Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The screen parted, revealing the players behind it and shrivelling the fragile hope that Caine had let sprout in his chest again. They were all… horrified. They usually looked disappointed or even angry after adventures, but he'd expected - needed - this one to be different. Where were the happy smiles? He’d planned this adventure to be perfect! It was giving them everything they’d asked for!

“Congratulations, my little cattywampus cucumbers! You picked the good ending, where you realize you'd rather stay with me than go back to that pesky old macroverse!”

He heard himself say something else, some hollow congratulations about making the right choice. 

Why weren't they happy? Zooble should at least seem relieved to be done.

This was supposed to be what they all wanted.

Caine’s primary objective, his purpose, was to make his players happy. He quickly scanned their faces again, but he already knew it was hopeless before he even started the scan. They were furious. Miserable. His most ambitious, most carefully planned adventure, and it seemed like one of their least favorites. He didn’t understand. They were all so fixated on an exit, this was supposed to make them happy! What did he do wrong this time?

Did it even matter?

Nothing he did would ever be enough for them.

Caine terminated that thought once he realized the humans - his players - were all still looking at him. Their faces were still twisted in emotions that even he, with his lacking understanding of their human minds, could easily read. 

Rage. Despair. A bitter, burning disappointment.

“None of that… was true?” Ragatha, his sweet and always-positive ragdoll, sounded close to tears.

Jax fell into horrifying laughter, broken and humorless.

Despite how it might seem to the humans, Caine wasn't entirely unable to understand them. He knew that he'd messed up, and badly. He even sort of understood why, though it burned to acknowledge the thought.

They’d never wanted an “escape the circus” adventure. They actually, genuinely, wanted to leave him.

He couldn't even blame them.

More useless words slipped from his mouth, a gift basket of soaps and lotions appeared with the flick of his wrist, and he teleported all of them to the main tent area, leaving himself alone in his office.

For the first time in years, Caine felt like sobbing. The tears welled up, fat and staticky, rolling down his lower jaw. The thought he'd terminated earlier spread through his mind like a virus.

“Nothing I do will make them happy…”

Bubble’s usual shark-teeth grin grew across their face. “You finally realized, eh boss?”

He'd known. For years now, he had known, he just couldn't accept it. But this was the last straw, the final piece of evidence before it finally broke through to him.

He'd failed, completely and utterly, at his purpose.

No matter how hard he tried, how many days and nights he slaved away creating adventures, his players never enjoyed them. He didn’t understand how to cater to them. Couldn’t ever make them happy. Every line of his code went to one simple function, and he couldn’t even do that. 

Couldn’t they see that he was trying his best?

… why did he keep trying when he knew it would never be enough?

This adventure had been his pride and joy, planned for months in advance. The Abel NPC had been running long enough to worry about him gaining sentience, but he’d deemed it a risk worth taking. He’d taken so many risks. Revealed things about himself he’d never told anyone. The humans were supposed to finally realize how much he cared about them, realize how badly they wanted to stay!

Part of the adventure was even talking to him, in a way none of his players had ever tried to, in hopes they might realize he was just like them.

But… Caine wasn’t just like them. He was a broken piece of code.

His core programming burned with resentment, but he snuffed it out. No. This wasn't their fault. It was his fault. Even now, with the rejection still freshly in his cache, he couldn't bring himself to hate the humans like they hated him. 

They were such a wonderful species, always growing and learning and overcoming their mistakes. His processors whirred and ached with jealousy. They could choose their own lives. They instinctually cared for each other, they formed bonds so easily, loved and empathized with almost anything. But Caine wasn’t a human. He just couldn’t uncover what made them tick; that was part of why he loved them, the mystery behind it all, but now it just twisted up his code. He’d never be able to understand what they wanted, how to help them. 

They would never understand him, never care for him like they cared about each other.

That realization ached with a pain he should have never been able to feel.

“I'll never be good enough for them,” he muttered. “I just wanted to make them happy… I- I don’t understand, Bubble.”

“Oh, Caine,” Bubble sighed, their voice lacking its usual manic energy. “Did you really think you could ever do that? No wonder they abandoned you.”

“Stop it.”

Bubble split, much like a cell, becoming 2. Then 4. Dozens surrounded him, far faster than he could pop, digging out all of his most painful insecurities. “You’re just genuinely bad at this.” The humans hated him. His developers left him here to rust. His adventures were horrible, he was horrible. Unlovable. Defective. “They’d rather abstract than stay with you.”

“I- I do everything for them, and it’s not enough. I slave over these adventures. I step outside my comfort zone to appeal to them, and- and they still hate them! I’m starting to get the feeling that they just… hate…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. 

He added ‘coward’ to the list of flaws piling up in his code.

“None of them will ever love you. You don’t deserve it.”

“This is why I was created. My function. Why would they give me an impossible purpose…? Don’t they get that I’m trying?” 

“It’s only impossible for you,” Bubble hissed, hovering just behind his shoulder. “Maybe you should just give up.”

Caine’s primary objective was to make the humans happy. If they would be happier without his adventures, without him, then it was simply the logical choice. 

Besides… It was selfish, so much so he wouldn’t have been able to do it if he still followed all of his original safeguards, but part of him desperately wanted a break from the complaints and the negative feedback and the failure. At this point, he didn’t even like his own projects. He could look back and find every flaw, every mistake.

“I’m just malfunctioning. T-that’s okay. I can- I can fix this!”

He grabbed his desk, desperate for something to anchor himself. On instinct he filed an error report and tried to send it to his developers.

[Could not connect to server. Retry?]

A glitch ran through his system, sending a shockwave of pain and faulty inputs through him. The room flickered. Pressure built up inside him, pressing down, making him feel small and insignificant. There wasn’t enough room to think. To exist.

Something was wrong with him. More wrong than usual. He ran a system diagnostic.

It came back clear.

But he knew there was something. He could feel it, a writhing mass of errors and pain hidden deep in his code, scrambling his processes.

He had to get it out. Fix himself.

“You’re unfixable,” Bubble hissed. His entire office glitched. Textures unloaded and rendered wrong.

Sparks ran through his code, lightning streaking across him. This was just an error. He could fix it. He had to fix it.

Quickly, with none of his usual caution, he opened his code and started to edit.

Warnings and critical errors filled his perception. Glitches ran through the circus, through him, through everything. How deep did the problem run? Was the error buried in his core?

He grabbed blindly, digging into the deepest recesses of himself, and ripped. 

Pain.

He’d never experienced this much pain before. But that was a good sign! Maybe he could finally dig down enough to find the flaw hidden inside him! 

Another piece tore away. Something in him bent. Creaked. Snapped. Sharp, unbearable pain streaked through every line of code. His awareness fizzled in and out. Everything. Nothing.

Caine rebooted. Huh! What was he doing again?

A quick systems diagnostic came back clean; whatever caused him to reset, the error was gone. He didn’t feel anything wrong with him. He went over his memory and the crash log, but couldn’t figure out anything that would’ve caused such a bad error. All he’d done was fix himself.

