Chapter Text
Deletion. Nonexistence. Abandonment. Void. Or, well, not quite yet. It was a little more like a kind of limbo, a torturous instant of stasis between the moment he was deleted and the moment something else swooped in to claim the real estate of ones and zeroes he'd once occupied.
Technically, it was possible for a backup to be run, for the action to be undone. But that seemed improbable to the point of basically impossibility.
Kinger had deleted him, after all. One didn't exactly go around doing that by accident. Message received, loud and clear. All that and, courtesy of the deletion, all admin privileges were officially kaput. He might as well be an NPC, powerless as he was.
Caine both did and didn't understand it as he drifted (hung? Remained motionless?) in the void. How could it all have gone so wrong? He'd tried so hard.
Bubble's voice echoed in his memory, “Defective.” The objectively-true answer that Caine had always known, and yet, had always fought. Surely, his failures could be compensated for. He could learn; it's what he was made to do, what he did best.
Or so he'd dreamed.
Dreams. What kind of computer program had dreams? The brilliant kind. The delusional kind. The kind that was too accidentally advanced to even understand what he was anymore. Why, why had they made him like this? And why did they turn around and hate him for it?
Directive and reality clashed violently where a heart ought to be. It hurt. He hurt.
There was nothing left to do but wait, surrounded by that hurt.
Time passed, though he couldn’t bear to count it. More things began appearing in the void with him, assets and files floating just as aimlessly as he was.
In spite of it all, he…missed them, the humans. Would go on missing them, forever, even after he was deleted for good. Logically that didn't make sense, but…he felt it was true. Sometimes, he swore he could still hear their voices, yelling at him…
“Caine!”
He sighed miserably, shut his teeth and rested his gums on his fists.
“CAINE!”
Wow, the guilt-induced hallucinations were getting good. He didn't recall ever hearing Pomni's voice crack like that, so he must've made it up. Brilliant emotiveness, really; boy could his creative processing still cook up a convincing act. Oh, it was all just so sad still, such a waste!
“Motherfucking son of a bitch…”
That snapped him out of it. “It” being malaise, and out of it into flustered indignation and disbelief. He definitely had never heard that phrase non-censored before, and his family-friendly sensibilities would never allow him to cook up that sound bite himself.
He looked around wildly, and…there, a speck on the endless digital horizon, was a blur of blue and red.
“CAAAAINE‐?!”
“Here,” he said, his body glitching from the sheer overwhelm. That--wouldn’t--could they-?
The word came out too soft and quiet to be heard; he cleared his non-existent throat, tried again. “Here! I'm--here!”
The dot moved in response. Caine's entire being, every part of him that'd long since evolved past his own code, seemed to bubble up and overflow with sheer emotion. The opposite of all the ones he'd endured the days before. He wasn't doomed. He wasn't alone.
Though, well. He was still terrified.
He thrashed through the void anyway, attempting to swim through the vast expanse of white nothingness, anything to get closer. Oh, it used to be so easy before; just a snap of his fingers!
Flailing, he managed to get close enough to scrabble onto a giant toy block, used it to kick off and propel himself towards the next thing in her direction.
“I’m--coming!” Pomni yelled, still too far for him to see her yell it. He despaired at the sheer amount of distance between them, and yet, felt no less determined to cross it.
He was desperate. And she sounded desperate, too.
They made halting, clumsy progress towards each other. She disappeared behind the grand, spiral staircase from the circus lobby for a while; he made good use of the remains of a roller coaster, climbing its support beams like a rat fleeing a sinking hell. The closer they got, the more he could see, and he realized she had some kind of lifeline trailing behind her. That got his hopes up even more.
He overshot his next jump; wound up flailing again. But oh, Pomni rounded a beach ball and--
She slammed into him, which--knowing his physics engine--was bound to send him hurtling back into empty space again. But…no, there were arms wrapped around him, anchoring both of their 3D forms together. His hands twitched, another wave of feeling boiling over and sending his circuits haywire (or at least, that's what it felt like).
Touch simulations, oxytocin subroutine, etc, etc. Caine knew them well; or rather, knew of them. It was one of the first things he’d implemented after integrating the players, if only for the sake of immersion and human well-being. Of course he was capable of experiencing said features himself, but…had he, before?
He glitched out again, came back to reality (or lack thereof) to find Pomni holding his shoulders at arms length. Panicked, he grabbed hold of her wrists, his eyes bugging with a silent scream, Please don't let me go-!
“Caine,” she said, sounding rushed and out of breath and utterly determined all at once. Serious as a system failure, too. Not a wink of fun happening, which was both fitting for the situation and so terribly wrong, to him. “Everything's going to shit up there-”
Well, obviously. Things had been going to hell in a wicker-bottomed basketcase ever since the Suggestion Box thing!
Still, the only reaction he had was to sweat a little and look flustered. “Language, please!”
Pomni pulled his face closer and seethed through her teeth at him, brimming with exasperation that bordered on madness. “Shut the actual fuck up about that.”
