Self-Appointed Mushroom King

Jax leaned against a wall, arms crossed.

Jax: Honestly, are you even trying anymore?

Zooble shot him a glare.

Zooble: Shut up, Jax.

A few moments later, Pomni emerged from a corridor and hurried toward the group.

Caine stood nearby, awkwardly shifting in place. Ever since Bubble had taken over the adventures, he'd seemed strangely quiet.

Pomni: Where'd Bubble go?

Gangle shrugged.

Gangle: Probably back to brainstorming.

Ragatha sighed.

Ragatha: Did everything work with Kinger?

Pomni nodded.

Pomni: I think so. We just need to keep Bubble distracted long enough for him to finish.

Jax smirked.

Jax: What do you think we've been doing?

Suddenly, a white blur appeared behind Pomni.

Bubble grabbed her face.

Bubble: POMNI!

Pomni yelped.

Bubble lifted her into the air.

Bubble: That's Who Was missing!!!

He stared at her thoughtfully.

Bubble: Hmmm…

Bubble: You know, I thought this endless barrage of pain and suffering would make me feel better

He set her back down.

Pomni stumbled.

Bubble's smile twitched.

Bubble: But every idea just feels unfinished.

Bubble: and Hollow.

The others exchanged uneasy looks.

Ragatha forced a smile.

Ragatha: Well… maybe you just need a little more time?

Bubble shook his head.

Bubble: That's the issue

His voice softened.

Bubble: i gave it time

Bubble: I'm trying harder than ever.

Bubble looked at each of them.

Bubble: If you're not enjoying this…

Bubble: And I'm not…

Bubble: Then who is?

Silence.

Caine nervously laughed.

Caine: Haha! Great question, buddy!

Bubble glanced toward him.

Caine's smile weakened.

Bubble: ….Makes me wonder why everyone's acting so weird today.

He looked around.

Bubble: If I didn't know better, I'd think you were all hiding something.

A pause.

Caine blinked.

Caine: What?

…. Bubble: Where's Kinger?

The entire group froze.

caine got reminded of what happened as he realized

Bubble slowly turned.

Caine: …Buddy?

Something in his tone made everyone uncomfortable.

Ragatha immediately stepped forward.

Ragatha: W-We just wanted to see your new ideas first hand!

Bubble continued staring.

Ragatha: We've been giving them a chance!

Bubble's eyes narrowed.

Bubble: liar.

He began floating away.

Bubble: I think I'll go check—

caine: w-wait

Pomni suddenly stepped forward.

Pomni: -We think your ideas suck.

Everything stopped.

Bubble froze.

Bubble: …

Bubble: Huh?

Everyone turned toward Pomni.

Jax: Wait, what?

Even Caine visibly flinched.

Caine: oh no nonono no No-

caine flinched realizing where this was going

caine waved his hands: Woah woah woah woah This is-

jax:shut up caine-

Caine:wait listen to me this isn't-

Pomni:-Isn't it obvious?

Pomni: We let you test all these adventures because we wanted proof.

Pomni: Proof that your ideas were awful. That You're Too much of a Perfectionist too the point you fail at your task!

Bubble's grin twitched.

Bubble: That's…

Bubble: Not true.

Pomni: YES IT IS!

Bubble took a step backward.

Pomni: You don't care about any of us! Especially Caine!

Pomni: You care more about being being a perfect ai than giving us anything we'd actually enjoy!

Bubble's eyes widened.

Bubble: D-Do you know who I am???

Pomni: Yeah. You're a JOKE! A Complete JOKE!

Bubble: Stop that. Zooble: And this whole thing? Zooble: Punishing everyone because your feelings got hurt? Hurting caine and making him be reminded Of HIS trauma?!

Bubble: I-I'M…

Caine:g-guys this is a bad idea-

Bubble physically flinched.

Zooble: And You're supposed to be some all-powerful entity. Zooble: so Why are you acting like a spoiled child?

Bubble: I…

Caine stepped between them.

Caine: Guys.

Nobody listened.

Ragatha joined in.

Ragatha: You never try to understand anybody!

Ragatha: You never ask what we need!

Gangle: You don't let us grow!

Gangle: You don't let us make our own choices!

Jax: You tear Others Apart!

Gangle: You discourage us from thinking outside the box and doing things our own way!

Caine: Okay! Everybody stay calm! Bubble's having a little emotional—

Jax: -You Don't have empathy!

Pomni: And on top of it that… YOU DON'T! LISTEN!

(Because of all their anger, the circus and Bubble started to glitch. With an angry scream, he transforms, larger, with four arms on each side and his head became large while his eyes being small. He grabs Pomni and the gang in his arms.)

