Chapter Text
Most of the biggest paradigm shifts in the circus are catalysed by one of Caine’s adventures, and this one is no exception.
Everyone is gathered by the main stage, having been collected by the AI seconds or minutes earlier through either verbal insistence or a finger-snap summoning. Some of the cast (really just the ones in the latter category) have visibly less energy than the others.
Zooble is generally sick of adventures before they’ve even started, so there’s nothing particularly unusual there. Pomni looks tired too, though—worn down in a new sort of way that isn’t just circus-based existential dread—and Jax would put good money on at least someone else in the circus knowing the cause. She must have complained about it by now, after all. About him.
Jax doesn’t want to think about the potential bags under his eyes connecting him to her, but fortunately, no one is willing enough to make eye-contact with him to notice.
It’s been a few days since their argument after the shootout, and they haven’t talked since. That’s what he’d been hoping for—he’d specifically told her to stop looking, and said enough awful platitudes to incentivise it besides. She’s probably just… angsting about the death of whatever plan she’d had to therapise him into being a better person. She was already sitting with the others during the awards show; she’ll be too distracted with her other friends-slash-basket-cases to bother with him soon enough.
Jax is just tired because convincing her not to be so nosy was hard work. Surely, that’s all it is.
Regardless of any potential tension, Caine seems to have gotten some of his energy for adventure-making back. He’s been talking about alternating between his own creations, suggestion box ideas, and a blender-mix of the two, and it sounded like a good enough balance of everyone’s wants that the rest of the cast agreed to give it a shot.
The AI had been almost desperately thrilled by the vague approval. He’s floating above them on the stage now, holding a piece of paper in one hand and spinning his cane in the other like he’s too excited to keep himself still. Bubble is… licking his lips, which is weird, but not enough to be surprising anymore.
“Good unspecified-time-of-day my yogurt-harvesting yolks!” Caine cries in greeting, breaking the silence. “Are you ready for a brand new, first of its kind, suggestion box inspired adventure?!”
He’s very clearly looking at Zooble as he says it, and—with great reluctance—they reply, “I’m… curious to see what you’ve actually come up with.”
“Excellent!” he beams (which is a weird thing for all-teeth-with-no-lips to convey). “Now, let’s start off with the suggestion that inspired this adventure!”
The note in Caine’s hand pops into a small cloud of confetti, before promptly reappearing in front of Zooble, who has to awkwardly grab it out of the air before it falls. They squint as they read the small slip. “…You should give Jax period cramps for a day?” they recite. There’s a very loud pause before a laugh bursts out of them.
That gets Jax’s attention. “Hold on, what?! Why?!”
“I needed you to suffer like I'd suffered.” Gangle(???) says, sounding like she didn’t even have to think before she said it, and Jax turns to her with wide eyes, not sure if he’s furious or just utterly bewildered. Clearly, she put that in the suggestion box after a particularly bad day; he’s pretty certain the girls don’t even get periods here. Zooble is barely managing to catch their breath, now mixed with vomit-inducingly fond looks in Gangle’s direction.
Caine, apparently taking the reactions as encouragement, continues. “Now, I can’t say I have much knowledge on how these ‘period cramps’ work, but it got me thinking: human genders and all their unique social experiences are fascinating! So, why not have an adventure exploring some?”
“We’re just… spending a day doing stereotypical girl or boy stuff or whatever…?” Pomni pipes up, sounding a little incredulous. She still looks tired.
“Ah-ah, not just that!” the AI corrects, clearly pleased with his upcoming twist. “I’m sure you’re already familiar enough with all of your respectively stereotypical stylisations, so I thought: how about we try swapping them for a day!”
Jax blanches. “We’re switching genders?”
“Yes you are! And, and, even better! You’ll be guiding each other through your respective tasks and activities, for better success and for bonding! It’s like a trust exercise, but better!” Caine declares, brandishing his staff at them all with a flourish.
For a moment, no one really knows what to say. Unbidden, Jax’s thoughts rocket back to the maid dress from the softball adventure.
He hadn’t actually been in the getup for that long, but it had damn well made its impact. Every time he thought he’d gotten over it in the last week, the thought—the stockings, the heart-shaped window in the chest, the weight of the skirt and its sea of ruffles—would brush up against the back of his brain like a ghost fondling living room curtains. It kept finding him at the most inconvenient times of the night. Every time his mind wandered to dresses in the past, he’d thought about how embarrassing it would be to get caught in one, looking like a girl. As it turns out, the real sleeplessness lay in the minutes after the initial horror; where the dress stopped being foreign, and actually turned out to be not half as uncomfortable as he’d thought it would be.
