Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Ragatha woke up she smiled, remembering what had happened the day before, the spider monster was a bit dramatic but Caine was always one for drama, but other than that it was good, she had enjoyed messing with the monster, and enjoyed arguing with Jax about what had happened.
When she sat up she looked at the time, 12pm?! How had she slept in this long? Why hadn't anyone woken her up! Surly Caine would have come to see if she had abstracted?

She started walking down to the stage, something didn't feel right.
When she got there Pomni and Jax were standing huddled, whispering.
“What's going on guys?”
They looked up abruptly.
“Ragatha!” Pomni said running over and grabbing her by the shoulders, “Caine's gone!”
This took a while to process, gone where? Why did Pomni sound so panicked?
“Gone where?”
“No one knows! Bubble just appeared and said there isn't going to be an adventure today because Caine is missing!” Pomni was shouting, Ragatha could understand though, if the all powerful A.I. could go missing who knows what could happen to them.
“Where are the others? Did they sleep in too?”
Pomni and Jax looked at each other, worried looks on their faces.
“They're missing too, Jax broke into their rooms to see if they were ok, or if they had abstracted, or-”
“I didn't break in! I just…visited without permission. Anyway, the point is: they weren't there.”
So Zooble, Gangle, Kinger, and Caine were all missing, what could possibly have happened!?
“Wait, why didn't you break into my room?!” Had they seriously forgotten about her!
“No offence Rags but I could hear you snoring from outside the door.”
Ragatha was greatly offended.
“I do not snore! Anyway it's not as bad as you! You talk in your sleep!”
“I do? What do I say?” He asked, seeming genuinely curious.
“Mostly stuff about pranks.”
“Seems about right.”
“GUYS FOCUS!” that was Pomni, Ragatha had almost forgotten she (Pomni) was there.
“Right, focus, we need to find them.” as Ragatha said this she knew that they would expect her to come up with the plan, but she had no idea how to find a missing person in an A.I. world that had no real logic, but luckily (and surprisingly) for her Jax said: “I have a plan!”

Chapter Text

Jax's plans were usually bad ideas, for example last time he had a plan it was to throw Gangle over the ravine they were trying to cross and use her as a tightrope.
“We should first of all make sure that we are all who we say we are. Especially after yesterday. Then when we know we are definitely us, we start looking for clues, maybe call Bubble and see if he knows anything?”
Ragatha was impressed, this seemed very well thought out for a Jax plan.
“Alright how do we prove it's us?”
“Simple Pom-pom, all we need to do is say something only we would know!”
“Pom-pom? Really?!”
“Whaaaaaat?”
Ragatha sighed, though, she thought, Jax probably was Jax considering how annoying he was being.
“I'll start!” She said, trying to break up the fight, “something only I would know…I know that Jax is actually scared of horror movies but pretends not to be.”
“RAGS!” Jax was clearly not pleased with her picking this fact.
“Well I know that Ragatha has an unhealthy obsession with stuffed animals!”
“Jax is all you do start arguments!” Pomni interjected.
“Hey! She started it!” he said, pointing at Ragatha.
“I know that…I shouldn't have left Ragatha for a ‘non-existent’ exit.”
“Pom-pom there isn't an exit.”
“Maybe there is! Maybe that's where they all went!”
“Caine's an A.I. how could he possibly leave.”
Ok this really was getting out of hand.
“BUBBLE!” Ragatha called out to stop them, Bubble didn't appear.
“Great. Bubble’s gone as well.” Jax was not pleased.
“Ok well then we're going to have to find another way to find them.” Ragatha was a lot more optimistic about this than the others.
“If they're still here and haven't found an exit” Pomni muttered.

Chapter Text

“Ok well we need to find some sort of clue…” Ragatha was pacing around in circles, suddenly Jax grabbed her and forced her to sit down on a sofa.
“Calm down Dolly! You’re so stressed you made a dent in the floor!”
She looked over to where he was pointing, and could see that, yes, she had in fact made a huge dent in the floor. He sat down next to her, Pomni sitting in the armchair to her right.
Jax was just about to suggest they go look around the rooms some more when Ragatha started to cry.
“What if Pomni's right! What if they did find an exit and just left without us!”
Jax hugged Ragatha: “It's ok Dolly, they wouldn't leave without you.”
Ragatha pushed away from him, unhappy with what he said ‘they wouldn't leave without *you*’
“Jax they wouldn't leave without you or Pomni either!”
Jax laughed and said: “So you admit they wouldn't leave! Besides I never said they would leave without Pomni, I just said they wouldn't leave without you.”
Both girls stared at him for a bit before Pomni spoke up: “Jax, we wouldn't leave you here…you know that, right?”
He gave a sad laugh.
“Wouldn't blame ya’ if ya’ did.”
It was now Ragatha’s turn to hug him. After a while of hugging Jax finally said: “so, should we go back and look for clues in their rooms or something?”

