Chapter Text
Weird game, he thinks, just as the headset settles over his eyes.
He could scarcely feel his sticky bangs cling to his forehead through the loading screen, but as soon as he pressed the colorful polka dotted START button the sensation was gone like it was never there.
How did he even press that button in the first place? He wasn't holding onto a computer mouse. There weren't any controllers that came with the console.
He sort of just... did. Were there any other options on that main menu, even?
It's an eye strain as soon as he loads up. Bright peppy sounds, tinkling against his ears. Like a concert with a live band, tinny music shrieking out of a radio.
Then he sees, blinking his eyes he didn't know were closed. Trippy, reminiscent of the games he'd load onto his family computer via disc. Somewhat an echo of the strange flash games he'd dug up during bored computer classes.
Walls upon walls in the distance, a slide, twisty shapes with cloud patterning. Skywards reveals the ceiling connects at a central point, like a tent. An awfully large tent. Almost psychedelic of a setting, but he could imagine some jumpscares, or maybe some endearing characters and light comedy.
If there was a game to the game.
Where was the tutorial? Or, like, anything?
As he's lifting his hands to slide the headset off, his fingers are plush against his face. Gloves. He's wearing gloves? Yellow, with three seams. His headset doesn't come off, or seemingly exist at all, his hands sliding against his eyelids.
He tilts his head down to his elbow, instead of ruddy pink it's... Purple. Rubbery, but also the very slightest fuzzy.
This game has some weird immersion. Maybe he had put on some CIA mind control machine that was brainwashing him. Cool, probably more interesting than what he was actually doing.
Wait, probably?
What was he doing?
He turns away, inwards to the stage he's on. Those were some characters! Probably spawned in wrong, just a little bug.
A clown, no, jester, red and blue. Some normal looking woman, but further inspection reveals she has a button eye and is made of fabric. Mask. Triangle head. Chess piece?
Does he look as weird as that? He frowns, looks down at his purple pawed feet and pink overalls. Purple, sure- pink? What kind of avatar is this?
"Oh my god," is the first voice he hears, pitched in surprise. Then a cacophony of bumps and ouches, as he looks up to see the neat little line spinning out of control. Everyone tripped into a neat pile, limbs tangled together.
He's being looked at now, by all these funny little characters. The jester wrenches herself away from the others, gets to her knees. A scripted event, maybe. They stand and look at him uneasily. Okay, maybe his character did something? Or he's the new guy.
He grunts his annoyance, what an annoying intro. Then he stills, as he realizes the avatar he's in had also made the noise. Not like a microphone picking up feedback, he had actually felt the vibration of his vocal chords in his throat.
This isn't his body? Why is he speaking through it? Not-his hands touch where his adam's apple would be, find nothing but smooth neck.
He blinks, tries for the headset again. Not there. Maybe he's having a drug trip or something. Weird dream? Probably that, he hadn't had any substances in..
In...?
"What the hell kind of game is this," he takes a step back, heel of his foot hitting the rim of the stage. He swings around wildly, looks down at the checkered floor and beyond, where he finds that it's strangely liminal, no life, artificial light bleeding down.
He spins around to the cartoons, who have started whispering amongst themselves. Bar the triangle, staring at him with what could be hostility, suspicion, or even a friendly smile. Who knows, because it doesn't have a mouth. Or eyebrows?
Eventually the doll breaks out of the group with a lopsided smile, raising her hand which had only three digits on it, a wave. "Hello! Uh, are you-"
"FANTASTIC NEWS, EVERYONE!" A blur of red, he raises his fists in anticipation of it hitting him. But, no, it's speaking. A character with a head of dentures. Who designed these things? "A new human has joined this realm!"
"Human," he checks if his arms are still purple. "Human?"
"Of course, my lop-eared friend," he leans away from the very enthusiastic teeth, who stretches his body impossibly to follow him. Wait, lop-eared?
"Welcome to the Amazing Digital Circus! Now, now, don't be nervous, it's a wonderfully exciting adjustment to all of you little humans to be in this digital world. But worry not! As the ringmaster, you flesh and blood apes are my first and only priority!"
