Chapter Text
The six main characters of the Amazing Digital Circus stood there in a row on the main stage, waiting.
Pomni, the little red and blue jester, had a guarded posture with her arms close to her chest, as was typical for her. New to the Circus, she wasn't used to how unpredictable and random it was, and it had her always hovering at a low boil of anxiety.
The show had yet to start; Caine the ringmaster was missing. The other five just stood there with neutral or even pleased expressions.
"Wh-what's going on?" Pomni asked. "This is the right place and time, isn't it? Why isn't the show starting?"
"Oh boy, it's probably one of these again," Zooble rolled their eyes. Zooble was a collection of shapes and limbs stuck onto a jellybean shaped body, with a pink triangular head.
"I think Caine's looking for an idea," Ragatha said quietly down to Pomni. The taller character was a sweet and soft-looking rag doll, her only peculiarity being that one of her eyes was a blue button that didn't seem to function for sight. "So um... be careful."
"Be 'careful'?" Pomni repeated.
"Yup, be careful," Jax confirmed. The lanky purple humanoid had some rabbit-ish features like his ears and feet, and big yellow eyes filled mostly with black pupils and a constant yellow Cheshire grin. "Anything you say or do could be something that sets him off into an idea for a wild adventure. Exciting, right?"
Pomni was far from excited. That explanation just set her stress up another notch. She glanced over to Kinger, who had quite the eponymous name because he was fashioned after a white king chess piece. Disembodied glove hands, misaligned bloodshot eyes, and a purple robe were his only other major features. He trembled subtly, his posture seeming to speak of the endless things he had been subjected to in previous adventures. But then, he tended to always look like that.
The only simpler character than Kinger was Gangle. She was merely a theater Tragedy mask with a body made out of thin strips of red ribbon. As always in her Tragedy mask, she looked upset and on the verge of tears. She nonetheless piped up. "Maybe we could do something about fixing my Comedy mask again? That could be fun, right?"
There appeared to be no response, from Caine or otherwise.
"Aw..."
Feeling like she was going to go nuts if she didn't do something besides standing there and jitter like Kinger, she walked over to the wings of the stage, peering into them. She felt like there should be more back there, but it was after all a "digital" circus, so it didn't require any apparatus for operating a theater in the real world.
The real world. How Pomni longed for it. She felt like whatever monotony she was enduring before she was sucked into this colorful purgatory surely was better than constantly having her senses bombarded by utter nonsense. She did notice a particular item in the wings that drew her attention; it was a mirror. The mirror was slightly slanted, had an ostentatious yellow border with little white lights on it, and had a placard on top with overly-cartoon versions of Caine's head and Bubble's entire being, with the phrase "ARE YOU READY FOR THE SHOW?" in alternating red, yellow, and blue letters.
Pomni knew what she now "looked like" in the circus, but it always gave her pause to look at herself again. Her face seemed to lack a nose but she still had a dim sense of "smell" somehow. Her pupils were red and blue in quadrants, she was dressed in a jester outfit of red and blue with yellow accents. Her face and skin was stark white, with dark brown hair and black eyelids that came down as she felt a wave of depression while staring at her reflection.
This was who she was now? Somewhere in her mind she knew that others had it worse -what was Zooble supposed to be, anyway?- but she was consumed by disappointment nonetheless as despite having a humanoid form, she still wouldn't have been mistaken for a "real" human.
And what was that, anyway? A living chess piece and a small spool of ribbon were "humans", too? It still felt like a nightmare, but it was one she'd been caught in for days now.
A dark mood clouded her mind as she rubbed her forehead with her red glove. "Wish I didn't look like this."
Jax swiveled his torso to look at her with an alarmed face. "Uh oh."
Zooble's mismatched eyes grew wide, then they narrowed them. "Pomni! What did we just tell you!?"
Caine appeared in midair. Dressed in magenta coattails and black slacks, the mostly-humanoid computer program had no "real" head, but had one made out of dentures and two floating eyeballs, one blue and one green. He was their ringmaster, the warden of all of their "adventures". Pomni cowered. She felt like she had messed up, but she didn't know how. Caine was carrying his black rod with a gold tip in one hand and a sky blue lamp with a big off-white shade on it in another.
"Well well well!" Caine said, his voice as always bombastic and full of cheer. "It sounds like someone just rubbed on a lamp three times and made a wish!" He tapped on the lamp he was holding, then threw it behind him where it broke in a spectacular display of porcelain and sound.
