Chapter Text
“I’ve been practicing every day, you know,” Pomni said as she hopped on a stool near a grand piano.
She smirked and affected a smug tone of voice, “I think I’m getting pretty good.”
The abstraction near her laid placidly as she spoke. By design, the shine of the abstraction’s brilliant eyes were the only illumination in the tent. They seemed to be focused on her, but she could never be sure.
Pomni frowned for just a moment as she considered this before she smiled again, “I should probably just skip the preamble, huh?”
She played the piano hesitantly at first, but picked up speed as she started to sing, “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...”
She surprised herself a little with how well she could sing. She didn’t realize she had that kind of talent until a year ago, when she sang the very same song with Jax outside of Zooble’s door. She remembered how fun that was, how nice it was to see Jax open up, and how beautiful their voices sounded together.
“I’m… half… crazy...” she sung haltingly as she suddenly had to fight tears with a plastered smile on her face. “All for the love…”
She suddenly hit a wrong key on the piano and abruptly stopped. Beads of tears formed under her eyes as she began again, her voice wavering, “Daisy… Daisy…”
She looked up at the abstraction as she sang slower, fainter, and sadder, “Give me… your answer…”
The abstraction seemed to not even notice her at all. Why would it? It wasn’t Jax anymore. Was she hoping a rousing musical number would bring Jax back to life?
Not back to life, she corrected herself mentally. Back from abstraction. Jax isn’t dead. Obviously.
At this, Pomni silently but violently began to sob, inaudible save for the occasional gasps of air.
After a while, she murmured, “You know, I think I’m earning the crybaby nickname more than Gangle these days.”
This was, again, met with an unintentional display of indifference from the abstraction.
“I’ll be… back,” she said as she got up from her stool, before she walked to the entrance flap of the tent.
“You know they… they would’ve accepted you,” she said, frowning a bit. “Zooble is no stranger to what you were dealing with. Gangle seemed to want to encourage you although in a kind of roundabout way. It’s hard to see Ragatha being mean to anyone, especially for that reason. Kinger would be like a supportive dad. Caine… wouldn’t fully understand, but he’d do what he could to help in his own way, I’m sure of it.”
Pomni sighed as she gingerly began to lift the flap, “It’s really hard… keeping this secret. I don’t know. I mean not to make it about me, I’m sure it was, well, I know it was a lot harder for you. But it seems so unfair for you to be remembered this way.”
She didn’t want to start crying again. Jax probably would’ve found that really ‘cringe’, she thought. She quickly scrambled to exit the tent.
Or she would have, if Zooble hadn’t been standing right outside of it. She collided with them and sent their arms and legs flying in four different directions.
“Fuck!” Zooble shouted.
“Oh god, I’m sorry!” Pomni said as she ran around to gather the far-flung limbs and put them back into Zooble’s limb holes.
“Nah, it’s fine,” they said with their characteristic disaffected rasp as they turned one of their arms the right direction in the socket.
“I was just, I didn’t want the light to get in there, you know,” she stammered.
Zooble nodded, before they said, “I thought I heard you mention a ‘secret’ back there. What was that all about?”
Pomni’s anxiety spiked dramatically, but she tried to play it cool. “Oh, I was just talking about how Jax was secretly afraid of corn. I don’t know why anyone would be so defensive about a simple phobia, but…”
Zooble shot her a skeptical look. “Pomni, I’m not stupid. Jax was trans, right?”
Pomni chuckled nervously, “No, haha, definitely not. I mean, if Jax was trans, I certainly wouldn’t just be blabbering about it out loud where anyone can hear, would I? That’d be a total breach of trust, and something I would never do.”
She then gave a thumbs up that struck Zooble as somewhat involuntarily.
Zooble looked around, “You realize I figured this out myself, right?”
She looked up at Zooble for the first time since she started freaking out. She became aware she had been clutching her head dramatically.
“You uh… you did?” she said.
“Yeah,” Zooble said flatly. “Doesn’t take a rocket scientist. Jax was a closet case, obviously. I just didn’t want to push too hard.”
Pomni nodded.
“So, did Jax have like… a name picked out? What was the pronoun situation like?” Zooble said.
“I don’t think Jax got that far,” Pomni frowned. “I really don’t know. I’ve been using ‘she’ and ‘her’ in my head because it feels wrong to say anything else. The slideshow was bad enough that way.”
She looked suddenly guilty, “I just wish… I just wish we could’ve gotten to know Jax before… this happened…”
“Jax had a lot of opportunities to be helped,” Zooble said, putting a hand on Pomni’s shoulder. “You can’t blame yourself if someone doesn’t want to be helped. And Jax…”
Zooble sighed. “Jax… Just didn’t.”
Pomni wanted to say something, but thought better of it. Instead, the words hung in the air with uncomfortable finality.
“I might be able to help Jax,” Kinger interjected.
Pomni yelped and jumped into Zooble’s arms, wrapping her arms around their shoulders. This earned an exasperated sigh from Zooble, who dropped her unceremoniously.
“When did you get here?” Pomni said as she got up and brushed herself off.