"Priority," a flat gravelly tone, he wouldn't have assumed came from the triangle if not for their amble towards him. Where the hell is their mouth. Every limb looks impossibly mismatched, like sticking superhero arms onto a furby. "Yeah, priority alright. Caine, we seriously haven't seen Kaufmo since last night. Could you, like, let us check on him now the theme song's over?"
The dentures responds to the name Caine. A pun on canine teeth? "Why, Zooble," Zooble bristles as the ringmaster twists over to look dead at them, righting his taffy stretched body to normal proportion. "You really are looking out for our new friend, what an amazing suggestion!"
"What," says Zooble at the same time as he says, "I have a name-"
"Come now, a tour is in order my frolicking friend!" And then his insides are completely rattled with motion sickness, the floor falling out from under him and then stretching new scenery into its place. He catches location names between heaving gasps. Circus, fairgrounds, lake, whatever, sure.
He sees The Void and is not pleased. Luckily, unluckily, Caine has stopped warping the air around him and has teleported him to the tiled floor in front of the stage.
He hurls.
A bubble with a mouth, like a Boo, appears and starts licking up the black holographic substance per instruction of Caine. He cradles his stomach and curls up on the cold floor instead of unpacking that. These characters are literally crazy. He's gone crazy. Awesome! Cool!
"Um, you alright?" The jester stands beside his head, leaning over. Her eyes are a pinwheel of the same neon red and blue on her hat and suit.
He rolls his head back, sits up. "Don't- I'm tired of talking to you dumb characters. Where. Do. I. Leave."
Her wide mouth twists down in displeasure, a wrinkle line forming under her eye. Cool, nice character animation. He'll mention that when he review bombs this crappy game later.
Of course, if he's not in a government lab in the middle of the woods having his brain analyzed, or if he's not tripping on some strange substances his roommate brought him, or if he's not having an awfully weird dream, or if he's not having a psychotic break.
Great lineup. Then he's wondering if he died and got sent to hell. Or if he's experiencing brain death and his messed up subconscious has decided this is the afterlife.
"Don't take it to heart Pomni, I think he might be confused..." the doll crawls back into frame, squeezes the jester's shoulder. "About that. Well, we can't... we're not really sure-"
The jester, Pomni, brushes the doll's hand off of her. "We don't know," she levels it out to him, ignoring the sigh beside her. "It's hard to say if anyone has gotten out, or how long this program's been running, or-"
"Pomni, you're making this harder." His lips twitch down into a deeper frown. Something actually interesting was being said and dolly decided to ruin it?
"Ragatha, please just..."
Zooble hops off the stage, plastic limbs clicking hard against the marble. "Could you stop trying to feed him your bull[$#^%]? Pomni, seriously, there's no way out."
Pomni whirls, clearly a sore subject, thrusting her hands out in frustration. He picks up on the implication there, some of these characters could be people like him? Or maybe just weird immersion. But he's kind of focused on, "...What was that noise?"
Caine reappears, drags him upright with hands planted on his shoulders. "Bad Zoobles are censored! And so is everyone else, as the Amazing Digit-"
"Amazing Digital Circus, yeah whatever- we can't swear here?"
"...Uh. No. But everything else is wonderfully imaginative, bridging creativity and reality! Isn't that great!?" Caine's loss of momentum is barely an issue, as he illustrates his points with grand gestures and fireworks popping out around his hands.
He blinks, makes a face. "Not. Not at all, actually." He'd gotten into the habit of touching his face to see if his mind would remember there's a headset, and stop tricking him. But he fails.
Frustrated, he stamps his foot and drags his fingers against his head- wait. He flinches away from what he touches, an appendage, before tentatively going back.
Connected to the top of his head, tall, there's two of them. He squeezes and he can feel the sensation, and some mental gymnastics reveals he can move them.
"...Why am I a rabbit," twisting around reveals a round purple tail on his backside. "Out of everything. A purple rabbit? What the hell kind of joke is this?"
"Just one of the circus's splendidly crafted avatars. Say, now's the perfect time to give your new body a new name!"
He opens his mouth in protest, he does have a name and whatever the teeth had to say about it was gonna be wrong. And then his mouth tacks to the roof of his mouth.
Why doesn't he know his own name?
"Hey, what's with the long face, buddy! A name, any name, as long as-" the teeth spill off into a speedy rendition of some copyright law. He ignores it.