"I, um-!" Pomni stammered.
"We can't have you dissatisfied with your form, my dear!" Caine folded his arms. "That's no fun! So... today's adventure will involve what Pomni should look like!"
Kinger's trembling seemed to intensify. Zooble had their gloved hand on their face, covering as much of their eyes as they could. Even Ragatha looked worried. Pomni felt sick to her stomach, or whatever she had that approximated one now.
"Can I choose what I look like?" Pomni asked weakly, knowing immediately it was a futile question.
"Of course not!" Caine took a break to laugh heartily. "Where's the fun in that? I'm one of those genies who answers your wish in the most fun and surprising way possible!" He spun his rod and pointed it at Pomni. "So be prepared to have fun and be surprised!"
Pomni's pupils shrank. She looked to Ragatha, who looked sympathetic, mouthing a "sorry".
But then, Caine froze in that position with his rod out. His pupils turned into little green and blue dots and started "circling" his eyeballs, leaving lighter trails of themselves behind.
"Uh..." Pomni breathed out weakly.
"He's processing," Kinger said suddenly.
"Ah man, this could take awhile," Jax put his hands on his hips, "he could be like this for seconds or hours."
Kinger put a hooked finger closer to his eyes, bending over slightly in thought. "Hm, maybe I could check on my insect collection while we wait."
"Oh, about that, Kinger," Jax chuckled into a fist. "Your centipede may have gone missing again. No idea how that happened."
"Jax!" Ragatha's pupil became tiny. "What is wrong with you!?"
"Oh no, not Maverick!" Kinger put his hands on the sides of his head. "The poor guy might get hungry!"
"You name your bugs?" Pomni's voice was flat and distant.
"Of course!" Kinger nodded.
Ragatha erupted into a full body shiver, looking uncomfortable. "Eugh!"
Caine's eyes suddenly snapped back to normal. "Okay! Sorry about that, I had to let the ol' blast processing work for a moment there. I was estimating about twenty years of human cultural predictions to figure out what I should do to you!"
Pomni's mouth hung open but only a tiny note of confusion and despair came out. That expression somehow filled her with intense dread.
Caine flew over Pomni, put an arm around her, and held his other arm out in the distance. "Here's what I see, Pomni. In the far-flung future of about twenty years from now... the creators of the Amazing Digital Circus will want to remake it from the ground up. More delicious polygons, more texturous textures! More... explodier blast processing!" He chuckled.
"I..." Pomni had no thoughts for the nonsense words pouring from Caine's teeth.
"Now don't worry, all of our favorite characters will be there and as we remember them," Caine flew away from Pomni and swept his arms around to indicate the group. "Only in STUNNING HIGH DEFINITION!"
"Tch, as if you could improve on my model," Jax scoffed, arms tightly folded.
"But!" Caine held a finger up. "For some reason- for some reason, the audience has all decided on one peculiar little thing." He thrust his finger down at Pomni. "That you should be...!"
He swirled his rod around and pointed it at her.
There was a cloud of colorful red and blue smoke, then everything was different. Everything was enormous!
Or- was she just-
She looked at the mirror in a hurry and instantly shrieked.
"A mouse...!" Ragatha gasped, enchanted.
"A MOUSE!" Caine exclaimed in triumph, then started rubbing his lower teeth in confusion. "Man, humans are weird. Why would they think you should be a mouse?"
Pomni sputtered as she took in her new form at the mirror. She had mostly the same proportions as before, but was about a tenth the size. Huge white radar-dish-like ears sprouted from her jester hat, and she was horrified to feel that she could actually feel from them, touching them as if they were fake. Her eyes were the same, clothes were the same, her fur was still stark white, but now she also had a cartoon mouse snout ending in a nose, partitioned similarly to her eyes. She felt her muzzle with her hands, and suddenly became aware of the rubber scent of her red-and-blue gloves; her sense of smell seemed to be much stronger. And behind her, a thin pink tail protruded from the back of her jester shorts. She wiggled it around. How did she know how to do that? She'd never had a tail before!
Pomni's pupils shrank to tiny little dots as the now-titanic bubble form of Bubble appeared behind her, reflected in the mirror. Pomni whirled around; Bubble's sharp toothy grin was gigantic.
"Hey Pomni!" Bubble chirped. "I got a denticure at the spa to sharpen my teeth!" He snapped them together. "Whatcha think!?"
