Chapter Text
Izzi was tired. Exhausted.
Not in a physical sense, of course. Her digital body didn't require any fuel to function properly — eat, drink, sleep... none of those mundane activities were necessary for her, though she (and the other humans trapped there) still clung to the last one, if only for the routine it brought. A spark of the humanity they left behind, perhaps.
No, physically, she felt absolutely fine. Marvelous, even! In the real world, every second out of bed was a struggle for her frail, ill frame. Here in the digital plane, though, she felt a constant spike of energy, like she'd just woken from the best night's sleep imaginable, every night. Which was ironic, considering the nature of the animal she was.
Mentally? Emotionally? Psychologically?
Yeah. She was not okay.
Although, it was safe to say she was better than the others.
Her fingers twitched faintly at her side as Izzi glanced around the makeshift circle, eyes lingering just a second too long on each face. Every single one of them carried their own kind of quiet misery.
To the far corner stood Jax, sprawled all over the purple colored couch as though he had already claimed it as his own — which had some logic to it, she supposed. They did share the same color.
His posture suggested nothing but calm, relaxation, indifference. He truly appeared unbothered, like nothing and nobody could even hope to touch him, but Izzi knew better. The best performers always hid behind a carefully crafted mask.
To her right, Pomni, Kinger, and Ragatha sat together on a red sofa.
Kinger looked… lost. His wide eyes wandered the room, filled with a strange mix of confusion and wonder. Gone was the frightened yet lucid man who had surfaced just hours ago, replaced once again by his erratic self. Still, that brief clarity — that glimpse of something real — lingered in her mind, and would for a long while.
Beside him, Pomni and Ragatha faced each other.
The jester's gaze was locked onto the ragdoll, who returned it just as intensely. For all the fear simmering beneath the surface, they were probably the most emotionally stable ones there. Their shared optimism kept them afloat — barely. But it didn't make them untouchable. Pomni's hands trembled, ever so slightly. Ragatha's eye twitched every few seconds, subtle but impossible to ignore.
Lastly, directly beside her, stood Gangle and Zooble, who were close to each other — almost too close, though her mind had no energy to think of the implications of their intertwined hands.
Gangle's porcelain face reflected a deep, quiet sorrow, her posture slumped under a weight that went far beyond simple sadness or any negative emotion she might've shown normally. Not dramatic, not loud. Heavy.
Zooble leaned against the back of the sofa, their body angled awkwardly as if even standing properly demanded too much effort. They looked drained — not physically, not really, but in a way that made their usual sharp edges seem duller, worn down.
Like even pretending was getting harder.
Izzi exhaled slowly, though she didn't need to.
Funny. No one here actually needed to breathe, and yet, they all felt like they were suffocating anyway.
A small smile tugged at her lips, subtle but real.
She shifted slightly closer to them without thinking, drawn in by something quiet and instinctive.
At least… they were all in this. Together.
The ground lurched.
All attention snapped to their surroundings as the room quaked. The floor trembled beneath them, colors warping, hues bleeding into one another as the walls themselves blinked in and out of existence with unsettling instability.
Ragatha's gloom faded. Zooble's eyes widened. Kinger blinked. Even Jax's bored expression shifted into one of surprise, brows raised.
Izzi flinched, body going tense all at once. It didn't take a genius to realize what was happening. The circus was glitching, but not a normal kind of glitch. No, the dimension itself was crumbling, their digital reality tearing at its seams. And there was nothing–
The rumbling stopped.
The shaking ground stilled. The walls' relentless flicker ceased. The bright, saturated colors of the circus returned as if nothing had happened at all. Just like that, the world resumed its routine.
As if it hadn't just been seconds away from collapsing entirely.
Izzi stared.
This wasn't normal.
She'd bore witness to one too many glitches before — one was bound to after spending so many years in this realm. But the warps were usually small. Harmless. Objects vanishing, reappearing wrong, space misbehaving in ways that didn't last.
Never this.
Never had an entire room flickered all at once. Never had the ground trembled harder than an Earthquake ever did. He-
Her breath caught — though she didn't need it.
"Uh, w-what was that?" Ragatha voiced, words breaking along with her animated mouth.
