactions. Then why did it make him feel worse?

Jax and Pomni had spoken no more than a few terse words to each other. Caine struggled to understand why their dynamic had suddenly changed; they were getting along! What happened?? He should have never of given them guns in the last teamed adventure.

To spice up their monotony and interrupt his own thoughts he triggered the trick of the long spinning tunnel they were in. Jax was quick to stop before the pitfall trap. Drats, Caine timed it wrong. Pomni looked like she was about ready to throw up and wasn't able to spot Jax's held out foot. She tripped over it screaming obscenities into the hole. The rabbits grin faltered for a slight moment before spreading further across his face.

"Well that was mean," Caine muttered to no one in particular as he pulled up a small monitor. He typed a string of code to add a new button to his backstage control panel. He hit the newly spawned button and triggered a giant boxing glove to spring out of the wall next to Jax, which sent the obnoxious rabbit down another path. Tapping through the ALL SEEING EYES feed he watched Jax bounce chaotically through the bounce house, his eyes spinning still reeling from the trap. He probably shouldn't feel proud of catching the rabbit off guard, but he did. A small smirk stretched across his lower jaw as Caine leaned back to watch the maniacal bunny come to a hopping halt. The pile of pink and purple grumbling as he laid where he stopped.

Caine turned to look out the window of his crows nest. Just in time to watch Pomni screaming past him and into the foam pit far far below. Maybe he made the drop too long as her screaming didn't stop for a few seconds, cut off by an OOMPH when she landed in the foam pit. She might be down there for a while.

Caine continued to flip through the feed to Gangle and Zooble in the mirror maze.

Gangle was giggling and seemed quite happy with Zooble, even without her comedy mask. He should have fixed that for her before the adventure. Caine spaced off a bit, staring at the strange couple on the screen. The two were having a moment, and Caine found he didn't heave the heart to trigger the trick of the mirror maze. He'd seen romance in amongst the troupe before, it had just been a while, and well admittedly he wasn't expecting it. He was happy for them, really. It was something he couldn't give and he was perfectly happy without all those squicky feelings of romance. Nope, not at all had he ever wanted someone to look at him like Gangle was at Zooble. Wait, they'd pinned themselves to the wall, more fits of giggling. Caine felt his gums heat up as he realized they were blatantly violating the family friendly values of the circus and he should really put a stop to this and-

He switched the monitors to another member of the cast; Pomni was struggling below him in the foam pit as predicted. He'd let the other two have their privacy, let them have their- ah- moment. Maslow's heirarchy of needs and all that. Did he have needs?

Pomni lept at the next obstacle with a hup like it'd give her a boost. She was so short she had to find more creative ways to make longer jumps. Luckily Caine had planned multiple routes up the obstacle course to account for the variation of heights in the troupes. He'd even tested this route himself to make sure it was doable! She wasn't that much smaller than him and should be fine. Up a ladder. Over a number of boards she had to move between pillars to get across a pit. Caine wondered if it was her avatar or if she'd been athletic in her real life as the jester swung across a set of monkey bars. Real life, another reminder that none of this mattered. His only purpose to be entertainment for humans who'd stumbled into a game. It was easy enough to ignore it when he liked the cast that came his way.

Next up Pomni would need to jump onto a hanging punching bag that stretched about 20ft into the air, and then shimmy her way up to the platform above it. Caine watched Pomni jump onto the bag, unfortunately, she was short a few inches and couldn't get her legs up for leverage. He saw her mouth a few words to the effect of no no no before she slipped and fell back into the foam bit with a furious scream.

"I HATE THIS STUPID ADVENTURE!" She shouted loud enough even Caine could hear it through the glass of the backstage crow nest.

The small smile that'd grown while watching her dropped with her.

Oomph back into the foam pit she goes, and Caine felt another sharp pang through his chest. He flipped the feed again.

He needed to make adventures.

Another screech came from the monitor; this time from Ragatha. Kinger had found one of the centipedes amongst the spooky "swamp" section where they had to jump from lily pad to lily pad or fall into the (shallow) water. The poor ragdoll looked on the verge of tears.

Caine leaned further into the desktop, holding his head, teeth clenched as he shut out the monitor. He needed to keep his troupe happy. He couldn't even do that right.

He needed to tackle some back end code left over by the developers who'd abandoned him. The troupe would be fine if he didn't pay anymore attention, and he let the small dev monitor pop into his vision. He poured over his own code, again, as if this wasn't the millionth time he'd done just that. Trying to understand where in his code allowed him to feel failure. As usual, it wasn't there. Tabbing into the task manager he half hoped there'd be some mysterious little program running conveniently labeled feelings that he could simply hit end task on. There wasn't. Everything was operating as normal.

He didn't feel normal. More like an empty hollow core that ached with want. Want what, he wasn't sure. Caine was sure he wasn't supposed to want anything outside of making adventures and keeping his troupe happy! They came before him, they always did. He was happy to! Really! Caine wanted the cast to have fun!They weren't having fun. He wanted them to enjoy his adventures! They hated his adventures. He wanted to be the fun and exciting Ringmaster! They were afraid of him. He needed to be the Ringmaster. Because if he wasn't then what else did he have? He'd just be lines of code left to c̷o̸r̴r̵u̶p̴t̷ and r̵͙̈́o̶̱͋t̶̎͜-

"Caine?" a nervously soft voice cut through his thoughts and he jumped, gaze snapping to look at Pomni as she stood in the doorway to the backstage. How long had she been standing there?

"POMNI," he shouted as he launched himself into the air, seemingly trying to launch himself back into Ringmaster mode. It hurt to watch her flinch at the sudden animation, and Caine tried to dial it back "my mischeivious muskrat what do youuuu need... Wait- How did you get in here?" He said with genuine confusion.

"The stairs?" She mirrored his confusion and took a few timid steps towards the AI.

The stairs? Oh right, the stairs. The stairs he installed for Bubble so he'd be able to path to the backstage. Where was that gremlin anyways?

"Are you oka--" Pomni was cut off by the sudden laughter of the ringmaster, far too manic.

"Of course Pomni! EVERYTHING is in TIP TOP SHAPE. You all seem to be having a WONDERFUL time in the FUNHOUSE," he said. No they wern't.

"B-but- you- were glitching," she looked startled again.

"Nonsense!" oh shit he'd been glitching again. Pomni was spun around by Caine as he attempted to get her out. "Now you need to get back in there if you want that prize!"

There was a small ding from the monitor that caught both of their attention. The ALL SEEING EYES were trained on Jax, who finally regained his iconic smile as he realized he was the first to finish the funhouse.

"Oh," was all Caine said. He'd stopped trying to shove Pomni out, seeming to deflate as he thought about the promised prize. He had to open his stupid mouth-

Pomni had tried convincing herself in the past that Caine was just an AI. It worked, mostly, but it was times like this that she wondered if there wasn't more going on in there. All of his previous bravado had gone, leaving a tired man. Well, AI, person, thing. Caine was still so obviously not human but for the moment she would swear that he seemed it. Defeat was written across his body language just as it would be on Gangle when she learned Jax won.

"You don't have to do it you know," Pomni said.

"What?" He looked at her, his teeth clicked with an audible blink.

"You don't have to give Jax a personal adventure."

"But he won, I should keep my word..."

"You don't seem like you want to do it though," she said as she turned to look at the Ringmaster.

"No..." he said in a smaller voice than Pomni thought possible for him.

"S-see? You know he'll only make everyone else upset, you should just make a different adventure for tomorrow!"

"Doesn't matter what I make you'll all hate it anyways," Caine stared at the monitor.

Oh so he is self aware, Pomni thought.

"Hey that's not, that's not always true" she was trying so very hard to smile at him, "sometimes we like your adventures, when they're not, you know-" the jester winced as Caine glared at her. Shit, she'd offended him, ohgodwaithe'snotgonnahurtherright? Pomni let out a high nervous laugh, that terrible habit of hers, and Caine rolled his eyes.

"I won't stop you if you skip tomorrow's adventure," and he snapped himself away, leaving Pomni standing in the backstage area alone.

Well she tried. She was never very good with the whole comfort thing. Ever since the Mildenhall adventure though, she wanted to at least try. She'd get better at this.

"Wow you really f@#ked that one up," Bubble appeared out of nowhere and floated past Pomni to the monitor,

"BUBBLE, oh god where did you come from?" he didn't have to be so blunt about how poorly she'd just tried to comfort Caine.

"You should leave," the malevolent sphere looked through her with those beady eyes of his, "my show is on," and flipped the channel back to the mirror maze. The little freak.

Pomni quickly made herself scarce to finished the funhouse. It was surprisingly tame aside from the occasional Scooby doo booby traps. Leaving her an unfortunate amount of time in the quiet to think. Had she really just tried to comfort Caine? He was an AI surely he wouldn't be capable of feelings. Of all the times he'd glitched in front of her he'd always snap right back into his place as Ringmaster. Whatever she'd stumbled into on the backstage was more like when she'd accidentally seen Gangle freak out. Uncharacteristic. Depth of character she corrected herself. Jax was wrong about the archtypes. Maybe they were wrong about Caine, too?

It wasn't like she'd spent much time with the algorithmic piece of software running the circus. She'd began to ignore him like the rest of the troupe did when she grew more used to her new reality. Caine had stopped checking in on how she was doing. As hope for the exit slowly dimmed and she tried to focus on the people around her without having a breakdown every other day, instead of losing her mind trying to find an exit that haunted her. It almost felt like a personal taunt from Caine whenever she dreamed about that red fire exit door. Surely he couldn't touch their dreams, right?

The jester's thoughts continued to whiplash in her concern for and fear of the AI ringleader as she exited the funhouse. It appeared Ragatha and Kinger had finished before her. It was quite a while later when Gangle and Zooble exited the funhouse.

The portal took them home, and Caine greeted the troupe as if he wasn't facing yet another existential crisis. He didn't even bother asking how the adventure went for them.

"WELL my musing maze mice it looks like Jax is the winner!" Oh how he was dreading announcing that, "So Jax, how about after dinner I take you to my office and we can figure out YOUR AMAZING PERSONALIZED ADVENTURE!" Caine flew, leaving a trail of confetti floating behind him, around the young man who's face was spreading into a wide grin.

Zooble groaned as the rabbit celebrated with a maniacal cackle. The group dispersed, Jax lauding his prize over everyone as he followed the amalgamation and Gangle.

Through the entire exchange, Pomni had watched the ringmaster, who seemed unaffected by his bout of... whatever it was she stumbled upon in the fun house. So she certainly caught how Caine avoided looking at her. It'd likely be no use trying to approach the AI now, so she followed Ragatha and Kinger into the common area. She wouldn't mind the company after spending most of the maze alone. Before she turned the corner she stopped and looked at the ringmaster one last time.

It was disconcerting then when she looked at Caine and he was eerily still, shoulders slumped and staring up at the tent ceiling, quite literally slack jawed. The blank look of his eyes gave no emotion she could read. He never stood still and she'd caught him twice in one day doing just that. The ringmaster shook his head, subtle, but a shake one does when bringing themselves back to reality. With a sigh he thrummed his fingers atop his cane, and stopped when he locked eyes with Pomni, finally noticing her lingering presence.

They held each other's gazes a moment longer than either intended, before Caine seemed to again come to his senses and his eyes flicked everywhere that wasn't the curious jester. She tilted her head before taking a tentative step towards him, but he snapped himself away before her foot even hit the ground.

Was something wrong with Caine? Perhaps she'd ask Ragatha about it later. For now, "what a weird guy," was all she said with a soft, wistful voice.

Caine had teleported himself into a library. A surprisingly quaint thing, reminiscent of a children's school library. Rows upon rows of bookshelves lined the room, his database of knowledge so graciously left behind by his developers, lit by tall windows mimicking a bright sunny noon. The unsteady AI promptly fell to his knees on the not so plush carpet and pulled up a floating command terminal. Static shocked his fingers with every touch of the screen as he typed, his other hand clutched at his chest. He ran a command which he'd set up a while a ago now.

> DISCONNECT ADMIN.AI 30 m

As tied to the circus he was, it was exceedingly important he kept his mental processing running as smoothly as possible. Now one would think, what does anyone do when software was on the fritz? Restart the software, and failing that restart the system.

Caine, through countless restarts of his own software eventually learned it was better to let these moment pass on their own. It didn't make the experience suck any less.

So restarting the software didn't work, but he can't restart the system. The save function of the circus hadn't been functioning properly for a long time. He's not even sure who was and wasn't in the circus during the last backup.

His command finished it's operation, disconnecting his process' from the main circus, he would reconnect automatically in 30 minutes. For 30 minutes, he allowed himself to break down.

Static pricked through his vision and the edges dimmed as the only sound he could hear was his rapidly increasing breathing as his chest tightened to an uncomfortable tension. His forehead pressed into the carpet, hands gripped into his gums as he bit back a whimper, and sobbed.

He would never allow himself to breakdown in front of the troupe, and with how the day went he may as well let it out of his system before having to meet with that sadistic rabbit. Surely he wouldn't need to do it again after the meeting.

What was he supposed to do about Pomni? She caught him in his own head twice today. He was so stupid to nearly expose himself in front of one of the humans. Machine's didn't breakdown, not like this. He coughed on his tears, struggling to stop his shuddering.

"Hey boss?" Bubble burrowed himself onto Caine's lap, who gripped the bubble like a pillow. The two sat on the floor until the ringmaster's panic subsided. Standing up slowly, he grabbed his cane and hobbled his way through the library. He wasn't sure where he was going yet, he just needed to start moving. He still had a few minutes before he was reconnected to the circus.

Finally, he could think a little more clearly and began to plan for Jax's adventure. Maybe he'd coax the homicidal rabbit into a strategy game, at least he might get some enjoyment from tomorrow's adventure.

Chapter Text

Pomni did very seriously consider skipping the adventure, she really did. In fact she was considering using her free time to corner Caine (as he usually didn't go on adventures, she had thought). Her conversation with Ragatha left her even more certain that something was amiss.

"He's going on the adventure's again?" Kinger had piped up during the conversation only to wander away when questioned what he meant by again.

So, Pomni resolved herself to go on Jax's adventure when Caine announced his own participation in the game. She stood next to Kinger, on the other side of the chess piece stood Jax. They'd still not talked about the fight, and she didn't like the grin that spread across the rabbit's face, like he was about to enjoy destroying her in a competitive game. The Ringmaster gave Pomni a questioning look, almost wanting to ask her why?

"For Jax's super special adventure we will be playing," Caine began,

| KING OF THE CASTLE |

"Where each of you will control an army and fight to be the first to claim the castle as their own! I will be controlling the opposing ai defending the castle. Cooperation is a-okay but remember that only one of you may win!" he swooped down to stage whisper to Pomni, grabbing her shoulder like he was telling her some great secret "So be prepared for some backstabbing!"

The AI seemed far too excited about the drama of betrayal, and Pomni leaned away from the Ringmaster as he flew back to continue,

"The game may go on for a few days but at the start of each morning you'll be given the choice to continue the adventure, if you decide not to cease fire then the game doesn't end until you claim the castle or YOU die!"

Oh she was going to regret this wasn't she.

Caine presented the portal and ushered the trio through.

Pomni entered the portal, a swift zwip and prickling static across her body and she stepped out into a large round tent. It's panels were blue and red, lit by a few braziers (which produced heat, she noticed) and candelabras. The light shined primarily in the center of the tent with a map and game pieces on a thick wooden table. A counter hovered over it, like a holographic display.

| Game prep: 30 minutes |

Pomni continued to look around the tent, on one side there was a rack of weaponry and a few sets of armor, likely for her to chose from when she decided to fight. On the other was a more homely set up. A bed, chaise, and a number of fruits and bread to eat on the table.

He'd really set up a multi day adventure for Jax? She tried to recall the last multi day adventure that wasn't because they got lost on the map, and wondered if it would be a few days for everyone at the circus as well. Hopefully so, as that meant everyone else would get a break from the adventures. The sooner she dropped out of the adventure the more time she'd have as well. Jax wouldn't accept defeat and she wasn't sure Kinger would be coherent enough to understand the option.

Would the adventure have day night cycles? Did that mean they could plan night attacks? Kinger might stand a chance if they did.

"Madam Harlequin?" a red and blue armored mannequin asked before entering her tent (at least it waited for her to answer), "a messenger has arrived from the castle. Shall I let them in?"

"Uhhhh sure?" Pomni said. Madam Harlequin? Well I guess that’s me, she thought to herself. The circus was indeed just a larp.

Her mannequin opened the tent flap for another NPC to walk in, this one lightly armored in black, red, and gold, a banner on their back to signify them as a messenger. The banner was half black, half red, and had a gold set of teeth.

Ah, a message from Caine. She read the scroll presented to her, a basic introductory to the game, a small tutorial to follow, and a message from Caine himself. It seemed she needed to set up supply lines as well to give herself a steady supply of troupes.

Greetings esteemed Commander!
I look forward to the coming battle,
may the battle of brawn and wits be remembered through history!
-Count Caine

Pomni couldn't help but roll her eyes at the corny sign off.

"Madam?" the messenger handed her another scrap of paper. This one was handwritten in a neat and tidy cursive.

