Chapter Text
"I think you might have taken my place as Caine's least favorite," Zooble says, and you laugh nervously as you glance up at everyone staring at your new outfit. Oh, God, is this how Jax felt?
"How's it feel now that the shoe's on the other foot, Sister?"
Jax's voice is dripping with obvious pleasure at your Caine-sponsored forcefemming, though yours is much more modest than his.
Then again, Jax went through the same thing, and you ate that shit up, so it would be hypocritical of you to throw a hissy fit now.
Shoe... You suddenly become aware of your feet in an unfamiliar pair of shoes. You wiggle your single toe and feel the cotton of thick socks. You hike up your skirt for a moment to examine your new, shiny black pair of combat boots.
"Big shiny boots!" You gasp in delight, turning your foot back and forth and looking at the light gleaming over the surface. They go up to your ankles, the laces tied snugly and securely. You think they add an inch or so to your height, too, judging by the thick sole and heel.
"Careful, now. Wouldn't wanna flash your ankle, Sister. You're a lady of the Lord and all," Jax continues, looking you up and down.
You smooth out your plain black skirt, taking a moment to let it settle in that you're a nun, of all things, for the day.
"Honestly... it could be worse," You say, turning around and examining your sleeves, messing with your veil. "Religious stuff aside, it does look kinda cool. And it's really lightweight and comfy."
"I agree, you do look cool," Gangle interjects, and Jax instantly snaps his eyes over to her and glowers.
"You'd agree with anything Kay said," He mutters while crossing his arms, before pitching his voice comically high in a mockery of her. "Oh, could I hold your hand, Kay? Can I sleep in your bed, Kay? Could I hold all your stuff, Kay? Could I lick your boots, Kay?"
"Wh-- no I don't!" Gangle squeals, turning red.
"Believe it or not, cottontail, there exists a magical middle ground between HONK-ing with someone and BEEP-ing someone, where you just simply like being around them, called friendship," You explain, making sure to inject extra salt into your tone, spreading your hands as you say the word friendship as though explaining a novel concept to a toddler. "Not that you'd know much about it, but maybe you should try it sometime. Might mellow you out enough to make you stop actin' like such a beach."
"Yeah, no," Jax replies, starting to walk down the hall, arms still crossed. "I already had my free trial of that, and it expired. You can keep your gross little gray hands to Ribbons and the other females, Sister."
He says females with a hint of disdain, like one might say the word animals.
"Hey," Zooble snaps at him, and Jax says nothing but flips them the bird, staring resolutely ahead. You jog up to the rabbit and fall into step beside him, not getting closer as he veers away from you a tad.
"Hey, Jax, completely unrelated question to the previous discussion, but how was your relationship with your mother?"
"About as good as my relationship with yours," He replies smoothly, and you feel a little thrill at how easily the two of you can slide from genuine arguing to teasing.
Maybe you can get to just teasing someday.
"Does that mean you'll be my stepfather soon?" You ask him, and he snickers.
"What, you wanna call me Daddy?"
"Only if you're the type who's, like, 'Get me another beer!' with the TV really loud and then you throw BLEEP at me," You say, giggling. "Ah, I can hear the sound of my mom yelling while you break dishes in the kitchen already."
"Jesus Christ, Sis," Jax says, laughing genuinely. "Quit projecting your daddy issues onto me!"
"Is it projection or is it observation?"
He goes quiet at that, staring ahead and walking silently. The two of you have gotten a bit ahead of the rest of the group, everyone else already engrossed in their own conversations with each other.
"I'm not some little broken toy that needs fixing," Jax says to you, low enough that you can tell it's meant for you alone to hear.
You take that phrase in your brain, turn it over in your mind.
He feels threatened by your attempts to make him stop being a bitch. Feels like you're belittling him, trying to make him something he's not.
"Jax," You say. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm a bit of a hedonist. I make friends because it feels good and because I want to live."
You watch the corners of his eyes widen a pixel as he hears the phrase 'I want to live.'
"I do things because it feels good and because keeping your brain healthy keeps you alive. People aren't meant to go it alone. So if you wanna make me the bad guy in your brain somehow... my evil, secret ulterior motive is that it feels really good to do this back and forth dance with ya. I like when you tease me and I tease you back. I like your quick wit, I like your smile, I like your laugh, your intelligence..."
