Chapter Text
POMNI
I had no idea where I was. Somewhere dark, the silence was thick, heavy, almost suffocating.
I put on a headset a few minutes ago.
I couldn’t take it off.
The air didn’t feel like it did in the “real world”. It was colder. I bit back a shiver and kept walking forward, trying to ignore the horrifying noises coming from the darkest shadows. Loud thumps, strange jarring sounds.
“Hello!?” I called, going against every sense of preservation I had.
A hand came out of the darkness behind me and covered my mouth, pressing my body against theirs. I struggled, but they held me tight.
“Shh,” they breathed, a quiet, desperate warning. I stopped. Once they let me go, I turned to face them.
They were hard to make out in the dark, but they resembled an old rag doll. “Who are you?” I whispered. “What is this place?”
“I’ll tell you everything later,” she replied quickly. “But we have to go. It’s not safe out here.”
She took me by the hand, and I flinched.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
We walked quickly through this… place. The landscape was strange and unfamiliar. It was filled with shapes of many sizes and colors, just barely visible in the darkness. We reached a door with a green frog character with big eyes. Someone had painted a red X over it, and it dripped, covering part of their name. “Ribbit.”
She knocked three times, and someone let her in.
I was instantly blinded by the brightness of the room. I rubbed my eyes and blinked furiously, and everything slowly came into focus. Multiple cartoonish characters stood in front of me, and they were all staring. I felt like a child.
“Who’s this?” a tall purple rabbit asked.
“She’s a new arrival,” the rag doll replied.
“Oh, fuck’s sake,” he muttured.
“Jax, be nice,” the rag doll said angrily.
“We can’t have--” he broke off with a sigh, trying to choose his words again. “She’s gonna get someone killed. Probably herself.”
“How would I get you killed?” I didn’t even realize I asked the question out loud.
“Uh, I dunno, maybe because you don’t know what the hell is going on,” he replied.
“Jax!!” the rag doll yelled again.
He sighed. “Whatever. Welcome to hell, kid.”
“I’m 25 years old,” I told him. His face broke into a smug grin.
“Anyway,” the rag doll said, looking at everyone and then at me, “this is the Digital Circus. It wasn’t quite as… apocalyptic before you came, but recently, something happened, and… And now we’re in danger.”
“What kind of danger?” I asked uncertainly.
“The kind where if you’re not careful, you can take yourself and the team down with you,” the rabbit butted in.
“Jax,” the rag doll said exasperatedly.
“Hey, I’m not wrong. Besides, she should know what she’s in for,”
The rag doll sighed. “This used to be a place of… ‘fun’ adventures, but something happened. Now we’re all trying to get out.” She looked around the room. “Let’s introduce ourselves.”
“I’m Jax,” the rabbit said with a grin.
“Yeah, I think she got that,” a character made of shapes said. They had a pink triangle head and a bean shaped body. Their limbs were all mismatched, one of their legs was made of a broken stick. “I’m Zooble.”
“I-I’m Gangle,” a girl made of red ribbon, with a crying play mask for a head, said.
“I’m Ragatha,” the rag doll said, looking at me.
“I’m Kinger,” a light colored king chess piece said. His eyes were uneven on his head, I would’ve laughed if the mood wasn’t so heavy.
“I’m Caine,” a man with dentures for a head, with eyes inside, said. “I was… Meant to be your ringmaster, but I guess I failed, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did,” Jax spat.
“Jax!!” Ragatha cried. “Don’t say that!”
“What? He deserves it after--” he sighed. “Nevermind. Just forget it.” He turned away from the rest of us.
“What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled.
“Anyway,” Ragatha said, starting again, “what’s your name?”
“U-uh…” I racked my brain for anything, but I couldn’t find it. It was unnerving. “I don’t know. Oh God, why don’t I remember my name!?”
“Ok, let’s just calm down,” Ragatha said. “Nobody remembers their name once they enter the circus. So, you’ll have to pick a new one.”
“What?”
“I can help with that,” Caine said. “It’s one of the… Few things I can still do.”
Caine brought a small slot machine into existence with a snap, it landing right in his white gloved hands. He pulled the lever on the side, and the letters started to spin. They landed on XDDCC.
“I don’t think--”
“Yeah, it’s terrible, let’s try again,” he pulled the lever again, this time it landed on POMNI. “What do you think?” he asked.
“Pomni,” I whispered. It felt alright, I guess. “Yeah, ok. Pomni.”
“Alright, Pomni,” Jax said. “How about you sit down, and we’ll tell you what’s going on.”
I walked away from beside Ragatha, and sat down on a red block. “Okay,” I said. “Tell me.”
He took a breath, and leaned backward against his chair. It was purple, strangely enough, his exact shade of purple. “Well, you see Pom-pom--”
“Don’t call me that,”
“Whatever. This place used to be obnoxiously child-friendly. Bright, colorful, vibrant, cheerful-- Hell, you couldn’t even swear. Anyway, this place is all digital, right? Well, one day Caine tried to make an adventure, but he couldn’t. We just figured it was an act, and it was gonna be the real adventure to find out what was stopping him, and then boom, adventure time again. But it wasn’t. He was losing his ability to manipulate the game,” he paused, readjusting himself. “So, naturally, we tried to figure out what the hell was going on. And we landed on two theories. One, the most likely, is that the game files or whatever are corrupting, and the game is breaking, or two, the less likely, Caine is actually lying through his teeth and this is all one crazy adventure.”
“Which I assure you all is not true,” Caine interjected. “I would end an adventure like this immediately if it caused anyone harm.”
“Whatever, dental plan,” Jax sighed.
“Why is it dangerous? Why can’t we go outside??”
“I’m getting to that part,” he said. “When a person goes crazy, or reaches their breaking point or whatever, they go through something we call abstraction. When that happened, they’d turn into a big, weird, black spiky monster covered in eyes. They’d attack us and break everything, so Caine would send them to a place called the Cellar.”
“...Why aren’t they in the Cellar?” I was almost afraid to hear his answer.
“Because when Caine’s powers got confiscated, the cellar burst open, and with it, the abstractions. So now they’re all roaming around. Only at night, though. They don’t go out in the light. It bothers them.”
“So you just stay in here? This room??”
“‘Till day, yeah. Otherwise you risk becoming one of them,” he replied. “And trust me, you don’t want that.”
“I can’t stop them,” Caine said quietly. “I’ve tried for days, but the cellar won’t open no matter how hard I try. They’re just a part of the Circus now.”
“Yeah, they always were,” Jax said, his voice raising. “Until you threw them into some dark pit where you think we’d forget about them!!”
“Jax,” Gangle said softly.
Jax looked at her, and then he sighed. “Whatever,”
“Let’s all get some sleep,” Ragatha said. “It’s late, and we’re all tired.”
“Good idea,” Caine replied. He climbed up a few haphazardly stacked blocks and covered the light with a blanket, dimming the room. “Goodnight, everyone.”