As her worried tone rang in the room, a horn-like blast echoed through the circus, twisted and over-accelerated, like a car engine being forced into laughter.
Their head snapped to the side just in time to see reality giving way to an oversized pair of dentures in a little swoosh motion. Familiar, but currently unwelcome.
Caine always took care of that.
"Hello, my little fortuitous fruitcakes!" Caine beamed, teeth stretching into that impossibly wide, cartoonish grin that always managing to push them to the brink. His voice rang bright and theatrical, clearly meant to sound as charismatic as possible, but it didn't land as intended.
Irritating as usual, the others would say.
Izzi realized, with unsettling clarity, this one was fake.
Oblivious to — or maybe deliberately ignoring — their concerns, the ringmaster threw his arms open, allowing the air around him to darken as a half-formed title, 'The Gloomy Tomb of...', began to materialize above his head.
"Today's adventure is–"
But Zooble was having none of it.
"No."
Their tone was sharp, cutting cleanly through his announcement. "Caine, we're not in the mood."
The air snapped back into color as the interruption yanked Caine out of his performance. His eager posture faltered—shoulders lowering, not quite relaxed, not quite right.
Even his usually sun-bright eyes seemed to dim, just slightly.
Nobody else seemed to notice. But she did.
Still, Zooble continued, their voice flat with a deep, judgmental exasperation. "Why don't you answer some of our questions?" They got up. "We have a lot of them."
Izzi flinched when, instead of complying or simply brushing them off, Caine broke into laughter — holding his midsection as if he had a stomach to clutch. It was intense. Manic. And at the same time, unmistakably forced.
She bit her lip.
"Who has time for questions–"
Izzi flinched again, shrinking in on herself along with the others when the AI vanished only to reappear right in front of them, oversized dentures far too close for comfort. Her prey instincts screamed at her, unwanted scenarios flashing through her mind.
"–when there's a whole wacky world of hijinks out there?!"
His frame warped and flipped into cartoonish, anatomically impossible positions — ones she'd never before thought possible, even for Caine himself.
His movements were too ragged, too rushed, too...
Hysteric.
Something was wrong.
"Uh..." Zooble didn't seem to pick up on it — or rather, didn't care — only narrowing their eyes in nothing more than jaded exasperation.
Pomni didn't either.
She wasted no time, immediately leaping out of her seat to step in.
"Yeah, hey!" Her eyes were wide, almost bulging from their sockets, and her heterochromatic pupils were shrunken — not in fear or anxiety, the trademark emotions of her expressions — no, this time they were narrowed in nothing but deep-rooted fury. "You have a lot of explaining to do–"
"Zip-a-da-bap!"
That gibberish was all the warning anyone got before Pomni's mouth shifted into a zipper, which Caine promptly closed, cutting off her accusation.
Ragatha seemed to take that as a personal jab.
"Hey!" she yelled in protest, jolting up from the couch.
"Alternatively," Caine gestured to the side as if he were about to make an actual suggestion, "I don't gotta explain diddly-squat!"
His dentures moved erratically, jutting further into their line of vision as if to better showcase his instability. As if that weren't enough, he went so far as to sway his hips, exaggerating the 'diddly-squat' for emphasis.
If he hadn't already looked like a child throwing a tantrum, he definitely did now.
Not that any of the others understood it. Their eyes remained fixed on him — not Caine, not the ringmaster, not even the wacky AI stuck with them. To them, he was nothing more than a captor. It was obvious, if the anger and fear etched onto their faces were anything to go by.
Izzi could only stare, something heavy settling in her chest.
Zooble, however, had their eyes narrowed, caught somewhere between breaking into tears and lashing out in screams. "Uh, can you just–" They hesitated, voice tightening. "–give us some time to process everything?"
"Ooor, how about we skip the melodrama and get right to the fun?" Caine laced his fingers together and stretched, as if preparing himself for the 'fun' ahead — despite the irony of never actually taking part in the adventures himself.
He was deflecting.
But Pomni wouldn't allow him the luxury of continuing.
"No! Caine!" She managed to exclaim after zipping off her mouth. Her tone, while softer, still had a clear animosity to it — and Izzi didn't miss that.
Even as the ringmaster allowed Pomni to speak, his mouth remained tense, gums pulled into a deep scowl, arms now crossed.
