Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Another day. Another day. Another day. Another... day...

The lights came on with suddenly and without warning, and Pomni groaned as her eyes adjusted. Sleep wasn't entirely necessary in this digital nightmare, but if she didn't try to lie down every now and then she got such a headache. Last night was a bad one, and she gave up tossing and turning after about two hours and turned to reading instead. Pomni wanted to read by candlelight to at least pretend she was getting rest... but if the lights were off when Caine decided it was morning, they all came on at once.

"$@*& it... Ugh." She rubbed her eyes and sat up, stretching.

After the Awards, Pomni wasn't sure if she wanted to get involved in anything too strenuous today, but... no, she still needed to have that conversation with Ragatha, they never ended up talking last night. With a sigh, she left her room and made her way to the stage.

It looked like she was the first up and about today, which didn't surprise her. Ragatha went through the wringer, Gangle was always a slow riser, Zooble would be sleeping off the stupid sauce (why did Ragatha keep any of that?), and Jax... well.

As she entered the main area, Pomni called out for the only member of the Circus who never slept in his room. "Kinger! Are you up?" Her hope was that the two of them could have a chat in his pillow fort before everything got started. She badly needed advice on how to deal with Jax...

"Kinger, are you--oh."

Pomni stopped, because someone was already in front of the stage after all. Or something. They were tall and lanky, and Pomni almost flinched because she wasn't ready to talk to Jax again yet. But no, it definitely wasn't Jax. This person was wearing a red shirt and blue pants, and was covered in unkempt brown fur. They were scratching their head, apparently bewildered as they looked around, and Pomni wondered if they were a new NPC... but then a much more disturbing thought occurred, because while she couldn't remember every detail from her first day since she was kind of panicking, she distinctly rememebered spawning in on the stage...

Oh no, not another one.

"Hey! Are you alright?" she yelled, breaking into a light jog. "You look, uh, you look confused!"

The person jumped at her shout, then relaxed with a hand over their heart as they slowly turned around. "Dude, don't scare me like that! I'm not as young as I used to be, man..." He turned fully to face her and froze, eyes wide.

Pomni took a moment to take in his full appearance. There were tears in his jeans and his loose, baggy shirt, and claws on his hands, but his face was the real kicker--he looked like he was wearing a cheap rubber Halloween mask of a werewolf. It was just a little distrubing actually, because she could see normal human eyes through the holes in the mask, but his mouth was moving and emoting like it was his real face. Poor guy.

The frozen silence stretched on awkwardly, so Pomni raised a hand and waved. "Hi--"

The werewolf screamed and jumped so fast that he practically vanished. Pomni found him again hanging from the curtains above the stage.

"Aw man, I hate the monster clowns..."

She frowned. "That's kind of rude. You're more of a monster than I am!"

The newcomer paused in his cowering. "...I am?" He looked up at his arms and screamed again, trying to almost throw himself away from his own hands. This, ultimately, resulted in him plummeting back to the stage.

Pomni winced. "Ooh, that looked like it hurt."

He stood back up, seemingly no worse for wear and dusting himself off, scowling at his fur. "Like, you get used to it." He started inspecting himself, running hands up and down his body." Ugh, I can't believe this, I thought I told Drac..." He got to his face and apparently relaxed. "Oh, it's just a mask. Someone must be pulling a prank on me." He reached up to take it off.

"Wait, I wouldn't--uh." Pomni blinked, because under the wolf mask was a second, identical wolf mask. Exactly the same in every way. She didn't know why she was surprised. "Oh. I guess it's fine then."

He ran a hand through his 'hair,' paused, and felt his face again. "What?" A second time, he pulled off the mask, and again, and again, until a pile of cheap rubber was sitting on stage while he grew more and more frantic. "What the heck, man, how are there so many?!"

Pomni reached up and grabbed his arm before he could pull a sixteenth mask off. "Stop! Just, stop, and maybe I can tell you," she offered, trying to calm him down.

He looked at her and flinched, then looked again. "Oh, wow. My bad, you're like, not scary at all!" He abandoned his efforts to unmask and resumed looking around. "So, you can tell me where I am? Last thing I remember, the gang and I were investigating an old friend's former workplace, when we found this weird-lookin' headset, and--"

"You tried it on?" Pomni asked tiredly.

"Like, yeah. Seemed like the thing to do," he said, shrugging easily. He scratched his head, grimacing when he felt the fake hair on his 'costume.' "Now I'm in this crazy place. Like, what happened?"

Pomni took a deep breath and spread her arms. "Well, I guess I should welcome you to the--"

POP

"TO THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS!!!"

Caine appeared out of nowhere, yelling right in the newcomer's face, and the werewolf shrieked in sheer terror, falling onto his rump and scrambling backwards until his back touched the curtains.

Caine, of course, didn't seem to notice this reaction and simply floated closer. "AND WHAT MIGHT YOUR NAME BE?"

"ZOINKS!"

[...]

Scooby followed the trail, sniffing at the ground. This place was a maze and made no sense at all. The complex was so big that Fred had them all split up in six different directions just to get a working map of the place going, no matter how much Shaggy and Scooby knew it was a bad idea. You never went alone, ever. It never ended well.

Still, nothing bad happened so far. They all met back up in the lobby and started comparing notes. Freddy found some offices, Velma found a server room, Daphne found some sort of artists' studio, and Scooby, happily, found the cafeteria. No food, sadly. Eric, their old friend from way back, was just about to explain what he found when Scooby realized that Shaggy wasn't back yet, and he got a bad feeling.

Thankfully, Scooby knew his best friend's scent like nothing else, and he followed it to some room with the nameplate pried off. Not a good sign.

"Raggy?" he called. He pushed the door open and gasped. "Raggy?!"

"Did you find him, Scooby?" Daphne rounded the corner after him, then stopped short in the doorway. "Oh, no..."

Shaggy was on the floor with a device over his eyes, and he wasn't moving. Fred and Velma tried to see past her.

"What's wrong?"

"Is he in there?"

"He's in there alrright," Daphne said uneasily. "It's... not like him to take a nap in a place like this."

"Rot rapping!" Scooby howled, shaking Shaggy frantically.

"Let me in, let me in!" Eric shoved his way past Daphne, saw Shaggy on the floor, and all of a sudden his body language changed to sheer, inutterable exhaustion. "No... I was afraid of this."

Scooby's eyes locked on to Eric's, but it was Fred who asked the question.

"Eric, what's happened to him?"

Eric took of his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "...There might be some things about C&A that I haven't told you yet... But only because I wasn't sure of it myself." He gestured to Shaggy on the floor. "Until now, that is..."