Work Text:
A Friendly Little Chat
By Violetlight
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“Jax! Just the lively lagomorph I wanted to see! Mind joining me for a little chat?”
Before Jax could so much as open his mouth, he found himself teleported to an area of the circus he hadn’t seen before. A long, rectangular room stretched out before him with an arched ceiling, shelves of multi-coloured, glowing orbs lining the walls. He looked behind him to see a half blue, half red double door decorated with stars and a moon, with “Caine’s Office” written in large, “friendly” letters above the frame.
He turned back and walked to the other end of the room. Caine himself was already seated in a plush armchair behind an obnoxiously purple desk, the toothed … whatever Caine was … fiddling with a child’s bead maze. Heh, as far as desk toys went, Jax could think of nothing better for him.
“So what’d I do to get called to the ‘principal’s office’? It was Ragatha that tattled, wasn’t it? I swear I only put centipedes in her room once,” Jax said as he walked up to Caine’s desk.
“Have a seat!” Caine said instead of answering. With another snap, an overly plush red armchair suddenly appeared behind Jax. A bowl of – of course, carrots – also appeared out of thin air on the end of Caine’s desk. “Can I get you anything else? Water, coffee, about twenty-eight different kinds of a non-descript ‘alpine drops’ soft drink? My favourite flavour’s goji citrus strawberry!” Caine buzzed from behind his desk, a small pyramid of multi-coloured pop cans piling up beside the carrots.
Jax shrugged, grabbed a carrot and leaned back in the chair, put his feet up on Caine’s desk, knocking over a few cans. “So what is it? You gonna to keep me in suspense all night, oh fearless ringleader?”
Caine’s huge, round eyes sparkled from between his teeth. “You’ve always been one of my favourite humans, Jax. You always take part so enthusiastically in my Adventures, never skipping out, never complaining, even if you play rather … creatively most of the time. It’s refreshing, really.”
“Hey, your games are fun, for the most part. Not like I have anything else to do around here anyway,” Jax said absently, chewing on the carrot. “At least you come up with better ideas than slaving away at some soul-sucking fast food joint or boring-#$^ high school animes. Hey, is Candy Kingdom getting a sequel anytime?
“Candy Canyon Kingdom?” Caine’s huge eyes settled in the direction of one of the orbs. “I’m still working on tweaking the NPCs in that one, but who knows?! You might get to see it again sometime soon! Glad you liked it!”
Jax looked over, realising that what he had dismissed as just swirling colours were actually scenes from the game in question – the face of one of those gummy alligators apparent in the orb. Wasn’t that the one Pomni tried to adopt? Meh. Not like it mattered.
The sugar-sprinkled wildlife did remind him of a better adventure though. “Oh, I bet you could expand Poacher’s Paradise in a cool way if you put your mind to it,” Jax added.
“Sure. Whatever,” Caine said dismissively. “So, what’d you think of today’s in-house Adventure?”
“It was actually pretty cool – we need to shoot each other more often!”
“I meant the Favourite Character Awards –”
Jax cut Caine off, not caring in the slightest about that stupid awards show crap. “Who knew Pom-Pom could be such a little chaos gremlin? There may be hope for her yet!”
Caine’s avatar flickered briefly at the nickname. “Pom-pom? So you two are getting close?”
“Not a chance,” the cartoon rabbit leaned on the desk now, absently stacking pop cans by colour. “Oh, next time how about adding some more grenades or a bazooka? That would be fun. Don’t worry about what Zooble says either. They just b$#*& for the sake of b$#*&ing.”
“In a fantastic turn of events, Zooble actually didn’t complain about my last Adventure! And Gangle sure seemed to enjoy shooting you with that tommy gun!” Caine said happily.
“Uh, yeah, I guess.” Jax said, suddenly uncomfortable. “… well, like I said, we should shoot each other more often.” He swallowed the last of the edible bit of the carrot, flicked the leafy end onto Caine’s desk, got up from the chair and turned back towards the office door. “Now, I’d hate to take up more of your valuable adventure-making time, so if you don’t need any more feedback I should show myself ou –” Jax cut himself off, as he suddenly found his foot stuck to the floor.
Caine popped in front of him a few feet in the air. “Yes, I’d say Gangle was about 13.584 percent happier after having the chance to blow you to tiny bits, which is quite the increase! She’s now well within parameters!”
