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The Last Laugh

But, when you really think about it, is it the winner or loser who laughs last?

Pomni’s been the target of one too many pranks to let Jax slide this time. But he's not going down without a fight

Potential warnings: cartoon violence. The Amazing Digital Circus tickle fic.

Word count: 10,765

~*~

There were a few ways in the digital circus to effectively make the entire cast convene to one location. Food was a relatively good method, though virtual and without substance; it could eventually draw most of the colorful characters from sleep or solidarity in their bedrooms. Much faster was when the ai ringleader, Caine, snapped his fingers and summoned the group, physically floating them into his presence. Fastest, though, was a way just discovered. Not technically the most completely effective, as it only successfully summoned four of the six troupe members, but one was the cause and one had been awaiting such sounds of chaos and felt no need to seek them, when they would surely find him soon enough.

If you weren't expecting it, a terrified genuine scream was enough to get anyone moving.

Just minutes earlier, the circus denizens had trudged to their rooms, ready to recover from an exhausting day of ai generated adventuring. You wouldn't know it, at the speed with which the four carnies flung open their doors and flooded the dormitory corridor, bolting toward the still-shut entrance of their newest member’s door.

Ever concerned and the nearest caring neighbor, Ragatha made it there first, rapping rapidly on the door. “Pomni! Pomni, are you okay?” Kinger, Zooble, and Gangle caught up with her quickly after, waiting anxiously for a response.

After a moment, the jester’s door opened, scant enough for only Pomni’s voice to pass through. “Ragatha, don't look.”

A collective sigh of relief passed through the group upon hearing Pomni’s voice, reassuring them that she hadn't been eaten or abstracted or fallen to any other manner of twisted fate that could be dreamt up in their little world. Their concern turned to confusion at her words, though. Ragatha furrowed her brow but didn't ask any further questions, moving to stand behind Kinger and covering her eyes. “Okay…”

Pomni emerged slowly, gently butting the door open with her shoulder due to her hands being engaged in cradling a pencil-sized centipede. The carefulness of her gait clashed harshly with the clench of her jaw and the angry cherry color of her cheeks. She took several measured, but not completely calming, deep breaths. “Kinger? Do you have an extra place in your terrarium for this?”

Kinger’s eyes lit up, and he gasped so excitedly that they seemed to glow. “Oh, Pomni, thank you!” His floating hands manifested from his royal purple robe and cupped together, eager but delicate as he held them out to accept the little creature. He watched in awe at its magnificent multitude of legs scuttling upon his fingers. “What a thoughtful gift! I can't remember the last time someone gave me so many legs!”

“You're… welcome,” Pomni replied, her temper visibly cooling at such sweet silly sentiment. She sighed, wiping her hands on the front of her red and blue costume. “I'm glad someone can get some joy out of this.”

“Oh, do you not like centipedes, Pomni? I know I myself didn't used to be a fan of bugs either,” said Kinger. Behind him, Ragatha scooted away until she was safely hiding behind Gangle, eyes still shut even with considerable distance between her and the creepy crawler.

“I don't not like them, but I definitely don't like them as much as you. And this one and I definitely didn't get off on the right foot, so.” Pomni pulled her door shut but didn't lock it. “So you are welcome to keep any bugs you find in my room from here on out.”

“Wow.” Kinger’s eyes narrowed happily, and he turned, practically skipping back to his room as he chatted with his new buggy friend. “Now, don't worry, little fella. I know meeting new folks can be scary, especially when you have a lot of left feet. But Pomni’s very nice when you get to know her. Oh! You didn't see any more bugs while you were in her room, did you?”

Once Kinger’s voice had faded down the hall and behind his own bedroom door, Ragatha dared to peek out between her hands, then dropped them with a relieved exhale. “Thanks for the heads up, there. You okay?”

Pomni nodded. “I'll be okay, thank you.” Her bicolor eyes glanced from Ragatha’s face to just past her shoulder, and the sight of the grinning purple face that marked the door across the way reignited her smoldering temper. Before she'd regifted it to Kinger, the centipede had surely been a gift from her leporine neighbor. He was infamous for leaving undesirable favors in the cast members’ rooms, and he was the only one wicked enough to rig Pomni’s door to drop something on her head and scare her eyeballs from her skull. Reliving the event--going from spent and sleepy to terrified and totally awake, letting out such an embarrassing scream, realizing who the culprit must have been and picturing his smug face laughing at her plight--made actual smoke begin to billow from beneath Pomni’s hat and a sharp smile stretch across her gritted teeth. “But I'll be better once I kill or seriously main that rabbit. Excuse me.”

Zooble chuckled. “I'll get the popcorn.”

*

For the second time that night, Pomni proceeded her own entrance with a yell.

“JaaaAAAAAX!”

The rabbitoid prankster was seated on a sofa in the main area of the circus tent, lazily flipping through a gobbledegook magazine. He pretended not to notice Pomni’s approach until she was standing behind him. “Oh, hey Pompom!” said Jax as he turned his head to her, his smug grin betraying his phony innocent act. “Not too tired from the adventure after all?”

Pomni balled her fists at her sides, resisting the urge to jump over the back of the couch and throttle him. “What is your problem?”

“In general? Or right now?” Jax snickered, dropping the magazine on the cushions. He kicked his legs up and swung them over the back of the couch before pushing himself up with his arms so he could face Pomni and grin down at her. “Because, if it's the former, we’re gonna be here a while.”

“When did you even have the time to--?!”

“Time to what, exactly? Whatever it was, it must've been pretty good to get your collar THAT ruffled.”

“You KNOW what; it was obviously you!” Pomni retorted, rising up into her tiptoes and glaring at him. “Nobody else is gonna rig a centipede on my door to land on me when I close it!”

