Chapter Text
"Uah!"
The little blue and red jester Pomni tried to get her bearings as the ground beneath her shook. The six characters of the Amazing Digital Circus were standing at the edge of the Digital Lake, which was rumbling and quaking.
The characters had been called to the Lake by their ringmaster Caine without being told why.
His stance wide to avoid falling over, the lanky purple rabbit man Jax held his arms out to further steady himself: "This smells like a boss fight."
The water in the lake turned from blue to green, and slowly, several pillars of goo rose up from the lake, each with a glaring dark eye inside with a white shine. Several fish also appeared to be stuck in each pillar of slime.
"I... am Blobbulus!" The immense body of slime said, its form rippling across the lake, presumably to communicate.
"Eeuh..." Pomni took a step back. "It's... it's the whole lake?"
"Definitely a boss fight!" Ragatha agreed, the rag doll peering into the lake to try to find out how many slime pillars there were.
"I have taken control over your fishing water pond lake!" Said Blobbulus, crashing its pillars down on the lake as a kind of taunt. "Unless you puny creatures manage to defeat me, you shall never be able to fish in this lake again!"
"I mean, I'm okay with that," Jax folded his arms behind his head.
"I never really get the urge to go fishing or anything," Zooble, a bizarre collection of shapes, seemed to tentatively concur, nodding.
Blobbulus appeared confused that its threat had not worked. "Wuh? Well... how about this then!?"
"Urk!"
A tendril of goo darted out of the lake and wrapped around Jax four times before yanking him deep under the lake.
"Jax!" Kinger screeched, the animated whitish chess piece king holding his disembodied glove hands near his head.
Pomni looked over to see Jax suspended in the goo lake, his arms and legs fully outstretched.
"Welp, this stinks," Jax muttered. "Can't move."
"Will he be okay?" Pomni wondered, a hand near her face.
"He'll be fine," Ragatha put her arms on her hips, peering down alongside Pomni with her one good eye. "Technically, we don't need to breathe, so he can just stay down there indefinitely."
"Ha!" Zooble barked, joining the two. "Hear that, Jax? That's basically a bonus!"
"Great..." Jax huffed. "Uh, wha...?" His body started to shake as he felt the lake around him quiver.
"Oh for crying out loud!" Blobbulus boomed. "You people are impossible! How about this instead!?"
With a spitting noise, Jax was launched from the lake and arced into the air, landing his back on the shore.
"Agh! That smarts."
Then, the slime tentacles came for Gangle, a tragedy mask connected to a red ribbon who had been trying to remain unnoticed.
"No! Yeeek! I hate slime!" Gangle squealed, then got dragged down to the gooey depths in Jax's place.
"Bleck..." Jax raised a finger to his yellow teeth and rubbed them, trying to get the slime out. "They could at least make it taste like lime or something. Lime slime."
"Well, now I guess we have to defeat that thing," Zooble grumbled. "What a pain."
Jax chuckled, looking at Pomni. "This is always how it goes, Pommers. The bosses gotta capture one of us to make us actually want to fight it. Else, we know we're not in any real danger, so why bother?"
"Why didn't it work when I captured you!?" Blobbulus sounded pouty.
"I've got no idea, Blobby," Jax lied. "All right, let's save our favorite little spool of ribbon, huh?"
Pomni looked around at the large lake, big pillars of slime slamming down all around it. "Okay uh, how do we fight a lake?"
"Well, usually Caine will just give us some hints on how to do it if we can't figure it out quick enough," Ragatha explained. "But look!" Ragatha pointed at the large wavy slide that led to the lake, and its tip was curled upward. "Whenever the environment is changed, that's usually the key."
"Already on it, Dollface," Jax was already running up to the slide, dodging a couple of slime tentacles that stabbed at him.
Without another thought, Pomni started running to follow them. "How do you figure all this stuff out?"
"Once you've gotten a few boss fights under your belt, this will be routine," Zooble said, looking bored as they ambled around the lake to the slide.
"A good boss fight is tricky, yet doable!" Kinger commented.