"We have a lot on our minds right now," she motioned to the rest of the group, a firm gesture that highlighted her creased brows. "and we are not going on an adventure."
Her tone was sharp. Final. Like a mother putting an end to a child's misbehavior — cutting them off with no room for argument.
Caine fell silent.
For a moment, his posture seemed to relax, the sharp edges of his dentures dulling, shifting from the pout of a reprimanded child into something eerily calm. Far too calm for a showman.
Slowly, he turned, a hollow pirouette, completely devoid of momentum.
It looked... wrong.
"I see."
The words weren't spoken so much as they were let out, slipping from his mouth in a low, almost absent murmur.
Right then, Izzi could've been fooled. She could've believed Pomni had won — that the silence meant reconsideration, that Caine had taken her words to heart… or whatever was the AI equivalent to one.
But that was too good to be true.
Because unlike a mother–
"And since when were you in charge?"
She had no authority.
Pomni's defensive stance broke faster than she could recover. She clearly hadn't expected that — though, to be fair, neither had Izzi. Or anyone, really.
None of them had time to get out more than a confused stutter before Caine spoke again.
"Do you have any idea how much I do for you guys?"
He began pacing in the air, gaze drifting downward, like he wanted to hide his expressions from them.
"How much I obsess over trying to make things perfect? How many insults I have to ignore just to do my job?"
His voice, already off from its usual charismatic tone, now lacked any trace of his showman energy. The chirpiness dulled, the excitement unraveling — until there was nothing left but… a hollow shell.
Was that… even Caine anymore?
"You have a lot on your minds?"
Izzi didn't even flinch anymore. She just watched as he laughed hysterically — loud, sharp, unsteady.
It wasn't real.
But it wasn't fake either.
He sounded broken.
Izzi's blood ran cold.
"Don't make me laugh."
The words came out cold, edged with mockery, as if the very idea offended him.
"I have a new adventure for you, and you…"
He tilted his head, something in his posture shifting. Subtle. Deliberate.
His voice dropped lower.
"…should consider participating."
Menacing. Threatening.
The sheer pressure of the tone seemed to punch the air out of their lungs, freezing blood they didn't even have.
Gone was the wacky AI that always welcomed them with ridiculous nicknames, replaced with a soul-crushing calm that felt nothing but unnatural on the ringmaster.
The other players stared at him, a plethora of emotions crossing their features — shock, disbelief, fear, pain. Pained with the realization he was right: they had no control, no choice.
But the despair that realization brought wasn't her main concern. No, Izzi couldn't find it in her to pity either them or herself — because her mind refused to focus on anything but Caine's words, couldn't ignore the genuine pain hidden behind them, the truth they carried.
"A-and–" Zooble, always the epitome of resistance, began, for sure about to protest, counter his cold command with another retort, anything that could possibly alter their fates.
She beat them to it.
"Fine." The word slipped out in a relaxed tone she hadn't been aware she could manage. "We'll go on your adventure, Caine."
All eyes snapped to the sheep at that declaration. No hesitation, not even a hint of uneasiness — Izzi was completely calm, pictured as her usual self, if one ignored the lack of spark in her pupils, her stiff shoulders, even her soft smile. That normalcy was merely pretend.
Not that anyone cared enough to notice.
At least Jax didn't. He turned defensive immediately, nonchalant façade unraveling as his brows furrowed.
"What the [boink] are you-"
He tried to grab her wrist, but she evaded the attempt by lifting her feet forward.
She didn't even let him finish.
Instead, her eyes remained glued to Caine's floating mandible, lids hardened, stiff with a determination rarely ever seen on her face. Not for a second did her gaze waver, glance away from the target of her words.
"Could you just... do me a favor before, and come here?" She requested.
Her voice was light, lighter than usual. Its gentleness carried through the room, resembling a mother — not one harshly exerting her authority, but one attempting to lovingly calm a frightened child.
A pause. Caine didn't move. Just stayed floating in the air, large eyes focused on her — but from a distance. That mere statement had been enough to quell his anger, but now... doubt had replaced it.
Her eyes softened.
"Please?" Her tone managed to sink even lower, to a level it was barely audible. Gentle. Delicate. Pleading.