Chapter Text

Ragatha was still panicking, but now that she knew that both Pomni and Jax were panicking too in their own ways she felt better. They were walking down the hall, checking for any sort of clue. Nothing. There was nothing. There were no clues, there was just nothing, the rooms were empty. Empty and completely black, they weren't even sure if there was a floor or walls anymore.
“They left, they must have.” Pomni kept saying.
“I'm sure they haven't. And i'm sure they're fine.” She didn't believe this, but she needed Pomni to calm down.
“Ummm guys…what's that?” They all looked to where Jax was pointing, the wall seemed to be turning the same black the rooms had been, except it was moving, the black was spreading across the walls and floor, and moving towards them, they looked around and saw the black slowly creeping out of the rooms as well. It was getting faster.
“Run!” Ragatha yelled, grabbing Jax and Pomni by the wrists, pulling them along.
“What is that?!” Jax looked horrified, and Ragatha didn't blame him, they'd never seen anything like this before, but it certainly wasn't good.
They were running as fast as they could, but the circus wasn't designed for people to be running around, so they kept tripping over things.

Eventually they were out of the tent, they looked back up at it as the tent turned black and then just disappeared. Just like that, completely gone.

Chapter Text

What just happened? What was going on?! Were things being…deleted? Was that even possible?
“Do you think that's what happened to the others?” Ragatha's voice was shaking, would they be next?
“No. I'm sure they're fine.” Jax didn't look like he believed this, but it made Ragatha feel better.
Neither Jax nor Ragatha heard Pomni mumbling about the exit, and about how they must have escaped.
“Ok there has to be some sort of fix to this, right?” Ragatha was trying so hard to sound optimistic.
Then suddenly they could hear a weird sort of glitching noise coming from behind them, they all turned around quickly. They saw Caine floating in the air, glitching.
“Caine! A-are you ok?” Ragatha was relieved to see him but not pleased at the glitching.
“HahAAHahHAahaHa, YoU foOliSh ChARActeRs, dO YoU NOt sEe whAT iS HAppeniNG! YoUr digITAL WoRld HaS bEEn HaCkED! AnD oUR PlaN Is TO delETe YoU!”
They all took a step back, this is bad, this is very very bad.
They started to slowly back away as the glitching Caine started moving towards them. Suddenly they were grabbed from behind, Ragatha turned her head and saw it was their friends, all equally as glitchy as Caine.
Ragatha wasn't sure what to do, she couldn't fight her own friends! Even if they were posesed! Jax didn't seem to have the same problem. He was repeatedly punching Zooble in the face, it wasn't working very well.
“YoU ARe ComINg wITh uS!”

Chapter Text

They wake up in a dark room, Ragatha looked around but she could barely see.
“Guys, you there?”
“Yeah I'm here. Jingle bells, you here too?”
“Yep I'm here, and stop calling me weird stuff!”
“Guys please!”
Ragatha tried to stand up, realising that her hands were tied to the wall, as she fell straight back down again.
“Ow.”
“Rags you ok?”
“Yeah I'm fine. Anyone know how to cut rope?”
Silence. Great.
“Oh I have an idea!” Ragatha looked in the direction Pomni's voice was coming from.
“Jax when you open your mouth your teeth go really sharp and pointy! Why don't you bite the rope!”
“Really Jingles?!”
Ragatha heard a biting sound and a sound of disgust, clearly the rope didn't taste very nice. She heard him say through chewing: “Pomni I swear I'll kill you if this doesn't work!” But it sounded more like: “Oni I sear I'll ill ou f his oesn’t ork!”
Eventually they were all untied, Jax was still spitting out bits of rope that had came off in his mouth.
Ragatha started looking around for a door, or a light switch. Eventually she came across a light and switched it on, there was a big screen and some test tubes qnd a weird shaped door. Then there was a noise at the door.