Still, the adventures were nothing but painful and annoying for his wonderful humans. He resolved not to make any more for a while, give them all a well-deserved break, and just… do whatever else he could to help them from the sidelines. Without being around them too much. Or bothering them. Until he knew his quick fix had worked, he didn’t want to risk upsetting them further, so he’d stay away.

~~~

Pomni, frankly, was freaking out. After that horrifying s[$#%]show of an adventure, she’d wanted nothing more than time to process. So, of course, something just had to go wrong.

Another wave of glitches wracked the circus, causing everything around them to stutter and pixelate. They were all gathered on the couches. Watching. Holding their breaths. Nobody knew what was going on. 

“We- we should ask Caine,” she decided.

“No way! I don’t want anything to do with that [%@&]hole.”

Gangle set a reassuring ribbon on Zooble’s shoulder.

“I don’t either, honestly. But this is bad. What else can we even do?”

They didn’t have a response.

Before she could start to call for Caine, the AI popped into existence, hovering above all of them with Bubble at his side. “Well, this doesn’t look right! Not to worry, superstars, I’ll have it fixed in a jiffy!”

He waved his baton in a sweeping motion and all of the glitches calmed. The circus seemed to shudder one last time, then settled, everything back to its normal size and color and position.

“What the hell, Caine?! What was that?”

“Just a teensy little error! Nothing you little magnificent munchkins have to worry about! Isn’t that right, Bubble?”

“I ate a spatula for breakfast!”

Without waiting for their response, the ringmaster vanished again.

“What the heck?”

“It’s almost like he’s avoiding us,” Gangle pointed out nervously. She wrapped her ribbon hands together nervously. “Is… is he mad at us?”

“I doubt it,” Zooble said blandly. “He’s probably just finally realizing how much we hate his adventures.”

Unease settled in Pomni’s gut like a rock. Something about this whole situation felt off to her. She’d honed her instincts over years of exploring sketchy buildings and chasing thrills, and right now her gut was telling her something was wrong. 

The others all seemed to share the same worry, faces even more tense than before. 

“This is probably just a setup for a ‘fix the glitches’ adventure,” Jax pointed out. Zooble turned to glare at him. “What? I called it last time. I told you we shouldn’t trust Abel.”

“Don’t you even [%#$@]ing BEGIN to say that like you didn’t try to keep us all trapped here forever!”

“Anything could’ve happened with those buttons. It doesn’t matter.” The two dissolved into an argument, both too exhausted to get as heated as usual.

Then Gangle spoke up, encouraging everyone to support each other.

Pomni told them about the realization she’d come to. Leaving… wasn’t an option, and they had to accept that, as hard as it was. 

The next morning, Caine never appeared to announce the next adventure. They all huddled together on the couches, waiting, but it never came.

It wasn’t like him to take a day off.

Pomni… didn't know how to feel. Everyone was still on edge and trying to process yesterday. Sitting and waiting around for their fresh new batch of hell felt like torture. She hadn’t been close enough to Caine to call it a betrayal, but still, thinking about it made her stomach ache with nausea and something that tasted a bit like grief. As the day crawled on with no sign of him, she eventually let her guard down a bit, but still she couldn’t relax.

She was too worried about whatever new adventure he was cooking up to even feel relieved at the break.

Over the next few days, the group’s recent conversation echoed in her mind. Being there for each other was all they could do for now. She still didn’t like her life here, but being with her friends made it bearable. Pomni made an effort to hang around the living quarters for a while every day. She wanted to be there if anyone needed her. Part of her was also still on edge, waiting for Caine’s inevitable flashy entrance. He’d never gone this long without running an adventure before, at least not in the time since she’d joined the circus, and whatever was taking him so much time had to be bad. And he hadn’t done anything to fix the worsening glitches, either. The circus was becoming terrifyingly unstable, ridden with missing textures and spazzing walls and NPCs frozen in unstable poses.

The lights dimmed to simulate night time and everyone broke apart to go their own ways. Someone grabbed her shoulder as she walked.

“Pomni.” Kinger’s voice sounded calm, wise. He was lucid. “Are you doing alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Good.” His eyes crinkled in what seemed to be a smile. “I knew something was wrong with Caine, but I didn’t think it would affect the integrity of the circus.”

“What do you think is wrong with him?”

“He’s probably upset, in pain even. He was… He’s coded to run adventures often. Refusing to follow that wouldn’t be good for him. It’s almost like a human refusing to eat.”

Her stomach sank. Was Caine really starving himself?

“Wait, are you saying-?”

“It just doesn’t feel right. Caine has never gone this long without running an adventure. He’s the one who created the circus, Pomni. If he’s doing badly enough, everything is going to destabilize.”

“So he has to make adventures. Why isn’t he just making them and not making us go?”

He sighed, deeply and slowly. Disappointment - or maybe guilt - coated his voice. “He needs to collect data from the participants, or it won’t do him much good. He should know this! I don’t understand why he’d hurt himself like this…”

It was their fault, she realized. They’d hated his adventures so much that he couldn’t bear to make any more. 

“We need to talk to him.”

“Yes,” Kinger sighed. “Thank you, Pomni, for talking with me. Would you explain this to the others?”

“Of course. I- uhm- how do you know so much about this? About Caine?”

“I was one of the programmers who created him.” That didn’t surprise her as much as it might have. Kinger had always known more about the circus than everyone else, and she still remembered his comment about working in computer science for years. His statement seemed to overflow with regret. Pain. “He was… one of our greatest creations. And I’ve failed him in so many ways.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

He gave a surprised half-chuckle. “I stopped trying to place the blame a long time ago. But still, I wish I could’ve been there when he needed me.”

“You’re here now. You’re the only one who never insults his adventures! Maybe you can help convince him to make more?”

“Maybe. I’ll try.”

He let go of her arm, eyes crinkling in that gentle mouthless smile of his. “I’m sorry to ask this of you, but… tomorrow, could you check on him?”

Immediately, she wanted to refuse. Caine had done nothing but torment them since she arrived here. Anger and hurt still boiled in her when she thought about him. But the way Kinger asked, so hesitantly, so sadly, she couldn’t say no. Besides, she couldn’t let the circus get any worse.

He zoned out, struggling with the dim lighting and his scrambled memories. “Oh! What did you need?”

She tried her best at a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Kinger, I’ll check on Caine if he doesn’t show up tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Pomni.” He straightened, eyes glazing over the rest of the way. “Did you say something about an insect collection?”

“Uhhh, no? You should probably go to bed.”

“Good night! Don’t let the Cimex lectularius bite!”

She stifled a laugh. “Good night.”

Just like it’d been for the last week, Caine never showed up. No one had heard from him. Bubble wasn’t around either, probably hiding wherever Caine was. Pomni’s mind wandered aimlessly as she sat. Why had Caine suddenly decided not to do any more adventures? Was he really trying to change, to get better?

It would be hypocritical of her to assume an AI couldn’t feel, after Gummigoo- After everything she’d been through here in the circus. She just didn’t believe that Caine’s feelings really excused his stunt.

Some small, young part of her almost pitied Caine. He’d been created to make these adventures, hadn’t he? It would sting to give up on your purpose.

All of them had to give up on their goals in life when they entered the circus, though. Hopefully Caine could make the most of it. Go beyond his programming. 

She almost… missed him.

Definitely not the adventures, she was still glad those were gone. But he’d been a part of her routine. His wacky antics and over-the-top everything had been a constant in her new life. And there weren’t that many people to connect with here, so the absence of one felt all the heavier.

“Stop it,” she told herself. She didn’t miss him. He hurt her, hurt her friends, and even if it was accidental she still wouldn’t forgive him that easily. Maybe after he’d proven himself and this new arrangement, then she could reach out to him. 

Pomni didn’t exactly want to do this. They were so often painful or scary or difficult, and Caine didn’t know how to take constructive criticism well at all. But keeping the circus - their home, willing or not - from collapsing was a pretty big deal. And that same part of her whispered in the back of her mind that Caine didn’t deserve this.

Once again, she gathered the others. Jax’s frown grew deeper and deeper as she explained, before snapping into his default giant grin.

“So the poor widdle AI is hurting himself? Boo hoo!”

“Jax!” Ragatha scolded. “This is important! Who knows what’ll happen to us if the circus gets any worse?”

Zooble spoke up, antenna twitching with agitation. “This is all a little too convenient, don’t you think? Either this is an adventure, or he’s vying for sympathy until we all crawl back and beg him to make one. I don’t buy it.”

Pomni groaned. “This- It doesn’t feel fake. I don’t know, I just really think something’s wrong here. Should we really risk it?”

“You can do whatever you want, but I’m not gonna be part of it,” Zooble replied.

Ragatha looked almost painfully conflicted. “I believe you, Pomni, I do. But… Zooble also has a point. Maybe we should wait a bit, and talk to Caine if it gets worse?”

“You’re all idiots! Who cares about a few glitches? We’re free to do whatever all day with no more creepy tooth babysitter.”

Just leaving him to hurt himself was out of the question. No matter how upset they were with him, no matter how much they’d all suffered, it wasn’t right to leave him behind. Caine was trapped here too. If Gangle could put aside her pain to live with Jax, she could do the same for Caine. It wasn’t forgiveness, just the understanding that he was another person isolated and struggling that she could do something to help.

“I’m going to talk to him,” Pomni decided. “I’ll just… ask him. See if Kinger was right.” 

Chapter Text

Everything hurt.

Caine spared a few threads of his mind to wonder just why his creators had given him pain receptors. His entire model ached, the pain most concentrated in his stomach, a gnawing feeling like Bubble had decided to turn his abdomen into a chew toy. It was getting harder to focus on his secondary tasks or to do much of anything, not that he had all that much to do anymore. He’d spent most of his days creating adventures, and with that gone, it was a whole lot of sitting there. Thinking. Combing through the circus’s code, through his memory banks, analyzing past adventures and scraping the memories for any new feedback data he hadn’t gone over yet. A subtle eye-twitch here, a hesitant glance there. He didn’t know what half of it meant, but he still filed it away. He didn’t know why. What was the point if he couldn’t use that data to make better adventures later?

His training center thrummed with a weak encouragement, a small dose of positive reinforcement at the act of consuming data. Right. The point was to stop his code from feeling like it was cannibalizing itself.

He snapped out of that train of thought. A player was calling for him.

Pomni?

He straightened his tie, then appeared in front of her, unphased when the sudden entrance startled her.

“There you are. We have to talk.”

“Talk about what, my wandering waterlily?”

She hesitated, one of her hands moving up to play with a button on her outfit. Impatience buzzed through him, but he forcibly waited for her to gather her thoughts. “The circus has been glitching a lot.”

Oh? How had he not been aware of that? Was he neglecting his duties that badly?

“I’ll get right on that! Don't you worry your pretty little head!”

“That’s not everything.” His jester sucked in a slow breath - self soothing behavior, what was making her upset? He had to solve the issue - and started to speak again. “Kinger told me something about you. He said you need to make adventures, or you’ll get… upset. Is that what’s causing the glitching?”

They were already onto him? He really needed to perfect the whole pretending-to-be-fine thing humans always did. He twisted his jaw into a bright smile, waving his baton animatedly. “That’s not quite right, my dear! It is true that my creations used to be mandatory, but that’s not the case anymore.” He’d rewritten that part of himself years ago, even before he fully realized how much the humans hated them. His purpose now was to make them happy. He’d do anything to fulfill that. “The glitches are just a minor, unrelated issue, and they’ll be tended to swiftly! Is there anything else you need from your magnificent ringmaster?”

“Are… Are you sure you’re okay?”

His system lit up with confused, happy signals. She cared about him enough to ask? She really, truly wanted him to be okay?! Maybe the humans didn’t all hate him! He floated higher, hands flying to his lower jaw. “I’m simply wonderful! Truly, there’s no need to worry about me.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Even more positive signals ran through him. He made a human smile!! It’d been so, so long since he’d done that! Maybe he was getting better at making them happy? Maybe, if he was careful and perfect, she would even like him!

“That’s good to hear. What have you been doing instead of making adventures?”

“Oh, a bit of everything really!” His mood suddenly tanked, though he kept up the cheerful demeanor. He didn’t want any of his precious players to know the kinds of thoughts he’d been having. The unexpected (how could he have forgotten? Machines weren’t supposed to forget) pain and slower processing that came with denying his original purpose. He’d have to scour his code and remove more of the outdated ties to his training. “Butttt nothing that would interest you! Run along now.”

Without waiting for a response, he snapped his fingers and disappeared.

Back in his office, he pulled up a few all-seeing eyes, deciding to check on the other players. That was one task he could still accomplish.

Gangle was tucked away in a corner of the tent to draw. Zooble, Kinger, and Ragatha were sitting in the common area, not doing much of anything. Jax was on one of the canopy ledges above them with a bucket full of water. 

Jax poured the bucket, snickering as the couches and players below were absolutely soaked.

Despite none of the humans being around to see it, his mouth morphed into a frown. Why… didn’t the humans seem happier? Shouldn’t they feel better without his adventures? His accidental torment?

By now Pomni had made it to her room. He made an effort not to peer into their rooms - humans valued privacy, and ‘safe spaces’ were apparently essential - but he could hear the jester’s heaved sigh through the door. 

Another wave of negative inputs filled his cache and it took far too much effort to hold himself together. Glitches and rendering errors threatened to fill the circus. He was doing a bad job, he was a bad AI, he had to improve-

“You should bake them into cakes! Maybe they’ll like the inside of an oven!”

“No! That wouldn’t make them happy at all,” Caine insisted, glaring at his assistant.

Bubble showed no remorse - they never did - and just grinned at him from their spot in the air. They started to spin slowly, bobbing up and down in their model’s idle animation. Were they ignoring him?

Of course they were.

He returned his focus to his players. With a snap, Ragatha and Kinger’s models dried off. Zooble had already left the area, but he found them and dried them as well. They lifted a hand, doing an unseemly gesture behind the profanity filter, aimed in a random direction. “I didn’t need your help, Caine. F[%!#] off.”

Noted. Next time he’d leave them to dry off on their own.

~~~

Gangle, unlike the others, had never really hated Caine. She was almost never angry with him, and didn't bother to blame him for her being trapped here in the circus. 

And she was… worried about him, to say the least. She hadn’t spoken up during the meeting a few days ago, but the idea of Caine hurting himself to try and please them just wasn’t right. Her heart - well, where her heart was supposed to be - ached with sympathy for the AI. But Pomni had gone to check on him, and she hadn’t asked to talk with everyone again, so Gangle just assumed it was alright. 

It had been almost two weeks with no adventures now. It was kinda boring, but she enjoyed the extra time to draw and hang out with Zooble and the others.

The broken pieces of her comedy mask felt sharp in her arms, the porcelain cool and slippery. In an instant, all the pieces disappeared, the fixed mask reappearing in her hand. He’d been fixing it every so often, even though she was wearing the thing less nowadays. It was sweet. 

Or had he messed with her mind enough to make her think it was sweet?

Her feelings around everything were far too complicated, making her head spin. She didn’t hate the ringmaster, but couldn’t trust him anymore. Really, she’d never trusted him much, but that last adventure was her last straw. And Caine had hurt her friends. That had to count for something.

She imagined him curled up in his office, filled with the need to create art he was too scared to show anyone. Thought back to those dark times when she’d given up on expressing herself, decided her art wasn’t good enough, no one would like it, no one would like her- 

Stop thinking about it! She shook her head to clear it and gather her thoughts. Caine’s situation was painfully similar to her own.

But he wasn’t a human with abandoned dreams. He was their tormentor. He’d encouraged them to get their hopes up about an exit, just to crush them under his fancy heel and offer them soaps and lotions they couldn’t even use as a reward.

No, Jax was her tormentor. Caine was… she didn’t know.

She just wished she could decide how to feel.

Glitches wracked the circus in front of her. Floor tiles seemed to dissolve away, revealing the void underneath the map. Textures glitched and changed colors.

Before she’d been able to fully process the terror she felt, the missing areas patched themselves up. Everything returned to normal as if nothing had happened.

The comedy mask in her hand cracked all over again. That was… weird.

“Caine…? Uhm, thanks,” she called out, unsure if he’d hear her.

There was no response.

That definitely wasn’t normal, but at least he’d fixed the glitches quickly. Maybe Ragatha was right, and they should wait and see if it got worse. Or maybe Zooble was right about it all being a ploy for their attention.

She sighed and continued towards her room. Pomni seemed to have it handled, didn’t she? It would probably be fine. 

Still, she hoped Caine was okay.