And that did it.
Caine finally hovered closer, though he never quite touched the ground. Whether it was out of habit, distrust, or some need to remain above them all, it was impossible to tell.
Izzi didn't question it. Only took another step forward.
Before he could react — before he could twist it into something theatrical — her hands reached out, gripping him just enough to pull him closer.
And then-
They enveloped his torso.
An embrace.
Not part of a game. Not a performance. Not something an artificial circus could replicate.
Something deeply, unmistakably human.
Warm.
It only took the briefest contact for that earlier instinct to surge back. Without even realizing it herself, Izzi's hold on the ringmaster tightened, and tightened, and tightened– until their bodies were clasped to one another. It only took the simple graze of digital skin for the scenario of ever letting go to become a very, very distant possibility.
Izzi couldn't help but notice how his body felt against hers, how... strange it was. It wasn't what she'd expected, not from an AI model. The edges weren't rough, weren't sharp enough to cut into her, weren't even the plain texture of plastic she'd come to imagine. Instead, his body felt... warm. Like her own, like the avatars of the other humans.
A wave of calm washed over her, and, as though a pressure built on her eyelids, they were forced shut. Izzi didn't even fight it, just let herself sink further into the lull of the embrace.
Suddenly, Caine's voice bloomed again, breaking that ease:
"What are you doing?"
A shudder ran through her at the coldness of his voice. Hollow. Quiet. Devoid of any emotion. But... it wasn't the same kind as earlier.
Izzi recognized it instantly.
A coldness not born of exasperation or anger, but of... exhaustion. Of disbelief, but incapable of expressing so. Of confusion.
Had nobody... hugged him before?
The question was so absurd it didn't linger in her mind for long before an answer made itself known.
Of course not.
"A hug." She stated simply.
She didn't allow her grip to loosen for even a second. In fact, it kept tightening by the moment — it helped she didn't have to worry about hurting the AI. Not physically, at least.
Still, Izzi felt the body underneath her hold shift, almost like Caine intended to wiggle his way out of the embrace.
But he didn't. He just shook.
His whole avatar convulsed — an imagery awfully similar to that of a stroke — edges alternating between different textures. Soft. Sharp. Plain. Sharp again.
She swore the color of his eyes shifted.
"A 'hug'!" He exclaimed, the chirpiness in his voice back at full force, as though he'd forgotten the source or reason for any prior aggressive behavior.
No.
As though his code had just... deleted it.
Erased his crashout completely.
The AI didn't even notice her hold tightening to unnatural levels, levels that surely would harm a human in his place — or was he hurting, and just chose to ignore the pain in order to keep her happy, to prevent his precious humans from worrying?
Oh, Caine...
"Yes, a 'hug'!" Nevertheless, he continued speaking, eager, excited, cheerful. "My processors tell me it's a very common practice among you humans." Plain Caine.
Of course, it didn't last.
"But- but I'm not a human!"
Of course such an emotional approach would only bring forth more problems than solutions.
"I'm an AI! I've never 'hugged' before! I don't know how to do this! Why have you chosen me as your hug partner?"
He was spiraling.
Izzi... hadn't anticipated this. It had been obvious his mental health — if processors counted as a mind — was deteriorating, but she didn't expect him to spiral so badly from such an innocent question.
"I'll fail! I'll do something wrong, and you'll hate me more! Just like with the adventures! You hate my adventures, you hate the avatars I made,"
What?
"you hate me! Why do you hate me?!"
She bit her lip. Hard. So much it could've bled, were that possible.
The others were still looking. Watching. Judging. For sure refusing to believe what was unraveling before their very eyes.
She was having trouble believing it herself.
A damp patch began to form on the fabric at her shoulder.
"Can't you get that I'm trying? Why do you want to leave me? Why do you hate me? Why don't you love me?"
...
The next tremor was so strong it forced her to her knees, but her hands stayed firmly glued to his form.
She didn't dare let go. Not when his body trembled with all its gathered might. Not when her shoulder kept getting wetter and wetter. Not when his voice dropped as hard as a brick plummeting down an entire building.
Words still breaking as they slipped out.
He himself still broken.
"Why... whY can't-t yOu l–love m-me-e?"