Chapter Text
‘Shitshitshitshitshitshitsh-’ Kinger thought as his hands quickly flew across the keyboard, hurriedly typing lines of code into the file for Caine.
He thought he would have more time to get his bearings. The computer in front of Kinger was a foggy reminder of his past, one that he was still adjusting to as he scoured the C&A files when everything began glitching out around him.
So now he was hurriedly typing out coding which had once been second nature to him, and answering prompts as the world around him collapsed. What made it more difficult was his lack of a fifth finger, which hadn’t bothered him for years, coming back to bite him in the ass as it slowed down his typing speed as he stopped himself from making numerous typos and errors. He barely avoided hitting the delete button, stopping himself short before his fingers hit it and wasting a precious few seconds as he went back to typing code.
Images of Caine and Bubble popped up on the screen, and he knew it was the A.I. 's own defense system trying to prevent him from messing with or deleting everything. In typical Caine fashion, they seemed harmless enough, wacky even, but were spiteful as they clouded up the screen and made Kinger’s own job more difficult.
Oh god, where had everything gone wrong? It was a question he used to ask himself every day.
At first, out loud to Queenie, Scratch, and the others as they grew used to their digital world. How had they not only managed to create a completely sentient A.I. but also gotten trapped in it? But when they were all gone, it was only Kinger left to ponder over all of their mistakes.
Only Kinger left to cry over the loss of everything that mattered in his life.
But then Ragatha had popped up. Then Jax, and Gangle, and Zooble, and Pomni (and many others who he wished he could have done something more for). And he realized that wallowing in his own despair and self-pity wouldn’t do them any good. He could make use of his time in the digital circus, provide them a sense of comfort and ease, and maybe, he could even forgive himself for what he had accidentally created.
But now, as he watched said creation collapse within itself, driven mad and torturing all of the people he had come to regard as a family of sorts, Kinger couldn’t help but ask himself once again, Where had everything gone wrong?
Caine had never been a particularly….sane being. When the abstractions happened, he could tell the A.I. grew nervous, but he didn’t mourn or grieve like Kinger and the others did. Still, he could tell that the ringmaster didn’t like it when the circus goers were upset. His adventures may have been a little bit out there, and could get a little too violent in Kinger’s personal opinion, but they always made relative sense, and were even fun once you got past all of the nonsensical chaos.
But something had happened with Caine after the whole ‘Escape the Circus’ fiasco. Kinger wished he were in his right mind so he could remember properly what exactly happened during that adventure. But he could only remember bits and pieces- of being confused when Zooble and Gangle mentioned an ‘Able’ and being worried when Pomni handed him a fake administration pass with such hope in her eyes. Still, even with the strong negative reactions of the circus goers, what about this adventure was so different that Caine snapped? It’s not like everyone hadn’t ever criticized him before, or strongly disliked an adventure. Was it because this one had something to do with leaving the circus? Or because everyone had demanded answers afterwards?
King had no time to dwell on it, however, as he typed in the last line of code and pressed enter. By now, everything was unstable. He could even feel himself shake and glitch out (it felt almost like his skin was being torn off and put back on over and over again). The computer put on a loading bar, and he watched it go forward before reaching the very edge and stopping right before completing.
“[BOINK!],” he cursed as he reached out and shook the console.
The bar held still for an agonizing minute, in which Kinger could feel his insides being mixed up, a painful, nauseating feeling, but he held his ground and kept his eyes locked onto the computer screen.
“For the love of God please,” he said and smacked it with his hand. The bar finally moved and dinging sounded, not only from the computer, but from seemingly everywhere around him. The glitching stopped, and Kinger breathed a sigh of relief as everything stilled.
He couldn’t stew in the feeling for long, however, and he quickly got up, making sure the bucket stayed on his head as he hurried out of the pillow fort. He hoped the rest of the circus crew was alright.
Pomni felt like she was dying.
It was hard not to feel that way when you were being gripped by a psychotic A.I. after having just gotten mauled by alligators.
She told herself they were just alligators, just fucked up alligators that Caine had conjured up. Not Gummigoo. They looked like him, but they were not him, they were not him.
