Chapter Text
Pomni was lost in thought as she walked through the foyer of the Amazing Digital Circus. The little red-and-blue jester had felt that something was off about the day's "adventure". No one endured a mental crisis, it was minimally traumatic for all the humans involved; it could perhaps even be considered "fun". Was Caine starting to rein in his zaniness and finally giving them a chance to relax?
To Pomni, who felt like she'd been stuck in the Circus for way too long already, it seemed foreign. Her thoughts were mostly crowding out the blabbering that the lanky rabbit man Jax was doing to her side. She didn't even know why he was walking with her.
"And then, man, did you see how far I launched that NPC when I hit him with the bat?" Jax chuckled heartily. "I don't care if Caine altered the physics engine, that was so satisfying." His steps slowed when he realized Pomni wasn't alongside him anymore. He looked to his left and saw that she had stopped in front of a mirror. His eyes rolled in her direction and he walked backwards to be near her. "Hey, pay attention when I'm talkin'." He gave her a little push on the shoulder.
"Jax, look," Pomni was wide-eyed, pointing at the mirror. It was the very same mirror she'd first stopped at to look at her digital form on her first day of the Circus.
Jax looked, his annoyed expression turning to glee as he beheld his tall, purple form, his big yellow eyes with massive black angular pupils, and his widening yellow grin.
"Handsome devil, ain't he?"
"Not you, dummy, me," Pomni pointed at her own reflection. Jax looked, and something was definitely off. While his own reflection was behaving as one might expect a reflection to, Pomni's was not pointing back at her. Instead, it had its arms folded and was staring back at Pomni's concern with something like contempt, its eyes slightly narrowed. Most notably, all of the blue segments on the reflection's costume and eyes were black.
"Oh, huh, looks like the mirror's broken again," Jax huffed.
Pomni felt a pit of dread open up in her midsection. "Do you think that could be Mir? That, uh, 'copy' of me back from when I inadvertently glitched the mirrors?"
"Huh, maybe," Jax chuckled, shaking his head, "man, Mir was great."
"She tried to get me killed, Jax," Pomni looked at him disdainfully. "You know, the whole locking me up and replacing me, hoping I abstracted?"
"Besides that, though," Jax rotated his hand at the wrist, "she was great. She tried to help us all out with all of our stuff."
Pomni's reflection grew a haughty smirk as its folded arms tightened up, keeping its gaze trained on Pomni.
"Why's only she not mirroring right...?" Pomni did a few poses with her arms out, up over her head, and waving around, but the reflection refused to reflect her.
"Who knows?" Jax shrugged. "But what a stupid name, right? 'Mir' the mirror demon? It'd be like calling me 'Rab the rabbit'."
Pomni's reflection glared up at Jax from behind the mirror with a scowl, then grabbed his own reflection by the overalls, dragging it down and starting to punch it in the face with her black-gloved fist. The reflection of Jax was clearly trying to escape and desperately trying to mirror Jax's surprise, but the reflection of Pomni kept beating it up.
"Yikes, poor guy," Jax huffed out nervously.
"Maybe we should... go," Pomni added with a nervous titter.
Jax nodded and took a big sideways step away from the mirror. The struggling Jax reflection was yanked off to the side, leaving the reflection of Pomni to whiff its last punch and hit the ground. It got up and stared at Pomni with obvious hatred, its eyes narrowing.
Pomni finally managed to break her gaze on it and walked away alongside Jax. "Oookay, that was creepy. Maybe we should tell Caine about this."
"What for? So he can 'fix' it like he did last time?" Jax shrugged, hands behind his head. "It clearly didn't work."
Pomni flinched as she walked past another mirror, but this one reflected her perfectly. She spent a few moments repeating her routine of trying to get her reflection to break "character", but nothing seemed to work, despite her wildest gyrations.
"You look like an idiot," Jax smirked, "guess you are a jester, though."
"Shut up, Jax," Pomni grumbled. "I'm just trying to figure this out. Is it only that one mirror? The first mirror I laid eyes on here? Why? How do mirrors even work in the circus?"