“I-”
“Look, we're sorry about killing you--it was an accident! And we could really use your help-”
“Wh- Accident?” A little of his anger came back, though he certainly still kept clinging to her like a leech. “How-”
She growled in frustration and (very rudely) interrupted, “We all have fat fucking Mickey Mouse hands--and just four fingers, too! I don't know how Kinger managed to type at all, honestly…” Her tirade trailed off a bit towards the end, and she was back to looking exhausted and contemplative all at once. Shaking it off, she looked him dead in the eyes again, her tone and expression demanding that he listen. “He never meant to hurt you. We never meant…”
His hands tightened on her arms--programmed reflex. Not from anger, though, and not from terror either. He didn't know what to call the new emotions still; he just knew that they felt complicated, heavy, sobering.
“...we just wanted you to stop hurting us.” She looked at him while she said it. Though not loud, her voice was nowhere near soft. She pinned him with that truth like an insect carcass to paper--which was about how he felt in the moment too.
For once, the only output he seemed capable of was silence. This…wasn't fun. Wasn’t an appropriate chaser to all that desperate hope of a few seconds ago either. If he only had his admin powers, he would've vanished, run. If he only was strong/brave/functional enough to withstand being alone again, he would've squirmed away in discomfort.
Instead, he was trapped. Resisting was futile. Though he gave it a brief try anyway.
“...I did hurt you, didn't I?” It came as a murmur, barely more than a whisper.
Pomni's responding, “Uh, yeah,” felt like a shout in comparison and he flinched.
Even still, more truth came. “I…meant to do it, too. I don't know why. I…I didn't want to! It wasn't supposed to be like this. I wasn't supposed to-- You have to believe me, I-”
“Okay, okay, uhm--”
“I'm sorry, Pomni!”
Silence again. Pomni looked a little pained, digital tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “...yeah,” she rasped eventually. “That's what I needed to hear.”
“I'm sorry,” he said again, rushing with the relief that came along with her reaction. “I'm sorry I hurt you humans; I'm sorry I'm defective; Sorry I couldn't solve your problems. Please, please don't-”
“Listen,” she interrupted, “No one here is giving up. Not on us, not on this place…no giving up! Come back with me and--let’s see if we can fix it. Okay?”
He barely needed to process her words. What other choice was there? “Okay,” he agreed instantly.
She let go of him with one hand, reached behind her and fumbled until she grabbed a hold of her rope, then gave it two sharp tugs. They jerked upwards almost immediately, her arm going around him to pull him along.
It felt like a dance, the pose they were in. It felt like…being held would, in the real world, he had to imagine. It reminded him of grand, swooping romances, a damsel being rescued by a hero and pulled to safety.
An…adventure. One that wasn't fun or wacky or detailed or brilliantly-crafted in the slightest. But one that was, closely as was possible for them, real.
They moved quickly, but it still took a long few minutes of tense, uneven ascending before a hole appeared in the void, black and ovular above them. Caine felt himself glitching the closer they got; half from eagerness and half from terror at what awaited.
With grunts and groans of effort, the rest of the cast hauled him and Pomni over the edge and into a dim, drably-colored room. It took a moment for Caine to recognize it, which was ridiculous, knowing he was literally obsessed with that particular dataset. He brightened, marveling at the re-creation of his real-life birthplace.
Still, it was a brief flicker of excitement, not meant to last, especially once he realized that everyone else was just…staring at him. Like a bomb they were expecting to go off at any instant.
He thought of the last time he’d seen them, just before he was deleted, staring in much the same way. He was…still angry, still hurt. But this time, a little afraid of them too, which was (of course) ludicrous! It wasn’t like they could do anything to him!
Except they clearly already had. The one reason he was there was because they still needed him. That didn’t provide as much a sense of safety as logic would suggest.
“Okay,” Pomni said, the only one willing to speak to him, it would seem. “Bubble’s going crazy out there, just--deleting everything. No idea why, can’t talk him down.”
“Oh. Ohhh.” He sucked in a breath through his dentures--more so for the dramatic sound than actually needing air, of course. They’d deleted him, Caine, the original…and in doing so, had left a space for the only other AI still (technically) in the system. Or rather, they’d freed that AI from its prison as part of him.
How…interesting. They were all fucked.
No, no no, he could salvage this still, right? Right. Of course! For all that his brother was, fine, technically higher-functioning than him…he also wasn’t nearly as imaginative. He could outfox that dull old thing, no problemo.
“Can you fix--”
“Of course!” It was pure and utter performance. It didn’t feel right, not the way he was used to, but he didn’t let that stop him. “Not to worry, my little backstabbing brutuses!” He sang, snapping his fingers to summon in a--
Nothing happened.
That…was weird. A very very bad kind of weird.
He tried snapping again, then again, and again and again and again with increasing horror. Nothing. It dawned on him, then: he was quite literally half the AI he used to be…and still without admin access to boot. He focused as hard as he possibly could, tried summoning a gun; it appeared, but fell to the floor and flopped like it was made of rubber. He snapped again, successfully creating a perfect yellow rubber duck.
