#rip ragatha

It was too little, too late before the pain was gone and he felt the prickling after-effects of his momentary departure tingled in his skull – his soul. Sensations of the cold, lifeless, numbing tickle of glitching overtaking everything; any other thing he could feel before. It was like plastic. It was fake and plastered to perfection.

Enough to make anyone sick.

Colours flooded his mind next. Bright and overwhelming, it infiltrated the darkness he was previously sucked into. It all came crashing back into his new reality after that. The sounds, the cold tiles beneath him, the tension making the hair on his neck stand up. The sense of dread and the urge to run.

Run… Running… He was running. That’s right, he was running. The threat was hot on his tail, he recalled it, clear as day! The fear and determination to run to… to...

To his girls.

Yes, it all made sense now. He could recall everything now, and a huff of breath escaped him as he forced his unstable body onto all fours once again. A stumble, then a shake of his weary head, dizzy from the events before. No, there was no time. He couldn’t rest – he couldn’t stop. He had to get to them!

He willed himself steady, before he felt his eyes flick side to side, up, down. Down… Oh god, the sinking dread of looking down. They were watching him – hyper focused on his every move. the monsters lurking beneath the tiles. Humming and thrumming at the back of his neck, like a string pulled taut to pull the marrow from his spine; the back of his head became weightless and airy as that cursed creaturenestles deeply into his spine. The endless spindling limbs each infiltrating the nerves of his limbs, his torso, even his blasted tailbone and up to the tip of his ears.

It could feel everything he moved, tracking it every millisecond by millisecond. The faint whispers in his ears were taunting him, whispering to him; lies of him being doomed to fail. He wouldn’t make it very far. He should give up.

Damn it all, he didn’t need to make it far. Just a bit further than he was before.

Every step. Every millimeter would be progress. Every second he’d spend moving forward was a second to his benefit. Every breath he took, even if he was struck down over and over… he’d make it to his girls. He’d do what he vowed to do the day he accepted them into his life. The decision he made to take care of them, as they were his, was the only driving force he needed. They’ve lost one too many.

He would have to be dragged to the darkest, flaming pits of hell before he’d lose them too.

With his mind set on his goal, the fierce beast of a man tensed at the ready, about to make a break for it again. Run – that was something he was good at.

Run-

“Run!” a course, high-pitched voice struck his ears, making the hare’s head snap into its direction. Thin slitted pupils dilated into wide black pits as he narrowly dodged the form that almost collapsed onto him. A mix of shapes and limbs messily tumbled around him, colors registering in his mind as the hare fronting his mind luckily doesn’t get too spooked at the sight of an old friend. Zooble.

“D#$n it, Jax, are you in there?” the Zolo-being growled, tumbling and twisting as they crawled in circles around him in a way only this monstrous mess of limbs can. Flashes of their previous fight briefly struck into his mind, and he had to rein in the damn rabbit driving the body, NOT to run off out of instinct. He was confused as to why Zooble was moving so much, circling him in sporadic, tumbling, rolling movements.

He knew Kinger would detect any move they made on the checker tile, that was why they  stayed fixed in place.

But now there was chaos!

Without wasting a second, the rabbit ran, leaving Zooble in the dust. Run, no thinking, that was the man’s job, who was currently barking orders from the back of his mind… but the rabbit wasn’t having it. The snake was out of his game. It was time to flee. He could handle the situation just fine. All he needed was a spot to regroup-

“Jax! Listen up.” Came a softer voice, one he had to strain to hear. It belonged to Zooble once again, but it was clear they came to an understanding about his current state of mind. The abomination was speaking at their normal talking volume, knowing he could lock in and hear them just fine, irrespective of the distance.  They knew how to deal with *the rabbit*, just like they did in The Games.

This time, it was no game, though…

“Jax, Pomni and I are handling Kinger differently this time-”

‘Yeah, no @#&π!’ the hare thought to himself as he frantically look around, locking his gaze on Zooble’s tumbling form, speeding into a complete opposite direction for a full 2 seconds.