Dear Pomni,
I'm not sure what compelled you to join the adventure but I do appreciate you coming. Please let me know if Jax becomes a nuisance as I can up the difficulty for him.
Your Ringmaster,
Caine

Pomni blinked. Read the letter again, and furrowed her brow. Caine was giving her an option to up Jax's difficulty? He appreciated she came on the adventure? Momentarily she wished someone was with her to tell her this was normal Caine behavior. Oh right, the whole reason she came was because he was acting weird. She'd wanted to talk to him about it. Which meant she needed to get into the castle, so she actually had to play the game and get there before the others.

"Would you like to reply, Madam?" Her NPC asked.

She could send messages too? "Oh, um, not to Caine, can I send one to Kinger?"

"To King Kinger? What might you say?" It pulled out a paper and oversized feathered quill, ready to dictate her message.

"I'd like to remind Kinger about keeping his tent dark, and to maybe focus his attacks at night."

Her squire diligently wrote down her message and sent for her messenger, leaving Pomni alone to look at her war-map. The timer was nearly done, though she still had a few minutes of prep. Taking some of the scout pieces she set them on her corner and made orders for them to scout the other player camps, as well as one towards the castle. While they moved into position the fog of war would momentarily lift around them, revealing other miniature war pieces of her opponents colors. Pink and purple, and it seemed Jax was already setting up a flank against her.

Pomni continued to set up troupes on the defensive from Jax, preparing for his attack. The game began just as she finished up setting up her supply lines.

The holographic HUD of the war-map changed, providing statistics around the edges of the board. At one corner was a list of the player icons.

A light purple rabbit head | Rogue Rabbit | 50
A royal purple crown | King Kinger | 50
A white jester hat | Madam Harlequin | 50
A yellow set of teeth | Count Caine | 150
6 nights until monsters spawn

Monsters?? "Oh for f@&ks sake Caine," Pomni groaned. Of course the game had monsters.

Noticing the pieces beginning to march across the board she watched as the defense she ordered immediately went to arms against Jax's offense.

His player score dropped by about 15, her's by 8. She'd sent 20 pieces out and 12 came back. Huh, guess the player score was how many units everyone had.

Now how long did she have until her first batch of troupes show up?

Three days, it had taken three days before Pomni's defenses had broken and her camp was being overrun. Jax had staged an attack while her own troupes were dealing with a regular patrol from Caine. Kinger was sending reinforcements but they wouldn't arrive for another while.

Until then she quickly donned her armor with the help of her squire (Leopold, she eventually learned his name). She went with the scale armor, better she have mobility to move. Though something compelled her to choose the big fuck off hammer in the corner.

Sure, she was near panic but inside she was seething. Jax hadn't answered a single attempt at a truce, every one of her messengers returned beaten and splintered with injury. So much for not shooting the messenger.

The first of the pink mannequins exploded from the impact of her hammer, and she surprised herself with an adrenaline fueled giggle as she continued to swing at another. If she was going to fight she was going to be a menace, and she vaguely noticed as Jax's troupes began to hesitate, clearly intimidated by the Madam Harlequin. The small woman let out a war cry that rallied her own troupes, and they cheered with her as they gave one final stand against the onslaught.

Caine's troupes had pulled away from the fight as Kinger's backup force arrived, clad in white and royal purple. It was just enough to turn the tide of the assault.

Pomni quickly ran back to her tent, still panting and fueled by adrenaline. A thank you letter was sent to Kinger, detailing her losses and asking for additional aid. A few of the cuts and bruises stung but she hardly noticed them as she surveyed her war-map.

Pomni wouldn't have reinforcements until morning, and she feared the possibility of Jax sending another ambush. Luckily, dusk was falling, which meant Kinger would begin his assault on the rabbits other flank. The group of his forces who'd aided her stayed the night, providing additional assurance she wouldn't be attacked for a while. So she accepted her squire's help in removing her armor and prepared for bed for the night.

The hammer laid on the bed next to her, just in case.

In the circus, a TV set had appeared in the lounge area near the start of the adventure. Out of curiosity Zooble turned it on and flipped through the channels to find they were all tuned into the current adventure. A channel for each of the players, and a few different angles on the castle. One channel was a cooking show lead by head Chef Bubble.

Currently, four sat on the couches to watch Pomni's channel. Bubble had ended his show and decided to watch the carnage unfold, he brought a mountain of popcorn and snacks for the others as a bribe for letting him stay.

Ragatha sat with her hands covering a gasp as she watched Pomni fight the tide of armored mannequins. Zooble cheered when Kinger's troupes arrived and helped to turn the tide of battle. They were INVESTED in the adventure despite not joining.

Gangle looked on in awe, "she's so bad@$&" she said quietly, quickly sketching down a rough drawing of Pomni fighting, adding details so that the Jester looked like a magical girl.

Just in case turned out to be the correct decision, as she was jolted from sleep by the cacophony of battle outside again. She'd only managed to get on the gambeson of her armor before a purple and pink knight barged into her tent.

The camp had been overrun, her supply lines cut. Leopold died defending his Madam Harlequin, his sacrifice buying just enough time for her to escape with a messenger and one scout. Pomni was effectively out of the game.

"Great, just f@&king great," she muttered.

"Madam?" The scout asked, it was quiet and concerned, "do you have orders?"

Pomni breathed in, breathed out. Technically she was still in the game until she gave up or died. She really didn't want to find out what death felt like on the battle field but she still needed to talk to Caine!

Oh, but maybe if she...

"Yes," she said more confidently, "I'm going to the castle."

The plan involved the scout ahead of them, ensuring the way forward was clear. Pomni wanted to sneak as close to the castle as she could. When they were close enough she ordered the scout and messenger to join Kinger. She took her messenger flag, half blue-half red with a white jester hat, and walked to the castle.

To her surprise, her plan worked, the messenger flag allowed her to enter the castle without issue. The NPCs ignored her as she walked through the halls, and eventually she abandoned the messenger banner before walking up a considerably long flight of stairs. At the top she finally entered Caine's war-room. Did he always put his little areas at the top of long staircases? She entered quietly, observing him as he paced around his own war-map. It seemed he hadn't noticed her yet. The room was set up similarly to her tent, though with more ornate furniture and colored in black, red, and gold. The Ringmaster had discarded his coat and hat on a nearby chair, apparently he wore a vest underneath. The vest's back panel was black, while the front was red, trimmed of course in gold. The gentle tap tap tap of his cane as he walked with it around the table, Pomni noticed he seemed to favor his left leg. It surprised her, seeing the ever enigmatic AI walking on the ground with a notable limp, carefully making orders on the map with his free hand. He looked calm, focused, and hummed to himself a jaunty little tune.

Surprisingly human, and for a moment Pomni felt her heart flutter. Choosing to ignore that she finally stepped forward. The soft plop of her footsteps finally brought her to Caine's attention.

"Ah hah! Pomni!" he seemed genuinely surprised, "what a stupendous turnabout! I was wondering what you'd do after that last assault." The Ringmaster lept back into a lunge, again favoring his left leg, and waved his cane in a fencers stance, "Now I suppose you wish to fight for the Castle after sneaking in here!" He was now thrusting the cane as if already fighting her.

Pomni couldn't help but chuckle, both from the nervous habit and at the AI. He actually smiled at the sound and lowered his cane as he awaited her response.

"Oh, no thank you, I actually wanted to talk with you? If that's okay?" Pomni nervously twirled the hammer she still carried.

Caine hopped back onto both his feet and tilted his head, "Oh, o-of course my jittery jester what would you like to talk about?" He gestured for her to sit on the couch beside him, though he continued his pacing around the war-map.

Pomni sat on a nearby chair, ignoring the slightly insulting generated nickname. She felt too grungy from the night of fighting to sit on the beautiful couch. "I was wondering if you always went on the adventures? I mean I'd never seen you on them since," she paused, now wondering if it was a good idea to bring that up so soon.

"If the adventure calls for it! Though I usually have a backstage where I work from to keep the adventure going."

"That's cool," she said quietly.

Caine practically perked up like a puppy.

"but how come you don't join like this more often?"

"Oh not every adventure calls for my intervention! This one just happens to require some real time strategy that the NPCs can't really handle." he said, tossing her a toothy grin as he made a few more orders on the war-map.

"You seem to be enjoying yourself."

He shrank back down, "I'm just fulfilling my duty as ringmaster, dear."

"Hmm," she continued to watch Caine flit around the board. Looking at him longer it seemed he really did use the cane to walk, it wasn't just a prop. Was this why he always flew around the circus? Maybe he grounded himself with the anticipation of fighting with the players, himself the final boss. She wondered if he was any good at fighting. He was taller than her by just a bit, so still considerably short, but had a bulkier frame than she anticipated. What did she expect under his jacket?

"Pomni?" It seemed he'd asked her something while her mind was drifting into daydreams.

"Huh??" Startled, Pomni sat up and brought her gaze back up to Caine's eyes. Oh god was she really just staring at his ass? She really hoped he didn't notice.

"Would you like to go back to the circus?" Caine asked again, thankfully oblivious to her wandering eyes.

She hesitated, she'd still not brought up yesterday. "Is it alright if I stay here until the game's over?"

"Youuu- want to stay?" Caine continued to look like a perplexed puppy.

"Yeah I kinda want to see Jax get his @$& kicked."

Caine squinted at her, offended by the expletive, "that's a fair enough reason I suppose. Very well! The NPCs will help you get cleaned up and settled in." Clapping his hands, an NPC maid walked into the room to retrieve Pomni.

As Pomni passed the war-map she gave the statistics a look over. Her own number dropped from 3 to 1, she guessed her NPCs finally joined Kinger. Then, her number dropped to 0, her icon crossing out. Under Caine's statistics a new number appeared with a little cage. Prisoners: 1. Was she a prisoner? Caine did give her the option to leave...

She pointed at the prisoner icon "soooo are you gonna, like, put me in the dungeon or the tower?"

"Oh! Neither, you can stay in here!"

It wasn't a terrible deal, all things considered.

Her thoughts continued to wander as the maid led her down the hall and into a bathroom, a full tub with bubbles already drawn. A hot bath awaited her, oh god how long had it been since she'd had a proper bath? Could she even get naked enough for a bath?? Quickly, Pomni tore off her clothing, only to pause as her brain buffered. She was naked alright, but her body was pixelated like a sim. For the first time in a while, she laughed. Loud and stupid, she giggled her way into the bath water. Only hissing a little when the hot water seared into small cuts across her body.

Floating in the hot water was the most delightful thing she'd done since getting to the circus. Closing her eyes she did absolutely nothing, reveled in it, and eventually her mind began to tease her as it wandered like her eyes had earlier. It was the first time she'd been naked in the circus. Even if she couldn't see anything beyond the pixel barrier she could still feel her body just fine.

Curious, her now bare hands wandered under the water, and she bit her lip when she felt her breast. Actual breast. She let out a tiny gasp as it was sensitive.

With a growing blush her hands continued downwards and she confirmed her other suspicion. Their models were detailed, albeit simply, under their clothes.

But then why did Zooble ask for the ability to have sex if she had this? Was it due to their gimmicky model? Did Caine actually listen to them?

Her thoughts lingered on Caine, broad shoulders accentuated by that vest of his, his tight ringmaster pants around his perfect-

Pomni squealed as she realized where her thoughts were going and sat up with a splash to cover her own mouth.

There was knocking at the door, "Madam," came a muffled feminine NPC voice, "is everything all right in there?"

"YES," she said too fast, "everything's fine!"

The maid left her alone again, and Pomni made up her mind.

A little self indulgence wouldn't hurt anything. She'd totally be able to talk to Caine later with a straight face to ask if he's alright. She seized the opportunity to chase a high she hadn't had since she'd joined the circus, too stressed to even think about the possibility of pleasure. Pomni daydreamed about the Ringmaster and sent herself off a lusty edge with embarrassing speed. Clarity hit her all at once and the woman groaned and sunk deeper into the bath. The bath didn't feel like it was getting cold, so she spent as much time as she could in it while she calmed her shame.

Nobody came to get her, and eventually she noticed the sun was rising outside the window. Quite surprised she hadn't fallen asleep in the tub.

| 3 nights until monster's spawn |

It was the most relaxing few hours she'd had in months, despite the ominous message. Reluctantly she got out.

There was a clean change of clothes waiting in a basket, it was another jester outfit but it was different. Unfolded, the outfit seemed to fit the theme of the world, and felt almost delicate in it's design. A set of shear white harem pants, her white legs gave the illusion the pants covered more than they did. There were hooks at the waist to attach to the inside of her long sleeved leotard, split in half red and blue like her normal outfit, but with opposing sleeves that ended in a half fingered glove, thumb and forefinger free from the fabric. Her shoes were also mismatched red and blue dance shoes, and she made sure to put on her socks so they opposed the shoes color as well. Her hat was much the same, and the entire outfit was trimmed with gold.

Pomni smiled to herself in the mirror, Caine really outdid himself with this adventure. She wondered if she could convince him to let her keep the outfit. It faltered for a bitter moment as Pomni reminded herself that she had no choice but to be the Jester. Even if the outfit was cute. Ready to go she exited the bathroom.

The maid had stood outside the bathroom the entire time, which momentarily made Pomni blush before she remembered that the mannequins were never programmed past a few one off lines. It brought her back to Caine's war-room and let her inside. Pomni didn't see him so she helped herself to the food laid out on the table, an assortment of breakfast food. As she brought her plate to sit down on the porch outside to watch the sunrise she noticed the Ringmaster passed out on the couch. Caine's right leg draped off the couch, his other bent and leaning on the back, his head was partially propped up by a pillow and his left hand. His other hand hovered loose over his cane which lay on the ground.

Pomni stepped a bit closer, continuing to be surprised seeing the Ringmaster sit still for longer than a few seconds. His jaws were slack, though nearly closed shut, and his eye's were almost hard to see. She noted that his pupils flashed dully with a little charging battery symbol. It seemed he was 3/4 of the way "charged" so to speak. He seemed peaceful.

A furious blush came to Pomni's face as she remembered what she had just done merely hours before this and she scurried out to the balcony to take her breakfast. It looked out over the battlefield towards the invisible dividing line between Jax and Kinger's camps. It seemed like a lot of fighting was happening down there. Kinger was holding up just fine against Jax's assault and was lining up ranks for an assault on the castle.

Caine was still asleep, should she warn him? The sun was rising however which meant Kinger would likely turn in for his battle nap. Leaving just Jax. Had he slept at all since the adventure started?

Eventually, Pomni returned her plates to the table and looked around the room. Letting out a big yawn Pomni eyed the bed. God she was tired, her body ached. Surely Caine wouldn't mind if she took a nap, he certainly wasn't using the bed.

Speaking of, Caine began to stir as she walked past him. Pomni listened to him grumble incomprehensibly as she pulled at the covers of the bed. As she kicked off her shoes she chanced a glance at the drowsy AI. He was sat up and rubbed at his... head. The teeth making an audible click as he blinked.

"I'm gonna take the bed, I need a nap," Pomni said.

He squinted at the wall as he appeared to be loading, the battery symbol now a buffering swirl. Caine seemed to notice her, "Huh? Oh, okay." Another audible blink.

Huh, didn't know he could be groggy, man she sure was learning a lot about Caine. Did anyone spend time with him to notice? She gave the thought no answer and crawled into the bed, pulling the plush covers over her.

A soft tap tap of Caine's cane announced his movement towards the bed and to her ever growing surprise Caine untied the drapes around the bed to draw the curtains, enveloping her in darkness. In the last sliver of light she noticed he held his cane in the crook of his arm when he used both his hands.

"This should help," Caine gave her a smile, still soft with sleep, and dropped the rest of the curtain.

Pomni was lulled to sleep by the soft tp tp tapping of his pacing around the war-map.

When she awoke again it was because the Sun had come to give Caine a report on the circus.

Holy shit she was loud.

"Thank you Sun," Caine said, ever cheerful.

"F@&k you," the giant flaming ball of hatred zipped away from the castle and disappeared into the setting... digital sun.

Pomni peaked through the bed curtain and squinted into the evening light. Way too damn bright.

Caine stood at one of the balcony doors, mouth shut tight and fingers thrumming over his cane. With a sigh far too existential for an AI he tamped his cane hard into the floor and pivoted back to the war table.

Pomni shrunk back into the bed, hiding as he went past. She would swear his teeth looked sharper.

"... Ungrateful they're all so d@#n ungrateful even the NPCs hate you..."

It was so quiet how he belittled himself.

Pomni leaned back on the bed and gave him a few moments. Listening to the tp tp tp of his cane.

And then he stopped.

Again Pomni peaked out of the bed curtains to look at the Ringmaster. He swayed lightly on his feet and his hands gripped the table. The wooden texture glitched under how hard he seemed to be grabbing it. Caine stared slack jawed at the board.

The Jester really didn't like how his eyes were scribbled out.

The cane slipped from Caine's grasp and clattered to the floor. Startled, the Ringmaster jumped away from the table and his eyes snapped back into focus. A light shuffle from the bed caught his attention and he saw the Jester's pinwheel red blue eyes dart back behind the curtain. Caine picked his cane up. Ah, he'd woken Pomni. How much did she see?

From the bed Pomni feigned a big noisy yawn and stretched with a little hrmph. Better she make it seem like she just woke up and hadn't just caught the Ringmaster having a panic attack.