Jax made his way up the slide's ladder and down its length. In midair, he seemed to be able to somewhat direct the course of his fall, and he dove right past a tendril and into the slime beneath. He grabbed one of the eyes, and the force of the downward plunge suddenly reversed, the bouncy slime sending him back up into the air.
"Hyah!" Jax kicked at the eye with a stylish, wild swipe, and the eye flew off for several feet before exploding into confetti.
"No! My weak points! You can't do that!" Blobbulus launched another tendril at Jax, and he taunted it by waving his hand, then scrunched up in midair and entered a diving pose, rocketing into another area which housed a Blobbulus eye.
"How is he doing that?" Pomni blinked.
"Jax can be... very cartoony, if he wants," Ragatha gave a nervous laugh. "Now c'mon, let's help him out."
Zooble was next up the ladder, disconnecting their legs at one point to avoid a tentacle strike. After they headed into the slime and bounced back up with an eyeball, they tossed it up even higher, giving it a headbutt with the full force of the flat of their hot pink triangular head. The eyeball went flying off into the cartoon sun.
"KO!" The sun said as the eyeball fizzled up.
When Pomni next looked, Kinger was already in the air, setting up an eyeball and spiking it into the lake's dock with a flat hand, where the eye burst into confetti. "Gotcha!"
She saw Ragatha nearing the top, but just then she was knocked off the ladder by a slime tentacle lashing her.
"Gah!" Pomni fell back onto the grass. The slime arm raised up to smash her, but she rolled to the side and got back up. "No! I'm not going to be useless this time!"
She climbed the ladder as quickly as she could; Pomni felt like she was being targeted especially hard as she dodged strike after strike by slowing down and speeding up on the ladder, and finally she made it up.
As she rode down the slide, she was launched into the air by the curved slide. In the air, she spotted only one eye left. She willed herself to go flying into it and dove into the slime, grabbing the eye on the way up.
"Pomni!" Ragatha yelped. "Your angle's too shallow!"
"Huh?" Pomni went flying back into the air, holding the eyeball. "Waaagh!" She realized that she was heading for the ground with her trajectory, not the slime lake. She held the eyeball down and landed on it, and it popped with a burst, sending her flying back up, spiraling and flipping. Miraculously, she landed on her feet, eyes wide, pupils tiny, and she gave into the urge to hold her arms straight up as if she had planned the whole thing.
"Sweet!" Jax popped down a thumbs up and gave her a wink. "Good job, Pommers."
"Oh no!" Blobbulus said, the lake rumbling and trembling with waves across its gooey surface. "I have no eyes anymore and I must see! Nooo that means I am defeated aaaaaaaaaaa...!"
The slime in the lake burst off, covering all of the characters somewhat with flecks of goo, and the water returned to its normal hue.
A large purple fish flung itself out of the lake and into Pomni's still-outstretched arms. Pomni slowly lowered her arms, processing that there was now a fish in them.
"Hello?"
The fish turned its head to her. "Thank you for saving our lake from the foul boss Blobbulus. You have our eternal gratitude, and we shall again be able to give you compliments every time you poke us."
Not knowing what else to do, Pomni poked the fish.
"A stunning victory borne of teamwork!" The fish went on in its regal voice. "Is there nothing this eclectic team cannot do?"
Pomni muttered "thanks" and went back to the water, dropping the fish into the lake. Gangle's ribbons then floated to the surface, her pouting mask following. She undulated herself to get back to shore.
Caine appeared from thin air, whirling around and making a wacky pose with his arms at angles. The mostly-humanoid presenter was dressed in a magenta outfit with a black top hat and slacks. "Wowie and also zowie! You all defeated the boss lickety split!"
Bubble popped out of Caine's hat, the soap bubble a green color instead of his usual blue. "But now you must face me! The true boss!"
"No, they must not..." Caine grunted, popping him unceremoniously with a single finger. "Sorry, all! He just messed with his RGB settings."
"Easy boss, easy win," Jax folded his arms haughtily.
"You okay...?" Ragatha helped Gangle out of the water.
"Yeah; I hate being wet..." Gangle complained.