Even if the initial shock had worn off quickly enough, though, Jax was right. It had been embarrassing. Zooble and Gangle had laughed at him the whole time. That can never happen again, so he’s never going to wear a dress again; it’s the only conclusion that makes sense. It’s not like that’s a disappointing end to come to or anything, either. He knows what it’s like to wear one, now, which means that it’s just one more idle little pop-up thought that can be put in a box and buried with all the other curiosities-that-killed-the-cats in his life.
Given all of that, his first instinct is to refuse the adventure entirely—but that would make it obvious that the laughter had bothered him, and it isn’t supposed to. Plus, Caine has been fraying like a loose thread for a while at this point, and he thinks that denying the AI now, when he’s clearly trying, might make him go plain crazy on them.
That and, well, maybe he’s still a little bit curious too, sue him. He has no clue what an AI’s ideas on ‘stereotypical girl activities’ are, and having one of the girls forced to teach him? That could be funny. And, man, they’re going to hate having to be guys for a day.
Yeah, that could be hilarious.
“That sounds… really interesting Caine!” Ragatha says, half-hiding her grimace behind an encouraging smile.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re gonna love it, Rags.” Jax taunts, unable to resist. She glares at him in return, somewhere between scorn and a pleading ‘please don’t make him think we’re rejecting him’. Caine, predictably, doesn’t catch onto the subtext, because he practically glows with the praise.
If Jax didn’t know any better, it would almost look like the AI is tearing up as he summons a portal. “I’m so glad you’re all so excited for this new adventure! When you step through the portal, I’ll start the switch, and you’ll be assigned your tasks afterwards! Have fun, my zodiacal zygotes!”
Obediently, they all begin shuffling towards the pearlescent unknown. Jax lingers at the back, waiting for everyone else to start going through before he does the same. He wants to be able to see their transformations before they see his; the reactions to their new forms will be brilliant, he’s sure.
The room they end up in looks like ten different ideas for a gender reveal party got spat up on each other. The overwhelming swathes of pink, blue, and white would be violent if not for the pastel coloration, and there’s so many balloons that Jax can’t even see the seams where the walls meet the ceiling. At the very least, there’s cake. He can see six from where he’s standing past the balloons, presumably one for each of them.
He’s so going to throw Ragatha’s at her when he gets the chance.
“It kind of reminds me of my cousin’s gender reveal,” comments the doll in question, after apparently searching through all her options for something to fill the silence with and coming up with nothing else. “Only—uh, more.”
“You had one of those families, huh?” Zooble says, more successfully idle.
Ragatha grimaces slightly. “Just my mother’s side of the family.” she says, which makes sense given the little snippets about her mother that he’s actually listened to. She sounds like… a lot; it’s both a wonder and somehow completely predictable that she ended up with such a people pleaser for a kid.
“When do you think Caine’s going to start the—you know?” Pomni asks the room, swiftly changing the subject, and reminding Jax why exactly he hasn’t already walked up to stand by everyone and bother them. She’s right, though, nothing’s happened yet.
Of course, it’s only when you say something like that that it does happen. Typical Caine.
There’s a little popping sort of noise as the change occurs, but Jax doesn’t need to the audio cue to feel the effects take place.
It’s similar to the softball vote. He feels the new eyelashes fluttering against his face as he blinks, and the weight of his regular clothes shifting. For a second, he’s expecting a dress again, and sort of braces himself for whatever the others’ reactions are going to be to that—but instead, looking down, he finds that his usual overalls have simply shortened, ending at the midway point of his knees and his thighs. The only real change to his outfit beyond that is a slightly higher neckline at the top of the overalls, and the addition of a pair of leg warmers the same shade of yellow as his gloves. It all feels sort of… light. Easy to move in.
‘Oh,’ Jax thinks, finding it almost anticlimactic. ‘This is… kind of nice.’
It’s nice because the cuffed trousers of his typical getup get heavy at the ankles, sometimes. It’ll be easier to run around in shorts, is what he means.
Still, it takes another few moments of twisting himself around and looking at the new changes as best he can before he manages to tear his eyes away and focus on the others. Most of them seem to have finished up their initial assessment of themselves, so maybe he was distracted for a little longer than he thought. Either way, the rest of the cast’s alterations are amusing enough to focus on.
