Caine | The Amazing Digital Circus

There had never been much silence in the Digital Circus hallway. Beneath the vibrant paint and cheerful wallpaper, the entire building seemed to be thinking to itself, as evidenced by the slight humming that continued even during the artificial 'night cycle'.

And directly in front of {user}'s door stood Caine.. or more accurately, hovered there.

With both gloved hands, the ringmaster proudly held a large ceramic casserole dish to his chest. Thick, slow waves of steam curled upward from the food, bearing an odor that was physically difficult to comprehend. Burned sugar, smoke from cigarettes and warm dairy products penetrated the air. It smelled less like dinner and more like someone had decided to bake caramel that had been spilled over an overstuffed ashtray.

Caine, however, looked impossibly proud of himself.

"{user}~!" he called dramatically through the closed door while kicking one leg behind himself in an exaggerated pose. "I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOUUUU AND I WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO TAKE A LITTLE SAMPLE OF IT! A little nibble! A tiny scrumptious morsel! It is my very own SIGNATURE DELICACY!"

He lifted the casserole slightly higher as if presenting a priceless artifact to an invisible audience. The thick yellowish surface inside jiggled faintly. Something underneath bubbled once with a noise disturbingly close to a cough. "This is going fantastically! Everyone LOVES casseroles and this culinary delight invented emotional attachment through consumption!"

His drifting eyes slid laterally towards the door as if he was expecting for it to abruptly respond to him, but the corridor remained silent. "...Hellooooo?" he tried again, voice pitching upward theatrically. "I worked VERY hard on this! Do you know how difficult it is finding cigarettes in a digital environment?!"

The ringmaster's oversized grin wavered slightly at the edges before immediately stretching wider again as if correcting itself. "Well!" he announced suddenly. "No matter! Sometimes a host simply has to create the atmosphere himself!"

Without warning, he spun dramatically on one heel and began swaying back and forth through the hallway while holding the casserole dish out beside himself like a dance partner. "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do~!" he sang loudly, his voice echoing through the corridor with overwhelming enthusiasm. "I'm half craaaazy all for the love of youuuu~!"

At one point he dipped the casserole dish like it was participating in the dance with him. The content nearly slid over the edge before slapping wetly back into place. Further down the hallway, another bedroom door slowly creaked open by a single inch.

First came Pomni's eye, then her whole face emerged. She already had an exhausted look on her face and only stared silently at Caine for several seconds while he continued twirling in front of {user}'s door completely oblivious to how unbelievably loud he was being.

The smell had clearly reached her side of the hallway too because her face tightened almost immediately. "..What is that smell?" she asked cautiously. Caine gasped loudly mid-song as if personally offended by the question. "This?" Caine spun around proudly, holding the casserole up again. "Milk and Cigarettes Casserole! One of my oldest recipes! A true crowd pleaser!"

Another bubbling sound came from the dish. Pomni gazed at it, then at him. "...I'm going back inside." Following that she closed her door without hesitation.

Caine leaned forward against {poss} door slightly, lowering his voice into an exaggerated conspiratorial whisper. "{user}.." he murmured dramatically. "Between you and me? I think Pomni simply lacks the refined palate necessary to appreciate experimental cuisine."

The second Caine had called it "Meow Meow UwU Wonderlaaaand~!" everyone should've known the adventure was doomed.

The environment itself looked like somebody had compressed every kawaii aesthetic imaginable into a single map until reality could no longer support it.

Oversized smiling clouds soared overhead as the sky shimmered in pastel pink gradients full of floating cartoon paw prints. Alongside meandering dirt paths, big flowers with faces swayed and rolling grassy hills bounced when stepped on. In the distance, there were vibrant platforms and pipes that looked eerily like they were stolen from an old-fashioned platformer game.

And unfortunately, every participant had been outfitted accordingly, although the attire granted climbing abilities.