"Your reward is a chest full of Amazing Digital Diamonds!" Caine exulted, pointing at the ground with his cane, make a chest appear and subsequently pop open, streamers and confetti joining the celebration. "There are at least a hundred! I didn't count!"
"How much do we get each?" Jax asked. "Is there a bounty for each eye we popped?"
"Nope!" Caine pumped an arm across his body. "You can just distribute them amongst yourselves using whatever fairness system you humans have invented for this process. I have to go do some boring and unfun things that nonetheless need doing! Bye!"
Caine whirled a black cape around himself, which squeezed his form into nothingness. Right before he vanished, he reached up from the folds and grabbed his hat, sucking it in with him.
"How do you wanna divvy the loot?" Jax asked the others.
"Well, hm," Ragatha thought. "Pomni hasn't been here very long, so she might need some Diamonds to buy some essential items down the line. Why don't we let her have them all?"
"She got the last hit!" Kinger held up a finger. "In some games that means she deserves everything! ...I never understood those games."
"I'm fine if you give her everything," Zooble shrugged. "Haven't seen anything interesting in the shop for ages."
"Me too, I guess," Jax shook his head. "An all-star bunny like me is already rolling in dough."
"Um, that feels kinda generous," Pomni gently touched her fingers together. "Maybe Gangle should get some for having to be trapped in slime that whole time?"
"I'm okay," Gangle said, shaking her mask left and right.
"Maybe just take ten?" Pomni's dark glossy eyelids came up. "I'll feel guilty if I get them all."
"Okay," Gangle relented, more out of wanting the discussion to be over than a desire for the Amazing Diamonds. She reached in and scooped up ten diamonds with her ribbons. Pomni then tried to get the rest; somehow all of the other diamonds came out in one big, unsteady glob.
"Yeek!" Pomni wobbled. "How do I...?"
"Like this," Gangle gestured like she was putting the diamonds behind herself, then they vanished. "Tada."
Pomni attempted to do what she did, wobbling on a foot as she almost fell over, then all of the diamonds vanished into nothingness behind her back and all that weight on her vanished. "And now I just have them...?"
"Yup," Zooble nodded, "just think about a Diamond and pull it from behind your back when you need one. It sounds weird but it works every time."
"Welp, great show today, guys," Jax clicked his teeth and pointed finger guns at them. "I'm off to the Carnival to relax. See you dinguses tomorrow."
"Ugh," Zooble grunted, their mismatched eyes closing halfway, "I really hate his gusto sometimes."
"You hate his gusto all the time," Ragatha pointed out, her own eyelid coming up halfway.
"Not wrong," Zooble admitted in a neutral voice.
Pomni stared at the colorful walls of her room, standing very close to the back wall. She still felt "gooey" from their "boss battle", though there wasn't a fleck of green on her form. Above anything else though, when she was alone, she was glad to have something to distract her. When she was not distracted, she recently felt like she could hear voices. The voice was quiet, seemingly shrouded in soft static. It was almost comforting, except that Pomni would have much preferred if she could be alone with her own feelings. For some reason, the static got almost imperceptibly louder whenever she thought of the time she'd been in the Void.
Yes, she could hear it now, clearer. She looked only slightly terrified, as if she'd realized a truth. She thought of the Void again. How the streaking lights and dazzling colors had made her feel, like she was melting away into nothingness.
Pomni breathed out in a kind of wild madness, as if a secret was whispered to her. That was it, wasn't it? The Void held the answer, didn't it?
"Pomni took out an Amazing Diamond from behind her back," she said.
[...]
"She twirled it in her fingers, gazing upon all of its facets."
[...]
"Then, she put it away, and as she did, so did she put away the soft voice haunting her."
[...]
Just like that, the voice disappeared, and the static was no more. Pomni even tried to listen for it, and she could no longer hear it. She breathed a sigh of relief and gained a relaxed smile. Then, her head twitched to the side as an idea seemed to bolt into her mind, borne from her preempting of the voice.
"Pomni opened the door to her room, and suddenly, it led to the real world!"