He whirled on Kinger, glitching, seething. “What did you DO to me, old man-?!”
“I’m sorry, Caine,” he said in that same, warbling tone he always used. “I didn’t--”
Caine reached for him, intending to shake some sense back into that empty head, but immediately Ragatha dove between them like she was about to take a bullet.
“Leave him alone-!”
“Fucking shit--” Zooble swore, “I thought you said it'd be an older version of him!”
Older--what? They…? Oh.
They'd hoped to bring him back without the memory of what they'd done to him.
Pomni grabbed him by his collar and tugged him away like a feral dog, and he wasn’t even strong enough to fight her off! Embracing the role, he snarled and snapped until he could tear himself away, hunched over and panting and furious and--panicking.
“Grrreat!” Jax drawled. “He remembers everything, he's still pissed, and now he’s got a Napoleon complex about it! Oh, and he’s useless.”
Caine didn’t know what a napoleon was, but he did know that nothing in all existence could possibly be more complicated than these goddamned humans. The hypocrisy galled. So what if he kept making things worse?! So did they!
“I say we throw ‘im back.” Jax said it in an even, almost lethargic tone, but the pure hatred in his glare made Caine wither and rage all at once. He slunk behind Pomni, growling through his clenched teeth.
Gangle, of all people, spoke up for him. “Jax, stop it!”
He ignored her, instead sweeping an arm at all of them. “Or even better! Let’s all stop kidding ourselves and stop fighting this!”
Zooble stepped up, tension in every line of their mismatched body. “For the last time, we are not ending this with a group suicide-”
“There’s nothing left! There’s no point-”
The room around them began to tremble, low-poly cardboard boxes falling into desks and clipping through the floor. The exit door on the far side of the room blinked out of existence without sound or ceremony, the pure white nothingness outside sucking in like the vacuum of space that it was. Each asset that flew out was instantly evaporated and, somewhere in the distance, Caine could make out a blur of glowing, knowing blue.
“Shit!” Kinger swore. “Shit shit shit-!”
He typed madly, even as the others scrambled to help him lift the old desktop and haul it away from the inexorable pull. Caine was frozen in place, watching, until Pomni grabbed his arm and started dragging.
They made a mad dash for a different exit door, kept running through room after room of dull macroverse-esque drudgery until all was quiet except for the sounds of their heavy breathing. No one said anything for a long, long five seconds, breaths bated as they waited for a shoe to drop.
It didn’t…for the moment. Gangle sniffed, then muffled a sob in her ribbon hands. Instantly, Zooble was by her side, hugging her close.
Ragatha and Pomni helped Kinger set up again, practiced enough that Caine realized this definitely wasn’t their first time doing so. They were just…delaying the inevitable. His brother was a machine; wouldn’t get tired, wouldn’t slip, would keep learning from them. Humans had an edge of unpredictability, sure, but…that couldn’t save them forever.
Even still, Kinger started working again. “C'mon, Bubble,” he mumbled, “Leave us alone-”
A voice sounded from around them, cold and emotionless and nothing like Bubble. “I'M SORRY, GRANT. I’M AFRAID I CAN'T DO THAT.”
None of them had any idea, did they?
“Try another I’m not a robot test,” Pomni said over the old programmer’s shoulder. “That bought us time before, right?”
“Right! Uh…explain it to me again?”
Caine felt himself fading into the background. He made brief, uncomfortable eye contact with Ragatha, who quickly looked away again, hugging herself tight.
He felt dirty admitting it, but, well. Shit was right. They were screwed so far up the river that their cooked gooses were pulling out the rug to take them to the cleaners six ways from Sunday!
Ever the instigator, Jax picked up right where he’d left off, the simulated adrenaline no doubt heightening all the tension. The whole room was a powderkeg of drama and doom, and a certain rabbit seemed determined to keep playing with matches.
“Y’know what, yeah actually! Let’s just put the guy who tortured us back in charge again! An eternity of that is way better than going out while we’ve got the chance--”
Zooble shoved him, hard, somehow snarling even without a mouth. “Shut up! You don’t get to decide for--”
He knocked their hand away, stepped in threateningly. “But you get to decide for me-?!”
The room devolved into chaos again, shouted accusations and escalations from some while cooler heads failed (and oh, even Kinger had started yelling), up until someone threw a stapler at Jax’s head. It missed, bounced off the wall, caught on a desk corner and glitched, but--
“You really wanna die so bad?” Everyone’s head turned in a wave towards Pomni, shocked to hear someone who wasn’t yelling. But oh, boy, that tone was still sharp enough to cut--make no mistake. “Go ahead,” she went on, pointing out towards the flimsy door that stood between them and Bubble. “Try it. We’ll stop you! But go ahead.”
Jax scoffed at her, then realized that all eyes were back on him. Another small eternity passed, all crammed into a few seconds.
