Chapter Text
"No, it really can't be done," Kinger sighed, shaking his bucketed head back and forth. "You're very clever, Pomni, but we had some of the nation's brightest computer scientists on the job. Sure, we had to work around the adventures. But we tried... so hard. And so many things." He stared down at his lap and closed his eyes.
Pomni leaned over the cafe table towards Kinger. "But I can go in! I can --"
"We all can," said Ragatha. "It just doesn't help. They're gone."
"But..." Her mouth hung open. Her eyes searched for nothing in particular. "Caine wasn't!"
"But I'm not human," said Caine.
Zooble put their claw on Pomni's shoulder. "It hurts every time, but... death is an inevitable part of life. Accepting and processing that grief is what these funerals and wakes are for."
Pomni welled up, eyes now fixed on some downcast spot. "But they're still right there..."
Ragatha pulled Pomni into a full hug and a full cry. A fog of silence rolled in over everyone.
Gangle, rotating her glass of ice water on the table, was the one to break through it. At near a whisper: "But it doesn't hurt, does it?"
Zooble shot Gangle a concerned look that said "you want to deal with this right here and now at the wake?" The morose silence turned tense as everyone turned to hear out what Gangle had to say about Jax. She could read their expressions and expectations as well as she could parse any other cartoon character's. "I mean, to visit. Right? Does it make anything worse?"
Ragatha winced a bit. Zooble spoke up. "It'd just be picking at old scabs. Not to mention the glitching. And who knows what other risks. You might abstract yourself."
"But they're our friends!" said Gangle, tears bouncing. "Don't we owe them a visit? Just because it hurts to see them like they are now... and Caine can always fix us up after!"
Kinger couldn't help but think of Queenie. "She makes a good point. We don't have to lock them away and forget all about them..."
Caine drew up at the mention of his usefulness, then shrank back at the allusion to his deeds. Still, he summoned up the bombast once more: "I sure can, my ribbinous one! Iiii LIKE THIS PLAN!"
There was surprisingly little question of who they'd arrange a visit for first. All the people who had abstracted were missed, of course, but if there was a hierarchy of who was missed the most, Kinger's wife had to be on top of the list. Everyone mobilized to kill the lights and guide the abstracted Queenie out of the aquarium. The escape plan was so simple it would be exaggerating to call it rudimentary: A long rope, tied around the waist, to follow in and out of the abstraction.
Not long after, Kinger once again stood before his abstracted wife in his pillow fort.
If this was just like his happiest memory, why did it feel so bad? Maybe because she wouldn't look him in the eyes this time. She was more distracted, her eyes swimming and swirling around.
"Queenie," he said. "Destiny...?" he tried her old name. "It's me. Kinger. Grant Best." It didn't seem to make any difference.
He could tell, something in her condition had declined. The spark of recognition he'd seen wasn't there. It broke his heart just a little more. She was more gone than ever before. What would you even see, deep inside?
"I've missed you, honey. I think about you all the time. Sometimes I can hardly bear the thought. I love you so much."
Kinger slowly reached out towards her with one trembling hand, then snapped it back so he could put his head in both hands. He sobbed.
"I can't do it," he choked out after a while. "I can't do it," he repeated, louder. He pushed a pillow out of the way and rushed out into the blinding light of day. Queenie didn't seem to notice.
Ragatha, Gangle, and Pomni moved in for the supportive hug. "There, there," said Ragatha.
"Where, where? Where was she?" said Kinger. "Oh, that's nice." He settled into the group hug.
Zooble didn't want to say something like "I told you so," so they didn't, not even with their body language. Instead, as the group hug broke off, Pomni said: "What if we visited someone newer?" And Zooble did not mind shooting daggers at her for even maybe implying Jax, while Gangle was right there, shifting awkwardly.
"Like a baby?" said Kinger. "That'd be nice too. I like children," he nodded.
"How about Ribbit?" said Ragatha. Third-most-recent, an odd pick numerically, but everyone got it. Ragatha had been Ribbit's teammate so many times, they became close friends. Nobody was going to object.
