Chapter Text
You were supposed to be studying for a test.
Well, a lot of the time you never studied for anything. Most of the answers in any literature quiz, paper, or assignment were in the questions and passages anyway. And even if you did score lower, there was always extra credit you could zip through in under ten minutes.
So, ignoring that fact, you decided to open your laptop, just like you did every day. You went through your regular motions, which were checking your messages, adding events on your calendar, and going through emails.
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Welcome to…The Freak Circus! Experience an all new game! With a colorful cast of clowns and their horrifying performances! Now with totally legit and not living at all “AI” to provide more creative freedom for the player! Download with the link below!
You paused at this particular email, choosing to expand it. Underneath the link was an image of three big red and black tents, surrounded in fairy lights and a sign that again stated the name of the game.
Was opening some random email from a (you quickly check whoever sent this to you) completely unknown sender probably going to give you a virus? Was this link going to take you to some sketchy German porn site that would bring your retinas unimaginable pain and suffering? Would playing this game give the creators of it the address of your house, and then you would be kidnapped by four big guys who would—yeah right, you wish.
You shake off these worries. Besides, it was an old laptop. You had already been planning to buy a new one since some games would make the chunk of metal sound like a Thunderscreech plane with how overheated it’d get.
So, with that in mind and now no worries about what will happen, you click the download link and watch the little bar start to fill. The percentages were rising slowly but steadily. Either this was a huge ass virus or a life changing game (good or bad, no clue).
The game automatically opened when the download was complete, which startled you because it jumped from 70% to 100% in the span of 2 milliseconds, but hey, at least you could play the game now.
There wasn’t even a home screen to press play on or anything. The game just jumped right in, and you didn’t mind that much. The screen showed a street with a few people walking around. The street was sort of run down, with cracks in the walls of the buildings and potholes in the street itself. The people in the town must not clean up either, since there were papers littering the ground and taped to the windows all over the place. You recognized the logo as one of the tents from that image in the email.
As you were studying the game’s surroundings, you heard someone shout. It sounded like it came from a corner of your room, but you knew no one was there. So, you came to the conclusion that the yell came from the game itself.
“Hey!! Get out of here, ya weirdo!” Shouted the voice again, and the scenery zoomed to a man on the ground, his cheek scraped up.
You had a few thoughts when you first saw this man. Ranging between “OH MY GOD HE’S ADORABLE AHHHH” to “Who the hell touched this little baby”. And whoa, that sounds weird when you think about it two seconds later with no context, but after those two seconds you have no more time to think about it since the camera pans up to a guy standing above the man on the floor.
This guy had basically no features. None whatsoever. Probably a side character or an NPC, but he sure did yell a lot nonetheless.
“Ever since you clowns showed up, people have been disappearing all over the place! Go back to whatever hellhole you crawled out of!” He shouted, and the camera panned back to the man on the ground.
Since the camera was only on him for a second the first time, you only got to focus on just his face (which was adorable). But now you got to actually see him. That email did say that there were clowns in the game, and he sure did look like one. Well, not those weird ones at kids' birthday parties that have red noses and ask for hugs from the teen girls, this guy was probably the most interesting clown you had ever seen.
He had white hair, longer in some parts, and he wore a red, black, and yellow themed outfit. It also looked like he had on a mask. Your mind flashed to earlier, when you saw that scrape. How does that even work then? It didn’t matter, this was a game after all. It didn’t have to make any sort of sense other than he looked cute and that made you happy.
The clown seemed to look right at you then, as you had been admiring him. Your breath caught. It literally looked like he was looking right at you. Not slightly to the side. Not looking passed you, no. He was looking directly at you.
Then that asshole spoke again, and your view was brought from the clown to the NPC.
“Hey! I’m talking to you, Freak! Get out of my town!”
An empty typing space pops up on the screen. The little cursor that indicated you could now type was blinking.
You wasted no time.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!? You can’t just attack random people like that!” You typed. It sounded cringy, but you weren’t one for writing out deadly threats.
Luckily, after you pressed enter, other NPCs began to swarm around the man.
“She’s right! You’re going too far!!”
You felt victory rising within you. The NPCs agreed with you, and you were helping the clown!
“Wake up, you idiots!! They’re the ones kidnapping people!”
You leaned back in your chair, satisfied that you already won while that evil little son of a bitch continued to rant, and he was dragged away by the crowd of people, who were still yelling at him to stop.
Then you remembered the little clown guy was still on the ground.
You sat back up straight in your chair and then started typing out your next actions.
“Are you ok? Let me help you up!” You type, then add that you reach out your hand. He stared down at your hand for a moment, which…huh. That hand looked very much like your own. Even had a bandage from when you accidentally stabbed yourself with a staple while trying to remove it from paper.
Again, you chose to ignore it because it was a game and it didn’t need to make sense.
The clown took your hand, and you watched your screen as your hand helped him up. You thought multiple times in his ascent into a standing position that he was done, but he kept rising until he stood at least a foot taller than you.
Damn. Well ok.
The typing box was still there, and it looked like the man was looking down at it, a grin on his face.
Well, at least he looked happier than before.
“People suck. sorry about that.” You type out, hitting enter when you are done.
The clown didn’t respond. Though he did tilt his head, which caused the bells on his jester’s hat to jingle. His eyes were now looking directly at you again.
This was maybe a little creepy, but hey, you didn’t mind.
You noticed he still had that scrape on his mask-face thingy. You don’t carry bandages with you in real life, but you decided the game version of you did.
You handed him a bandage and gave him a smile. “Here. He got you pretty bad, huh?”
On screen, your arm pulled out a bandage and held it up to him. The clown…well, he blushed! The cheeks of his mask-face turned a light pink, and his smile widened in thanks.
You wondered why this AI wasn’t responding to you in words, but hey, it was pretty cool that they reacted in real time!
Right as you were about to type out another response to the bot, your phone rang and you swear, in the corner of your eye, you saw the clown’s eyes go to your phone. You looked back quickly and his eyes were still there, staring right back at you.
You shivered before finally grabbing your phone, answering whoever was calling you.
It was your friend, Carol. She practically cried your name before spilling into a big rant about the test tomorrow. You listened to the whole thing, adding comments about some things she had questions about and ways she could study.
You weren’t to be trusted, though. You only saw a few study tips online every once and a while but never tried them yourself. Either way, she cheered up and after an hour of talking about random things, you both hung up.
You glanced back at your laptop that you had forgotten about, but the screen had gone dark. Probably since you didn’t touch it for the past hour and a half.
It was late anyway, probably for the best to get to bed and get rest.
After you got dressed, showered, and snuggled into your comfy sheets, you fell asleep.
You never noticed that on your still open laptop with the black screen, a little red dot blinked at the top of the screen.