Chapter Text
"I'm just saying, I think it's a perfectly viable avenue to pursue, if that's something we decided to do."
"Jax, we don't even have money, let alone anything to spend it on if we had it," Pomni shoots back with an amicable look of mild exasperation as the two make their way toward the common area. "So what would even be the point of starting an entire gambling ring centered on where Zooble's newest daily hiding spot will be and whether or not Caine can find them without resorting to snap-summoning?"
"Ahh, and there's where your simple, shortsighted imagination fails you once again, Pomni," Jax laments with a dismissive tsk-tsk-tsk and shake of his head, one hand pressed to his chest in the most condescendingly nonverbal expression of 'bless your heart' known to mankind. "It's not about money—it's about being right and getting to laud the bragging rights that come along with it! That's a way more valuable currency than any boring old coins or pieces of paper with some dead guy's face printed on it. Also: it's funny~"
"Mmhmmm..." Pomni hums back with a wry sort of expression that belies just how much she hasn't quite been convinced on the matter—but by now they've reached the general vicinity of the couches and attracted the attention of the current occupants, which just so happens to be the uncommon occurrence of actually-everyone today.
"Ah—good morning, Pomni!" Ragatha says as she hurries to stand for her greeting, completing the gesture with a little wave for good measure. Her eye darts almost nervously—well, more nervously than usual—between Pomni and Jax for a few moments before she hesitantly adds, "...and... you too, Jax, I guess."
"Wow, could you sound any more like you'd rather be pulling your own teeth out right now?" Jax teases nonchalantly, and Ragatha flusters for a few moments more before re-taking her seat without another word. Pomni almost wants to say something to either or both of them, but considering how her attempted intervention at the softball game is still lingering awkwardly at the edges of all of their interactions now, she ultimately decides against it. For now, at least. Gangle's attention remains occupied on whatever she's currently drawing in her sketchbook at the far end of the red couch, and Zooble offers an acknowledging nod from the adjacent corner of the green. "And speak of the devil! Looks like bigfoot actually decided to leave the woods today and grace us with their presence! How about that?"
"Are you, like, clinically allergic to even greeting people before launching right into instigatory remarks, or is it really just a choice you continue to make for some reason?" Zooble shoots back without hesitation, mood immediately shifting towards contention in the way that only Jax seems to be able to cause.
"One of my many charms~" Jax deflects with an easy tilt of his head as he braces his arms against the back of the couch behind Kinger's shoulder. "It's just curious to see you out in the open so late in the morning is all. What, are you hoping Caine's gonna ease up after the lightning round or something?"
"F[%$!#] off," comes the expected response and equally-censored middle finger combo which only serves to stretch Jax's grin even wider. Pomni makes her way around to sit on the purple couch and prepares to settle in for the looming sparkshow, but a sudden puff of confetti and glitter cuts Jax off before he can say his next piece.
"Gooooood morning, my little superstars!" Caine's voice suddenly booms out as the ringmaster materializes in the air above the sitting area, remaining frozen with his eyes pointing in opposite directions for a few moments before he seems to fully catch up with himself. "Oh, good! You're all here already! I've got an important announcement to make, so let's take this over to the stage lickety-split!!"
With a single snap of Caine’s fingers, the cast of characters find themselves shifted to their feet and suddenly zipped across the tent to end up deposited in a loose semicircle facing the main stage.
"Today's adventure is a special occasion—even more special than usual, I mean!" Caine announces as he floats exuberantly before the backdrop of velvet curtains and plastic stars. "After switching it up last time with our slapdash tour of your suggestion box adventures, I realized that a change of pace is exactly the kind of thing we need around here right now—but in the opposite direction!"
Ragatha slumps slightly in Pomni's periphery and mutters a knowing, "Oh, boy..."
"It's been a fair while now since our last Extended AdventureTM, so I figure it's probably high time to do one again—!"
"Ughhh, noooooo," Zooble groans out with an impressively full-bodied eyeroll, "I hate the extended adventures..."
Pomni offers them a sympathetic smile before quietly asking, "Don't you kinda hate... basically all of the adventures?"
"Yeah, but he never lets me skip any of the long ones because they take so much effort to make, so I extra hate them," Zooble all but growls, antennae twitching with agitation as they glare up at the histrionic ringmaster. "Can't we just go back to poking around in the suggestion box again? Some of those were at least quasi-enjoyable. And short."
Caine heaves a mighty strain of laughter that definitely doesn't come across as forced or eerily unnatural in the slightest. "Of course not, Zooble! We just did that; repeating an adventure idea like that so soon would just be uncouth!"