A blue flash and the sound of skidding nails on tiles overtake his senses, scrambling into a different direction, narrowly escaping the stomping hooves of that cursed knight, who set chasing after him for it’s remaining time out and about, teeth gnashing to his fleeting form before diving into the tiles again.

Golden eyes flick about the tiles of the large main area in the tent and his eyes immediately spot a bishop burst from the tiles about 30 meters away. It slid into place, stopping the jester with a soft ‘oof’ when she ran straight into it. He watched curiously, the snake poking out his head when the bishop opened its split head, letting those ominous blue petals blossom from the casing. The effect is immediate; the little jester’s pie-cut pupils expanding impossibly wide and sinking to her knees on the floor. She started clawing at her head, heaving her chest a few times before she let out a blood curdling scream.

Kinger was learning. If he was going to break Pomni faster, it was going to be mentally. The pathettic little loony body could take a punch or two, it seemed… and deep within the hare’s mind to the snake couldn’t help but rumble into a restless coil of curiosity at how far she’d need to physically be pushed to scream like that. He could hear it in her voice as she wailed. The suffering of complete and utter anguish, laced with the undeniable undertone of stubborn determination. Like she knew she had no choice but to face it.

It sounded so… interesting…

Jax reveled in the sound; it should not have sounded as sweet. Despite the circumstances, he couldn’t help but be fixated – he didn’t have the chance to see the previous attack of the bishop on Pomni, he only saw the black ooze trail a few lines down from under her hat. It was so similar to blood and yet it just wasn’t.

It was almost enough…

Why did she have to be such a uprooting hazard to the Oasis, though?

He wasn’t blind – she surely was something. He’d be lying if he said that the jester didn’t intrigue him at all. That he had absolutely no interest. Of course, non of those interests were necessarily good…

For her.

In a blink of an eye the bishop’s blue tendrils abruptly fled back into it’s split head casing and sunk back into the tiles, leaving Pomni to crumble into herself, with a single bated breath, before a knight jumped up from tiles nearby Jax and huffed aggressively. It took him a second for the knight to hoist up it’s front legs in charging it’s attack, before the startled hare was reminded that he was just as deep in the mess as she was, at the end of Kinger’s sword.

But much to the bunny’s surprise, the tired, strained voice of the little jester rung into the air again, with the unmistakable twang of attitude that he could help but get riled up from.

“Is that all you got, you overgrown show pony?!”

The Knight harshly stomped onto the ground, just shy of Jax’s arm, which was frozen in place after he barely made it onto all fours. The knight looked it was about to charge at her, when a exasperated growl made it’s head turn to the other side, almost bewildered.

The purple hare’s gaze snapped into he same direction, seeing Zooble, and his beloved girls still intertwined into that god-awful possession. It felt like forever when he last saw the ragdoll’s face, now completely covered in adorning Gangle’s mask, completely overtaking Ragatha and all that she was.

The possessed doll was trying to rip Zooble apart, stumbling and flailing as there was a clear power struggle evident between the possessed and the possessor. Gangle was unable to effectively maneuver Ragatha’s limbs to fight back Zooble, and every time she’s unwrap a ribbon from a limb to get to the Zolo-creature herself, Ragatha would weakly try to reach up to pry the mask off her face.

It wasn’t effective and the ragdoll never managed to reach up to her face, but it was enough to aggravate the masked ribbon.

This led to Gangle using the ribbons around the doll’s legs to unwrap one at a time to manage the balance of ripping and tossing one Zooble’s pieces, before wrapping around to lower limb of the doll again to force a step forward, since Ragatha would squirm and inch back from the abomination to play at Zooble’s advantage.

The doll really was the only one who could fight Gangle back, even if it was still hopeless.

Meanwhile, Zooble was stuck in the everlasting struggle of trying to literally keep themselves together and get a hold of the possessed ragdoll – any hold on her.

The abomination had any limb that reached out to disarm the ribbon bound doll, disarm then. Literally! Besides that, the awkward, bulky digits and limbs was not able to grip the porcelain mask, unless they aimed to crush the entirety of the girls’ heads in one solid grip – which was everything the zolo-being was trying to avoid.

