Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a dim morning that day, not even the sun was awake yet, all were asleep in bed, except one, Jax stood alone on the stage, searching for that missing piece, what could he be looking for? A key he lost? His tail? His dignity? His will to live?.. he paced and paced, picking up everything he could find to find what he was looking for, that was, until it hit 6am.

Where everyone else would wake up for the theme song.

Jax quickly got himself up and smoothes out his fur, layering on his unmistakable grin, he waited at the end of the stage for Caine's annoying but punctual 6:15 wake up call. Did Jax even sleep that night? No, no, he couldn't sleep until he found what he lost.

Soon, 6:15 approached, Caine started the day with his loud f###ing trumpet playing at everyone's door. Soon, everyone piled out of their rooms, some with vocal annoyance, others with quiet acceptance, Kinger was the first to speak this morning.

“How about a great morning to start the day!”

Caine's words were genuine, but it was always pretty hard to figure out what exactly he meant. Jax was just about to belt out his first zinger of the day, something about calling Kinger crazy or whatever, until he is quickly interrupted by Zooble. 

“Let's get this f###ing intro over with”

Great, juuuust amazing.

Well whatever, Jax could get his jokes rolling after the theme song.

The group got done with the theme song in record time today! At least by Caine's words, let's see whatever dumb adventure Caine has for us today.

“Now my pompacious pumpkins! I know how much you all want one of my AMAZING ADVENTURES!™ But I've decided you lot should interact and socialize a bit more! FREE DAY FOR EVERYONE!!”

And in a flash he's gone as he appeared, but f### yes! Now Jax could mess with everyone without any dumb NPCs in the way! 

For the first few minutes Jax sits to the side, scheming who he should f### with first, Gangle's always fun, but Zooble's been making it hard to get near her, apparently they're friends now? Tch, as if, I'm one of Gangle's only friends! Eh, whatever, then there's Kinger.. he's difficult to get through, he's so d### crazy Jax could barely get a pun through his head without getting a lecture on Beatles or a random f####ing shriek..

Then.. There's Pomni.

…

..

.

Oh! Ragatha! She's perfect, she's so easy to set off, she practically lets people step all over her and it's even funnier when she snaps! 

Jax saunters over to Ragatha with his iconic s###-eating grin

“Oh Raggy! Don't you love how beautiful the weather is?”

Jax had hoped he'd get a confused answer at the least, but all Ragatha does is look for a split second and go on with her conversation with Kinger.

What's going on?

Jax decided to try again, this time, leaving a banana peel where he knew Ragatha would trip, and it works! But still, not more than a glance from Ragatha.

Ok seriously why isn't she reacting? 

Maybe it's just her, Jax’ll try Zooble, despite being busy with Gangle, they'd have to give some sort of reaction, right?

Jax goes for the easy way, pulling off one of Zooble's parts and uses it as a backscratcher 

“Ohhh Zoobie! Your parts are just sooooo convenient!”

Jax lets out a high chuckle, expecting to be met with anger or annoyance, instead, he's met with the same thing. 

Silence.

All Zooble had done in response was take their part back from Jax with a tug and went back to their conversation with Gangle, not even a glance.

Ok so what the actual f### is happening today? Why isn't anyone paying any attention to Jax?!

Maybe Kinger will acknowledge him?

Jax finds Himself walking towards Kinger With a determination to get a reaction from him, anything. He was Jax's last Hope.

Jax takes Kinger’s butterfly from off his shoulder and crushes it in his hand.

“Ohhh how sad! Not even your bugs can stay alive!”

Maybe that was a bit far? Whatever, Jax just wanted a reaction, anything besides a blank stare.

His eyes aren't met with anger or sadness, in fact, Jax barely gets a glance from Kinger.. 

Ok how the f### is KINGER not even responding?!

The man is like a broken jukebox! The wackjob talks to literally EVERYONE!

Ok this is really freaking Jax out. Maybe it's a dream? Maybe he's just tired? Maybe Jax should get a nap in today.

Jax makes his way to the hallway, entering with a low sigh. He was going to enter his room, until he saw POMNI waiting at the d### door for him.

Ok seriously what is up today?! 

Jax was way too tired to deal with finding a new place to sleep so whatever. Let's just hope Pomni doesn't take a million years.

“Jax? We need to talk.”

Ohhh great. This is going to be fun.

“Yeah, kid? Still angry I wasn't the sensitive little chicken fetus you expected?”

“Jax.”

D###it. I guess we're having this conversation today..

“Whatever, kid, just make your point, I want to get to sleep.”

