Chapter Text
Another day, another horrible adventure. Pomni knew that they were just to give all the humans trapped in this digital Hellscape some sort of schedule, some semblance of a routine, but it still sucked. It wasn’t anything particularly new and exciting… Okay, well, it was the most terrifying version of excitement she would ever experience, regardless of how many times she’d undergone it, and she’d frankly not do it if she had a choice, but it still wasn’t new. That was the point she was trying to get at. Just some fantasy nonsense, with knights, dragons and the like. Like she said, it wasn’t anything new.
There were only two things worth noting about the whole thing. The first was that she saw him again. Gummigoo. The Australian gummy crocodile man who she watched get blown up before her very eyes. She was still a bit freaked out by that, which she doesn’t think she could be blamed for in all honesty. Ragatha had mentioned that, sometimes, NPCs got reused but Pomni was in no way ready to actually see him again, dressed in a suit of armor and speaking the Queen’s English. Nevertheless, that’s what she was faced with today and she still wasn’t entirely over it, even as she stepped through the little portal to welcome them back to the circus.
Of course, as she mentioned, that wasn’t the only thing that threw her off that day. Granted, being thrown off implied that she was on at some point during her time at the circus. Regardless, it was still something strange that she had noticed. As she said, or thought rather, Ragatha had mentioned that sometimes, NPCs got reused, but Pomni was pretty sure that it was more than sometimes at this point.
“Welcome back, everyone!” A familiar voice greeted, as their tormentor floated above them with a smile. Pomni wasn’t used to how normal the AI looked, especially compared to the rest of them. Gangle was a comedy/tragedy mask with a body made up of red ribbons, Zooble was a chaotic assortment of colors and shapes, Kinger is a beige king chess piece with crazy looking eyes and a purple robe, Ragatha was basically Raggedy Ann’s distant cousin, and Jax was a purple Bugs Bunny knock off with red overalls and a near constant yellow-toothed grin. Pomni herself was closer to human, but the literally white skin and red-and-blue pinwheel irises made it pretty clear that she wasn’t human, or at least, not whatever she used to be.
This AI though, it was so close it was almost insulting. She looked like a basic human, with long coral brown hair and emerald green eyes, wearing a typical circus ringleader outfit. Black tophat, red tailcoat with a white undershirt and black bowtie, along with black dress pants and shoes. She doesn’t know why they had to look like a bunch of weirdos and suffer dysmorphia while the ringleader got to look normal, but from her explanation, Monika had no control over it either.
“I hope you all had fun.” The AI asks with a smile that Pomni was tempted to call pleasant. Tempted being the keyword there.
“You stuck us in a time period without guns. It sucked.” Jax complains as he flops down on a nearby couch.
“More guns, got it.” Monika notes with a roll of her eyes, leading Pomni to believe-or at least hope -that Monika wouldn’t actually be adding more guns in later adventures, even if Jax liked shooting people. Him plus guns usually meant bad things for the rest of them.
“Well, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have other matters to attend to. New adventures to plan and all.” She says with a nonchalant wave of her hand as she turns away from them and disappears with a pop.
“So, Pomni, did you have fun this time?” Ragatha asks with a gentle smile as she approaches the jester.
“No, not really.” Pomni admits, not wanting to disappoint the doll, seeing that she was always so concerned for Pomni’s wellbeing all the time, but she wasn’t gonna lie. “I guess I’m not into renaissance stuff. It was… Weird seeing Gummigoo again, though.”
“Oh, the gator guy, right?”
“I think he’s a crocodile, actually.” Pomni says, not knowing why she cared enough to point that out, but she did. “But, um, speaking of, there’s… Something I wanted to ask about.”
“Oh?” Ragatha asks, wondering what the jester was curious about.
“Um, remember how you said that Monika reuses NPCs?”
“Um, yeah? That’s why Gummigoo was there again.”
“No, no, I figured that much out, but… Well, she seems to reuse the same ones a lot .” Pomni explains, not knowing how to phrase what she was asking, exactly. Ragatha, however, made a small ‘OH’ face, as if somehow figuring out what she was asking about.
“Oh! You’re asking about those three!”
“Took you long enough to notice!” Jax asks, perking up from his position on the couch.
“Yeah, they’ve sort of just… Always been there.” Zooble notes with a shrug.
