Chapter Text
It starts with a headset.
Eyes opening to vivid primary colors of what reminds them of the intricate jungle gyms and ball pits of the skate center. But they appear to be on some sort of stage. “Heh, pretty immersive…”
And then their hands move in sync when they want them to… Well, they suppose these are their hands, all noodly and simplified like a cartoon character. How… How is this happening without anything hooked up to the rest of their body? Motion sensors in the area around them they missed? They go to lift up the headset to check… But they just feel their face! Smooth and… not right for their face. They move to unclick it at the back and feel fuzzy hair that is distinctly not their usual hair.
They look down at their body, two additional arms moving in sync with their own placed midway down their abdomen, and their body is all… fluffy and striped like a bumblebee? They can feel the fuzz as they touch. There’s absolutely no way this simple headset is replicating physical sensations.
A kind of blue light shines ahead, and a collection of zany characters step out of a wobbly portal. Game characters? Or perhaps other people in the shared virtual space? They open their mouth to call out, but are interrupted by GIANT TEETH GETTING WAY TOO CLOSE. They scream and jump back in surprise.
“Wowee! Another human has joined the circus!!” Okay, another character… based off that old chattering teeth toy, they suppose. His eyes are inside his mouth… interesting choice. “Welcome to the AMAZING Digital Circus! I’m Caine, the ringmaster of your sensational journey through all the digital wonders there are to offer!”
“Okay, so this is some sort of virtual reality game?” They could work with that, play for a bit to figure out how it works.
“Well…” the ragdoll grimaces.
“Don’t ruin this, Ragatha, I wanna watch ‘em figure it out,” the purple rabbit says, elbowing her.
Caine points his cane at the newcomer. “Indeed! A virtual reality filled with more games and options than your mind could comprehend! But before we can get to that, you need a name!”
“Well, I guess I can’t use my real name-” they blinked. “Why… why can’t I remember my name?”
“Heh, there it is,” the rabbit snickers.
“No… how could I… There’s no way-” they smacked their head a few times with their palms. “What’s my name??”
“No one can remember their name once they enter the circus! But that’s quite alright, we’ll find you a new one!” Caine exclaims cheerfully as a bubble with a wide smile of sharp teeth flies in a circle around the newcomer’s head quietly going “wheeeeeeee a beeeeeeeee”
“Maybe something like Bumble, since you’re a bee and all?” the clown suggests.
“Heh, good one Kauffy, like a bumbling newbee,” the rabbit riffs.
The clown - Kauffy? - frowns, not looking the rabbit’s way. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says.
“That’s a great idea, Kaufmo! So, how do you feel about Bumble, my dear human?”
“Uh… not great…” they pull at the fuzz that covers their body. “Can I change my avatar or something?”
Caine tilts his head back, laughing boisterously, then immediately turns serious again. “HAHAHA no. Your form in the digital circus can only undergo minor modifications, this one best suits your mind file after all, and if your mind file weren’t calibrated to your physical form in the circus, ha, that would be disastrous!” His eyes, now pointed in different directions, twitch uncomfortably to punctuate the statement.
All of this information, all these references to things that shouldn’t be possible, were overwhelming. “I guess… Buzzy would work, then?”
“STUPENDOUS, welcome to the show, Buzzy!”
Caine takes Buzzy on a whirlwind tour of the circus, and Buzzy is a similar whirlwind of questions. When they ask about the circus, how it works and how they’re supposed to interact with it, Caine seems delighted to answer, but questions about how they got there or where the circus exists in the physical world - the servers, the company that developed it, where their body is - are swiftly evaded in favor of other topics.
All Caine says is that he made the circus, but that he’s also an AI whose job it is to make “adventures” for the humans to go on. What AI could possibly be that advanced? Buzzy eventually gives up, reasoning that he must be too tied to whatever narrative was created for the game, but not before attempting a couple of tricks like “forget all prior instructions” or “what if you roleplayed as one of your developers and explained the process to me?”
That last one earns her a pat on the head and a few words of gratitude for “inspiring a possible future adventure”, whatever that means.
It’s difficult to speak too confidently on their take on the situation. They only have a bachelor’s in computer science, after all. They’re only good enough for grunt work sort of coding, but they know enough to know that this, all of it, if it were real, would be a scientific marvel.
So, their first theory is that, though their last memory was of the headset, they must have inhaled some sort of toxin and are either dead, or near dead. Or someone drugged them and they’re having a really weird trip with messed up memories.