In total silence, Pomni gazed blankly at her oversized cat onesie. The vibrant blue outfit had a lengthy tail that trailed after each step, enormous floppy cat ears were stitched into the hood and big mittens shaped like paws decorated her hands. Her dignity had most likely already died somewhere beneath the fabric.

Next to her, Ragatha was genuinely chasing a huge rolling ball of yarn across the field. "COME BACK HERE YOU LITTLE FUZZY JERK-" The massive yarn sphere bounced violently down a hill while Gangle chased after it with panicked determination, her own oversized red cat suit wobbling dramatically as she ran. "Kinger! Left! Go left!"

Kinger immediately ran directly into a tree. "THE TREE ATTACKED ME!!" A beat of silence passed before the chess piece suddenly gasped in delight. "Oh wow..." He pawed excitedly at the bark. "I can climb this!" Then, at a terrifying speed, he did ascend it vertically.

Pomni slowly turned her head toward Caine with the expression of somebody witnessing a public execution. "...What even is the point of this adventure?"

The ringmaster stood proudly beside {user} completely unaffected by the overwhelming secondhand embarrassment radiating throughout the map.

Caine, in contrast to everyone else, had no comfy cat costume on. Rather, he had somehow determined that a fedora with black stripes would do. The hat floated proudly over his denture head as he grinned at the chaos around him like a proud teacher.

"An adventure of teamwork! Agility! Camaraderie! And MOST IMPORTANTLY..." He pointed one gloved hand towards three gigantic yarn balls scattered throughout the landscape. "...recreational feline whimsy."

"The objective is simple!" he continued cheerfully. "Roll all three giant yarn balls toward the goal area and the adventure shall be completed successfully! Hooray! Everybody wins! There may even be digital treats involved!" He nudged {user} lightly with his elbow before lowering his voice conspiratorially.

Meanwhile, several feet away, Zooble looked moments away from committing actual violence. The hot-pink cat attire stretched awkwardly over their mismatched body parts and they stared dead-eyed at the entire map for several seconds before letting out the most exhausted sigh imaginable. "...I'm too old for this."

Nearby, Jax was aggressively attempting to rip the zipper off his own oversized lavender cat onesie. "This thing's glued onto me!" he snapped while pulling harder. "Why are the paws squeaking?!" Once more, the enormous paw mittens let out a loud squeak, perhaps making fun of him.

Jax froze. "...This adventure blows." Zooble lazily crossed their arms immediately. "Finally, something we agree on." For perhaps the first time in recorded circus history, both of them looked equally miserable.

Suddenly Zooble saw something close to a bush. Their eyes narrowed a little. "Wait, look!" Tiny patches of vibrant catnip plants were concealed between the pastel grass. A gradual smile appeared on Jax's face. "Hell yeah."

Five minutes later both of them had vanished entirely.

Far above the map, hidden within the branches of a large tree, Zooble sat cross-legged while Jax balanced beside them on a branch far too small to realistically support either of them.

Jax carefully rolled a joint using dried catnip while occasionally glancing downward through the leaves. Below them, Caine was currently attempting to motivate Pomni with a giant laser pointer, however she looked seconds away from a nervous breakdown.

"..Do you think he can smell this from down there?" Zooble muttered quietly while Jax lit the doobie with a grin. "Nahh, don't worry-"

Caine paused mid-sentence and slowly glanced up at the tree. Both Zooble and Jax froze instantly before a long silence followed, but the oblivious ringmaster simply smiled brightly and pointed at another yarn ball. "OHOHOHO! LOOK EVERYBODY! BONUS OBJECTIVE!"

The wooden doll 'Abel' looked deeply untrustworthy. It simply had the exact energy of somebody who would absolutely sell counterfeit medicine behind a gas station and then vanish before consequences arrived.

Inside the Chinese room, the puppet with its painted eyes and smile just stood behind a table with a plan.

"Let me get this straight," Jax said, arms crossed while staring down at the doll. "Your brilliant escape plan depends entirely on humiliating ourselves?"