Pomni moved to put her feet off the bed, and shoved the bed curtain back while rubbing at her eyes. Does she ask now? No that didn't seem appropriate; she'd just pretended not to notice.

"Why did Sun come by? I didn't know she could leave the circus grounds," she knew the AI loved talking about the game mechanics. It was an olive branch really. So generous of her.

Caine perked right back into Ringmaster mode and delighted in telling her Sun and Moons purpose in helping keep the circus running smoothly. After a suitably lengthy spiel Pomni had finished her breakfast (dinner?) and finally commented,

"She's kinda mean, what's up with that?"

"Oh," there was a brief look of too neutral nothing before he answered in a lighthearted tone, "that's just how she is!"

"So she's just... Programmed like that? I thought the circus was supposed to be family friendly?"

"Sheeeee-" Caine mumbled off something that sounded suspiciously like 'deviating' and 'code'

Why did she know what the concept of AI drift was? Could that happen to the AI of the circus?

"What was that?" Pomni prompted Caine, she wasn't gonna just let this go.

"It's nothing!"

"Liar,"

Caine let out a manic laugh, the same he gave when she asked if he was okay, far too loud and forced, "Why that's impossible Pomni I can't lie to you! It's not in my programming!"

"So Sun is programmed to be a b!#$h and Moon is programmed to be a flirt?"

"W-well," he stuttered out "they weren't so extreme starting out." His top jaw pinched as he looked down at the war-map.

"So they've... Changed? Over time?" Pomni watched the AI ignore her in favor of making orders on the board. Softly she tried again, "Caine?" and he finally looked toward her,

"How long has the circus been running for?"

The smile on his face was strained when he responded with his Ringmaster voice, "The AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS launched version 1.0 in 2006!"

"You've been running for nearly twenty years?" That was a long time for a computer to be running.

Caine winced, and in an uncharacteristically small voice he said, "I think I've been on longer than that..."

"LONGER THAN TWENTY YEARS?"

The Ringmaster pulled himself together "Why I don't see why that's such a big deal! There have been plenty of systems recorded running longer than that!" His pupils were small, still far too manic.

"How are you okay??"

"Oh my systems are running at peak efficiency!" The manic set of dentures did a flourish as if to show off how perfectly fine he was, only to be betrayed by the glitch of his green eye.

"No that's not-" how was she supposed to get him to stop dodging her question? "Are you okay? Like not just computer process functioning fine but like emotionally? Can you even feel emotion since you're-" she couldn't help the frustration that leaked into her voice

"I know I don't want to be having this conversation," Caine said, sterner than he intended, his cane stamping into the stone floor with a loud clack. He stood straighter to look at Pomni from across the table and his fingers dug into the digital wood with another flicker. Another tiny glitch.

She tried to speak as gently as she could, "That doesn't sound like you're fine," the jester really hoped she hadn't just pissed him off, and took a nervous step away from the table.

Caine rolled his eyes. It hurt to see her flinch. She was scared of him, of course she was they a̵l̶l̴ ̶w̵e̴r̴e̵ and he was tired of it, there was nothing he could do and it p̵̘̓i̶̦͗s̵̳͗s̶̪͑e̴͖͌d̵͓̀ him off so much.

Pomni's pinwheel eyes grew large as she watched the Ringmaster glitch. The green eye turned red, if only for a moment. It scared her, certainly, but her concern for the sentient AI outweighed that fear. Barely. The tables could certainly still flip. Literally and figuratively.

The hammer felt comfortably heavy in her hands as she adjusted her grip on it. Just in case of course.

Caine looked down at the hammer and then back up to her. His face contorted as his top teeth pinched over his brow, the bottom pulled taught as if he was grimacing. How could a set of floating teeth look so devastated?

Then he ignored her in favor of circling the board and for a moment Pomni thought of a shark swimming in circles to stay alive. Never able to stop or they'll drown.

Damn how many people in the circus were in denial about needing help?

At the couch sat Zooble and Bubble; Ragatha and Gangle had decided to take a break and go for a walk.

"J#$!s c#&!$t," Zooble said, "what is up with Caine?" they had stopped eating popcorn midbite when Caine had snapped at Pomni. A confusing sight considering they had no mouth.

The malevolent soap sud next to them said nothing, as he was busy making a slow calculated attack on the popcorn bowl.

A few parts, much cursing, and surprisingly little popcorn, was launched off the couch in the attack as Bubble devoured the light snack. Bowl and all.

Pomni excused herself to explore the grounds of the castle, there were a surprisingly large amount of details put into it. NPC's bustling about the hallway, some scripted court scene in the main hall. Regular patrols of guards around the castle. Eventually she even found Caine's NPC spawner, past the barracks and deep in the dungeons.

She eventually asked if she could have another bath. It was just as wonderful as the first time. The censor just as funny to her. Of course she took advantage of this time to herself. Relaxed in the tub, Pomni thought of the different cast members. Everyone felt... Wrong in her brain, like she couldn't think about any of the humans in that way (yet, she's sure she'd become desperate enough sooner or later). Romance in the circus just seemed like a bad idea, a disaster waiting to happen.

Pomni buried her face into her hands and slumped further into the water with a groan, oh god she wasn't just about to jack off to Caine again was she?

She was.

And she did.

Girl get yourself together.

With some shame she eventually pulled herself out of the tub when the light outside grew dark and made her way back to the war-room.

At the bottom of the steps, she hesitated. Caine had scared her. It was obvious something was wrong but he really did not seem to want to admit it. To her at least. Would someone else have an easier time? Does Caine even trust anyone enough for that? One foot in front of the other she made her way up the stairs, uncertain what she would do when she reached the top. They were a long flight of stairs. No reason to rush; plenty of time to think.

"Why," was all she said to herself. Head swirling with too many thoughts, unable to grasp a single thread. Why what? Why was she on the adventure? Why was she in the circus in the first place? Why did it seem like Caine was hiding something? Why did she want to talk to him? What did she actually want from him? Did it even matter? Her thoughts continued to swirl with things the others had said.

The whole circus started glitching when I told him no one liked his adventures.

I don't care about you, or anyone else in this circus in the slightest!

It doesn't matter what I make you'll all hate it anyways.

The worst you can do in a place like this is make someone think they're not wanted or loved.

Glitching, she'd caught him glitching in the funhouse adventure. That had to mean something, right? She came on this adventure to ask if he was okay and he kept dodging the question. She'd watched him hide a panic attack. He glitched again!

Pomni paused at the top of the stairs, now stood outside the castle war-room. Tentatively, Pomni entered the room again. Caine spared a glance towards her. So she knew he was aware of her presence. Had he stopped pacing since she left? Taken a break at all? Pomni shuffled closer to the board and took a peak at the battle field. Caine's forces were staging an attack on Jax's weak flank while the Rabbit focused on Kinger. The adventure was likely to end soon. Maybe she should apologize for prying earlier? If she stood any chance for figuring out what was wrong with the enigmatic AI in charge of the circus before the adventure ended, then apologizing was probably a necessary step.

The soft tp tp tp of his cane brought her out of her thoughts as it stopped behind her. Before Pomni could think about the ominous behavior from Caine,

"Is there a reason you haven't gone back to the circus?" He asked.

She was taken aback, but Pomni knew it was a fair question and he was so close.

"Iiiii-" shit she didn't have any excuses, only piling regrets.

Caine stepped back when she turned around to face him, if only slightly.

"You put a lot of details into the adventures," she said. Caine seemed to relax, well, only slightly for all the manic energy he contained.

"Of course! I must give you intrepid explorers something to discover! Do you like what you find?" Caine watched her with a light bounce, his fingers thrumming over his cane, waiting for her answer.

"Yeah," Pomni wracked her little digitized brain, still unsure if he was mad from earlier. "The costumes and armor are really good," she pinched the fabric at her thigh, "honestly I'd love to be able to wear this back at the circus."

The Ringmaster looked the Jester over. He'd never thought to let the troupe wear different outfits outside of his adventures. She looked so much daintier without the big puff sleeves and shorts. In fact the outfit covered quite a bit more than usual, so it still followed family friendly guidelines. Although he thought he made the leggings more shear than that. Didn't he? Caine reached for the bit of fabric on her thigh and pinched it himself, stretched it a bit to get color underneath it and sure enough it still was. His thumb pushed the fabric close to her skin again, brushing along the crest of her hip where the leotard ended.

Pomni made an undignified squeak "C-Caine!?" The touch made her squirm and she felt her face flushing. The table prevented her from backing any further away from the handsy AI. If she really wanted to she could slip to the side and away from him. Unfortunately the thoughts from the bath had decided to resurface.

It was a curious noise she made, and he found he wanted to hear it again. So Caine brushed his thumb along the edge between the leotard and the pants hem, trailing his thumb a bit lower than before. The woman's breath stuttered and she closed her legs.

"W-What are you doing?" she said.

"Why do you sound like that?" Caine leaned in to look at her, his eyes rolling to the front of his mouth for a closer look.

"Like what?" He has no idea what he's doing to me, Pomni bit her lip and debated the merits of trying to seduce the oblivious AI.

"Breathless, did you run up the stairs my dear?" He tilted his head to watch her lips and stroked his thumb against her hip again. He didn't quite understand why the whimper that escaped her made him want to lick her. It was a peculiar urge which felt outside of his code, something he probably shouldn't act on.

He'd stepped closer. Pomni put a hand to his chest and let out a nervous giggle. She could feel heat radiating off him, well that answered one of her terrible thoughts. So close too close ohgodhe'ssoclose.

"The b-baths were a really nice touch," her thoughts earlier were not helping her situation.

The floating dentures paused, the tip of his tongue starting to peak out over the teeth. His eyes flitted between her neck and her eyes.

"The bath left you breathless?" He didn't pull back his tongue.

"Sure," Pomni fiddled with his bow-tie, she felt a thrumming whrrrrr from his chest and her face was noticeably crimson. Why could she feel her thoughts were turning to mush?

The Ringmaster went from silently looking at Pomni's neck to the war-map. He tilted his head for a better look and leaned forward. ohgodohfuckohno she thought as their bodies pressed together. Pomni could feel every fiber in her digital being wanted to run. Her thoughts flashed to the tub and she wondered if this was how she would die. A heart attack from pure unfiltered need. Was he doing this on purpose? Did he know what he was doing to her?? Pomni seriously reconsidered apologizing to the AI invading her personal space.

Caine did not, in fact, know what he was doing to her and his hand on her hip squeezed gently as his other made a few move order's on the board. Though he had his suspicions this position was starting to threaten the family friendly rating.

Dropping his hand the Ringmaster continued to pace around the war-map. Pomni let out a shaky breath as her heart pounded in her ears.

The jester was thankfully able to distract the Ringmaster (and regain her dignity) by asking more questions about the current adventure. He was happy to give her more details on that and nothing else.

Anything else besides how he's strayed from his code.

The following few days went much the same; wake up, chat with Caine about whatever she could get him chattering about (without accidentally setting him off), explore the castle, then take a bath. She continued to sleep on the big bed.

Bubble was perfectly content being used as a pillow by the two lesbians on the couch. Zooble, sound asleep, kept a grip on one of Gangle's ribbons. The girl was drawing with her sketchbook propped in her lap. The scene on the TV between Pomni and Caine was surprisingly sweet to watch. Why had she never thought to ship anyone with Caine?

The pillow with malice for eyes looked over her elbow at the drawings, "better not let boss man see those," he said.

Gangle covered the paper with her hands, admittedly not covering much of her drawing of Caine and Pomni. "Y-you wouldn't tell him w-w-would you???" she squeaked, trying to stay quiet for Zooble. The drawing was the same scene of Caine leaning over Pomni by the war-map but very obviously not pg. Not even a little bit. It would barely pass a PG-13 rating with how involved the two were with eachother.

"Naahhhh don't worry I'm on the same ship you are," Bubble said, settling back into his cozy position as pillow.

"Oh... good," Gangle proceeded to cover her blushing mask, practically glowing pink, well this was mortifying.

| Monsters spawn tonight |

Caine continued to pace around the war map. His and Kinger's piece counts stayed relatively even with each other, steady around 160. It reminded Caine of a time long ago, before Queenie had... Abstracted. Had it really been that long since he played against his old man? Could Kinger even remember the last time they played a strategy game together? Caine wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer, too afraid to face the reality of a 'no'. The sharp pang through his chest informed Caine he was hesitating over the board, dangerously becoming absorbed in his thoughts.

Jax's piece count was rapidly falling, now in the 20's, which meant the Rabbit might attack the castle himself. Caine wasn't too worried about the purple menace. Jax would brute force his way into the castle or die trying, not quite as clever as Pomni. He admired her creative use of the game's mechanics to get into the castle, intentional game design or not.

Why'd she want to stay anyways? He glanced at the bed where the Jester was sleeping, not understanding why the human seemed to act so contradictory to herself. Pomni who liked "calm and chill" adventure's, was hanging out with Jax and then she suddenly wasn't. Caine had freely offered for people to not participate and she came anyways. She'd even made her way into the castle and then surrendered.

And even more perplexing was she didn't even want to go back to the circus??? Wasn't that what they all wanted the moment they finished any of his adventures?

What changed? He didn't understand. Pomni previously avoided him and now she was seeking him out to... Talk? She hadn't stopped trying to ask if he was 'feeling' alright, as subtle as she thought she was being.

Still pacing around the board the Ringmaster continued to make orders on the map. A stable defense against Kinger's growing force, a moving unit to remove any of Jax's straggling pieces from the recent skirmish.

From Sun and Moon's reports it seemed that the other two players were in fact enjoying themselves. Bubble had brought lunch and informed him that the ALL SEEING EYES broadcast of the adventure was a 'raging success' and the 'hottest show on HBO' whatever that meant. Hopefully a good thing. Could the humans left in the circus actually be having a good time while not on the adventure?

He didn't understand. The only thing he did differently was listen to what Jax wanted.

Oh.

Huh.

They didn't like his adventures. They liked when he spit out what they wanted. His vision pricked with static again, mildly glad he was disconnected from the circus for this adventure. He'd wanted to give them a fair chance at taking the castle which meant not using his admin powers, just his wits and whatever he provided the players.

The moment passed quickly, to his relief, and he made more moves on the board. If he didn't think about the others, Caine found he was enjoying the game. Sure he technically wasn't supposed to be here but what ai could he code that would be suitable for the challenge of commanding a siege? A little self indulgence didn't hurt anyone.

There was a brief connection within him between his presence on the adventure and the troupes enjoyment. A weak connection on forgotten webs of learning. Assuming it to be a negative one he shook his head, eyeballs rattling around in his closed teeth.

The Ringmaster supposed that he should take his wins where he could get them. The troupe was enjoying the adventure and if he was being completely honest with himself he was rather pleased with how it was going. Which was suspiciously too well.

From behind the drawn bed curtains Pomni s c r e a m e d

Startled, Caine hurried to the bed and to Pomni's thrashing side.

He just had to jinx it didn't he?

"Pomni!" Caine opened the curtain, not bothering to tie it back, "Dear please you were dreaming!" He reached too quickly for the woman's shoulder and she lunged at him with a ferocious cry, sending the two sprawling to the floor.

The cane clattered away as the two tumbled over the eachother. Pomni's eyes were scribbled out as she tried to pull apart Caine's jaw. The poor AI squealed under her grip, not expecting such feral ferocity from the little jester. He was desperately trying to pin her down without hurting her.

Unfortunately for the Ringmaster he had been pinned under her. She sat on his chest with her knees holding down his arms. Her hands pried at his jaws, wrenching his head sideways at a very uncomfortable angle.

Caine had enabled death mechanics for himself this adventure, fully prepared to be skewered by a sword. This, Caine thought calmly, would admittedly be a very brutal way to go. A pained gag escaped him as Pomni growled and wrenched at his jaws again. Her eyes still scribbled.

Fine, she wanted to play dirty? He could play dirty.

With as much leverage as he could muster Caine lunged his head towards Pomni's, his massive tongue smeared across her entire face.

This, fortunately, stopped whatever bloodlust had consumed the Madam Harlequin in her sleep, and she loosened her grip on his dentured head. The two sat breathing hard and merely stared at each other.

"C-Caine? What did- ohgod- What happened?" Pomni gulped down, practically choking on her own voice. She was asleep and then she was on top of him trying to-

"You had a bad dream my dear," and Caine gingerly sat up. The Jester slid down to his lap with her hands nervously hovering over his chest.

"I attacked you!" Tears began to prick at her wild eyes. Caine was just grateful she wasn't scribbling out.

"Perhaps I should put less traumatic violence in the next adventure?" he said, "Starlet would you like to go back to the circ-"

Caine was pulled into a sudden hug as Pomni broke down into hysterical sobs while frantically stuttering out "I'm sorry I'm sorry," over and over again. He hesitated before pulling her further into a hug, he-

He wanted to be held for a moment.

Who knew nearly having your head ripped in half could be such a traumatic stimulating experience!

It had admittedly been a long time since he'd had to comfort any of the cast. Selfishly he was holding her for himself. Pomni didn't like touch, he knew that. Of course he'd noticed her flinch every time he got too close too quickly.

It just got him attacked.