"YEEEEAAAAGH!" Pomni leaped twice her size into the air, then in midair, her feet pedaled and she dashed straight forward with the sound of a gunshot and a plume of smoke, trying to find a place to run as gravity reasserted itself on her.
"Aw, don't do that, Bubble!" Ragatha protested, bending over to catch Pomni and holding her up. Pomni looked up at the face of the doll which now filled most of her vision. "She's just a cute little mousie, yes she is."
"Gh-!" Pomni flinched as Ragatha nuzzled her, and was keenly aware of the plastic of Ragatha's blue button eye as well as the softness of the material of her face.
"Haha, check you out," Jax came closer to the two, "a regular >awoooogah!<!" Jax's face twisted in confusion as his mouth was blocked out by a censor bar to silence what he had tried to say. "What the... why can't I say >awoooogah!<? That's not a swear!"
"Oh, um, well," Caine stammered nervously, his eyes looking left and right. "You... you could call her a mouse that is mini, but you can't call her... what you tried to say. If you did we could open ourselves up to lawsuits."
Jax's face scrunched, head shaking left to right. "Okay whatever. I liked the midair dash, even-shorter stuff. Your cartooniness levels must have gone up."
"Why am I a mouse...!?" Pomni squeaked.
"What a great adventure we have for everyone today," Caine clapped, proud of himself. "Why am you a mouse? If you can't find the answer, I have hidden a special piece of cheese in the Circus. If you eat it, you will change back to your original form! I was considering using a mushroom or some kind of potion, but we also cannot use those to embiggen you for legal reasons. Sorry!"
Pomni groaned, overwhelmed.
"Anyway, mice love cheese, so go find it if you'd like to no longer be a mouse!" Caine said. "Or... do they like cheese? Bwa ha... BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!" He vanished in a puff of gray smoke and Bubble wandered offstage.
"What did that mean...?" Pomni sniffed. "That's terrifying!"
"Eh, could be worse," Zooble walked up to everyone looking at Pomni, sitting in Ragatha's palms. "Once I wished to be more symmetrical. He turned me into a cactus, Pomni. A symmetrical cactus."
"Uh..."
"And the worst part is it almost worked for me!" Zooble looked off to the side, folding their arms.
Gangle started to slink away quietly, beneath the notice of the others.
"Man, she sure is cute, huh?" Kinger chuckled at the tiny Pomni mouse.
"Yeah, I just... I wanna pick her up and throw her for some reason," Jax chuckled, his shoulders scrunching up and face narrowing devilishly. His hands came out to grab her.
"Jax, no!" Ragatha closed her hands around Pomni, leaving only her head protruding, and held them up and away from herself. "What is the matter with you?"
"C'mon, Raggie, it'll be fun!" Jax flailed his hands to try to reach Pomni and almost succeeded. Panicking, Pomni popped herself out of Ragatha's grasp and leaped onto the ground, scampering away.
"Ah yeah," Jax smirked, "two cartoon animals in a chase? I love the classics."
He vanished in a puff of smoke, reappearing in Pomni's path. "Wait 'til you learn that one. It's a lot of fun!" His hands reached down to scoop up Pomni, closing around her body.
Pomni took in breaths of fear as Jax chuckled maliciously into her face. As her stress rose her mouth opened. Her head grew to about twice its size and her now dagger-like teeth sank into Jax's yellow gloved hand.
"YEOW!" Jax dropped her to the ground, wringing his hand and holding it with the other. Zooble laughed.
Pomni started to run away again.
"Oh no ya don't, you little pipsqueak," Jax was now determined, and he ran up behind her. "You think you're gonna out-cartoon me on your first day as a cartoon animal? Not likely!"
Jax somehow gained on the mouse Pomni with his ambling run, caught Pomni with his protruding toes, and launched her into the air to about Jax's chest level. He grabbed Pomni with his uninjured hand, spun around, and then pitched the mouse straight into the air.
"YeaaaaaAAAAAAA!" Pomni yelled.
"Do a flip!" Jax called out with his hands positioned on the sides of his mouth.
When Pomni reached the apex of her jump, she instinctively curled into a ball and started flipping over and over and again. As the world revolved around her, she somehow landed directly on her feet after countless flips. Stunned, her arms came out to the side in a pose of presentation. She let out a breath of adrenaline as she heard a brassy fanfare of celebration come from nowhere. "Huh!"
"Hey, nice," Jax laughed, giving a thumbs up.