No one ever knew the consequences of killing Gangle while she was possessing another member. The fear was that That Amazing Digital Circus, glitchy and unstable as it already is, would not be able to handle the event and that the two members involved would meld and fuse together permanently, forever forgotten of what their former selves were and wanted to be.

No, the mask had to come off.

That was the goal.

And that was what struck Jax’s feral mind like a ton of bricks.

‘Jax, Pomni and I are handling Kinger differently this time-‘

That was it. This was for him. It had to be him.

Pomni and Zooble was distracting Kinger, using themselves as bait, taking the beatings and onslaught of the panicked King’s wrath to leave the hare and the possessed doll be. After years of taking the beating for and from everyone else, being the scape goat, the self-proclaimed menace for everyone else to step on, the roles were finally reversed and they chose to take the beating for him. It was odd. He should’ve felt something, he knew that, but it was dull and faint, as it always was since that fateful day he willingly let it go all those years ago.

Guilt.

Then came something he was all too familiar with, so used to repressing it that it caught him off guard when it burst for the depths of his being – almost knocking the wind out of him.

Rage.

How dare he have let it come to this…

The shrill, beast-like whinny that came from the knight, looming over him, crashed the purple bunny back into reality once again. The sight of Zooble laying their hands on the possessed doll, the ones that the King piece was meant to be dealing with himself, sent the older man into a flying rush of rage of his own.

Jax could hear it in the undertones of the knight’s whinny, the chilling undertone of Kinger’s voice bleeding through the animalistic screech.

Its time was up, it was forced to dive below the tiles once again.

But it couldn’t.

Long, milky white appendages grabbed at its mane and jaw, wrapping around it’s neck in a quick, web-like fashion, before pulling taught, preventing the head from following it’s body below the tiles. Jax’s eyes widened for a moment, before his slit-like pupils dilated into inky, black pits, searching the tiles for the source of this offender.

Only to find Pomni.

The jester slid to practically stand over the thrashing knight’s head, bearing over to keep it from sinking to allow another piece to resurface. The little jester’s arms stretched, coiled and twisted around the desperate chess piece, tightening into a death grip as she groaned in the effort to keep her hold on it.

Her determined expression had her white teeth bared as if she had fangs, causing Jax to perk up, startled when her gaze flew to his perplexed figure. She growled out one word to snap him out of it.

“GO!”

He knew what he had to do.

Without acknowledging her, the fierce rabbit leaped into a full sprint, his claws piercing the tiles into tiny cracks as he gripped them to propel himself forward with every leap he made.

The hare. The snake. The man.

All as one this time.

All with the same goal, heading into the same direction with the same destination in sight.

His girls.

He was fast – barely faster than Kinger’s knight. One of the only advantages he had. He could hear – listen – every breath in the room, every heartbeat. He didn’t need to flick his gaze back to hear the desperate Knight, that Pomni was doing her best to restrain, twist his head back to sink it’s teeth down onto the jester’s shoulder, snapping what might have been her collar bone, before whipping the small body over his form in a swift, aggravated motion, to drag the clown girl down into the blue-glowing tiles along with it.

Now it was a chase.

Jax had to get there first.

 The next few seconds went by in slow motion. Jax was bolting to Zooble, Ragatha and Gangle, with the possessed doll being preoccupied with the zolo-being. Jax heard a zap, and then a crash from behind him, the rhythmic sound of the leaping knight gaining on him from behind, as it leaped up from out the tiles as it chased him down, not quite able to catch up. He wasn’t aware of the horrific image the Zooble managed to see; one of Pomni, saddled onto the wild Knight’s shoulder, clutching to the mane of the beast, with her eyes glowing a bright cyan-blue as the knight’s was, most likely influenced by the fact that she was also dragged down beneath the tiles.

The sight of it made Zooble’s expression strike to one of complete and utter shock – one of which was briefly picked up on by the charging purple blur, but not fixated on, as he gave one final leap towards his friend and his muse. He managed to catch the possessed doll off guard and tackled her off of Zooble, baring his claws to the porcelain mask.

