Chapter Text
And here she was again. Standing in front of the blue and red doors, embarking on a journey into the unknown with nothing but hope and a vague idea of what to do. It was an oddly nostalgic feeling, despite having happened less than a month ago. So much has changed since.
Yet, there were differences. The doors were left ajar. She was alone. And this time, the adventure wasn't yet another big lie scripted from start to finish. What happened now was entirely real.
"Jax? Are you there?", Pomni yelled out.
Silence.
Not that she would have expected anything else to happen. That would have been too easy. If living in the circus for a few months taught her anything, it was that good things never happened on their own - one had to get out there and seize them on their own.
There was just one direction to go. No turning back. Pomni walked through the doors.
It was almost eerie, returning to this place on her own. Back when she arrived for the first time, she arrived together with her friends, and everything felt just so magical - the wooden furnishing, the snowglobes, the whimsical statues. She felt like she was in a fairytale.
Now, it all felt empty. Like a haunted house, after the park closed, the lights turned on, and the janitor swept the floor in his orange uniform. All the magic was gone, and Pomni saw it as all that it really was - nothing but a potemkin façade with no deeper meaning, superficially resembling what one would expect Caine's office to look like. It was all so artificial. Even the spiral staircase she ascended felt like a carefully placed intermission, a way to add dead time to an otherwise packed segment.
Still, the snowglobes... even though they were mere props, it was hard to dismiss the sheer aesthetic appeal of them. Kitsch, sure, but beautiful kitsch. And there were so many of them! Pomni was astounded by the amount of effort that must've gone into this adventure. She still didn't understand what Caine was thinking, how his mind functioned, and by now, she made peace with the fact that she never would.
It was like a row of memories. Candyland, Mildenhall Manor, Spudsy's. All of them in their self-contained bubbles, lined up like terrariums to be observed from the outside. For a second, Pomni wondered if the circus as a whole also worked like that. Were they being tracked from the outside? Just how much of Abel's story was made up? All those questions, left with no answers. For now.
The orange glow of one orb caught her eye. "Poacher's Paradise". One of the adventures they had during the suggestion box rush, skipped after what felt like less than a minute. Looking at it from a distance, it was amazing just how large that world really was - there was this expanse of savannah they initially spawned in, but there were so many more areas they didn't even enter. Swamps, jungles, a large mountain. It was like a diorama, a snowglobe with the detail of a Fabergé egg.
There even were animals! All of them were still moving, like nothing ever happened, and Pomni realized that the same probably applied to all the worlds being stored here - thousands of tiny planets, every single one of them containing life.
Out of curiosity, she tried to spot them all. A group of red ribboned rhinoceroses, one being dead. Flamingoes with pink, triangular heads. Wooden elephants with uneven eyes. Crocodiles made out of rags. She searched for an animal resembling herself, and couldn't find one - until she spotted a hot air balloon floating near the peak of the mountain, with a white envelope and a red-blue patterned wicket basket.
The only thing they weren't supposed to shoot at.
It was a strange feeling. As she walked down the shelf, she saw dozens of similar orbs - beaches, cities, volcanoes, all remnants of adventures that took place long before she arrived. How long has she been here, anyway? Maybe a month? She couldn't imagine being stuck here for years.
Near the end of the room, she saw a portal floating in the air. Grey, blue, white swirled around in ever changing patterns, with the entire object shining brighter than anything else in the room. It emitted a soft hum, which Pomni now noticed for the first time - outside of the portal, the room was dead quiet.
The location felt familiar. Was - wasn't that the place where Jax was wistfully looking into that snow globe, the one with the mountain and the hut? She remembered him being completely lost in thought looking at, despite legitimately believing that all of them were about to leave the circus soon. Whatever that adventure was, he must have some memories associated with it.
That must be the place.
To think that she would ever jump into one of those on her own volition. Things really did change around here. Pomni hopped in.
She spawned at the foot of a mountain.
In the distance, close to the peak, she could see a small wooden cabin. It was clearly inhabited - the windows were lit, smoke rose up from the chimney, and if she squinted, she could see the silhouettes of people moving around.
To her left, she could see a trail map board, indicating this place as some type of natural reserve. Beyond the usual hiking routes, small symbols littered the map - candy canes, moons, those sorts of things. Most of them were crossed off. Collectibles of some kind? That, at least, was what the massive banner to the right of that board seemed to promise.
"WELCOME TO THE TREASURE TRACKING ALPINE ADVENTURE!"
Alpine? No, that didn't fit. Judging by who inhabited the peak of it, this was clearly Mount Olympus.
She didn't pay attention to the collectibles. They must've been remnants of the adventure, and Jax in all likelihood didn't return to grab those last candy canes. Something must've happened here. Something that fundamentally changed him.
It had to be something related to that cabin. Looking at the ground, she even saw footsteps in the snow leading towards them - fresh ones, at most a few hours old. Couldn't he fly now? Not a good sign of his mental state, she thought.
At least that gave her something to track.
As she climbed up the mountain, her mind began to wander. She tried to recall what she was up to right before entering the circus, and realized that it was difficult to remember - memories of her time before Pomni were already starting to fade, losing vividness, turning into the same type of distant history that events preceding her birth were to her.
Who am I?
A black-haired jester. A brunette accountant.
A digital avatar stuck in an insane, everlasting digital world. A regular woman stuck in a monotonous, repetitive life.
Pomni. ... ... ...
She realized that she wasn't as upset about the name thing as she used to be. On an intellectual level, she knew she should feels existential dread - depersonalization, loss of identity, the whole nine yards. It was horrifying, or at least should be.
Yet, she found it more and more difficult to mount up an emotional response to it. Yes, she forgot her pre-circus name - so what? With her escaping the circus seeming more and more unlikely every day, the relevance of it kept diminishing further and further. Panicking over it turned into an obligation, not a natural response. Being Pomni wasn't all that bad.
What were the biggest problems she was dealing with as a human? Supplier conflicts, paperwork, tax bills. Ellen microwaving fish. Hinge being dry.
Now, she was climbing up Mount Olympus, trying to stop a now godlike borderline suicidal purple rabbit person from turning into a dimension-destroying eldritch beast.
She chuckled. Wasn't that just what she was looking for? She searched for adventure in that abandoned building, and found it. Diviny irony? Probably, although as time went on, she started to view it in a way more straightforward way.
Near the peak, Pomni spotted a photograph laying on a pile of snow near the path. Out of curiosity, she picked it up, holding it in her hands. It depicted three people, each holding a cup of chocolate - Jax, Kaufmo, and some frog-like individual. Was that Ribbit?
The background of the image seemed to match up with a mountain hut, though. She took it as a clue that she was on the right path. Before she folded the photograph up, and placed it in her pocket, she noticed that some spots were puffy and discolored, like they got wet and dried out later. Snow didn't do that.
As Pomni approached the hut, the sun started to set, and it began to snow. Wind started to whip up. In the distance, she could hear thunder. In a quick dash, she ran the last few yards, hoping to avoid the blunt of the blizzard. For a second, she wondered - was weather always a part of this adventure? Or was it the result of something different?
She knocked, not really expecting anyone to answer. It was easy to imagine what would happen next. Jax would refuse to come out, she'd talk to him through the door, a long conversation would follow, and so on.
None of that ended up happening. To her surprise, she heard footsteps. Not tepid ones - casual ones, determined ones, the sound of someone holding no reservations about facing whoever came to that little cabin. Did he already get better?
The door opened, and Bazooble stood in front of her.