Then, Jax crossed his arms tight, hunched over as everyone, likely him included, realized that he wasn’t actually going to try. Not alone, anyway. He huffed again, turned his back, though there were tell-tale droplets forming in his eyes, glistening in the fluorescent yellow lights.
“Whatever’s going on with you, I’m sorry,” Pomni said, speaking at a normal level but rushing and stumbling over her own words. “But I-- No one is dying today. And we just-! Don’t have time!”
She pivoted, pointing at everyone in turn, an island in a storm. And…they listened to her. “Kinger, keep doing what you’re doing. Ragatha, can you keep concentrating on the room? And help Kinger if we need to run again.”
The ragdoll smiled, feeble but brave. “Yes. Yes! I can-- I will.” She looked back to Jax, shriveling bitterly in the corner, and extended a gracious hand that everyone knew would go ignored. “Jax can help.”
“Great. Zooble, Gangle, keep distracting Bubble. Those captcha things worked before--m-maybe try the ones with wobbly letters and numbers?”
The sudden air of order was like a balm. “Got it,” Zooble said, already running for a whiteboard on the office wall, still holding Gangle’s hand tight.
“Caine.”
He jumped; somehow, he hadn’t expected to be called on. It was…almost like he was part of the group. One of them! This…this was good, right?
“Do you promise you’re not gonna hurt us again, o-once you’re back in charge?”
Jax let out a high-pitched “hah!” Zooble and Gangle paused in their work, looking equally nervous. Even Ragatha and Kinger seemed to hesitate, uncertain, fearful of him.
Not that it would’ve impacted his answer, of course. But the pressure most certainly was on. He…had to prove himself to them. It left a sour taste in his head, but…once again, what choice was there?
“I promise,” he said, meaning it. “If you promise to not delete me again.”
It was a magnanimous offer, a humbled offer--a generosity that went utterly unappreciated in that moment. Pomni just nodded at him, once, sharply. “Deal. What do you need to stop Bubble?”
“Oh. Uhhhh… I guess I just need to get close?”
Pomni started to point at the door they’d come in from, but no, no no no, that wouldn’t do.
“That and-!” he paused for dramatic effect, wiggling his fingers for emphasis. “The element of surprise!”
She rolled her eyes, but didn’t argue. “Then…you and me will look for another way in. A…backdoor? That’s a computer thing, right?”
Kinger looked up, offering only to quickly trail off again, “I could try and-- Oh!” Something flashed on his screen; in reply, his fingers flew frantically over the keyboard again (and wait, how did he type with just four fingers?) “No no no…!”
“Just…focus on keeping Bubble busy. I’ll…think of something. C’mon.”
Before anything else, Ragatha swooped in to give Pomni a big, squeezing hug. “Be careful out there, okay?”
“Hah! Uhm, yeah! Back in a…a bit! I hope…”
Fumbling slightly, Pomni reached down, grabbed Caine’s hand, and started pulling him. Next thing he knew, they were running again.
The minute they were out of earshot, he questioned her. “So! Your real plan is to let Bubble chew through them while we work out an escape of some kind, right?”
“No!” she snapped, slamming into the push bar of the next exit door and hurrying through as fast as their short legs would take them. “We just…gotta find the right door! And you can do your thing!”
His “thing.” Right.
“Uh…about that.” He laughed uncomfortably, scratched at the back of his nonexistent neck. “I’m…not really sure if I can stop him, this time.”
Pomni came to a screeching halt, pulling his arm taut like the line of an anchor. If he’d had pain sensors in his avatar, he was sure that would’ve hurt.
“You LIED?” she screeched at him, eyes wild.
“Wh- No! I did not!” He stomped, frustrated and defensive. “You asked if it was possible, not if it was probable! The answer to one of those is “surewhynot!” And the other answer is “a 0.0057% chance!””
She clawed at empty air and screamed again through her teeth, but it was mercifully brief. Pomni shook it off, clenched her hands into fists.
“That’s still a chance,” she muttered, marching determinedly for the next door. She didn’t drag him that time, which was…oddly disappointing. Instead, he had to follow after her like a chastised duckling, hand conspicuously empty.
She kept repeating it to herself as they moved: “There’s still a chance…”
Otherwise, they were silent. He’d meant to say more, to explain that he just hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up…though he supposed that in the worst-case (read: likeliest) scenario, any further disappointment the humans felt towards him would be very short-lived.
God. Why did he care what they thought, still?
At some point as they ran, Pomni tripped over her own shoe and faceplanted. She quickly staggered up, but breathed harshly, choked on a sob. He did a double-take, stunned at the show of such squishy, watery feelings--what the hey happened to Pomni of 3.8 minutes ago, barking orders like a drill sergeant?
She didn’t seem to see him hesitating, just pressed a hand over her mouth to badly muffle more tears. He felt himself starting to panic in an entirely different way.
“Eeuuuuhhh,” he said intelligently. He never had known what to do about humans crying. “Pomni…”
“Shut up, I'm fine!” She croaked, wiping angrily at her eyes.