“The %$#^ you talking about?!” Jax tried to pull his foot free. “What parameters?”
“The Not-Abstracting Parameters, of course, my inquisitive coney!”
Caine’s voice and demeanour was as manic as usual, but … was there a bite to it? Nah, not Caine … Jax tried to convince himself.
“If there’s one thing I’m absolutely the best ever at – besides making adventures, of course! – it’s seeing patterns. And Gangle’s Happiness-O-Meter was getting dangerously close to abstraction territory, until the last few Adventures, that is.
“Okay … well, I’m glad she’s sticking around. What does this have to do with me?”
Caine tapped his lower jaw with his cane. “Yes, I was getting quite worried about Gangle for a while there, especially since she seemed to be following the same path as the last, hmmm, two Abstractions, I’d say.”
The last two. Kaufmo, and …
Caine glitched above him.
“Oh yes, don’t think I haven’t noticed, my incognizant denominator, ever since you’ve arrived.” There was definitely a bite to Caine’s voice now. The light in the room lowered, a spotlight shining just over Jax. “You leave the room of a certain amiable amphibian. A few weeks later and she’s in the cellar.”
Jax’s head – and eyes – started to spin. “No …”
“Then the same thing happens to the other, clownish corner of your trio.”
“Caine, you don’t know! It’s not like that!”
“Don’t think I haven’t seen how you’ve been the one to push my masked mademoiselle to her limits. And now, you’re trying to do the same thing …!” Caine’s huge eyes flickered, flashing for a second bright red and blue before flickering back to as normal as they could be. “To Pomni,” he said with a frightening finality, his jaws, closing somewhat, “narrowing” around his eyes.
No description for her? Weird …
Jax wasn’t sure why his mind picked up on that when the ringmaster was scaring the shit out of him.
“Like I said, I like you, Jax. But the math should be clear even for your inferior human mind. Two humans are worth more than one. Four, even more so! I will NOT lose any more of MY humans because of YOU!” Caine shrieked,
Jax suddenly teleported free from the floor, only to find himself shrunk, and inside of Caine’s top hat, now held in one of the toothed demon’s white-gloved hands.
“I’ve spoiled you for too long,” Caine said calmly. Which was even scarier. “Perhaps an early trip to the cellar is in order?” The floor opened up under where Caine was floating, and he began to slowly tip the hat over. “it’s where you’re headed anyway.”
“You sadistic f*^%!” Jax screamed, desperately trying to hold on to the rim of the hat. He made the mistake of looking down at the jagged, inky black forms and psychedelic eyes beneath him. One of the abstractions looked directly up at him as his hand started to slip.
“I’m sorry! I’ll leave them alone, I swear! Gangle and Pomni!” Jax felt tears leaking down his fur.
He hated Caine so much.
Almost as much as he hated himself.
With a cartoonish “pop” he was suddenly back in the circus, standing in front of the main stage, like nothing had happened.
“Glad we had that chat Jax!” Caine said cheerfully, and floated away. Bubble appeared out of nowhere, blew a raspberry at Jax, then followed.
Jax was left alone.
***
“What a nice talk,” Caine said as he pondered his adventure orbs back in his office. The AI held his hands behind his back as he floated up to a picture frame, identical to one of the paintings lining the cast’s bedroom hallway. Sure enough, Pomni was there in the hall, talking with Ragatha.
Caine turned absently towards his Candy Canyon Kingdom orb for a second, before continuing his … observations. For his humans’ own good, of course.
Pomni had seen something in one of his NPCs, of all things, enough to want to adopt it, as stupid as that idea was … there was something different about her. By trying to drag that NPC to the circus, treating it almost like it was a human itself … none of the others had done anything like that.
Why would she do that?
Whatever this quality is, maybe it could be the key to keeping all his humans from abstracting. So they would stay with him forever.
Then of course he could craft the Perfect Adventure that they would all love! They would finally see how talented and important he was!
As long as his sweet little Pomni-grante didn’t abstract first, that is. But with the most dangerous factor no longer in the equation, that risk had gone down by a significant percentage.
He cocked his jaws as he stared at the jester girl.
What an Adventure it would be, discovering just what was so special about her.