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The Circus had gone from a prison to a paradise now that Caine had passed the reigns over to the humans, and with it came with quite a few dramatic changes.
The digital world was hardly recognizable in all the best ways, and while Caine normally wasn't good with change, he had grown to accept that the happiness of the humans was his top priority.
And what defined that happiness was free will, the ability to choose and change things the way they saw fit, and that often extended to shaping their bodies any number of ways.
With everyone taking advantage of their conjuring abilities, avatar customization was to be expected—Zooble especially appreciating their new slew of options now they weren't limited to their box of random parts.
Yet, for the most part, the lot of them were content with the way they’ve looked over the past couple of years.
Caine had assumed that extended to Pomni who, initially, was a bit dismayed to be portrayed as a tiny jester—embarrassing in concept, adorable in execution.
But lately, Pomni had been analyzing her physique more closely, studying her features in the mirror on the main floor before deciding to make a few minor modifications.
This mostly came in the form of new outfits and experimental hairstyles.
Caine deduced that the change in attire was inevitable and often the first thing anyone considered—it turned out humans weren't all too fond of wearing the same thing everyday—it was also the easiest. The Circus didn't have seasons unless they were adventure related, and the state of infinite spring proved to be the perfect temperature for anything from jeans to shorts to swimsuits and blouses.
Sweaters were cozy, jackets were never too heavy, pajamas were commonplace when lazing about, and Pomni had tried just about everything until deciding what suited her best.
She was very much a jeans a t-shirt kind of girl, casual yet effortlessly stylish, and Caine delighted in seeing what new ensemble she had come up with on the daily. In fact, it was easily one of the highlights of his day, especially since she had mostly abandoned the comically large jester hat and now let her short dark hair flow freely.
It was something he hadn't expected to be so enticed by, and realized he must have looked like some sort of lovesick puppy obsessing over it so much.
Pomni, the one who had truly opened his eyes to what he'd been doing all along, and rallying the others to do the same, had become his most recent fascination now that adventures weren't much of a priority.
It would seem some element of his programming made it hard for him to not fixate on something or else he'd go mad.
He'd found himself pouring into his beekeeping hobby more and more to keep himself distracted from his more…indecent ideas, Kinger and Ragatha always offering their assistance in the newly installed garden and greenhouse, and yet his thoughts would always wander back to Pomni.
And he tried to not hover, he really did, especially since the status on how much the humans trusted him was still up in the air, but he could feel himself falling in love with humanity all over again through Pomni alone.
She was kind, bold, intelligent, and courageous—just about all the things that made him so enamored with mankind from the very beginning, and Caine expressed that interest through the smallest, simplest of ways.
Displays of pageantry had been his M.O. for a long while, but with his powers significantly decreased, he only ever felt comfortable with longing gazes, subtle compliments, and casual conversation, all of which Pomni seemed to reciprocate.
One might even read their recent interactions as "flirting", especially as Pomni engaged in a bit of playful teasing more and more as of late, though Caine couldn't bring himself to slap such a bold label on to what kind of dynamic the two of them had.
Friendship usually came first, right? And Pomni was his friend now, right?
Maybe he should have asked her what thought was going through her head when she initiated the conversations, when she invited him over for drinks at Zooble's bar, when she would sit beside him on the rolling hills to watch the sun set as it berated them with insults.
And all the while Caine wouldn't be watching as the sky transitioned from blue to the warm reds and subtle purples, nor as the stars began to shimmer through the clouds. Instead, he'd be watching Pomni and how the light danced across her features.
The beauty of the human race, Pomni, the two had become interchangeable in his eyes.
So that's why he couldn't help but wonder as to why Pomni was slowly turning into a cat.
Bit by bit, Pomni started obtaining more feline attributes. It had started with her hands, her once smooth fingers now coming to fine points at the tips. Caine had questioned as to what sort of convenience claws could have in her daily life, but Pomni had insisted she was just "trying something out".
"I wanna start small," Pomni had said, the tip of the claw on her index finger poking into her thumb. "I imagine you tested things out for your body before they felt right."
"Well…" Caine thought for a moment, realizing that he had experimented with his own body several times over before acquiring his signature look. The ringmaster avatar just fit his bold personality all too well, closely attributing the information fed to him by C&A with ideas of performances, showmanship, and entertainment.
The Circus, as it once was, was a wonderland of constant adrenaline, and someone of his overflowing passion had to dress the part.
But Pomni…acquiring these beastly qualities…he supposed it did make sense.
