Chapter Text
The circus felt…well, strange. Why wouldn’t it be strange? They all thought they would get out of this prison for a few hours, before they eventually learned it was a trap. Or was it? How would they know?
Caine had become increasingly quiet since then, probably guilty- or as guilty as an AI can get. That adventure had scarred pretty much everyone there, so he gave everyone a well deserved break.
It had been perhaps a week or so of Caine’s so-called, ‘Resetting minds’ and everyone seemed to not be talking to each other very much, yet they still ate together. No one wanted anyone to abstract over this.
They had all been having their breakfast, when all of a sudden, a big commotion startled them from their seats. A little dear like doll creature stood terrified on her hooves, shaking as if she was just learning to walk for the first time. Oh boy, here we go.
Pomni looked at the others with a skeptical look, mixed with concern. She really hoped it wasn’t someone new. It was bad enough they had to deal with this misery, and now there was someone new who they had to explain all this to, and by the looks of it, this girl was young.
Before anyone could process anything, the girl grabbed at her head, trying to take something off her head, but it was already too late.
Caine appeared suddenly and snapped the little fawn to the others, putting her in a chair, flying around her.
“Looks like we have a new character! Though, she is a bit small though!”
Zooble talks first, examining the little thing. “Of course she’s small, she's probably a kid Caine, leave her alone.”
The little girl in question looked back to Zooble, to Caine, and back to Zooble, shaking physically. “M-my dad…” She whimpered.
Ragatha stepped forward, and offered the little doe a hand. “Hey, hey, you’re safe. What happened to your dad, sweetheart?”
The girl looked up at Ragatha with big eyes, well, eye. One of the girl's eyes had a button, similar to Ragathas, which made Ragatha smile.
“Head thing…put head thing on me.”
Pomni frowned, not liking the sound of that. “Headset, you mean?”
But in response, she only got a confused head tilt. “What?”
Pomni stayed quiet. That was more than enough interaction for her. That role was for Ragatha.
The little deer jumped from her seat as she looked down to see hooves. Her eyes started to do the scratchy effect, starting to lose her mind…tears falling….
Ragatha put her hand on the girl's shoulder, crouching down to her height. “You’re okay! Do you know your name, or no?”
She looked up, blinking through her tears. Of course she knew her name! It was- wait…
She started trembling, her feet not working. What was her name? She had a name…
At the reaction they were given, Ragatha sighed. “Figured. It's okay, none of us know our real names. Do you wanna pick a name out?”
The fawn shook her head, pointing to Ragatha. “You.”
Ragatha looked quite surprised, pointing to herself. “Me? You want me to name you?” She looked back behind her at Zooble and Pomni, who gave her a shrug, while Gangle nodded enthusiastically.
The ragdoll turned back to the little girl, and gave in. “Okay, well…your character is a deer, so maybe Fawn?” She immediately back tracked and started overthinking. “Unless you don’t like it! Uhm…uh, how about…Button!”
Before anyone could say anything about said name, Caine appeared, smiling widely as he appeared beside the little girl. “MY MY! Looks like we have a new character by the name Button!”
At the presence of Caine, ‘Button’s’ ears stuck up, fully aware of him now, she felt her legs move for her, running to the nearest exit, which happened to just be the opening to the tent area.
“DID I SAY SOMETHING WRONG?”
Zooble rolled their eyes, and went over to Ragatha, trying to comfort her, glaring at Caine. “Oh yeah, you did nothing wrong. I don’t see anything wrong with jumpscaring 6 year old child who is going through something traumatic, yeah definitely not.”
Cain raised a very confused eyebrow, extremely confused, and not understanding sarcasm one bit. “Uh, whatever you say Zooble! Now! Pomni and Ragatha, you are now responsible for the new character! Have fun!”
And he was gone like that, leaving everyone silent, especially Pomni and Ragatha.
The thing that broke the silence was Gangles squealing, even though her sad mask was on. She was insanely happy at this moment. “Does this mean Pomni and Ragatha are moms!?”
“WHAT?!” Pomni exclaimed, jumping down from where she had been sitting, and backing up. “No! No! That is not what that means!”
Ragatha nodded, agreeing with Pomni. “That’s not what Caine said. He just wants me and Pomni to go get her and show her around! Not- not parental things or anything…” Ragatha started to trail off. She secretly was obsessed with the idea of finally being able to be a parental figure for once, but if Pomni wasn’t okay with that, she would respect that. “Anyways…we need to comfort that girl regardless. Come on Pomni.”