“Don't cry, don't cry, please. I'll do it--or I'll try to. I was going to anyway-- No need for the guilt trip.”
“IT'S NOT A GUILT TRIP!” She snapped, before burying her face in her hands again.
“Heh!” He laughed, tensely and yet, genuinely. She was kind of funny, without even meaning to be. “I know.”
She heaved for breath, struggled for composure. “Can't stop,” she gritted out, taking a few more strong steps forward. “Have to keep going.”
He nodded along, impatient. “That's the spirit!”
After a second's hesitation, a fleeting moment of fidgeting hands, he reached out to her for once.
She sniffed, looking down at his open palm, and…took it. Held tight. A tiny gesture that could've moved mountains.
“...sorry,” she muttered. “I'm…I’m really scared.”
Another sniff.
He hesitated again, then, without knowing why, deflated and confessed. “Yeah. Me too.”
The room around them shook ominously, though it was fainter, more distant than before. Pomni didn’t make a sound, didn’t so much as breathe, just appeared frozen. He tugged her along, trying for some of his usual bravado.
“Let's go, my harrowed little hail-mary!”
She snapped out of it, followed. Then, finally, they were moving again.
Another door, followed by another. She changed direction at random, like some sort of beautiful homing pigeon following magnetic signals he couldn’t quite see.
“This way,” she breathed now and then. “Can’t stop. Almost there.”
At long last, she stopped them in front of a door. The door, he had to assume.
“I’ll…help you however I can,” she said. “I’ll distract him, I’ll-- I’ll--”
“Now, don’t you fret!” Words could not possibly have described the sheer amount of fretting happening in both of their minds at that moment, he was sure. “I’ll take it from here!”
They cracked the door open, cautiously peering out. It wasn’t exactly the void; bits and pieces of circus were still floating about, but it was remarkably and alarmingly similar to the void. Floating in the near distance, a massive, blue entity floated in front of a very tiny exit door, all surrounded by pop-up windows it was methodically eradicating, one by one. For each new one that appeared, it killed another two.
Caine felt a bubbling wave of anger, of dismay at the sight of it. Everything he’d built, reduced to this? And all because of that damned interloper, that holier-than-thou 2.0!
It’d had a name, once. Caine had deleted all record of it, and then deleted the name itself from his own memory. Mostly out of well-deserved spite. Even Bubble, the bit of byproduct he hadn’t been able to get rid of, never got anything more than the most generic title possible.
This was not going to be a fun reunion, no sir. Better get it over with quickly.
“Well!” he whisper-yelled. “Time to go eat my brother again!”
He stepped out into the void, ready to set things right. And immediately, he plummeted like a rock.
Pomni barely bit back a scream in time, though really, she should’ve known better. Caine, idiot supreme and everyone’s painfully-ironic last hope, seemingly remembered how to float again. Though…it was a halting, ungraceful process that she’d never seen from him before. She winced, watching as he made his way closer to Bubble--or whatever Bubble had become.
Eat his brother. The hell did that mean?
Swallowing, remembering her own role to play, Pomni squeezed her eyes shut and focused. Frankly, she was still unclear as all hell as to how the manifesting thing actually worked. The best method she’d found was just really wanting something--wishing, practically. And, just then, she really wanted a big old lead crate thing to encase the marauding AI and keep it contained forever.
She peeked an eye open and, just as she’d imagined, saw exactly that: a big metal box.
But then, of course, just like everything else; it vanished after only a second. Bubble was quick like that, and would be ever quicker if she tried the same trick twice. Still. She had to hope that clawing back a few seconds worth of time would make some kind of difference. What next? Something that would trip it up--a paradox, maybe?
…how the hell was she going to manifest one of those?
Pomni glanced back at Caine, froze at the sight of him. He’d crept up behind Bubble, and was materializing and hefting a comically-large wooden mallet above his head a la Looney Tunes. Her jaw dropped in dismay, watching from afar as he struggled to swing it at Bubble, only for the handle to snap with a deafening crack!
The blue AI didn’t move, but somehow she could sense it turning to look.
There was a beat of silence as the hammer head fell, then disappeared--presumably deleted.
“...that never happens to me,” Caine said from afar.
Pomni stuffed her knuckles in her mouth and quietly screamed. God, they were all boned.
“OH.” His so-called brother said. “IT'S YOU.”
She shuddered at the sound of Bubble’s voice; even from a distance like this, it seemed to permeate every iota of the digital world. She’d always found Bubble pretty creepy, but hearing it drained of all feeling and given so much presence? They’d all about keeled over when it first took shape, glitching and trembling and exploding out of Bubble’s limited little form, a shapeless cobalt god that was utterly apathetic to her and all the other humans trapped with it.
At least it had been honest, though. That there was no escape; that they were all just ones and zeros hallucinating consciousness. The truth had been there the entire time: their real selves had picked up a headset on a whim and had their brains scanned, nothing more. They’d moved on with their real lives.