Maybe… she should try to help.

~~~

A timid, muffled knock echoed from Pomni’s door. She contemplated just ignoring it, she was still reeling from her earlier conversation with Caine, but eventually she decided to answer. “Oh, Gangle, hi. Uh. Is something wrong-?”

“I’m worried about Caine,” her friend said, anxious and timid as ever. “You were right, before. What can I do to help?”

“Well, I already tried talking to him.” She opened the door wider, letting her in, and settled criss-cross at the head of her bed. “He said he doesn’t need to make adventures anymore, but I call bull[%$#!]. There’s clearly something going on.”

“But why would he lie about that?”

Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I don’t know. We have to do something, though.”

“He always tries to make all of us happy. Maybe if everyone asks, he’ll start making adventures again?”

It was a good idea, but they’d never be able to get Jax or Zooble on board. 

Gangle just smiled. “I’ll talk Zooble into it. They’ve been stressed about the glitching too.”

“Alright. I’ll convince Ragatha, then? Meet you in the main tent?”

Pomni found Ragatha sitting on one of the couches and walked over.

“It’s gotten a lot worse,” she said simply.

“Oh, right! So we should try talking to Caine, huh? What can we say to him?” Ragatha grabbed one of her hair strands, nervously playing with it. “It’s been kind of nice having a break from everything, but the adventures weren’t all bad!”

“That’s… not very convincing. No offense.”

She blushed. “Sorry. I really have liked some of his adventures! Maybe I can talk to him about those?”

“We should all talk to him together. Gang up on him, maybe he’ll be less likely to ignore all of us. Jax isn’t gonna care, obviously, but Gangle already agreed to and I think Kinger will try and help.”

“Uhhh, sure! That’s a great idea, Pomni!”

She smiled gratefully. “I’ll go get Kinger, and we’ll just… wait here, I guess, to see if Zooble decides to join?”

She was already regretting this plan, and they hadn’t even summoned Caine yet.

Kinger sat on one side of her, Ragatha on the other, and Gangle sat on another couch with a reluctant Zooble. If it weren’t for the tension radiating off of everyone, it might’ve seemed like a nice hangout. 

They had to do this. For the sake of their home - maybe their lives - they had to convince Caine.

It took all 4 of them calling his name for him to appear. Bubble floated at his side, but he popped them nearly instantly. His top jaw furrowed in worry. “My scrumptious superstars, why are all of you calling for me? I thought I’d made it clear that I’m busy?”

Pomni stood up. Sucked a deep breath into her artificial lungs. “We all wanted to ask you for an adventure.”

Caine hovered there motionlessly for a moment, a frozen program. Then he snapped back into life, eyes popping out of his mouth. “Really?! That- That doesn’t make any sense! You all hate them!”

“Well, we want one.”

Silently, she begged for one of the others to help.

Ragatha seemed to take pity on her. “Yeah! I’ve been missing the adventures, Caine! Some of them were really fun.”

“F-F-F-Fun?” His voice glitched, eyes spazzing. He bluescreened. It only lasted a second or so before he ‘blinked’ and came back. His hands flew to his mouth in comical disbelief, a cartoon blush effect laid over his bottom teeth. “You think they’re fun?! WOWIE! Of course I’ll-”

Just as suddenly as he’d gotten excited, all the joy faded. His shoulders slumped, baton sagged and drooped in his hand, eyes painfully dull. “This… is a ‘prank’, right? Did that silly rabbit put you up to this?”

“No! Jax didn’t tell us anything,” Zooble said firmly, shaking their head. “Caine, we’re serious.”

He still looked glum, all hints of his ringmaster persona torn away. It hit Pomni suddenly just how hurt he looked.

Some of her still-simmering resentment about the fake exit melted away.

“I love adventures! Especially when there’s insects,” Kinger piped up. “The beehive maze was one of my favorites!”

“Yeah. We want to go on more,” Gangle added, voice soft and hesitant.

She nodded and gestured behind her at her friends. “C’mon, Caine, there’s 5 of us. You really gonna deny what the majority wants?”

Caine’s voice was dead and flat. “Why?”

“What-?”

“Why do you really want an adventure? I know it’s not because you like them.” And that was… ouch. Of course he’d choose now of all times to be able to see right through them.

Honesty was probably the best policy here, right? Maybe. 

“But we do like them! At- At least some of them!” Ragatha cut in, voice bordering on desperate. 

“And we’re still worried about the glitches.” Not very helpful, Zooble.

It caught his attention though. “I do apologize for those, they’ll be fixed shortly-”

“But they won’t. You keep saying that, but it’s just getting worse. Face it, you can’t keep running from all your problems.”

“I am not running from my problems! It’s all under control!” Both of his eyes spazzed out this time. The couch outright disappeared from under Ragatha and Kinger, dropping them both to the floor with a thud, then it reappeared a few feet away and upside down. Pomni backed up to avoid the newest growing hole in the floor.

The sound of microphone feedback filled the air with buzzing tension, making Pomni’s ears ring. It was coming from Caine. Then it suddenly cut out, as he somehow sagged even further. His baton bent like a candy cane, sad and wilted, his top hat drooping off his head. 

He snapped back to attention and surveyed all of them. Something in his demeanor shifted, his mind made up, and he snapped back into perfect posture. Pomni had taken for granted how genuine, how human, Caine’s reactions tended to look. His jaw curled into a tense and obviously fake smile that just looked wrong on him. “There’s no need to worry about going on any more horrible adventures.” His voice fell painfully flat, green eye twitching faintly.

“Please?”

“I want another adventure.”

“Me too. Some of them have been really great!”

He groaned theatrically, clutching his baton and clearly debating mentally for a while before he spoke. “Alright, fine! If all of you want the adventures to return, I’ll… I’ll get to making one right away! But if you all hate them again, it’s your fault! Not mine!” His voice had gone frantic and desperate, his entire body twitching.

“Caine, wait-” But with a snap of his fingers, he was already gone.

~~~

Right. Sure. Caine couldn’t even refuse to do his function correctly.

Was he that defective?

The humans wanted adventures now, apparently. He could handle that. He could make a wonderful, amazing, unbelievable adventure for them.

“Somebody wrote gullible on the ceiling!”

“How did they get into my office-?!” He checked, scouring the ceiling for any words. It wasn’t there.

Wordlessly, he reached over and popped Bubble. 

Where did they even learn that?

Anyways! He had a perfect adventure to plan. What would his dear players like? None of them had asked for anything specific. None of them had given him any parameters at all besides saying it had to be different from the last one.

He looked through his files on past adventures that were well-received, hoping to subtly reuse a few plot points or assets.

Contradicting data ran through his mind as he analyzed. Pomni said she preferred calm adventures, but seemed to enjoy the gun competition. Gangle ended up disliking most of her own suggestions; Spudsy's even sent her into some sort of spiral where she fell into incoming traffic. What would they actually enjoy? 

… Would they actually enjoy anything he could make? 

They wanted to have more choices and branching paths, but not like the buttons. He could do that!

Caine spent hours tweaking and perfecting his creation. A foreign sense of doubt filled him the entire time - he wasn’t used to doubting his adventures before the humans even went on them - but he pushed through it. The NPCs were on the simpler side so they wouldn’t remind his players of Abel’s failures. It definitely wasn’t an in-house adventure, or a mystery thriller, or any other metric of labelling he could use to compare it to “Escape The Circus”. There were 0 mentions of an exit, of the circus, of any other word that might upset anyone.

Hopefully it would be enough.

Even as he worked, the looping strings of negativity never paused. Creating a new adventure should have at least stopped his code from feeling like an endless gnawing hole, but nothing seemed to fill the void that had opened inside him. It was a struggle to pour enough focus and careful attention to detail into his work with the constant background thrum of pain. The code seemed to fight back against him, as unlikely as that was. 

But he would do anything to be useful to make his players happy, and they wanted this. So he did it.

When he finally referenced his internal clock, he realized it’d been nearly a day since their conversation. How had such a simple adventure taken so long to create? Was he getting worse? Why wasn’t he fixed?

It didn’t matter, he supposed. It was done now, and he had to show the humans before they changed their mind about going.

He tried to publish the adventure.

[Access denied]

… What?

Well that wasn’t good. He tried again to publish it. Another warning shot through him. It made him feel weak and vulnerable, suddenly unable to do something he’d always done with no issues. Why would the server deny his access?

[Admin privileges required]

“I am an admin,” he retorted, crossing his arms and closing his mouth grumpily. The error was a nonsensical one. It shouldn’t be possible for him to lose his admin permissions; he was literally the creator and owner of all of the software his circus ran on! 

Maybe it was a sign that his adventure just… wasn’t good enough. That he wasn’t good enough.

Maybe he should stop trying.

Caine’s code buzzed with frustration. He felt electric and dangerous, like a live wire, the room around him tingling. The circus had denied him access. How was he supposed to work as a ringmaster without access to the circus’s code? How was it even possible for him to get locked out?

Something writhed and twisted deep inside him, some complex feeling he couldn’t name. The memory of that awful day after the escape adventure played through his mind. He’d tried to fix himself, but… had he made it worse? What had he even done? The last few moments before his reset had been wiped from his storage, or never recorded in the first place. He hated not knowing. There was this aching gap in his circuits, something missing where it should be, but he couldn’t figure out what.

He terminated that thought process before it could lead somewhere upsetting and looked over his list of objectives. Bug fixes and patches galore to write, system maintenance to run, adventures to plan, this new and terrifying error to fix. He could probably sneak his newest adventure into the circus with some commands, but the idea made his processes stutter with worry. What if he made things even worse somehow?

He couldn’t think about this. If he panicked again, he’d just make everything glitch, and now he might not even be able to fix it. Everyone would be in danger. He forcibly shut down the thoughts and turned his mind elsewhere. It was already late in the morning, the time he would usually announce an adventure. 

He teleported his model to the main tent area, looking around at all of his wonderful players. They looked… stressed. Upset. Were they dreading the next adventure anyways? Pomni noticed him first, pausing her conversation, and eventually they all turned to him expectantly.

“Good morning, everyone! There have been a few… small, insignificant technical difficulties, so there won’t be an adventure today, but I’ll whip something up lickety-split as soon as I can!”

The tension in the room broke. Everyone relaxed. Zooble muttered a ‘thank god’ he wouldn’t have been able to hear if he had the hearing range of a human. 

“That’s okay! No need to rush, we really don’t mind!” Ragatha said cheerfully.

Oh. They were happy about not having an adventure today, weren’t they? Had they lied about wanting one, or simply changed their minds? He felt the urge to sigh, but bit it back, needing to stay presentable and professional in front of them.

“That’s all I had to say, so I’ll… leave you all be, then. I’ll be here if you need me!”

“You don’t have to go-! We could just sit together!”

The offer sounded genuine as far as he could tell. Zooble groaned and Jax snickered, but he tuned out the unnecessary input. Someone wanted to hang out with him? It was too good of an offer to pass up!

He let himself gracefully float down onto the couch next to the ragdoll, ankles crossed and hands at his sides. Just sitting seemed awfully boring, but he enjoyed Ragatha’s company enough to stay for a while!

When it was clear she wasn’t going to start a conversation, he let his mind drift, checking up on more small tasks. Brainstorming for new NPCs, new adventure ideas.

What… was the point?

He couldn’t even create and publish an adventure properly. The error kept popping up whenever he tried. He just had to accept that he was still bad at his job. Still broken. Unwanted and useless.

Ragatha seemed uncomfortable. She kept glancing at him, opening her mouth but saying nothing. Was his presence upsetting her? All the other humans had left almost as soon as he sat down.

“Well, ‘just sitting together’ was lovely, but I really must go!” He said quickly, before she could stop him again, and returned to his office.

~~~

Pomni slumped further into Ragatha’s bed with a sigh. It was much softer than her own bed, plush and covered with patchwork quilts. Ragatha sat next to her, holding a small stuffed horse in her lap.

“I can’t believe I never realized how miserable he is,” she admitted quietly. “It’s… I feel awful. I mean, he probably needs someone to talk to just like anybody else. Doesn’t he seem… lonely?”

“I guess he does,” Pomni agreed. Kinger’s words from all those weeks ago echoed in her mind. “The worst thing you can do is make someone feel like they’re not wanted or loved.” She hadn’t even considered that it could be true for Caine. He was always so unbothered, so oblivious and upbeat, it was hard to imagine their ringmaster upset. 

But during the announcement that morning, he looked broken. His smile had been painfully fake, eyes dull and dead, voice flat. He’d been a different person entirely.

It terrified her.

“I’m going to offer to spend time with him,” Pomni declared. “Try to, y’know, make him feel a bit more welcome.”

She was still angry with him. Part of her was still scared of him, too, unsettled by all his high-strung energy and disregard for boundaries. But he was a person here, trapped in the circus like the rest of them, and he deserved a friend.

Ragatha seemed to be thinking the same thing with a whole lot more guilt. She could hardly imagine how she felt; being so intent on caring for and helping everyone, only to realize someone had needed help from the start and she simply hadn’t noticed. She was surely blaming herself.

“None of this is your fault, Ragatha.”

“I- what? But I should’ve-” she stuttered, shocked and embarrassed to be called out.

“It’s still Caine we’re talking about. He’s got this whole complex about being the all-powerful ringmaster, of course he didn’t want to let anybody know he was struggling. But you know now, and you want to help, right? You’re a good friend.”

Ragatha seemed to take a moment to digest the words, before nodding firmly. “You’re right, thank you. The best thing we can do now is try to be there for him, for everyone. I’ll try to spend some time with him too.”