He's adaptive, doesn't want to reveal his panic to the other maybe-humans lingering about, so he tucks aside the horror of not knowing himself to think up something. Hey, if he has one choice in here, it's gonna be his name.
Any attempts at cracking the case of his own name fails. Ideas of some default dude names pass him by, with a shudder he won't unpack.
Some of them are named in a funny way. Ragatha, Caine. He's a rabbit now, apparently. Harren- nope. Jack.
"Jax," he says, diverging Caine's spiel. The ringmaster looks at him with glee.
"Jax! Oh boy, oh boy, this is the first time anyone's named themselves in a long while! Remember that, Kinger? Ragatha? Maybe I am getting better at this whole introduction thing."
"...Three out of ten," Caine's... smile? drops at the rating. "I'm gonna go figure out where the exit is. Seeya."
Jax- he's Jax now, because he still can't figure out why his name is absent from his brain- leaves. He sees a row of doors on the far wall, maybe one of them? Maybe the exit to the tent itself would be a good idea, if he could figure out where that is.
A zipping noise. Caine's back in front of him, "But- Jax! You're yet to see the unveiling of my greatest adventure yet, a real showstopper to impress your distinguished tastes-"
"What about Kaufmo?" The mask speaks, teardrops coming out of the edges of her eyes that hadn't been there before. She holds a copy of her head close to her chest?
Caine twists his head around to look at her, leaving Jax with a horrifying view. He inches away, back toward the crowd. Maybe he could information gather under the guise of playing along. If these suckers didn't interrupt anything interesting, of course.
"Always Kaufmo, Kaufmo, Kaufmo today," he spins across their heads to the stage, while ribbons squeaks in fright and hunches down. "How about... KaufMORE adventures! What do you think, Bubble?"
Jax finds a place next to the jester, who's spinning one of the tassels of her hat on her finger. She looks at him for a second, apparently bored out of her mind.
"That's a greeeaaat idea, Caine!" The bubble talks and is named Bubble. Jax's eye twitches, and Pomni exchanges her boredom for curiosity. Is she mocking him? He glares.
"Today's an in-house one, but don't let that get you down! Brighten up Gangle, because today's adventure is Gather the Gloinks!"
Gloinks are apparently a very invasive species that has kleptomaniac tendencies. Who would've thunk. Caine bids them good luck, disappears in a puff of smoke.
He deduces what he can. Ribbons is probably Gangle, a fitting name. Kinger is the chess piece, who he'd seen earlier but hasn't since. Six characters including him. Seven, with the mysterious Kaufmo who seems to be some sort of neet.
Everyone present clusters towards him, which makes him itch. After a few more seconds, he realizes.
They're looking to Pomni. Is she some sort of... leader?
Surely not, right, she's the smallest of all of them. And everyone seemed to shut her down pretty quickly earlier. Strange.
"Has... anyone even seen Kaufmo since the adventure? I don't remember him at dinner," Pomni looks around the group, seemingly uncomfortable with the attention as much as Jax is.
Ragatha presses her hand to her fabric mouth, brows creasing down against her button and worried eye. "No, now that I think of it. He said he was going to his room after the adventure, but I swear he came back out. Jeez, I feel bad for not sticking around for his jokes... but, I did promise Kinger-"
"I'm sure he would understand if you told him," and then Pomni turns to watch a couple gloinks steal the curtains off the stage. Jax folds his arms, watches the annoying little things bounce off.
One hits Zooble in the head, straight up decapitating them. As their body rises independently, a whole... clutch? Murder? Parade? of gloinks comes down upon them. "What the [#%*$]," is their fading shriek as their body parts are plucked apart and taken away.
Gangle gasps as if she'd watched a murder. Ragatha looks mildly disturbed. Pomni's just wholly inconvenienced. "...Right. Those. Zooble... probably needs help? Can you go with Gangle, Ragatha?"
"Oh, of course," she widens her eye. "I hope they're okay." Gangle whimpers her distress besides her.
"I'll get Kinger," she watches as a pillow fort gets deconstructed, revealing the trembling chess piece beneath. "...And we can go find Kaufmo."
Jax tilts his head, watches the group of girls head off after Zooble. Then he realizes, "And what is the newbie meant to do?"