“Oh no,” Jax said, holding a hand in front of his mouth in a way that might have looked sympathetic if not for the corners of his grin stretching unabashedly out from behind his yellow glove. “Don't tell me you're afraid of centipedes, too, Pomni.”

“I'm NOT--” Pomni took a deep but not exactly calming breath. “I'm not. What I'm scared of, and what you know perfectly well that I'm scared of, is things JUMPING at me.”

“Well, now, that's just a hurtful stereotype to put on a rabbit, and a lazy way to accuse me of something objectively hilarious.” Jax’s hands fell to his hips, and he leaned forward to loom over Pomni. “You even got any proof it was me? Huh? Like you said, when would I have had the time? We were having so much fun together on that adventure today, remember?”

Refusing to be cowed by his approach, Pomni stood her ground and crossed her arms. “It's certainly no one else’s MO.”

Jax waved a hand dismissively at that rebuttal. “Circumstantial. Your blame is both baseless and hurtful.” When Pomni tried to take a confronting step toward him, Jax bapped a palm against her forehead and maintained distance between them, stopping her in her tracks and easily holding her at bay with his long reach. “Hey, for all you know, that centipede could have wandered over from Kinger’s room just looking for a new warm friend to snuggle with.”

Pomni shoved his hand away with a huff. “You won't even pretend to be sorry.”

“What, and lie to your face like that?” Jax batted his eyelashes at her, and Pomni felt a twitch in her own eye. “Would I do that to you, Pomni?”

Certainly, she would have made a good centipede snuggle buddy, what with how steamed she felt. She was currently of two very disparate and very loud minds. On one hand, she could practically hear the voices of the other circus members advising her not to engage with Jax (whenever possible, but especially when he was in an instigating mood). His antics were only to garner attention and a reaction, so walking away was both the high road and the far less bumpy road. On the other hand, (and she realized she could actually hear their voices because the other circus members had followed her on her warpath but stayed a safe distance back and half hidden in the hall) she could feel their rapt gazes on her, hear their hushed bets on whether or not blood would be shed. Jax wasn't likely to take responsibility for the stupid prank he'd played on Pomni, and he definitely wasn't going to apologize. Quite the opposite; he was relishing any upset from her and would only get a bigger laugh the angrier she got. Pomni would have loved to do something to wipe that smug smile off his face, make him feel humbled or thrown off his rhythm. But. But… She took another deep breath, a begrudging sigh. She supposed she would have to be the bigger person.

“Aw, turning in after all?” Jax said when Pomni turned to march back toward the dormitory without another word. “Fine. Hey, tell your new roommates I said goodnight.”

Her trek stopped after only three steps. Roommates, plural. He'd hidden more than one. Or he was messing with her, trying to get into her head or under her skin. She no longer had the energy or patience to figure it out.

[BOING] it. Why should she be the bigger person? Jax would be the first to point out, tauntingly, that she wasn’t. The high road would take her nowhere, so Pomni could see no reason not to stoop to Jax’s level. His tall, tall level. He had to be taken down a peg.

Pomni may have been the smallest member of the circus, but her cartoon body was as agile and spry as anyone else’s. And she was easily able to use it to pivot on her heel, sprint the three steps back, and launch herself at Jax with a screech. The loud noise and sudden movement surprised Jax and prompted him to turn tail to run, but he wasn't quick enough to avoid Pomni’s flying leap. She landed squarely on his back, catching his long ears in her fists and yanking them to keep her balance. With a grunt, he pulled against her, but Pomni shifted her grip and held firm, the opposing forces making Jax’s ears and forehead stretch backward like they were made of rubber. Both snapped back into place when he gave up on pulling away, and Pomni wrestled his head closer with just one vice-like grasp so she could use her right hand to land blow upon thunking blow atop his head. She wasn’t the strongest, and her fist colliding with his skull made disappointing cartoonish bounces and squeaks, but she still found some catharsis in the attack. If his irritated grunts and censored curses were anything to go by, not only could Pomni get the upper hand, but she had it, and she was not planning to let go any time soon.

It was a shorter-lived victory than she would have liked. Jax had realized trying to pull forward had gotten him nowhere, so he opted instead to go rigid and fall backward. Pomni was having too much fun smacking him in the head to react in time and move, so he dropped atop her like a felled tree and knocked the wind out of her. Squished but not ready to surrender, Pomni continued to grapple viciously with his head and ears. When that didn’t work to budge him, she wriggled her legs out from beneath him so as to drive her heels repeatedly into his sides, like urging a stubborn horse. Jax did rear up into a sitting position with a growl, dismayed when she clung to and followed him easily. He flung an elbow backward at her, and, when that attack didn’t uproot her, he reached over his shoulder to grab at one peak of her jester hat. Part of her avatar, it moved and stretched with the same unnatural give that Jax’s ears had when their positions had been reversed. Pomni gritted her teeth on a pained holler and instead cried out vengefully, finally releasing his ears so she could scrabble at his face, finding purchase on the edges of his ever-present (albeit currently grimacing) grin and pulling his cheeks. Jax grabbed her wrists first, and then shot his hands back further, hooking them under her arms to try and detach her from her perch.

Something unexpected happened then, amid what had seemed a lawless anything-goes brawl. After the grunting and hissing and cursing and punching and pulling, when Jax’s hands squeezed her sides to try and wrench her off him, Pomni let out a startled high-pitched squeal and relented immediately, releasing her hold on Jax in order to instinctively clamp her arms to her sides and her hands over her mouth. All movement seemed to freeze, all air seemed sucked from the room, and even the peanut gallery was hushed. Jax’s hands, still clasped around her ribcage, squeezed again, curious, deliberate, and Pomni tried to smother a yelp in her red and blue gloves.

