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“You know,” began Ragatha, with that tired note in her voice that always came when she spoke of a certain rabbit, “after everything we went through, I assumed Jax would be less…”
“Of an asshole?” offered Pomni.
It had only been a month since they restabilized the Circus. But, even then it brought her no end of relief to be able to freely swear again.
“I was gonna say ‘difficult’,” Ragatha corrected, “but yeah that works too.”
Pomni couldn’t help but chuckle a bit. Ragatha had been somewhat resistant to change too. Sure she was more assertive nowadays, but she was still so terribly polite all the time. It was charming in a very Ragatha way. What was less charming was Jax’s own way of refusing change. Even after surviving the near end of their little world and the reveal they’d be stuck in here forever, Jax had somehow dodged the character development bullet. Case in point, he was currently being an ass to some random NPCs they had set loose.
Still, Pomni knew well enough that he’d changed, even a little.
“Nah, he’s gotten better,” Pomni spoke with a fond smile. “I’m pretty sure if old Jax was told we had near omnipotence over the Circus - and would exist in it forever - he’d have abstracted before lunch.”
Ragatha winced at the thought of that, “I guess you’re right, but couldn’t he get just a little bit more character development? Just enough not to torment random NPCs?”
To her credit, Pomni’s old self would find the idea of ‘tormenting NPCs’ to be kind of stupid. They’re not even real, so why care? And yet, after everything that happened, she did learn to care. Funny how finding out you’re just a brain scan running on a 30 year old computer really gives you a new perspective on what ‘real’ means.
So, she did her best to be a benevolent keeper of the new Circus, and all the minds within it, human or not. This unfortunately meant keeping Jax away from them most of the time. Not like she minded spending time with Jax, it was just such a pain that she had to do that as a chore, and not just because she enjoyed his company. Though to be honest his company was also starting to wear on her with just how dense he had been for goodness knows how long.
Come on, he even called himself an egg and still couldn’t see it? It was driving her insane! If she could just drag his stupid head out of his ass long enough to see it, maybe she’d be able to kill two birds with…
Pomni had a terrible idea. It would get her yelled at for the next 5 hours, but it might be her best shot at getting this whole thing cleared in one quick go.
Kinger had insisted it was fully possible to just conjure an object out of thin air the same way Caine did so many times, but for Pomni anything other than pulling stuff out of her personal “hammer space” felt nearly impossible. So here went nothing.
She reached behind herself just ‘off camera’ enough for cartoon logic to take over. Then with an exaggerated yank, she pulled into existence exactly what she needed. A fully functional dart gun - With bolt action!
“Uh Pomni…?” Ragatha called, “What are you doing?”
“Solving our problem,” Pomni answered as she adjusted the gun. She had no idea what she was doing, but she was pretty sure acting like she did was somehow gonna make the gun work better.
“I don’t think putting him to sleep is really gonna- woah!”
Ragatha was cut short as Pomni next conjured an oversized bright-pink dart from her pocket. There’s no way this would fit, but cartoon logic had its benefits - actually quite a few if Gangle was to be believed - and the dart slid into the barrel of the gun with a soft pop!
“I’m not planning on putting him to sleep,” Pomni commented as she lined up her shot.
“H-Hey we promised we wouldn’t mess with each other’s mind files!” Ragatha protested, “That’s like the one big no no line we had!”
By that point Ragatha’s squawking had attracted the attention of the other Circus denizens, with Gangle and Zooble approaching to see what was causing all the commotion. Jax - thankfully - remained completely unaware.
“Trust me, that is the one thing I’m not changing.”
Pomni stuck her tongue out as she aimed and pulled the trigger. It made a satisfying ‘Thip!’ as it shot out the barrel. She had aimed for Jax’s head, but she knew it would never land there. The gag would only allow one target for this dart.
“YEEEEOWCH!” Jax shrieked as the dart hit him in the butt. “What the fuck!? Who’s the wise guy?” He glared at Pomni, smoke rising from his ears as he shouted, “You!”
He took a step towards her before he erupted in a giant puff of pink, glittery smoke as the word ‘Kaboob’ popped up in front of it. Jax coughed hard and stumbled out of the smoke cloud, landing on all fours right before the other humans.
“No way,” Zooble breathed out. “No fucking way!”
“What? What happened?” Jax asked, standing back up on her feet, “why does my voice sound funny?”
Jax looked down at herself in shock, taking in all the changes Pomni had done to her. Her model had been made ever so slightly rounder, adding little curves here and there to give her a more feminine body. Then her clothes had been swapped for striped thigh high socks, a pleated skirt, and a comfy hoodie with an anime character on it. Jax couldn’t really see it, but Pomni had also given her some really pretty eyelashes.
“Pomni! What did you do!?” Jax yelled, before something seemed to catch her attention. “W-Why does my chest feel funny?” her hand flew to her own chest, grabbing at the slight softness that had been added there. Jax froze, mumbling a soft, “What the fu…?”
She turned to look at her own butt, her skirt spinning around her.
“Jax,” Ragatha asked, “are you crying?”
“What!? No!” Jax denied, wiping at her eyes. “I’m not crying! You’re crying! Shut up!”
“You know we accept you no matter what, right?” Ragatha offered sweetly.
“Well there’s nothing to accept here, because this is just a stupid prank and nothing else!” she snapped back.
“Well then why don’t you just change it back?” Zooble teased, crossing their arms.
“Y-Yeah! I’ll just… I’ll just change it back,” Jax answered, though only half heartedly, “I just need to focus for a second.”
As a fellow affectionate bully, Pomni really did appreciate teasing Jax with her friends. But she knew that rabbit well enough to know she would never have a moment of emotional vulnerability while other people were looking. She also knew that if she invited Jax to go somewhere else to talk, she’d start deflecting. So there was only one thing she could do.
“Do it, no balls,” she taunted and ran for it.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” Jax shouted as she gave chase.
“Did uh…” Gangle muttered as she watched those two run off, “did she just force femme Jax?”
Zooble just shrugged. “Eh, I’m not sure how much force was really involved.”