Chapter Text
Jelly’s eyes shoot open as the sounds of intense glitching shakes the objects outside her door all the way down the hallway. She tosses her sheets off, and rolls out of bed, wasting no time dashing to her door to take a look outside. As she flings her door open, she realizes she never checked her room, but it’s too late. Her body is already standing outside in the hallway. Looking to her left, then her right, she runs to Jax’s door, and bangs on it frantically. The various objects around her are glitching, gyrating, clipping through the walls. Twice she smashes her fist against the door, and yells for him before pulling out her own copy of his key. “JAX I’M COMING IN!!” she warns loudly, forcing her way through the door. The light is off, but she can hear various objects glitching as well. Particularly, his chairs are thrown about, and the big table is upside down, the texture glitching.
The flashes are almost enough for her to be able to see a paper laid on his dresser desk thing. She never really paid too much attention to that specific furniture piece until now. She hears a growl from far away. A growl that almost sounds familiar, like a monster they’d encountered in an adventure.
Suddenly she was hit with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for those moments, despite being put in danger multiple times. The last time she’d heard such a growl, she was hanging off the back end of a train as the engine raced the falling tracks behind them. She was frozen with her hands clasping the railing, and her eyes fixated on the ground.
“Take my hand!” A familiar purple voice grazed her ears. She didn’t need to look up to know who it was. As soon as she saw the flash of yellow, she reached for it, thankfully being grasped by the blob that was connected to a pair of pink overalls, and yellow blobs for a face. Her vision had temporarily been tampered with thanks to a sneak attack from an enemy that had raided the train earlier in the adventure, which is why she was hanging off the edge in the first place. “Jax?” she yelled over the noise of the scene around them, the wind throwing their ears, her skirt, and her hair with great violence.
He looked at her with great concern, a look she couldn’t see due to the blurriness of her vision. She could barely make out his dark purple fur against the dark shadows of the busted caboose. “Are you okay?!” he yelled against the chaos around them, grabbing the door handle, and firmly wrapping an arm around her as the caboose shifted. The wooden bridge was slowly falling faster than anticipated. They needed to move now before they were swallowed by whatever waited for them below.
He looked out to the scene behind the train, but only for a quick moment before forcing her inside, and leading her back through the other cars. The others had already made their way to the engine and the two cars directly behind it. “What’s happening? I still can’t see anything!” She yelled back to him.
“Shut up, and just. Keep moving with me!” he panickedly says back to her, only stopping to open car doors to reach the next one. Once they reach the last passenger car before the coal, he throws her in by dragging her arm as hard as he can. “Hey! What!?” she yells as she stumbles in, falling over and miraculously able to grasp a nearby metal rod. He twists a wheel nearby that separates the train cars, the entirety of the last 5 cars slowing as the engine picks up speed. He’ pants as he closes the door behind him, locking it, realizing he had barely been breathing. He takes deep breaths as he turns around to face her, while she’s looking off in a random direction. He looks to Ragatha, who is staring at them with immense concern, but doesn’t know if it’s appropriate to approach. Zooble goes up to Jellybean, and looks her over as Jax sits down, taking a breath after having saved his canine friend.
“Are you okay?” Zooble asks, alarmed but physically calm.
“I... I’m not sure... I can’t feel all my limbs.” Jelly responds. Zooble checks her over, and confirms she has all of her parts still. “You’re all there. I’m guessing the shock is messing with your nervous system.. Or.. I guess.. I don’t know what to call it.”
“I think.. Nervous system is a good term.” Ragatha says slowly, on the verge of tears.
“Where’s Pomni and Gangle?” Jax asks
“They went to the engine to steer this thing.” Zooble responds.
“You mean drive?” Jellybean says, sounding unalarmed.
“Uh.. yeah. We would have you do it, but.”
“Yeah. No vision. Or hardly any anyway...”
~ snapping back to present ~
Jellybean snaps back to present day as the growl echos down the hallway outside. She swiftly closes the door behind her as she makes her way through the hall, banging on everyone’s door.
“GANGLE!”
“ZOOBLE!”
“POMNI!”
“RAGATHA!”
She bangs on Kinger’s door just for reassurance on the off chance this is the one time he’s in his room. “KINGER!!”
She runs through the hall, and looks downstairs.
“JELLY!!” She hears multiple voices call her. She looks up to see Zooble, Ragatha, and Pomni from the top of the spiral staircase with Zooble and Ragatha using their hands to accentuate their voices.
“Ragatha! Pomni! Zooble!” she tries to throw her voice. “What happened? Are you three okay??”
“We’re okay!” Pomni yells back.
“What about you?” Zooble accentuates.