Pomni's intelligence, her resilience, her sheer stubbornness—she was the furthest thing from helpless prey, and Caine was happy the two of them seemed to be in mutual agreement about that.
But for Pomni to be showing those elements through her avatar…well, it certainly awoke something that went beyond the puppy love he was originally drowning himself in.
"I've also been working on these," Pomni said, sticking a finger in her mouth and pulling back her lips to reveal a pair of sharp canines. "I know I can make all my teeth sharp, but these ones feel more personalized."
Caine could feel his gaze lingering a few seconds longer than he found appropriate, soon enough nodding his head.
"My, how creative you're being, Pomni," he said, tugging at his collar. "Your conjuring knows no bounds."
"Thanks," Pomni said, then grinned, her newly given teeth giving her smile a dangerous edge.
Something resembling a heartbeat skipped inside of Caine's chest.
"Have you, uh, seen Pomni around lately?" Caine asked when he attended Zooble's bar the following day, nervously fiddling with the small umbrella topping his coconut martini.
"Pomni, yeah, I've seen her once or twice," Zooble said, the silver cocktail shaker between two of their four arms. "What's up? You gotta tell her something?"
"N-no, nothing like that," he said, staring down at his drink. "I just like to keep tabs on everyone. Make sure everything's hunky-dory."
Zooble nodded, well aware of what he was referring to. "She's perfectly fine, if that's what you're asking," they said, looking off somewhere in the near distance. "I'd say she's been really flourishing lately, creatively, at least."
"Creatively…" Caine mused, running a finger over the lip of his drink. "Yes, that has to be it."
"What has to be it?"
"She's expressing herself the only way she knows how: by tapping into her animal instincts! I knew humans had some ties to the animal kingdom, but to see it with my own eyes has been invigorating!" he said, taking one long sip of his drink. "Ah, yes, Pomni is in a class of her own."
"Well, you could always tell her yourself," Zooble said, gesturing with their head towards Pomni who was making her way towards the bar. "Hey, Pomni."
"Hey, Zooble," Pomni said, sitting down beside Caine.
She turned to look at him.
"Caine," she said, waving. "Didn't expect to see you here."
"J-just getting some refreshment," he said. "Got a long day of honey harvesting ahead of me."
"Oh yeah, the bees," Pomni said, a clawed finger to her chin. Her sharper canines flashed in the overhead lighting. "Kinger's been gushing about them all day."
"And Ragatha's had plenty of things to bake with the honey," Zooble added. "That honey pie from last night was amazing."
"I know," Pomni said. "I guess I'm not surprised she…"
Caine felt another lurch in his chest, his eyes flitting between Pomni and Zooble as the two engaged in idle chatter. Pomni had changed herself even more today, looking even more like a cat than yesterday.
Now her arms were decorated with smooth black fur that started at her fully clawed fingers and ended at her forearms. The same went for her legs, cheekily exposed in a pair of short-shorts, that were coated in the same slick black fur, her three-toed feet bare and flexing against the metal bars of the stool.
At some point in the conversation, Zooble had finished Pomni's signature drink and proceeded to pour it, noticeably, into a small bowl before handing it over. "Okay, that's one Bloody Mary."
"Thanks," Pomni said, taking a whiff of the contents in the bowl before extending her tongue and proceeding to lap it up.
If Caine's mouth weren't perpetually open, perhaps the others would have noticed that his jaw had dropped, but his boggle-eyed stare was hard to miss.
"You okay, Caine?" Zooble asked.
"Uh…" Caine shook his head, trying to collect himself. "W-would you mind if I get a refill, please?"
"Not a problem," Zooble said, taking Caine's coconut and getting to work. Though his eyes stopped lingering on Pomni and her latest display of cat-like behavior, he swears that his hearing processors could pick up the unmistakable hum of a low, satisfied purr.
His gaze couldn't help but wander back to Pomni, the young woman's purring growing louder as she pulled away from her bowl of Bloody Mary, a pink tongue running across her red lips with a look Caine could only describe as "satisfied".
When she meets his eyes, he feels like he's being sized up for consumption.
Caine just couldn't make sense of it. Was this ordinary human behavior and he was just blissfully unaware of it?
It certainly wouldn't be the first time that he's had to learn a thing or two about what made humans tick, and perhaps all of this could have been a learning experience that he should internalize.
"Yes, that has to be it," Caine said to himself as he prepared to leave his office and his make his way to the main floor of the Circus.