"Those sound like nerd questions with nerd answers," Jax folded his arms, but then held them out wide as they approached the lounge area. "But we're in luck! Nerds!" The other four Digital Circus "Actors" were seated on the colorful couches in the lounge. Ragatha and Zooble looked less than pleased to see him, Gangle flinched but miraculously her comedy mask had survived the day, and Kinger just stared past the two approaching characters.
"What do you want?" Zooble spat with their usual venom.
"One of the mirrors seems to be broken," Pomni explained, "and my reflection in it is... misbehaving. I think it's gone bad or something. But how is that even possible?"
"Well, nothing in the Circus acts quite like we expect it to," Ragatha explained with her hand halfway up, a patient smile on her face. "But from experiments done by characters before your time, we think that each mirror actually has NPCs in a 'mirror world' behind it that all copy us exactly."
"None of the mirrors can be moved," Zooble explained, "in their more desperate moments, a couple of previous humans here tried to crash the Circus by mirroring a mirror. But despite whatever they tried, the mirrors can't mirror each other, they just stop at one reflection. Hence the 'mirror worlds' theory."
Pomni looked down at her feet. She wasn't quite standing on the carpet of the lounge, and a blurry mass of her color was reflected at her from the floor. "So uh, is my reflection down there a 'mirror world' too?"
"I don't think so," Ragatha shook her head, "I think that's just a trick of the lighting engine. But to save on processing power, we think that the mirrors only copy whatever they need to at the time. We think."
"I feel like I'm getting a headache," Pomni sat down on the couch between Ragatha and Gangle.
"This is boring," Jax rolled his eyes with a flippant wave. "See ya."
"I think I can show you something that'll explain it," Gangle said, starting to draw in her notebook.
Pomni looked down at her feet, quiet for a moment, then looked up to Kinger, who didn't seem to be paying attention at all. She offered a sad sort of smile, then looked over to Zooble. "Thanks, by the way, for noticing that Mir wasn't me."
Zooble nodded, folding their mismatched arms. "No problem. Just surprised no one else noticed. I mean, 'your' colors were reversed and 'you' were acting weird."
"Guess we could all brush up on our observational skills," Ragatha gave a guilty giggle.
"Here," Gangle showed Pomni a rough sketch she had drawn. In it, a little stick-figure Pomni was staring at a mirror in a three-quarters view, but nothing was reflected in the mirror.
"Uh, what am I looking at?" Pomni narrowed an eye.
"See, I drew you and a mirror, but the mirror isn't reflecting you, because it isn't really a mirror, it's just a drawing of one," the ribbon girl explained, then quickly scribbled in a reflection of Pomni into the mirror. "I had to draw the reflection myself to make the drawing mirror work like one. The mirrors in the Circus must draw in the models the same way."
"Somehow, it might take less processing power to make 'dummy' duplicates of everything that could show up in the mirror rather than just use the lighting engine to make real reflections," Ragatha explained.
Pomni looked down, trying to focus on this explanation, remembering the misadventure she went on in the Candy Canyon Kingdom. Then, her thoughts drifted to her encounter with her mirror duplicate which escaped from said mirror after a system glitch that Pomni technically caused, though not through her own actions. "So Mir never really went away, she was just forced to be my reflection in that one mirror after Caine threw her back in. But now she's found some way to defy her 'purpose', and I... don't really like the vibe she's giving off."
"We should probably tell Caine about this," Gangle's voice had a worried edge. "It could be dangerous."
"But that's what she might want," Zooble offered with a finger up. "We know she's conniving and scheming."
"And she went out of her way to look different than me," Pomni pointed at her blue glove. "All of her blue bits were black. Like she's trying to get my attention."
"So we should just ignore her?" Ragatha shrugged. "She could just be getting frustrated and desperate." She paused to consider. "Kinger, what do you think?"
"Uh!?" Kinger lurched straight as if he'd been napping with his eyes open. "Well, ah, if you squash a bug, you don't get to enjoy it anymore. But, if the bug is a nasty one, it might sting you."
"Thanks, Kinger," Pomni shook her head with a tired smile, "that's very inconclusive."
"Thanks! I think," Kinger put a hooked finger up near his eyes.
"Well, this has been exhausting," Pomni got up and stretched. "Think I'm gonna try to get some sleep."