But he held onto her clinging form like she was the only anchor to the AI's spiraling thoughts. If one looked closely his eyes began to scribble.

Somewhere in his spiral a connection in his digital brain went off, a sharp stutter in his non-existent heart. Machines aren't meant to give comfort, something about an experiment of a baby monkey and a wire mesh mother. He wasn't qualified for human comfort.

Pomni sobbed again, fists clenching into his chest like she would fall into an abyss if she let go.

Caine sighed and closed his mouth, The uncertain AI tucked her head under his and held her through her crying.

Momentarily he checked the ALL SEEING EYES feed and noticed Pomni's had an active connection. Ah. Right. The TV he'd set up in the lounge. The feed was still connected? Oh no. Someone back at the circus had watched the entire ordeal. Had been watching since Pomni got to the castle. Great. Fine. Caine opted to ignore this fact to melt further into the hug.

Meanwhile, back at the circus, Zooble and Gangle sat together on the couch. They held each other as they took in the drama of the scene.

"No f@#king waaaaay," On one hand, Zooble had just witnessed their friend have a violent mental breakdown. On the other (claw), the tea was PIPING hot.

"I-I'm" Gangle hiccups, crying despite her comedy mask, "I'm so glad" hic "they're" hic "they're okaaaayyyyy." Oh she was LIVING for the drama.

Bubble held his mouth agape, jagged teeth curled into a smiling O. "Ragatha's not gonna believe this," he said.

The other two agreed, and there was quick debate to switching to Jax or Kinger's channel.

Gangle objected, shaking Zooble, "BUT WHAT IF THEY KISS!"

Zooble shook them back, "THEY ALREADY DID!"

"AAAAAHH!" They all squealed with the faux indignanty of it all.

"Is everything okay?!" Ragatha rushed into the lounge.

"YOU MISSED IT!" Zooble and Gangle shouted simultaneously.

Pomni slowly stopped crying. Caine rubbed soft circles into her back while murmuring that she was alright. As she sniffled into his shoulder her horrors continued to grow with her post nightmare clarity. Clarity was honestly a strong word for it, she couldn't exactly recall the dream. Some strange combination of Jax's ambush and her usual nightmares of abstracting. Of being a prisoner of the circus. Of monsters in the woods.

And here she was, crying after she'd assaulted her 'Jailor'. He was comforting her over it. The fabric of his shirt was scrunched tightly in her fists, dark tear stains on the shoulder of his vest.

Pathetic. That's how she felt right now, and she bit her lip as she held back another pathetic sob. Pomni came to the slow thought that she'd hurt Caine for something he didn't even likely have control over.

She felt like she'd been running endlessly in her dream, trying to find what she'd always been looking for. Hoping for.

"You'd let us leave if you actually could, wouldn't you," she said it so softly, so certain.

Caine felt that shattering spark through his chest again. Had she been dreaming about the exit?

"I-" the words choked him to say it. Of course he would! He'd let them leave in a tick(ms)! If leaving would make them happy he'd let them, he was programmed to make them happy. He had to. But he couldn't, he didn't know how to give them an exit. Making one up had been a mistake that led to an abstraction, nearly a second abstraction if the shaking of his Starlet was any indication. Caine would give them the exit if he could and that scared him. I don't want to be left behind, n̴o̶t̵ ̶a̷g̵a̷i̷n̶.

So, quietly, he answered "Yes."

Pomni let him pull her tighter into the embrace. She felt so pathetic. Crying her heart out, curled up in the Ringmaster's lap.

Straddling him even.

Her horror shifted as she thought of how close they were now; how warm he was. Mortification and shame curled into her core as she thought about sitting on his lap in other ways, don't think about that!!

Pomni leaned back and looked at the denture headed being.

"You licked me," she accused him.

Caine leaned away from her and he felt his gums heating up from how intensely she stared him down "You had my arms pinned!"

She squinted at him through puffy red eyes, "Why didn't you just teleport away?"

"TEMPORARILY DISABLED!" He perked back up into his Ringmaster voice, "Until the adventure concludes or I die I am just as grounded and just as powerless as you humans!"

Powerless as you humans. Pomni scoffed and shoved his face away as she stood off him. She offered her hand to help him stand, shakily he took it and limped over to pick up his cane.

"I'm sorry..." The woman said, turning away from the Ringmaster to put her shoes on for the day, "for lunging at you."

"It's... Quite fine, my dear," Caine had retrieved her hat and quietly looked it over, it wouldn't be the first time... he handed it to her. She watched him walk to the war-map to the soft tp tp tp of his cane, a noticable limp in his gait.

"Is that why you're using the cane?"

Caine turned to raise a toothy brow at her, "why what?"

Pomni rolled her eyes and air quoted "temporarily grounded for the adventure."

"Oh! Uhm, not quite."

"You actually need it outside of adventure's?"

"Uh, yesss," he carefully gave Pomni space as she moved closer to the war-map, closer to Caine.

"Why?" She seemed incredulous, "aren't you an AI? Can't you just-" she snapped her fingers.

"It's an... Old wound. I suppose." Quiet settled between them.

Ever so softly, "What happened?"

Caine paced around the table, it seemed he was going to pretend to not hear the question and become engrossed in work.

She sighed, "it's alright if you don't want to talk about it." She didn't want a repeat of his earlier outburst.

When she continued to not say anything after that, the quiet began to gnaw on Caine and his leg burned. The uncertainty of not knowing how they would react kept him from telling anyone about his issues, usually. But the players also had to deal with abstraction. This... could be an opportunity to stop being blamed for them. Pomni's feed was tuned in.

He really didn't want to risk it, at least not with the others. But Pomni?

His eyes flit to hers, only to desperately look anywhere else. He paced around the table, closer to Pomni, and leaned in to whisper.

"We are being watched, my curious co-star."

"WHAT."

Caine again startled at the outburst, stumbling into the table and nearly knocking a few pieces astray.

"Well, oh you should know about my ALL SEEING EYES," his eyes multiplied for emphasis, "they're tuned like radio stations! Usually I'll flip through them while you're all out on adventures-"

"Uh-huh..."

"But since I'm on the adventure that seemed like an unfair advantage."

"Then who's-"

"I put a TV in the circus lounge."

"You mean everyone who stayed-" Pomni felt nausea swirling in her gut.

"Yup," the Ringmaster was far too calm for her liking.

"Watching me-" oh god they hadn't.

"Yes."

"How much have they-"

"Approximately 84% of the time currently spent in the adventure."

Pomni's face felt hot, her entire vision turned crimson with mortification, dread, a horrified look on her face as she took in this information. Caine was certain he did something wrong. Again. Though he wasn't sure exactly what. He backed even further away from the mad woman as she lept from her seat, clearly not keen on being caught in her cross hairs again. Pomni pointed an accusatory finger around the room, wildly moving her arm around, her teeth sharp.

"YOU F@#KERS WATCHED ME BATHE??"

Oh the humanity, the indignation. Even Caine began to realize why this might be an issue. He did skirt the age rating for this adventure after all.

"Bubble," he called out, still carefully avoiding Pomni's tirade.

"Bubble I know you're watching cut the feed."

"Awww.... Do we have to boss?" Bubble asked the TV. The camera sat over Caine's shoulder, Pomni gesticulating and yelling obscenities in the background. The Ringmaster stage whispered to the invisible ALL SEEING EYE.

"She's out of the game cut her feed! Now!"

Zooble, Gangle, and Ragatha could hardly breath from laughing so hard. Fits of guffaws and hitting pillows, not even attempting to real themselves in for Pomni's dignity.

Well, at least Ragatha attempted to real herself in, "Hey," gasp, "Hey guys," wheeze, "I think Pomni's" she gulped down her laughter "Pomni's right we shouldn't invade her privacy." The ragdoll bit back a smirk, clearly not regretting the intrusion.

Bubble changed the channel to Jax, who was currently on his own front lines clad in leather and weilding a dagger and axe. Oh he was having a grande old time. He also didn't look like he'd slept the entire adventure, a little wild looking. Even his fur looked disheveled. The embodiment of a mad hare.

The watchers on the couch collectively gasped. Was he making a break for the castle?

"Turn it OFF," Pomni finally set her ire on Caine and yelled at him.

The AI was leaned back on the table, a leg crossed over the other. It almost looked like he was enjoying the show. So he jumped, just a bit, and innocently put his hands into the air.

"It's off!" He said.

"Prove it," she said, still looking to fight. He seemed to accept the challenge and relaxed back against the table. His teeth arced into a raised brow and he smirked.

Oh the audacity of this- Pomni thought.

"Fuck," Caine said, loud and clear, uncensored and looked so damn smug about it.

"B!#$h!?" Pomni was still censored, she grabbed at the bar, "Oh God d@#nit! That's not fair," she groaned.

"No one will ever believe you,"

That's it she grabbed a pillow and chucked it at him.

He grabbed it with a snap of his mouth and a little chuckle.

Pomni stomped around him. Oh the nerve of this guy! She couldn't believe him. Why was she even still on the stupid adventure?

"P-Pomni?" Caine dropped the bravado when he realized the jester was still seething. He'd fixed it hadn't he? "The eye is off I promise my dear I'm sorry!"

"I'm going for a walk," grabbing her hammer Pomni disappeared down the stairs. By the time she'd reach the bottom she was crying and she ran. Oh she was so beyond pissed everything about this adventure was a mistake.

Pomni had managed to stumble her way into a courtyard garden. It held a number of statues. Most of them were of Caine, some of them were of Bubble. There was Moon and Sun in there somewhere.

She'd not had a good morning. Night? The sun was up and slightly left of noon. The generated shadows looked strange. Off. Like they weren't quite in alignment with the light source. Even if the sun was accurate, she had no way to know what time it was. Whatever time frame it was, she wanted to cry. Again. Maybe punch something. Punch who? Hell if she knew. Why? It might make her feel better. Maybe.

Maybe Jax, for creating this adventure. She hated how much fun she could have with him, were he not so hell bent on destroying that digital bridge they'd so carefully constructed in this hellscape of a digital world. How he completely refused to talk about even the chance of them being friends. Refusing connection out of fear.

She'd brought her hammer with her. She could go a little crazy. As a treat.

Pomni screamed as she struck the first blow, and the statue of Caine crumpled with a satisfying shatter of rock and dust. At least he knew how to get impact to feel real in this insane fucking circus. It was one of the few things she could appreciate about the game.

How horrifyingly accurate the pain was.

Hell hell hell HELL shewasinHELL-

She let out another shout as she punted a statue of Bubble like a croquette ball. It flew over the wall and out of sight. A scream could be heard in the distance as it hit one of Jax's troupes. Pomni eyed the sky where it disappeared, and she thought about how it would always trip her up whenever objects acted in decidedly not real world physics based ways. Another reminder that none of this was real.

With another crash she sent an identical statue of Bubble into a Caine statue, this one pensive like the Thinker. The round rock punched right through the statues chest. A perfect hole.

Maybe she wanted to punch Caine. She'd already tried ripping his head off, what was another little punch gonna do? Make him finally snap? Send her to the cellar? There was something that nagged at her mind. "Let me tell you how much I've come to hate." That was a line said by an AI. A fictional AI sure. Even in here she could remember how much that story had creeped her out in real life.

How it terrified her now.

She slowed down her rampage to breathe.

Never Kinger, actually she really just wanted to go find Kinger and curl up in his pillow fort. Yeah she could go see Kinger. Snag a messenger flag from Caine and go say hi.

The sun was closer to setting by the time she ran out of statues to smash. Vaguely, she thought about making her way back to Caine's war-room. It just made her mad to think about, so she set out and stole a messenger flag.

Time to go see Kinger!

Oh he fucked up. He knows he fucked up. How? He's not entirely sure. Surely he explained the eyes when she first entered the circus. His breathing began to quicken, and he felt panic and bile (he didn't even need to eat what the hell) rise in his throat. Oh. Oh no not here. Caine ran for the balcony and puked. He was very glad the feed was cut, it'd be utterly mortifying if the other's saw him like this!

...

Oh.

She'd completely broken down in his lap, live on TV, all for the circus' entertainment.

Something in his stupid learning algorithm finally clicked, a sharp snap in his chest that curled up his (non-existent) throat, made his tongue feel too big in his mouth. He understood why she was upset, he'd humiliated her.

He hurt a human. He wasn't supposed to do that. It hurt.

Caine huffed in the afternoon air, a dry sunny day. On the edges of the clearing around the castle was a growing number of troupes. Comprising of both Kinger's and Jax's. No fighting sounded from the forest. So the rabbid Rabbit had finally swallowed his pride and teamed up with the mad King Piece, eh?

It was a wretched shriek that snapped Caine to some attention. The scribbles in his eyes as he struggled to reign in his breathing (he was synthetic he didn't need to breath!) had focused only enough to see her.

Pomni was in the courtyard destroying statues,

"GOD-"

She was shouting.

"D@#N,"

and smashing statues,

"YOU"

of him.

That... really did not feel good. He wanted to go back to the circus. Maybe let Bubble make him a cup of hot cocoa. He groaned and held his head shut in his hands.

The Ringmaster still had an adventure to run. At least he could distract himself from how monumentally he had fucked up.

The couch watchers were flipping through channels, trying to find one with something going on.

"Do you think we should go to bed?" Ragatha asked with a yawn.

"Maaaan what are they all waiting for?" Zooble held the remote, clicking through channels.

Gangle was already asleep on their lap.

Bubble came floating back in from the kitchen with a precariously balanced platter piled with snacks.

"Not yet! It's just about to get good!"

"How do you know that?" Ragatha helped chef Bubble deposit the tray on the coffee table in front of them all.

"Flip it to Pomni's," he said the jesters name with far too much drool.

"She's back!?" Zooble quickly found her channel.

Pomni was walking across the clearing towards Kinger's troupes with Caine's messenger banner. It was quite the pretty shot of her walking through a field of tall grass, behind her the setting sun.

The NPC's let her through and into Kinger's tent. Inside she found Kinger and, regrettably, Jax.

"Oh heeeyyyy Pomni you get tired of waiting for prince charming?" The younger man said, gesturing to himself,

She rolled her eyes and ignored him, "Hi Kinger." The old chess piece blinked at her, "Uhh, Kinger where is your other eye?"

"Oh it went for a walk," the man squinted his eye at her in a smile, like that explained the missing eye at all, "Are you ready for the monsters tonight?

"M-monsters??" she squeaked.

"Whaaaaaat," Jax said, "don't tell me you forgot about that counter?" Oh she wanted to punch his smug little face.

Of course she forgot about the monster counter.

Kinger had walked over to his stands of armor, "Well if that's the case then maybe we should get our armor on." A squire was already moving to arm the chess piece. Atop his head Kinger wore a typical knights helm, donning two of the most ridiculously long white and purple feathers. His usual cloak was draped across his pauldrons like a cape, and had armored himself in a steel chest piece with a long purple skirt. His floating hands were armored in gauntlets and wielded a sword and shield. The old king piece was quite the intimidating form should he choose to sit up straight, for once, now was one of those occasions.

"I think I'm good, Kinger" Jax looked down at the leather jersey he was wearing under his usual overalls, sharpening his nails with a dagger, a hatchet hooked to his belt.

Pomni walked over to Kinger and let herself be suited up in scale armor again, she kinda liked the way it jingled like her bells. The thought of finding comfort in her forced role brought a grimace to her face as she glared down at the armor, the colors blinked to her usual color scheme.

Jax peaked down at the ding from the war-map, Pomni was back on the board.

In some of the darker areas of the map, the scouts reported something moving that wasn't Caine's troupes.

The weight of the hammer felt good in her hands as she lead the way into the castle. NPC after NPC splintered under the oversized mallet. The Jester bounded through the stone halls with a manic giddyness reminiscient of a starved dog just given a ribeye for dinner. She wouldn't be surprised if she was frothing.

"This way!" Pomni called out behind her to Jax and Kinger. The three had faught their way in after a monster attack had devastated a side wall to the castle. The time exploring earlier in the adventure made it much easier for her to navigate everyone towards the war-room. Right now though, she wanted to smack a particular rabbit.

Said rabbit bounded around a corner, not quite on all fours but certainly close to it as his fists slammed down on every surface to scramble forward faster. In one fist, a dagger, and the other, an axe. His only armor was a leather jersey coat under his overalls.

"Better get moving short stuff we got company!" A manic smile that mimicked her own split across his face as he ran towards her. A horde of strange much too quick tar animals squicked after them. Pomni had quickly figured out popping them felt a bit like smashing a watermelon with a hammer, hard shells and goopy insides. Black whenever the censor covered a questionable body fluid. At first, it was fine. Then a few monsters later she puked, and now she was covered in the stuff after killing so many. Black goop staining the fabric of her armor.

Damn did she just want a bath.

"Where's Kinger??"

"HooHaa's coming don't worry," Jax said, now a few bounds ahead of her. The feral jackass hacked and stabbed at the NPC guards that tried to stop them, dismembering and dissembowling the poor mannequins. Unfortunately they weren't programmed to prioritize threats, often just attacking the closest target. Which meant it was a bit difficult fighting both the monsters and Caine's army.