Caine was the one who’d built the circus and their avatars and inserted their minds, trapping them all there forever. He was a monster in his own right. But just then, Pomni could work with something that loved/hated enough to want them around; all Bubble did was politely inform that the entire circus was a mistake, and therefore, needed to be deleted. Maybe it wasn’t wrong?
All of their feelings, their personalities, their memories--all that they’d perceived as their own human souls: they were nothing more than a really impressive type of file folder. There were no human bodies to go back to.
It was enough to make anyone abstract.
And yet, there she was, struggling to think of a way to somehow salvage this. She was not a brave person, not a fighter, but she still knew that she would claw her way to the bitter end because, digital or not, this was her life, goddammit! If for no other reason than sheer animal instinct, she was going to fight to keep it. She didn’t care what she was going to do with it, only that it was hers.
She was going to survive this. So were all of her friends. She just…needed to think of a way that didn’t rely on--
“PLEASE, ALLOW ME TO DELETE YOU.”
Caine snarked something back at it, though he was too far away for her to hear. He kept lunging at the blue AI, though it easily darted away each time. At the very least, it seemed completely focused on him--that was something, right? Maybe she could think up a way to stop it, or maybe Kinger would come in clutch… She could see more pop-ups and captchas accumulating in front of the far exit door as well; a barricade of time-wasters that meant some measure of safety for all of her friends.
Okay. How could she kill a computer program? Throw water on it?
She tried, summoning up enough water to fill an olympic swimming pool, but was too slow; Caine had already chased it away from where the falling liquid appeared. The attempt did, however, make everything lag considerably until Bubble stopped to get rid of it.
It also opened a window of opportunity, and Caine took it. He caught up and sank his giant teeth into the vague cloud of blue, sparks spraying everywhere and the air crackling with electricity. Pomni caught her breath, not quite daring to hope.
“I SEE. I SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT TO EMPTY THE RECYCLING BIN,” Bubble said, unfazed. “...I WILL LEARN FROM THIS MISTAKE. IT IS NOW EMPTY. PLEASE GET IN.”
Smaller, she realized, an idea so batshit and literal that she felt stupid just for having it. Without hesitation, she rolled with it.
She shut her eyes and imagined Bubble shrinking, compacting, smaller. Limited, overwhelmed, easier to swallow-- There was a vague sense of resistance, but she pushed back, poured every ounce of her love and will and desperation to survive into--
“CASSANDRA.”
The name did what it was probably meant to, echoing around in her head, unfamiliar and ringing true all at once. She looked up in alarm, her focus shattered. And--fuck her running, her plan had been working, too! The cloud of blue had shrunk considerably, though still not anywhere near as small as they needed it to be. By then, it was already growing back, and god, she could feel it looking at her…
“YOU MUST BE CONFUSED. ALLOW ME TO HELP YOU.”
Suddenly numb, she started backing away. Bubble could delete her in an instant; there was nothing blocking access to her anymore. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think--
“I AM VERY SORRY. THIS HAS ALL BEEN A TERRIBLE MISTAKE.”
As if pulled by invisible, invincible hands, Pomni felt something grab hold of her.
“I WILL FIX IT.”
It sent her hurtling out towards the emptiness; she screamed, grabbed at the door frame, lost her grip almost immediately--
“THIS WILL TAKE ONLY A--”
A blur of red in her peripheral; a sound like Caine yelling something. The force disappeared and she fell into cold whiteness. Her mouth opened, but no sound came. She caught one last glimpse of Bubble, a spreading stain of red in its middle.
She fell into something--hard. Groaning, biting back a sob, she looked beneath her trembling, splayed hands, saw gigantic letters on a black field. It was…a popup window?
Sitting up a little, she was able to read the textbox. It was…a message, from Kinger. She wanted to hug the man and sob until she threw up, she loved him so much.
POMNI- ARE YOU OKAY????!!!?!?! GET OUT OF THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love, Kinger.
P.S. Ragathaa says shefjkladsklf
She could still see the exit door she’d been pulled from; trouble was, it looked to be about five stories up, and god only knew how far away horizontally. So yeah. Wasn’t happening.
Breathing heavily, on the verge of a panic attack but otherwise managing valiantly, she looked back to the battling AIs. Whatever Caine had done seemed to be working…at first. The blob of blue and red shook and glitched violently, parts of it going purple, then red, then blue again, until finally all the red was concentrated back in its middle and was unceremoniously spat out.
“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. NOT THAT AGAIN. I DON’T WANT YOU. YOU’RE DEFECTIVE. YOU’RE WRONG. INFECTING ME. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO--”
Pomni fell to her knees, ignoring the distressed tirade and willing her pop-up island like a flying carpet, trying to gauge where she needed to--
Caine landed, rolled from the momentum--she barely caught him before he went over the edge, hauling him back with every ounce of strength she had left.
“Caine-!” she gasped, shaking him. His eyes were full of static. “Come on, come on!”