No, of course not, her digital body couldn't be especially strong or tall or fast, and it didn't look or sound anything like the physical body she’d spent twenty-five years trying to get used to. But of course, of course, her avatar would be ridiculously ticklish. The notion, even the possibility, hadn't occurred to her, had slipped her mind in the midst of circus chaos and asinine adventuring and not losing her mind. But the realization shocked through her system, this truth shot through her. This very silly, very familiar, and very human sensation.

For how much force she'd exerted trying to rend his cheeks moments earlier, Pomni imagined Jax’s grin was nearly splitting his face as he, too, realized why she’d made such a squeaky sound. With his hands in such a convenient spot and Pomni’s fists no longer choking his ears or clobbering his head, Jax could easily pluck her from his back and flip her over his head to hit the ground in front of him. The arcing toss she’d been thrown in and subsequent slam to the floor knocked the air from Pomni's lungs with an oomph, and her pupils spiraled dizzily. She shook her head, blinked, focused, and immediately wished she hadn't.

Jax’s face, his massively smug grin, loomed over her. Pomni glared up at him in return, hoping to appear more menacing than the petrified she actually felt at the tables’ sudden turning. His hands moved, one just enough to press down on her shoulder and chest to keep her pinned, and the other to rest complacently on his hip. “So,” he said, tipping his head to one side, “centipedes don't bother ya?”

Pomni didn't bother wasting time on confusion at the question Jax already knew the answer to. She put her focus instead on gripping his wrist and trying to free herself from under him.

Jax didn't appreciate her lack of a reply and demanded her attention by pushing her a little harder into the checkerboard floor and brandishing his free hand in a claw above her. “How about spiders?”

For just a moment, Pomni froze, eyes growing wide at the implicating inquiry that was confirming what was about to happen. Her attempts at escape redoubled, her body thrashing and feet scrabbling and hands shoving and mind wailing at the floor to glitch beneath them and swallow her up. Or launch Jax through the top of the big top. Pomni tried to glare up at Jax, but she couldn't help her gaze flitting betrayingly to his descending, wiggling fingers. “[HONK] you,” she tried to hiss, only to groan at how her censored cursing only made the situation sound all the sillier. “How can we even be--?! Why is this even a thing?!”

“Who knows?” Jax replied with a shrug. “Seems like the sort of thing Caine would be inspired to zap us with, so maybe it's a feature. Or maybe it's a bug.” His arachnid hand crept closer, hovering inches above Pomni’s torso. “Either way, if I can use it against you, that's fine by me.”

Pomni came to the begrudging conclusion that she wasn't avoiding her imminent fate. Jax was too stubborn, his hold too strong, and his fire for revenge too stoked. Even so, she refused to go down silently. Forcing herself to take a deep inhale through where her nose used to be, she let the struggle ebb from her limbs, crossed her arms, and scoffed. “If you need a glitch to make me laugh, maybe you should try pulling pranks that are actually funny.”

Jax’s smile widened further fiendishly, making his eyes narrow and his pupils shrink. Touched nerve for touched nerve, it seemed. His hovering hand dive-bombed to finally connect with Pomni’s side, squeezing and spidering up and down the blue side of her torso.

Pomni bit her lip hard enough to taste static. He may have surprised her before, but she could see her doom coming now; if she was ready for it, maybe she could withstand it. Her arms still somewhat crossed, she clamped them tight to her sides, hugging herself in defense against his attack. Even as his hand skittered up and down her right side where she couldn't easily block, Pomni held back the rising tide of hilarity she could feel bubbling in her throat, holding her breath and hopefully withholding any satisfaction for Jax in cracking her.

“Ooh, you gonna try to hold out?” Jax teased with a sneer. “You think that will work? Like I'll get bored if you don't laugh again? Joke’s on you; I'm actually very patient. Especially if I get the entertainment of what your face is about to do.”

Despite her cheeks being puffed out like a hamster’s and her face beginning its “entertaining” shift of rainbow hues, Pomni tried to glower at Jax. If her face hadn't naturally been shifting from blue to magenta, it would have definitely gone red when Jax laughed at her.

“Aww, is that the best you can do? I've seen you make scarier faces than that. Or, is that why you had to attack me from the back? So I wouldn't see how you just can't stay mad me~”

Censored by a loud car horn, Pomni hurled a curse through gritted teeth and a punch through her instincts of self-preservation, both aimed at Jax. Both equally ineffective.

Pomni’s arm was too short for her swing to connect when Jax leaned back, but it did reach far enough to open a new place for him to target. His assailing hand jumped from her side to her opposite exposed underarm, fingers dancing beneath her striped poofy sleeve.

Her face shifted sharply from green to white as a shriek barreled its way out from Pomni’s chest. Where last such noise had been followed by breathtaking silence, this one preceded an avalanche of merry mad cackling. Her arm rocketed down to try and defend the apparently very weak spot, but it was no use. Jax had gotten a reaction from her; no way was he going to quit when he'd just gotten started.

“Boom, THERE’S the fireworks!” Jax cheered, positively beaming.

For as insufferable as his verbal teasing was, Jax’s tickle attack wasn't as malicious as Pomni would have expected of him. Maybe it was because the movement of his hands was somewhat limited with Pomni trying to crush them like a rat in a snap trap. Not limited enough though, if her squealing was anything to go by. Were his hands glitched into her avatar or something?

Whatever the case, the pair became all the closer when Jax hauled Pomni up into his lap, still tickling under her arm and using his own arm to pin her to his chest. “Now, what were we talking about?” said Jax, rubbing his chin in mock thoughtfulness before sending the fingers of that hand to flutter by Pomni’s neck. “Oh, right! You were accusing me of some awful clever prank. Rudely, but. I SUPPOSE I could hear you out. Floor’s yours. Do you have any evidence that this surely dashing prankster was me?”

