Chapter Text
Pomni felt numb.
She didn’t react to anything at all.
She drifted through her stay at the Digital Circus in boredom. She had a predictable routine of laying in her bed, never leaving her room, only to be forced onto an adventure with the other residents of this digital world. She would just sit on the spot where she was teleported while everyone else went on the adventure until it ended. There were times she was dragged along, but she never participated. The adventure would end in a prize that lost its interest the moment it was presented before they had a digital feast cooked by Bubble.
Pomni knew how the aftermath would play out. Caine, the excitable ringmaster of the Digital Circus would congratulate them on the adventure before asking for feedback. The criticism would be centered around how the harmless journey turned into something worse than it could have imagined with a painful twist. To Caine’s credit, he did take the feedback in earnest, and did make changes to the adventures, but he never seemed to grasp what went wrong because the event would somehow spiral out of control. It didn’t stop him from trying.
He did eventually stop asking for Pomni’s input when he realized she wouldn’t talk. He either assumed she was content with the adventure or was too mentally exhausted and wanted to relax. “Just remember!” Caine said to her with his trademark enthusiasm. “If you’re having trouble with your stay here, just say the word and I’ll fix it!”
Pomni met his generosity with a bored stare, not that she even turned to face him in the first place. Her eyes were half-lidded, with dark eyelids that were halfway close to blinking but never doing so. She used to blink until she realized that she was doing it out of habit instead of necessity. Then she got bored of blinking and stopped altogether.
She didn’t blink from the nightmarish adventures. She didn’t blink when someone entered her room to try and talk with her. She didn’t blink when Jax would play his mean tricks on her. Or when he stole her food from her plate.
“Thank you, Pomni,” He said with a smug grin as he plucked another morsel from her plate. He tended to sit next to her during meals. “You don’t mind if I take another one, right?”
Her digital food was delicious, that much she remembered when she used to eat it. It had the appearance of a low-resolution texture but its flavor was divine. Bubble did take requests on what to cook, but Pomni eventually ran out of requests to make. There were only so many flavor combinations someone could taste before they got bored. She used to brainstorm for something different, for a taste she wasn’t sick of, but Pomni realized that she would get disgusted with the new food eventually. She might as well not try at all.
“Don’t steal her food.” Ragatha scolded. It only made the rabbit’s grin wider. He liked being mean, and he liked seeing their reactions more. Maybe that’s why he picked on Pomni more than everyone else, despite her apathy. He viewed it as a challenge.
“It’s not like she cares, right Pomni?” The rabbit asked with not a single ounce of honesty before he grabbed Pomni’s plate of food and spilled its contents on her head. When the jester didn’t react or move, Jax stared back at Ragatha with a mischievous glint in his gaze. “See? No harm done.”
“Jax, you’re upsetting her!”
“She hadn’t cared about anything in years,” Had it been years already? Pomni thought she would’ve been more horrified at the news. Oh well. “Watch.”
The slap echoed like gunfire and silenced any small talk at the table.
Everyone else stopped eating when the rabbit and the ragdoll started shouting. Jax would say that no harm was done and Ragatha shouldn’t overreact because it was a joke. Her counterargument was that he was a bully and downplaying his cruelty to the people he hurt.
If the slap did hurt, Pomni didn’t register it. Her jester body was made out of hard, elastic material that would snap back to her default state. Any pain she was capable of feeling just bounced around in her empty mind before it faded out into nothingness.
Pomni would have cared if it all wasn’t so predictable. There may have been a variation in the outcome but it has happened so often that Pomni could tell what would happen before it did. She knew these people well.
Kinger and Gangle were too mentally unstable to help, the former being too detached from reality while the latter being too sad to be assertive, but they were harmless. Ragatha would scold Jax, but never physically stop him. She was too nice to strike someone, no matter how awful they were. As for Jax, he would poke and prod until his antics would escalate to the detriment of his safety. He would arrogantly believe that he could get away with anything until it was too late. Zooble will…well if Pomni’s predictions about these people were right - which they had been for as long as she remembered - the rabbit would face his consequences soon. There is one person who didn’t tolerate Jax in the slightest.
“-that doesn’t mean you should do it!” Ragatha screamed. Pomni didn’t know what they were screaming about, everything was just dull noise to tune out.
“I’ll take that constructive criticism to heart, Dollface,” Jax said with sarcasm and an infuriating wink as he plucked one of Zooble’s antennae before using it to pick his yellow teeth. “If you don’t like what I’m doing, then why don’t you make me stop?”
Zooble stood up from their seat and walked behind Jax with a hard glare. “Good suggestion.”
Those were the last words Jax heard before Zooble’s hand grabbed the rabbit's head and slammed it on the table. If the slap from earlier was startling, then the head-force trauma was frightening. The entire table shook from the impact. Jax bounced off the table and fell onto the ground with a choked scream.
Zooble’s antennae, which Jax had been using as a toothpick, was hammered through his teeth so deep it was lodged in his throat.
His agonized screams were muffled by the foreign object blocking his airway. Jax didn’t need to breathe - no one did - but still did so out of habit and having his airway suddenly obstructed wasn’t pleasant in the slightest. With a hole hammered painfully through his teeth, it was made worse when the object that caused it was still there, poking and scraping the inside of his gullet.
Gangle let out a frightened scream and tried covering her eyes with her ribbon limbs. Kinger would forget what happened and later let out a startled gasp as if he was seeing this for the first time. Ragatha would express her concern over the injured Jax while yelling in shock at the brutality. Zooble would make a sarcastic remark without a single shred of remorse and not do anything to help. And Pomni? Well…
Pomni felt numb.
She didn’t react to anything at all.