The team pulled Ribbit's abstraction out of the tank and led them into the tent that was originally built for Jax's. It was effectively the visitation tent from that point on. They decided to try sending multiple people in at once, this time. The rope would be tied around Ragatha, since she was more sturdy and substantial than Zooble, who volunteered to come along despite their skepticism because Ribbit was transgender and would need the support. Pomni would also tag along, just because she was the only person around who'd ever done this before. The three held hands, and leaned against Ribbit with a group hug, immediately starting to glitch and hurt on contact. But it worked. They sank in.
"Ragatha? Ragatha? Ragatha? Ragatha? Ragatha? Ragatha?" hushed whispers swirled around her in the darkness as the very air turned hard and began to compress her from all sides, immobilizing her.
"Yup, it's really me," she said, nervously forcing a tone like banter with a laugh at the end. "Thought I'd pay a visit!"
"Are you okay?" asked Pomni. "I didn't see anything like this with Jax..."
"I'm fine!" said Ragatha. "Just can't move, is all."
Then the air started moving again -- fast. Ragatha was nearly blown away. She stomped against the gust, gritting her teeth, and grabbed onto a doorknob to hold on to. The wind was only growing stronger. Her grip slipped just a little, turning the knob, and the door slammed open, pushing her into the wall. Pomni lifted it off her. Gritting her teeth, she swung around the door and grabbed on to the frame, while Pomni and Zooble pulled. With their help, Ragatha was able to climb around and she pulled herself through the doorway to take shelter from the gale.
Pomni and Zooble simply walked in.
Jax was sitting there, on top of the toybox coffin at an unattended circus funeral, sipping a fruit juice from a box. "Oh, hey Rags and, uh..." he smiled and shot them finger guns, one each. "...newbies. Here to talk about Ribbit?"
"Yeah, actually," said Zooble.
"What a bitch, am I right?" he said. "I'm glad he's finally gonna leave me alone."
"Do you know where we can find her?" said Pomni, strategically ignoring the incitement and easing Zooble back with one gentle hand on their chest. This wasn't Jax. This was Ribbit talking about herself.
"Oh, he abstracted. I'm not surprised you hadn't noticed. Nobody did, certainly not me." He crunched his juicebox, sat up a little to lift the coffin lid, and threw his trash in there.
"That's not true," said Ragatha. "We all noticed. We all missed them. And Jax especially was never the same afterwards."
"I'm pretty sure I'd remember if I was never the same afterwards," said Jax, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Then he snapped his fingers. "Ah, but I do remember forgetting him completely!"
"Then who set up the funeral?" asked Zooble.
"The what?" he said.
Zooble gestured around. "This funeral. The one we have every time someone abstracts. The funerals where Ragatha always rambles for like 30 minutes about how much she loved them."
"Hey!" said Ragatha.
"It's true," said Jax. "Don't you realize that if they wanted to take up our precious time, they wouldn't have abstracted?" he said, and he sounded free of the usual venom, like he really thought that's how it worked.
"Is that why Ribbit abstracted?" said Pomni.
Jax shrugged. "Must be part of it."
"Does she really think we didn't care about her?" said Ragatha, tearing up. "Did she not want us to?"
"Hey, he spent days making his room into a coffin, and nobody cared then," said Jax.
Ragatha was taken aback by that interpretation. "Of course we all cared!"
"I sure didn't. I thought we were all on the same page, letting him slip away quietly? Making it easy?"
"No! It's just... nobody wanted to say the wrong thing," said Ragatha, wringing her hands. "And when we did check in, they just told us they were fine... until she stopped answering the knocks." Damn it, how do they keep letting people slip through their fingers? Like Jax... Seeing him here again was a lot. Ribbit didn't even know he abstracted... She started welling up a bit from the guilt.
"We can't help people if they won't meet us halfway," said Zooble, comforting Ragatha.
"Guess he was just too stubborn. That was really fuckin' stupid of him, huh?" Jax shook his head. "He was probably even waiting for ME to show up and reach out. What a maroon! Selfish, too. Oh, and an attention whore!"
"We should try another door," said Pomni. "I don't think we're finding Ribbit in here."
"Should I come with?" said Jax, as the team turned around to leave.
"No," said Zooble, forcefully.
"Alright!" Jax leaned back on the coffin like it were time to take a nap on a bench. The Jax Pomni knew would have wedged himself in the adventure even harder once it was made clear he was unwanted, but that wasn't the Jax Ribbit knew.
The team opened another door.