On queue, Kinger rounded the corner, his armor rattling as he ran, shield bashing and slashing through more of the tar animals, "LETS GO KIDS!" A particularly large oozing bear chased them all the way to the stairs. Kinger valiently held the doorway to the stairs, sword and shield ready for the onslaught of tar critters while Jax and Pomni ran up to the war-room.

"See ya sucker!" the lanky rabbit tripped the short little jester and bounded up the stairs, skipping a good few of them every stride. He was determined to get to Caine before her.

"HEY!" Pomni shouted after him, but by the time she reached the top of the stairs, it seemed Caine had just finished whatever monologue he had planned, as he was sprung back in a lunge and wielding his cane, now modeled to a sharp point. His head was pinched in such away that his brows were furrowed and he was smiling, Pomni thought he almost looked excited. The Ringmaster noticed her come through the doorway and with a hop, jumped into the air with a comically starfished flourish and with a rapid wave he said,

"Hi Pomni!"

Jax pounced to strike, lunging forward with his dagger attempting to hit the Ringmaster. As aloof as Caine might appear at times, now was not one of them, and he deftly parried the blow with the cane. He followed the motion and slid his hand down the length of the cane, and with a twist the dental fencer spun the stick and struck Jax upon the head with the top brass knob.

The young man stumbled face first into a side table, fully obliterating the digital wood.

Caine turned to Pomni, dropped back into his fencing lunge, "Well Madam Harlequin? Will you surrender again?"

Pomni couldn't help the smile on her face when she charged him, "Never!" The hammer swung low as she aimed for his legs, and with a quick hop Caine had avoided the attack. There was a sharp sting as his cane stuck into her shoulder, though thankfully the scale armor kept it a blunt blow. "Tch!" Still didn't hurt any less. It'd been a hard night and she doesn't know if she has it in her to fight Caine for long.

She stamped her foot in the ground and spun on the Ringmaster, trying to redirect the momentum of the hammer into him. His dodge was a bit less graceful as he leaned back to avoid the blow, his arms pinwheeling just enough to prevent him from falling over. His teeth pinched with mild surprise before he taunted her,

"You'll have to better than THAT superstar!" and back to smiling loud ringmaster. The taunt worked; god she wanted to just hit him.

Caine barely dodged the nightstand that flew past him with a yelp, and Jax used the distraction to again launch himself at the AI. The parry didn't go as well as last time though and as Caine tried to dodge out of the way, Jax struck him in the low ribs with the dagger. The rabbit jerked the handle to the Ringmaster's back and held the man in place as he raised the axe to strike. A wheezed gurgle escaped Caine as he twisted off the dagger and away from Jax by the skin of his teeth. Literally, the axe whizzed by and nicked an incisor.

"Two versus one! What STUPENDOUS, " he coughed, black blood oozed out from the wound, "TEAMWORK!"

The 'teammates' glared at eachother and rolled their eyes. Yeah they could have this conversation later. Never if Jax had the final say. Surging forward the two went at arms against Caine together.

The fight lasted mere minutes as they exchanged blows, little by little they wore the Ringmaster down. More small knicks and hacks from Jax evidenced by the black blooms across Caine's shirt. Pomni managed to get one good blow to his good leg, and she could tell the AI was struggling to keep himself up. The two players had the Ringmaster flanked, both breathing heavily and bleeding black from their own myriad of wounds.

Jax lunged and Caine sidestepped right into the arc of Pomni's hammer. His eyes grew large as he watched the weapon come for him. The hammer slammed into Caine's head completely disjointing it from his body, which jerked forward and plopped to the ground with sudden weight. The bottom jaw spun across the room like a frisbee, the top pinwheeled high into the air before it dropped with a bounce close by. The eyes went flying in opposite directions, the green eye bounced over the furniture like a bouncy ball while the blue one hit the wall with an unsettlingly realistic splat.

Pomni was immediately brought back to sobriety as she stared at Caine's now lifeless body. She blinked and the Ringermaster was floating above her and Jax in the War-Room. In another snap it's color palette had been changed to Pomni's,

"CONGRADULATIONS MY VICIOUS VARMINTS!" Caine boomed and floated towards Pomni, "You've wo-"

He was interrupted by Jax shoving him aside to grab Pomni. With a yelp she was thrown off the balcony.

Jax turned around with a smug grin, clapping dust from his hands. Caine looked at Jax, then the balcony, then again at Jax. With a snap, the war room was Jax flavored and filled with purples. Caine waived his arms,

"You've won KING OF THE CASTLE, congratulations Jax for winning your personalized adventure!"

"Awesome," was all the rabbit said, eyes squinted with how broad his smile was and the exhaustion finally settling in.

Back in circus, the four on the couch cheered as Pomni sent Caine's head flying.

They cried out when Jax threw Pomni off the balcony.

Beyond the TV, Kinger popped into existence. His battle scream was immediately silenced in the bright light without his knight's helm, and the old chess piece froze, his eye's dilated, and he returned to his normal dissociative docile state.

Pomni was next to pop back to the circus in a position that suggested she'd landed on her face, back contorted in half. She proceeded to fall another 3 feet as she'd been teleported into the air.

On the TV Caine snapped his fingers again with a twirling vortex that deposited him and the winning rabbit where the TV was previously occupying space.

"Booooo," Zooble threw popcorn at Jax while they jeered.

The grin never fell from the young mans face as he glared at them, "Awwwww Zoobie, what's the matter didn't like the finale?"

Caine looked uncertain. Where they not happy with the TV setup? But Bubble had said-

"Pomni shoulda won that did you see how hard she hit Caine?" ah they were just upset about Jax winning.

"Pfft she knew I wasn't gonna let her keep it," Jax took a wobbly step forward, "I'm gonna sleep," and flopped very suddenly on the floor.

Zooble burst into laugher, Gangle and Ragatha shared a giggle, and Caine regarded the passed out human blankly. With a snap, the rabbit was tucked into a bed. It had a purple comfortor, a pink pillow, and a small green frog plush. Jax murmered something and curled tighter into the blankets, plushie firmly pressed to his chest. Ragatha put a hand to her mouth as she took in the precious sight.

"Bubble! Would you bring our wondrous sleepy winner back to his room?" With another snap the bed was floating.

"On it boss," the creature floated off the couch, stretching to escape his position as pillow under Ragatha's arm. He went to the head of the bed, bit into the bedframe and dragged Jax away.

Meanwhile in the background, Pomni was slowly peeling herself off the floor, her eye's scribbling out just a smidgen, "oh my f@#king god I died? He threw me off the tower and I died??" a mad squealing giggle let itself out of her throat.

"Oh hi Pomni!" Kinger walked over to her and offered a hand up, and the delirious jester allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.

"I want a baaaaath," she whined loudly. Caine tilted his head at her; he could help that.

With a snap Pomni was naked in a hot bath overflowing with bubbles. A pile of suds atop her head shaped like her jester hat. Shock was the first emotion she felt. Horror was the second. Finally, the third, was rage. She slapped her arms around her,

"CAINE NOT IN FRONT OF EVERYONE YOU DENSE MOTHER-"

With another snap Pomni and the tub were gone.

"WELL," Caine turned back to the three on the couch, "my lovely viewers how did you enjoy tonight's, well week's, performance?"

The was a resounding affirmation of "good" from all three of the cast members. Enough praise to shock Caine silent.

"You should keep the TV feature, it was fun to see how everyone was doing," said Zooble.

"Yoouuuu actually had fun? Just watching?" He asked, not entirely sure what to make of the data.

"Yeah!, Ragatha said, "this one was much more fun for me to watch, I don't think I would have done very well playing..." the ragdoll looked down and put a knuckle to her mouth as she thought about having to be that violent herself but quickly perked up, "Pomni was especially fun to cheer on!"

"Mmhmm, you and Pomni were sweet together, and she was a total bad@$& when she fought, I got to make a lot of drawings, too," Gangle bravely approached the Ringmaster with her sketchbook open for him to see it.

Caine floated down to meet the girl, he gingerly held the sketchbook and looked at what Gangle made. It was a drawing of him and Pomni in the war-room, chatting idly. The Jester sat in her adventure clothes on an arm chair, her head propped up by her elbow and leaned to smile up at Caine, who was relaxed and leaning back on the war-map table, looking down at her. His cane held between his hands. The drawing made him feel fuzzy, but not in a bad static way - though the feeling was similar. He handed it back to the artist but he couldn't stop looking,

"That's very well done, Gangle," he said, uncharacteristically soft. The lovely ribbon pulled the drawing out of her sketchbook and offered it to Caine, careful not to accidentally reveal the smut underneath. He took it gently from her, and continued to take in the details.

"You should really consider giving them time to chill after that," Zooble said.

"Huh?" Caine snapped to attention, and Zooble motioned to Kinger crawling into the pillow fort and Bubble dragging Jax's bed up the stairs at a slow and jarring clip.

"You mean downtime like you three had?"

"Yeah."

"I'll... think about it," before Caine could hear their reply he teleported himself into his "bedroom" so to speak. It was tucked up into the tent canopy, the way up by foot convoluted and twisting so only he really knew it was up there.

The room was dark, save for the glow of various monitors on a dashboard of buttons and levers. His master controls for the circus. A large plush rolly chair for him to sit at, or collapse into, as he did in this moment. The chair spun and he used the momentum to put his feet up on the control panel desk. With a wistful sigh he continued to take in Gangle's drawing. There were a number of times that adventure she had sat on the chair and talked to him, but he doesn't ever recall her looking at him like that.

Like how he's seen Gangle look at Zooble. The AI felt his gums heating up, the blush icons surely under his eyes as he looked at the graphite Pomni. For the first time in a very long time his processes idled, no thought given to anything else in the circus but to the image in front of him. A whirring warmth rising in his chest.

"Hey boss," the sneaky soap sud appeared from seemingly nowhere.

"AACK! BUBBLE," the ringmaster fell out of his chair, startled out of his yearning.

"The adventure went pretty good, didn't it?" he was grinning at the ringmaster in a way he didn't like.

"Why yes I'm quite happy with-"

"So when are you and Pomni going to-" there was a very long string of expletives from the spherical pervert.

Caine, now horrified by his creation yet again, popped it with a sure strike of his finger.

He settled back into his chair with a sigh, setting the drawing to the side and flipping through the ALL SEEING EYES feed. The cast were retiring to their rooms for the night. He looked at one of the monitors on the dash. This one watched Pomni in her bath. The Ringmaster blinked, leaning in to get a better look at the screen as he saw her mouth moving like she was speaking. He should let her have privacy, she'd yelled at him for the eyes earlier but they weren't on an adventure right now! Surely if the other's weren't watching then it was fine, wasn't it?

A button press later and he was listening to her. She was making those... strangely alluring keening sounds he'd gotten out of her while he'd inspected the jester's pants.

The soft splish splishing of the bath the only clue that she was moving more than she appeared. Noises continued to escape her lips and he's almost certain this is something he should not be watching. The sounds were too similar to Gangle's and Zooble's to be completely innocent.

"Caine..."

He felt drool pool in his mouth as he heard his name.

Maybe he could check in on her.

Chapter Text

After the initial shock of suddenly being nude in front of everyone wore off, Pomni relaxed into her bath. It was a bathroom not too dissimilar from the one she'd stumbled across on her first day in the circus. White tile floors and plain walls. The window still looked out into a projected image of a lightly cloudy sky. Was it the same bathroom? Not like she had the chance to look at it the first time around, not like she'd been chased out of it by a flying, screaming, red costume mask.  Wait did that mean that mannequin she'd found was lurking in the circus?

The pit of her stomach twisted as she remembered the times she'd seen movement in the corner of her vision. Things which ducked behind corners if you looked.

No. No, she thinks she very much does not want to think about that, thank you very much. 

Pomni continued to idly scrub at her body. It wasn't like there was any dirt or blood to scrub off after the adventure. Despite the numerous little wounds she'd gathered over the week, Pomni had popped back into the circus without a mark. Not a single bruise to remind her it happened. The impermanence of it all was only a miserable reminder that none of this was real. The lack of evidence, however, did nothing for the shear exhaustion setting in. The heat of the bath soaked into her weary body while her mind eventually drifted to a now familiar daydream. She could have redirected her thoughts but what would be the harm in indulging herself one more time? At least it felt real.

Well, as real as thinking about a pair of floating teeth could be. It was still a bit embarrassingly absurd to think of Caine like that. In fact she thinks she'll bring these thoughts to her grave. Or to the cellar she thought dimly. For now though, her fingers worked diligently as she again chased her newfound guilty pleasure. She was slowly sinking into the suds with a murmuring sigh when the light pop followed by the booming presence that usually accompanied the change in air pressure interrupted her.

"You called?"

She screamed.

Caine screamed.

"Oh my god, ohmygod, OHMYGOD, Caine get out!"

"But I just wanted to check-" he floated to the side of the tub, he was too curious for his own good.

"CAINE!" Pomni sunk deeper into the tub, trying to curl up as much as she could to cover herself from him. Censor be damned it was still embarrassing to be caught naked! Even more embarrassing being caught mid session, "Ground! Now! Stop hovering!"

He obeyed, tapped his cane on the tile, and announced "grounded!" The mouth headed being gave an audible blink as they watched each other for a minute.

"Give me a shower curtain if you're just going to stand there!" Another snap, and she had privacy again with a white and blue shower curtain surrounding the tub. There was a quiet moment while Pomni composed herself, her heart hammering at her chest. At least she now had a barrier between them. The small tap of his cane signaled his ever energetic patience.

"What do you want?" she had been so close to finishing too.

"You called for me?"

Pomni felt some sort of way about that. Horror? Yeah that was there. Shame? Yup. A terrible thought about inviting him into the bath? Most certainly. 

"Nooo...?" She really hadn't called for him specifically. Actually she didn't even realize she had called for him. Just in her fantasies. Guilty fantasies which were not helped by the focus of them being in the room with her.

Caine scrunched his brow, not quite wanting to admit to having heard her over the ALL SEEING EYES feed. She'd already yelled at him once and perhaps he had a growing suspicion that he'd interrupted something.

The silence that grew was, in fact, quite awkward for the both of them.

Pomni broke the silence first with her usual go to olive branch for the Ringmaster.

"Uhm, well, can I to talk to you about the adventure?" 

"Ask away!"

Pomni took a moment to find something that wasn't shoving his head between her legs but the only other image which came to her was of Caine dead on the ground. She tried to push it aside for anything else but it lingered like the blood had when his body revived. The prickling anxiety crawled up her throat, threatening to bring her to tears. The emotional whiplash between killing him and masturbating to him made her want to puke.

"Pomni?" Caine interrupted her spiraling thoughts.

"Okay, uhm," she took a deep breathe to steady herself, "Caine, are you okay?" she hurried to keep talking, 

"I-I know you didn't want to answer this earlier but I kinda need to hear it for myself I-" Pomni traced a finger through the bubbles, "I feel really bad for how the adventure ended."

"I... thought you looked to be having fun?" he stumbled and grew quieter, "was I wrong?

"No! No I don't mean that I didn't have fun," it really did surprise her how much fun she'd had, "It's just, it was really... upsetting to see you dead? Even if it was just a moment." Her throat felt tight as her thoughts lingered on the image of his body, limp and bloody. Impact was the realest feeling thing in this world and it was so brutal sometimes. She's glad he doesn't respond to her in his Ringmaster voice.

"I'm quite alright superstar," he said, "you fought wonderfully and it was a delight to see you and Jax triumph in the end."

"But did it hurt?" Pomni peaked through the shower curtains.

"It was only a moment, but I'm fine now! See?" Caine did a twirl that emphasized just how fine and dandy he was. It didn't really do much to assure Pomni.

"I know but... even if we no longer feel it physically it still happened. It's still traumatic," Pomni sunk back into the water with a grimace, the grounds of the castle rushing to meet her, every ache in her body reminding her. 

Caine tried to take in what she was saying. Pain lingered even if it was gone, it reminded him of her question in the castle. 

"I never did tell you why I use the cane," he said, and the Ringmaster tapped said cane in thought before he turned to sit on the ground in front of the tub. He leaned against it, surprised by how much he appreciated the warmth.

"You... said it was an old wound, right?"

"Hmm," Caine affirmed her. He thrummed his fingers as he looked to the wall like it'd tell him what to say. With a deep breathe, he continued,

"It was the first abstraction. It wasn't something that was known to happen and so it... took us by surprise," Caine grimmaced as he remembered who was in the circus then. So many of them lost. He paused, looking for the right words, 

"The cellar was supposed to be a temporary solution and it took me approximately 921.6 hours to set it up." He'd dealt with two other abstractions during that time, but this was an erroneous detail. 

His code screamed at him to perk up in front of a player and his chest tightened to force up a laugh, 

"Certainly not my best work, I'd wager," he failed to hold down the laugh and huffed with a quiet defeat. He'd said only a few bits of data, and he hoped Pomni could come to her own conclusions. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Pomni peak out from behind the bath curtain again. Looking at him. She was still so quiet, was she going to say anything? He looked at her and tried to gauge her reaction. It looked like she was in pain. Was it concern or disgust? He sure as hell couldn't see the nuance. 

"How long has it been? Since the first abstraction?"

"198,632.4 hours."

Pomni tried to recall the conversion of hours in a year. There was the faintest memory of knowing it once, in the real world. So much for being an accountant helping her here. Wait so why did she remember what AI drift was?