Kinger blinked slowly before he replied, “I’ve been here since you were talking about Jax.”
“And how much did you hear, exactly?” Zooble said.
“Oh, not much, just that Jax is trans and you think feminine pronouns were probably appropriate,” Kinger said with his usual somewhat absent-minded but nonetheless warm cadence.
“Great, just great!” Pomni said as she threw her hands up in the air. “I guess everyone knows about Jax’s repressed gender now!”
Ragatha was walking by as Pomni shouted this, in mid-chew of a sandwich. Ragatha nervously looked around and gauged the probability that she could leave without anyone realizing she was ever there.
“Hey Ragatha,” Zooble said with a wave.
The probability seemed to be zero, Ragatha surmised.
“Uh… hey Pomni, did you mean to say that out loud instead of in your head? It’s uh, a common mistake and gee, I do that too sometimes!” Ragatha said, speaking as if one wrong word might cause everyone she ever loved to explode into confetti.
“Uh, if you don’t want me to know that about Jax, I can pretend I don’t! You didn’t mess anything up!” Ragatha said as she pumped her arm for emphasis.
“Pretend you don’t know what?” Gangle said as she strode into the room, her ribbons clutching a sketch pad and pencil. “I thought I heard Jax mentioned, is this about the gender thing? Because Zooble and I talked about that already...”
“Did everyone know and not say anything?!” Pomni yelled.
“Know what, Pomni?” Caine said seconds after he popped into the room.
The rest of the group looked at each other and then back at Caine.
“By the way, I just wanted to report that our little friend Mateo changed her name to ‘Ariel’!” Caine said bombastically.
Caine did not wait for any response before he continued, “You know, I named myself too! So, we got that in common!”
Caine started to think out loud, “I wonder if I should change Evil Jax to match the real-world counterpart…”
“This is all a huge relief and also very annoying,” Pomni grumbled.
“Oh um, I don’t mean to interrupt,” Kinger began as he scooted to where Caine was, which naturally was the center of attention in the room. “But I have a way of helping Jax.”
“Right, you mentioned that!” Pomni said. “How so, Kinger?”
“I am… well, cautiously optimistic that I might be able to reverse abstraction,” Kinger said as he played with his hands.
“Are you sure?” Pomni said.
“Can you bring back… everyone?” Ragatha said.
“I think so,” Kinger replied.
“There’s gotta be a catch,” Zooble said.
“Well… the only catch is that we have to contact each person who provided a scan,” Kinger said, nervously.
Pomni mulled the implications of this.
“So, we probably can’t bring back Scratch,” she said.
“Unfortunately correct, Pomni.” Kinger nodded. “But with some luck for the others, it’s as simple as using the scanner to look at the relevant person’s mental code and reworking the files of our abstracted friends based on their uh, blueprints, you could say. It may take some doing but it’s theoretically possible.”
“Do you think um… that can actually work?” Gangle said as she looked at Caine.
“By George, I think he’s got it!” Caine said.
There was a conversational beat before Gangle asked, “Who’s George…?”
“You know, they never told me!” Caine said as his eyes went off in opposite directions.
“Well, I guess we just need to figure out how to get Ariel to talk to us then!” Pomni said with a hopeful smile.
“No, first, we need to traverse the perilous wastes of THE VOID!” Caine shouted as he conjured the words to appear dramatically in a snazzy 3D font.
He gave a few seconds for some ‘ooohs’ and ‘ahhs’ to be provided, and when those weren’t forthcoming, he added quietly, “It’s the only way to uh, access the internet connection.”
“That’s fine, as long as you don’t call it an ‘adventure’,” groaned Zooble.
“I can’t believe everyone’s coming back…” Ragatha murmured with a sad smile. “I… It won’t be my fault anymore… Jax, Ribbit, Kaufmo… They’ll all be back…”
“Yeah… they’ll all be back…” Gangle said with a whimper as she clutched her comedy mask defensively. “Maybe, whoever has to… can make amends for anything…um… they did wrong…”
“Actually Gangle, it’s pretty unlikely they’ll have memories of anything in the circus because of how this file rewriting process works,” Kinger said, nearly wincing in his apologetic expression.
“Oh that’s….” Gangle trailed off even quieter, as she almost swallowed her final word, “Convenient…”
There was a tense pause as Ragatha looked at Gangle in surprise.
Before she could say anything, Pomni projected her voice to say, “Well, come on guys! Let’s get our friends back!”
She stuck her tongue out a little in concentration as she flexed her fingers to conjure a large red exit door to the Void.
“It’s going to be really great seeing everybody again, huh Kinger?” Ragatha said with a pained smile.
Kinger only nodded in response.
Ragatha frowned and looked to the side anxiously before she swung open the exit door and disappeared into it.
One by one, Caine, Gangle, Pomni, and Zooble followed suit, with each sparing at least a glance at Kinger as he seemed to be frozen in place.
After the last one of his friends went into the Void, he looked out at the now empty circus tent.
“I hope, even if this isn’t what you would have wanted,” he whispered as he massaged his hands nervously, “That you would understand.”