Work Text:
All of the circus members ran into the room of the office building. Zooble—who’d been forced to come after tripping and falling right into a portal that appeared in front of them—slammed the door so hard they almost knocked off one of their antennae. Gangle hit the button on the detonator she was holding, and everyone dropped to their knees as explosions rocked the building, killing the last of the zombie horde that was chasing them. The explosions knocked out the power, and the building lights all shut off at once.
After the rocking ended, everyone got to their feet and dusted themselves off.
“So, our adventure is over now, right?” Gangle asked. Suddenly, a light turned on in front of them, dimly illuminating the room. It came from a karaoke machine. The screen displayed a message to all of them:
Congratulations on surviving the Mundane Workplace Adventure! You have all been rewarded with the chance to take part in office karaoke! Have fun!
Pomni groaned, “God, what I wouldn’t give for an actually mundane adventure.” She turned to her friends, exhausted. “He’s being serious about the karaoke, isn’t he?” The others nodded. “And he’s not going to let us leave until we do it, is he?” The others shook their heads. Pomni sighed and pinched between her eyes.
“Ooh, office karaoke!” Kinger exclaimed suddenly, having just read the note. “I’ve always wanted to do that!” He began humming the chorus of Should I Stay or Should I Go, brows furrowed in concetration. He kept missing or repeating notes, and when he noticed, he started again from the beginning. The others watched him tiredly. No one wanted to tell him he was the only one who wanted to do karaoke. Well, almost no one.
“Yeah, this is lame. We’re not singing,” Jax announced. Everyone glared at him. “What? They’re not even gonna be real songs. Don’t pretend any of you actually want to sing about… I don’t know, what does Caine even like?” He paused for a moment to think. “Teeth?”
“Bees?” Ragatha suggested.
“Oh, I know! The joy of creation,” Kinger added. Pomni went up to the karaoke machine and started scrolling through the songs.
A Little Insect Named Anthophila - Caine
No End To Ingenuity (Woah-Oh Woah-Oh) - Caine
The Size of an Incisor - Caine & Bubble
“Sorry guys, Jax is right. I don’t think anyone will want to sing these,” Pomni reported. Kinger sighed and slouched in disappointment. Ragatha put a hand where his shoulder would be.
“Well, we don’t have to sing songs off the karaoke machine,” Ragatha said. “What if we just tried to remember one? Maybe we could sing… um…”
“Dancing Queen?” Gangle suggested. “I mean, everyone knows that one.” Jax began staring daggers at her. She backed away from him nervously. “Um, well, maybe we shouldn’t do that one actually, I’m probably the only one who knows the lyrics anyway—”
Zooble began singing dryly, “Ooh, you can dance. You can jive.” They were staring directly at Jax. He opened his mouth to insult them, but Kinger joined in before he could.
“Digging the dancing queen!” He looked at everyone expectantly. “Oh, wait, it’s ‘See that girl, watch that scene’ next, right?”
“It’s close,” Gangle told him. Kinger smiled.
He continued, “Ooh, see that girl, uh…”
“Watch that scene,” Gangle finished for him. Everyone (except Jax) sang the last part in unison:
“Digging the dancing queen!” Jax crossed his arms, mumbled something under his breath, and trudged away from the others to sulk in the corner and wait. The others continued singing together. Gangle mostly led them through the verses, but they all remembered the majority of the song—even Kinger, although he often sang parts in the wrong order. Pomni was very glad the lights were shut off.
Caine watched them from the circus as they sang. He hadn’t been paying much attention during the rest of the adventure—he’d gotten bored and started working on a Rubix cube recreation of the Mona Lisa—but he wanted to see what they thought of his songs. He’d made sure they were in the style of all the most popular songs in his database, hoping that would increase the odds they’d enjoy them.
But they didn’t even listen to them! Caine pushed down his disappointment and frustration as he listened to the humans. He’d just have to do better next time. And he was sure he would, especially with the new datapoints they were giving him.
He went through his memory files and separated their voice data as best he could into six different files to analyze their singing. It seemed Gangle was the most confident in the rhythms and lyrics, but Ragatha seemed the most on pitch. Pomni, Zooble, and Kinger were somewhere in the middle, although he had to rearrange some parts of Kinger’s voice files since he kept singing lyrics out of order. He relied mainly on Gangle and Ragatha’s recordings, but cross-referenced them with the others’ when he needed to. Jax hummed along to half of one of the choruses, but it was at the end of the song, where everyone was singing loudest and most confident, so he didn’t need it.