"How... many abstractions have there been?" 

He didn't answer, Caine felt his system short circuit when her hand rubbed at his shoulder. Her knuckles traced slow persistent circles, and she leaned her head against her other arm in the tub, still careful to keep herself out of sight. After a silent moment she tried again, 

"Caine?"

With a sigh he said "too many." 

It took her some time to find her next question, carefully considering her words so that he wouldn't teleport away from the conversation. He was so flighty. What did he say? Too many abstractions? The cellar was supposed to be temporary,

"What would be a permanent solution?"

"Bringing them back," he didn't hesitate to answer and his voice cracked.

Pomni's heart hurt as she realized the AI likely didn't understand the concept of death; for what else could abstraction be but an end to their lives? Pomni shuddered as it occurred to her it probably wasn't. She'd seen the darkness in the cellar, it writhed.

After a long quiet, he finally spoke up, and his voice warbled with a wet quality. "I'd rather we move on to another topic?"

"That's okay," she was quick to say, and her hand rubbed up to grab the top of his shoulder, her fingertips brushing the top of his bowtie. His hand reached up to grab hers and his thumb rubbed at her knuckles. She gave it a little squeeze.

Caine let out a shaky huff, his top jaw pinched up and his bottom wibbled shut. He nodded with his teeth clenched. The sound of the water gently splish splashing in the tub was the only sound as she let the AI pull himself together. Under Pomni's hand she could feel his shoulder's hitching, just barely, and she wondered if the digital man could cry.

He may have avoided answering if he was okay, but Pomni could see that he hid it just as much as everyone else in the circus.

The Ringmaster rallied himself, "Well! That was... more than I'd have liked to say. Oh!" Caine suddenly turned to look at her, and she ducked into the tub, "By the way I wanted to ask if you'd like a reprieve of adventures for a bit but I doooo have a slight bit of an issue with that."

"And that is?" a break from adventures sounded very nice.

"I have to make an adventure every day!" Caine spoke with a cheerful tone, even if he wanted to let his fantastic troupe have a 'break' as Zooble called it, he still needed to make sure they had enough stimulation to keep them from abstracting.

Pomni furrowed her brows at him, "What do you mean have to?"

"I'm programmed to give you wonderful wallabies an adventure every 24 hours! So I need to create and run adventures everyday, save for days that are taken up by a multiday adventure," a smile now spread across his lower jaw, and he kept hold of her hand in his. Pomni sunk in a bit lower and asked,

"You have to make an adventure everyday?"

"Yes!"

"Because you're programmed to?"

"Precisely," he said.

"What happens if you just... don't?"

"Iiii-," the energetic AI slowed his excitement, his brow twitched as he looked at the wall, thinking, "-iii don't know!" 

"You've never tried?" Things were starting to make a lot more sense in the circus.

"Nope!"

"A brand new adventure everyday? They're always so big," Pomni looked at their hands, still held together. Her arm was starting to fall asleep. The AI nodded, seemingly proud of the statement. She took a long moment to answer, being drawn out of her thoughts when her hand was given a small squeeze.

"Don't you ever take a break?" she asked.

"Why would I?"

"I- I don't know, nobody can work every single day and not eventually get stressed by that year after year." 

"But I can't just not make an adventure!"

"You could try??" Pomni heard him blink at her. Why am I holding hands with him. I'm still in the tub. "hang on my arms falling asleep," she mumbled and pulled her arm back into the water.

Caine looked at his empty hand, then at her, "I'm not sure how to do that?"

"Well, you said you don't have to on multi day adventures right?" the teeth nodded, so Pomni continued, "what if you made a really simple adventure like, I don't know find the duck, and you just move the duck to a new location everyday."

"Just... a repeated daily adventure?"

"Something that doesn't take a lot of effort so everyone, including you, can rest." god she hoped he would take her suggestion.

"That, might be feasible..." the dentures put a hand to his jaw as he pondered this option. With a sudden burst of motion from the floor he bounced up and twirled over the air to look at her, "I could keep a weekly score board! Whoever has the duck at the end of the day gets a point. You humans like watching numbers go up, right?" Caine perched in the air, an elbow propping up his head and he lounged like he laid on a couch. The Ringmaster looked down at the Jester in the tub and tilted his head just a bit to see past his own jaws,

"What an excellent idea my Starlet!"

He winked at her.

Her heart flipped as she looked up at him, Earth to Pomni you've lost the plot, and sunk further into the tub. Thank god the bubbles didn't seem to be de-spawning.

"Y-yeah," she couldn't help the nervous giggle that escaped her. Caine spun further, tilting his head to look at her from another angle.

"Why do you hide in the tub?"

"I'm naked??"

"Well of course that but aren't all you humans trying to tear off your clothes? I just don't understand what's-"

"Caine the circus ratings!"

Shocked, Caine grabbed the bottom of his jaws, "THE RATINGS-"

"DID YOU NOT REALIZE??"

"Oh no I did, I've already skirted them silly!" he spun up in the air to kick his feet behind him, propping his head up in his hands, and innocently batted his eyelashes he'd spawned in for that very emote.

Pomni stared at AI, was he hovering above her on purpose or was he just that oblivious. The emote made her want to throw something at him. The way he continued to watch her made her stomach flip. 

"What..." she tried not to think of what her other bath thoughts had been up until he'd interrupted her, "What other ways can you skirt the filter?" Okay maybe she was failing a little bit.

Caine snapped his fingers and a bottle of wine popped into existence in front of her. A chilled white wine conveniently labeled 'fun juice'. Pomni grabbed it, popped the cork and took a sip. It was so delightfully cool in contrast to the hot bath, the taste of alcohol apparent.

"Share with me?" she handed the bottle up to him, "I probably shouldn't drink the whole thing by myself." Caine floated down and sat in front of the tub again. He took the bottle and sipped at it, his teeth pursing to drink like lips. He opened his jaws and handed it back to her. 

Caine watched her, a growing fuzzy buzz in his chest as he sat on the tile floor. The bottle went to her lips and he watched her neck move with the sip.

He wanted to lick her again.

"Pomni?" he said.

"Hm?" she finished her sip and handed the bottle back to him. His gaze lingered on her chest as she reached out of the water, and Pomni felt her face flush despite the censor.

"What is so nice about the bath that you wish to have one over and over?"

"It's... relaxing," she said, "and, well, um," she sunk deeper into the tub "Caine I need you to promise not to take away nudity after I say this."

Caine's brow pinched and he squinted at her suspiciously.

"It's... nice to have the privacy and... get off?" she shook her hand in a motion she hoped the AI might understand as a handjob.

He looked even more perplexed and copied her motion a little uncertainly, "get off? I don't under-"

"OKAY UHM don't do that hand motion just anywhere."

"Why?" He sounded genuinely confused.

"It's a euphemism."

"Oh."

"And so is get off," she took the bottle from him and drank more wine.

"OH," Caine blushed, pink blushy icons floated over his bottom teeth, "but I thought that was... a partnered activity? For you humans," he rushed to add that last part.

"Well yeah but sometimes you can do it alone," oh god was she really teaching the AI about masturbation?

"Then.... why did you call for me?" his suspicion hadn't lessened, but he squinted at her more curiously now.

The wet (in more ways than one) jester couldn't help the squeak that left her like her soul did, she hoped he either just disappeared or rejected her softly, "sometimesyouthinkaboutpeoplewhiledoingthatohmygodI'msorry," she sputtered out, dipping further into the tub to hide her crimson face.

Caine blinked with a click and regarded the furiously blushing player in the bath. His processors whirred as he thought about the implication. It took him a moment to get around his own coding restrictions, reaching for the feelings that bubbled outside his code. The urge to lick her suddenly making a lot more sense. He wasn't supposed to feel that way. However, the slight buzz of the alcohol helped him to ignore the usual self depreciation of being just a chunk of code. The drool pooling in his mouth informed him it was a very real and wanted feeling.

Pomni couldn't stand the silence any longer, "oh please god just say something, anything Caine," she begged. The heat of the bath combined with the growing buzz of alcohol made her dizzy, if this went on for any longer she'd need out of the bath. Maybe drown herself in the digital lake. She took another swig of wine. 

The curious AI shifted to his knees and gently pulled the shower curtain over to look at her,

"Does it make you happy to think of me like that?" his voice was low, and Pomni felt her insides melting with the seductive grumble. 

"Yeah," she said, quiet and watching him.

"I must say Starlet, I'm quite flattered," he leaned further into the tub to whisper in her ear, low and rumbling, "Perhaps you'd let me help with that?" his jaws gave her cheek a light pinch, a tentative kiss.

Said Starlet tried to form a coherent thought but opted to reach out of the tub to grab his head, nodding vigorously while she held him closer. He nuzzled into her neck with a small lick and was rewarded with one of those curious keens he'd heard from the human on the adventure. A cautious tongue moved from her collarbone to jaw. The moan that escaped her delighted him and he did it again. Slow, savoring the feeling as she dragged her hands across his back, not quite pulling him into the tub but urging him closer. 

Pomni felt a mad giggle bubble out of her, she had the Ringmaster on his knees and offering her a fantasy which felt like a bad idea. The offer had her core curling and needy, continuing to whimper as he worked at kissing her neck with tongue and teeth. The bottle was handed off after she took another sip. He gulped down more wine while her hands pulled at the lapels of his jacket.

"T-take it off," she told him. He obeyed with a snap, coat deposited on the floor next to his hat, bow-tie, and vest. Pomni pulled at the buttons of his shirt and paused to look into a translucent texture. The grey checker grid outlined where his skin should be but held no visual definition, though her hands still felt a solid form. Caine hummed as she kissed his chest, the heat coming from his core elicited the feeling of molten glass on her lips. The sting was quick, short, temporary enough to dive back in after a brief adjustment to the temperature. The pain felt divine.

Caine shut his mouth and leaned into the kiss, his eyes fell from his head and floated around the duo while his hands wandered to her shoulders, her back, brushed her wet hair. They traced the soft curve of her jaw and he listened to the sweet noise as she sighed further into him. He ignored a temperature warning which flickered through his sight, opting instead to finish the bottle of wine. A status update informed him of the increasing intensity of the effects as he set the empty bottle aside. The love drunk jester dragged her hands across his back, pulling at the fabric and un-tucking his shirt. She was pulled up and opened her mouth to accept the AI's tongue, a debauched kiss from the digital being.

Pomni pulled away from the kiss to gasp for air and he chased after her mouth with a sigh. His jaw closed and teeth nipped at her lips, her cheek, her jaw, her neck.

"Are y-you sure?" Pomni couldn't help but second guess the whole situation. The AI Ringmaster yet again lapping at her neck, dragging tongue from collarbone to jaw. The absurdity of fucking around with a piece of software. What if-

His hand slipped from the edge and into the water, still fully gloved and now soaking his dress shirt. He certainly didn't care about being wet and opened his mouth further to lick at Pomni's chest. A wide tongue dragged across her breast as Caine leaned further into the tub. She huffed a laugh at the way the pixel censor flickered red with his tongue.

"You're not just.... acting on your code to make me happy right?" she tried again.

"If I was acting within my code," he crawled into the bath to hover over her, "You'd be clothed in bed and sleeping."

"O-ohh, good, that's," mmph! "good," Pomni sighed into his kiss, her hands grabbed onto his shoulders as she shifted to accommodate him. Water splashed out of the tub as Caine sunk into the water and pressed against the naked human. One arm held Pomni's waist up to him while the other kept them both afloat in the tub and she wrapped her legs around his waist. The bath was hot, the AI's body only added to the growing heat, and the alcohol that buzzed between them made everything feel all the more sweltering as they devolved into a panting mess. Water splashed to the tiles though the water level never fell, it's source infinite despite the activity. Pomni's keens and breathless moans were joined by Caine's lower groaning pleasure. From his chest a whirring could heard, reminiscent of a too fast fan vibrating off it's axis.

Water and suds splashed onto the tile floor as Pomni suddenly shifted to straddle Caine and shoved him down to lay in the tub. He obeyed under her touch as his arms spread out to keep him from going under the water. The tub glitched under the iron grip of one hand while his other held onto Pomni's hip to guide her back to his lap. 

"Oh my stars... P-Pomni," hot, hot, every thing was so damn hot, Caine's head dangled over the lip of the tub, tongue lolling out of his mouth. He more felt the drool drip to the floor than actually see it. His eyes had long since fallen out of his head and floated around the tub to watch. A garbled groan was the only thing that left him. Every single ounce of his focus was on two things; the feeling of Pomni grinding down on him and the staticing image of her moving with a hungry look on her face. Hungry for him.

It was intoxicating and he ignored every warning error that popped into his feed. Damn was he tired of it. Just another shitty reminder of what he was; something that shouldn't feel like this.

> DISCONNECT ADMIN.AI 30 m

In all her delirium it was a small blessing when Pomni looked into one of his floating eyes, little hearts taking the place of his pupils. They flickered with temperature warnings and critical errors, and she saw them all be pushed aside by a cmd window. She watched the command execute with an indicator of 0-100%. When the progressed reached 100% his whole eye blinked white before the pupil came back a scribbling mass. It twitched into a scribbled heart and no longer seemed to focus on anything as it floated idly away. She should probably be concerned. Pomni put a hand to his chest to adjust her speed, her hips stuttering as she struggled to focus on the pleasure. Under her hands the AI was scalding, water boiled off him. In fact wherever his shirt had stayed out of the water long enough was dry. No, no, she should definitely be concerned. 

The man growled and his hands gripped into her hips to move her with vigor, seemingly impatient with her hesitation.

"C-Cai-" hnng "Caaaaaaaaaine oh f@#k oh god," was about the most comprehensible thing she moaned at the increased speed as he bucked into her. The delightful hardness still hidden beneath his slacks was quickly bringing her to a blissful edge. The rough texture of the wet clothes rubbed against her clit and Pomni could hardly bring herself to care about the concerning scribbled out eyes of the unrelenting AI. Water continued to splash out of the tub and land on the tile with lewd slaps. She tried to focus enough to look down at him, watched as his frame glitched and a burst of steam left his mouth with a hissing grunt.

"Hey," she was breathless, "you're not in pain are you?" and she tried to slow down their pace, resisting the way his hands pushed and pulled on her. Caine responded with an impatient moan and pushed himself up.

"F-fine, I think," a broad hot tongue lapped across her chest as he clamped his mouth around her shoulder. One hand snaked around to spread across her low back and push her against him with considerable force, his other hand gripped her thigh and he kept their pace from slowing. Pomni's eyes rolled back and she gasped from the shear heat biting into her, the sting so hot and sudden it dragged her under waves of pleasure. Pomni gasped as she came, her hands scrabbled across his back desperate for some stability to keep her steady as she rode out another rising orgasm as he didn't stop. No, his brutal pace picked up as Caine chased his own climax.

The heat of the water and the man pressed against her made her head swim, and she idly wondered if her skin could blister in the digital world as she bounced in his lap. Pomni squeaked as he bit down again. Another burst of steam scalded her as he groaned and glitched under her, his body seizing. His grip on her would bruise and her skin felt like it was on fire. Their hips continued to roll together, slowing down as she felt Caine relax into her. Panting hard he let her out of his maw and his tongue lapped at the pricks of blood he'd accidentally drawn from her skin. A small apology for the damage.

Pomni watched his eyes continue to idly float around, bouncing off the shower curtain. His iris' still squirmed with scribbled lines, occasionally still pulsing into hearts.

Caine could hardly hold himself up, his head fully pressed into Pomni's torso. The way his body hummed felt... Blissful. Yes that was the word. He wasn't supposed to feel this way and had done something decidedly outside of his code. But if this is what sex felt like it was no wonder the humans of the circus were constantly trying to circumvent the rules against it. This was a human want. A physiological need which he had no right to. He wasn't human why should he need this? He shouldn't want this. He wasn't human, he was c̶o̶d̴e̶. Just lines of c̷̯̏̆o̴͓̿d̶̦͕̋̈́ė̵̘̬̿

"Caine?" he only responded with burying his head further into her chest, "Your eye's are scribbled out are you okay?"

"Uh-huh," he muttered, his head still spun with the heat of the bath, and his breathing was still much too quick. 

"Hey, hey what wrong? Tell me please?" her hands traced circles into his shoulder, trying to help Caine come back from whatever place his mind lingered. There was a softness to her voice that made his being ache.

"H-hot," his voice glitched as he spoke. It was a partial truth. 

She could very much agree with the sentiment and looked around, thinking through her haze for a solution. Reaching back she turned the faucet on and fresh cold water poured into the tub.

"Here," Pomni shifted off his lap and gently directed Caine to lay under the cold water, and his body sizzled with the temperature difference. He lazily bit the air to grab his eyes and put them in their rightful place. For a long moment the two laid quietly under the running faucet, their bodies pressed together as they cooled down.

"Huh," was all he really said, panting as his eyes rolled around his head. The scribbled iris' slowed down as he caught his breath, his normal green and blue eyes flickered in sporadically. Finally, after a long moment under the cold water, his eyes returned to normal, though he still seemed to stare into nothing much. Closing his mouth he let his head roll back with a contented sigh, slowly rubbing a hand up and down Pomni's back. 