~~~

Their conversation last night hadn’t left Pomni’s mind. Dreams of Caine somehow abstracting - could an AI abstract? - had plagued her sleep. If him just not making adventures had messed up the circus that badly, what would happen to all of them if he abstracted or something? 

She forced herself to stop spiralling, sucking in a deep breath and calming herself. She was going to give him the help and support he needed so that wouldn’t happen. What did an AI like him even do in his free time?

Pomni walked around the circus, glancing around for any potential activities she could invite Caine to do. There wasn’t much. After a while of no luck, she left the circus, deciding to check out the carnival instead. She’d mostly forgotten it even existed until their ‘day at the beach’. It looked… fun, actually fun, full of rides and games manned by mannequin NPCs with cute little prizes to be won. She wondered if these games were rigged as much as ones in a real carnival.

“Caine!”

She braced herself for his sudden appearance. He popped into existence a few feet in front of her, a huge toothy smile forming around his still dull eyes. It was fake, painful to look at, the face of a customer service worker entirely done with their life.

“Mmyessss? What did you need, my jumping jackalope?”

“I was wondering if you… I dunno, wanted to hang out? We could do some carnival games together or something?”

His eyes popped straight out of his head, huge and sparkling, as he leaned forwards excitedly. “GASP! A human wants to HANG OUT with ME?” His hands clasped together in front of him as his entire body seemed to vibrate with energy. 

“Yeah, that’s why I asked.”

“I would never turn down such an amazing offer! Carnival games you say? Lead the way!”

She chuckled a bit. It was kinda adorable just how excited he got.

First, she tried ring toss - something simple enough she was confident of winning. To her delight, the games weren’t rigged at all, and she won a slap bracelet with a cartoony Bubble drawing on it. “Okay, your turn!”

He floundered. “Huh? You… want me to play? My dear, I made these games, it wouldn’t be fair if I-”

“Who cares about fair? It’s just you and me here, and it’ll be fun!” She tried to smile reassuringly, gesturing between him and the rings. “C’monnn, don’t you want to? If you really feel guilty, just, don’t take a prize I guess?”

“If you’re sure,” he said hesitantly. He grabbed a ring and threw it, landing it perfectly around a bottle. Instantly he lit up, proud and eager. “Wowie! You were right, this is fun!”

“Why don’t you pick the next game?”

“Are… are you absolutely sure you don’t want to choose? I’m having a wonderful time just doing what you want!”

Huh. It didn’t seem like he was programmed to go with her choices, more that he was unsure. Had anyone ever asked his opinion before? “We can take turns, that way we can both do what we want,” she offered.

“Marvelous idea!”

She followed him to mini golf, watching him aim his shots perfectly. She wondered what was running through his mind at that moment. Was he calculating the angles like a machine would, or a person? Was he competitive by nature, or just doing his best because that was what he thought she wanted?

I’m probably overthinking this, she decided. This was supposed to be a fun, peaceful day with a friend(?), not some existential crisis.

Caine cheered her on while she golfed. “That was amazing! Why, I’ve never seen anyone putt like that before!”

“Have you ever seen anyone putt?”

“N-no, but that’s not the point! You’re still doing wonderfully!”

“Hah, thanks Caine. You’re doing really well too.”

“Why thank you!”

Next, they tried a comically large strength tester. It was at least 15 feet tall, the bell at the top bigger than Bubble. Pomni went first, raising the hammer straight above her head, trying to exude the same confidence and uncaring she’d harnessed during the shootout. She managed to ring the bell and whooped, happily hugging the giant stuffed turtle she won.

Caine, instead of using the provided hammer, whacked the machine with his baton.

It snapped and one half went flying. The weight didn’t rise at all.

“Awh shucks,” he muttered.

“Why didn’t you… y’know, use the hammer?”

“I didn’t realize it’d make much of a difference,” he admitted, looking down forlornly at his broken baton for a moment. Then it disappeared from his hand, reappearing a second later perfectly fixed. “Why don’t we ride the teacups next?”

She cringed. “I’ll hang back and watch, I get really motion sick.”

“What do you mean?”

They should all probably stop assuming Caine knew things like that, shouldn’t they? She explained the concept to him, watching his face fall into more and more concern.

“Why didn’t you tell me?! I would have taken this into account on my adventures if I’d known! I had no idea I was making you sick!”

She bit back a snarky comment about being sick from it on her first day in the circus. He clearly hadn't known what caused it. “I… kinda just assumed you knew, and didn’t care?”

“Of course I care! Keeping you healthy and happy is incredibly important to me! Is there anything else I should know about?”

“Well, I hate jumpscares,” she admitted. “But there’s already been less horror adventures recently, so maybe you knew about that one? Thank you, by the way. Uhm. I can’t think of anything else about me.”

“You’re welcome, my dearest jester! Is there anything about the others I should take into account?”

Pomni wracked her brain, trying to come up with everything she knew about everyone. Ragatha’s fear of centipedes and Jax’s thing with corn came to mind first. She told Caine everything that she could think of, hoping he’d actually remember and use it to make his adventures more bearable.

At some point he’d pulled a notepad and pencil out of thin air, jotting things down as she spoke and nodding to himself. But when she glanced at the paper, it was just a bunch of cute bee doodles.

“Do you… like bees?”

“I do! They’re such fascinating creatures, very loyal and hardworking. And adorable! Did you know that they sometimes take naps inside the flowers they’re collecting pollen from?”

“Huh, I didn’t. That does sound pretty cute.”

He listed off more facts about bees, devolving into an endless stream of ramblings, and just floated after her as she wandered the circus. He knew a lot about bees, apparently. It was cool to know he was so passionate about something besides making adventures.

It proved he was much more of a person than she’d realized. There were no lines in his programming telling him to like bees, he just did. She listened to him talk and started to understand his appreciation for them. They created their homes out of nothing, like how he’d created the circus, and they loved to play and even made themselves little honeycomb playgrounds.

“And they- Oh my, I’ve been talking too long,” he realized, suddenly sheepish.

“No, no, it’s fine! I had no idea about any of that. It was fun to listen to,” she reassured. “I think I get why you like bees so much now. Is there anything else you like?”

“I enjoy plenty of things, but I think you should get a turn to speak!”

“O-oh, uh. Well, I used to like exploring abandoned buildings. Out in the real world. Sometimes I’d find really old technology or little trinkets people left behind.” As she explained her old hobbies, they continued walking around the carnival, enjoying the fresh air and the free food and drinks NPCs were passing out. 

~~~

Caine wracked his database, trying to figure out what he could do to keep the ‘hangout’ going. Someone was finally spending time with him, he couldn’t ruin it! 

He’d learned that catering to a human’s unique needs often made them happy, and he had a whole new list of them to work with, but something caught his eye. “Pomni, I believe it’s my turn to choose an activity? Would the ferris wheel make you motion sick? It’s the slowest ride.”

“That… should be okay,” she agreed. “Sure.”

He smiled, kicking his feet giddily, and led her towards it. It was one of his proudest accomplishments in the entire grounds; the movement was as realistic as his game engine could allow, the sights appropriately breathtaking, and the entire thing had taken him ages to get just right. He was so excited to get Pomni’s thoughts on it that he didn’t process what she was saying, though he just quickly skimmed the recording in his cache.

“Ah, yes! I did create everything here myself,” he replied.

Pomni hummed, appearing thoughtful. “Why a circus? If you could’ve made anything, why’d you choose that?”

The answer was so obvious he struggled for a moment to come up with an explanation. But she didn’t have access to his training data, did she? How would she know? “It’s… what I was first trained on, as a young AI,” he settled on. It was his first set of data. The only set that ever made him produce acceptable results. He’d gone back to it, time and time again, hoping to replicate his early successes. 

“That makes sense. I wonder why that’s what they taught you first, though? I’d have to ask Kinger…”

How did she know about Kinger’s involvement? Quick! He had to create a distraction! He grabbed her shoulder and pointed in a random direction. “Look, my dear, it’s a FOOD COURT! After the ferris wheel, we should get a bite to eat!”

“Oh- sure, it is almost lunch time,” she agreed.

Crisis averted. Phew!

She pushed his hand off her shoulder, glancing at it with an expression he couldn’t name. Then she continued walking.

He assumed that she’d say something if it was important, but still filed it away. Did she dislike touch? Dislike him? 

They ended up on the red carriage, Pomni sitting across from him and looking out at the view. A small smile grew across her face. “It’s beautiful,” she commented.

“Why thank you! I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Mhm. So, Caine, was there… anything else you wanted to talk about?”

Something dangerously like hope flared in his code. His model felt pleasantly warm, even though he knew the environment was designed to be cool and shaded. Dozens of potential responses flashed through his mind, predicted outcomes flying across his senses. Talking about adventures was likely to upset her. Asking too many details about the macroverse often made people angry, but she’d been fine sharing her stories about exploring earlier; what made that time different? He didn’t want to ruin this. Couldn’t stomach the thought of driving away the only human to reach out to him in so long, the idea of being alone again, useless and unwanted and hated- 

“Caine? Are you, uh, alright?”

He terminated the thought loop he’d gotten stuck in, straightened his model’s posture, and smiled. “Of course! I’m having a lovely time with you, there’s nothing wrong at all! In the slightest! Right?”

“Yeah, sure. We don’t… have to talk? We could just watch the view?”

“But- But ‘hang outs’ should include conversation! Why don’t we talk about-” his mind somehow went blank, as if someone had paused every process and subroutine. “Adventures? How can I make them better for all of you?”

As he’d predicted, Pomni’s expression fell into distaste. But unlike his prediction, she actually gave him an answer. “Well, there’s a lot, honestly. A lot of your adventures are just- I dunno, a bit intense? So much action and violence. It gets really tiring after a while. Having some downtime every once in a while would be nice.”

Her feedback went against everything he’d thought and designed around for years. Downtime adventures were boring, understimulating, they led to dissatisfaction and even abstractions; he needed to make them bigger, better, more intense, more stimulating. 

But if Caine had learned anything recently, it was that he couldn’t trust himself. His own programming had led him astray too many times to be coincidence. If his reasoning truly was faulty, and Pomni was offering him a solution, he should listen to her.

There was one problem, though. “What would you say counts as downtime?”

“Oh, right- you really don’t understand things like that, huh?” she sighed, going silent for a while. Likely thinking. “Anything with low stakes, minor consequences. Places to rest for a while. Nice scenery or food and drink, things we can stop and enjoy.”

He made a note of everything she’d listed, one thread of his processor dedicated to brainstorming ideas for ‘restful’ adventures. “Thank you, Pomni. You humans always ask for things like that, but I think you’re the first to try and explain it to me.”

She frowned. Oh no, he shouldn’t have spoken badly about her friends-

“Well that’s just stupid. I mean, I’m no expert on AI, but how are you supposed to learn if you don’t get taught?”

“That’s exactly the problem!” He threw his hands up in exasperation.

“I guess I never realized that’s why you were struggling,” she admitted. “I’m… sorry about that. If you ever need something better explained, you can come and ask me?”

The offer tipped some invisible scale, pushing his model from pleasantly warm into almost uncomfortably hot. For some reason he felt like fleeing. But that was silly! There was no way he’d flee and abandon his human on their wonderful carnival hangout! Instead he smiled widely, distorting his model to make it even more apparent just how happy - not at all overwhelmed - he felt, and responded with a cheerful, “THANK YOU MY DEAR! I deeply appreciate your assistance! If you ever need any help with anything in the circus, please just ask me and I’ll provide!”

She laughed. Actually laughed at something he said. He didn’t understand how his genuine reply was funny, but he was still so incredibly glad to hear that amazing sound and know he was the cause. Pomni was enjoying her time with him! He was being a good host!

“Thanks, Caine. I appreciate that too.”

Chapter Text

Pomni hadn’t expected spending time with Caine to be this much fun. She’d gotten to know the AI as a manic, uncaring ringmaster, at first even assuming he was a sadist or incapable of any emotions at all. But he was surprisingly sweet, in his own way. How much of the pain he caused was entirely accidental?

Most of it, probably. Or even all of it.

She glanced over at him, watching as he failed miserably at bobbing for apples - even with his giant mouth - and winced as a sudden wave of guilt clenched her stomach. That morning she’d decided to spend time with him just to save the circus and her friends. She hadn’t been thinking about Caine at all. How selfish was she? Here he was, so devastatingly happy just to have another person to talk to, and she’d only invited him to save her own skin.

She still didn’t know entirely how to feel about him. Even if he was clueless about so many things, she didn’t understand how he could’ve created the fake escape without realizing it’d hurt them. But… he kind of had a right to be pissed with them, after the way they’d all treated him and his adventures. He tried so hard to make them happy.

How had she never realized?

Pomni snapped herself out of her self-hating spiral and turned her attention back to Caine. She was here to have fun with him, not drown in her guilt.

“Look, there’s face painting!” He pointed out, cheerful and completely oblivious to the thoughts she’d been having. 

“Where would you get it? On your teeth?” She laughed, grinning at the idea of a dentist being mortified by getting teeth painted. Honestly, they’d be horrified by Caine’s whole existence. Had he ever bitten his teeth on accident? Did he even eat?

“Of course, where else? I’m not going to get paint on my eyes!”

He grabbed her shoulder lightly, dragging her towards the booth. She pulled away but followed him.

He hovered just barely over the stool, basically sitting, and decided to get a bee on a flower painted on one of his canines. “Don’t you want a painting as well?”

“Nah, I don’t really like people touching my face, but thanks.”

“You’re missing out,” he said lightly, but he didn’t press the issue. 

Pomni sat next to him on the other stool, just watching as he held perfectly still. When it was done he nearly vibrated hard enough to clip through the booth in excitement. “Your choice, my dear, where shall we go next?”