"What was that about?" Ragatha demanded, staring at Jax with hands on her hips.
"What? I knew she'd be fine," Jax examined his injured hand with a suddenly-bored expression. He held up a finger. "One, she's a mouse, with very low surface area." He added a second finger. "Two, she's a cartoon mouse, so she's got a ton of bonuses to escape injury unharmed." Then, a third. "Three, she's a cartoon circus mouse, so she's got all those innate acrobatics stashed away in her stat sheet somewhere."
Pomni was baffled, but she did find it at least a little fun.
"But you can't just-" Ragatha started.
"You should know by now that I always have a reason for throwing a rodent," Jax bragged, his fingers daintily on his chest. "No different today."
"Moron," Zooble grumbled.
Gangle returned to the stage and walked up near the small jester mouse. She crouched down, becoming a little pile of red ribbon on the floor, her big Tragedy mask staring right at the mouse.
"Hey Pomni," Gangle said in her dour voice, "do you wanna be a small mouse?"
"I... I don't know," Pomni shook her head. "I don't think so. I didn't need to be any shorter than I was before. I was already the smallest of all of you!"
"If you want to change back, follow me," Gangle said, getting back up into a standing position and turning around. "I found out what you're supposed to do."
Pomni blinked and her little nose twitched. What she was supposed to do?
She followed Gangle, and the others followed along with nothing better to do.
"Oh, I see," Ragatha observed.
Near a small corner of the floor of the main Circus hall, a little maze had appeared. Its walls and floor were a plastic yellow, and the very top of it was clear. Pomni hopped onto the top of the maze and looked around through the clear ceiling. It was fairly complex, but small enough that it shouldn't be too difficult. At the very end of the maze was a small white plate with a piece of cream-colored cartoon cheese with a bunch of holes in it. Somehow, it was hovering about a millimeter from the plate it was on and rotating slowly, with no clear indication how it was accomplishing this.
"Okay so I... this- this, this way, right, left... straight," Pomni felt like her tiny head was spinning. "Ugh, I'm no good at mazes."
"The human mind can only process about eight chunks of data at once without getting confused," Kinger said, "who knows what the mouse mind is capable of?"
"How do you know that?" Gangle wondered.
"I forgot," Kinger said flatly.
"Mice are good at mazes," Jax shrugged. "Just put her in there and she'll find her way. Follow the nose, yada yada."
Pomni put her head into the entrance of the maze, sniffing around. "I... I don't smell cheese. What... what is that smell?"
"Bad smell?" Ragatha wondered with a wince.
"No, it smells good... like, too good," Pomni blinked. "But it doesn't smell like cheese. Wha- what is that smell? It's so powerful, nostalgic..."
"Uh, careful there, sport," Jax pulled her back by the tail. "Some cartoon mice fall victim to that thing where you can be literally carried through the air by an attractive scent. It could be dangerous."
"Isn't it my only chance to get back to normal, though?" Pomni huffed. "And let my tail go!"
Jax chuckled, complying. Pomni shook her head. "My tail". What a weird thing to suddenly have to say.
Zooble groaned. "Are you guys stupid? There's an obvious solution here." Zooble tapped on the top of the maze with their claw hand. "She just goes into the maze and we give her directions. The top is clear. Duh."
"Oh," Jax looked down at the maze. His voice turned nervous. "Oh right of course. Haha, I knew that the whole time."
"The fact that the answer is so obvious kind of concerns me, though," Ragatha pondered. "Doesn't that usually mean there's a trick?"
"Don't overthink yourself into a box," Zooble scolded her. "It's not that deep. It's a maze, it's a challenge. Just do it."
Pomni sighed, venturing into the maze. The plastic of the floor of the maze was so smooth it was almost slippery. Pomni almost felt the urge to get on all fours and scamper through the maze, but something told her she should probably not get into that habit, especially if she managed to change back.
Suddenly, all five of the other characters started talking at once, their voices colliding in a cacophony. Pomni squeaked and her body tensed up as the discordant barrage assaulted her large ears. She pulled them toward herself and over her hat to try to muffle out the sound. It only mostly worked.
"C'mon, I'll tell her how to get through the maze," Jax pushed his thumb into his chest. "I'm a fellow cartoon animal."
"You're just gonna direct her into all the dead-ends like you think that's funny!" Zooble accused with a point of their finger.
"Golly, I really want to help, but I'm just terrible with directions," Kinger said, shaking his fists up and down nervously.