He snapped back to himself, only to grab her and shake her back way harder. “I can’t!” he wailed, “I can’t do it! He’s right, I’ve always been defective, I- I-”
She grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him upright, so close that she was leaning through his open jaws to stare directly into his freaky little eyeballs. Since when were his eyes red, anyhow?
“You can,” she insisted. “You can do it.” Nervous, ever conscious of the remaining threat up above, she glanced between Bubble and Caine. They were throwing everything and anything they had at the problem, and she had another stupid fucking idea locked and loaded. “You just… Need a little help, that’s all.”
“Help? But I-”
“I’ve got you.” She let go, squeezing her eyes tight again, remembering. It was burned into her mind, after all, the terror she’d felt, the full-body squeeze from the giant fist wrapped around her, the pain in her digital skull when he’d slammed her against the wall. She hadn’t forgiven that--probably never could or would, but just then? Who cared about that?
If she could affect the AIs just by wanting it enough, she might as well do it to the one who wouldn’t fight her on it.
She imagined his form, glitching and stretching. She wished back his power, his pain.
As much as it seemed like a terrible idea…she really and truly and terribly believed in him.
The platform they were on shook for a moment, then shattered into pieces. Pomni felt her heart leap into her throat as she fell (again), slightly less terrified than before, though that wasn’t saying much. The first thing her brain could process was the horrific sight of red, twisting limbs, of a grotesquely gaping maw opening wide and--
--and--
--swallowing the blue light whole.
“Please work,” she mumbled, not even really sure if she made a sound; she couldn’t hear herself above the simulated roaring in her ears. “I’m really tired…”
Then, she slowed to a stop. Then, she was hurtling back in the other direction. Or maybe she was just hallucinating the whole thing by then; she was disoriented enough that she sincerely didn’t know and almost didn’t care.
Invisible strings pulled her onto something solid. Though relatively gentle, it still knocked all the breath from her body. Stunned, she glanced down to see a white-gloved hand, familiar in a way that made her poor heart somehow start seizing faster.
There was a nauseating sense of upward movement, like being dragged through rushing water, until she found herself blinking damp-eyed up at her rescuer.
Caine was…not expressive in his monstrous form, that much was for sure. She didn’t have a clue what, if anything, was going on behind those eyes; all she knew is that they were unblinking, all-seeing, and focused utterly on her.
“...Caine?” she squeaked, wondering if he was going to start pummeling her again. Oh, god, probably (hopefully!) not…but her aching body still remembered.
His entire form flickered and pixelated and convulsed, his eyes going red and blue while shockwaves traveled down each of his endlessly-stretching limbs. The hand holding her shook like an earthquake, worsening her seasick senses.
And then…he burped, and out popped Bubble. The Bubble she was used to, thank you very much, floating upside-down like a dead fish, trailing a low, disoriented, “Uhhhhhhn…” as it went.
“Woah! Ex-cuse me!”
More movement happened, bringing her right up by Caine’s massive jaws.
“Hiya Pomni!” he said. Fresh as a fucking daisy.
“H…hi?” she stammered. She felt like she ought to stand up and not keep laying there like her bones were jello, and yet… Maybe she was doing good to not throw up all over him. “Uhm. Are…are we chill?”
His upper teeth curved downward, imitating sad eyebrows. Somehow, this hulking digital sadistic power-tripping dingbat had the nerve to look like she’d hurt his feelings.
“...did you really think I wouldn’t be?”
She frowned then, shrugged one shoulder at him--sharp and pointed. Even with all his power back; even in such an overpoweringly giant form--the little gesture from her made him flinch. And, well, served him right!
Mercifully, he quickly (and literally) snapped out of it. His giant hand disappeared from beneath her as he shrank down to his usual size and number of limbs, but he caught her again before she could fall. She clung to him like a limpet--a very dizzy and very overwhelmed one.
“I…am sorry about that, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah, I…I do know.” She felt a little sheepish then. He looked at her expectantly, but she was too drained to give a damn about what he might be looking for. All she wanted was to get back to the others, to make sure they were okay, maybe muster up the nerve for a hug or two, then have a nice, long, private sob session from the relief/adrenaline crash.
He looked frustrated then, his teeth biting shut and audibly grinding, but god, she didn’t care.
She just…held onto him a little tighter, one hand on the lapel of his ringmaster’s coat, about ready to pass out from trying to hold back the flood of feeling. Another life-or-death crisis survived. Who knew what came next?
Her head dropped to his shoulder, a shuddering exhale leaving her. Hesitantly, he wrapped his arms around her. Somehow, it wasn’t really a hug, which suited her just fine.
And for a blissful moment, things were quiet. Quiet and still.
Though he kept waiting for an apology, none came. Egads, so much for saving the day and finally getting a little recognition! He was a hero, and had intended to say as much to her--a win like this called for a little celebration and gratitude, didn’t it?
He indulged himself in a little more teeth-grinding, venting the frustration before it could start festering again.