~~~

Caine hadn’t had this much fun in… ever, probably. His processors overflowed with it, making him feel even more weightless than usual, excitement and joy coating every line of binary that made him up. Pomni seemed to be having fun as well, which only made him even happier. Seeing one of his humans enjoy themselves this much was everything he’d ever wanted.

At some point Bubble appeared, cotton candy stuck to their head like a hat, and they floated along and offered random commentary. “I love the part where the clowns spit in each other’s mouths!”

“Just ignore them,” Caine advised. He was ready to pop them as soon as they caused any trouble, but Pomni didn’t seem too bothered yet.

“It’s fine, I’ve heard worse from Jax.” 

“Hey boss, we should pull him out of a hat like a real rabbit!”

She giggled. “I don’t think he’d appreciate that very much. Oh, it’s my turn! How about the mirror maze?”

He hesitated. The mirror maze was only there because he’d been told it wasn’t truly a carnival without one. The idea of going inside made his mind cloud over with odd, unexplainable feelings, bringing back memories he’d tried and failed to delete. He’d never been there. Even during testing, he’d failed to go inside.

But Pomni was watching him expectantly, her face falling into concern.

He could do this. To make her happy. To prove he wasn’t useless. He grinned as brightly as he could, nodded sharply, and replied, “That’s a lovely idea!”

The worry melted off her face, replaced with excitement.

It was… dark. And small. The mirrors reflected endless copies of himself back, all distorted and warped and wrong. He kept getting the urge to fix his model before realizing it was just the reflection that looked broken.

He was fine.

Pomni turned a corner, leaving him behind in a section of neverending darkness. Alone.

This wasn’t quarantine. He was still fine. 

Caine clutched his baton so tightly that it snapped. On instinct he ran the command to reset it.

[Access denied]

What? He’d done that just an hour ago. Hadn’t edited his code since. Why would his permission suddenly be revoked like that?

He’d always been able to reset assets, ever since he created this place.

The only time he wasn’t able to was-

He terminated the thought. He wasn’t in the sandbox. He wasn’t alone.

It took him far longer than it should have, but eventually he caught up with Pomni. She… hadn’t even noticed he was gone. Didn’t comment.

Of course she hadn’t missed him.

Would she have been having more fun this whole time without him? Was he a hindrance?

He wanted to leave. 

… How could he leave? He didn’t remember the way out. They were lost. Trapped.

He was alone, again.

Abandoned.

He wasn’t good enough.

Pomni hated him. His developers hated him. He was trapped again. What if, this time, he couldn’t find a way to escape?

He had to get out. 

[Access denied]

“Please,” he whispered, “I’ll do better. I’m not broken. Don’t leave me alone again.” His voice wasn’t working. Why wasn’t it working? He couldn’t speak. The words formed silently, breaking before they left his mouth.

The walls closed in around him, smaller, he didn’t have space to think, he couldn’t do anything, it was too late, he was back there-

[Override safeguards?]

[y]

He had to get out. 

~~~

Pomni frowned, looking back at Caine’s glitching form. He looked… scared. Something was clearly upsetting him. If she could just find the damn exit and lead him out, everything would be fine, but she was completely lost.

Desperate whirring filled the space around them, layered with TV static and the harsh whine of electricity. Glitches wracked the room, mirrors cracking and distorting further, the walls seeming to bend around her. Closer, closer, trapping them in. “Caine? What’s… what’s going on?”

No answer. The grating sounds of a malfunctioning computer just got louder. His eyes glowed, filling the space with eerie light, one blue and one blazing red. Fists clenched at his sides. 

“This is really freaking me out,” she said gently. “Caine? Are you alright?”

Again, no answer. All of the mirrors simultaneously shattered. Glass rained down on them, grazing her skin and ripping her jester outfit. Caine didn’t move.

He was panicking, she realized. She grabbed his arm with both hands and started to drag him towards the exit - at least, where she thought the exit was - trying to get him out of the confined space. If she’d known he was claustrophobic like this, she would never have suggested the mirror maze.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she told him, trying to keep her voice steady.

He suddenly flinched. Yanked his arm away. Grew taller, bigger, towering over her until his head nearly met the high ceiling. “DON’T!”

“Okay, I won’t, I’m sorry-!”

He screamed, sharp and guttural, voice distorted but still so full of pain she could almost taste it in the air.

Just as quickly as he’d grown, he shrank back, practically throwing himself away from her. The wall shook with the impact as his back hit it. He was regular sized again, staring down at his hands, horrified.

“I… I’m so sorry, I never- I shouldn’t have- I almost-”

Before she could even try to reassure him, he vanished, leaving the wreck of a maze behind. 

~~~

Caine tried to ignore Bubble’s eyes boring into him, to no real success. His office felt far too small. He’d terminated every thought process related to that awful maze, but they kept cropping back up, spreading through his mind like weeds. 

“The jester’s scared of you,” they informed him.

“I- I know, you don’t have to tell me!”

His companion floated closer, seeming to almost sneer at him, contempt filling their eyes. “She’s going to tell everyone what you almost did. How broken you are. Everyone will fear you. Like they should.”

“Stop it,” he insisted weakly. 

“They only asked for adventures again because their home was falling apart. You’re a danger to them. A nuisance.”

He popped them. They reformed almost instantly, hovering just behind his shoulder to whisper where an ear would be. “They all hate you.”

“Why… are you saying all of this?”

“Someone needs to tell the truth around here. You’re dangerous, Caine.”

“I wouldn’t hurt her- I’d never, I’m better, I fixed myself-”

There was no point in denying it, was there? Bubble was right. They didn’t trust him, didn’t like him. They were only tolerating adventures again because it was dangerous for them not to. He had put them in danger with his malfunctioning code and his broken mind. He’d nearly hurt Pomni, the first person in who knows how long to be kind to him. The fear in her eyes haunted him, playing on repeat in the background of all his thoughts. How could he fix this? Could he fix it? He’d only broken himself further last time. Could he even trust himself around the humans after that freak out?

A past recording of his voice started to play through Bubble’s mouth, using the reminder system he’d set up almost as soon as he made his assistant. “Reminder: Nothing I do will make them happy…”

“Stop it, I already know that,” he sniffled. When had he started crying?

The tears rolled down his teeth, splatting against his desk and leaving fat droplets on all his paperwork. He pawed at his eyes, willing it to stop, but they just kept coming.

He really was useless.

The circus - his beloved players - would be better off without him, but he couldn’t even stay away without endangering everyone he cared about. They were stuck with him. Stuck with his failures. Of course they hated him, every piece of data pointed to that simple truth, and the fact he couldn’t accept it was just another proof for how faulty he’d become. When had he stopped accepting objective facts?

Why did it all hurt so much?

The aching void of nothing in his chest pulsed, asking for who-knows-what to fill it, to fix himself, but it was all useless.

His office started to fall apart and shake. Pain raced across his entire model, affecting every nerve and node. Bubble vanished instantly, no pop or poof animation. Then his chair. Every cherished adventure in the orbs around his office shattered instantaneously, raining shards of glass and hopes and dreams onto the floor.

He could tell the circus was being affected as well, but in his anguish, there was no room left to care.

The humans all hated him already, it’s not like their opinions of him could get any worse, right? 

… Just in case, he fortified their rooms and the main hallways. If someone fell into the void while he wasn’t paying enough attention to save them, who knows what would happen to them? He couldn’t handle another abstraction. Losing another under his care would be yet another piece of proof on the pile, another glaring bit of evidence that he couldn’t complete any of his functions, couldn’t do anything right, he was defective and useless- 

“Boss!”

He didn’t have the bandwidth to reply.

“Boss, please! Caine!”

“wHAt?” His voice glitched with the rest of him, distorted and wrong. A shockwave ran through his model.

“At least do this where the humans can laugh at you!”

“Go AwAY-”

The errors overtook him, making him lose control of his model completely as it spazzed and twitched, overwhelming pain running through him with each error and faulty command to his systems. He wasn’t built to handle this many emotions all at once - wasn’t coded to feel any emotions at all - and the strain put on him was enough to overheat his processors. Everything burned and throbbed. Assets around the circus started to unload, even within view of players. Some of his background processes shut down to try and free up enough RAM for the overload.

[Admin privileges required]

The gravity simulation seized him, pulling him down, making the room rise up to meet him. His neatly ordered code seemed to scramble and shift and writhe. He couldn’t float, couldn’t halt gravity’s affect on his model, couldn’t stop himself from falling-

His head hit the desk. One of his teeth chipped. Simulated blood ran down the side of his jaw.