"Night, Pomni," Zooble waved casually. Ragatha and Gangle followed up with similar waves and smiles.
Pomni found herself back at the mirror, gazing at it. For now, it was reflecting her cautious expression, her fingers gently touching each other, but still, the black color on her reflection remained, rather than the blue of Pomni's own. Why had curiosity gotten the better of her? Why had she come back?
After an uncomfortable period of staring, Pomni decided to turn away. However, the mirror image was still standing across from her, as if she was still in front of the mirror. Her mirror copied her moving forward as it moved backward. Anywhere she turned, the reflection was the same distance away. A diagonal sheen shimmered, as if a pane of glass was dangling in front of her, following her every move.
"What's the matter?" It was her own voice, though the reflection's mouth did not move. Instead the form of the reflection began to warp, twisting, growing larger. The mouth spread into a selection of sharp teeth, focused on Pomni in a razor scowl. The body of the reflection towered over Pomni, massive, almost apelike. Pomni let loose a whimper of fear.
"Are you so worried about me?"
Bits of the mirror demon's costume frayed and tattered, becoming upturned and flowing as if they were made of fire. Pomni tried a dash in one direction and, seeing the demon was still the same amount in front of her, doubled back and turned around, only to stop as it was still there. She couldn't look away. Her eyes felt paralyzed into beholding the monster her reflection had become.
"What are you afraid of?"
Neither she nor the reflection were actually talking, but it was her voice. It sounded chiding, accusatory. The reflection's fingers had grown into long consummate knife points, the shoe tips curling back like scythe blades.
"You're afraid of me? Me, Pomni!?"
Pomni tried to shriek "stop!" but her voice wouldn't come out. The demon stood there, its eyes intense, starting to glow as its form simmered with hatred and fury. Pomni tried to close her eyes again, tried to do anything, but her body wouldn't obey her.
"Do you think I'll kill you?"
Paralyzed in dread, Pomni stared up at the fulminating creature above her. The scowl was twisted, so full of hate and malice, but the demon didn't appear to move, either.
"That I'll take your life!?"
In one swift motion, the demon's grotesque, mutated claws rose up, then raked across Pomni's-
"Gyah!!!" Pomni shot up in bed, her breath coming quick. She placed a hand on her chest. Across her room was her own mirror, displaying her terrified form sitting there on her grandiose blue and red bed. After the shock and shivering had worn off, a grimace formed across Pomni's face and she lay back down in bed, folding her arms across her. Pomni's eyes opened back up sudddenly as she gave another quick glance to her own mirror. Thankfully, her reflection there was following suit.
"Good morning my little oxygen breathers!" The ever-wacky and exuberant Caine greeted the six human members of the Circus from his usual floating perch above them. "Now, today we're going to-"
"Hold on, wait!" Pomni shot her hand up. "Before we get into any adventuring stuff, I'd like to, uh, report a bug."
"A bug!?" Kinger lit up. "Like a moth, or- or maybe a beetle?"
"No, like, an error," Pomni shook her head.
"An error?" Caine scoffed, folding his arms. "My Circus is perfectly flawless!"
"Here we go," Jax rolled his eyes, his hands on his hips. "You don't get any extra credit for being the teacher's pet, Pomni."
"No it's..." Pomni's brow furrowed in frustration, pointing in a northeast direction, "it's that mirror, the mirror where my reflection came out and tried to replace me."
"That mirror?" Caine bat a hand. "Oh, no need to worry. That NPC copy of you will never be getting out of there."
"Well, uh, even so..." Pomni poked her fingers together, "she's doing weird things in there, like refusing to mirror me and beating up Jax's reflection."
"Maybe you should try that," Zooble offered, "might be cathartic." Jax clicked his teeth.
"Hmmm... well, if it will get you in a more adventury mood, I guess I could look at it," Caine flew towards the mirror in question. "What was that mirror clone's name, anyway?"
"Mir," Pomni replied.
"Mir the mirror copy?" Caine scratched at the back of his gums with his rod. "Sounds a little uninspired. Did I come up with that?"
"No, she did," Pomni answered.
"Ah, that makes more sense," Caine chuckled. He floated in front of the mirror, his googly mismatched blue and green eyes extending out of the midst of his floating teeth to get a better look over the mirror. His reflection copied his movements perfectly. "Well, everything looks copacetic to me!"