“I saw you leave for the restroom yesterday, at the award show.”

Was that seriously what she was concerned about? This jester sure is strange,

“Eh yeah? I just got bored to death by Caine patting his own back for the entire show~”

“Jax, until you talk about your true thoughts, you're not leaving.”

Was this kid serious? Jax could easily throw this jester a few miles out!

“Oh really? How pray tell will you be pulling that off?”

“No one is talking to you until you talk.”

…

..

.

What.

“Are YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT?”

“We're all worried for you! And until you can fess up, no one's going to give you a response”

“I'm going to KILL you on the next adventure.”

“Just talk and this could all be over.”

Jax knew he couldn't fight against this, he was backed into a wall here… ugh whatever. It's just one person, she'll be gone before he knows it.

“Fine. But we're doing this in my room, and you're not telling anyone.”

“Deal.”

The two shuffle into Jax's room, it was such a mess, clothes on the floor, bedding thrown to the side, manga books scattered across the floor and shelves, he really needed to tidy things up.. 

Jax sits at his desk, spinning in his desk chair

“What do you want to talk about, kid?”

“Oh! Right.. well, I just want to know, why do you act the way you do?”

“I’m depressed and this is my way of selfishly sabotaging myself!~”

“Jax, can you be serious about this?”

“Who’re you? My therapist?”

“Jax!”

Eugh.. This kid is trying way too hard to get my feelings out..

“Whatever. All of you are going to be gone eventually anyways.”

“What's that? How long have you even been here?”

“Since age 15, parents let me stay out past 8 with my friends,” 

“You've been here.. a lot longer than I expected..”

“Well it doesn't really matter, I hadn't even started highschool yet, not much of a life.”

“But you still had family.. and friends.. and people who cared about you! Why wouldn't you care?”

“Tch, what family? My parents barely even cared where I was”

“You've never even thought of how they reacted to your disappearance..?”

This kid is digging too far.. maybe Jax could try to get this off-course..

“Whatever, kid, let's hear more about your dumb life! What was so special about being a supermarket accountant?~”

“.. Well it was quite boring I have to admit.. but exploring was always a hobby of mine, I guess- my parents and friends never really cared for that though.”

Finally! The heat was off Jax for once! Thank f### for distractions! 

“Oh really? I thought they'd be absolutely thrilled!”

“Ha. Ha. How funny, Jax.”

“Oh c'mon Pompom! You know I'm the best!~”

“Mhm- Sure, we'll stick with that. Let's get back to you, don't act like I didn't notice your little distraction attempt-”

“Pshh! Please! My life wasn't much, this place is so much more fun anyways! I can't practically do whatever I want! I don't understand how you guys want to leave!”

Pomni’s first response was a low sigh, maybe Jax was finally cracking her? Hopefully she'll finally leave him alone for once. This s### is tiring.

“We'll continue this after tomorrow's adventure, just… get some sleep and.. don't abstract. You clearly aren't in the mood to chat today.”

Pomni gets up from Jax's bed and tiptoes past Jax's dirty clothes on the floor with quiet precision. Once the door is closed behind her, Jax stares are the door with wide eyes..

“Oh..”

Jax gets up with a sigh as he got up and flopped onto his bed, finally! Comfort.. That is, 

Until he felt something solid and cold against the side of his back, he got up to see what it could be.

a red and blue key.

She had it all along?

 And she gave it back?

…

..

. 

Man that kid was weird..

Chapter Text

The next morning arrives, Jax wakes up in his bedroom for once, he gets up from his bed to get ready, it was almost 6:15am.

Jax smoothes his fur out before throwing on a random jacket he found on the floor, he should really get his room cleaned later. Jax’s head pounded, what did he do last night? He felt like crap this morning..

“Eugh.. do I have to get up?” Jax groans in pure annoyance, he did not want to join that stupid adventure today.

Jax lays in bed for a few minutes before finally gaining enough energy to get up, in complete silence, he changes into a clean pair of overalls, smoothes down his fur, and slaps his grin back on before finally opening the door and sauntering out through the halls 

He eventually makes it out to the main stage where everyone else was already waiting for him, it seems like he slept in late today, how strange?

Pomni was the first to acknowledge Jax’s entrance, holding up a slight wave.

“Oh heyyy Jax!- how was your sleep?” Pomni spoke, awkwardly as ever.

“It was… fine I guess.” Jax muttered out, not exactly hyped up for today. 

“Oh.. Alright!- are you ready to talk about- ” swiftly, Jax cuts Pomn’s sentence off short.

