whoa!!! wait what the hell

Pomni can TRY to take control, but its not conscious. The only reason Abel shifts in and out of control at all is because Pomni's condition is terribly, terribly unstable - her "taking" control again is technically just Abel being kicked off the server over and over again automatically, for lack of a better word. It's an inconsistent feedback loop that Abel is trying to figure out in order to develop itself into a fully fledged AI.

Pomni has almost NO awareness when Abel takes over, while Abel has full awareness constantly - when she lapses in, everything is very unusual, and abstract, and hard to decipher.

Eventually Pomni realizes when Abel is control she can actually communicate to them/her/him/it DIRECTLY in their shared brain-space (Abel doesn't care about pronouns) and she starts shooting the shit

and as Pomni does, she figures out the root of the problem after a few conversations.

Abel is never a threat to any of the humans, either, just Pomni by proxy - and Caine purposefully.

Sometimes when Abel knows they'll be taking a long time using the body, they'll absorb Bubble for a little bit so Pomni isn't totally alone for hours and hours. Abel doesn't actually like hurting Pomni after all, they just like hurting Pomni to hurt Caine. If they could hurt Caine directly they would.

the biggest issue here is abel's latent code that caine ate slowly resurfacing now that caine isn't actively suppressing it

lets put caine thru his own torment immersion blender

All fired up, you're a hot mess getting messier I'd do anything for sleep But I can think of far better ways to waste your energy If you can bear to still touch me