"No, but...!" Pomni anxiously went over to the mirror. "Look, its my reflection that's messed up-"
Nearly the moment Pomni got in front of the mirror, her red-and-black reflection leaped up and dragged Caine's reflection to the ground. As Caine's reflection struggled to get away from her, Pomni's reflection opened its mouth and lunged at the ringleader's mirror image.
"Oh, oh my gosh!" Caine moved back, his arms flailing until he froze in panic.
"Ih- Is she eating him?" Pomni gaped.
"Well! Ah- that's quite enough of that!" After witnessing a few destructive bites, Caine snapped his fingers and the mirror dislodged from the wall, turned around, and slammed back onto the wall, it's blank backside now facing front. "This is a family-friendly operation, after all. We can't have something so disturbing on display, it'd- ah, bother the censors."
"Why don't you just fix it?" Zooble asked in a barely-interested voice.
"I will, I will," Caine waved his hands back and forth, "I just had a really great idea for an adventure and I want to send you all on it before I forget!"
"Why's she eating your reflection, anyway?" Ragatha looked disquieted about what she'd witnessed. "She couldn't get your powers that way, could she?"
"No, no!" Caine wagged his finger. "My reflection doesn't have any powers! Well, actually, it does, but there's a robust lockout preventing it from ever actually ever using them, even if it had its own personality. It's perfectly safe if Pomni's psychotic reflection wants to eat mine."
"Sheesh, listen to yourself," Pomni deadpanned.
"So how about you all go on my cool and robust adventure and just forget this little incident ever happened, okay?" Caine shrugged. "I promise I'll fix... whatever's going on here."
"Before Pomni's reflection can escape the mirror?" Gangle looked worried, despite still having her comedy mask on.
"Ha! There's no way she could do that," Caine scoffed, "there's no exit on that side of the mirror!"
Pomni's reflection then pushed her way out of the backside of the mirror. She seemed to struggle, but before several seconds had passed, she popped out of the backside of the mirror, floating alongside Caine.
"Hello, Caine," the reflection said in Pomni's voice.
"THERE'S NO WAY YOU CAN DO THAT!!!" Caine shrieked.
"It took a lot of doing, but everything finally fell into place," Pomni's red-and-black reflection folded her arms. "You remember me, right? Mir?"
"Do you want to try again on the naming thing?" Caine winced. "Maybe, uh... Inmop?"
"I'll tell you something, I was getting pretty sick and tired of being stuck in that mirror for so long," Mir sneered at Caine, "with only whatever character's soulless reflection walked past the mirror for company. Soulless reflections I couldn't even talk to, or meaningfully interact with."
Pomni seethed, though she managed to hold her tongue. That was what Mir had tried to do to her, after all, at least something to that effect.
"Listen, Mir, how about we let you go on an adventure today and-" Caine attempted to speak, but Mir cut him off.
"I'd rather show you what it's like to be cooped up in a completely impotent state!" She balled her fists, hovering there opposite Caine.
Caine reared back with his rod and prepared to shake it at her. Hurriedly, he shouted: "That's it, missy, you're grounded until further notice!"
Mir grimaced and snapped her fingers on her black glove. Caine was held there in midair before he could complete the motion of his arm.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhh-!"
As Caine screamed, he abruptly transformed into a little plush version of himself, then dropped to the ground.
"Uh oh," Jax understated.
"Wh-what have you done!?" Pomni put her hands on the lappets of her hat.
"Don't worry, just a little revenge on my part," Mir rotated her right hand at the wrist. "After all, it's only fair that the person responsible for my suffering suffer the same way I did."
Pomni wondered if she should just take off running, though she didn't know anywhere that'd be safe from a being like this.
"So, I... I'm guessing me next, then?" Pomni balled her fists.
"What? Nah," Mir kicked back in midair and flicked her black hand. "I've evolved as a person, or whatever. I'd like it if you didn't think of me as Pomni's evil mirror clone... just think of me as your new benevolent dictator."
Mir's face widened into a broad, Jax-like smile.
"Uh oh," Kinger agreed with Jax.