Chapter Text
It started with Pomni.
One day, just a few days after the mess with Abel and the fake escape 'adventure', Pomni was taking a minute alone when-
"... rley… plea… re…ond…"
Pomni blinked in confusion at the static-ridden female voice that seemed to be coming out of nowhere.
"Um… hello?" she asked.
"Har… Qui… do… u… opy…" the voice said again.
"Caine? If it's you, this is creepy," Pomni said.
It wasn't Caine's voice that responded, or the feminine voice from before. Instead, still riddled with static, a deep and menacing voice barked out, "...INN REP…RT!"
Pomni shrieked and bolted away towards the others.
"Guys! Something weird is going on!" she shouted as she ran up to their sitting area.
"What did Caine do now?" asked Zooble tiredly.
"It's not time for our next adventure yet, is it?" asked Gangle, looking worried.
"The last one was fun… wasn't it?" asked Kinger, confused.
Jax, who was remarkably not hiding away in his room as he had frequently been doing after the last adventure (though he was standing far apart from the rest of them), scoffed, but didn't say anything.
"Quiet down, guys, let Pomni explain," said Ragatha, before turning back to the jester. "Go on, Pomni. What's wrong?"
"I just kept hearing these voices," Pomni said. "Two voices, coming out of nowhere."
"Oh, darn, sounds like she's starting to lose it too," said Jax apathetically. "Next, she'll be hiding in the pillow fort all day with Kinger. Or, you know, worse."
Zooble whipped their head around to glower at the rabbit. "JAX!" they said sharply.
"That is not funny," Ragatha scolded.
"I'd love the company," said Kinger, not seeing anything wrong with it.
Pomni opened her mouth to defend her sanity, but before she could, the voices were back.
"...ook wha… did… ou scar… er!" scolded the first feminine voice through the static.
"She kn…s my …oice… Why …id sh… react… at way," the creepy male voice replied suspiciously.
Pomni tensed at the sound, and from Zooble's censored swear, Kinger's startled jolt, Ragatha's head snapping up, Jax's freezing solid, and the frightened squeak Gangle let out as she dropped and shattered her comedy mask, they all heard it too.
Still, just to be sure, she said, "You heard that, right?"
"Sure did," said Zooble.
"God?" asked Kinger, looking up at the sky in confusion.
"Is someone there?" asked Ragatha loudly.
They waited a beat, but the voices didn't respond to her.
"Hello? Who's there?" Pomni asked.
"Harl… it's m… Orac…" the female voice called back.
"Orca? Is there going to be a talking killer whale?" asked Jax.
"Jax, shh," Ragatha hissed, before adding louder and sweeter tone, "Sorry, don't mind him. He's just… like that. I mean, unless you actually are a talking killer whale, in that case, um, cool!"
Jax just gave her a poisonous look.
But the voices gave no reaction to Jax's joke or Ragatha's apology.
"Hey! We're talking to you!" shouted Zooble.
Still no response.
"Um, hello?" called Gangle.
"Are you talking insects too small to see?" asked Kinger.
Still nothing.
"Aren't you going to answer?" asked Pomni.
"Ans…r what… Har… I tol… you it'... e," said the female voice.
"But you didn't answer my friends," Pomni said.
"Wha…riends?" asked the scary male voice. "Qui… re… ou…lone?"
"Why are they only talking to her?" asked Zooble, confused.
"I'm not alone, and they asked you a question," said Pomni, no longer scared and getting to be just plain irritated. "Stop being rude and ignoring them, are you a talking killer whale or not? Is that both of you, or just one of you?"
"A t..lking…iller…what?" asked the female voice, confused. "We… nly f…nd yo…"
So, not a talking orca, what is going on then?
"Shoot th…curity…s…kic…me…ut," said the female voice, her voice fading in and out even more.
As the static sound grew louder, but, somehow, the scary male voice made it through the sound for the clearest message yet. "Harley Q…! We…ill get you out… there!"
And with that, the voices disappeared, and not even Pomni could bring them back.
"Well, that was random," said Jax once it was clear the voices were gone.
"Who's Harley?" asked Gangle.
"Me."
It wasn't until the others turned to look at her that Pomni realized she'd spoken.
But still…
"That's… that's my name," she said, the realization sinking in. "I… think that's my name."