"Welcome to the AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS!" said Caine. "Geeeeet ready to get holy, because for today's adventure, we're going into the woods to starve away the gay! I--"
"Nope," said Zooble, immediately closing the door. "Next."
"Holy shit!" said Pomni.
"What was that?!" said Ragatha.
"Conversion camp trauma," said Zooble. "Like summer camp with torture."
"Oh... I guess that makes sense," said Ragatha, sinking into herself.
The next room down the line opened up into a large, dark, empty auditorium, with the Circus stage at the bottom. Upon it, followed by a spotlight, an empty suit holding a microphone trudged from one end of the stage to the other, limply gesturing but making no noise whatsoever. It was wrinkled and deflated, dragging its limp pant legs on the floor. It constantly looked on the verge of complete collapse in on itself into nothing more than a pile of clothes.
The audience, who didn't even show up, was constantly booing this shabby suit. They weren't following the instructions of the sign above the performer, intermittently flashing the instruction "LOV" at them in red letters. (The "E" had burnt out some while ago. Deterioration.)
"This one is kinda creepy," said Pomni.
"I think it's really sad," said Ragatha.
"Do you think it'd be helpful to go in?" Zooble asked Pomni. Pomni shook her head. The real Ribbit wouldn't be in there, they'd probably already learned all they could just by seeing it, and there wasn't even anyone to talk to.
The next room was all-white and perfectly square in every dimension. It was nicely-furnished, with a fine china cabinet and a tea set for two set up on a round table in the center atop an all-white rug. There was no obvious light source, like a chandelier or lamp or a window. Curtains hung on the wall, open, framing a blank space.
Pomni lifted the curtain. It moved like a stiff board. "Feels like plastic," she said. Everything was plastic. "I wonder what this place is meant to be?"
"I wonder where Ribbit is," said Zooble, picking up and inspecting the tea set. Ribbit was everywhere.
"Yeah... or anyone else," said Pomni, looking quizzically at an ornate oval frame hung on the wall that seemed like it should have held a mirror.
Ragatha wondered if she should take a drink of the tea. She had a vague sense like accepting food or drink would keep her trapped there forever or something. The point was moot, though: the serving kettle was empty, she could feel just by picking it up. Still, she sat down, apprehensively poured a "drink" and took a "sip."
"R-R-R-Ragatha?" Ribbit digitally stuttered into visibility in the opposite chair, eyes drawn as wide as the teacup saucers. Then, she slumped back and her lids drooped, immediately demoralized. "No."
"No, yes, I'm here!" said Ragatha, nearly lunging across the table. "How are you? How have you been?"
Ribbit didn't even acknowledge the spectre of her memories. Instead, she suddenly noticed Pomni wandering into view and furrowed their brow. "Who the fuck are you supposed to be? Kaufmo if he took E?"
"Oh, no. I'm Pomni," she said, moving to the table and then, after a half-second's hesitation for consideration, outstretching her hand for a shake. Ribbit took the proferred hand, skeptically. "You don't know me. I came in after you... left."
"A new chick..." They rolled the concept around in their jaw, squinting. "Why are you here?"
"I was coming along to help Ragatha and Zooble navigate, but it doesn't seem like they needed it," she smiled. "I also wanted to meet you."
Ribbit stared at Pomni, calculating, releasing the handshake. "Zooble?" Ribbit asked. Zooble gave a wave and Ribbit jumped a little. "Oh, sorry, I thought you were a statue. Like roadside lawn art."
"Nope, I'm human," said Zooble.
Their mindscape didn't usually produce whole new people she'd never seen before... unless this was just what it was like when things were deteriorating. She turned back to look at Ragatha, then to Pomni again. "So you're saying you all came from outside," they said slowly.
Pomni nodded. "We thought it was high time for a visit," said Zooble.
Ribbit's eyes grew hungry again. "So you're for fucking real?!" They pounced onto the table to hug Ragatha tight. The tea set tumbled harmlessly onto the floor.
She had a dozen more questions after that, probing for information frantically. Is this Caine's idea of an adventure or something? No. How is everything? Better than ever. Filling them in on the changes led to at least a dozen more questions. How long has it been? Close to a year. Why visit now? Because we didn't have the time, the freedom, or the idea to earlier. Why me? We miss you. You do? Yes, of course.
