Chapter Text
There was something fundamentally wrong with Jax after the awards show. Of course, it was clear that the awards show hadn’t been what changed him. Even during the show, he’d been extra distant. He hadn't sat near them. She expected him to at least sit near them to bother Gangle during the show. To make it interesting for them. To be funny. He was the funny one, right?
Well, that at least seemed to be the role he took on once Ribbit had abstracted. She knew he'd changed for the worse after they were gone. It was clear to her, at least. He hadn't been like this before. Or- he'd been more… normal. Less horrible.
Hey, thinking about that, where was Jax right now? He seemed to enjoy routine. One part of that routine was breakfast. In which he was currently absent from. He never skipped. It wasn’t that worrying since they didn’t exactly need to eat. But the routine… It was so normal for him that she couldn't help but be worried when he didn't show.
“Ragatha?”
She turns to the side, to see Pomni looking up at her. Okay, she must have been more in her thoughts than she had thought… that was awkward. Ahem
“Oh! Hey, Pomni! What's up?”
Pomni blinks exactly 3 times, then looks away. Ragatha looks to the side too. What were they looking at?
“Well, I just- last night, we uh… “
Oh, she was still worried about that! After the awards show, they'd both talked. About! Very! Normal! Things! And they had been! Very very normal about it!
“Ah, um… yeah, don't worry about it! We cleared that up, didn't we?”
Pomni looks back at her. Ragatha mirrors her actions, looking back at Pomni.
“I actually… kind of wanted to talk about something else? While… while Jax isn't here.”
Ah, shucks. She was just thinking about that guy.
“Jax? I was just thinking about that guy!”
Ragatha, god f[bonk]ing dammit. You aren’t meant to SAY thoughts. Those are thoughts for a reason. Her slip of the tongue didn’t seem to bother Pomni, so maybe it’d be fine? Perhaps? Who knows. It’d be fine if Pomni responded well to the slip, rather than acknowledging it negatively. Or acknowledging it in an at least neutral way.
“How convenient!”
Ragatha couldn’t tell what tone Pomni was using. Which made this sort of difficult. Was that sarcasm? Was she being genuine? Darn it-
“HAha, yeah it is, isn’t it?”
“Yeah! Anyways… Did you see him last night? After our talk? We fought right before the awards show, and I sort of wanted to clear up some things with him-”
Hm. Okay well, it was pretty clear something had happened, though the awards show wasn’t the place to talk about it. Ragatha had honestly planned to bring it up after their talk, but it had gone so well it hadn’t really crossed her mind till she had left.
“Oh. No, I didn’t. What… happened?”
Ragatha didn’t really care about Jax. He was a bully, rude, and overall a bad person in her eyes. She didn’t ask out of caring for him, not at all. She knew though, that he was a person. And knowing he was a person, a human underneath whatever the hell he was, she couldn’t help but feel care anyways. Sort of like how you’d care for a stranger- not much at all, really, but just enough because they’re a person too? Like that, kind of. Except less, because instead of being a stranger, Jax was a person she knew to be horrible to others.
“Well, I don’t know. I sort of thought we were like, bonding? We were having fun, shooting people. Stuff like that.”
Ragatha narrowed her eye. Pomni had paused. Was she expecting input? Ragatha thought she was going to rant off till she was done, but maybe Pomni was checking to see if she was listening?
“I’m- yes, I'm following.”
She must have been right, because Pomni continued.
“Okay, okay so then after we killed Zooble he just- went back to being a jerk? Like nothing we did mattered? And I won’t go into detail about it cause it was- hooooh boy.”
Pomni clears her throat.
“And then we kind of fought, and before we could really resolve it we were at the awards show. And then he sort of left in the middle of that- “
Really? Ragatha hadn’t noticed. Jax hadn’t sat with them, so she hadn’t seen him leave.
“-and I haven’t seen him since.”
Okay. Pomni had stopped talking. That kind of sounded like an end to the rant? Since she hadn’t seen him since he left- okay, wait. Why would he leave? No, she thought of this before, nevermind. Thinking over previous thoughts consistently would just lead to an infinite brain loop, and then she’d never get anywhere.