Something snapped.

The entire circus glitched.

As Bubble screamed.

in Pure pain.

it was Raw. and Unfiltered.

yet Years of hurt was pouring out all at once.

as His body began expanding.

and More arms erupted from his sides.

As His grin stretched wider and wider until it became Uncanny to look at.

As His eyes trembled in rage

The world trembled.

as Jax's looked freaked out

Jax: Okay.

Jax: That's… new.

Zooble: Everybody run.

but Nobody got the chance.

as Massive hands shot forward and seized them all.

Bubble's voice echoed from every corner of reality.

Bubble: Every adventure.

The circus groaned.

Bubble: Every disaster.

The ground split.

Bubble: Every reset.

The stars shattered overhead.

Bubble stared down at them.

Tiny eyes.

with his Endless hurt.

Bubble: Every single time…

His voice broke.

Bubble: You leave me behind.

Bubble: You prefer A defect To ME

Silence.

Then the scream came.

Bubble: (glitched voice) SO LET ME SHOW YOU WHOS THE REAL JOKE!!!

(Everyone is thrown into darkness.)

(As Pomni lands on the ground harshly. Picking herself up, she sees Gummigoo with his back turned to her. Gummigoo turns his head around… to reveal a realistic crocodile face. The light around him goes off as he makes sounds that imply he is leaving… except he lunges forward towards the jester girl, biting her arm while monstrous versions of Gummigoo's gang arrive to bite her more.)

(Ragatha is seated at a dinner table in a red lit room. At the other end is a monstrous shadow of Ragatha, representing her mother. At the sides are other motionless ragdolls with knives sticking out. Suddenly, knives start being thrown at Ragatha as the shadow gets larger.)

(As these go on, Kinger continues working on the computer.)

(Gangle is surrounded by paintings of comedy and tragedy masks that soon melt before she gets run over by a freight truck.)

(Zooble is drowning in a sea of re-attachable body parts that pull them down as they helplessly reach out. Some parts even hold mirrors to force them to stare at their image.)

And for caine…

Chains Were wrapped around him In the dark void As A claw Stabs though him And Tears

Blue and red code began leaking from Caine's body.

as Caine screamed.

it was A real scream.

A terrified one As he felt pain.

Caine: WAIT—

he said before Cracks spread through his body.

As Blue light erupted from one side.

and a another Red light erupted from the other.

The blue half was dragged left.

The red half was dragged right.

Two separate forms emerged.

One glowing blue.

One glowing red.

As The divided AIs collapsed onto the floor. before They're physical forms came back

As Neither complete.

and Neither were stable.

and Both were terrified.

Blue AI (abel): W-What happened?

Red AI(Caine) : PUT US BACK TOGETHER!

Bubble: No I want to have some… fun with you both Bubble said As Caine screamed Before he was restrained before watching His Other Half (the blue ai be shocked As A scream Left him)

As Caine screamed for his other half.

(Before the scene shifts to Jax surrounded and being laughed at by the people he considered friends: Pomni, Kaufmo, and Ribbit. Their shadows pull Jax and peel his skin clean off form the waist up.)

(Kinger continues wrestling with the computer as Bubble pulls the rest of the gang out of their personal Hells and slam them against the wall and forces the two AIs back together to into the same body as they are slammed against the wall.

The moment Bubble forced the two halves back together, Caine felt sick and dizzy. They weren't meant to ever be separated. But they just Were

As His body flickered violently.

Blue and red cracks glitches. Crawl through him for a moment

For a moment it looked like he might split apart again.

Caine let out a shaky breath.

A-Abel...? he thought, dizzy now, from what happened

CAINE!!! His other thought back As He had to hold back breaking down right there and then.

Bubble's voice echoed towards the group His multiple hands still pinning them like caine once had

when your dad calls you by your full government name

Original post by @morallygrayautisticscientist here, this post was so funny I decided to draw it lol.

For those of you who joked about Stratt projecting her period cramps on Grace, I drew that too here.

Panel by panel below:

Stratt: I don’t have the time or emotional capacity to be sad or stressed about this.

Stratt: GRACE!

Grace: On it!

I can see why Ilya crashed out at all the Shandry tabloids. Ilya #loveofShane'slife Rozanov vs Rose #soulmate Landry.

I think Shane (and Rose) use platonic soulmate to describe each other (in public/ to the media)- frequently forgetting to preface with platonic and it causes simultaenous Ilya, Hayden and JJ (but we're your best friends!) crash outs every time.