Perhaps he should consult Pomni about this, get a read on why she was acting so strangely and if it was perhaps offensive for him to be so puzzled by her recent actions.
His ignorance had cost him everything before, he would hate to make a mess of things again by repeating the same mistakes.
Yes, a single conversation would do it. They've talked plenty of times now, with or without that simmering romantic subtext, so this shouldn't be any different than the other times.
"Just once," he said, willing the doors open with a wave of his hand. "Then it'll all make sense."
But as he closed the doors to his office, his peripheral vision took note of a small slip of paper taped right over one of the doorknobs.
"Hm?"
The once hidden room had become accessible to the others as a way of establishing everyone as equals, and now Caine eagerly anticipated the humans coming by to drop some suggestions about ways to improve the Circus, but a letter being pinned to his door was certainly new.
He removed it and read it more closely.
Meet me in my room, it said.
No name, though the paw print at the bottom was all he needed to know.
When Caine arrived to Pomni's bedroom, she was being smothered with attention from all angles. Now it seemed as though she had done a full transformation, a hybrid of human and feline that sat somewhere in the middle and produced the result before him.
She now had a pair of pointed ears sprouting from her head that twitched with intrigue as she was lavished with cooing and compliments. She was also very much naked, her breasts and vagina out in the open as a tail sprouted from her exposed behind.
"So cute! So cute!" Gangle squealed as she bobbed a toy over Pomni's head. It was nothing but a stick with a string attached to the end, a rubber mouse always dangling just out of the reach of Pomni's paws.
Not that it seemed to bother her much because Zooble, whose lap she was sprawled across, was rubbing her belly.
"Cats usually don't like when you touch their stomachs," Ragatha said, readying a camera to take a couple of photographs. "She must really trust you."
They all looked up to acknowledge Caine.
"Hey, look who it is," Zooble said, speaking in a softer, sweeter voice to Pomni. "It's your favorite A.I., he's here to play with you…"
Pomni immediately perked up, her ears standing up straight and her tail batting the air as she crawled out of Zooble's lap and made her way over to Caine.
Caine gave a nervous laugh, leaning down to greet her. "Ah, yes, hello Pomni—Uh, oh dear…"
Pomni rubbed herself against Caine, starting with nuzzling his face with her own before rubbing her back and tail against him. All the while she purred and purred, relishing in her teasing.
"Go on, she loves pets," Ragatha said, her camera raised again so she could capture the moment. "Her favorite spot is the fur on her back."
Caine coughed into his fist, a shaking hand running along the exposed skin of Pomni's back. His fingers brushed against the tuft of heart-shaped fur between her shoulder blades which earned him another noise of satisfaction.
"Isn't she adorable?" Gangle said, her own smile being rather cat-like. "She really wanted to see you, Caine."
"M-me?!" Caine asked, pointing at himself as Pomni continued to rub up against him, now pacing around him in small circles, embedding him with her scent. "I-I can't see as to why…"
Zooble rolled their eyes. "Ah, oblivious as always, aren't we, Caine?"
"I think it's time we give them some privacy," Ragatha offered, the expression on the usually modest rag doll's face looking awfully cheeky.
The three agreed with a nod, heading out of the door and leaving Caine to cater to Pomni on his own.
"Are you sure about this?" he asked, Pomni resting her head right beneath his chin. "She, uh, seems like a handful, don't you think?"
"Oh, she's plenty well-behaved," Zooble said, winking. "You'll see for yourself."
"B-but—!"
The door is shut before he can say anything else, Pomni staring up at him expectedly with the same intensity she had back at the bar. Now there was no denying it, no ambiguity to spare, Pomni desired him in ways that he could only dream of.
"Uh…good kitty?" Caine said, rubbing her between the ears. "Y-yes, you're a very g-good kitty, aren't you?"
Pomni hummed in satisfaction, raising her chin to receive scratches there as well. "Mmm…."
"What was that, Pomni? Uh, kitty?"
"Meow," she said, then paced away from him, prompting him to follow her to the bed.
She leapt on top of it, taking something between her teeth and presenting it to Caine.
"Oh, what have you got there?"
Pomni dropped it into his hand, and Caine feels his internal systems kick into overdrive as he finally gets a good look at Pomni's most recent conjure. It was a collar, red on one side and blue on the other much like her mostly abandoned jester attire.
At the center is a large golden bell that jingled with the slightest movements. Ring! Ring!
Caine tried and failed to keep his hands from trembling.
"S-such a pretty collar, Pomni," Caine said, his voice a high, whiny pitch. "Would you like me to put it on for you?"