“Well, let’s see, there's the depressing purple one, the one that makes Gangle seem emotionally stable, and the b[WHOOPS]h.” Jax lists, counting them out on his fingers as he does. Once he finishes, Pomni glances at Ragatha, hoping for an explanation for that last one.
“The one with pink hair and eyes usually fights with Jax whenever she shows up. She’s sort of the only NPC that does.”
“Oh? Is there, uh, any reason they keep showing up?”
“Not as far as we know.” Kinger chimes in, a knight’s helmet still on his head, the visor still down and blocking out most of his vision. “Monika just always uses at least one of them in every adventure. If you see all three, that usually means that the adventure will be extra special. Her words, of course, not mine.” He continues to explain, seemingly not realizing he wasn’t looking at anyone as he did.
“We’re over here, Kinger.” Ragatha informs him gently, drawing silence from the chess piece before he turns to them and raises the visor on his helmet, his cartoonishly crazy looking eyes popping out from within.
“Wha?” He mutters in confusion, as if he didn’t know what was happening at the moment.
“Huh.” Pomni mutters, surprised by the information, or rather, the lack thereof. Monika wasn’t all too secretive, she was pretty upfront about everything going on in the circus, aside from the unfinished exit door fiasco when Pomni first arrived, but aside from that, she was pretty much an open book. So it was strange that she hadn't seemed to explain who those three were.
The ringleader of the circus had been pretty thorough when showing Pomni around the digital landscape, as she had done for every human before her. However, aside from the cellar, there was one room that was truly private. One room that only Monika knew of, and only she was allowed to enter. Not even her digital assistant Bubble was allowed beyond the simple wooden door that clashed with the rest of the colorful interior of the circus. Granted, it was normally hidden from view with some digital trickery that Monika had mastered over the years.
Regardless, as she revealed the door once again, she snapped her fingers, causing her outfit to change. There was no flash or sound effect like there normally was when she changed something, it simply switched as if it had always been that way. Her hat gone, her hair held up by a white bow. Her tailcoat gone, replaced by a simple gray jacket with an orange-brown checkered vest underneath, and a red ribbon replacing her bowtie. Her pants had been replaced with a blue skirt and brown stockings, her dress shoes replaced by white mary janes with pink toes. When entering this room, she was not a ringleader. Never a ringleader.
She opened the door and closed it behind her, concealing and locking it on her way in. No need for the humans to see it. Inside, it was what looked like a fairly standard Japanese classroom, but with no podium for the teacher to stand at, or anything else one might expect to find. Instead, all that was in the room were three desks, all with a vase of flowers on them, and a photo frame along with them, each holding a photo of a different girl.
“Um, hey everyone. It’s… Good to see you.” Monika greets, as if the photos could somehow hear her. “The, uh, humans had fun today, or, at least, I think they did. Pomni still hasn’t adjusted too well. Zooble didn’t join, of course, and Jax complained about the lack of guns. Otherwise, I think it was a success.” She explains with a smile, falling silent as if waiting for the photos to respond. “Sayori, I made you a princess! You looked really pretty in the dress I made for you!” She says, turning to one of the photos in particular, one that showed a girl with short, coral pink hair and sky blue eyes. “I’m sure you would’ve loved it if you… You were around.”
Monika looks away from the photos at this point, a frown stretching across her normally smiling face. She had their original files, of course, with all their memories saved. Even the ones she wished to delete. They served as a basis for whenever she made a copy to use in the adventures, just hit File, Copy, Create New, Paste, get rid of some memories in the copy, do a bit of rewriting of their personality to fit the scenario and boom, new NPC of the friends she couldn’t let go of… The friends she was too ashamed to fix.
“Sorry for not bringing you along, Yuri, Natsuki, but I just couldn’t figure out how to involve you in the scenario. Guess I’m getting rusty when it comes to writing, huh?” She asks, though she wasn’t sure why she bothered. Not like they could answer… Not after what happened… What she did to them.
“S-So, anyway, I have to… Y-You know, get back to writing the adventure for tomorrow. They don’t write themselves, you know. And I gotta work on that exit. It’s funny, it was so easy to do when all of this was just a dating sim.” She notes with a laugh as she walks to the door. She wasn’t a ringleader here. Never in here. But she had to put the hat back on eventually. Much like the adventures, the exit wasn’t going to make itself.