Murder Drones/TADC AU where Tessa is taken by the circus and subsequently taken back by four very angry drones. She and the other players are given replacements for their brain-dead organic bodies.
Series: Murder Drones/The Amazing Digital Circus
AU Criteria: Tessa ends up in The Amazing Digital Circus! And now there's a race to get her out before the drones get angrier.
AU title (optional): Side Shows
The night before the Gala, Tessa is working on her computer when she finds a new program installed on it. A Virtual Reality game. Having a little, she decides to give it a try, as she'd never heard of The Amazing Digital Circus, but the colorful lands and cheerful look is inviting.
She is greeted by Pomni, Ragatha, Gangle, Kinger, and Zooble who try to help her understand what happened. Pomni leads the explanation, remember how terrible her introduction was, while the others subtle check on Jax's room, and then gets Caine to deal with the abstracted rabbit. Tessa is curiously an anthropomorphic bat looking puppet doll.
Meanwhile, J finds Tessa's body after her sleep cycle ends, and alerts the others. Cyn seems especially upset, and wants Tessa back, as she refused to let the other program have her. The gala is still a bloodbath, but less dramatic as Solver focuses on getting Tessa back.
Getting to the code of the Circus while Tessa is doing adventures and enjoying herself as much as she can, the drones finds that there are multiple people in there. And that the code is not annotated to who is who. To be certain, they'd have to get all of the six active ones out.
No, the drones do not ask where Cyn got the six bodies on such a short notice, and they really would rather not ask. All they know is that they have to stop the humans from attacking their mansion until the transfers are complete.