Did she know that for certain, no, but the name felt right.
There was a moment of shocked silence.
From the moment they'd arrived in the circus, none of them had remembered their names, for Pomni to regain hers now…
Then Jax let out a loud and obnoxious laugh. "Oh my god, I can't believe any of you are falling for this?"
The purple rabbit was immediately met with several glares at his words and tone.
"What?" Jax said, his typical sarcastic grin on his face as he tore down any hope before it could form. "Come on. Please tell me you don't think that was real. This has 'Escape the Circus Adventure Two: Electric Boogaloo' written all over it. This time with help from the 'Macro-Verse', whooo," he said while doing jazz hands, before a deadpan expression overtook his face and he crossed his arms. "Caine didn't learn his lesson the last time he tried something like this. And it's even less believable this time."
Ragatha narrowed her eye at him. "How so?" she asked, not wanting to disappoint Pomni.
Jax rolled his eyes. "The freaky sky voices said her name is Harley Q-something," he said bluntly, like that was reason enough.
"What's wrong with that name?" asked Zooble.
"I think it's a nice name," said Gangle timidly.
"Oh, absolutely lovely," agreed Kinger.
"Oh, sure, it's a beauuuutiful name for a Harley-quin," Jax said with a overly-dramatic swooning gesture. "You know those fancy French jesters that dress. Just. Like. Her."
"Um, they're Italian, actually," Gangle muttered.
"Whatever," Jax said dismissively. "But what are the odds the clown girl's name is exactly what she is. That'd be as likely as my real name being Bugs Bunny, or Ragatha's being Raggedy Ann, or Gangle's being William Shakespeare, or Kinger's being King Henry the Eighth, or Zooble's being…" He paused and looked Zooble up and down, "Whatever kind of building blocks they're made of are called."
"Alright, we get it," said Zooble, annoyed.
Jax just shrugged again and turned to leave. "I'm just saying, Caine saw Pomni was the biggest sucker the last time he tried this, and now he's just trying to reel her in again."
Pomni winced because she knew he was right. She had been the one who believed Abel first. She was the one to get everyone else to go along with it.
"Well, I'm not falling for it." And with that and a sarcastic backwards wave, Jax left.
Zooble huffed before turning to Pomni with an apologetic look. "You know I absolutely hate to say this, but he's probably right. It's just too unlikely. And it is just like Caine to completely forget our grievances and keep doing things he shouldn't and then not understand why we're upset."
It wasn't voiced by any of the rest, but one glance at all their faces made it clear they all agreed.
"Oh," said Pomni, glancing down at her shoes as bitter disappointment welled up inside her. She should have known it was all just another of Caine's adventures. "It… it would have been nice to have my name back."
"Oh, Pomni," said Ragatha sympathetically as she came over to put a hand on Pomni's shoulder comfortingly.
"Sorry, Pomni," said Gangle quietly.
"I can call you Harley if you want, or at least I'll try to," offered Kinger.
"That's okay," Pomni said, forcing a smile on her face. "I don't want a fake adventure name. I want mine back."
But it was clear all of them saw right through her from the clear pity on their faces.
At that exact moment, Caine suddenly appeared with the sound of a kazoo. "Howdy doo, my radical rampaging rodents. It's about time for today's-!"
"You have some nerve!" Zooble interrupted him angrily, not at all in the mood after what he just tried to pull.
Caine blue-screened mid-sentence, before his eyeballs focused on them. "Um, I'm sorry?" he asked, confused.
"You should be," Ragatha scolded, her grip on Pomni's shoulder turning protective.
"I thought AI were supposed to learn," Zooble said bitterly. "But clearly you never do."
"That was a really mean thing you did to Pomni," Gangle said sadly.
"Not cool, Caine," said Pomni, sending the ringmaster a bitter look.
"Do what now?" asked Caine, still looking more befuddled than should be possible for a pair of teeth with eyes inside their mouth.
Ragatha scowled and then turned away, waving for the others to follow. "Come on, let's just go. I've had enough 'adventure' today."
The others all followed her lead and walked away
"But we haven't even started yet?" Caine protested as he tried to prevent them from leaving.
"Eat a D!#%, Caine," Zooble said, making an equally censored rude gesture as they went.