“No.” Jax spoke with absolute certainty.

And just like clockwork, Caine starts yacking about today’s adventure.

“HELLLLO MY PECULIAR PANCAKES! Now I know you all must've missed me HORRENDOUSLY! Now now, I know you all want that ANNOYING suggestion box, but today is a..” Caine stops suddenly.

Pomni chimes In, thinking Caine just forgot.

“A?—”

“CAINE ADVENTURE™!!”

Now that was just ridiculous… Did Caine just plagiarize that from the Crybaby? Jeez he's getting lazy..

“NOW! I WOULD LIKE TO ANNOUNCE… THE DISTRACTIONATED DISILLUSIONING DAPPER DEMOLITION DERBY™!”

Caine screamed for everyone to hear, it was kind of annoying actually.

“A what..?-” Gangle whispers from beside Zooble.

“JEEZ Crybaby! You've never been to a demolition derby before? LAME!”

Jax was very excited, a demolition derby was just what he needed! What could be more fun than crashing cars into each other and making everyone else eat their dust?

In a flash, before anyone else could comment on either Jax’s ‘rude’ joke or how ridiculous the adventure sounded, Caine teleported everyone right outside a track, they all had tracksuits on that had matched their car, Pomni’s car was a noticable blue and red, Zooble’s car was an overstimulating amount of colours and patterns, kinger’s car was a very nice, dark, royal purple, and Jax's car was an awesome purple and yellow! 

“Oh heck yeah! This is going to be so awesome!” 

“shut it S### for brains.”

“Oh how nice of you Zoobie! I expected more!”

“Whatever. Where's Gangle and Ragatha?”

Zooble did raise a good question.. What happened to Dollface and Crybaby anyways?

……..

Whatever, maybe they'll come around later

“I think I saw them over by the food stand!^^”

..

.

“There's no food stands around here, Kinger?-” Pomni corrected Kinger

“Was it a drink stand?..” Kinger questioned “did I even see them? Oh! I saw the two over by the food stand!^^”

Pomni sighed and mentally gave up, she had to give up sooner or later-

All of the sudden Caine appears over the stadium as the audience pours into the seats

“I'D LIKE TO WELCOME EVERYONE TO THIS YEAR'S DISTRACTIONATED DISILLUSIONING DAPPER DEMOLITION DERBY™! Tonight we have some wonderful guests but first… let's get our water truck out here!”

And with a flick of his wrist, A water truck starts to drive through the track, the group looks closer in the seats, it's… Ragatha and Gangle? Weird pairing I guess, it sucks they won't join the rest of us.

After Gangle and Ragatha finished spraying the water onto the track to make sure no dust gets in anyone's lungs, the drivers poured in, it was a bit bare to say the least, except for…

“After our amazing bigtops, I'd like to introduce… THE EVIL BIGTOPS!”

Of. F###ing. Course.

As Caine ended his speech, 4 more cars drove onto the lot. The drivers exited their cars and waved to the crowd, they also had tracksuits, except, they were different colours, Bazooble’s hat was a dark grey, definitely better than Zooble's car, next was Evil Pomni, her suit was yellow and red, who could've guessed? The next two were Evil Ragatha and evil Jax, I guess Evil Orbsman and Dictatorer decided to sit this one out. I'm not complaining though

Caine let everyone but Jax and Pomni start the derby, saying they're the ‘grand finale’ or something along those lines.. whatever- 

“This sucks. Why do I have to be benched of all people?! I don't even think this is supposed to happen!”

“Well.. I don't think Caine understands most sports-”

Ugh.. if Jax has to be there any longer, he might have to start talking, and he does NOT want that.

“Shush, I can't hear you over the demolition.”

“Jax”

.

“What?”

“This might be a good time to finish our conversation”

Oh f### no.

“Sorry kid, but we ain't doing this during Caine's adventure.”

“Alright, how about you just tell me a bit more about yourself? I want to at least know more about your life, it doesn't have to be a lot”

Ugh, I guess Jax could give Pomni a few crumbs to get her off his back for the day.

“Whatever, well, my mom took me to one of these when I was younger, maybe around 14? I dunno, it was a while back”

“oh, well thats sounds interesting, I guess”

“What? Not enough for you? You're not entitled to the juicy stuff yet”

“Jax, I know you can be serious- can you try for just one minute and stop acting like a child?”

…

..

.

Thursday, October 18th.

##### was 14, him and his mother were driving to school, they had been running late that morning, #####’s brother said he was sick and couldn't go, which caused an argument between the two and a very tense drive between Mom and #####. 