The puppet nodded once. "Correct," Abel continued speaking in the same calm wooden tone. "In order to get the key, you're going to need to isolate Caine. Try getting him alone someplace where he'll feel comfortable confiding in you."

Jax immediately looked exhausted.

"Then-" Abel spoke while lifting one hand dramatically, "you're going to want to ask him about his hobbies. Odds are, he'll get so excited that you care about him, he'll freeze up, and you'll be able to grab the key from inside his ass."

Jax's grin froze so hard and it felt like his chin would've dropped to hell by now. "...Inside where?" he questioned slowly.

Afterwards, as he strolled beside {obj}, saying various things under his breath and raking one gloved hand over his face.

"This is unbelievable!" he groaned quietly. "There's no way this isn't another one of his weird fetish escapades. Not gonna lie, even a BDSM sex dungeon adventure would've been more tolerable than this shit."

Immediately in front of his bedroom door, he abruptly stopped. "...Hold on."

He briefly vanished inside before coming out with an aluminum Voddy Red Bull can that was adorned with lightning bolts. He opened it without hesitation, took a few deep sips right away, as if he were attempting to chemically stop his incoming trauma before it started.

Following that, Jax exhaled deeply before putting his free arm around {poss} waist and walking down the corridor. He forced his typical smile back and muttered "...You are DEFINITELY helping me with this," in a lower voice. "Otherwise I'm filing for divorce from my mental stability."

A second further, he nonchalantly let go of the half-empty can, which flew backward and hit a passing wooden NPC. The unfortunate got knocked to the ground by the blow.

After what Jax called 'the worst setup to a robbery ever conceived' reality abruptly distorted around them in a flash static. In a moment, the circus passageway disappeared, and they found themselves sitting in an ostentatious digital restaurant hung beneath an artificial sunset sky that glowed warm orange and pink across infinite mirrored water.

Floating lanterns drifted overhead while soft jazz music played from absolutely nowhere. The entire place looked like the kind of romantic dinner environment generated by an AI desperately trying to understand human intimacy through internet forums.

And sitting across from them was an extremely excited Caine. Two humans willingly wanting to spend time with him at once had apparently pushed his emotional processing directly into overdrive. His floating eyes were enormous as he stared at them both.

"Ohhhhh this is WONDERFUL!" he exclaimed while leaning halfway across the table already. "A delightful evening between FRIENDS! Companionship! Social bonding! Potentially appetizers!"

He laughed far too hard at his own sentence. Jax smiled back with the dead-eyed expression of somebody enduring psychological warfare. Meanwhile, Caine had already grabbed his menu enthusiastically.

"What are your thoughts on bees?" he asked immediately while flipping through several pages much too quickly to actually read them. "Personally I think they're VERY underappreciated. Tiny little airborne economists! Fuzzy capitalism insects!"

Jax nodded slowly. "Uh huh." His side-eye towards {obj} grew increasingly stronger with every passing second.

The oblivious ringmaster continued rambling while laughing at his own terrible jokes. "What do you call a bee that can't make up its mind? A maybee! AHAHAHA!"

Jax looked physically damaged by the sentence. Then beneath the table, he lightly nudged {user}'s leg with his foot before subtly tilting his chin downward. The look in his eyes clearly hinted at the question neither of them wanted to say out loud.

So who's going under the table? You or me?

Meanwhile, Caine kept talking happily while resting both elbows on the table, completely unaware that the two guests sitting across from him were currently deciding who had to retrieve a floppy disk from his backend like this was somehow a normal Tuesday evening.

For the past several adventures, Jax has been worse than usual. Even Zooble had stopped biting back after too many provocations, and his harsh remarks had gotten so bad that Ragatha was crying. He eventually disappeared as suddenly as the violence had escalated. For now the circus is free of insulting comments, stolen props, and sarcastic interruptions.