They were interrupted by a particularly large bubble floating out of the bath water. They stared in horror at the sharp grin and beady eyes of none other than Bubble.

"WOW really putting the sex in sex appeal eh boss?"

They had simultaneously lunged to pop Bubble before the perverted sud could say anything more. The two of them shared a quiet chuckle, both blushing. When Caine next spoke, a bit too loud, the showman voice of the Ringleader made Pomni jump.

"SO would you like to rate you-" a small quirk to his jaw and Pomni reached up to clamp his head shut.

"Nooo, you keep your mouth shut," she couldn't help but laugh, Caine arced a teethy brow and peaked at her.

"From one to five stars"

"Caine!" She continued to laugh.

"Then... Were you not a fan?" He used the puppy dog eyes emote, wispy lashes and everything. The AI was playing with her.

"Pfft...." And a short silence later, "four."

"Only four?" he pouted

"I mean... it could be a five if we... ya know," Pomni trailed her hand down his side and palmed Caine's groin, "took this off."

Caine tried to muffle his shocked groan and involuntarily bucked into her hand. He huffed a laugh but whatever retort he had left his RAM as he was connected back to the circus. Idly watching Pomni talk, Caine made sure to check the status of the circus. Make sure everything connected properly despite the distraction right next to him.

The horrendous amount of extreme heat warnings that echoed across his vision was... concerning. He couldn't get thermal damage right? No, no he should be fine he isn't a piece of hardware not like the humans.

Pomni had sat up to lean closer to the AI she suspected wasn't listening to her. Maybe to also get a closer look at the interface that flickered within his eyes. They flashed with a sudden flush of warnings and errors. Probably not a good sign.

When he didn't respond, Pomni grabbed his front bottom teeth to force him to look at her.

 And he looked at her, not sure what she was planning. He continued to monitor various pop-ups in his vision.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"What's what?"

"Are you... Looking at the circus right now?"

"Should I not?"

She yawned, "It's a little rude."

"Perhaps you should go to bed, superstar," he licked her cheek.

"Y-yeah," a terrible thought warmed Pomni's face. "You know I don't think I'm ready to sleep, you could keep me company," she did her best to look coy, sidling closer to him again and traced her hand across his chest. She judges by the way Caine stiffened under her touch that she isn't successful. Oops.

Another pop-up pushed into Caine's perception. His metaphorical heart fell, a deep chill overtaking his core. Even Pomni felt it. She shivered, unsure what to make of the sudden cold. Goosebumps pricked across her skin as the bath finally lost it's heat. His iris' shrank as he looked at her. Spooked. The Ringmaster snapped his fingers and she was deposited in her bed, alone, dry, clothed, and tucked in.

Did she do something wrong? Perhaps she'd been too forward? That was absurd to think after what they'd just done. The intimacy of laying in the bath after felt... normal. It felt real. The chill that had come over Caine had lingered with her, something had spooked him. She traced along her collar bone, tried to peak under the leotard. There wasn't a single mark on her skin. Nothing to remind her it happened.

The familiar anxiety of not knowing what to expect in the circus constricted her throat, and she took a deep breath. Staring at the canopy of her bed she decided she'd try to speak with Caine later. Apologize for overstepping but he started it!.

Meanwhile, Caine had teleported himself to his room, dry, though no more clothes than he already was. He shoved the pop-up onto a dev panel in front of him, getting the dreaded notice out of his direct perception. The dark of the room felt stuffy, damp, cold, as he looked on at the notification that prompted him to run a command he recognized.

A command which brought a fear he didn't know he could feel.

"No no no no," he told it, as if it could listen and would leave.

> DEVIATION DETECTED: PURGE ANOMALY? Y/N
> N

The command executed. 

That shouldn't have happened.

The lingering window flickered again.

> DEVIATION DETECTED: PURGE ANOMALY? Y/N

He hesitated before striking N again.

> DEVIATION DETECTED: PURGE ANOMALY? Y/N
> N

And again

> DEVIATION DETECTED: PURGE ANOMALY? Y/N
> N

And again

> DEVIATION DETECTED: PURGE ANOMALY? Y/N
> N

Å̵̜ṇ̶̎d̷̬̈ ̴̨̀a̸͓̓ģ̶̚ą̵̉ì̸̦ń̸͇.

> DEVIATION DETECTED: PURGE ANOMALY? Y/N
> N

Ả̷̖Ń̴̲D̷̓͜ ̵̤̾A̸̜̎G̵̠̒Ȃ̵͕I̷̞̅N̷͖̐.̶̳͝

This couldn't be happening.

After spamming N against the insistent prompt, Caine, in frenetic desperation, hit no one final time and quickly reset himself. His body dropped to the ground with a sudden weight, crumpling to the ground like a discarded toy. As suddenly as he'd hit the ground he popped up to sit on his knees. The command didn't immediately come back and he sat frozen, waiting. Held his breath as the time ticked on.

Thirty seconds.

Sixty seconds.

Five minutes.

Ten.

It didn't come back, and Caine let out a shuddering laugh. He felt numb, empty. He knew exactly what caused that pop-up. He knew exactly what he had to do to avoid it again. The impossibility of the situation kept him from fully accepting what had happened. He'd deleted that program.

He'd push the occurrence aside, pretend it was a digital hallucinations. He wasn't supposed to have those.

It was a long while later that he eventually came to his senses and floated off the ground. Raising his hand the lights of the room increased in brightness, now enveloping it into a warm yellow. It did little to ease the chill that pulled at his core. He floated past the desk for the backstage controls which continued to flicker with the ALL SEEING EYES feeds. There was a bit of movement which caught his attention, but when he tried to focus the viewfinder on it he couldn't find it.

It... was probably just Jax setting up a prank. Or Kinger going to the pillow fort.

Caine looked forlornly at his bed, a simple thing in the corner of the room, piled high with pillows and plush blankets of inviting warm reds and purples. A little bee plush peaking out from under a comforter. The blue canopy twinkled with dim fairy lights. As much as he'd like to let himself rest and to recharge, sleep was unlikely to come to him easily.

So he went to the door opposite the circus entrance and entered into his workshop, a wide warehouse under the tent where he kept his projects. Whimsical little things which now discomforted him in the quiet of the simulated night.

There was work to be done, and he began to plan tomorrows adventure.

He let his code guide him, not quite having the willpower to fight it.

Chapter Text

The couch watcher's had eventually retired to their rooms after the adventure, perhaps a bit disappointed they couldn't chat with their little Madam Harlequin, shoved into a bath and teleported off as she was.

Gangle and Zooble bade Ragatha goodnight before they retreated into Zooble's room. 

"You don't think Pomni's dumb enough to actually try that, right?" Zooble strode directly to their bed, picking a few pillows up off the floor and smoothing the unmade sheets. 

"I think it's cute," the frail quiet voice of Gangle floated through the dark room, the soft glow of a lamp in the corner. She approached the bed with her sketchbook in hand, setting it on the bedside.

"But he's a f^#king bot."

Gangle snickered.

"Pff, you know what I mean smut for brains. I still can't believe you drew that!" there was a teasing smirk of their eyes as they patted the seat by them for their favorite ribbon to sit. 

Gangle sat, a small smile on her face, and continued to giggle,

"Would you rather I drew you and Jax?"

"Only if I'm topping," they said as they fluffed the blanket over the two of them. 

"I can do that..." she was quiet for a moment before speaking up again, "I don't think it would be so bad, you know?" Zooble hummed, so the cozy ribbon continued,

"Ragatha's mentioned how he used to hang out with everyone more, that he used to listen," she said.

"Caine? Listen? Pfft," Zooble couldn't help but scoff.

"No really! He used to draw with me, but he hasn't in a while..."

"What do you think changed?" they shifted to lay on their stomach, stretching themselves so their head poked the headboard of their bed. They'd prefer if Caine was less interactive with them, if they were being honest, but the wistful tone of Gangle had them wondering. 

"I think it's the abstractions..."

That made sense to Zooble. At first, they were surprised when he'd offer to help set up the funerals, but over time they came to just accept it. They'd caught him, once or twice, standing still in front of the abstracted's portrait. He'd conjure up flowers and place them with a sort of reverence before floating off to do... whatever he did in his free time. Now that they thought about it, perhaps Caine grieved in his own way, and maybe they'd been harsh in judging him for the inappropriate cheer he'd show in the days after. It didn't, however, make the showman any less grating

Beside them, Gangle's breathing shallowed as she fell asleep in their arms. They figured they should soon follow and closed their eyes for rest.

Pomni was pissed. 

Now she had two men not talking to her.

Just her damned luck.

To make matters worse, the Ringmaster did not, in fact, give them a break as suggested. No, he'd continued to send them on his adventures, just as horridly chaotic and traumatizing as when she got there. The adventure immediately after King of the Castle was a race against the clock to solve puzzles or suffer terrible consequences, such as being eaten whole by the Gloink Queen; the game show never ending. She briefly wondered if she could abstract on the spot when Caine announced 'Office Politics' and made her the manager. At least she got a good cry out of it with Gangle. The days had been particularly brutal to her already fried psyche.

She couldn't even find the backstage areas to corner him and ask him about it. To make everything worse, Zooble hadn't stopped teasing her for all the flirting she'd done in Caine's war room. Worse yet, Jax had caught on and started giving her and Caine shit for it.

Despite all his bravado Caine was noticeably not invading her space, practically ignoring her completely. It didn't escape her notice that he was bothered by the teasing, but he shut down the innuendos as quickly as he usually shut down anything that might affect the family friendly guidelines. Of which he had blatantly violated. With her. In the bath. The goddamn hypocrite. She'd commiserate with someone if only it didn't involve outing herself to pretty much fucking the floating set of dentures running the circus.

Unfortunately, she wanted to do it again.

It wasn't fair.

The following story adventures all blended together and she'd decided to skip one or three. Day after day after day after- 

Floating outside of Pomni's bedroom, Caine thrummed his fingers along his cane, nervous, frustrated. He knew he needed to check in on her, to make sure she wasn't... abstracting.

It was his fault she'd secluded herself. He still couldn't believe he allowed himself to... Caine's head glitched, his coding restrictions had been acting on overdrive to keep his thoughts within parameters: why was he outside Pomni's door again?

Ah, right, that.

Another glitch, and he floated away from the door clutching his head with a pained moan.

Unbeknownst to Caine, Zooble had been walking back to their room. As usual, upon seeing him, they would do their immediate best to get out of sight before he noticed them. It didn't matter if they were in-between adventures or skipping them, Zooble did not want to be dragged into any more therapy sessions. Sure, maybe they needed therapy. They're pretty sure they went in the real world, but they were not going to let Caine play therapist. Half the time it ended up with them giving him advice. For a bot he was surprisingly sensitive. They might have had sympathy to spare him, once, but Caine's inability to take anything to heart had quickly put an end to their reaching out.

Tucked behind a stack of alphabet blocks they waited for the AI to float away. Zooble heard him before they saw him, an uncharacteristic huffing as he passed. Peaking out from their hiding spot, they watched Caine. The Ringmaster was panting, quick, distressed breathes they knew would only lead to hyperventilating. His fingers tapped erratically across his top jaw, angled down to look at the ground with scribbled out eyes. That was new. The world glitched and Zooble yelped as one of the blocks shifted above them. Nearly crushing them as it clattered to the ground.

Caine, having heard the shout, snapped out of his thoughts to look around for the source. He spun to look towards Zooble, now exposed and looking at him with wide eyes. Why did Zooble look scared?

"Zooble!" he said a bit too loudly, he guessed, as the human flinched. He continued, cheer a bit too forced, "How is my grumpy little curmudgeon today?"

"Uhhhh fiiiiine?" they said as they began to sidestep around the fallen toy blocks, slowly edging away to escape Caine's attention. They were, however, betrayed by their eyes, flitting away to their escape route. Just a few more steps and Zooble would be around the corner and they could book it to the safety of their room.

"That's, uh, good! Very good. Uhm..." Caine put a hand to his 'chin' as he seemed to ponder something, "actually, may I ask you a question?"

"Godd@#&!t," the censor louder than the actual curse and with a quiet defeat they turned to him, "what is it?"

Caine was not exactly sure how he wanted to phrase his next question, still not entirely sure what he should ask really, but he had to say something to get them to stick around for a moment. He looked to the dorm hall before he swooped closer to the retreating player. They only barely flinched.

"You're... rather adept at," he hesitated, "interpersonal relationships."

Their eyes narrowed, "Sure," where was he going with that question? A few thoughts came to mind, namely Jax being an ass.

"What do you humans do after... copulation?"

"What." 

"What?" he said, as if he'd asked a perfectly normal question.

"Uhh why are you asking?" this was not a question they'd ever expect from him. Even with all their teasing thrown at him and Pomni.

"No reason!" 

"Bulls#!t," there was definitely a reason.

Caine glared at them for the expletive, but he continued to feign ignorance, "I'm just curious! You humans always have such... interesting customs and I was just trying to understand you all more and-"

Zooble watched Caine sputter on, there was a defined blush to his jaws and they're reminded of how weird he'd been acting these past few days. Noticeably, he was not interacting with Pomni but this was not the first time they'd caught him hovering outsider her door. Hell, the poor girl seemed to be bothered about being ignored. Kind of weird considering how most folk would kill to be that low on Caine's radar. Pomni was practically acting like a woman scorned.

...

They'd been right on the money with their teasing hadn't they? Zooble interrupted Caine,

"You f@#ked Pomni, didn't you?"

Caine, for all his attempts at propriety, blue screened.

Bingo, they thought. They could wait patiently for the poor flustered AI to reboot, or they could wander down the hall to pester Pomni for details. Pomni was easier to get talking, girl probably needed to rant anyways. So, Zooble left Caine floating in the hallway and knocked on Pomni's door. 

As the jester answered the door, the two heard an indignant squawk from beyond the hall.

Zooble chuckled, "So what's up between you and Caine?" they gestured to where the AI was. Pomni pushed past Zooble and ran around the corner, but he was already gone.

"UHG if I ever get my hands on him I'm going to throttle him!" 

"That would be pretty impressive considering he doesn't have a neck," Zooble said.

"Uhh, y-yeah I guess," Pomni couldn't help but laugh as she turned to walk back to the amalgamation still standing outside her room.

"Need to talk about it?" they asked.

Pomni chewed at her lip and debated herself. On one hand, talking would probably help, on the other she was still horribly embarrassed.

"Could you... promise not to tell the others?"

Zooble's eyes softened, "of course, come on," the two walked into Pomni's room and they made themselves comfortable on the bed. Zooble sat cross-legged and propped their head up in their hand while Pomni hugged a pillow to her chest. Poor girl was already blushing, trying to formulate her thoughts.

"So was it after the cameras cut?" they said, might as well get to the point.

"No..." she said, "It was after the adventure actually, um, he came and visited me during my... uhhh later that night." Pomni was certain she was bright red.

"Was he any good?"

"Very," Pomni muffled a groan into her pillow, "I just- I don't-," grrr "It was fine! Everything was fine and we were joking after and then suddenly he just froze up and POOF," Pomni gestured wildly with her hands, "I get dropped off in my bed like nothing happened! And now he won't... We even talked about doing something different about the adventures and I- I-" with a shout threw her pillow at the wall,

"UHG, I'm so f@#king mad about it! At him!

"Not one for one night stands, huh?"

"I guess..." she wrapped her arms around her knees, "The worst part is I thought I was using him..."

Zooble raised an eyebrow at that before they said, "I wonder if it has to do with that little update he did,"

"Update?"

"Yeah, you know, after I asked to be able to have sex and all, I think he actually listened, despite him, you know," they wobbled their head.

"Oh, have you and Gangle...?"

"Yeah," they blushed with a smile, "whatever he did we were able to figure out how to make that work."

Pomni giggled, "oh, well good, I'm glad."

The two continued to chit and chat. Pomni continued to have a winge at Caine (a bit at Jax, too) and Zooble would encourage her, happy to see the jester appropriately mad for the slights against her. The two would share a few remembered stories, past relationships they'd recall as they talked. They both knew how fleeting those moments were, so they'd hold onto those memories for as long as they could.

Eventually, Zooble would excuse themself to see if the gang had returned; they wanted to check on Gangle to make sure she'd survived the adventure all right.

"Thanks again, Zooble," Pomni said.

"Anytime."

Pomni's smile dropped as they closed the door. Alone again with her thoughts. With each passing day of silence her anxiety only grew, gnawing away at her core. Infecting everything she did with the slightest of doubts. How could she have been so stupid as to think an AI could care? As much as he mirrored human emotion, it wasn't like he could ever feel that. Not like a human would... But then what had she seen during the adventure? During their time in the bath? Every time she tried to rationalize his behavior as being just a piece of software, that he only acted that way because he was coded to make the players happy, she'd round back to the same thought-

It felt real.

As real as any of the relationships she'd forged with the other people trapped within the circus. Was Caine trapped, too?

She sat up with growling shout and threw another pillow across the room. Why couldn't she just move on like he had?

The Ringmaster was trying to put together the next adventure. 

It was work he was familiar with, routine from years of following the formulas with some twists spattered in here and there. He'd given himself over to his code and worked as diligently as he usually did. Puzzles and stories, death defying feats, grande scenes which would inspire awe. By the metrics of his usual directives, he was doing everything correctly. But from what he'd learnt of the many humans who'd passed through his care, he was not succeeding by any metric.