And with that, they started their journey to look for the little doe.
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“So, where do you think she could have gone? I mean, there's not that many places to even hide.”
Ragatha shrugged. The two of them had been searching for Button for almost 3 hours now, and she was nowhere to be found. They were 100% sure she was in the tent where they had slept, but she wasn’t in any of the available rooms, and it wasn’t possible for her to go into the abstracted rooms, so where could she have gone? She couldn’t have slipped under their noses…right?
“Let's go over the facts.” Ragatha said, sitting beside Ribbit's door. The door gave her goosebumps. Ribbit was such an amazing person…It was crazy that she was gone. They brought the light to the circus, and were the only one who could control Jax to an extent.
Ragatha shook it off. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about that at the moment.
“We’ve checked My room, your room, Zooobles, Kingers, and Gangles room, and we know for sure that Jax did not let her in.”
Pomni let out a small laugh, giving a smirk. “I wish, but a kid would actually really help him, or…at least I wish it would.”
Ragatha gave a smile, nodding. “Do you wanna just check? For giggles?”
Pomni raised her eyebrows. “You mean for $h1t$ and giggles?” She asked, really hating the filter they had to live with.
Ragatha nodded, blushing, a bit embarrassed. “Yes. I don’t prefer swearing, so I just say that. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, you don’t need to apologize! I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to apologize."
Ragatha rolled her eyes. She loved when Pomni was like this, it reminded Ragatha of herself. It was adorable.
“Well then…let's just ask Jax, and then next we can maybe see if she escaped somehow out of the tent?”
Pomni gave Ragatha a thumbs up, before going to Jax’s door, hesitating for just a second. She and him haven’t talked since the fake exit. Everything had been instantly awkward, but this was necessary, even if there was a 0% chance that the kid was in his room.
Pomni breathed in. ‘Just knock already!’ That voice in her head yelled. She bit her lip and finally raised her glove up to the door, and gave a slight knock, before stepping back.
There was some rustling for a few moments, before the door had finally opened, but only a little bit, just to see his face only.
“Uh…what do you want?” He asked, looking behind him, as if he was trying to hide something, before looking back at Pomni, seeing Ragatha behind her. “Ugh, what’s ragdoll doing here?”
Pomni steadied herself, and stood tall- well, as tall as she could be beside a 6’2 purple bunny. “There’s a new character here. She's a child, and ran here. We looked everywhere, and she’s nowhere to be seen. We’re hoping you have seen her? Or let her in your room?” As she said that, she tried to peer into the room, but Jax had hid it well.
Jax raised his eyebrow for a few seconds, before keeping his composure, making it a point to laugh. “No kids in sight, sorry about that. It was hilarious though for you to think I would be hiding a kiddo in here.”
Just as he was about to close the door, there was a crash in his room. A really loud crash, followed by a cry.
Jax immediately dashed from the door, leaving it halfway open as he rushed to whatever it was.
Pomni looked to Ragatha, who just gave a gesture to go in, so that’s what she did, and the sight that she walked into.
Pomni had never actually been in Jax’s room before, so it was actually surreal. Around the room, it was actually themed for a little girl, with rainbows littered around the room. It was actually pretty calming for Pomni, but all that calmness washed off once she saw the actual main event, which was something she thought she would never see.
Jax was kneeling down to the little fawn, inspecting the damage that had been done. It looked like she accidentally broke something, and she was upset about it, but Jax looked like he was…comfrorting her? That was insanely new.
“I sowwy, I sowwy! No yell!”
Pomni stopped mid in her tracks, putting her hand out to stop Ragatha. She just wanted to see how this would play out. This new Jax was…really caring if he was kneeling down to her height, and hiding her away from them.
“Hey, hey kid, that’s okay, we don’t like lava lamps anyway, right?”
The little girl looked up, and blinked her innocent eyes up at him. She had obviously been crying, but when he said that, all her problems had gone away. “No lava lamp.”
“Good. Go get Sparkle. I need to talk to these lamees.”
The little girl quickly gave him a cute a$$ smile that actually made Pomni’s very, very small maternal side grin with joy, before leaving to get this so-called, ‘Sparkle’.