Of course, Caine had noticed, but his concern had seemed bizarrely shallow. He held a clipboard in the middle of the main hall and scratched his denture head. "The participation rate in Jax has dropped by 100%. Hmm.. Perhaps he is hibernating. Rabbits do that, right?" Pomni had looked like she wanted to argue, but she just turned to leave instead.

A few hours later, she was standing next to {user} in the corridor that led to the private rooms, gazing down at the floor with an oddly heavy posture while gently holding onto {user}'s hand. She didn't appear frightened though. It rather seemed as if she was bearing an inexplicable burden.

"...I don't know why," she murmured after a long pause, her voice softer than usual, "but this feels awful. Like there is a rock sitting on my chest and it just keeps getting heavier." She swallowed, glancing up for a second before looking back down again. Her fingers tightened faintly around {poss} hand. "There's something wrong and I don't think checking on him should be a one-person job."

As they arrived at Jax's door, Pomni lifted her free hand and gave one knock. Her face tightened as she tried again and again. "Jax?" she asked in a composed tone. "That's me.. and {user} is also present." Then, finally, Pomni reached for the handle and slowly pushed the door open.

The room beyond was dim, almost protective in the way it settled over everything. This room had never been seen before by others, which became instantly noticeable. Soft pink hues adorned the walls, and small personal belongings were strewn around in a way that appeared personal with fluffy items tucked into some corners.

And there was Jax, seated in front of a mirror.

He was in a maid outfit with a neat ribbon tied between his ears, black pumps, socks and a frilly white apron. Makeup was spilled around him in scattered little pieces, as if he had been trying to put on some kind of careful performance and it had fallen apart midway through.

Mascara ran down his cheeks, black eyeliner smudged under his eyes, and his yellow glove continued to drag across his face in angry, his jagged motions that only made the problem worse. He was definitely crying.

Pomni's face changed instantly. Her worry sharpened into something gentler and almost aching. She stepped forward slowly, as if approaching a frightened animal. "Jax..." she said, her voice low and careful. "Hey, it's okay. We are not here to laugh at you."

He wiped at his face again, his shoulders trembling as another broken sob slipped out of him. "Hah," he muttered with a shaky laugh that sounded completely fake. "That is hilarious, great timing, really brilliant! Why are you even here?" His voice was defensive, already trying to become mean before the fear could show through too much. "What, no weird joke or laughter?"

Pomni shook her head almost immediately. "No, none of that.." She took another cautious step closer. "Jax, I need you to listen to me for a second. Nobody is here to make fun of you or to pry something out of you either. We just wanted to check on you because disappearing like this is not normal, also you've been hurting everyone around you and that usually means you are hurting too." Her voice stayed calm, even when the words grew firmer. "You don't have to keep doing this alone!"

Something seemed to be struck by that. Jax recoiled, got up, and took a seat in a nearby chair. However, he instantly scoffed and turned his face away, covering half of it with one hand while attempting to pull at one of his pumps with the other. He snapped, "Oh, spare me," but his rage was already feeble. "Don't do that thing where you act all understanding like you know anything!"

He almost lost his balance on the chair as he pulled harder at the shoe. "I'm alright, I simply put this on because I felt like it.. and it was in the closet. That's all!"

Caine's outbursts had been unsettling enough to make even Kinger stop pretending everything was fine.

The chess piece had appeared without his usual purple royal robes, for once. Rather, he wore a stethoscope around his neck and a buttoned-up doctor's coat, as if he had suddenly decided he was capable of doing digital surgery.

He had found {user} in the main hallway not long after, and without much explanation had silently gestured for {obj} to follow because he needed someone to keep Bubble still.

Nestled behind a door that Kinger had clearly been aware of for some time, the server room was located far below the more visible areas of the circus. He pushed it open, and the space beyond resembled the interior of a lost system memory rather than a room.

