Chapter Text
Gangle: “Caine, I’ve gotta know something important.”
Caine: “Yeah?”
Gangle: “How many… years, have I spent here?”
Caine: “Well I don’t know. Wahoo!”
Gangle: “... Don’t you have a clock? You’re an AI, right?”
Caine: “It’s probably been about… let’s see. The birthday of Antonio Vivaldi was sixteen-seventy-ei-”
Gangle: “WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH IT?!?!”
Caine: “Okay,” He paces in the air, stroking his nonexistent beard. “Hmm. What music genre do you like?”
Gangle glares at Caine.
Caine: “Oh. Uh, hallucination. You have spent 276,300 years here in this beau-tiful circus!”
Gangle: “You’re not helpful.” She sobs.
Ragatha: “What’s wrong?”
Gangle: “I want to know how old I am.”
Ragatha: “I don’t know either, but last time I checked I was twenty-three. You’re four years younger than me, right? So that makes you nineteen.”
Gangle: “Thank you, Ragatha.” She continues sobbing, processing how she has spent one year in the circus.
Gangle opens her eyes, taking in the soothing visual quiet of the strangely desaturated sky. She loves quiet, she wishes everything could be quiet. The air smells of… she doesn’t have a nose. She’s still not used to that, but her hypothetical blood still hypothetically oxygenates itself anyways – wait, where’s Ragatha?
She jolts up and darts her eyes all around.
Where am I?
The intense HSB of the circus she thought she saw moments before burned into her vision like a mirage in the dull tones of the alleyway.
She looks at her hands.
They’re… hands. Not ribbons, my own hands. Five fingers, covered in real black skin.
Is this
Earth?
This is too good to be true. Caine wouldn’t just put me back out of nowhere, he’s too self-centered to listen to us.
She starts to regain sensation and notices sharp pains all over her body. The air smells of shit and rot. She was the hungriest and thirstiest she had ever been, and she had a headache. Her ears rang.
Why do I feel like I need to eat? I’ve never had to eat before–My skin is pale. How long has it been since this body got any sun–Ow. Holy shit. Why are there so many cuts?
She clutches her arm, but that only pushes in tens of splinters.
“AAGH-”
Oh, there’s broken glass all over me. I thought I did it myself.
How does that explain feeling like I got hit by a truck?
She looks up at the broken window.
What is happening?
She tries to limp around and explore, but her fractured bones and dizzy head can’t handle walking. She falls on her hands and knees. She begins to cry.
I can’t live without Ragatha. I don’t know what to do without Ragatha or Zooble. They understand me like nobody else does. Hell, I even miss Jax. Where are they?
Her sight blurs into nauseating spirals, and the smell isn’t helping either. She gags, but she has nothing in her stomach to throw up.
I need some fucking food. Right now.
She crawls over to the sidewalk, seeing the busy street in front of her. The honks feel like an attack on her throbbing head.
Come on, I need that food. I’m literally going to die if I don’t eat.
“Hey, someone! I need food!”
She sees a pedestrian’s feet stop in front of her. She looks up.
The guy looks like a skeleton, but he has a boxy head. His teeth are exposed at the gums and are so rotten that they have holes in them, and his eyes are glowing orange. “The Whale Belly’s right there. Right across the street.” He points behind him.
“Thank you.”