You notice his gloved hand gripping at his elbow where his arms are crossed, so hard he's leaving an impression in his arm.
"I hate you," He mutters. "You get more annoying every day."
"Oh, yeah, I hate you too," You reply, voice obviously unserious. "Hate how you make everything funny when I'm getting too deep in my head. Hate how you give me something new to do every day."
"I told you not to compliment me. You're actually going to make me vomit."
His tail is wagging again. Out of all the things you got out of the dress-up game, that has to be your favorite -- that tangible indicator that he's enjoying your attention a lot more than he lets on.
"I'm not complimenting you, I'm telling you how much you suck and I hate you," You reply, seeing the end of the hall in sight. The breakfast table is set with what looks like fifteen different boxes of cereal lined up in a row.
"But, man, Jax..." You continue, daring to drop your voice into something lower, more intimate. Flirtatious, even. "Just how long has it been since someone told you all the things that they liked about you? Given you some real praise? Real shame you won't let me --"
You see his hand going for his inventory, as you predicted he might, and run.
BANG.
Kinger is close enough to dive behind as you hear a big blast of something, and a few of the girls scream. You peek over Kinger's shoulder -- he didn't even jump upon hearing the firing of a gun -- to see Jax holding what looks like a hunting rifle, looking furious.
"How many of those do you have in your BLEEP-ing pockets?" Zooble exclaims, voice shaky. Gangle is curled up behind them, ribbons over her head.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Jax spits out before raising the gun again. "Now get out from behind your human shield, Kay!"
He can't hit the others, after all, if he wants to keep the deal you made with him. You wisely remain squatted into a crouch behind Kinger, your long skirt pooling out around you. It's weirdly comforting to be covered in so much fabric -- it's like a protective blanket.
"Jax," Kinger says slowly. "I really don't think any of us want bullets for breakfast. How about you put that away and we can just continue on our day?"
Jax doesn't move for a second. Then, with a dramatic sigh and roll of his eyes, the long rifle disappears behind his back.
"Fine, whatever," He says as he turns back around. "You guys are no fun."
You slip out from behind Kinger and go to walk with Jax again, only to feel a familiar, fabric hand catch your wrist. You turn around to look at Ragatha, who's giving you a wide-eyed stare, her mouth a straight line.
"What did we just discuss?" She whisper-hisses, and you laugh nervously.
"Ah-heh, well, I, uhhh... didn't mean to?"
Ragatha's eye narrows at your transparent lie.
"Oops?" You try. "Whoopsie?"
"Annoying Jax until he tries to shoot you with a gun again isn't an 'oops' or a 'whoopsie', Kay!" Ragatha scolds you quietly. "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? You realize there's a lot less dangerous ways you can spend your time, right?"
"It's fine, Ragatha. He and I are making progress. We're getting somewhere, seriously."
She pinches the bridge of her red triangle nose with a frustrated sigh, and you take the opportunity to slip away to get a seat at the breakfast table, next to a certain purple rabbit whose face scrunches up in disgust as he glances over at you.
"You never learn, do you?" He says as he pulls forward a box of rainbow-colored fruity cereal.
"Do they have cornflakes?" You ask as you scan the boxes. Jax rudely reaches past Gangle and snags a box before lightly whapping you in the face with it.
"Here, have your prude cereal, Sister."
"My what?" You ask as you tear open the cardboard box and pop open the plastic bag inside. Jax scoffs amusedly.
"Y'never heard? Why cornflakes were invented?"
"These are frosted flakes."
"Same difference, it's just the sugar, sugar," Jax replies. "Hand me that orange juice and I'll tell you."
'Did he just call me sugar?'
You push it over to him as you start pouring cereal into your bowl. Jax unscrews the lid on the plastic jug and, instead of pouring it into the glass beside his bowl, starts pouring it into the bowl itself.
"Are you -- are you going to have your cereal with orange juice?" You ask incredulously.