“I just woke up! I heard noise, and I guess I kinda launched myself out of bed!” She yells. Just as she finishes, a loud grunt comes from downstairs, but it’s glitched, gargled, broken. The three on the stairs look down, and both Zooble and Ragatha’s eyes go small while Pomni goes stiff with fear. Jellybean does her best to look over the railing, but it’s a hair too tall. By the time she gets on her toes to see what is throwing things in the main area, all she sees is the tail end of something large and blacker than her outfit. She looks up to the other three. “Hey! I’m coming to get you! Hang tight!”
The three try to yell at her to stay put, and stay safe, but to no avail. She’s already on the move to head down the stairs, and reach the spiral staircase. At first she debated going up to avoid the monster, but she had a but too much confidence in her own conjuring abilities.
They continued to yell for her to stop, maybe try a different route, but their voices would be better spent on deaf ears.
“What do we do??” Ragatha asks the others in a panic.
“Leave her.” Zooble says, staring at the space where their usual lounge area had been run through. “Besides. I hate to say, but her and Pomni might be the only ones who can truly help.”
“But.” Ragatha starts, but doesn’t finish her thought.
“What? How could I help? I was terrible the last time this happened.” Pomni looked at them with confusion.
“Because.... I... I just have a feeling.” Zooble continues. Ragatha looks over the railing again, before backing up a few steps. “I’m going to the top to see if I can’t find Kinger’s fort. Maybe the others made it in there.”
“Yeah but... who is left...” Zooble says softly, their antennae drooping.
Ragatha walks closer, and places a hand on their arm, giving a sympathetic smile. “It’ll be okay, Zooble. Whoever it was... They’re in a better place now.”
“But how can you be so sure?” Zooble responds sadly.
Ragatha’s smile drops, and she looks to the ground for a moment. “Well.. I can’t know for sure, but.. It helps when you’ve lost so many already... To imagine they went somewhere like heaven.” She slowly looks back up at Zooble. I’m going to search for the other three.” She takes off up the stairs just as the monster roars again, making it’s way back into the main circus area.
It found Jellybean.
Jelly hears the noise, and pauses to listen, her tail flicking and her ears scanning the room. Her eyes shrink as she hears the noise again. She looks towards the entrance of the circus, and sees a massive, jagged, black stegosaurus thing if it had a wide body and neck like a Trex. It’s standing on all fours, with a mass amount of multicolored eyes darting about.
She raises an eyebrow, questioning internally if it’s just an angel she’s seeing. It faces her fully, watching, waiting for any movement. She stays frozen still for a long moment, waiting for it to make a move. “Hello...?”
It roars at her.
Her breath catches, but she continues quickly before her skirt can start to spin. “Jellybean!” Zooble calls down to her, capturing her attention with just her eyes. She refuses to move at all unless the thing moves first. They both stand there, at a stand off, until the thing starts patting it’s front foot, like an impatient animal. It blinks at her and stops its foot as she slowly takes another step. The monster mimics her movement.
“Sh!t.” the censor covers her word. Carefully, she removes her platforms, and tosses them, some of the eyes watching the parts as they fly. She scans all the eyes, noticing all the yellow eyes particularly are staring directly at her no matter what angle they’re at. She repeats in her own mind I believe in myself. Over and over in her mind as she slowly gets on all fours. She stands like a cat with it’s back hairs fully extended before she takes off, much like she would normally when playing with Jax.
The Monster stops it’s feet, then starts chasing after her. She runs in circles as she figures out exactly what to do, what door to run through, maybe a set of curtains? Hide in some blocks? Almost nothing comes to mind until she hears Gangle’s voice come from a different part of the circus. She looks around desperately, still running on all fours, looking for her ribbon friend. She slows slightly, and takes a hard right away from the tent wall. As the thing runs into the wall, it knocks out a light.
“Jellybean!” Gangle’s pitched voice barely reaches her fox ears. They flex at the vibrations. “Over here! Follow my voice!”
She follows her voice as Gangle continues singing a song to keep the stream of noise. The monster behind her quickly gets back on it’s legs, leaving a glitched mess in it’s wake.
Jelly takes a hard left, then right through some blocks to lose the thing. “I’M COMING GANGLE!” she shrieks. She sprints as fast as she can as the monster figures out a way to get past the blocks. Jelly sprints as fast as she can towards the pillow fort, watching Gangle as she opens the ‘hatch’. She aims directly for it, trying to move faster. She barrels straight in, Gangle closing the door behind her. She slams straight into a wall of pillows, which somehow is pleasant, but doesn’t feel great as her body compresses into itself.
“Oh my!” a familiar voice comes from behind her. A familiar pair of gloved hands grabs her legs, and pulls her as her now-accordian body falls to the floor. She pops back into shape, and rubs her forehead. “Oh my god. Y’all. What.” Her ‘what’ comes out with a bit of a southern twang.
She takes a quick breath in, and forces it out smoothly. “Thanks Kinger.”
“You came in at one heck of a speed there.” Kinger responds as the monster outside roars again, shaking the world around them.