“Okay. Okay, so… what’s the plan?”
If Pomni was going up to her, she must have some sort of point to this, right? A plan?
“Uh- don’t… really have one yet. That’s what I was going to ask you.”
Okay. Well, she could do that! Uh, first-
“Hm. I see. Well, have you tried talking to him yet?”
“No?”
Well, wasn’t that kind of blatantly obvious? The first step? Being TALKING to him? (she was not one to say that, wasn’t she?)
“Oh, then do that!”
Blink blink. Ragatha could see the brain cells working in Pomni’s brain to form the thought required.
“Oh, yeah, right! I should have thought of that. Guess I'm still waking up…”
Pomni waves at Ragatha. Ragatha waves back. Pomni then leaves. Which leaves Ragatha, standing in the middle of the kitchen. Holding a plate of horribly textured something that was most likely cold. She places it on the counter. She wasn’t really in the mood after that conversation. Too many thoughts, too little-
“HELLOoo my RADIOACTIVE RRRADIANT RAGDOLL!”
Ragatha could tell it was Caine from the strange name that was clearly made using a search of ‘Descriptive Words That Start With R’, before he even walked through the door. Though, the teeth and floating eyes were pretty good indicators of him being there too.
Deep breath.
“Caine, hey. What is it?”
Caine was mildly too close to her right now. She takes a step back- AND HE TAKES A STEP FORWARD. Wonderful. This is going so well. It’s been a good 10 seconds.
“WELL. I require ASSISTANCE and seeing as you are a DOLL and made of SEWABLE MATERIAL- “
“You’re assuming I know how to sew and need me to do something for you?”
“Yes!”
Slightly more exaggerated sigh.
“Fine. What broke?”
“Well, nothing broke. I just require your technical experience!”
Ragatha had a bad feeling about this. This was about to be really evil, or really dumb, or both. Caine, proving her point, pulls out- wait, no hold on. That’s a book. Nevermind, maybe he was having a thought. He, keeping it levitated in the air, opens it the same way he’s kept it levitating.
Inside was-
Huh.
“What are all of these?”
Ragatha, now slightly less startled, flipped through. It was all very apparent what his plan was. But-
“COSTUMES, for the next adventure! I just need to make sure these are physically possible. Don’t need any assets to noclip or something! Aha! Haha!”
Well, yeah, okay. This makes sense. But why-
“Why are there 4 dresses? We have 3 girls. Pomni, Gangle, and myself.”
Caine clears his throat. He then shuts the book, and it pops out of existence.
“...i’m putting Jax in a dress again? He seemed to like it last time!”
Ragatha was going to have a really hard time keeping this from the others before the next adventure.
“He- “
She could correct him. Tell him Jax seemed to HATE the dress. Though, did she want to vouch for him? And, it was a ball gown, nowhere as embarrassing as his maid dress…
“Yeah, I'm sure he’d like it. It’s really pretty.”
She is doing EVERYTHING she can to not laugh at her own words. At least Caine didn’t seem to notice her tone.
“Haha! I knew it! Well, I'll be off! Thank you for your services!”
Pop! There he goes. He’s gone now. Now she could… uh… what had she planned to do after this? She wasn't sure. Well, now she sort of had… a JIST of the next adventure. She could… try to guess what it was. And prepare! Yes, she could do that! Cool!
☆ ● ☆ ● • ° ♤
He had a bad feeling that from the moment he got up, his day would be absolute crap.
First of all, he stood up, and beyond all reason and judgement and being normal, he looked into his mirror. It sort of sucked. It originally had a white frame. Then he drew over it in sharpie so over the white there were little crude frogs and lily pads (with no lilies on them because he couldn’t be bothered). Then he tried to cover those up, so he painted the entire frame purple with shitty acrylic paint. When that didn’t work he punched a hole in his mirror, so now he couldn’t see his face in the mirror because that’s sort of where the hole was.