"Long ago," Jax says loudly, completely ignoring your question, "In the mid 1800s, there existed a man who hated that people were going around choking the chicken, so to speak. Pulling on their pork. Beating their meat."
He pops open his bag of fruity cereal and starts pouring it into the orange juice, and you hear an "ewww" from Gangle beside him.
"Shut up, it's fruit on fruit, it matches," He says to her before continuing the story, gesturing with the hand not stirring his cereal with a spoon. "This dumb doctor's name was John Harvey Kellogg, and he hated people using their johns for anything other than makin' more white Christian babies so much that he went around telling people to eat foods that were so tasteless and bland that they, and I quote, 'wouldn't excite the passions.' And he was vegetarian, too. Double L right there. So he made corn flakes so people would be so bored that they'd stop jerking their gherkins, and that was obviously an epic fail. And they had to put enough sugar to kill a small animal in them just to get people to eat it. The End."
"Wow," You respond, pouring some milk into your bowl. "That was... very informative!"
"I'm a wealth of knowledge," Jax replies, finally taking a bite of his orange concoction. "Mmmmm."
"You are so nasty," Zooble says, taking the box of fruity cereal from across the table and shaking some into their bowl. They don't put any milk, just start eating it dry with a spoon.
"At least I don't like going in dry like you do," Jax responds, and Zooble's antennae twitch as they wordlessly take a bite.
"As if you'd know anything about getting someone wet," They mutter after they finish.
"Sister Kay, do you hear that? It sounds like there's a fly buzzing around in here or something!" Jax says to you, a big grin on his face.
"I dunno, bun, someone tried to shoot me this morning and my hearing's been bad since," You reply before taking a bite of your cereal. It is kind of tasteless, but at least the milk being cold is somewhat of a food experience.
"Someone tried to shoot an emissary of the church?" Jax gasps with false horror. "Golly, who could that have been?! I'm sure they're going straight to hell for that!"
You laugh.
"Some total maniac, I'm sure. A gun nut who has an itchy trigger finger and an ego fragile as spun sugar," You respond.
Jax huffs in a way that could be taken as a scoff or a short laugh.
The rest of breakfast is uneventful -- you mostly listen to the others conversing while you eat. Gangle has a weakness for any chocolate cereal, you learn, and Pomni actually prefers oatmeal.
Then, when everyone is starting to finish, Caine appears above the table with a loud "SALUTATIONS!!!" and Kinger screams. With a snap of fingers all of you are suddenly deposited into the area in front of the big stage where Caine usually makes announcements, and you can't help but make a small yelp at the sudden forced teleport.
The others don't -- they're more used to it than you are.
Caine must be really itching to get rid of you all today to be rushing you so fast. It's a big switch from how he actually let you all come to him yesterday.
You suppose the ringmaster's sudden shift in mood might be mostly your fault. You fiddle with the ends of your long sleeves as the others turn their attention to Caine.
Hopefully he doesn't inflict more Circus Bullshit on the others just because he's mad at you.
"Today's challenge will have you all smiling more than EVER before! It contains elements EACH of you enjoy! There's high stakes! The power of friendship, and also incredible violence! And even CAKES!"
As he spins and spreads his arms, a truly excessive amount of sprinkles fly from his hands and clatter onto the floor.
You pick one up and sample it.
Mmm, food grade wax and sugar.
"Yes, that's right! Today's adventure will be CANDY CARRIER CHAOS! Nefarious ne'er-do-wells have plundered Candy Canyon Kingdom of their staple cash crop: MAPLE SYRUP! You all will have to capture those thieving gummies and bring them to face the CONSEQUENCES. OF THEIR ACTIONS."
Is he... staring at you when he said that last part?
"Candy Candy Kingdom?" Bubble asks as he floats out from behind Caine.
"Candy CANYON Kingdom," Caine corrects him.
"Candy Cannon Kingdom?"
"Candy CANYON."
"Candy Candy--"
Caine thrusts his cane out and pops Bubble before summoning a portal.
"ANYWAY, time is money and the more time you spend here the more money Candy Canyon loses with their trade partners! So get on through that portal and start bounty hunting!"
"You had me at incredible violence," Jax says, stepping forward eagerly.
You have a feeling this will be an interesting day.