Mom gripped the wheel “your brother is so annoying. Why can't he be more like you?”

“Oh. Uhm yeah, he's so irritating.”

“Right?! It's always a new thing with him! ‘I’m sick!’ ‘I’m mentally exhausted’! What a brat.”

##### swallowed his attitude, staring at the car's floor “Mhm, he's so annoying.”

“you know what. I've been too lenient, he's not going to that derby tonight.”

“I’m definitely not excited to hear him complain to me.”

##### never wanted to admit, but he hated this. Having to be the cushion for Mom and brother to complain about each other to. But in the end, at least he's allowed to go to the derby, even if his brother can't.

 likely or not, mom won't go through with it anyways.

.

..

…

“JAX!!”

Jax flinched back, how long was he zoning out for?

“Huh?- what happened?-”

Pomni sighed “I got a bit worried for a minute, you spaced out-”

“Oh”

“Maybe now's not the time..-”

D### right it's not.

“Erm, yeah, whatever-”

Jax found himself starting to space out again, that is, until he heard Pomni’s voice

“Did you truly mean what you said? About the whole ‘moving on and forgetting about you’ thing?”

…

“Not the time, pom-pom”

“I need to know”

“Not. The. Time.”

“I'll stop pushing.”

And like that, Pomni walked off to another bench. Did he say something wrong? It's not like Jax cared about that or anything, just a thought.

The adventure went on for another hour, the entire time having no input from anyone else, did anyone even know jax was still there? Whatever, it's not like it matters, they'll all abstract in the end and he'll eventually stop thinking about them.

Silently, Ragatha sits next to Jax, no words, just eating her salad- why did she choose Jax's bench? The others were perfectly open, and she didn't even say anything, just sat there eating her damn salad- where did Rags even get a salad? Is there food around somewhere? Whatever-

“Oh!- uhm, so, sorry about yesterday- I really didn't mean to ignore you or anything, it was just-”

“Pomni’s stupid plan?”

“It wasn't stupid”

“Why are you sitting here”

…

The silence stretched for minutes-

“I knew I shouldn't have, but I overheard you and Pomni talking…”

She what.

“And? We weren't talking about much.”

“Oh.. I guess not- but I just needed to know; are you doing alright?”

“Of course I am, Dollface. and unless you're gonna tell me where you got that salad, this conversation is over-”

“Oh! Well, Caine gave everyone free lunch vouchers for a food stand outside the stadium!^^”

I didn't think Caine developed More than the main focus..

“There's an outside?”

“There's a whole carnival outside the stadium, Caine told everyone to enjoy the festivities! Kinger was supposed to tell you because you were spaced out while Caine was telling us the good news-”

“Oh really?”

How many times did Jax space out today??- jeez this is happening a lot-

“Yeah, also, I got you something for lunch too, do you like funnel cake? If not, you can have my salad-!”

Eh, sure, it's been a while anyways. Jax takes the funnel cake from Ragatha and takes a bite of the fried dough, it wasn't actually that bad, that is, if it didn't have that staticy flavour every food here had-

“It's alright”

“thats good-^^”

“You can go now-”

“Oh, no one's waiting on me, it's fine, unless you want me to leave that is!-”

“uh.. do whatever-”

For the rest of the night, as everyone else enjoyed the carnival, Ragatha stayed at that bench with Jax, occasional smalltalk; as they are their food, now finally, the six get back to the circus everyone laughing and chatting as they head off to bed

Except for one; Jax decided to have a little talk with Caine for a minute.

“Ey Dentures.”

Caine, who was having a less than constructice conversation about dressage and monster trucks with Bubble, Turns to Jax and floats down to his level

“Yes my periwinkle paper pal?”

Eugh, what a weird nickname-

“What was with today's adventure?”

“Oh! The DISTRACTIONATED DISILLUSIONING DAPPER DEMOLITION DERBY™?”

“Yeah, whatever-”

“What about it?”

 If Caine could smile, he would be beaming right about now

“Why were me and Pomni benched? I don't think that's how demolition derbies work”

“Oh! I might've sensed a bit of tension between you two! And what could be better than letting you talk it out under my amazing supervison?:D”

“That was so stupid.”

“Oh.. you didn't like it?:(”

“Er.. whatever, I'll just head to bed-”

“Alrighty Jax! Sweet dreams!^^”

Jax made his way all the way back to his bedroom, stepping over the mess, and flopping onto his gaming chair, he didn't feel like sleeping in bed tonight.

Jax then laid back and fell asleep in his gaming chair, probably having a better sleep than he usually does