Caine wondered to himself why Jax would hum so quietly during the loudest part. Maybe he didn’t want to be heard, but if he didn’t, why would he hum at all? These organic minds were so strange. He spent a few hours making a chart of all the odd things his humans did, and the possible reasons for them, before remembering halfway through a presentation to Bubble that he’d been in the middle of organizing other human data he’d just collected.
Once he got back on track and finally finished, he further cross-referenced it with similar songs in his database to make sure the version he made was accurate. He came to the conclusion that the voice of a young, female adult would be best for the song. He made a tape appear in front of him—it was always more fun watching or listening to things when he represented them with physical objects—and pressed play. The sounds of Dancing Queen in acapella filled his office. If only he had instrumental data too.
At first, he intended simply to file it away in his database, either for making songs that the humans would like more or for playing in a future adventure. But after all that work to piece it together, he figured he might as well listen to it again. So he did.
Then he listened a third time.
And a fifth.
And a tenth.
* * *
“Yeah, this is lame. We’re not singing,” Jax announced. Everyone glared at him. “Oh, come on, I’m just saying what everyone’s thinking. See, Caine thinks this is lame and stupid, too.” He turned to Caine, who was sitting on the floor and examining the gray office wallpaper as best he could in the dark. He tapped on Caine’s shoulder, and Caine snapped out of his thoughts with a jolt. “Hey, Caine, you agree with me, right?”
“What? Oh, yes, of course, Jax!” Caine responded. Jax busted up laughing as the other humans looked between him and Caine, unimpressed. Caine waited, confused and a little embarrassed, for someone to explain what was going on. Nobody did. “Did… did I say something wrong?” he asked nervously.
“You’re fine, Caine,” Pomni told him. It didn’t seem very much like he was fine, but he decided to trust her. He went back to staring into space, his thoughts now on what Pomni had just told him. He replayed the words in his head. Even though the circus members made an effort to be friendly now that they thought he was human, was still a nice surprise when they gave him reassurance like that.
“You’re fine,” he whispered to himself. The humans looked at each other and wondered if Caine knew he was speaking out loud. They decided probably no. Kinger sighed sadly.
“Well, if no one else really wants to do karaoke, we don’t have to,” he conceded.
“Oh, no, Kinger!” Ragatha assured him. “Of course we want to do karaoke! We’ll just have to think of a song we all remember. Like, hm…”
“Dancing Queen,” Caine murmured. Everyone looked at him. His eyes glinted as he remembered listening to the song he’d made over and over in his office, dissecting what it could possibly mean for the humans and their macroverse. To the humans, it looked like he was really excited to sing Dancing Queen.
“Um… sure, Caine! That should work,” Ragatha said. He looked back at her.
“Sorry, what was that?”
“I like that song, too,” Gangle told him, smiling softly.
“Yuck, of course you would like that.” Jax scoffed. He sauntered over to Caine, knocking into Gangle on the way, and poked at Caine’s head. “C’mon people, this guy can barely keep a conversation in here. No way he’s remembering a whole song. Better to just wait for Bubble to take us back. You know.” He put a hand on Caine’s shoulder. “For everyone’s sake.”
“I too can remember a conversation!” Caine stood up indignantly. He could feel anger rising in his chest, and he fought to keep it down in fear of what would happen if he got too mad at them again. “My memory holds tens of thousands of past conversations in it.” He paused, considering his wording. That was probably not how a human would say that. It didn’t seem to matter, though, since Jax kept talking.
“Ooh, I’m sure you do, bud. Y’know, I’m trying to remember, what were we talking about before the adventure started?” Jax looked at Caine expectantly with a wide grin on his face. Caine wracked his databases for what had been going on around him at the time. Nothing came to mind. Before the adventure, he’d been busy doodling on paper from Gangle’s sketchbook.
In the vain hope that they’d been talking about his sketches, he guessed, “...bees?” Jax began laughing again, ignoring the eyes of everyone else in the room.