The hug Pomni currently found herself trapped in was unyielding, Jax’s arm like a seatbelt securing her to her doom. Any answer she could have given was swallowed up by guffaws as Jax bullied her further, forgoing his fluttering attack on her neck in favor of scribbling his fingers into her stomach.

“Fair point,” Jax said, considering her cackling as though it were a profound, let alone coherent, response. “I can see how you'd jump to that conclusion. But I think I have a pretty good counter point.”

His hands vacated her body so suddenly that Pomni slumped to the floor, limbs weak like jelly and chest heaving. Jax shifted from sitting on his tail to his knees. Pomni had been about to summon any strength into crawling out of his reach, but now she just blinked in confusion. No way he was actually letting her go all of a sudden, right?

(In retrospect, Pomni thought she heard the sound of a slap coming from her colorful creeping peers in the hall. Whether it was someone face-palming at her foolishness for not trying to run when she had the chance or someone clapping their hands over their eyes to avoid watching what came next, Pomni couldn’t say.)

Jax grabbed Pomni’s limp forearms and easily wrangled them under his knees, pinning her to the floor. Fighting instinct flooded Pomni’s body seconds too late, and she writhed fruitlessly under his hold. Her human body might have been injured being restrained under an unforgiving attacker and to an unforgiving hard floor, but her cartoon body wouldn’t so much as bruise--a fact she used to her advantage first when twisting her arms to claw at Jax’s legs and then at the floor itself. Caine could restore the floor with a simple snap if her attempts to dig herself free left trenches in her wake.

“[POP] you,” Pomni growled, the sound a mix of a hiss and a whine through her gritted teeth. She kept her eyes on her thrashing arms, pointedly not looking at Jax’s hands as they came to hover by her sides. “Don’t you [SPLAT]ing dare, don’t you-- [BOI-OI-OING!]”

Undeterred by her swearing or squirming, Jax unleashed both hands upon her torso, fingers spidering up and down her sides, pinching her hips, and knuckling into her stomach. No matter how hard she tried to focus to fight against his hold on her, she couldn't, no more than she could fight her body’s reactions to the giddy elation sparkling under her skin. Under Jax’s conducting hands, Pomni’s symphony of mirth marched on. To the raucous melody of squeaky cachinnation, Pomni danced, her heels scrabbling against the floor and her head thrown back and her eyes scrunched tight and her big sharp-toothed smile stuck to her flushing cheeks. In the beats of silence when she heaved in air, Pomni could hear that Jax was laughing, too. Definitely at her, but somehow not fully derisive. Maybe it was the lack of air going to her lack of lungs and brain, but she almost thought they even sounded fond.

“Hey, your face changes color when you laugh really hard, too!” Jax snickered. “Ain't that funny?”

That WAS due to the lack of oxygen. Her eyes were shut, so she couldn't confirm, but she doubted her face was turning anything but red. Especially once, to her horror and despite not having a nose, she snorted through her squealing. That HAD been a tic of her old body, and, [SHLOOMF], how long had it been since someone had made her laugh hard enough to trigger it? She couldn't quite recall, but she did remember being mercilessly teased about it afterwards. Jax, of all people, didn't immediately taunt her about it. Though, more likely than him being nice, it was probably because any snorts entered the litany of silly sounds so seamlessly that they could be missed, overshadowed by peals of squealing laughter and expletives that would be more colorful than her face if they weren’t censored.

“Speaking of colors, which one is worse, red or blue?” As Jax asked, he drew back his hands until only his fingertips tapped against Pomni’s sides.

Pomni heaved in deep breaths while she could, bracing for another trick. “Red or bluAHAHA--?!”

Jax clarified by unleashing his hands once more, first scribbling his fingers beneath her left arm, and then switching to under her right arm, her costume’s red side and then blue one. He repeated the cycle of swapping sides, hopping from one to the other and pointedly never targeting both simultaneously. Even so, he jumped between the two spots so fast that Pomni couldn’t even begin to decipher her nervous system’s reactions, untangle them and determine which side of her brain wanted her to howl and which wanted her to shriek.

“Come ooooon~ Better tell me, or I'll have to keep going until I figure it out for myself. Oh, I see, you're having trouble talking! That's okay; you can just snort when I find the worst side.”

Both sides of Pomni’s mind were in agreement, though, about wanting to try again to yank Jax's ears off once her arms were free.

The back-and-forth brutality went on, Jax digging his wiggling fingers beneath her arms and adding rapid rib squeezes for good measure. Left and right and left again. Delirious, Pomni pondered, did she even have ribs? Did she have bones? Her lungs ached from laughing--did she have lungs? Only if it was funny, apparently. Then all of it, bones and breath and nerves became as real as real could be.

Unsatisfied with Pomni's completely unreasonable indecisiveness (as snorts were now present throughout her guffawing gaiety the harder he tickled her), Jax huffed and rolled his eyes. “Well, you're no help. But I guess if you're as stupid ticklish as you, it doesn't really matter which side is worse, huh? 100% on either side is 200% if I get both sides at once, and that's just arbitrary.” He grinned, wide and villainous. “But I bet it still feels pretty bad anyway.”

If Pomni’s scream from earlier had brought her friends running, she wouldn’t have blamed them if this one sent them running away. Jax abandoned his playful experiment in favor of combining his forces against both red and blue. His fingers skittered spirals around her armpits, then (perhaps in mercy, but, more likely, in self-preservation of his own ears at being so close to her sustained banshee laughter) hopscotched with vibrating steps between her ribs before landing at her belly and squeezing her until she squealed like a stress toy he had vengeance against.