Ribbit was surprised, and flattered, and more than a little disappointed that they even remembered her. She wished she could have just disappeared without anyone noticing, like they never existed at all. Even though the pose was incredibly awkward, Ribbit wouldn't let her friends go through the twenty questions. But then, the grip slackened and they pulled back a little, that hollow sadness creeping back into their expression. She leaned back, sitting on the table, grasping her elbow.
Their next question: "How's... Jax?" She could have asked first about Kaufmo, or about Kinger. He was right, she WAS obsessed. Stupid fucking moron. God damn it.
They all glanced at one another. Zooble read the room and took point. "He abstracted."
Ribbit nodded glumly. Of course he did. But if they could visit abstractions... "So how is he?"
"Uh... bad?" said Zooble. It was probably wise to be circumspect there, for now.
Ribbit chuckled. "Yeah, aren't we all." She shouldn't pry for gossip. Stupid, stupid.
They climbed down off the table and started setting the tea set back up. "I've been a terrible host," she said with just a trace of irony. "I haven't asked about you at all." She kneeled before the table, poured more imaginary tea into a cup, and pushed it towards Pomni. Pomni nervously played along with a sip, Ragatha soon following suit with her own cup. Zooble didn't have a cup, so they just mimed an invisible cup and saucer for their invisible tea. None of them were sure if this was just Ribbit doing a bit or not. "How long have you been in the circus?" The walls were slowly moving further away.
"A couple months. It's fine, we'd really rather talk about you, I think," said Pomni.
"Eh, what's there to talk about?" they shrugged. "Ragatha can tell you, I'm nothing special," she self-effaced.
"But you are." Ragatha put the cup down from her long sip. "You're kind, and funny, and you were always the best at solving puzzles. You could cheer people up after the worst adventures and make it look like you weren't even trying." Truthfully, Ribbit hadn't even known she did that. "Once you were gone, things got a lot darker... I tried to lighten the load, but I was never as natural at it as you, and people could feel it."
"You did good, though, Ragatha," said Pomni, putting a hand on her shoulder. Ragatha put a hand on that hand. Ribbit impulsively put a hand on top of Ragatha's hand, then their other hand on top of that hand. Everyone snorted a light chuckle at the slight silliness.
"See what I mean?" said Ragatha.
"You... really do mean all that?" said Ribbit, pulling away.
"I haven't known you very long, but I can already tell she's telling the truth about you," confirmed Pomni.
"...Thanks," Ribbit said, blushing.
"I'm excited to get to know you more when I come back to visit again," Pomni continued.
Ribbit flinched and perked up at once. "Are you going already?"
"We probably should be going..." said Zooble, exchanging a worried glance with Pomni. "It's not really healthy for us to stay in here very long."
Ragatha stood up from the table and curtsied. "It was really great to see you again, Ribbit. We'll be back soon, don't worry!"
"A-and so will the others!" said Pomni, rushing to reassure Ribbit.
"Well... bye, then," said Ribbit with a sad little wave and desperate eyes.
Fucking hell, the others too, did she ever miss them all. She couldn't wait to see them again. As the group walked up and out of the room, waving and saying their farewells, Ribbit dissosciated. "Don't go," they said, almost too quietly to hear, failing to claw the hard plastic tablecloth. "Please don't leave me," she might not have said at all. They couldn't tell. They were dissolving. "I don't want to be alone again," she definitely did not say out loud. The door shut slowly.
No. No. No. She wasn't letting go again. Not this time. While they were still themself, she sprung up and ran. Ran for the door, yanked it open with all of her might. Looked out into the hallway. The three were walking into -- out of -- the darkness, holding each other's hands. Ribbit could still see them. It wasn't too late. She kept running, feet pounding cracks into the floor, tears streaming down their face.
Ragatha, Zooble, and Pomni dragged themselves out of Ribbit and back into the circus. They were badly glitching. Ribbit undulated and morphed shape fiercely, agitated, eyes swimming around on their form, and the rope was getting thrown around through the air then back down to the floor. "Hold on!" cried Caine, holding the rope with Kinger. The abstracted Ribbit was making these horrible screeching screaming hard-drive grinding noises. Ragatha lost her grip and was flicked to the hard floor below. Zooble clattered to pieces on impact. Pomni had to crawl out on her belly. All were visibly glitched.