Pomni stops mid stride, turns to look at him. Back to that curiosity, rather than the dead eyed look when she was dishing out orders. "I thought you were looking for the way out. Didn't feel like bothering you."
He blinks, curls his knuckle over his chin. So she had been listening. Observant, that one. Maybe that's why the rest of them gravitated so easily towards her. Maybe everyone else is just an idiot and she's the smartest on here?
Kinger hops over, hands folded across his chest. Pomni greets the chess piece with bright familiarity, "Hey, Kinger! Sorry about your fort. Me and Jax are gonna go figure out what's up with Kaufmo, but you could also see where the gloinks took Zooble? And, uh, your pillows."
The chess piece hums and haws, a disembodied hand coming up to scratch the side of his crown. Then he seems to notice Jax all of a sudden, who has been standing doing nothing directly next to Pomni.
He shrieks a note of terror, which frightens Jax and makes him feel sick again. "Oh, my, you startled me. Black dogs often are a sign of bad luck," whatever that meant. Jax covers his mouth, shuts his eyes. "Are you... feeling okay?"
"Fine," he hisses out, stands up straight after swallowing down acid. "You're Kinger. What was that about dogs..?"
Pomni walks off, and the two follow her. Apparently Kinger had decided to stick around. Well, Jax too. "Oh, well, that's just a superstition. You're not a dog, either... and you're purple. Huh, I wasn't even close! Anyways, have you thrown salt over your shoulder lately? Or covered your stomach when a crow flies by?"
Jax is baffled by this man more than anyone or anything else. Just nonsense. What sort of king just says all this garbage? He continues talking as if not in a conversation with another person, "Of course, stepping on cracks is a bad one too, it'll break your..."
Kinger blinks, pupils rounding slightly. "Pomni! When did you get here?"
The jester smiles at him just as they get to an impossible corridor, going through one of the tent walls. "Hi Kinger. We're finding Kaufmo, remember?"
Jax dips his shoulders, shoves his hands into his pockets while they keep walking. Paintings that seem to fill entire walls leer down at him, along with a myriad of doors. A lot of them just have the same picture of a mannequin, but as they turn a corner some start popping up with cartoon avatars. Why are some crossed out?
"That's a great idea, Pomni," Kinger says kindly. "Last time I saw him he was going on about exits. Sort of like you two. Maybe he found one!"
Jax mutters a huh, just as Pomni perks up. "Oh. That- I hope that's true. It'd be great if that were true. Though, uh, the alternative might be more likely."
Kinger and Pomni ease into a confusing conversation, one that Pomni guides with no problem despite the king's... quirks. She says something about a pattern, Kinger replies with the suggestion that a statistical anomaly is more likely the deeper they go. Occasionally he is included, mostly by Pomni who briefly explains the dorms and the concept of sleep in the circus.
What a strange duo. Familiarity runs deep within them, not the sort of forced proximity the others have. Jax pries, "You two're friendly. Got a secret handshake too?"
Kinger pauses contemplatively, goes to ask Pomni about a handshake. She quickly shuts it down. Then he's given an infinitely interesting answer, "Well, yeah, we're friends. Kinger's the only one I really trust here."
"Him?" Jax reconsiders Pomni as if she'd begin to start spitting tinfoil hat conspiracies. If Kinger is her preferred company... Is she really that smart? Is Jax the smartest person here, actually?
"I know, right? But... he's been here the longest, knows a whole lot under there." She carries some hidden meaning that he fails to interpret immediately, instead tucking that away for later. Jax shrugs, and the conversation fizzles off as they come up to a door.
A proper clown, with black lines on his white face and big red lips. Something scratches around behind the door, creak, creak, and Jax's ears stand to attention. Sounds like a pencil?
Pomni gives him, or rather his ears, a raise of her brow. And then she's extending her forefinger, tapping the doorbell which rings out a giddy chime. Jax folds his arms over his chest. Something heavy weighs down on him when he stares at the avatar on the door, accompanied by those strange noises. It gives him the creeps more than anything else.
"I hope he enjoyed the clam chowder I gave him," Kinger says in the long silence, brushing down his velvety coat.
"...When did you-"
The door swings open, revealing the man of the hour. Kaufmo. He's puzzled, at first, beady eyes shifting from each person's face.
Then he smiles, befitting of his avatar, "What's up guys?"