"I should tell her the way to go," Gangle said with a pout. "I found the maze."
"QUIET!" Pomni squeaked from within the maze. "Ragatha, you do it. ...Please."
Ragatha looked gracious and humble at this, placing a hand to her chest, but nodded. "Sure! Okay, first..."
Ragatha patiently guided Pomni through the maze. She found her voice easy to listen to, and Ragatha's directions were clear and concise, and when she faltered at a direction or two she apologized and helped correct Pomni's path. It was pleasant, and Pomni got to the end in no time, standing above the rotating cheese.
"Here it is," Pomni said. She sniffed it with her mouse nose. "Well uh, there's that smell. It smells so strong. Like, I should know what it is, but it also smells so much more than that- I have no idea, like it's being buried with all the new signals my nose is getting."
Zooble shook their head. "You get used to the weirdness after awhile."
Pomni reached down to grab the cheese, and it stopped roating. She opened her mouth.
"Pomni, wait!" Ragatha implored.
"If you eat the cheese and transform back now, you'll probably get crushed by the maze and die!" Gangle warned. "Don't do that."
"O-oh," Pomni's little pupils became pinpricks.
"Eh, dyin's not so bad," Jax shrugged. "We've all got a few deaths under our belt by this point."
A cold wave of dread washed over Pomni. "...What."
"If you die in the digital world, you just reappear in your room!" Kinger explained. "It's very convenient and not at all permanent."
"Yeah but... wait, let's not give her the wrong idea," Ragatha cautioned. "You still kind of... well, 'experience' death. Like what that's supposed to feel like? I mean... normal humans, they can't come back from it, but we can. It's not... it's not exactly pleasant."
Pomni let out a small squeak, in a daze. Not even death was a release from this place. She was trapped. Trapped in a maze, trapped in a mouse body, trapped in a digital world.
Forever.
"Ngh... hnh..." Pomni had black tears bubbling up in the corner of her eyes. She wiped her eyes off with her arm. She sniffled. the tears were staining her fur. "Her" fur. She couldn't take it, she started breaking down, crying some more.
"Oh, no, Pomni honey..." Ragatha groaned, looking down at the mouse.
"Another Pomni peel-out," Jax sighed.
"Guess we laid it on too thick," Zooble shook their head. "Our bad."
Pomni continued to sniffle, trying to get her thoughts under control so she could at least escape the maze.
"Oh, hi Maverick."
That was Kinger's voice, wasn't it?
Ragatha screamed. "No! Oh god! Ew! EWWWWW!"
"Uh oh..." Jax laughed nervously. "Hey Pomni, you don't think you can find your way back out, do you?"
"What is it?" Pomni blinked, wiping her tears away again. She sniffed around and smelled an unfamiliar, somewhat acrid smell. "What's going on?"
"The centipede has entered the maze!" Zooble reported. "We gotta get you out of there!"
"What!?" Pomni snapped out of her funk and looked left and right. "How!?"
"I know!" Gangle held up a ribbon. "I'll try drawing you a path to get you around the centipede with my ribbon hand. We can get around it and then get you to the exit."
In the distance, Pomni heard a rushing and skittering sound. She must not have had much time.
"Okay, go!" Pomni nodded, holding the cheese close to herself. Gangle dragged the ribbon on the glass of the maze, and Pomni kept her eyes on it as she followed it, it highlighting the top of the turned she needed to make.
The centipede itself was large enough to cover most of the halls of the maze. Being a denizen of the Amazing Digital Circus, it wasn't an ordinary insect. It was large, long, purple, and had fuchsia legs and two mandibles on its mouth, which it clicked together as it moved. Its eyes were narrow and angry looking, small and circular black in obtuse trapezoid shaped white sclera.
Ragatha screamed, her hands on her cheeks. It really wasn't helping Pomni or Gangle's focus, and she made a mistake leading the mouse around.
"Ragatha hush!" Zooble implored. "Gangle has problems concentrating!"
"It's a dead end!" Pomni yelped.
"Ss-sorry!" Gangle huffed, panicking. "Try this way!"
But it was too late. Maverick the centipede burst onto the scene around the corner, its long body snaking around to fill the pathway back.
"Gaaaaaaagh!" Pomni fell back, her pupils bounding from her eyes and then shooting back into them. She cowered, cradling her cheese.
"Oh, the poor guy is probably hungry," Kinger noticed. "Since he didn't get to eat today and all."