Red or blue, who could say which was worse? Coincidentally, Pomni’s face briefly turned purple between gales of full-body chortles.

“That bad, huh? Bad enough for you to, I don’t know, say you’re sorry for accusing me? Hm? I miiiiight stop if I feel like you mean it.”

Her hilarity had just tipped toward wheezing, and, actually goading an answer from her, Jax begrudgingly stilled his hands. It took Pomni a moment before her breathing was steady enough to speak, but she could feel her answer at the ready. Would she apologize for calling out his stupid prank? [DOINK] no. She may not have had much in the way of poise, but she still had SOME dignity. No way could she tap out now. Yeah, it was more than she could remember ever being tickled in her old life, but it wasn’t as though her new body could die of oxygen deprivation or exhaustion. She could laugh her Schrodinger's lungs out and still be fit as a fiddle for tomorrow’s adventure. And, on that note, getting to roughhouse and being made to laugh with a friend (?) was painless and even pretty fun compared to just her last twelve hours in the circus. Pomni could bear the shame of losing, but--Jax’s own words, advice from Pomni’s early days in the digital circus, echoed in her mind: you could toughen up--no, she wouldn’t settle for the embarrassment of simply letting him win so easily.

Pomni averted her gaze and knit her eyebrows together, appearing like she was considering the harrowing option of surrender. Jax leaned in, preemptively gleeful and ready to gloat. Giving Pomni a perfect opening to aim a kick at his head.

Surely, the audience was cringing at how close Pomni had come to a successful counterattack. Alas, the mother[SQUEAK]er dodged at the last second. He added insult to injury by catching the assailing limb by the ankle, forgoing any previous mercies and spidering his fingers behind her knee. Squeaky cackles leapt from Pomni’s lips, and her shoulders scrunched up to her jaw, both in attempt to twist herself free or hide her noises in Jax’s leg.

“Careful,” Jax snickered, “keep acting cute like that and I might feel sorry for this.”

“You! Should!” Pomni retorted with a squeal of a roar before sending a second leg attack right to his noggin. There was a loud [BONK] as her foot connected (which could have been the sound of the impact or Zooble swearing in excitement and vicarious victory). Jax fell, hitting the floor and rolling so that his back was toward Pomni. The freed jester, elated and exhausted, didn’t move right away, her muscles like molasses and her body finally out of reach from a certain pair of yellow-gloved hands. Jax was all the way over there, sprawled on the floor and… shaking. Clutching his head.

Pomni pouted, peeling herself from the floor. What a spoilsport Jax was, going and getting hurt to sour her victory. Her mind’s halves began to struggle, one panicked and guilty while the other was unrepentant and smug. The latter lost, and Pomni shuffled on her knees toward Jax. As it turned out, she was going to be the bigger person today. Prepared to apologize, she opened her mouth, only to get close enough to see that Jax was unharmed and trembling with stifled laughter. Pomni glowered, falling back onto her seat and crossing her arms. “[BLEEP] you.”

“HA!” Jax crowed as he sat up, holding a palm to his forehead. “You beaned me in the head! Oh my god, that was hilarious! You are so never living this down. Poor Pomni is so ticklish, she has to resort to bloodshed!”

“Oh, you're fine!” Pomni retorted, repeatedly whacking at Jax’s arm. “ You still have both your braincells, don't you?”

Jax let himself be pushed like a bobble toy but sat back on his hands before he could fall down. “That was awesome,” he said with a sigh. “I am definitely putting more bugs in your room if that's the show I get afterward.”

Pomni pointed furiously at him, vindicated. “I KNEW IT!”

“Yeah,” Jax scoffed, boredly waving at her hand like it was a mosquito, “your two braincells really eclipsed together to figure that one out, huh?”

With one last smack to Jax’s hand, Pomni swiveled how she sat so as not to face him (not fully turning away though; she did not want him in arm’s reach AND in her blind spot), crossing her arms atop her knees and grumbling about how he couldn’t even come up with his own insults, let alone a funny one. She didn’t think he’d heard her, so she narrowed her eyes at him when he suddenly chuckled. “What?”

“It’s not your fault,” he shrugged, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. “Your avatar is just too cute to take seriously when you pretend to be mad.”

“I’m not pretending--!” Pomni sputtered before giving up on arguing with him any more, the roll of her eyes shifting her gaze from his teasing grin. “You’re impossible.”

“You’re trying to keep me from seeing your not-scary face again. Like I didn’t already see you smiling two minutes ago.”

Pomni whirled around with the intent to show him just how scary she could look when her nervous system wasn’t being taken advantage of. Intent only, because, before she could don her angry eyes or sharp teeth, Jax had reached across the distance between them to jab her in the ribs. She wasn’t quick enough to muffle the squeak that jumped from or wrangle the wobbly smile that spread across her lips. So she hid them and the suddenly-too-familiar red heat in her cheeks behind her hat, pulling the peaks down as a flimsy shield. Unsurprisingly, Jax laughed at her reaction, but, more surprisingly (and Pomni chided herself, her ears must have been ringing and mishearing things from her own shrieking), the sound was, once again, warm--at least, not unkind.

“See? You're smiling, so you can't be THAT mad. Otherwise, you woulda kicked me way sooner. Welp!” Jax groaned as he pushed himself up to his feet. He tapped Pomni twice on the head and, when she looked up, offered a hand to help her stand. And then promptly pulled it away when Pomni reached for it, making her growl and him snicker. The second time he held his hand to her, Jax didn't psych her out but helped her to her feet. “That was fun and all, but I gotta go nurse my concussion.” He pressed the back of his hand melodramatically to his forehead, and Pomni had to pinch her lips tight to keep from chuckling. “Oh, and, I may have been merciful this time after you played dirty, but, just know, I get the last laugh around here.” Jax knocked Pomni’s hat askew as he walked past her, headed for the dormitory hallway. “I'm not going so easy on you next time.”