Throwing open her door, she saw the hallway that led to the other characters' rooms. Pomni muttered a quiet swear, and even in her own privacy, a soft honking noise swallowed up the profanity.
But then, she vanished.
Pomni blinked, trying to get her bearings. She was onstage, but there was no stage lighting. The ambient light was dim, and there weren't even any mannequins in the seats to serve as the audience. As she turned around, she saw Jax, Ragatha, Kinger, Zooble, and even Caine, but not Gangle.
None of them looked too surprised to be there, and even Pomni was getting used to the sort of "mundane" involuntarily teleportation she was put through almost every day.
"What's going on?" Pomni asked the group.
"Yeah, what gives, Caine?" Jax yawned. "Was trying to get my beauty sleep."
"Show's over, isn't it?" Zooble accused. "Aren't you supposed to leave us alone?"
"Indeed I am!" Caine hovered just inches off the stage, his knees bent as he did. "However, um, there's a bit of a matter I think I have to discuss with you all."
"Okay...?" Ragatha tumbled her hands together a bit.
"So..." Caine's eyeballs rolled around a bit. "I'm not quite sure how to broach this with you all, but I have a bit of concern."
"Where's Gangle?" Zooble asked, still accusatory.
"That's what this is about," Caine gave a nervous laugh. "Um, would you guys like to... perhaps... see your crafting skills?"
"Huh?" Pomni blinked. "The show is over, right...?"
"I'm pretty sure he just means our stats, right?" Ragatha asked.
Caine nodded, bringing up a kind of scoreboard in midair. It was lacking most of the presentation most of Caine's signs did, and was instead very utilitarian and "computery". It read:
GANGLE - 99
KINGER - 69
RAGATHA - 50
ZOOBLE - 45
JAX - 7
POMNI - 0
"Hey hey, you got 69, Kinger?" Jax wiggled the top of his eyes. "Nice."
"Thank you," Kinger nodded with sincerity. "I do like to try my hand at crafting every now and then. It relaxes the mind to put the hands to good work-"
"Okay, never mind," Jax grumbled.
"I'm surprised yours is so high, Zooble," Ragatha smiled. "I didn't know you liked to craft."
"I don't," Zooble rolled their eyes. "But I guess my skill goes up sometimes when I rearrange my parts? I do that a lot."
"Wait, what is all this?" Pomni held a hand palm up at the board. "Why don't I have any?"
"Don't be discouraged," Ragatha put a hand on one of Pomni's bulbous shoulders. "When we do certain things in the Circus, our 'skill' for that goes up. But it's not like in real life when you actually get better at something by doing it more often. As our skill rank goes up for a certain thing in the Circus, we kind of just 'unlock' more features related to that skill. Like, if I craft a few hundred dresses, maybe then I could suddenly make a space suit. It doesn't make much sense, but that's how it works."
"Wait, space suit is at 61, isn't it?" Jax pointed at her. "You wanna make a space suit, Dolly?"
"A little...!" Ragatha had a sheepish grin. "Just to try?"
"Well, thank you for explaining all that, but you all have missed the bigger point," Caine pointed at the top of the leaderboard. "Gangle is nearly at one hundred! She might even hit it tonight...!"
"Gangle's been grinding her crafting skill?" Zooble blinked. "I've never seen her making anything."
"Yeah, what's that about?" Jax tilted his head, resting a fist near his chin. "Wait, is she able to make her own Comedy masks now? That might be a problem."
"That's not technically the problem," Caine shook his head. "At level one hundred, the final crafting skill unlocks. No one has ever gotten that high before!"
No one looked impressed.
"It's called..." Caine paused for dramatic effect and then turned his eyes straight to them. "Voidforging."
No one's expression changed at all. Kinger looked like he was deciding if he wanted to yelp or not.
"Sounds kind of spooky, I guess?" Ragatha shrugged.
"Sounds cool to me," Jax chuckled. "What's wrong with that?"
"Well...!" Caine thrust down both of his arms. "The issue is that... I have no idea what Voidforging is! It's an under-tested, underutilized feature that was just left in the Circus while it was in its infancy! I'm sure no one was supposed to even get that high, but they wanted to put a cool reward for doing it!"