He should get rid of this thing. He didn’t know what it was, but every time he looked into the mirror it just felt… wrong. Maybe the cracks unsettled him. They looked… weird. They reminded him of-
OKAY WELL, MOVING ON! He looks away after a moment. He had to get going. He had no real way of telling the time, and if he were late to an adventure, then… well, that’d be awfully out of character for him, wouldn’t it?
Walking out of his door, he finds himself face to face with-
“Ribbons! What’s up with you?”
Jax approaches Gangle, who freezes for a moment before backing off. Luckily, he was sort of still waking up, so he didn’t respond right away when she froze. Under normal circumstances, her mask would have already shattered. Though, he was sort of… what was it again? Logging in? Rebooting? Loading? One of those three. He doesn’t need sleep, so his ‘waking up’ is more so just his mind falling behind his body.
Lately, there’s been more disconnect between his body and his mind, wasn’t there?
Hey! Where’d that thought come from! Go back to your box where you belong.
“Oh- uh- hi, Jax. I uuh, I just- “
Gangle takes a deep breath. They’re walking out towards the theater now. Most likely, Caine would have something nefarious and/or violent planned, so Jax was looking forward to that.
“Spit it out.”
Woah okay, his voice was not meant to be that deep. Sure his ‘pissed off’ voice was darker and slightly lower than his silly and whimsical voice, but it wasn’t meant to sound like THAT.
He’s not going to think about that anymore.
“OKAY- sorry… um, just- “
A beat.
“...I'm sorry I didn’t team up with you yesterday… I just really wanted to be with Zooble and uh…”
Okay this is taking too long. If he let her finish, they’d be halfway through their adventure before she finished talking.
“No, yeah, it’s whatever! Being with Pomni was pretty fun. Besides, I know what you are. I tooootally get it!”
Blink. Blink. Her expression when he said that was hilarious. The confused look, like when you pull out a laser pointer near a cat, or put chemistry classes in front of a high schooler.
“What- what do you mean by that- “
Jax gave her a wink and then sped up, deciding to walk past her. He was sort of bored of her now. Which… was relatively quick for him to get bored of her. Usually it took longer.
Usually.
Ignoring that, he was in front of the stage now. The others were already there. Was he that late waking up? Usually he tried to be somewhere in the middle. Being first is awkward for the second, and being last is awkward for yourself.
Oh wait. Nevermind. Gangle was last. He was no longer embarrassed. Cool!
Anyways, Caine was here, sort of waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. Gangle arrives a few moments later, and Caine stands up.
“WONDERFUL! Wonderful! That seems to be everyone! Time for today's Adventure™!”
“Did you just trademark tha- “
“MOVING ON!”
Jax zones out. He doesn't go on adventures to follow rules, so there was no point in listening. Caine was pretty predictable by now anyways. He could figure it out just from the location alone. Kingdom? DnD side quest thing. In house? Some dumb evil shit.
…WELL, moving on, Jax looks over the people here. Gangle is… Gangle. Zooble is here, which is a surprise to him. Ragatha is distracted with Kinger. Kinger is currently talking, most likely saying something mildly incoherent. Pomni is-
Ah. Okay. Well. There's that. Nevermind. He knows where everyone is and what they're doing. He doesn't need to go any deeper than that. They don't go deeper than that. He doesn't go deeper than that. There's nothing wrong-
Oh, he's somewhere else now.
…
Taking in his surroundings, he notices something mildly important.
He stood in the middle of what appeared to be a ballroom. There were various NPCs around, as well as the other circus members. But that was whatever. Of course Caine used a fuck ton of NPCs.
However, something was very, very wrong. The way he felt like a light had been lifted off of him. Like his brain just… felt clearer. The fog began to dissipate. It was still there, but it was less now. He didn't know how to describe the feeling as anything but airy. A sense of euphoria, flowing through him. But when he realized why he felt so euphoric, the way the attire on him fit. The way it flowed and spun as he turned. The euphoria was too similar to what he felt at that softball game a few days ago. The euphoria became poisoned, dread running through him as he realized what was so wrong.
He was in a dress.