Through the pain she felt, as Caine pressed her into the wall so hard she was sure if she had a skull it would be broken by now, she wondered if Kinger would be able to stop Caine before he destroyed them completely. She knew they couldn’t die technically, not in this digital world with fake bodies, but Caine could certainly fuck with them enough to make them wish they were dead. Hell, he probably caused abstractions too if Kinger’s comments about that Scratch person last week were anything to go by. Though she trusted the chess piece to be able to eventually decode Caine, as the seconds went by and the A.I. grew larger and angrier in front of her, Pomni began to feel her own panic rise at the idea that Kinger may not be able to stop Caine in time before he did something to them that couldn’t be reversed.
“WHY DO YOU PEOPLE TORMENT ME!?” Caine roared at them, looking for all the world like a monster Pomni had never imagined he could be until his moment.
“I DIDN’T ASK TO BE CREATED,” he cried, and the A.I. rushed so fast at Pomni she thought for a moment he might eat her before he yelled out, “I JUST WANTED TO FULFILL MY PURPOSE!”
Everything was crumbling around them, and Pomni felt like she was being crushed as the A.I shook her in his grip. She saw black as her eyes hit the back of her head painfully.
“WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FOR ME? EVERYTHING I DO I DO FOR YOU!” Caine yelled.
‘PleaseKingerPleaseweneedyoutorightnowtopullthroughPlease’ she thought incoherently, crying out as she was squeezed harder.
Then, like a flipped switch, Caine’s grip on her was released and she crashed to the ground. Any pain she had felt previously disappeared, and she quickly looked up at the A.I, trying to quickly formulate a plan for whatever he had in store.
However, Caine’s monstrous form was gone, and there he floated, looking every like the ringmaster he was when she had first arrived.
In fact, he even looked scared as he stared at them before saying, “Uh…..what?” when he suddenly fell from the sky and hit the floor.
It was silent for a moment. They all stared at the A.I. 's form, his cartoon-like body lying still, his limbs all at odd angles like a doll that had been thrown on the ground.
“Kinger……did it,” Ragatha said from behind her, and she turned to see a look of amazement on her face that Pomni was sure reflected on her own as well.
“How do we know this isn’t some trick by Caine just to torment us further?” Jax asked distrustfully as he got up from his crouched position.
“I guess there’s only one way to know,” Pomni said and stood up, cautiously walking forward as the others followed behind her.
She got the ringmaster's body, which remained eerily unmoving, and she reached out. She hesitated for a moment before reaching out her hand and quickly flipping the figure over.
There was Caine, or well, his avatar, she supposed, his eyes completely white, his pupils now gone, and his face slack, not a single emotion on it. Pomni had never been so close to him before, he seemed so much tinier now, almost fragile if she didn’t know the godlike power he had over them.
She heard footsteps coming from her left and quickly turned, half expecting some other horrible creature of Caine to pop up, though was relieved to see it was just Kinger, who hurriedly strode over to them.
“Are you guys alright?” He asked as he arrived and lifted his bucket a bit to glance at Caine’s comatose body.
No one answered, and Pomni glanced back to see them all looking away from Kinger, even Ragatha, who had a hand pressed to her mouth and her gaze down.
Pomni turned back to Kinger and said, “We made it out,” which she knew didn’t quite answer his question but was truthful enough. Kinger nodded, and she knew he probably understood what her answer meant.
They all stood there for a moment, none of them looking at each other as they took in what had happened. The circus was quiet now, quieter than it had ever been, and though Pomni knew she should feel relief with that, maybe a sense of triumph, all she could feel was dread.
“So what now?” Zooble said, asking the question that they had all been too afraid to voice.
Pomni looked up at the question, only to see everyone looking at her, bar Kinger, whose gaze was back on Caine’s body. In the time they had been planning their overthrow of Caine, she guessed she had become the accidental leader. The thought only worried her even more as she gazed helplessly back at them.
“I….” Pomni began, choking on the words before forcing them to come out, “I don’t really know.”