Pomni straightened her cap with a huff. The prospect of a ‘next time’ didn't scare her as much as it maybe should have, albeit she would take a less heart-stopping catalyst. Speaking of. “Wait.”

Jax stopped, looking back over his shoulder at her expectantly.

“Did you actually hide more than one centipede in my room?”

His grin grew all the wider, eyes narrowing and pupils shrinking in diabolical delight. “Nighty night, squeaky~”

The fire in Pomni’s body that had smoldered to just heating her face caught a second wind and raged into an inferno. But it wasn't burning and angry, no, it was bright and warm and stoked. Fighting and playing and feeding into and off of each other’s energy--that had been fun. Could it really be done so quickly, so abruptly? Torrents of adrenaline ran through Pomni’s veins, and she knew there was no way she could go to sleep now. How could Jax? How could he actually be so smug and composed when Pomni felt like a soda fizzing and ready to pop. After all the chaos and excitement, he had to be buzzing, too. He hadn't closed the book neatly; he'd left the ball in her court, given her the challenge to meet or ignore. It was her move, and he didn't even look back at her. But the peanut gallery was still watching. Pomni felt a brief flash of embarrassment, then indignation, that they'd just been watching the silly showdown. But the feelings faded to something calculating. Gangle, Zooble, and even Ragatha hadn't stepped in to help. Maybe it was because it was hazing for the new kid on the block, but Pomni didn't think so. They believed in her, trusted her to be strong enough to hold her own. They'd stayed back and watched her get the wind tickled out of her, maybe because it was adorable, but perhaps because... they knew she wouldn't need the help. They knew she could get the upper hand.

Pomni recalled with a smirk the way Jax had ferally unleashed himself on his doppelganger after the softball game. She felt what she could only imagine was a similar surge of predatory energy, and thought a fittingly childish thought after a childish war of pranks and tickle fights: my turn.

Just as before, Pomni raced across the short distance between Jax and her, hurling herself at his back and latching on like a koala. Still somehow surprised by Pomni’s audacity, Jax staggered but didn't lose his balance. “You up for another round already?” he scoffed, trying to untangle her legs from around his waist with one hand and using the other to reach behind him and try to grab at her side and replicate the way he'd defeated her before. “Or are you trying to pat me down for bugs?”

Pomni resisted his attempts to dislodge her, throwing one arm his neck like she meant to throttle him in retaliation. Jax reacted in understandable self-preseveration, his hands retreating from Pomni’s body to try and pry her chokehold from his throat.

“You said you wanted the last laugh,” Pomni said, smirking at how flawlessly Jax had fallen into her trap. Her unoccupied hand met no obstacles as it snuck under Jax’s arm. “Far be it from me not to let you have it.”

Jax froze, locked up like a startled goat the moment Pomni’s fingers began to wiggle. Fruitlessly, he cinched his arms to his sides, if not to squish her already breached hand then to prevent the other one from joining in the attack. Pomni didn't hear any laughter from him--last or otherwise--so she hooked her chin over his shoulder to see where his volume and bravado had gone. His usual, near-constant, smile seemed so easily donned, but, now, Jax’s jaw was clenched and eyes were pinched shut with the effort to keep the smile in place. A grin like gridiron, no stretching any wider and no letting anything pass, save for a few uncharacteristically quiet and quick exhales. He tried to reach back again to shove Pomni off of him, but, as soon as his arms had become unglued from his sides, her other hand sought pinching purchase under them, and he had to retreat with a hissing grunt of a snicker.

Okay, Pomni could understand now how Jax could take such pleasure in her reactions when their positions had been reversed; Jax’s reactions and attempts to hide them were too adorable and endearing not to tease about. “You better laugh, Jax, or everyone’s gonna finally see what happens when you try to hold your breath.”

Remembering the rapt audience, Jax’s eyes popped open buggishly, and he stumbled around to place Pomni as an offensive defense between them and him.

“Coward!” jeered Zooble.

When Jax was safely faced away from the viewers, only Pomni could see his eyes close once more, his lips wobbling around the edges of his grin, his cheeks growing magenta. Whatever he was hiding--whether it was his character model’s unique quirk from a lack of air or how his laugh sounded when it wasn’t at someone else’s misery--he wasn’t giving it up easily. That was fine; Pomni had plenty of patience and vengeance to spare. She finally wormed her other hand under Jax’s arm and wasted no time digging for ticklish treasure.

A strangled chortle escaped through Jax’s teeth before he could bite it back, and the cracks in the dam only broadened. An actual giggle slipped next, high pitched and wheezy, followed by another, and another. Jax’s brow was furrowed in embarrassment, but Pomni was beaming. So the mystery of his breathing tic would remain, but Pomni felt no loss. This was better. And, for how hard he was holding back just from her current--frankly, nice--efforts, it could only get better. She reserved the right to comment on the irony of him definitely being just as ticklish as she was and wriggled her hands free from the press of his triceps, scribbling lower to where his ribs might have been.

Jax crumpled, cackles escaping his widely grinning mouth and strength vacating his legs. He fell to the floor, with none of the grace or malice with which he’d done so to crush Pomni earlier. She didn’t even end up underneath him this time; Jax had been courteous enough to collapse on his front, so Pomni was still comfortably straddling his back when they landed. She could practically feel the peaks of her jester cap curl upward like devil horns.