"Does that... scare you?" Zooble wondered, a bit intrigued.
"Oh, it terrifies me!" Caine's jaws nodded loosely and enthusiastically. "I literally do not have the capacity to speculate on what Gangle would be able to do with Voidforging! But, since it involves the Void, which I also know nothing about, I know double nothing about what Voidforging is for!"
"So, what do you want from us, then?" Zooble asked.
"Just... see what she's up to, maybe!" Caine said. "Ideally, convince her to stop building her skill level. She must have crafted and destroyed thousands of things to get her skill level so high. With that level of dedication, I'm sure she has something she wants to do!"
Jax's pupils grew tiny and he hunched down with his arms out. "Oh crud. You don't think she wants to make like... an indestructible Comedy mask, do you?"
"If she did, you'd deserve it," Zooble scoffed.
"Why can't you do it?" Pomni asked Caine.
"She won't talk to me about it!" Caine whined. "I figured maybe as fellow humans, you could help get her to see reason."
"Gangle?" Jax let out a "ha!". "We could try."
"If you stop her, I can give you a ton of Diamonds," Caine promised. "A literal ton! Whatever you want is yours!"
Pomni held up a finger.
"Well, not whatever you want, Pomni," Caine looked apologetic, "sorry."
Pomni scowled.
"Let me know how it goes, okay?" Caine implored the five, then wound up and flew out of sight.
"So," Zooble scoffed. "We basically help Gangle finish, right?"
"If Caine can't do anything about it, I feel like we have to let her try," Ragatha nodded.
"Let's get up to her room," Jax rolled his eyes. "I've got her key. Least that bozo could have done was teleport us back."
The five made their way back up to their rooms.
Jax crouched down, preparing to open the door to Gangle's room. On the other side of the hallway was the door to Kaufmo the clown's former room. Pomni looked behind her, staring at it a little. A prominent, freshly-created X now adorned the door's picture of Kaufmo. It wasn't there the day she'd first come to the circus, and she sighed at the implications. There were a lot of doors with X's on them.
Before unlocking the door, Jax paused. "Actually... is this such a good idea?"
"Oh come on, are you trying to tease us?" Zooble's voice was disgusted.
"Think about it," Jax's eyelids fell halfway, "we know barely anything about the Void. Gangle will probably bottle up if we try to interrogate her about what she's doing."
"What do you want to do then?" Ragatha had her hands on her hips.
"Maybe we should... try to talk her out of it gently, like Caine said," Jax said carefully.
"Oh that is so like you!" Zooble exploded. "Forever Caine's lapdog if he brings up something that even slightly freaks you out!"
"Zooble..." Jax looked back at her darkly, "if Caine told you not to jump off a cliff, would you?"
"It'd depend on why he would say that!" Zooble retorted. "Caine's scared of something. We should take advantage of that! Else we'll just be his puppets forever!"
"So that's one no, one yes," Ragatha pointed at the two. "I say we let Gangle do what she wants. She's obviously worked really hard for something, and that's just... I mean, it's not really like her, but maybe it's a sign she's growing."
Kinger held a trembling finger up. "I for one say we should tell her not to. The Void is extremely scary and dangerous. We'd do better to avoid it as much as we can. Avoid the void. Heheh..."
"Does he really get a vote?" Zooble lolled their head in Ragatha's direction.
"It's only fair," Ragatha affirmed, then all four of the ones who had spoken their piece looked at Pomni.
"I... I barely know Gangle," Pomni protested in a weak voice. "You'd really leave something this important to me?"
"Just give it your gut feeling, Pomni," Ragatha encouraged, pumping her arms gently. "What do you think the risks or advantages are?"
It could kill Caine, Pomni was struck by a sudden, powerful thought. Gangle could create a sword, spear, axe, whip, any kind of weapon and kill Caine. It had to be possible. And then, with no Caine, there would be no one to run the Circus. And with that, the Circus would be pointless, and then everyone could finally leave. This was their chance.
"We let her do what she wants," Pomni suddenly said with surprising resolution.