Chapter Text

Suddenly their friends, well not really their friends, the possessed version of their friends, came into the room. Seeing the others made Ragatha feel sick, she felt so bad for them.
Jax on the other hand was thinking about getting out of there, he attempted to attack them. Attempted being the key word. In an instant Jax was on the floor with his hands tied behind his back and a cloth in his mouth, at least he tried though?
But when Ragatha looked at Pomni, she was in shock, she didn't look anxious, or scared, or upset. She looked…happy? And then she started to laugh. Why was she laughing? What is going on?
And then she spoke: “You idiots really believed I was Pomni! I must be a pretty good actor!”
“What happened! Where's the real Pomni!” Ragatha asked, her fear building up.
“Oh love, she was the first one we deleted. We tested the machine out and it got a bit…violent. But now we think we've fixed it. So tell me, which one of you would like to be the first to go?”
Ragatha felt a chill go down her spine, they had killed Pomni. And now they were going to kill her and Jax.
“If I let you delete me, will you let him go?”
Ragatha heard Jax let out a grunt of protest through the gag, but she couldn't let them kill her brother.
“You can die first but we're going to kill you both.” Said the imposter Pomni.
Jax managed to spit out the gag and said: “delete me first.” And then turned to Ragatha, and it was obvious that he was telling her to run.
Imposter Pomni didn't waste any time, she just grabbed Jax and shoved him into the machine, and locked the door.
“I'll leave you alone.” Imposter Pomni said, and her and the others left the room, leaving Ragatha to bang on the door of the booting up machine.
“Run Raggy! Don't be stupid! I'm going to die but we don't both have to die!”
The timer countdown was on 10 seconds, she started pressing random buttons, trying to get the door to open.
10
“I'll get you out of there!”
9
“I promise! I won't let you die!”
8
“I just need to-”
7
“Find the right-”
6
“Button!”
5
“Raggy it's fine.”
4
“Just give up.”
3
“No!”
2
“I can do this!”
1
“Machine activating.”

Chapter Text

“Machine…activating…”
“Machine malfunctioning. Recommended action: vacate the premises. If you do not get at least 2 miles away in the next few minutes you will explode.”
This made Ragatha even more frantic, but she was glad it gave her more time. She was pressing every button she could find, seemingly every button except the correct one.
“Dolly you have to run! Just get out of here!”
But she couldn't stop. Finally she found the button and the door to the machine opened. As soon as the door opened Jax started trying to open the main door to the room. Eventually he resorted to kicking down the door, he managed to, but as soon as he did he grabbed his foot and started screaming.
Ragatha, even though she knew it was a bad idea, grabbed Jax and picked him up as she started to run away. Jax looked shocked, for one he didn't think that his sister, being made of fabric, would be able to lift him so easily, and two because why was that her first reaction!
“Put me down!” he yelled and Ragatha kept running.
“You had hurt your foot and were hopping around, and we needed to get out of there quickly. You should be thanking me!”
“Thank you! Now put me down!”
She stopped running, and rather ungraciously dropped him on the floor.
“Oi!”
“You told me to put you down/1 not put you down gently.”
“Do you think we’re 2 miles away?”
“Hopefully”
Suddenly the part of hallway that was only a few feet away from them, and everything before it, exploded.
“Oh my god.”
“You ok Rags?”
“Yeah…you?”
“Yeah…we should get out of here.”
“Agreed.”

Chapter Text

They were walking around, trying to find a way out of the building, and trying to work out where in the digital circus they were.
“Raggy…what do we do about Pomni?”
Ragatha paused, she had been blocking the thought of what Imposter Pomni had said.
“We need to move on. We need to get out of here first.”
They kept walking in silence for a while. Until Jax exclaimed: “Raggy we’re walking in circles! We've passed that door 5 times!”
“Well that's not possible! We've been walking in a straight line!”
“It's the digital circus rags! What did you expect! For it to make sense!”
They kept arguing like that for a while. But they didn't notice the door that they had seemingly walked past 5 times opening, and with a quick move they were both pulled inside.

Chapter Text

Suddenly they both felt a sharp pain and were knocked out.

When they woke up they were tied to chairs in a dark room. Then a bright light shone into Ragatha's eyes.
“Where's the exit to this crazy building!” Came the voice of presumably the person who had shined the light.
“What? Why would I know?”
“You guys trapped us, remember?”
And suddenly Ragatha had a worrying idea that maybe their captors were also lost inside their own chaotic building.
“What do you mean you don't know! You work for them right! The machine blew up! So there's no way you're the real Ragatha and Jax!”
“Wait…Pomni?!” Ragatha shouted, Pomni couldn't be there, but imposter Pomni would know that they weren't clones.
“How the h!?# did you escape! Imposter Pomni said you blew up!”
“Well I assume the same way as you!”
“But there were 2 of us! How would you have pressed the button to get out!”
“There was a button on the roof of the machine.”
“SERIOUSLY!” Jax interjected, “I COULD'VE JUST PRESSED A #!@?!£& BUTTON?!”

When Pomni had finished untieing them she went to the door and started listening through the keyhole.
“Shhh, I can hear them.”