Pomni smiled, bowing her head.
"Of course I can do that for you, dear," he said, fastening the collar around Pomni's neck. "After all, cats don't have opposable thumbs, ha ha…"
Immensely satisfied with her new collar, Pomni gave an eager and rather convincing meow.
Caine feared he might just overheat and blue screen if he didn't get ahold of himself, but he couldn't help it! She was just so incredibly cute!
His eyes lingered on her chest, her small breasts with their gentle, pink nipples squished between her arms. The tail just above her exposed ass swayed in a slow, constant rhythm. And her pussy, well, it was one of many things getting harder to ignore.
Caine felt his body trembling under her gaze, his pants beginning to tighten.
"Kitty…" Caine began, his voice hoarse. "W-would you like to play?"
Once the offer was out in the open, Pomni smirked, a low, dangerous sound as if she were eyeing prey nearly making Caine reboot.
"Y-yes, of course, good kitties love to play," he said. "Let me just grab one of your toys and—"
Her claws digging into his suit jacket, she pushed him down to the bed before crawling on top of him and straddling his hips. Her tongue lapped hungrily at his jaw, purring all the while as she pressed into his crotch.
"Pomni, you—Oh…"
Pomni began to grind into him, teasing his erection as she continued to lick him. She pulled away soon enough, a hungry look on her face as she took in the rest of his body.
Her sharp fingers trailed from his chest down to his pants, pulling them down just enough to reveal his erect cock already leaking precum.
"I...I, uh," Caine stammered. "Your forwardness has really left an impression on me, Pomni. Do forgive me."
"Nya..."
Pomni leaned down and began to run her tongue along Caine's cock, nothing but an unrendered texture in the shape of a human penis with white and gray squares in place of skin.
Caine's hands bunched into fists, his body trembling as Pomni took him deeper into his mouth. He could feel the smallest pinpricks of her sharper teeth as she continued to suck him off, his cock just about reaching the back of her throat.
"P-Pomni...Oh, Pomni..."
"Mmm..." Pomni danced her tongue along his tip and shaft, shutting her eyes along the way.
"Pomni," Caine whimpered. "Please, kitty…"
She stopped before he could get a chance to climax, drool slathered all along his cock and breaking from her lips.
She crawled off of him only to splay her legs, giving him a knowing smile.
His hard cock now slick with her saliva, Caine feels more than ready to penetrate her, crawling over to hover over Pomni's bare body. Much like Pomni, he feels something feral overcoming him, his body moving on autopilot like a man possessed.
He slips his way inside, Pomni arching her back and making a high-pitched mewl as Caine fully entered her.
She reached up to grab him by the shoulders, claws digging into the fabric of his coat for leverage as he began to thrust in and out of her wet cunt.
The look on her face is that of the upmost satisfaction, closing her eyes as she moved her hips just enough to rub the lips of her cunt up against Caine's rapidly thrusting cock.
His body shuddered, the tightness and wetness of her pussy was driving him insane. He watched the subtle sway of her breasts as he pressed into her, the bell at her throat ringing with each one of his movements.
Ring! Ring! Ring! Ring! Ring!
It set the perfect tempo, Caine finding himself fucking her in time with the sound as Pomni further dug her claws into his shoulders, trailing them down his back and creating vertical tears in his coat.
"Pomni…" he breathed, fucking her all the more intensely. "Such a good kitty. Such a good, good kitty…"
Ring! Ring! Ring! Ring! Ring!
He slammed his hips into her pelvis, her pussy clenching around his twitching cock.
"Nyaaa…" Pomni lulled her head back, biting her lip as she bucked her hips. "Mmm…"
"You're doing wonderful, my dear," he panted. "So adorable.."
Caine kept up the rough pace of his thrusts, her slick cunt taking his cock so easily.
"Pomni, my adorable kitty, yes…yes…"
He's cumming soon enough. Pomni arched her back as she reached her own orgasm, sinking her claws further into his back which, if he had any pain receptors, probably would have hurt.
And, upon further consideration, maybe he wanted Pomni to hurt him.
He took a moment to collect himself as the rush of adrenaline began to dissipate, his vision fuzzing over and threatening to blue screen altogether. He pulled himself out, cum leaking from his cock and Pomni's pussy.
"Oh, Pomni," he said. "Such a good kitty, Pomni."
He gently caressed her face, Pomni leaning into the touch as she offered another content purr.
When it came to humans, and cats, he still had so much to learn.