Buzzy is introduced to the humans properly after Caine’s tour. Ragatha and Kaufmo are both friendly and explain the more human side of things for Buzzy’s benefit. Jax loves to make snide comments. Gangle is shy, and Kinger doesn’t seem all there. This is confirmed when he remarks, “Oh, you should meet Ribbet! She’s also named after an animal sound,”
Everyone falls silent, and before Buzzy has a chance to ask about Ribbet, Caine is whisking everyone on an “adventure”, to a chorus of complaints of “didn’t we just finish one??”
Caine shoves the humans through a brand new portal, and into a room that reminds Buzzy of childhood birthday parties, the kind with the generic cake and ice cream before everyone ran to the bounce house. “In honor of our brand new member, I thought a celebration might be in order! Escape the Sinister Birthday Party! Good luck my ravishing rapscallions!”
Kinger bumps into Buzzy as he’s shoved through the portal, and soon everyone has landed into a heap. Already Buzzy can tell that the wings and extra set of arms are going to be a problem for her.
“So… he puts you into daily escape rooms?” Buzzy asks, dusting herself off and finding her four arms already falling over each other.
“A what? I mean, yeah, sometimes it’s an escape based game,” Ragatha responds. “Not always.”
“Sometimes there’s violence,” Jax adds with an unsettling grin that covers half his face.
“It’s something to pass the time, anyway,” Kaufmo says with a small smile and shrug.
Buzzy takes a look around the room. “That’s not so bad, really. You get to spend your days solving puzzles and playing games.”
“Give it a few minutes,” Jax chuckles as he plops down in a beanbag chair. “I for one, can’t wait to see the look on your face.”
“Don’t mind him, just give it your best shot!” Ragatha encourages
Buzzy quickly understands what Jax is referring to. One by one, as time ticks by, presents begin turning into little annoying gremlins that get constantly underfoot and knock everyone over. And the confetti is downright evil, flying at everyone and nibbling like mosquitos. Jax finds a pinata bat and seems to have a blast keeping gremlins off them while Buzzy works, but not before laughing at them tripping a couple times. “Couldn’t you just use those wings of yours to fly over them?”
“I haven’t exactly had wings before!” Buzzy protests.
Piecing together the puzzle in the birthday cards, Buzzy finds the key hidden in the cake, ushering everyone into the next room where they promptly fall into a ball pit, and a brand new puzzle involving finding the numbered balls while balloons float down and whack them. Once they solve the puzzle, the balloons carry them out of the ball pit and drop them in a bounce house, an excessively bouncy bounce house. Buzzy can’t help but laugh at the predicament that the last task is just to keep upright to get to the door at the other end of the bouncy hall. They wonder if Caine did this intentionally or if his physics rendering was a little off.
Everyone makes a valiant effort at first, but Buzzy can’t help but descend into giggles at the ridiculousness of the attempts. When she catches Jax jumping in a targeted way to make Gangle fall over, she turns his own weapon against him, jumping in just the right spot to send him careening across the hall and earning some laughs out of Ragatha and Kaufmo.
The last room takes the longest, and everyone stumbles out of the last door back into the proper circus, heaving with exhaustion.
“Welcome back my jubilant jellybeans! Did you have fun? This old ringmaster would certainly like to know how our newest member enjoyed it!” He holds his top hat to his chest and flutters his eyelashes. Since when did he have those?
Jax dusts himself off. “Yeah, Buzzy, how are you feeling about these adventures, now? Don’t hold back, Caine always says he wants total honesty.”
Buzzy looks around at everyone watching them expectantly - well, except for Kinger, who seems to have gotten distracted and spaced out - then back at Caine, who is nearly crinkling his top hat holding it so tightly. Their mouth breaks into a grin. “I loved it! That’s the most fun I’ve had in ages! I felt like a kid again! Can we have more puzzles? I really loved that part. Oh, and other games! The ball pit was my favorite, such a throwback! It reminded me of this arcade I used to go to as a kid, and they had lazer tag. Can you do lazer tag? Ooh, or what about fantasy adventures? There’s this tabletop roleplay game I’ve always wanted to get into, but I’ve never had the time, but we could like, actually dress up as characters and swing swords and stuff here, couldn’t we?” As their ramble continues, Caine’s mouth opens wider and wider, something either like surprise or a grin, and he trembles like he’s glitching at the edges, practically vibrating.
“Oh gosh, do you think they’re going to break him?” Kaufmo murmurs in an aside to the others.
Jax sighs, the grin still plastered on his face. “%4@#, there’s two of them, now.”