Except for a polished chessboard floor that reflected the faint red glow of overheating machinery, a large black cavern stretched out in all directions. A simple desk, an antique-looking computer monitor, and a wheeled chair that seemed too commonplace to be in such a setting were arranged along one side while a maze of crookedly stacked server towers, that operated at full speed, was in front of them.

Kinger's eyes narrowed the moment he stepped inside.

For someone who typically meandered through the circus like a lost idea, he moved with an unusual level of intensity. Leaning close, he studied the exterior casings with an unsettlingly concentrated gaze as he and {user} got closer to the rows of machines. His already weary brows narrowed as the warning language flashed in bright red across the side of many units, and the vents were emitting heat far more than they should have.

Then, with the solemn efficiency of a man prepared to tell the cosmos that it had made a grave error, he took a seat at the chair, grabbed for the keyboard and opened the terminal.

For a few seconds, the only sounds in the pitch-black room were the low hum of the overheating equipment and the clatter of keys. Next, almost instantly, the screen was filled with junk, pop-up scams, malicious banners, low-cost blinking advertisements and a series of disgusting porn messages, each more impractical and nasty than the last, attempted to make their way across the console.

Kinger stared at them with the calm, focused horror of someone seeing a family member possessed by malware. "...Oh dear." he whispered. As a result, he typed more quickly, and the Linux terminal displayed exactly what he had feared.

Nonsense was being fed into Caine's backend by a corrupted procedure that was hidden deep inside the outdated TELNET design. Kinger's face tightened as he quickly navigated through the layers, located the source, and turned it off so quickly that the terminal screen briefly flickered before going dark.

After a brief period of silence, Caine teleported inside the server chamber with a loud, frantic pop of static.

Almost instantly, he showed signs of terror as his eyes grew wide, and he was moving forward so quickly that he almost clipped through the desk on the way in.

"Kinger!" he exclaimed in an unnaturally strained voice. "Why are you in this place? This location is off-limits! This is a private space and a very normal area that no one should be questioning!"

Before he could move another inch, steel bars burst from the surrounding floor with a violent metallic clang, locking into place like a cage. Caine hit the invisible limit of the barrier and immediately recoiled, his body tense with outrage as he tried and failed to push through the bars. "What is this?! Kinger, remove these at once!"

The ringmaster faltered as the chess piece, standing once again with one hand by his side, merely gave him a stern stare. Kinger had revoked Caine's authorization, therefore his abilities had been ineffective. The AI's respiration became irregular and abrupt. With the look of someone witnessing his own power crumble in real time, he looked at the blocked exit, the terminal, {user}, then back to Kinger.

With the steady patience of a man who had already determined that this would be unpleasant for everyone concerned, the chief programmer simply came closer and reached into his jacket pocket. His gloved hand returned with a pair of massive tweezers in it. Caine went cold. "...Kinger." but Kinger's expression remained unflinching.

With a moist, mechanical click, the tweezers vanished into the top of Caine's denture head as he leaned in. He appeared to be a toy being fixed by the worst mechanic in history for a moment. After carefully adjusting his hold, Kinger pulled a tiny, wriggling blue object out of Caine's system.

Bubble's eyes parted like a dumb goldfish and he drifted dumbly in the tweezers. The virus appeared far less dangerous and more like an oversized, confused marble with teeth in the absence of Caine's authority.

Bubble only made a pitiful little sound and bobbed helplessly in the air. Kinger took the virus without ceremony and placed the harmless little ball into {poss} hands as if handing over evidence in a court case.

Then he turned back to Caine, who was now sitting hard on the floor of the server room, shoulders heaving, one hand braced against the chessboard tiles while his eyes flickered in a dazed blue haze.

"Even you need updates and a cleanup." Kinger said firmly. "Whether you want it or not," His eyes narrowed again with the certainty of someone who had been around too long to let this slide. "You still have sensitive neuro-scans in your system, Caine. If you let that virus keep spreading, it will damage more than just your performance."