"Uncouth!" Bubble echoes helpfully as he floats up beside Caine from wherever else he had been choosing to exist before this exact moment.
"Failed step one," Zooble grumbles under their breath, obviously not expecting any true acknowledgement for the statement as Caine predictably continues on as if they hadn't even spoken.
"However!! While not specifically drawn from any of the suggestion box entries per se, this particular adventure is in fact based on something uniquely foreign to me that your lovely human minds have brought into the Circus with you—so, that's kinda close enough for this time around, don't you think?"
To their credit, Zooble only barely flinches backwards when Caine suddenly zooms uncomfortably close into their personal space with his biggest, shiniest puppydog eyes on full display. "Uhh... 'uniquely foreign' to you?"
"Yes! Quite the fascinating piece of work from what I've been able to piece together through your collective understandings! So, this Extended AdventureTM is kind of like a collaboration of sorts, instead of being a purely-Me or purely-You idea," Caine explains magnanimously, waving his cane broadly over the group to invoke the plural usage of the word 'you'. "I've been diligently whittling away at it between designing your daily adventures for a good long while, and now that so many of my lovely performers have knowledge of the source material, I've been able to shore up the finer and final details to the point that it's finally ready to play!"
"...And ...what source material exactly are you talking about—?" Pomni attempts to prompt just in time for Caine to summon the bombastic title drop and drown her question out completely.
"Today's adventure is: Caine's Splendiferous Streamlined SCURB Spectacular~!"
An elongated pause follows the brief peal of fanfare as if Caine had been expecting applause or at least some kind of recognition—something, anything—but all he receives is deafeningly perplexed silence until Zooble eventually dares to further venture, "...'SCURB'?"
"Gotta eat your vitamin C or else you're gonna get SCURB-y..." Bubble chimes with a voice like an electronic toy slowly losing battery power along the way, beady black eyes blinking out of sync with each other as he idly rotates in place.
Caine, as ever, doesn't seem to find this behavior odd in the slightest—or at least not concerning enough to interrupt his own effusive spiel of theatrics with acknowledgement. That doesn't mean he won't indulge in a bit of Yes-And-ing, though. "GASP! You're absolutely right, Bubble! Digital nutrition is definitely a real thing and also VERY important!"
Another snap of Caine's fingers has all six circus members scrambling to catch the variety of fruits suddenly summoned before each of them—except for Kinger, whose hands were somehow already perfectly positioned to procure his plummeting piece of produce before Caine even produced it.
"You've got a long journey ahead of you, and the LAST thing you want to deal with at the start of a long journey is such an easily avoidable ailment like scurvy!"
Pomni barely manages to register the sound of Gangle muttering something too-quiet-to-catch under her breath, a small smile quirking her own lips as she inspects the fruit now resting in her hands. It looks to be just a run-of-the-mill digital orange, as far as she can tell; nothing strange or off about it, except for maybe having slightly fewer polygons than usual—presumedly rich in vitamin C, if Caine's shaky-at-best understanding of nutritional values is to be trusted. Although… the longer she stares at it, the more she can't shake the feeling that it seems... uncannily familiar in some way that she can't quite put her finger on...
"Anyways, where was I...?" Caine idly scratches at his 'temple' with the handle of his cane as he recollects himself. "Oh yeah! There was... a LOT going on with the story at large that kinda seemed like unnecessarily complicating gobbledeygook—so I removed as much superfluous content as I could manage in order to simplify and streamline the actual gaming experience while still leaving it expansive enough to hopefully accommodate everyone's preferences this time around!"
"Uh, 'g-gaming experience'?" Ragatha pipes up hesitantly, brows furrowed with obvious concern and even more confusion as she instinctively cradles her fruit close to her chest. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh my god..." Gangle's voice, now tinged with the beginning hints of understanding, raises just loud enough to be heard over the soft thump! of her papaya slipping from her ribbon grip and hitting the floor—but not nearly loud enough to not get drowned out by another voice in the next moment.
"Yeah, you haven't even given us the blurb of what the adventure actually is yet," Jax jeers blithely, the typical smirk sprawling across his face as he casually tosses his gifted lime back and forth between his hands. "Chop chop, Dentures, we're clearly all dying of suspense here."
"That's the spirit! See, I knew this would be a good idea; look how many of you are already so interested to learn about the adventure!" The excitement is just short of physically sparkling in Caine's eyes as he gives a happy little kick of his feet before launching back into announcer mode. "You lucky six friends are fortunate enough to have each gotten your hands on copies of the newest hit game before it even hits store shelves—SCURB!"