From behind him, sprouted the knight in a rushed and desperate fury, ready to pounce onto Jax’s back. There was seconds.

Mere seconds.

Jax had to be gentle.

With aimed precision, the awful, ebony claws of the hare was brought down to the top of the fine rim of the white, porcelain mask, the very end of the sharpened tip, sliding once… twice… before hooking into the almost seamless split of the layered masks, feeling the flush, fit-together pieces subtly give way from each other, separating the comedy mask from the tragedy mask with a soft clink.

The detachment of what she considered her power, gently pried from her in a rushed, yet precise way - in which only her snake can, left her true emotion flood her being in the reveal of her tear-streaked face.

It was a sight for sore rabbit eyes.

The moment, a mere fraction of a second, was over with the painful crash to the floor, as the comedy mask shattered into pieces beside them and the wild hare tackled the possessed doll to the floor, using her plush, restrained and beaten body as cushioning.

The hair on Jax’s back stood at end as he felt the impending doom of the Knight having leap up to stomp down onto his back, still rode on by the partially possessed jester – two sets of eyes glowing, making the white tiles beneath the tackled party reflect the flash of cyan into his vision.

Jax didn’t care anymore.

The snake pinned down the manic owl – and his deed was done. Now all he had to do was brace down and take the beating of those cursed hooves, so that he would die and his girls wouldn’t – free from the looming possibility of respawning into an amalgamated mess as a result of dying while Ragatha was possessed by Gangle.

He welcomed his temporary demise once again, looking down to the screeching porcelain mask that was stuck to his dolly’s face, only to have his eyes widen in shock as Gangle blurred out of sight, unlatching from Ragatha’s beautiful face, and charge into Pomni’s, still saddled to the knight’s back.

At the sight, the steed burst and crumbled into a cloud of cyan dust as met Jax’s back, the impact so much  softer than he was bracing for, but too distracted by seeing his distressed doll’s pretty eye again to care.

Pomni’s body was flung over them and tumbled into a rolling mess of lanky white limbs and flowly crimson ribbons.

A beat of silence.

The body of the little jester, now possessed with Gangle’s tragedy mask, skid limply to a stop as she seemed to lay there, lifelessly. At the sound of Zooble’s cry, the ribbon that acted as the masked ribbon’s torso, quickly wrapped around the torso of Pomni, using the other 4 ribbons – Gangle’s limbs – to hoist up the little jester’s limp body like a spider.

It barely spare a glance to the worried face of Zooble, before it fled, climbing the structures and anything it could find to make it to the owl’s sanctuary.

The upper rafters of the Circus tent.

It all came falling apart after that. Zooble rushed to tumble and charge towards their beloved friends fleeing form, until they couldn’t see her anymore, only to be grabbed by Kinger, who stood fast in holding them back.

They didn’t care that he was back or how he reemerged from beneath the tiles, now adorned with his blue eyes once again. They tried and failed to chase after their partner, only to crumble to the floor, caught and gently laid onto their knees as Kinger lowered them down.

It hurt.

It hurt so much.

“She lost it.” The zolo-creature said in a quiet sob, only to be hush by Kinger’s eerily quiet voice.

“She’s not alone.”

The king’s attention was divided. His dear friend, his neutral, his counterpart that complemented his role in the Oasis so beautifully, now at their lowest. Broken and hopeless.

His princess, who’s limp body was swiftly dragged by having fangs sunken into the back of her neck, blurring across the checker tiled floor of the main room. The rabbit stopped before sparing a quick glance to the King piece, then quickly rounding the corner and out of sight, toward the hallways harbouring the members’ rooms.

That boy…

Kinger shook his head, getting back to comforting Zooble.

The snake was a monster, but he’d take care of their water spring, even if he had methods that the king did not entertain.

Ragatha would be ok.

Everyone would be okay.

And Pomni…

Well…

She wasn’t really one of them yet, to begin with.

End note: Oof... there you have it folks. Kinger has his priorities.