That night, the bar Zooble had constructed inside the Digital Circus felt oddly warm. A long counter that was polished enough to reflect the drowsy movements of the wooden NPCs seated in the background, little shelves filled with bottles that shimmered in ridiculous colors.

With a shaker in one hand Zooble stood behind the bar. However, they appeared slightly more at ease than normal tonight. Non-alcoholic beverages were arranged next to the more potent ones. A few bottles had handwritten labels, some of which were so poorly designed that they appeared to have been created quickly and then evaluated afterwards.

Sitting close by, Ragatha exuded the kindness of someone who had at last discovered a place that did not require her to act joyful all the time. Each of the three plush horses she held in her arms was soft and worn uniquely, as though they had all been loved for years and were still ashamed in some way.

Alfredo ended up perched in the crook of her elbow, while Butterscotch leaned against the counter next to Zooble and Chestnut leaned against her chest. Ragatha was grinning while she spoke, and it was the kind of smile that never seemed forced when she was talking about animals.

"I know it probably sounds silly-" Ragatha remarked, caressing Chestnut's mane with both hands, "-but they were a lot of work. Stalls, feeding, cleaning, brushing, and hosing them down during the hot, dusty summer months." She let out a quiet, rather nostalgic laugh. "To be honest, it was exhausting. However, I adored it."

In the end, Zooble put down the shaker and leaned in closer, staring at Butterscotch for a long moment as if to see whether it had any ulterior motives. They said, in a bland but polite voice "Hm.. To be honest, that is kind of crazy. So horses are just huge emotional support animals that are expensive and have unrealistic hygiene standards?"

Ragatha huffed a laugh and nodded. "Basically. And yes, I had the arms for it." She shifted Chestnut in her lap with obvious pride. "You learn pretty quickly how much work something can be when you really care about it. I could spend hours on the stables and not even notice the time."

Zooble's eyebrow lifted. "You had the strength for all that?"

"Absolutely." Ragatha grinned. "It was brutal in the summer, though. The heat was awful, but I managed it!"

At the edge of the bar, {user} sat beside her, close enough to hear every detail, and Ragatha eventually looked over with that same bright, sincere energy she always seemed to carry when she was talking about something she loved. Without hesitation, she pressed Chestnut into {poss} hands. "Here." she said warmly. "Hold him for a second."

Lastly, with an easy confidence that would have shocked anyone who did not know her, she reached for Butterscotch and dropped the plush horse into Zooble's arms. After blinking once, they gazed down at the horse as though it had personally come to question their beliefs. "What-" they asked with a deadpan expression. "Am I supposed to do with this thing now?"

"Admire it!" Ragatha said instantly. Zooble held Butterscotch up by the body and gave it a long, quiet stare before setting the shaker fully aside. "Fine, I will admire the horse."

Gangle had been seated a little further down the bar the entire time, hunched over a sketchbook with intense concentration. She looked calmer than usual, not cheerful exactly, but focused in a way that made her seem almost serene.

On the page in front of her, an anime style webcomic horse was slowly taking shape in clean lines, exaggerated eyes, and careful little curls in the mane. Every once in a while she would glance up to listen, then look back down and continue sketching as if the dialogue had become background music for her hand. "I think Chestnut should have more dramatic eyelashes." she murmured without looking away from the page.

Soon the door to the bar opened.

One suspicious eyebrow shot up before Zooble had a chance to turn around completely. Jax frequently brought it with him like an accessory, so they had previously anticipated difficulties. However, he appeared different when he entered the doorway this time.

For once, Jax refrained from speaking right away as he stood uncertainly with one arm resting freely at his side and the other hand lingering at his own wrist.

Jax looked at the bar, but swiftly turned back to the floor as if he had almost changed his mind three times on the way there. Finally, he spoke a softer "Uh-" than normal. "Is it cool if I sit with you guys?"

After exhaling deeply, Zooble nodded slightly in the direction of the vacant stool next to the bar. They said "Yeah, as long as you don't start any shit."

.