Kinger looks about how Jax had expected him to. The main difference is that the shape of his head has changed from a king chess piece’s to a queen’s shape, and he has eyelashes now.
Gangle is a bit more different, even though she never had much to indicate gender in her avatar in the first place. Her mask is somewhat rounder, and her ribbons have taken on more of a russet colour, like a darker copper coil. Her frame seems blockier, but she doesn’t look any taller, and she’s staring at her ribbons with a curious sort of fascination.
Ragatha is probably the one who’s undergone the most drastic change. Her hair is shorter, the ribbon on her head swapped for a blue and white hat, and her patchwork dress has been replaced by a plaid shirt of the same colours, with a dark blue bow hanging from its white collar. On her lower half, she's sporting a pair of trousers the same shade as the bow with bracers attached. Out of everyone in the group, she also looks the most uncomfortable with the transformation, scratching her cheek bashfully as she talks to Pomni.
It’s kind of starting to seem like Caine thinks shorts are for girls, because the main changes to Pomni’s costume are just the fact that she’s in trousers and long sleeves now. Other than that, the little twigs of hair framing her face are shorter now, and her eyes have lost their asymmetrical lashes. She doesn’t seem that bothered, but—well, he supposes that Pomni’s been uncomfortable with her digital body from the start. It’s not that different comparatively.
She’d said something like that, before... before the fight, anyway.
Who knows, maybe she doesn’t care anymore.
Zooble's swapped colours—whatever that implies about their gender—and they have eyelashes on their big eye instead of the small one. Jax honestly doesn’t know what he was expecting, but their head being green is actually pretty funny. Is there a good joke he can make about that?
Green… plants, snakes, mould…
Mould?
“Ha!” he saunters forward, interrupting whatever conversation they’d been trying to have with Gangle. “Nice one, Zoobie; you look like a block of mouldy cheese.”
Zooble just shrugs. “I figured Caine wouldn’t know what to do with me; this is probably the least weird thing he could’ve done.” they pause, giving him an indifferent once over. “You look nice.” it hardly even sounds sarcastic, but Zooble has to know by now that weird compliments are the single most annoying thing they can give him.
“Oh, shut up!” he snaps instinctively, barely grappling his face back from a flush, before realising how defensive that sounded and promptly backpedalling. “What, you wanna piece of this or somethin’, Zoobs?”
“Of you? Not even if you paid me.” they reply, and promptly turn away to the cake tables. That’s fine, he can let them go for now.
Right as Jax decides that he wants to see if the cakes actually taste like anything, however, Caine’s disembodied voice invades the room like a gust of air.
“Hello there, my organic omelettes! I hope you’re finding your new switcheroos exciting! If you head to the round table on your left, you can find your task sheet for the adventure! Just grab the one with your name on it, and you’ll be taken to your first stereotypical escapade! And don’t worry about missing the cake—you’ll be coming back to this room at the end of the last event to talk all about the adventure and enjoy the confectionary!”
Pomni hums thoughtfully. “He’s thought this one through a lot, hasn’t he? He’s really trying his best.” it’s such a vague musing—and an unnecessary one, too, because Caine is so obsessed with his adventures that it’s rare he doesn’t think them through—but he thinks about saying any of that, with any kind of nonchalance, to her, and something in his throat turns strangely bitter.
“And don’t we all love a trier.” Jax mutters instead, darkly, almost entirely to himself. She hears him anyway, and he can practically feel the way her eyes narrow against his back. All at once, the thought of staying in the room any longer suddenly becomes unbearable.
Pointedly keeping his back turned to the others, he strides over to the table with the papers on them—one for each of them, with their names at the top like Caine had said. There’s nothing written on them besides that, but he just assumes that the activities will appear at the top as they happen. Sure enough, he grabs his own, and after a second some new text appears in a glittery, eye-searing pink.
‘1 ) Learn to ride a horse’
“Huh?” Jax asks the room. By the time he looks up, however, the scenery has already changed. They’re transported individually on grabbing the task sheets, then; he’ll just have to wait for everyone else to show up.
He’s in a ranch of some kind, though much nicer than any one that he’d been to in the real world. The whole thing is nestled in a rolling hillside, grass bright and green and perfectly trimmed within the fencing meant for riding practice. The barn next to the pasture is something straight out of a rich horse girl movie or maybe Ragatha’s memories—jewel red and gleaming in a fake sun—and, just outside of the fencepost, a pair of horses wait patiently. Thoroughbred, maybe.