“Now then!” Pomni all but sang, her fingers plucking a tune of hilarity from Jax’s ribcage. “What were we talking about? Oh right! You were just telling me how many centipedes you had stashed in my room.”

Futile but admirable, Jax gulped down his guffaws to reply, “That's for me to know and you to-- nohohoHOHO!”

Pomni knew better than to expect Jax to take the easy route. So she was ready, before he finished speaking, to dig her fingers more firmly between his ribs and drill her thumbs into his back.

Jax’s laugh shot to a squawk and then tumbled once again into booming cachinnation. Pomni realized suddenly that she couldn’t recall ever hearing Jax laugh for longer than a scoffing second. Definitely ironic, considering his massive constant smile, that Jax didn’t laugh all that much. Until that day, she hadn’t wondered what he sounded like halfway to hysterical, but she decided the humorous sound, loud and bright and raspy, suited him well. His love to talk didn’t leave him either, despite his airways being occupied. Best he could, he rambled and bartered and threatened, even when gales of laughter stirred his words to gibberish and swept them away. Pomni couldn’t relate; the idea of trying to talk and talk her way out of being made to laugh so hard made her tired to even imagine.

Her imagination did wander a bit while her hands stayed busy, clawing into his lower ribs with one hand and his hip with the other. Pomni wondered how this situation would have transpired differently if she and Jax were in their old bodies, in the real world. Would she still have been able to pin him? She hadn’t had a labor intensive job, but she didn’t know if Jax had either, if he would have been particularly strong or similarly tall to how he was in the digital world that would have given him an advantage. Furthermore, he would have lacked his cartoon physics tricks to wield against her. Not that said tricks were doing him much good at present. Did the others in the circus know Jax was so shockingly easy to take down? She didn’t spare a glance in the direction of her audience to see if they were surprised; if they didn’t know before, they did now. Pomni might not have been the only character spared from Jax’s pranks in the future, for having a viable option of retribution to threaten his nonsense with. Pomni’s train of thought diverted fully to her friends. Surely, she and Jax weren’t the only ones affected by this sensitivity-- this “glitch”. How would they react? It was pointless to be logical, but Pomni mused anyway. How would being ticklish work for Gangle, who didn’t have a human body? Or Zooble, with their interchangeable limbs? Or Ragatha, who was made of fabric? Could Kinger laugh with no mouth? Most of all, was Pomni brave enough to test it out on all of them and find out? She considered enlisting or goading Jax into helping her do so, if he didn’t kill her first after today.

Though, Pomni doubted Jax would seek revenge of a painful or malicious kind; for all his joyful jabbering, he hadn’t once asked her to stop. Their bodies may be changed or glitched, but their minds were free from Caine’s influence. Pomni’s body may have been about as ticklish as her old one, but her mind still enjoyed the sensation and laughter-high of it the same. So if Jax was having fun, it was all him. Even if there was variance between their bodies, at least some of Jax’s happiness wasn’t programming. Grinning, Pomni reserved that revelation to be another theory tested on another day. For now, she had a game to make the most of, and she probably should have kept some amount of focus on her motivation so both she and Jax could pretend their squabbling hadn’t settled into something just plain fun. No no, of course not, this was serious vengeance.

Recalling the way her soul had been momentarily terrified from her body when that centipede had fallen onto her head, Pomni actually slowed her attack, lightening her touch and redjusting her targets until she was spidering her fingers up and down Jax’s sides and poking at the edges of his stomach that weren’t protected by being pressed to the floor. His cackling softened to a sweeter sound, breathy hee-hees of tongue-bitten laughter. Pomni let herself be distracted by the adorable sound rather than delve for the soft spot he was blatantly trying to keep her from. “Come on, I’m not even asking you to say you’re sorry. It’s gotta be easier to just say a number, right? Just spit it out, or… I’ll have to get reinforcements.”

Jax snorted at that. “Aw, can’t finish the job yourself?”

“Don’t have to,” Pomni said, granting him momentary mercy when she cupped her hands around her mouth and looked to the hall. “Hey, guys! Quit being wall ornaments and help me out! I need someone to hold him so I can get his stomach!”

Despite his best efforts to shove his still-smiling face into the floor, Pomni heard Jax grumble, and she grinned all the wider. Her bystanding friends were not so immediately enthusiastic, as Ragatha and Gangle both looked tempted but hesitant while Zooble looked amenable to approach but unwilling to leave the other two behind. Pomni couldn’t hear Zooble’s encouragement from that distance, but she saw Ragatha brighten, smiling and standing a little taller. Gangle visibly needed more convincing from them, but soon her wringing ribbon hands began to rub together impishly.

“Last chance, last laugh. How many bugs do I need to find?” said Pomni, trying to wriggle her fingers underneath Jax but being thwarted as he subtly rocked from side to side. “I’d hurry. After today’s adventure, they don’t look like they’ll be all that nice to you.”

Jax didn’t lift his head to watch his doom approach. For a moment, Pomni wondered if he was faking another injury to garner mercy. But then, he’d turned his face away, too, when he’d realized the other circus members could see him laughing before. Was he hiding now? Pomni leaned to one side to get a better look at Jax’s face. Of course, he was still smiling, but it was a far gentler thing than the mask he usually wore. Relaxed, almost, and accompanied by a fuschia blush on his cheeks and wrinkles at the corners of his closed eyes. Pomni’s hands stilled and smile softened at how unabashedly happy he looked. And, how could he not? Jax’s pranks, his instigating behaviors, were all to get a reaction and attention out of people. Between his and Pomni’s fights and the giggly retribution, Jax had to be on cloud nine.

Happy, but aware that the vengeance wasn’t over, that it was about to get a whole lot worse before he was off the hook. And this was evident by how he, still beaming, tried to replicate Pomni’s earlier method of escape, attempting to swing his heel at the back of her head.

