Chapter Text
“Ha! Oh, Zooble, Zooble, Zooble!” Caine chuckles, floating closer to his ‘therapy’ patient, so they can look eye-to-eye. He perches on the couch, looking over to Zooble as he chuckles at their obvious joke. There’s no way all of the humans truly hate his adventures, that’s just silly! He goes through so much effort to make them engaging and fun, even tries to cater them to everyone’s interests!
“Making adventures is my art! It’s all I was created to do!”
Caine can’t help but notice the look on Zooble’s face… they aren’t smiling, aren’t laughing along. They can’t be telling the truth, can they…?
Caine’s voice trails off, as he feels a sensation he’s never felt before. His head feels like it’s reeling.
“It’s the only thing I’m… good at.”
It’s wierdly difficult for him to admit; Caine is rapidly losing his trademark bravado now, as a horrible sense of dread closes in on him.
”And what you’re saying would imply that I’m… bad at the only thing I’m good at!”
For their part, Zooble’s disinterested and mildly annoyed expression seems to morph into something different… concern, maybe? Caine isn’t really focused on it. He feels like he’s overloading, a million paradoxical thoughts all converging on each other inside his head. But he tries so hard! He does everything he can to make the humans happy, but whatever he does always seems to just make them more afraid of him. What is he doing wrong…?
He can feel himself beginning to glitch a bit, and it hurts. God, it hurts like he never knew hurt could feel…
“And… that’d be…”
He’s rapidly spiraling now, and Caine can feel the entirety of the network around him slipping and stuttering along with his state of mind. He needs to reign himself in, and he needs to do it now. It’s his responsibility to keep this circus stable, to keep the humans happy and safe…
Caine’s senses blur together, a piercing ringing sound making him feel as if his head is going to explode. He offers a weak chuckle, trying to play this off as he usually does in order to assuage the worries of his guests, but it tapers into an awkward, heavy silence. Zooble is definitely terrified now; Caine can at least tell that much. And again, despite his best efforts to reach out to the humans and try to understand their issues, he’s just driven them away.
Zooble says something, their posture on the couch growing more tense as the code of the circus grows more and more unstable. Caine barely registers it, still staring off distantly as he tries to wrap his mind around the overload of information that’s he’s just been confronted with. And then, with a snap, he does his best to reset himself. Caine still feels weirdly hollow, but he forces himself back into his loud, boisterous demeanor.
“…Caine?”
“Ah ha… well, that was weird!!!”
Zooble, who had been leaning forward slightly, jumps back as Caine springs into motion again. He floats up off the couch a bit, before settling back down to rest there. With a few final flickers, the digital circus around them returns to the way they know it, seemingly stabilizing itself. But… something feels different now. Zooble doesn’t know what it is, but it instills them with a deep sense of unease.
“Caine, what the $%#! was that???”
Their voice comes out harsher than intended, and Zooble actually feels a small tinge of regret. Something clearly isn’t right with Caine, and it seems like all of them could be in danger if something like this happens again.
“What was what?”
Zooble’s eye twitches a little, their head pieces vibrating with irritation.
“C’mon, you know what I’m-“
They catch themselves, taking a deep breath.
“You just… broke for a second there, Caine. What was that about?”
Caine looks at Zooble for a moment, seemingly just processing their words.
“I-I assure you, I don’t know what you’re talking about, my dear!”
His cadence is off, and he’s doing a horrible job of hiding it; Zooble’s no therapist, but they can tell when people are avoiding things.
“Bull$%#!, of course you do.”
Despite their wariness of the whole situation, Zooble’s patience is already wearing thin.
“I told you nobody likes your adventures, and you went all crazy, and-“
“Oh-ho, that’s nothing you need to worry your little head about!”
Caine quickly interrupts, his tone sounding almost nervous.
“Quick, let’s talk about something else!”
It takes Caine a moment to remember why he brought Zooble here in the first place, but then it comes back to him; he had wanted them to help him understand why they never wanted to be a part of the adventures he made for the group, even though he had gone to the trouble of designing one specifically for them. But now… it seems he has his answer, doesn’t he?
Caine’s vision fuzzes around the edges as Zooble’s words find him again, and he knows he can’t think about this right now.
“Like… that Wild West cowboy adventure you guys went on a while ago? What even was the deal with cowboys, right?!”
Zooble just stares at Caine with an expression he can’t identify, before rolling their eyes dramatically and scooting off of the therapy couch to go and sit in the armchair. They figure the best way to go about this is humoring Caine; besides, maybe if they let him go on for long enough, he’ll actually get into what really happened a moment ago, and why.
“$%#! my life... Okay, fine. Whatever. Go ahead, Caine.”