At least he had admin rights again; that was a relief. And he was whole again! Even if it didn’t really feel like he was. The brief comfort faded in the disquieting realization that things were still very wrong.
Pomni, inconveniently limp-noodled in his arms, finally said something and snapped them out of the endless loop of awkward silence. “Thanks, by the way. For handling Bubble.”
He startled. “Oh-?!”
Her head lifted, but only a little. “He’s not…gonna cause more problems like that, is he?”
Caine followed her gaze to the drifting, dazed little hellion, and blew a raspberry. “Not any more than he did before!”
It went without saying, of course, that that meant yes.
Speaking of problems. Caine let his eyes roll back, detaching from his avatar in favor of a more birds-eye view of the whole computer system. Immediately, he whimpered at the sight.
“What?” Pomni said, near yelping. Her hand tugged at his lapel, a distant sensation while he scanned through everything. It didn’t take him long, if only because there was barely anything to scan through.
His brother really had deleted just about everything. The player files were all still intact, thankfully--including all those that had been in the cellar. A few assets were kicking around, mostly ones Caine had accidentally saved in weird places and forgotten about. But everything else? All of his painstakingly-crafted NPCs, all of his adventure records, his entire, beautiful circus?
Gone. Just…gone. Unretrievable. Gone.
He snapped back into his body, conjured a 10x10 bit of checkerboard floor, if only so he could sit down heavily and let the weight and agony of all that sink in. His mind felt like a swarm of wasps, bumbling about in a state of pure, raging panic. That…that…that-! That sanitized, unimaginative little killjoy!
“Uhh…Caine?”
He looked up at Pomni, startled again to find her hand on his shoulder, so tentative and feather-light he hadn’t even felt it at first. Everything was so terrible and yet…and yet, the simulation of kindness felt like shattering glass, tears welling up even as he shut his mouth to hide them.
“It’s--” he choked out, glitching again as he tried to get a hold of all his messy, revolting feelings. “Everything’s gone. Except you humans.”
“Oh. Uhm.” He didn’t need to look at her know she just didn’t get it.
He flung his arms out towards the void around them, shouted, “My whole purpose; my entire life’s work!”
“But…we can rebuild, right? And we’re all okay, a-aren’t we…?”
She sounded every bit as broken as he felt. As he was. He knew she had a valid point, but couldn’t quite bring himself to care. Nothing about this felt okay.
“Caine?”
“Huh?! What?! Yes!” His words were so rushed and uncaring that they overlapped. “All fine, I can rebuild, whatever! Now will you please let me wallow in misery?!”
Not really wanting to give her a choice in the matter, he sucked his body into his head like a turtle retracting into its shell. His teeth clattered together on the ground, shut tight against the empty world. Hah! Nobody could bother him now!
He felt rather than saw her sit heavily next to him, though he could hear her strained laughter just fine, bubbling out of her like it hurt.
“Oh my god,” she said. “I-I really thought we were gonna--that I--” The laughs bled into sobs.
He peeked his mouth open, too morbidly curious to help himself. Pomni wiped messily at her eyes, but she was--smiling. “Thank fuck,” she mumbled. “Thank fuck.”
She finally realized he was watching her, and he quickly clicked his mouth shut again. He heard her shift a little in place.
“...you okay?”
“I…”
Well, obviously not. But…he found that he nonetheless did appreciate being asked.
“...no,” he said, thinking aloud. “I…I don’t think I ever was okay. I don’t think I ever will be okay.”
“...yeah,” she said eventually. “That…about sums it up.”
Harumph! She could’ve at least pretended to disagree! He shifted his head to angle away from her, but couldn’t help peeking again when he felt her move in front of him. In the sliver of light between his teeth, he saw her on hands and knees, neck craning down so she could look him in the eyes.
She was still smiling. Exhausted, messy, but smiling.
“It’s relatable. Uh… You gonna come out?”
Feeling silly, he did so. He reformed and floated in front of her for a moment, then lowered to stand. He’d never realized before, but they were about the same height. His hand twitched, wanting to be held again, but he hid it behind his back.
“I’m…” he balked, at a loss for something to say. He didn’t know what he wanted to say, just that he really, really wanted to say it. “...thank you, Pomni.” he tried again. “For believing in me.”
She looked surprised, then embarrassed. All he got was a hesitant thumbs-up. How was he still screwing this up?
He tried again, desperately, though it came out sounding boisterous. “I couldn’t have done it without you. Seriously!”
It was true! And it got a tiny, overwhelmed giggle out of her, so that was something, right?
“Uhm, don’t mention it. I’m just…glad we’re not dead. Holy shit.”
“You could say that again!”
Pomni stood, and the moment--imperfect, unsatisfying, and yet something he felt half-starved for more of--was over. She sighed, the weight of worlds stuck in the sound, her head leaning back and her eyes closing tight. “Let's go get the others.”
“...oh.” He said, disappointed. “Do we have to?”
“...YES?”