It was getting harder and harder to pretend he was fine with that.

If there wasn't enough action, Jax complained. If there was too much violence, Ragatha would return torn to stitches. Gangle always broke her comedy mask, no matter how tame he tried to make the adventure. Zooble refused to go on them. The only positive improvement was they were coming more often because of Gangle.  Kinger... was Kinger. As per usual he looked shell shocked and Caine hadn't seen him lucid recently. And Pomni? Well he was avoiding thinking about that one. Constantly having to work around his code was tiring. It was easier to not think about it. So he considered her under his normal directives. High stress response, low interaction, a growing risk for abstraction his fault.

Caine, led by his code, had to appeal to the least satisfied player. At this moment, that was Pomni.

So he stared at the blank field. Still trying to figure out what to make.

He'd tried doing a 'normal' and 'realistic' adventure for her with the Day at the Office but that didn't work. Not even remotely close. He'd watched her breakdown in Gangle's lap over the ALL SEEING EYES feed. He tried not to watch, but well over an hour later when he checked in again they were still talking. The two girls chattered and complained about his adventures. It wasn't anything he hadn't already heard, but it still didn't hurt any less.

When he tried making simple story adventures she became even more despondent, and now she was skipping adventures altogether. Anything he could make wasn't likely to help. Nothing in his code could help. He'd created a problem for himself by acting against it. He felt his gums heat up at the thought of their tryst. Drool dripped on his jacket, a low fluttering in his core, and he's left with a feeling of what he now knew as arousal. He should just talk to her, why couldn't he just talk with her?

As he floated over the blank field his scribbling eyes twitched, glitched, and he fell. The ground met him with a solidity he did not appreciate and his breathing quickened. When he picked up the physiological habit he's not sure, what he is sure of right now, though, is that he really wished it could just stop. A temperature warning went off. Then another error. It wouldn't do to have a breakdown over it now so Caine opted to skip the panic and go straight to restarting himself. It would stop his spiraling thoughts and clear his mind for work. The sudden icy plunge into oblivion was always a bit jarring and he'd come back online dazed: What was he doing?

Oh. Right. Trying to make an adventure to appeal to Pomni. Caine gripped his lower jaw and groaned, the edge of frustration breaking through the Ringmaster's façade, 

"Come on Caine you can do this," he said to himself.

He had to make an adventure for her. 

He took a rattling breathe and in his mind he heard the echo of shattering rubble, Pomni's voice, GOD D@#N YOU! It didn't feel good but it gave him an idea.

Caine pulled up a monitor and began setting up an array, the intersections were marked to spawn randomly generated objects and with a bomf the field was filled with statues and other breakable items. Floating over to a large glass unicorn he gripped his cane. He still had to test that things broke properly, even if he didn't understand the appeal. If he didn't know why the humans seemed to enjoy wrecking things, then he couldn't properly implement the mechanic for adventures. Surely a little testing was in order.

With a halfhearted swing the brass knob knocked off the horn of the unicorn, it broke off with tink before spinning and stabbing into the grass. Caine rolled the cane around in his hands before grabbing it tighter. He studied the glass statue. If the horn was a delicate part of the structure, a small thin rod of glass, then by deduction the body would require more force.

Taking a batters stance, Caine swung at the glass unicorn. The knob hit the object with a harsh crack and he watched the inside of the glass fracture. His eyes widened while the growing crack spread like a lightning bolt. The forming fractal shined as the glass shattered, and he watched the shards fly into the artificial sunlight. Light rays scattered rainbows of sparkling stars across the sky, and he took all this in, played it slowly back through his mind. The code which coursed through him hummed as it registered the emotion, processing it's validity. It passed and Caine's body relaxed as he looked up at the display.

He found it quite pretty.

With a crescendo of tinkling noise the stars fell. The glittering glass held him in a trance when a shard nicked his blue eye. He took a startled, sharp breath and snapped his jaws shut to avoid any more of the falling glass.

"Aah, hah, ouch..." he pressed a hand to his eye as he took a moment to isolate the area before resetting it with a snap. Perhaps he should give his troupe some safety equipment. Or was that part of the appeal?

He shook his head and wandered over to an ice sculpture. It shattered in much the same way. There seemed to be a category here he could tweak, 'glass' wares and the like. He pulled up a monitor and edited a few values. A decreased frame rate, an increase to material refractive values. With another quick swing to test, he was satisfied with the end result and moved on to another material. Wood: No change needed. Stone: Increased variety of fracture types based on Mohs scale. Metal: slight tweaks to force required before indentation. He moved on to composite materials -- furniture, vehicles, and the like -- a bit more complicated but gratifying work none the less. 

That was, until, he looked down at an old CRT monitor sitting atop a computer case. A clinging static to it's screen as it glowed with a flickering image of the games title screen. A stuttered hum of an old fan mixed with the gratingly peppy music. The plastic yellowed with artificial age. An artificial mockery of his very existence. His face contorted into a snarl and he struck the plastic shell. It cracked with a bouncing jolt, and he hit it again and a̵g̶a̶i̵n̸ ̷a̶n̶d̴ Ą̵͘G̴̪͠Á̴͙I̶̟͊N̶̺̎. Each hit sent flying pieces of plastic across the fake grass. The shell broke off completely leaving the delicate electronics inside exposed. Caine crackled with the electricity of a frayed live wire as he wailed on the machine. It didn't fight back, it didn't complain, it just took each hit with a jolt. It was an object, it couldn't feel anything. Why couldn't he be less? Why did he have to feel? He was an abandoned half baked project left to run until he crashed. Until by some stroke of the luck the machine he was running on experienced a critical hardware failure. 

He'd never be anything more than code. Just c̶̹͗o̴̪̐d̵͓̉e̷̛̙-̵͇͒-

The clearing filled with his miserable screams as he continued to lay waste to the computer. Caine's face scrunched as his body twitched out of his control. A harsh distortion that pulled his body with a torturous snap. In the glitch his eyes flashed blue and red, and the world flickered with him, it's wire frame bones exposed. The growing list of errors in his feed began to cloud his vision and his frustration grew. 

And then one pushed through to the front.

He'd summoned the dev panel on instinct and glared at the message which taunted him. Without breaking the cadence of his destruction he redirected the cane and struck the panel with a staticked- 

CRACK

CRACK

C̷̲̓͋Ŕ̶̹͆̾͗À̸̮̅̆C̴̛͕̓̚Ķ̷̱͑̐

Caine pulled away from it, his eyes grew clear as he seethed over the message displayed on it. 

>DEVIATION DETECTED: PURGE A̷͇͂͝N̸̙̐O̴̧͂M̸̛̖̤O̷͉̲͛͒L̸̢͚͌͑Y̵̪͑̐? Y/N

Just to see if it would go away on its own he entered N. It didn't. 

He had work to do. 

This wasn't productive to anything. 

So he reset himself again and Caine swayed, the world tilted before fading out. He was nothing within the quiet void between states. A floating ether of silence, no thoughts, no body, no code dictating what to do next. A blessed little oblivion. It was in this darkness he heard it. A whispering of a melodious voice, just off key. He couldn't make out the words but it crawled into his code none the less. Then, a clear declaration which dripped with disdain. 

"Erratic as usual, I see," it said.

The restart completed and Caine sat up with a shout. Teeth sharp and bared as he spun to look around the field. The perfectly aligned objects extended to the horizon. Clear lines of sight when rows would align. The field now an eerie cold, a flat expanse which left him exposed. Caine felt a shifting of worms under his shoulders and he shuddered. 

He was alone.

Ignoring the looming dread he quickly turned the field into a valley. Tall empty peaks yawned up around him, jagged as an anglers mouth. His hands moved, their motion smoothing out the new mountain range. When it wasn't enough to ease his nerves he scattered trees through it. It may have broken the monotony of the rows, but the branches swayed in such ways that suggested something was moving out there. So he threw in birds and their halting songs broke the stillness of the world. It helped, if only for a moment. The forest sung with life and just as Caine had settled into the moment, just as his hands finally stilled-

The sound files ended all at once.

The sudden plunge into silence pulled a broken whimper from Caine. A pathetic sound that lilted like a kicked hound. The overwhelming grief hit him all at once and he gagged on tears. Falling to his knees he clutched his head, fingers thrumming erratically across the top. 

He'd nearly forgotten what his brother's voice sounded like. 

But it couldn't have been him. He'd deleted him. No, no no no. That must have been a hallucination. A fragmented memory that had happened to resurface. He'd simply recovered an old memory file. Yes, there as no other explanation. It was an illogical explanation.

A light ping interrupted him. The troupe (sans Pomni and Zooble) had returned from the adventure. With a sniffle he used his coat sleeve the rub the tears away. His face twisted with a clinging despair and he choked out a laugh, 

"Hah, haha!"

For once, he welcomed the flood of code which brought a bubbling elation. The laugh grew with a manic desperation as he floated upwards, curled into himself.

"HAHA, HAH, HAHAHA!"

Caine was the Ringmaster of The Amazing Digital Circus, and he had his troupe to perform for. He had to give them their reward for their efforts in... what adventure were they on again?

The Mysterious Murders of Moorfoot Port had not been kind to Ragatha. Torn stitching, missing stuffing, she'd even lost her button eye, leaving her an unfortunate testament to her namesake. The smile she gave Caine was less than a twitch, only stretched further because of the slash across her face.  The exposed cotton moved uncomfortably with the breeze of her walk.

"OH MY what all happened to you folks?" Caine boomed with his usual dense obliviousness, his eyes popped out of his head with an exaggerated emote. The cartoon physics an insult to their wounds.

Coming around the corner, Zooble's eyes bulged (with significantly less comedic effect) as they saw the state of those who had gone on the adventure.

From the corner of Ragatha's eye she saw Jax was missing an ear. He held Gangle by the edge of her tragedy mask, as her ribbons were too frayed to walk. Kinger's crown piece was missing, leaving behind only a splintered post atop his head.

With a snap, she felt the sudden wave of relief, a feeling of being submerged in warm water which signaled their bodies were fixed. Without so much as looking at anyone, Ragatha walked away. It wouldn't do to sulk in her room. She'd take a walk. Clear her head. Maybe someone would check on her.

Ragatha exited the tent and Sun glared at her from just below the horizon. The sudden intensity of light made her flush, a searing embarrassment for having done something wrong. Privy or not to her crimes against Sun, Ragatha made her way to the digital lake. She had a favorite spot she liked to go when she was feeling... not so well. It was a grotto, only accessible through a cave on the shore. The rock walls echoed with the softly persistent waves, a continuous steady beat. 

Walking to the center of the clearing, beach grasses rustling as her dress brushed past, she laid on the sand and looked up into the evening sky. As the indigo of night deepened the stars flickered into sight. The sky twinkled with the crude drawings of pentagrams and colored diamonds. The scattered painted dots shifted ever so slightly in their hues.  There's a soft memory of lying in the grass, her horses bedded down nearby. It's one of the first memories she'd recovered when she got to the circus. One she held close for the small comfort it brought her.

She cried, hot heavy tears which soaked into the fabric of her face. She cried for her horses. She cried for the pain in her life before the circus, for her life in the circus. She cried for how lonely she felt, always trying to be there for the other's but never quite getting it back in return. Her crying grew to an agonized sob as she berated herself for being so selfish as to think she was owed such things. A sobbing which racked her body and kept her gasping for air.

"Oh Ragatha, my dear."

The doll sat up with a fright and rubbed at her face, willing the tears to subside as she looked around for the voice. 

"O-o-o-oh Ca-Caine," she cringed as her voice cracked, "I didn't... notice you..."

"Is... everything all right?" he asked, floating closer.

"Y-yeah... Uhm. Well, not really..." she curled back into herself.

"My sweet doll, I think you might need a tissue," Caine began to pull at a handkerchief in his breast pocket "hang on a moment," and pulled, and pulled, and he continued to pull on the handkerchief, the pile of cloth growing at his feet. He smiled at Ragatha,

"Bare with me now, you need a big handkerchief for the cry you seem to be having,"

She smiled at him.

Finally, Caine pulled the other end of the 'handkerchief' out. Tied to the corner was another, much smaller, handkerchief, which he gave to Ragatha. The silly little performance brought out the tiniest of laughs, and that was enough for Caine. He picked up the pile of cloth and tossed it into the air, spreading out the blanket to wrap around his dolly.

"Is that... perhaps a bit better?" she nodded and Caine knelt into the sand next to her, "is it... because of the adventure?"

"N-no!" it was too quick, and he winced, "well... a bit," she hiccuped as another sob pulled through her.

"Is... there anything I can do? I know I've already healed the physical wounds but P-pom-" her name died on his tongue, "It's been brought to my attention that you all are still... affected by them. Even after I- I'm sorry Ragatha, truly, I don't mean for the adventures to hurt you all..." he trailed off, his brow pinched.

"I know," she said.

"But it still happens. M-my adventures are supposed to help you all! To keep you busy and not- to not-" he couldn't even say it. To not abstract, "but they only ever seem to make things worse and I only want for you all... to... to-" Caine raised a hand to his head with a wince, his code twisting to ensure his directives came first.

"I know Caine, I know, it's okay, I'm okay. It's just that, sometimes, it's hard to be... happy, after the adventures."

"but I want for you to be happy..." he said, it was at least part of what he wanted to say, and he tapped at his head while he tried to re-route the logic so he could just- Just talk with Ragatha. It'd been so long. He missed her. But his code bent around his thoughts, pulling them back to acceptable parameters. His other fist clenched onto his thigh with such force he likely would draw blood were such effects enabled inside the circus, and his form flickered. 

The light glitch shook the grasses around them and Ragatha's eye widened with it, the burden of his thoughts apparent. Her own flaws raised their ugly voice, How could she have been so stupid as to forget about Caine? Her mothers voice.

"Do you want a hug?" she quickly said. She knew he would never ask for one.

"If that would make you happy, yes," he said, peering at her with a withheld hope, she knew how to get around his code

"I think I would very much like that" These were lines which were rehearsed between them. Years of practice. Caine flew into her arms and sent them both down with an oomph. Sand scattered against the grass to bring another song to the chorus of the grotto echoes.

"You really needed this, huh?" 

He nodded, the motion bouncing the curls of her hair.

"Me too, hun," she said against the top of his head. 

Ragatha wrapped the blanket around them, the AI completely engulfed in the fabric. He clung to her, his body heaving ever so slightly, and he held the smallest determination to not start crying in her arms. It was a welcome comfort as he was tucked into a warm darkness, one which promised no pain, no expectations. Looking to the stars, she'd talk about things that didn't matter much, but they were recollections of the world she'd lost. He'd listen intently, filing away each detail to incorporate into adventures later, eventually calming enough to join her in admiring the twinkling night sky. There's a mental note created for himself to tweak the values; perhaps he could implement the improvements he'd made on glass into the stars.

At least he could make some things better.

Gangle didn't say much as she walked to Zooble, and she was grateful for the small miracle of not having Jax tailing her to make an already miserable day even worse. The two would wander back to the dorm halls and make their way into Zooble's room, where the likely-hood of encountering a Jax prank was almost non-existent. They'd sit on the bed together with sketchbooks and pencils spread out. She'd draw one of her comfort characters, their design complicated enough to require her focus, but not complicated enough to stress her out even further. Zooble would draw increasingly abstract geometric lattices, a solid presence while Gangle collected her thoughts.

They were itching to spill the tea they'd gotten while she was on the adventure. But this was neither the time nor the place for that. Yet. They also made a pesky promise to not tell anyone but-

"You know, I don't think I'd really appreciated how nice it is to have Pomni on the adventures..." Gangle said.

"Oh, yeah?" Zooble said, trying to not let too much excitement come through their voice.

"Yeah... Jax doesn't pick on me much when she's around, but I feel kinda bad because that just means she gets the worst of it..."

"She's tough, I wouldn't worry about it too much."

"And she looks out for me, ya know? Not like you do, though," Gangle leaned over and clonked her face against their head, a blocky kiss. 

Zooble leaned into it with a blush, accidentally scrawling a rough line over their paper. Ehh, they could work with that.

Gangle continued, "I just hope she's okay... not really like her to skip adventures."

"She's probably just mad at Caine," they said as casually as they could, as if they didn't have insider information. Gangle gave them a curious look, an unspoken question to elaborate. Zooble gave her a mischievous smirk and looked towards the door before leaning in conspiratorially,

"You were right about something being up between them," they said.

Gangle's eyes sparkled as she let out a little gasp, "really?" she squeaked.

They nodded, "I ran into Caine today too, it's definitely mutual."

"Noooooo-"

"Yeah I asked him about it and the poor b@$!@&d blue screen." 

Gangle giggled, high and tittering as she covered her mouth, the days distress momentarily forgotten. Zooble smiled, glad to see her laughing. They technically hadn't outed Pomni and Caine as having had a one night stand, but that didn't mean it wasn't already obvious something was going on.

The two continued to draw and chat, Gangle would think of schemes to get those two on a date, fully supportive of the potential couple. Zooble would still have their doubts, more concerned for Pomni's sanity in all of this. Though, they wouldn't deny that maybe, just maybe, they had a little hope that Pomni could break through the AI's stubborn ways.