Caine just stared after them before glancing at Bubble in utter bewilderment. "Was it something I said?"
That should have been the end of it. Caine tried to trick them, but they saw through it. End of story.
But it wasn't.
Because after that day, Pomni was… different.
It started with small things, like a sudden love for cartwheels, flips, and other gymnastics moves, and no sense of self-preservation when doing them.
"You know you could just take the stairs," Zooble pointed out one time as they descended a spiral staircase in the fantasy-based adventure Caine had them in.
"Where's the fun in that?" said Pomni as she flipped like a monkey through the support beams instead. "Race you to the bottom."
And with that, she let go and squealed in delight as she fell down before barely managing to catch herself at the bottom.
Zooble worried for her sanity.
Then she woke up with an accent she didn't have the day before, and suddenly sounded like she grew up in the heart of Brooklyn.
"But I'm from New Jersey!" she protested in her new accent when it was pointed out.
"I can hear a little of that too in there," said Ragatha, looking like she was trying to be positive, but was just as freaked out as the rest of them.
"Does it sound bad?" asked Pomni. "I feel like this is the sort of voice some people might find annoyin'."
"No, no, you sound adorable," Ragatha assured her too quickly to be entirely sincere. "Very charming."
It did not reassure Pomni in the slightest.
Then she started giving everyone pet names, though thankfully with more fondness behind them than Jax did.
"Aw, come on, String Bean, you can do it," Pomni said as she encouraged Gangle to make her way across a sheer drop in their current mountaineering adventure.
"String Bean?" asked Gangle, bewildered.
"Well, yeah, 'cause yer stringy and a cute little bean," said Pomni. "Why? Too much."
Gangle, however, only got flustered but pleased as she heard the reason behind it. "Oh, no, it's fine."
Then she got… uncomfortably observant.
"Look, I don't know if all this is some ploy to make me feel sorry for you, but it's not going to work," Jax told her dismissively.
Pomni just gave him a look. "The inflection in your voice, the way ya can't hold eye contact, the way you hold yourself defensively, and the fact that I know you still have that picture of us together in your room somewhere all suggests that you do. But you deny it and cling to a nihilistic outlook in vain hopes that it'll protect you from disappointment. But as you shoulda learned from the Abel disaster, That. Won't. Work! And instead yer just setting yourself up to spiral into oblivion. So stop bein' a jerk and help me fix this, Puddin," she said bluntly.
Jax reared back as if he'd been slapped. "Okay, one, never call me that again. And two, never do… whatever that was again."
Pomni scrutinized him once more, but thankfully didn't make any other on-the-nose observations, and instead just said, "Yeah, you're right. That name don't fit you. I get the feeling it belongs to someone way worse."
Needless to say, Jax left that conversation unnerved. And Pomni cemented his nickname as Bunny Boy.
And if all that wasn't strange enough, then there were the dreams she began having, although for some, nightmare might be a better term.
"A green-haired clown?" asked mostly lucid Kinger one night when she took shelter in his pillow fort from them. "I don't think we've had anyone in the circus that looks like that. Nor do I remember anyone like that from an adventure."
"I… don't think it's from the circus, but I can't imagine where else it could be from," said Pomni.
"What does the green clown do in your dreams?" asked Kinger.
"Nightmares, more like," said Pomni. "He does awful things, and a lot of the time I help him do them. But the weirdest dreams are when he's just… talking. Making a grand plan. It almost sounds like he's describing this place, but like the circus is a future plan he wants to make someday. Not something that's already here. And that he deliberately wants to make this place a trap to drive people insane without them even realizing it."
Kinger was silent for a long moment. "... Huh, you know, maybe I'm misremembering again, because that sounds… familiar. Not personally familiar, but like I should know that too."
"Or maybe my crazy is catching," Pomni said bitterly.
Kinger rubbed her back comfortingly. "There must be something good about these dreams, right?"
Pomni thought for a moment before a blushing smile spread across her face. "Um, well, there's someone else I see sometimes. She can't be real, 'cause she's all green, but I call her Red 'cause she's got this pretty red hair, and she gives me all the flowers I could want. And in pots too, so they don't die."
"She sounds lovely, tell me more about her," said Kinger.
Suffice to say, there was really only one conclusion all of them could reach for these changes.