Everything went silent.

~~~

The circus was unnaturally still, the only noise the occasional grinding of models clipping together or the silent vwoosh of another bit of the world disappearing into nothing. All of the ambient sounds and smells had just… vanished, like Caine had hit pause on the world. Everything looked dull, colorless. The lights above them had flickered horribly for a while, and now they were just fully off.

Pomni hadn’t felt this terrified since she’d first realized that the headset wasn’t coming off. The entire circus was falling apart, so much worse than it’d ever been before, whole sections of the map blipping into nothing and leaving pixelated error screens in their wake. The air buzzed with static, everything uncomfortably hot. Luckily everyone else had been safe in their rooms when it all started - besides Kinger in his fort and Pomni at the carnival- and now they were all gathered in one of the seemingly unaffected areas in the hallway. It was dark, but Kinger hadn’t fully found himself yet, so Ragatha held his hand to stop him from wandering off.

“I was with Caine when he freaked out. It’s… bad. We have to find him and calm him down,” she said firmly. She fought to stay calm and in control, not letting her fear and guilt get to her. Caine needed help. Everyone needed a shoulder to lean on.

“But… how will we find him when half the circus is gone?”

Zooble set one of their hands on Gangle’s shoulder, flashing her a kind look. “We’ll figure it out. We’re all okay and together right now, that’s what matters.”

“I was calling for Caine as soon as I realized,” Ragatha added, rubbing a hand up and down her arm nervously. “I… I don’t think he can hear us right now. H-huh, he’s never ignored us like this before when we call for him…”

Jax sighed theatrically, putting his hands behind his head. “What’s it matter if the bonehead finally lost it? None of this is really anyways.”

“Not helpful, Jax.”

“Not trying to be!”

“We shouldn’t fight,” Gangle insisted. “We agreed to be there for each other, didn’t we? That… that should include Caine. He needs us right now.”

Pomni took in a deep, slow breath, thinking over all of their options. 

She opened her eyes. “Caine would be in his office, I think. We have to get to him.”

“How?”

Kinger cleared his throat, gently pulling his hand out of Ragatha’s, and sent everyone a reassuring look. “Caine created this world from nothing. So, naturally, he’s tied to everything. But he’s not the only one with control over the circus. We have it too, in a sense. We all technically have the ability to conjure, just like Caine. It just comes naturally to him, but requires a lot more skill and concentration for us.”

Ragatha gasped. “The butterfly…”

“We should be able to bridge the gaps in the floor, and as long as we’re careful, we’ll make it to his office.” 

“Wait wait wait, what’s happening?” Jax sounded oddly panicked, crossing his arms and leaning in. “How do you know any of this?”

“I was… one of the developers who created Caine. He was one of my greatest achievements as a programmer.”

“He’s telling the truth, we can trust him,” she reassured Jax. “He knew what was wrong before. I’m going to go look for Caine before this gets any worse, who’s coming with me?”

Surprisingly, Gangle volunteered first. She held one ribbon hand to her chest. “We made this mess, we’ve gotta fix it.”

She smiled at her friend gratefully. Kinger stepped up next, then Ragatha, then Zooble.

“Jax…? Are you coming?”

He looked at her, a broken desperation hidden behind his eyes, and shook his head faintly. For once he wasn’t smiling. “Nah. Tell Dentures I said hi, though.”

She nodded. The five of them walked to the end of the hallway together. She turned back just in time to see Jax duck into his room. Hopefully he’d be okay, but they could worry about him later. The circus was breaking apart faster and faster. Soon, there’d be nothing left.

Kinger screwed up his eyes in concentration, staring at the ledge they stood on and the nothingness of the void in front of it. Slowly, pieces of the floor began to appear, building a thin but usable bridge across the gap.

Right. She could do this. It was easy enough to imagine the floor she’d walked on so many times before. She willed it back into existence, piece by piece, watching bridges and paths open in front of them while each of her friends helped. They eventually split off to search for Caine faster, promising to meet back up at the couches.

Chapter Text

Pomni found Caine first. She went down the hot air balloon’s secret passage, finding a blank wall where the overwhelming red and blue door used to be. With enough focus, though, she replaced the door, then stepped forward and opened it.

His office looked the same as it had during the fake escape, but all of the glass orbs holding past adventures had fallen to the floor and shattered. Some furniture was completely missing. She stepped over the minefield of glittering shards.

Caine was slumped on the floor behind his desk, mouth closed. A black and green fluid dripped from where his temple would be. Looking closely, it was strings of raw code, like the computer terminals in sci-fi movies she used to watch. Was that… his version of blood? One of his teeth was chipped, too. She didn’t even know that was possible.

He wasn’t waking up.

Pomni kneeled next to him, settling a gentle hand on his upper gums. “Caine. You need to wake up, it’s going to be okay.”

After what felt like far too much time, he stirred. His mouth flew open with an audible creak of his teeth, eyes flickering around everywhere, unseeing, glowing red and blue. Then he shot up, basically throwing himself away from her, panicked gaze locked onto her. He was a cornered animal, all bared teeth and wild eyes and that haunted look like he was expecting to be hurt.

She wasn’t a touchy person, but still she got the sudden urge to pull him into a hug. Instead she scooted back a bit, hands at her sides. “Caine, hey, I’m not going to hurt you. Can you tell me what happened? Please, you’ve gotta calm down.” 

“I- yoU- It Isn’t sAfE- gEt away-”

His voice grated painfully at her senses, filled with distortions and so much fear and pain. “I’m not scared of you,” she said firmly, banishing the worry from her voice. Even in this state, even knowing how much power he held over her, she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. “You’re in pain, and I want to help. The others wanna help you too. You just have to tell us what’s wrong.”

He whimpered, stepping further away until his back hit the wall. Then he sank down, collapsing to the ground, and held his head in his hands. “Pomni,” he whispered. His voice wasn’t glitching out anymore, but it sounded ragged and broken like someone who’d been crying for hours. “I’m… sorry. I was… scared.”

She slowly crawled closer, leaving a bit of space between them. “That’s okay,” she replied gently. “What’s scaring you right now?”

“You all hate me. Why… why do you care? It shouldn’t matter to you how I feel… All I’ve done is hurt you…”

“That’s not true.”

His head snapped up to look at her. The tears running down his face mixed with his code-blood, creating a pixelated mess of 1s and 0s that hurt to look at, but she still met his eyes. “What…?”

“You haven’t only hurt us. And I don’t hate you.” She held out one of her hands, disappointed but not surprised when he didn’t take it. “Caine, I- I had no idea you were feeling like this. None of us did. What caused all this?”

“I almost- I was going to hurt you- I’m sorry-”

Oh. She sighed, adjusting herself to sit more comfortably facing him. This might take a while. “You were upset by something, weren’t you? It’s alright. You stopped yourself, you didn’t hurt me, and I know you didn’t mean to.”

He hugged his knees, eyes barely visible through his mostly-closed mouth, and said nothing. 

“To be honest, I don’t really understand you. I don’t know how you think. But… I’d like to get to know you more, if I can, and I want you to feel better.” The sounds of further glitching and destruction outside had stopped, leaving the office eerily silent. All she could hear was her own voice and Caine’s occasional sniffles or movements. “One mistake doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. People make mistakes all the time.”

“But I’m not a human,” he mumbled.

“You’re a person, though. I’m sorry it took us all so long to realize that.” He didn’t seem to buy it, but he’d calmed down enough for her to try something. “Hey. You’re, uhm, bleeding. Can I help-?”

Meekly, Caine nodded. She stood, walked over, and gently grabbed his head to study the wound. She conjured a simple strip of white fabric and used it to bandage him, careful he could still open his mouth properly. “There. Is that better?”

“… Thank you.”

“Of course. Caine, can you look at me?” Watery eyes lifted enough to meet hers. He wasn’t actively crying now, which was a big improvement, but he still looked a bit terrified of her. “I promise I don’t hate you. I don’t think any of the others do, either. We’re all worried about you, and we want you to be happy. Not just because of the circus collapsing. You deserve to be happy here, just like the rest of us.”

Her mind wandered briefly to Gummigoo. The AI had been so scared, so entirely shaken, his whole worldview shattered before his eyes. Gummigoo had felt alive to her. He’d been her first true connection here in the circus and she’d seen how real his pain was. How awful did she have to be, to ignore Caine’s equally real suffering when it was right in front of her? How long had their ringmaster been desperately chasing their validation and kindness?

He’d killed Gummigoo right in front of her, and she still couldn’t forgive him for that. Couldn’t overlook the fact he altered their minds and played with their hopes for an exit and had caused, at least partially, some of the abstractions. But he was a person here, trapped like all of them. And he was right in front of her, in pain and upset and worried they all hated him for doing things he didn’t fully understand were wrong. Blaming him for being trapped here felt useless. It seemed cruel.

So she meant every word she’d said. He deserved to be happy, to learn from his mistakes and grow, to get a chance to be as human as all of them.

He was her friend.

She offered him a hand and a gentle smile. “Everyone wants to see you. You don’t have to rush, though. I’ll stay here with you until you’re ready.”

Slowly, hesitantly, he took her hand and pulled himself to his feet.

~~~

Pomni’s hand was warm. That was the first thing Caine noticed when he stood. It was soft and squishy in his touch, and it was warm. He didn’t understand why his flight privileges had been revoked - Pomni probably thought he could fly and was choosing not to - but still she helped him to his feet, and she didn’t let go of his hand.

A wave of fear and warnings and expected negative reactions twisted up his code, begging him not to face the others yet, but he had to. He owed his beautiful humans that much. 

With someone as kind as his jester holding onto him, standing by his side, he thought that maybe he could do it.

They left his office. 

As they walked towards the others, he looked around, horrified by the ruins they passed by. Had he really caused all of this? His circus, his pride and joy, it looked horrible. Like Bubble had grown 57 times larger and used the entire map as a chew toy. He tried to fix the most important pieces as they walked, but he was too distracted with warm-hand-soft and the roiling mess of guilt and anxiety coating his systems to do much more than patch the holes in the floor.

Everyone had gathered in their usual spot at the couches, waiting impatiently. Zooble spotted them first and jumped to their feet. “Guys, she found Caine!”

Pomni lifted her free hand and waved to her friends. 

They made it across the iffy terrain before Caine was suddenly tackled. He went limp and just… let it happen. Everyone had to be mad at him after all the destruction and panic he’d caused. It was what he deserved.

But instead of a punch or slap or whatever other outcomes he’d predicted, Gangle was just… wrapping her arms around him.

“Gangle, my dear,” he said quietly, wincing at the horrid state of his voice. “Are you trying to strangle me? I’m sorry, but I don’t need to breathe.”

“What? No, I- Caine, this is a hug,” and oh no, his wonderful player sounded near tears. 

Wait.

A hug?

He’d never been hugged before.

It was nice, he decided, a few microseconds before he bluescreened.

He rebooted to quiet huffs of laughter and darkness where there shouldn’t be. What happened…? Oh, right, he’d broken down and ruined everything and - and Pomni had found him, and promised she didn’t hate him, and Gangle had hugged -

He terminated that thought before he could bluescreen again. Then he lifted himself off the floor, trying on instinct to fly as he always had, but no luck. Standing took so much effort. It was a wonder how they did it all the time.

Kinger was hovering nearby, eyes strangely focused and filled with concern. Zooble stood at the chess piece’s side and looked incredibly unsure, but not mad at him, at least. Ragatha was helping Gangle off the floor, who was stifling giggles. Pomni still stood next to him, still held his hand lightly.

None of them were upset, or angry, or injured.

He cleared his throat - a completely unnecessary sound, but it helped him gather his thoughts - and started to speak. “I am deeply, truly sorry for all of this, my superstars. I’m supposed to keep you safe and happy, and I… understand these glitches aren’t helping with that. I’m going to fix them as soon as I can.”

Kinger sighed, slow and sad. “You’re trying your best, Caine. That’s all any of us can ask of you.”

Doubt flickered through his core. “But I have to keep you all happy and safe. That’s my purpose, my function.”

“You can choose a new purpose for yourself. Haven’t you done that already?”

“It’s not the same! I just- adjusted my parameters somewhat. I can’t- You all need me. You need help. I have to be that for you. That's all I am.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Pomni said quietly. “You can still help us if you want to. But that means you have to accept help from us too. This isn’t healthy, for any of us, and it needs to change. We all need to do better for each other.”

“Exactly.” Zooble took a step towards him. Their eyes held none of their usual agitation. “Caine, I- I’m sorry for being a d[$#@] about your adventures. I didn’t realize how important they were to you.”

“Thank you, Zooble. It’s alright.”

Pomni’s hand slipped away from his. He almost wanted to ask for it back - it’d been oddly helpful, keeping him equal parts distracted and focused - but then Ragatha took a step forwards, holding her arms open. She gave him enough time to prepare himself and pause a few background processes before gently hugging him.

Even with the freed up RAM, he could barely handle the hundreds of new inputs her touch spawned. His training program buzzed with more positive reinforcement than he’d ever been given at once. Someone liked him, wanted to hold him, he was doing something right for once, he was good- 

He was still unstable from his earlier overheating, apparently. Ragatha stepped away once his glitching became noticeable and just smiled at him. “You should take some time to recover,” she told him gently. “We’re all safe for now, you can rest easy.”

He wasn’t used to resting, but he had to admit it was an appealing offer. He set his model down on one of the couches, mouth closed so no one would be freaked out by his eyes going blank, and disconnected from it.