“What do you want with her?” He asked, as if he didn’t just lie to their faces.
“You - You lied. It was simple enough, just a yes or a no.” Pomni didn’t know why she was getting defensive. Maybe it was because she knew Ragatha was really liking the idea of this. That she finally had a change to redeem herself to be a parental figure to someone who isn’t a 25 year old adult woman.
Jax’s expression stayed the same. The same way Pomni always saw him.
“It’s not that serious.” Jax said, looking back to the deer for a few moments, before turning back to them. “Well? You’ve found her, go on.”
Pomni, for once, didn’t move. The room was quiet for a few moments, the only sounds visible were the little fawns' movements in trying to find her little stuffy.
Finally, Pomni broke the silence. “You expect us to just…leave?” She asked, narrowing her eyes.
Jax leaned against the wall, his ears twitching a bit with irritation.
“Yeah. That's how adventures work. There's a problem, you do stuff to fix the problem, there's a twist, you leave, everyone wins.”
“No.”
Ragatha stepped forward, kind of standing in front of Pomni as if she were protecting her. “No.” She repeated, firmly this time.
“No?” Jax asked, completely confused.
“Shes scared, can’t you see? She’s new. She ran into here for a reason. We can’t just act like nothing happened just now Jax.”
Jax rolled his eyes, but by the looks of it, it didn’t exactly have the same bite as it usually did. “Oh please raggy, spare me the motherly speech.”
“You hid her.” Pomni states. “That shows you at least care for someone in this circus. You’re taking care of her, and giving her the comfort she needs.”
“It doesn’t mean $h!&. I don’t care about her. She's a kid though. I don’t want you guys to drown her in your boringness.”
“Or…” Pomni starts, “This means your little act you put on can’t work with kids.”
That made Jax pause for a few moments. His expression was still annoyed, but in a different way, like he was less smug, and more- caught.
Before he could actually reply, Button trotted back into the room, clutching a big stuffed frog in her arms that was half her size.
“I got Sparkle!”
They all turned their heads towards the little girl, who held up the stuffed animal proudly.
Jax imminently crouched down again, as if the conversation behind him did not exist.
“Nice.” He nodded approvingly. “At least someone’s got taste, unlike these losers.”
Pomni stared, not believing this at all.
The little girl looked to both Pomni and Ragatha, before looking to Jax. “Mad?”
Jax put his hand on the kid's shoulder, and nodded. “Mad they aren’t us, because we’re cool, unlike them.”
Ragatha grabbed Pomni’s arm before she could explode. There was a kid in here. They needed to play along, and Pomni knew that…unfortunately.
“Yeah…you guys are just so cool…”
Ragatha rolled her eyes, and gave a smile to Button. “Hey Button, I know we left off on a…questionable start, but we can start over with some ice cream!”
Buttons eyes lit up at the suggestion, and jumped up and down, putting Sparkle down, and grasping onto Jax’s hand, which made him flinch immediately, almost tearing away from the contact, but caught a glimpse of her excited eyes, which made him pause.
“Can Jaxxy go?”
“Jaxxy...?” Pomni questioned, but stopped once Jax gave her a death like glare, and backtracked. “Uh, uhm yeah! Yeah he can go.”
Jax groaned under his breath, but sighed, going through with it. “Where are we even going?”
Ragatha, finally being in charge for once, smiled and picked up Button, who was giggling. “Well, we are going to be showing her around, and then finish off with some ice cream if she’s good. Are you gonna be a good Button?”
Button gave her an enthusiastic nod, and squirmed out of her arms, running out the door, not waiting for them at all, which left all the adults alone.
They all just awkwardly stared at each other, before Jax had broken the silence.
“We’re only doing this for her. We won't speak of this again.” He said, before leaving his room, leaving them.
Pomni watched as he left, blinking a bit, before Ragatha rested her arm on her shoulder, spooking her.
“This is an improvement. Let's enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Okay. Sorry, I’m just…I’m worried about him. I’ve been worried about him. “
Ragatha nodded, noticing how touch seemed to make Pomni a bit discomforted, so she pulled away, and put her hands at her side. “I know, maybe we can talk to him, now that he seems to have a connection with Button.”
Pomni looked up at Ragatha, who was not starting to head out, which made Pomni follow suit. She just really hoped nothing would go wrong.