"CAINE!" shouted Pomni.
The AI appeared immediately. "You rang?" he said, sounding excited to be summoned, only to falter at the sight of their severe expressions.
"This has to stop, Caine," said Pomni.
"You need to stop messing with Pomni. This is getting out of hand," Ragatha agreed.
Caine looked just as confused as he always did when this was brought up. "I assure you, I haven't done anything to Pomni, well, outside of our adventures, where I throw her into peril, but I do that to all of you. Is that what you mean?"
"No, Caine, we're talking about how you've been messing with her mind," said Zooble, frustrated at his obliviousness.
Caine tilted his teeth to the side like a golden retriever cocking its head. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean. I told you I try not to interfere with your mental states to avoid anything bad happening."
Jax let out a bitter laugh. "Please, you've been doing that from the start. Now we all know it, and you can't hide it anymore, so you've been F@#$ing us up on the regular."
Jax got a few side-eyes for speaking up in Pomni's defense, but he just shrugged. "Hey, he may be starting with Pomni, but who's to say he won't move on to the rest of us once he's got her just the way he likes her, and I am not going to be reprogrammed into his perfect toy."
"For once, we agree," said Zooble, turning their glare back to Caine.
The AI in question shrank back at their united ire. "I assure you, I haven't done anything to Pomni's mind. You made your displeasure with that feature very clear."
"Then what is happening to me, huh?" Pomni demanded. "My voice changed, I'm givin' out pet names like candy, I suddenly know how to do a Yurchenko Double Pike vault-"
("A what?" whispered Kinger.
"Uh, I think that's a gymnastics move," said Gangle.
"Only one of the hardest moves there is," said Ragatha, sounding slightly awed.)
"- I'm psychoanalyzing all my friends, and I keep having those freaky dreams," Pomni finished, clutching at her head. "I feel like I'm losing my mind, and yer the only one here who could do that to me! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"
Caine held up his hand in a placating way. "I admit I have noticed Pomni has grown more peppy lately, a bit more spring in her step, but any changes you are experiencing are not coming from me," he insisted. "I have nothing to do with it."
"Yeah, the thing is, Caine, after the Abel fiasco, we really don't believe you," said Zooble.
Caine wilted at their words, but as ever, Caine just didn't understand why they were upset and insisted on his innocence.
They could get no more out of him than that.
Hours later, Pomni found herself huddled in Kinger's pillow fort again with just the chess piece as company.
"I just don't understand," she said as she curled in on herself tightly. "What's happening to me? Caine says it's not him, but who else could it be? What's going on?"
"Chin up, Pomni, this could be a good thing," Kinger tried to assure her.
"How?" Pomni asked desperately. "You and Caine said that messing with our minds is a one-way ticket to abstraction."
Kinger looked thoughtful for a moment in the darkness before replying, "Well, maybe these changes are not you changing. Maybe it's getting back what you lost when you came here."
Pomni blinked, then turned to look at him with wide eyes.
Kinger's floating gloves went up in a shrugging motion. "None of us knows how much we really forgot when we came here. Our names, obviously, but maybe there's more. And maybe you're getting it back."
Pomni thought about the changes she'd gone through, and what kind of person she might be with all those traits, and had to giggle at the thought.
Kinger chuckled next to her, though he didn't seem too sure what he was laughing at.
But the longer Pomni giggled, the more manic her laughter became, and Kinger quickly grew concerned.
He then grew alarmed when she started glowing on top of that.
Then, as if possessed, Pomni threw her head back with her eyes blank white, and only said one more word.
"Bats?"
Then, within a beam like a spotlight, or like she was being sucked up into a spaceship, she was gone, and in her place flashed a word that had not been used in the circus since its inception, no matter how much its inhabitants desperately wanted it.
"Log…out…" Kinger said in awe as he watched the word glint in the darkness of his impenetrable fortress until it too faded away.
Kinger sat there in stunned silence for a very long time, even after it was gone.
Then he screamed.
Meanwhile, in a dark cave, watched over by a masked individual, an extremely pale woman jackknifed up in her hospital bed, ripped a VR headset off her head, and smashed it on the ground.
For a moment, she just sat there gasping for breath.
Then-
"Fuck you, Jax! My name IS Harley Quinn!"