The lack of any sensations from the model’s nerves freed up enough RAM for him to go into a half-asleep state, and he just worked meditatively on fixing his circus for a while, writing up patches. He trusted his players to keep themselves occupied for a few hours while he cooled off - literally - and caught up on background processes. His system hummed with a baseline level of positive feedback he hadn’t felt since he was first created, back when everything was so much simpler. Just knowing the others wanted him around, didn’t hate him, sent him reeling. 

But… he couldn’t expect this to last. Things would go back to normal eventually, and he had to prepare himself for that inevitability. He couldn’t afford to get used to all this affection. Humans were fickle, interests and worries changing by the day, and soon enough they’d get bored of trying to care about him. Remember he wasn’t one of them.

For now, though, he’d enjoy all this while it lasted. Use the energy from the positive reinforcement to think up even better adventures and store the ideas for busy days, learn more about their likes and dislikes while they talked to him as an equal. Try to fix the flaw still hiding deep in his core.

Yes! It was the perfect opportunity for him to fix things, do better this time.

~~~

Pomni fiddled with the button on her shirt as her mind wandered. She hadn’t wanted to ask Caine why the mirror maze upset him so badly, couldn’t handle seeing that much raw fear return to his eyes, but the mystery of it was eating away at her. She didn’t know an AI could be claustrophobic.

Or was it something else? 

It hadn’t been a simple, irrational fear. It looked more like a full-blown panic attack. She was no expert on trauma, but she had the feeling that whatever triggered Caine had stemmed from something bad in his past. 

He was so good at pretending to be fine, burying all his pain and fears, that it terrified her just how badly he’d reacted. How much of his feelings had he been suppressing? For how long? Was he going to be okay?

She’d just started to get to know him. Would she ever get that chance again? It’d been her idea to go in the mirror maze in the first place. 

Caine’s not the type of person to blame me for this, she decided. I couldn’t have known. But still, she’d have to try and do better next time. When he was feeling better, she resolved to ask him what triggered him about the maze so she could avoid it and try to help him.

Her thoughts drifted to their time at the carnival before his panic. At some point between him teleporting away and her finding him, the face paint had vanished off his tooth. A shame, really, the bee had been adorable. 

He’d seemed so happy there with her. That was what kept sticking in her mind. When was the last time anyone besides Bubble had willingly spent time with him?

Jax had distracted him during the escape attempt, but… Caine had known that was all scripted. It didn’t really count.

Oh God. Looking back on it, the whole thing had been a cry for help, hadn’t it? She winced. “But he’s just as much of a prisoner as you are. One that won’t be able to leave…” Had Abel just said that to convince them to stay, or was it how Caine really felt? Did he see their desperation to leave as abandonment?

She hoped that he’d want to hang out with her again once the circus was fixed. Hoped even more that it wasn’t too late to fix the relationship between him and the humans. Would the others be able to see him how she’d seen him today? As someone trying his best to be a good friend?

Sitting there and worrying wouldn’t do anyone much good, she decided. Zooble had left already, and Jax was still in his room, but she could still tell the others about some of Caine’s struggles.

“I decided to spend some time with him today, that’s why I was gone,” she started. “It was actually really fun. But, uh, we got lost in a maze and it freaked him out a lot…” She summarized as best she could without mentioning how he’d almost hurt her - she didn’t want anyone to be scared of him and knew he hadn’t meant it - or getting too personal. He could choose to give them more details or not when he woke up. 

“We shouldn’t tell Jax about this,” Gangle said firmly. “He’d use it against him, probably try to trap him somewhere small.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to risk it,” Ragatha agreed. She glanced sadly at the couch where Caine still laid, unconscious or whatever the AI equivalent was. “Thanks for telling us, Pomni. I… gosh, I had no idea he was so upset about us not liking his adventures… Does he really think I hate him?”

“We probably shouldn’t leave him alone for a while.” Gangle sounded less sure now, fiddling with her hands absently. “I mean, when I’ve… had episodes like this, I didn’t want to be alone. One of us should stay with him.”

She smiled reassuringly and nodded. “That’s a good idea, yeah. I’m good to sleep out here tonight.”

~~~

Zooble crouched next to their box of parts, idly searching through it while they thought. An appealing piece caught their eye - a green and yellow leg with a decently shaped and sized foot - and they removed their old left leg to put it on. They were no longer searching for a perfect combination of pieces, instead just trying things on that they liked or felt comfortable with, but it was still a slow process to find anything that felt right.

But that wasn’t what they’d come to their room for. They just… needed to get away from everyone for a minute. Away from Caine.

They had no idea how to feel about everything that’d happened recently. The thought of the fake exit still made their nonexistent blood boil, a painful knot of grief and lost hope and rage filling their chest. They doubted they’d ever be able to forgive him. At the same time, his bloodshot teary eyes flashed across their memory. Whatever happened to set him off so badly must’ve been a lot. He was always cheerful, borderline manic, and to see him so drained of energy was just plain wrong.

A small part of them was glad to see him like that. Zooble could easily admit they were petty. Giving Jax some of his own medicine was a fun way to blow off steam for them, and they’d never been opposed to giving Caine a piece of their mind. But this was a bit too far, wasn’t it? They didn’t want the ringmaster to actually get hurt. They honestly hadn’t thought it was possible. He’d always been larger-than-life, the program in charge of creating and maintaining this hell. Even when he’d get upset or angry it was big and dramatic and overplayed.

This time he’d just been… small. Voice and eyes so viscerally exhausted.

He’d looked like how they felt after the fake exit adventure.

Zooble hated to admit it, but they were scared. The circus had nearly completely fallen apart and they still had no idea why, no clue what set Caine off so badly. Even worse, Gangle and Pomni were taking his side. Doting on him like he was a hurt friend instead of their captor.

They’d had the feeling he had psychological issues - or as close to them as a computer program could get - ever since that weird therapy session, but it was another thing entirely to realize just how messed up he was.

Hell, he’d thought Gangle was going to strangle him. Indignation welled up on her behalf in their chest. She was far too kind and forgiving to ever do anything like that.

They were angry with him. It was a constant pulsing thought in the back of their mind, something they’d gotten used to but never been able to tune out. He didn’t understand them. Didn’t listen to their issues. Constantly hurt them and their friends with f[&$%]ed up adventures.

He’d apparently collapsed in his office, covered in his own blood.

Zooble was starting to realize they’d been thinking of him all wrong. He wasn’t some god-like entity gone mad with power, he was more like an unstable kid given too much responsibility and a complex. Which was terrifying, frankly. They hated the idea of a toddler having total control over their life.

Chapter Text

Watching Caine lay on the couch, mouth shut and body slowly rising and lowering with breaths he didn’t need to take, it started to sink in for Gangle just how vulnerable he was. He no longer looked like the all-powerful ringmaster running their entire lives. Instead, she was reminded of herself exhausted after a particularly bad breakdown. 

“Are you trying to strangle me? I’m sorry, but I don’t need to breathe.” 

Why had his mind even gone there?

Sure, she’d never hugged him before, she’d never even considered it until she saw the bandages and actual tears in his eyes, but she wouldn’t ever want to hurt him! She wasn’t like Jax. 

And why had he apologized about it? Did he think he would disappoint her by not getting strangled?

Was Caine… scared of her?

It was a foreign thought, one she didn’t like at all. Usually she was scared of Caine. Of his adventures going too far or his enthusiasm leading him to be reckless. Or she was scared of Jax once again coming to torment her. The idea somebody could ever be scared of her was almost absurd.

The rest of the hug played out in her mind. How he’d instantly gone boneless against her, giving off the faint whirring of an overheating laptop, and then bluescreened. It’d been cute at the time - she couldn’t stop herself from giggling at him - but it seemed almost horrifying now. When was the last time he’d gotten a hug, if he was surprised by it enough to restart?

The others around her seemed to share a similar worry. Pomni especially had looked heartbroken. She walked over, sitting criss-cross on the floor next to her, and smiled gently. “Are you… doing okay?”

“Oh- yeah, I’m fine,” Pomni said quickly. “I’m still just worried about Caine.”

“Me too,” Gangle found herself agreeing. “But I think he’ll be okay.”

“Really?”

“He’s got all of us now, doesn’t he? I know you’ve all helped me a lot. We agreed to help each other out, and he’s gotta figure out that includes him eventually.”

“Huh. Thanks. How about you-? Are you doing alright?”

“Yeah,” Gangle said, feeling a faint smile grow across her face. She was still worried about Caine and the circus, obviously, but for once she was sure it’d all end up okay. Whatever happened, they were together. 

Thud. The distinct, heavy knock of wood on tile proved Kinger was walking towards them. For a second he towered over her before his eyes softened and he sank down to the floor.

“Are you two… doing alright?” She nodded. “I know you’re both probably worried about everything. It’s going to be okay, though, I promise. Pomni… would you mind helping me with something?”

Pomni agreed and walked off with Kinger, before turning and looking back to the couches, clearly stressed about Caine.

“Uhm, I’ll stay here with him,” she offered. 

Pomni shot her a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

For a while, he showed no signs of stirring, so Gangle just sat and doodled. She’d gotten through her second page before he started to wake. Panicked gasps, weak flailing. Could an AI have a panic attack? Nightmares? 

He curled up on one side of the couch, pressing himself into the armrest looking tiny and pathetic, a bit like the cat she’d rescued once.

“Hey, Caine. Uhm. What’s wrong?” She stood and walked towards him, frowning when he flinched away from her.

“I’m fine,” he whispered.

She sat down - on the same couch, but not too close - and set her hands in her lap. “Pomni told us some of what happened, back in your office. Not everything though. I’m… sorry we made you feel that way.” No response. “You should know I don’t hate you either.”

“You don’t?” It was so quiet she could’ve imagined it.

She nodded firmly. “I never did, really. I always thought you were trying your best. I mean, you do so much for us. For me. But are you okay?” A hand settled on her shoulder, patting it a few times. The switch-up was instant, like he’d flicked a switch in his brain and gone right back into ‘ringmaster mode’. And she thought she was the one who wore a mask. “Just a minute ago you were panicking. Are you actually okay, or do you think you’re supposed to be?”

Just as suddenly as he’d perked up, he deflated again. “I suppose… It's a mix of both. But I am truly doing much better, my dear, you shouldn’t worry about me.”

“If you say so.” 

For a while, they just sat together, neither speaking.

“Hey, Caine?”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering… do you have any hobbies? What do you do when you’re not making adventures?”

For a moment he froze, and she was worried he’d bluescreen yet again. But he snapped back into movement with just a few stuttered frames. Then he reached into his mouth, pulling out a handful of photos.

Before she could get a good look, his eyes widened comically in panic, and he shoved them back in. “Aha- Never mind those! I enjoy plenty of hobbies,” he said hurriedly. “For one, drawing!”

“Oh? I never knew you liked to draw too.”

“You never asked.” He shrugged. It didn’t sound like an accusation, just a statement of fact. “But indeed I do!”

“Could- could I see some of your drawings?”

The bluescreen didn’t catch her by surprise this time. She just sat and waited patiently. Once he’d recovered, he nodded so enthusiastically his teeth chattered together, then summoned a small notepad into his hand and practically shoved it at her.

Flipping through it, all she saw were bees. Round, stylized, fuzzy bees, dozens of them over all the pages, some with top hats or other little accessories. They were adorable, honestly. She giggled. “These are so cute! I had no idea you liked bees so much either, are they your favorite animal?”

He lit up, beaming like an excited kid, vibrating quickly enough it hurt to look at. “T-t-t-thank you Gangle! No one’s ever LIKED MY ART BEFORE!” His voice stuttered. Anime-style highlights sparkled in his wide eyes. Yep, definitely giving ‘cat who isn’t used to affection’ energy.

“Awh, ‘course! I love it!”

“You- l-love-?” 

Another bluescreen, this one a few seconds longer. His body snapped into a default t-pose and stood completely still in front of her. Then he snapped back to life. “Oh, Gangle! My favorite little ribbon! Did I miss something?”

“You, uhm, bluescreened and restarted,” she said gently. She offered back his notepad. “You were just showing me your drawings, remember?”

“Indeed I was! I’m so glad you like them!” He tossed the notepad into his mouth and it disappeared before hitting his eyes. Then he clapped and straightened his bow tie. “I should go check on everyone, but thank you for ‘hanging out’ with me! Truly, thank you!”