"Are you okay?" Gangle shouted to them. She was too lightweight to hold the rope, so she just watched.
Ragatha smiled and nodded as she got up, unsteady on her feet, rubbing her back. "It's not my first rodeo." Caine snapped his fingers and they were all back to full health anyway.
"What did you do?" shouted Kinger, watching the thing that used to be Ribbit thrash around. When Caine took one hand off to snap them healthy, the rope slipped out of their grasp, taking Kinger's hand with it. This looked like it was turning into another rampage.
"I don't know! We just talked!" Pomni screamed back.
But what was hard to tell at first, in all the chaotic disruption of form, was that the abstraction was steadily getting smaller even as it got louder. It knocked a few things over, poked holes in the tent's blanket walls, but soon it was just a dark orb floating in the air erupting with narrow spikes and flashes of rainbow colors that both only existed for split-seconds. They probably should have all started running like hell as soon as everyone was out, but they all just backed away with hands over their ears, transfixed with curiousity. Eventually, what was left of the abstraction shrunk itself out of existence entirely. The group just kept staring at the spot it used to be, stunned into a second of silence.
That was interrupted by a "pop" sound effect as Ribbit -- looking just like Ribbit -- popped back into existence in that spot in the air. And fell to the floor with a yell. Unluckily, they missed all the many, many pillows in the tent.
"What DID you do?" said Kinger to Pomni, Zooble, and Ragatha again, even more curious this time.
"I don't know... we just talked," said Pomni again. Kinger's mind was spinning like a turbine trying to figure out how this possibly could have happened, but he'd save his questions for later.
The group slowly closed into a huddle around Ribbit, lying in a heap on the tile floor, moaning quietly from pain, glitching out. Aha, Caine could help with that! Triumphantly he snapped her back to full health, feeling quite pleased about his ability to contribute.
"Welcome back... to the AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS!" he said, flying around in loop-de-loops above Ribbit's head.
Ribbit looked terrified and confused and suspicious at everyone and everything. It was not hard to tell they'd been crying. "Am I... back?" she croaked out, sitting up on the floor.
"Looks like it," said Zooble.
"Back... to the AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS!" Caine said again, flying in the exact same loop-de-loop pattern.
"Tone it down, Caine," said Zooble. "I think Ribbit might have a headache or something."
"Yeah, just get away from me dude," said Ribbit.
"Right, yes," he nodded and landed some distance away. Caine following orders? Things really had changed around here. If it was here.
"How are you feeling?" asked Gangle.
How were you even supposed to answer a question like that? "Uh... more corporeal?" said Ribbit. Caine saluted. Nobody saw that. "More than a little confused, to be honest," they chuckled.
"That's perfectly understandable," said Kinger. "How did you get out?"
"I dunno really. I just... wanted out real bad, so I left," she said. Ribbit surveyed the people around them. Mostly new faces. "Where's Kaufmo?"
Everyone winced at once. Ribbit basically knew the answer before Zooble said it: "He abstracted."
"Kaufmo!?" Ribbit nearly pulled a wild take. They leaned back on their arms and their lids lowered into a frown. "Sheesh, that guy was like a rock... why?"
"He thought he saw an exit," said Ragatha. "He just... couldn't take it anymore. It happened so fast..." Pomni avoided looking at anyone. She'd never found the time to actually tell anyone about the exit door...
Ribbit clicked out the side of their mouth. "Damn shame..." They shook their head. It was a shock, but it was way easier to swallow the grief when you knew abstraction was reversible and you could visit them anytime. Still though, Kaufmo. Never would have guessed. Abstraction could get anyone. "Wait, we can curse now?"
"That's right, my froggy friend! I have lifted the censor!"
"Oh, fuck yeah!" Ribbit leaped up into a standing position. "And you can fuck off, because you are definitely not my fuckin' friend, dude." She pointed at Caine, who shrank into his shoulders. Wow, it was true, the dude really was cowed now. "But the rest of you are about to see this miraculous bitch in a whoooooole new light, motherfuckers." They flipped both their middle fingers up and rotated around to face everybody in the circle around her.
They all laughed a little. It was good to see Ribbit, even better to see them lively, even better to see them lively seconds after coming back from abstraction. The recovery seemed... yes, miraculous was the word.