Kinger said, “Well, he wasn’t too far off. We were talking about insects.” Relief that he hadn’t completely messed up washed over Caine. That is, until Kinger continued, “Actually, no, that was the conversation before. Or was it after?” The others looked at each other. Until now, nobody had mentioned insects the whole day.
“Oh, boy!” Jax sighed, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “You two crazies are perfect for each other. Hey, maybe I should ask Bubble for an adventure that’s just the two of them locked in a room together. Now, that would be entertainment.”
Caine shuddered. He would very much not like to be locked in a room with Kinger, whether this was the same Kinger that created him or not. Gangle opened her mouth to say something, then decided against it. Zooble said it for her.
“Jax, for the love of god, shut the f%$!# up.” He looked at them, his grin somehow growing wider.
“Or what, Zoobie?” He propped an arm up on the flat top of Caine’s head and put his full weight on him, pretending to swoon with his face twisted in mock anguish. Caine’s legs shook as he struggled to stay standing; he’d forgotten to get up with his cane. “Oh no! I’ve been defeated by Zooble’s harsh words! How will I ever recover?”
Gangle grabbed Jax by the arm and yanked him off. Her expression was almost blank, but a quiet fury blazed behind her eyes.
“Jax,” she whispered. “Stop.” He shook her off and stepped away. She shut her eyes tight and cringed, bracing for him to retaliate by hitting her or throwing something at her or revealing all her secrets, but he only looked between her and the other humans. Zooble stood right beside her, eyes narrowed at Jax. Kinger look disappointed; Ragatha looked furious. Even Pomni was glaring at him. Behind him, Caine had gotten his cane and was leaning both on it and the wall, eyes downcast.
With a huff, Jax marched to the far side of the room, arms crossed and grumbling something about everyone not knowing how to take a joke.
“You can go ahead, Caine,” Pomni said. She smiled and put an encouraging hand on his shoulder.
“Do you… want me to?” he asked.
“Yeah. I mean, if you want,” He hesitantly went up to the karaoke machine and turned the microphone on.
“Ooh, you can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life,” he started. He kept singing, voice growing in volume as he grew more confident, the past few minutes soon forgotten. Instead of joining in, everyone looked on in surprise and a little awe; they hadn’t expected him to be such a good singer. There was a distant worry that them not joining him was a bad thing, but it was overshadowed by the joy of performing for a captive audience. And not just captive—pleased. They were smiling at him. They were listening to him because they wanted to.
“Friday night and the lights are low, looking out for a place to go…” He set the mic down (he probably didn’t need it; he’d always been told he had a very loud voice) and began moving along with the music. He tried walking to the right, but stumbled and almost fell to the floor, his legs still tired from carrying his and Jax’s weight. The humans’ faces fell, and he quickly righted himself and continued singing, not wanting to disappoint them. He decided it was best if he danced along in one spot.
The further he sang, the happier he felt. Not just happy, but normal. Putting on a show for his audience of humans again just felt right. After everything had been so strange and confusing, doing something familiar was an immense relief. He briefly wondered if this was why Gangle had asked for a “normal” adventure.
There was something else, too. The joy of being human—or at least, as close as he would get. The joy of singing office karaoke like a human, of being seen like a human. Of being understood like a human. Of being appreciated like a human. Of being wanted. As he sang, Caine felt happier than he had in a very long time.
The feeling of wrongness that pervaded since he’d come to this version of the circus still ran underneath it all, like cracks in a vase. A voice inside him screamed that he was not supposed to be on the same level as them. He was supposed to be above. But it was quieter now than it usually was. Having fun with them instead of providing them with all the fun… it felt wrong, but at the same time, it felt nice. It felt really nice.
Before he knew it, he was on the final chorus.
“Digging the dancing queen!” he belted. He began theatrically raising the arm that wasn’t holding his cane. “Digging the dancing queen!” He brought his arm down and bowed, before quickly straightening to see the looks on the others’ faces.
Pomni started clapping, and nudged Ragatha next to her to do the same. Before long, everyone (except Jax) was clapping too. Caine’s eyes widened, overjoyed. He soaked it all in until they were done before rejoining the group, still buzzing from the praise. Now that he was finished, he figured this would be the best time to ask something he’d been wondering for quite a while:
“Which nation does the dancing queen rule over, exactly?”