"Ugh..." Kinger shivered. "Well, I guess that's th-"
"LEVEL UP!" A cheerful, unfamiliar female voice rang out.
Gangle opened the door and squeaked at seeing the five faces looking at her.
"Hi, um, I gotta do something... bye," Gangle said with a mushy mumbly voice, then tried to head past them into the foyer.
"Hang on there, Gangle," Jax held up a finger.
"Jax," Ragatha grabbed his wrist. "We had a vote."
Jax snapped his hand up to break Ragatha's hand from its grip. "To heck with the vote! You all voted to jump off the cliff, not me!" He started to jog after Gangle. "Gangle, wait up! I just wanna talk."
"Yee!" Gangle yelped, and her legs started to spiral into oval shapes and she took off at much higher speed than her normal run.
"Whoa! Where'd she learn to do that!?" Jax was impressed. "Well, you can't outrun a cartoon rabbit, Missy." He wound up for one of his speed bursts, then suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his back. "Gaagh-!"
Falling to his front, he quickly spun around to see Zooble's head had launched into his back.
"You were OVERRULED, Jax!" Zooble shouted.
"RrraaaAAAAGH!" Jax threw himself to his feet, picked up Zooble's head, then drop kicked it. It flew over the balcony and into the Foyer.
"Calm down, guys!" Ragatha warned the two.
But Zooble's headless body was already bouncing toward Jax on one foot. They whacked Jax with their purple foot in a horizontal strike. Jax doubled over, letting out a cough, then looked up to see Zooble raising the leg for a downward strike. Jax sucked his teeth and swept his leg out in front of himself, sending Zooble onto the floor. Jax then grabbed Zooble's body and leaned onto his back, kicking with both of his legs, sending the rest of Zooble flying off the balcony, where their pieces scattered as they impacted the ground.
Gangle shrieked as she saw this; one of Zooble's arms went skittering right past her.
Zooble's body started to roll around to re-collect their pieces, and their head was near the front of the tent.
"Go, I'll cover you!" Zooble hissed at Gangle, their eyes darting back to indicate the exit.
"Thank you, Zooble!" Gangle's tears bubbled in her eyes. "I promise I'm trying to help."
"I believe you, go!"
"Tell him I went to the lake!" Gangle said as she left the tent. She felt horrible about lying, but she'd worked too hard to stop now.
Back in the hallway, Jax had a wild look in his eyes. His elbows were drawn in to his sides and his fists were balled.
"Well!? Any of you want some next!?"
"Jax!" Ragatha yelled. "We shouldn't be fighting! We should be talking with Gangle-!"
"You can't just talk down death, Ragatha!" Jax shouted, pointing at her. "You can't reason with it!"
"What's wrong with you, Jax?" Pomni's eye twitched. "Do you like what the Circus is so much that you'd fight for Caine!?"
"It's not about Caine, it's about Gangle!" Jax shouted, holding his arms up and out. "If you think she can be trusted with something more dangerous than a pair of scissors, then you DON'T KNOW GANGLE!"
"But-!"
"You haven't been here long enough, Pomni!" Jax yelled. "She could hurt herself, or worse! I'm not trying to be the bad guy, I'm trying to keep her from putting herself into a >honk<ing oven!"
Ragatha looked very conflicted, looking at all of them. "If... if you do meet up with her, just try to be gentle, okay?"
"Ghh-!" Jax grit his teeth even tighter than normal and leaped down the balcony, rolling to break his fall. When he looked up, Zooble was blocking the exit to the door. Jax reached behind himself and brought out a two-handed wooden mallet. His face was determined, and lacked the hint of a grin. "You wanna go round two, Silly Shapes?"
Zooble reached behind themselves and pulled out a bunch of assorted pieces. They quickly clacked onto themselves in various ways, extending the length of their limbs and adding two more, turning them into an unsteady six-limbed monstrosity.
"LEVEL UP!" The cheerful female voice came again.
"Ding ding, you >beep<ing rabbit."
"That just makes it more fun," Jax breathed out, narrowing his eyes as he dashed at Zooble with his mallet raised.