She twists as she turns around, sitting on her rear but leaning back on her arms as she pants, a small smile on her muzzle. “Well. Good to know. Most of y’all. Are safe. Just need to. Find.” She pants a bit more. “Jax.”
Kinger, and Gangle look at each other with a bit of worry, but Jelly doesn’t see since her eyes are closed.
Kinger starts first. “Did you find Ragatha?”
Jelly lifts her head to look at Kinger, and her brows come together a bit. “Yeah. She’s with Zooble and Pomni.” She looks at the two in front of her as a sorrowful expression covers both of their faces, Gangle’s tears dropping and her frown deepening. Despite Kinger not having a mouth, Jelly can tell just by his eyes that something is deeply worrying him. “What’s wrong?” She pants. “Has nobody seen Jax?” She looks between the two, quicker now, a bit of worry creeping up her throat.
Kinger looks down to his lap with his hands relaxing, then looks up to Gangle. Then back to his hands. Then, to Jellybean. A beat passes as he prepares himself to speak. “Jelly... did anybody explain to you.. Abstraction?”
Her smile stretches slightly, upward. “What? No, but. I don’t see why that’s relevant.” The monster outside roars again, this time guttural like a starving beast. It stomps the ground hard enough that the pillows shake, letting in the faintest of light streams. Kinger quickly closes his eyes until the shaking stops.
Gangle crawls close to her, and places a ribbon hand atop hers, capturing her attention. She looks down at the ribbon with curiosity, a bit of dread building. She snaps her gaze to Gangle’s.
“Well.” Kinger says, Jelly still looking at Gangle as she sits up off her hands. Gangle wraps her hand around Jelly’s hand. He continues. “That... uh.. I don’t want to say monster, but uh... well, that big thing out there? That’s.. An abstracted.”
Jelly looks at the chess piece with confusion. “Wait, really? Did one get out or something?” The idea that any of her friends possibly abstracted just can’t even sprout from her imagination. Not in reality. Not in her world. No. That’s just not possible. You can’t die here, so. Abstraction? No. Not her friends. Not the people she holds so dear. She loves them too much for any of them to abstract.
Kinger looks even sadder, his body bending as he sinks slightly. “Jelly...” He puts a hand on her free hand, and slowly curls his fingers around her palm.
Her eyebrow raises high, her ears standing tall.
“Jellybee.” Gangle chimes, Jelly quickly turning her head towards Gangle. “What...? What are you saying?” Her heart picks up it’s pace again. Off in the distance, the supposed monster starts to wail. It sounds similar to crying. Sobbing even.
“Gangle....” She looks back to Kinger. “....Kinger...?”
She searches his eyes for a prolonged period. Her throat slowly starts to close, catching her breaths. “J....” she starts, unable to believe it. “No. No.” She shakes her head the second time as it comes out extended, more breathy. “Noo. No no no.” She pulls her hands away from the two, giggling. “You two. Wow. Okay. Haha. Obviously...” She looks down slowly, hanging her head.. Jax put you up to this... she trails, continuing in her own mind. The idea is already ridiculous. The idea Jax released an abstracted just to play a silly prank. Managing to convince Gangle and Kinger to go along with it.
She swallows hard as tears start to sting her eyes. “No.” she shakes out. “No that’s not...” She takes in a deep breath into her chest, stomach, and soul, as she sat tall, motioning her hands towards her torso. “Nope. This isn’t happening! I’m. Going to go find him!” She continues, standing up. Pure denial is forcing all her sadness to bottle up inside her, creating a pressure in her ears and her chest. She marches towards the exit of the pillow fort. “Let me out please.” she says somewhat cheerily with a hint of sadness behind her words.
“Jelly.” Kinger says again.
She quickly turns, snapping her attention at them. “Please.” she says harshly.
“Jelly there... there isn’t anything you can do.” Gangle says gently.
“Yeah, well. Whatever. I’m. Going to go find him.” she says, standing taller with her hands at her sides balled into fists. “I’m going to go out there. Face that monster. And I’m going to. Find him.” The longer she talks, the shorter her breaths become.
The others look at each other, Kinger nods, and Gangle stands. She looks sadly at Jelly as she watches expectantly.
“You ready?” Gangle asks, her tears falling a bit faster now.
“Yep.” Jelly answers, getting back on all fours.
Gangle opens the hatch as Kinger turns away with his eyes closed. Jelly takes off running, and Gangle closes it again. She turns to Kinger slowly. “Is he....?”
Kinger sniffles. “Yeah. Yeah Gangle....” He sighs sadly, and Gangle quickly goes to him, collapsing as his side as she wraps her arms around his torso, and rests her head on his chest. Kinger puts his hands to her back, holding her as he quietly lets out his tears. Gangle finally starts to sob quietly, her shoulders shaking as she cries.