"Gotta get out from under the lawyers," Bubble stage-whispers with an exaggerated wink towards no one in particular.
"But what's this? In a shocking twist of fate, it turns out that playing the game will unknowingly initiate the actual literal apocalypse and destroy the entire world as you know it! Oh, the humanity! Now your only hope for survival is to escape into the game itself, working together as a team to advance through the many layers of the game's rich storyline and eventually claim The Ultimate Reward!"
Caine's voice echoes dramatically to the tune of another awkward silence.
"...What, that's it?" Jax asks, the majority of whatever previous goodwill he'd been harboring for the potential adventure suddenly stripped away by Caine's less-than-satisfactory synopsis. "That's what the momentous 'extended adventure' consists of this time around? We're literally just playing a video game together until we beat it?"
"In the absolute barest-bones of terms, yes!" Caine agrees wholeheartedly, missing the obvious downgrade in enthusiasm by a country mile. "But that description sells the experience quite short, methinks! It's an incredibly intricate and fully-immersive experience—not like any video game you've played before, I assure you! Did you miss the part about escaping into the game itself??"
Jax's mood recovers just marginally enough to cast a haughty glance Gangle's way and snort, "So, what, it's like a whole isek—"
"This is the Amazing Digital Circus, my loquacious leveret—what kind of Ringmaster do you take me for!?" Caine interrupts with more than a little indignance, flailing his arms wildly for emphasis. "Because I can assure you that as far as Digital Ringmasters go, I am simply the best there is! This will be no case of idly sitting around staring at a screen while twiddling your thumbs across a mouse and keyboard! When I say fully-immersive, I mean fully-immersive!"
"So, just like almost every other adventure ever?" Zooble points out superciliously. "Then why bother with the whole extra layer of—"
"We're talking a massive open-world experience here, complete with individualized worlds and personalized quests for each of you, all cleverly interwoven into the fate of an overarching war between the forces Light and Darkness themselves which culminates in a fearsome final battle against the Final Boss built up from the various choices you've made along the way—but that's getting into spoiler territory if I talk about it much further!!"
"War and battle you say?" Jax asks with a renewed glint of interest in his eye. "Like, we'll actually get to fight things? With weapons and stuff? On purpose?"
"Most definitely!" the ringmaster chimes with an enthusiastic aerial backflip. "I told you I did my best to encompass everyone's differing interests with this one! In this strange new universe, you'll have to work with your coplayers to solve engaging puzzles, fight an assorted array of monsters, uncover compelling lore, level up your skills and abilities, discover all types of weapons and other helpful objects to aid in your journeys through a robust and expansive crafting system—the possibilities are nearly endless!"
"Well, I guess most of that doesn't sound... too bad, all things considered—especially compared to some of the extended adventures we've done in the past," Ragatha admits cautiously, briefly rubbing the back of her neck before glancing down towards the newest member of the group. "What do you think, Pomni? This being your first introduction to an Extended AdventureTM and all."
"I..." Pomni blinks rapidly, trying to dispel the rapid swirls from her pupils as her mind struggles to actually process and make sense of everything Caine is actually saying here. It almost sounds like he means... No, no surely that couldn't be it; it has to be something else disturbingly similar that she just isn't getting yet. "I don't—"
"Excellent point, Pomni!" Caine agrees with another emphatic swish! of his cane. "We've already wasted plenty enough time with this intro! You all have a shiny new world to explore! Quite a few of them, actually~!"
A third snap summons a massive portal beneath the group's feet before another word can be said edgewise, and the last thing Pomni registers before her awareness gets swallowed up by the too-bright not-quite-void of the portal space—other than the usual stomach-turning sensation of entering freefall—is an all too familiar spirographic pattern weaving its way between the shimmering pixels of the gateway. When her feet finally register solid ground beneath her again after what feels like a small eternity, her vision gradually swimming back into focus to reveal an environment of stark white shapes and crisp black lines, oh-so-different from the technicolor childish whimsy of the Circus but still oh-so-frighteningly recognizable in its own right—Pomni truly can't deny it any longer.
Caine is really doing this.
He is making this happen.
"...Oh my god..."
A young woman stands in what is apparently now her bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 17th of May, is the day this young woman will embark upon the task of successfully completing a full game session of SBURB—err, SCURB, sorry—alongside a handful of her closest companions who have absolutely no idea what they're all about to get into.
...You have a feeling it's going to be a long adventure.