Maverick snapped its mandibles together and made a screeching sound, its forelegs thrashing.
Pomni shrieked. She looked down at the cheese. She was thinking of shoving it into her mouth to taste it, but then she feared she would also taste death.
But what choice did she have at this point?
Suddenly, Pomni's stomach dropped. The whole maze began to rotate onto its side. With a shriek, Maverick tried to find purchase with its legs, but was starting to slip. So was, Pomni, however, and she fell onto Mavericks head.
With a sinister shriek, the mandibles started to close. Pomni squeaked and jumped, the mandibles closing around nothing. The maze started to tip in one direction, and Maverick went tumbling out of the way. Pomni felt whatever passed for a stomach in her little mouse body become queasy as the maze started to rock left and right. Eventually it was gently set back down.
Pomni looked up. Kinger had apparently tilted the maze in such a way as to flush the insect out of the maze while leaving Pomni in it. He was now holding it in his hand with a pinching grasp while it flailed around in impotence.
"You- wha-" Pomni sputtered.
"Poor guy is really hungry," Kinger chuckled, "did you want the cheese or the mouse, Maverick?"
The centipede's shrieks just sounded like tiny chitinous chitters to the large Kinger.
"Just get it out of here!" Ragatha demanded, her eyes shut, stamping her foot.
"Okay, sure!" Kinger left with no further complaint.
"I... uh," Jax blinked. "Why didn't I think of that?"
Zooble looked like they were coming up for an answer, their eyes searching around, then it hit them. "Guess sometimes it takes someone who barely thinks to find a solution that requires barely any thought."
Jax's eyes half-closed and he pointed at Zooble. "I like that one, let's go with that."
"You okay, Pomni?" Gangle asked down at the mouse. "I'll lead you out."
Pomni followed the ribbon the rest of the way out. When she was clear of the maze, she looked down at the cheese. Without a second to second guess herself, she took a bite.
Pomnis tiny eyes went wide.
"Peanut butter!" Pomni gasped. "That's what it tastes like! Ooh, yummy!" She ate the rest of it.
"Peanut butter?" Zooble blinked. "That's weird."
There was a puff of red and blue smoke, and Pomni was "herself" again.
"Hooray!" Ragatha held her arms up. "I think that's adventure complete then."
Caine poofed into existence above them. "Indeed it is! Congratulations Pomni, on unbecoming a mouse! Though, I must say, I thought you looked quite 'becoming' as a mouse! Haha!"
"Nngh..." Pomni groaned. She sighed. "Well, as 'fun' as that was, I'm kind of glad my sense of smell isn't so sharp anymore. Everything in the Circus smells like brand-new magazines."
"Ah, you eventually become nose-blind to that," Ragatha shrugged.
Pomni looked behind her to make sure she still didn't have a tail, and also felt around her face for the missing muzzle.
"Eh, it's a shame," Jax shook his head, "you and I could have made a great cartoon animal comedy duo. The skill points you get in the toon force are nothing to sneeze at."
"The 'toon force'?" Pomni blinked.
"Yeah, all that wild cartoony stuff you did," Jax pointed at her. "Let's me do stuff like this." Jax reached behind himself and pulled a two-handed wooden mallet out of nowhere. "Hammerspace, baby."
"Uh, okay?" Pomni winced. "I guess I didn't think about when I might have needed a hammer."
"The toon force is a pathway to a lot of abilities some consider to be... silly," the top of Jax's eyes wiggled as he bent over, putting the mallet behind his back, and suddenly it was gone again. He held his hands out in presentation to show they were empty again.
"Well done, everyone! We've had a great show!" Caine said, clapping. "So Pomni, if you ever want to be a mouse again... don't worry! I'll be able to turn you into one at any time. Usually whenever you least expect it!"
Pomni's eyes began to look into the middle-distance. Great, just one more thing to worry about.
"Well, all, I hope you all had fun with that adventure," Caine took a bow, then started to snicker, "even though I- pfft... I think it had a 'bug' in it!"
The five others groaned. Pomni barely heard him. He began to laugh wildly.
She was back to normal now. That form, that small little weird jester humanoid decorated in red, blue, and a dash of yellow. That was "normal" now.
Pomni reared back, tugging on the lappets of her hat, and screamed.
Pomni screamed for quite awhile, accompanied by the harmony of Caine's bizarre laughter.
It was just another day at the Amazing Digital Circus.