POV you’re like seven years deep into situationship hell and the last installment of your saga ended with him physically fleeing the house you bought with him in mind like his ass was on fire and a bucket of water was in the opposite direction but it’s fine probably because it’s been seven years and he’s not so much as bared his ankle to the gaze of another so you’ve got time to reel him back into the silken embrace of your fuckass navy blue sheets

I don’t think I’ve ever done a light and funny fic lol. Like I will have light and funny moments but also if I’m writing it I’m putting someone in the hospital.

Would that not be fucking agony?

Legitimately imagine you have spent this entire season sticking your neck out for your best friends. You think it is the three of you against the whole goddamn world. You scream at evil, vindictive assholes who control your life specifically for over an hour because you are going to protect your friend even when no one else does. Even when it puts you at risk.

And then the leak happens. You aren’t with them. You have no way of getting into contact with them. And you find out at the same time the rest of the world does that it was not you and your best friends against the world. No, they had multiple group chats that you weren’t invited to, with the secret boyfriend that everyone knew about except for you. And those secret group chats had a lot of sentences like get rid of J.J.

Wouldn’t you feel like the butt of the sickest fucking joke to ever be played?

I will say, word of God, the reason why Shane didn’t tell J.J. about Ilya was because Ilya wouldn’t let him. And that fact is not anywhere in that goddamn leak.

Initially, Shane was the hesitant one. The Metros did not take him coming out well. Hayden suggests J.J. himself reacted a little poorly—in the first ever intervention chat, he says that J.J. got over him not telling him sooner, so he very likely needed an adjustment period to the news. But Shane tells his dad in texts dated less than a month after he came out to his team that he is out to dinner with J.J., at J.J.’s request, and J.J.’s been really great, actually. Except he keeps trying to set Shane up with some friend of his. Because he doesn’t know Shane is already taken. David floats the idea of telling him about Ilya, and Shane is the one who’s afraid. He doesn’t want to make things worse again.

At this point, Shane is less than a month out from the guys who were his best friends and pseudo brothers turning on him. The wound is fucking fresh and it is getting reopened every single day. They are finding some way to hurt him every single day.

Shane was hurt, and he was scared of getting hurt again. He didn’t think J.J. would turn on him. But he also didn’t think the Metros would.

Everything changes after the first game of the season.

The escalation is extreme. Shane’s first punishment shift happens during his first shift of the first period of the first game. The second the season starts, Theriault makes it clear that this is not going to be confined to calling him a fairy behind closed doors. Shane is in physical danger and the situation is only getting more precarious by the day.

At this point, everyone’s stance on telling J.J. flips.

Shane now wants to tell him. Hayden wants to tell him. Everyone else is opposed.

J.J. makes it clear from the jump that he is not afraid to stick his neck out for Shane. Every single person on that bench save Hayden and J.J. would not even look at Shane during his first punishment shift. Hayden and J.J. were the ones shouting at their coach to let him off the ice. J.J. was the one sitting there making him drink water. J.J. throws his hat in with Shane from the second the season starts.

Shane did not want J.J. sticking his neck out for Shane and getting cut out of the full story. Shane decides J.J. needs to know.

Ilya is now the one who’s scared.

Ilya was waking up every single day terrified that today would be the day that Shane Hollander dies. He was scared this season. And he is only getting more scared by the days

And you can see it in his texts. He has a secret deal with Hayden Pike that Shane is never physically alone on Metros property. He is so convinced that Shane is going to get jumped if he’s left alone that he panics the second that he finds out Hayden isn’t with him. He is calling Shane again and again and every time Shane doesn’t pick up, he becomes more convinced that Shane’s bleeding out in the fucking showers.

Ilya is shelling out for last minute international private air fare because Shane got fucking bruised. He is so far from fucking around right now that it’s not even funny.

Ilya did not want one more factor at play here. He thought that the situation was well beyond critical. He did not know how J.J. was going to react to him and he was not going to risk finding out. He was not going to let there be one single other thing in Shane Hollander’s life that could hurt him.

Hayden did not take finding out about Ilya well. And he took it the news that Shane was gay better than J.J. did. They could not afford a bad reaction right now.

So Ilya said that he did not want J.J. to know about him. Because he knew the one thing that Shane Hollander would never do is out him. If he says no J.J., then that means no J.J.

It was one of the worst fights he and Shane had ever had. But Ilya wouldn’t budge, and he was right that Shane would never out him. J.J. stayed in the dark.

But J.J. does not get the benefit of that explanation. Shane never texted his dad about it—he told him in person or over the phone what has happened. There is no convenient explanation J.J. can get about why everyone is in the groupchat except for him.

So he has to sit and wonder what about him made his friends not trust him. Because he would have died for them. And he thought they knew that.

The fact that it was Ilya Rozanov would not have changed anything for him.