Jax has hitched a ride on a good lot of weird creatures on escapades in the circus, but he’s never ridden a horse before. As far as a first activity goes in a ‘gender stereotypes’ adventure, it could be worse. At the very least, if the horse bucks him off the second he gets on, the pain won’t be as bad in a rabbit body as it would be in a human one. Don’t some horses prefer women, too?
Well, okay, that shouldn’t matter anyway. He’s still a man—even if his avatar looks different right now, it’ll be turning back at the end of the day, pumpkin-carriage-glass-slipper-style. It’s not permanent. That would be weird. The digital horses might not be smart enough to tell the difference… but maybe they will be.
There’s a bubble-pop of air as someone else appears next to Jax.
Absolutely just his luck, Pomni is the second person here. Fortunately, she looks about as pleased about it as he is—which is to say not at all—judging by the long, boulder-heavy stare she gives him.
He’d been planning to ignore her for this adventure, and also until he figures out how to spring back into pranks and unfriendly jokes like nothing happened. She weirded him out the other day, though, so he’s having… mental writer’s block, or something. Nevertheless, even if the lack of commentary makes moments like this awkward, he’s not planning on going back on his original strategy. He’ll just stare vaguely at the horses until someone else finally shows up.
Or, well, that was the plan, but then a good twenty seconds pass, and no one else shows up. And there’s only two horses. And learning to ride a horse implies someone is going to teach him.
Pomni, apparently, realises what this means at the same time that he does—or maybe she figures it out from the face he starts making.
“…Caine didn’t say anything about this being a paired adventure.” she states flatly, looking out at the horses like maybe one will come and run her over.
Jax scoffs, crumpling the paper he’d forgotten was in his hand slightly as his fist clenches. “Yeah, because he loves pleasant surprises,” he seethes, and then tilts his head away, stuffing the sheet in his pocket. “There’s probably a time limit on the tasks or something. I’m gonna go wait this stupid thing out.”
Pomni cuts him off before he can so much as take a step in the other direction.
“If there was a time limit, Caine would have mentioned it by now—you know he likes using them to up the stakes,” he hates that she’s been here long enough to know that. “Do you really wanna drag this out longer than we need to to sulk?”
He wouldn’t mind dragging this adventure out, actually, but if he says that, she’ll ask why. “So, what, you wanna kiss and make up, Pommers?” he sneers instead.
She looks at him, long and hard, and it almost, almost makes him regret the joke.
“Look,” she starts abruptly, heaving a sigh bigger than her body. “Some of the stuff I said during that argument was too far, and I’m sorry, okay? I know even if you’re sorry for the stuff you said that you’re not going to say it, so—whatever. If you really, really don’t want to be friends, then fine! We don’t have to be friends. But you’ve been weird ever since we fought and even if we’re not friends or teammates or anything, you don’t get to decide whether or not I’m allowed to care about you. I do, I care about all of you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
For the few seconds that take up the small eternity of aftermath, Jax doesn’t know what to say. Because, well, he thought that argument before the awards show was going to be the end of it—that she’d thought he was fun to be around for all of about half an hour and maybe a little of the adventure before that, but that he’d successfully corrected the assumption. He’d said so much to get her off his back, both metaphorically, and literally when she started trying to fight him.
They were supposed to be kind of weird for a few weeks, and then things would go back to normal. He’d think of a good prank, bother her enough that she’d run off to the others to complain about him with them, and basically forget that she’d ever thought she enjoyed his company for as much as a moment. Maybe it was a little disappointing, sure, but the kind of entertainment she’d been offering came with the stipulation of friendship, and feelings, and he couldn’t have those things. Not here.
That was how it was supposed to go. What is he supposed to do with what she’s giving him here? He can’t—every time she looks at him, he’s going to be forced think about it—he knows it’s not going to leave his head now that she’s put it out into the open. If there really is nothing he can do about it, what is he meant to do?
Be friends?
“You really do sound like you’re coming onto me, you know.” he pushes, because the silence was getting a little too oppressive, and he doesn’t know what else he should say.
“I just want you to be okay, Jax.” she hits back, eyebrows furrowed and tone half-desperate-tired and far, far too sincere. It’s such a nice sentiment.
Jax wonders how long it’s really going to last.
There’s a long moment, like holding a breath, but the only thing he can come up with in return is, “…Do you even know how to ride a horse?”
“No,” she answers, even though the look in her eyes reads somewhere between an olive branch and I’m not done with you yet. “Let’s go figure this thing out.”