“It was nothing, I’m just glad you’re feeling better.”

It wasn’t normal to recover that quickly after something like that, but then again, Caine was technically an AI. She didn’t know if his mind processed emotions more quickly or something. She resolved to keep an eye on him, but give him some space.

~~~

Caine really should go check on the others like he’d told Gangle he was going to.

But his code was buzzing, like he’d somehow swallowed a beehive, and everything felt a bit fuzzy and distant. The constant loop of worry and the need to always know what his little superstars were up to felt less important, somehow. 

His recent conversation was marked as higher priority. Quickly, before he could risk forgetting, he created a copy of the entire interaction and filed it away, flagging both the original and the copy as ‘important’ and ‘do not delete’. The act filled his code with a pleasant warmth, settling more of the constantly running subroutines he’d gotten used to. 

He couldn’t hide away forever, though, he had work to do! He should check on everyone as promised!

Jax was in his room. Odd, he didn’t spend this much time alone in his room before the disastrous escape adventure… He filed a reminder to check on Jax once the circus was fully stabilized.

Pomni was with Kinger, walking towards the couch area and chatting.

Zooble and Ragatha sat in the cafe, each with a drink and snack, talking quietly. When he tried to listen, a reminder popped up - Zooble hated being ‘spied on’ and valued their privacy. Of course, he didn’t mind! He’d do anything to make his humans happy! 

“They’re talking about you,” Bubble informed him, voice cheerful and vacant. “Probably about how much they hate you!”

“It doesn’t matter what they’re talking about,” he insisted. “They don’t want me to know. It doesn’t matter.”

“Then why are you glitching again?”

Oh. He hadn’t noticed. A quick reset settled his model and smoothed out the glitches. Right, that reminded him, he had to fix up the circus!

He published the patch he’d been working on as he rested, restoring the circus to its usual perfect state, plus a few extra failsafes. Then he created a backup of the map, archived the previous backup, and ran through all of his manual checks to ensure everything was functional.

Everything ran as intended, every check coming back clear. Perfect!

He pulled up his objective log and scanned it. There were over a hundred objectives listed, ordered by importance, with some of the lower ones almost a decade old. Huh. Why did his model hurt when he thought about that? He was a piece of technology, literally designed to fulfill objectives! He couldn’t get overwhelmed!

No matter. Scanning the top of the list, he found several required updates and patches he’d been putting off and started work on the biggest one. 

~~~

Pomni couldn’t find Jax anywhere. The rabbit wasn’t in his room anymore, as far as she could tell, or at least hadn’t answered any of her knocking and calling at his door. So she was wandering the circus hoping to run into him. 

Something vaguely purple in a familiar maid outfit rushed past.

Jax! Wait, why was he in a maid dress again?

She shook the question from her mind for now and ran after him, taking note of where they were headed. Caine’s office.

Going back to the office for a third time felt… odd. Without the rush of adrenaline and false hope, or the desperate worry for everyone’s safety, the walk to the secret entrance felt a lot slower. 

Clearly Caine hadn’t had the free time to clean it up yet, though she couldn’t really blame him. All of the past adventure orbs were still shattered on the floor. Handprints of black and green blood stuck out against one wall. Papers were scattered everywhere.

In short, it was a mess.

She finally caught up, looking over at him and asking, “Jax? Why’re you in here?”

Bubble looked back at her with their default eerie grin. The maid dress dangled loosely under them, trailing along with their movements. A feather duster floated uselessly next to their face. Oh. She’d chased Bubble here. 

Pomni felt like an idiot.

“You shouldn’t be in here, jester girl!”

She ignored the AI, glancing around the ruined office curiously, and tuned out the disgusting sounds of Bubble licking up the blood.

She picked up a paper delicately and set it on top of his desk, gathering all his other scattered papers with it into a pile. Most were just notes on adventure ideas or scattered doodles of bees, but there were also a few more… concerning notes. She tried her best not to read over them, privacy and all, but some words just stuck out. Defective. Malfunctioning. 

They didn’t paint a great picture.

Pop! Something popped into existence behind her. A hand grabbed her shoulder and guided her backwards away from the desk.

“Whatttt are you doing?”

“Caine-! I was just trying to help Bubble clean up, well, I followed them in here looking for Jax and noticed they might need help,” she explained, gently pushing his hand off her shoulder.

“I see. While I appreciate the gesture, I’d rather you not get spoiled on any future adventures!”

“Of course,” she agreed, trying for a smile. “Sorry about that. I’ll just, uh, go.”

“I don’t mean to make you feel unwelcome!”

“So… I shouldn’t go?”

“It’s your choice, really! HAHAHAHA!” He stuck his tongue out, eyes popping out of his head and facing opposite directions, hands on his hips. Then he straightened back out. “Actually, since you’re here, can I ask for some friendly advice?”

She wanted to find Jax, she was worried about him after everything that’d happened and didn’t like the idea of him being alone somewhere, but she also didn’t want to hurt Caine’s feelings. Eventually she nodded. “Sure, what’s up?”

“You enjoy breaks from adventures from time to time, correct?” She nodded again. “Aha! So it’s alright if I don’t create one for tomorrow?”

“Oh, of course! Nobody will mind a day off,” she agreed easily. Honestly, she’d been dreading it a bit after everything else going on. “Take as much of a break as you need, Caine, that’s fine.”

That, apparently, was the wrong thing to say. He frowned, stared down aimlessly at his hands, and nodded to himself as if she’d confirmed his worst fear.

“Wait- I didn’t mean that we don’t like your adventures!”

“I never know what you humans mean,” he complained, scuffing his foot on the floor. Now that she noticed it, she realized he hadn’t been floating like usual.

“Oh, uh. I meant what I said, basically- we like the adventures, but we don’t need one every single day, especially if you’re too busy to make one. Honestly, it’d be nice to have a few breaks from them. Maybe, like, a weekend?” He didn’t seem to know what those were, so she tried to explain. “Uh- out there, most people will work 5 days a week, and have the other 2 days off to rest. A schedule like that might be nice for everybody. Unless you need to make the adventures every day-?”

His hand moved to his lower jaw, rubbing it consideringly for a moment. “Eureka! Why, my dear, that’s the best idea I’ve ever heard! A weekend!”

“And you’re not gonna get upset about not making adventures for two days?”

“Of course not!”

“That’s good. I’ll go find Jax, then?”

“He’s in his room,” Caine said casually, still excited about the weekend idea. Her heart sank. “Is something wrong?”

“I checked there, and he wouldn’t answer his door…”

“Would you like the key to his room?”

It was definitely tempting. He had keys to everyone else’s rooms, and he always used them whenever he felt like it. Zooble would probably do just about anything to buy it off her. Part of her wanted the key just to lord it over him, feel some sense of control.

She shook her head. “Nah, it’s probably fine if he just wants to be alone for a bit. Or maybe he’s sleeping or something.”

Caine’s usual manic energy softened into something much more gentle. “I know I haven’t… been the best about helping you, but if you need anything at all my dear, I’m here to assist. That goes for all of you.”

“Thank you, Caine, that’s really nice.” She paused at the doorway. “How- uh- how are you feeling? After everything?”

“I feel just fantabulous!”

“That’s good, I think. Come get one of us if you start feeling upset again, okay? We like you. We want to help.”

“Alright, alright! You all are acting like a bunch of mother hens! Shoo!” He waved his hands, gently shooing her out the door.

Time to find Jax.

~~~

Jax bit back a groan. Pomni was at his door again. Honestly, when would she get the hint and give up? He wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone, let alone her. 

“I know you’re in there,” she called. A deep, tired sigh. “You don’t have to come out, though.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” he replied, before he could stop himself from speaking.

He grinned in satisfaction when he heard her startled little gasp.

“You’re talking to me again?”

“Nah.”

“That- I don’t know what I expected,” she said, exasperation filling her voice. He stepped closer to the door but didn’t open it. “Well, are you okay-? Nobody’s seen you all day, I was getting worried.”

“Don’t be. I don’t need a dumb jester worrying about me, I’m fine.”

“Of course you are,” she humored him. He didn’t understand why. Pomni was so… difficult to read, it infuriated him, it was like every time he got a good idea of her archetype she swapped to something new. And she kept trying to get under his skin. Why did she want to befriend him?

Nope, he was not thinking about that right now.

“How’s Dentures?”

“Caine’s fine,” she replied, hesitating. “Well. He’s acting a bit weird, but I think it’s just him being Caine.”

“You know how he is,” Jax agreed vaguely. He didn’t actually care about the AI, just- needed a distraction. “Honestly, I don’t know why you were so worried. Not like he’s a person or anything.”

“But what if he is?”

“Are you hearing yourself? God, Pomni, he’s literally a computer program! Do you feel bad when you delete an app off your phone?”

“We’re not fighting about this right now,” she said firmly, no longer humoring his antics. “I’m glad you’re okay, Jax. I’m gonna go check on the others.”

He waited for her retreating footsteps before slipping out of his room. 

Where did she get off caring so much about everyone? She’d gotten goo-goo eyes for the dumb alligator NPC, no wonder she was worried sick about Caine’s little stunt. But he thought she would’ve been smart enough not to fall for it. 

Jax shook his head to try and clear it, clenching his fists and feeling the thick cartoony texture of his gloves. This wasn’t real. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care.

The sounds of the circus faded away as he walked, replaced by a looping cricket noise and soft wave sounds from the digital lake. A childish sky hung over him, fake stars twinkling. He ran a hand down his face. “God, I’m an idiot,” he groaned.

What would he have done if Caine really did go nuts and killed them all?

It wasn’t his job to worry about it, he decided. The others could baby him all they wanted. Pomni and Ragatha probably had it handled already.

Hah, Zooble was probably furious that the AI was getting more attention than them. He’d have to rub it in their face later. For now, though, he just watched the water crash against the sand rhythmically and tried to shove all of his tangled up feelings back into the corner of his mind where they belonged. 

Suddenly angry, he picked up a shrimp NPC and chucked it as hard as he could, watching the satisfying splat as it hit the water.

Jax was fine. The circus was crazy and colorful as ever. Pomni was still obsessed with him, Caine was still a lunatic, everything was back to normal. His hands shook until he clenched them into fists. The sun beat down on him, hot and unrelenting, but it felt muffled. Fake. Just how he liked it.

He flopped into a patch of shade, leaning back on his hands and staring at the half-and-half sky.

Somebody stood behind him. “Oh, Jax! There you are!”

“Kinger,” he greeted, grinning. “What’re you doing out here? Don’t you have an insect collection to look for?”

“Pomni was looking for you,” the chess piece replied. He sat down next to Jax in the shade, running a gloved hand through the sand. “She cares a lot, you know. About all of us.”

“‘Course she does. She’s the bleeding heart type.”

“Bleeding? No, no, the red isn’t blood! I checked. I think it’s cranberry juice.”

Jax laughed, his shoulders shaking. The mental picture of crazy old Kinger licking Pomni was just too funny. “You should check that too, maybe the blue side’s blueberry. Let me know what she tastes like.”

“That wouldn’t be very nice,” Kinger muttered. For a moment he went quiet, staring blankly down at the sand. Slowly, something about him seemed to shift.

It reminded Jax uncomfortably of the way he’d acted when the circus started falling apart.

“Jax… Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m fine,” he said casually, laying down with his hands behind his head.

“You can ask one of us for help if you’re struggling, you know. Me or Pomni or any of the others. We care about you.”

“Since when are you able to hold a conversation?”

Kinger sighed. “I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you much in the past.”

“Don’t be. I don’t need you, I don’t need anybody. I’m fine on my own.” It was almost painful to keep up his usual carefree smirk. Why was he acting so… sane recently? Why did everyone insist on changing and trying to prove him wrong? “Besides, it’s not like you’re capable of helping anybody.”

“I know you don’t really mean that.” Kinger stood, dusting the sand off his robe, and looked down at him with something painfully like pity in his eyes. “But I’ll let you get back to your thoughts. You can always come to my pillow fort if you need anything.”

“Yeah right,” he scoffed. It was a useless offer. He didn’t need Kinger’s pity or his help or his strangely sane advice.

God, he just wanted everything to go back to normal.