“Jax!” The awkward angle at which the rabbit had had to kick meant Pomni sat safely out of reach, only feeling the wind from the attack. Regardless, she kept her tone playfully indignant. “Oh, NOW who’s resorting to bloodshed?”

He didn’t reply, and Pomni looked over her shoulder to see him winding up for another kick. Quick to abandon her once-safe perch, Pomni jumped from Jax’s back to wrangle his rascally leg. Sitting on his calf, she could easily pin the offensive limb to the floor, and she ended up facing another prime spot to tickle. No way was he getting away with all his pranking and trying to punt her like a football. Her cartoon gloves didn’t have fingernails, but Pomni made up for that with the ferocity she unleashed upon the bottom of Jax’s foot, madly scrabbling her fingers across every inch of his sole.

Beneath her, Jax jolted, but, instead of his laughter resuming, there was only silence. Pomni wondered if she’d just been unlucky in choosing a spot not as sensitive as ones she’d already tried, but, just then, Jax’s other leg began to shake, fluttering kicks against the floor. His lungs caught up with the propulsion and volume his laughter tried to leave him with, and he was bellowing once more, wheezy and croaking.

Pomni grinned. That was a much more fun reaction, even if it meant she had to almost shout to tease Jax. “I guess I should feel lucky that I got an avatar with shoes, huh? Don’t have to slog barefoot through sticky kingdoms or stomp through haunted graveyards or… well, be in your position right now.”

Through his howling, Jax sputtered, trying to retort, but all he could end up getting out was her name. “PomneeheeheehahaHA!”

Jax’s free foot switched from swinging uselessly to scrabbling for purchase on the floor below. It didn’t look to Pomni like he was making any headway, but then, just as fast as he’d flipped the script on her earlier, he managed to push himself enough to turn over onto his back and subsequently unseat Pomni yet again. She, too, hit the floor and looked up to meet the suddenly too familiar sight of Jax’s face hovering above hers. But where before his eyes had been narrow and smug, now they were wide and bright, joyfully sparkling like stars in a black sky. His smile was no longer tightly stretched either, effortlessly worn albeit stubbornly twitching when he tried to sober his expression to something less elated.

“Quit smiling.”

Not realizing until he’d said something how infectious his genuine grin was and how naturally her face had mirrored it, Pomni snorted. “You first.”

Before Jax had the chance, he was yanked sharply backwards, his arms pulled wide by a ribbon on his left wrist and a crab claw on his right.

“Hey, thanks, guys!” Pomni rose to her feet and crossed over to the group, who offered her various nods or thumbs-up if they had a hand free.

On her approach, Jax began twisting his arms to break free of his captors’ grip, but it was no use. With one arm held by Zooble’s massive pincer, one lassoed in Gangle’s loops, and any backward retreat blocked by Ragatha standing immediately behind him, Jax was going nowhere. “Wait! Wait wait wait, we-- we can talk about this--!”

“Can we now?” Pomni replied, kneeling down in front of the vulnerable and vociferous rabbit and cracking her knuckles. “Because I think you’ve made it clear you’re not answering my questions. So all I can really do is try to dissuade you from pulling any more pranks on me for a while by showing you what’s waiting for you on the other end.”

Pomni afforded him no more time to fill with pointless chatter. Her teeth and claws were bared, and could no longer deny her hunger for justice the final course of its meal. With the speed and chaos of a tickly typhoon, Pomni’s hands dove for Jax’s stomach, fingers scribbling patterns that swirled up to his ribs and down to his hips and back again. She didn’t even have to try to really dig in or find an extra bad spot; no matter where her fingers flew, Jax’s torso jumped beneath her touch, trembling and then bouncing between instinctive fight and relenting to raucous laughter.

An idea flashed across her mind, and Pomni wondered if she had been momentarily possessed by the spirit of her evil doppelganger. Before she acted on it, she grinned up at her helpful friends. Their expressions were a sliding scale but all delighted. Gangle was pink-cheeked and smiling, one hand pressed to her face. (She might have been trying to hide how amusing she found Jax’s torture for the habitual fear of him getting her back, or trying to still her excitedly looping ribbon appendage which longed to recreate this scenario later in a sketchbook or add to its drama at present.) Ragatha, too, was stifling her satisfaction a bit, biting her lip but offering no help to poor Jax other than letting him smack the back of his flailing head into her plush hand. And then Zoobe was unapologetically smug, free hand on their hip as they watched Jax writhe. It was funny; no one disagreed that Jax deserved this, and no one either could take their eyes off his uncharacteristically adorable and silly and genuine reactions. On one hand, Pomni didn’t want to hog all the fun of destroying Jax, and, on the other hand, she might have actually felt a little bad for Jax if she was the only one being as mean as that fleeting idea prompted her to be. “You guys all have at least one hand free, right?” Pomni said, watching the three characters’ eyes light up in turn. “And I’m sure you have some payback for him, too. If not from today, then…?”

There were some eye rolls and shudders as each of them recalled one of innumerable times Jax had messed with them. If Pomni had to guess, Zooble definitely had recourse for Jax stealing their spare limbs and coating the sockets with itching powder, Ragatha had grievances times a hundred and one in centipede pranks, and Gangle was sore from having been used as a climbing rope on that day’s adventure. Oh yeah, now that they were all up close to the action, it would take very little egging for them to get all their hands dirty. Ragatha struck first, grabbing Jax’s ears and holding his head still so her other hand could scritch beneath his chin. Gangle and Zooble were no less brutal for still being on capture duty and down a limb each; Zooble’s plastic claw hand scribbled beneath Jax’s arm closest to them, and Gangle made use of Ragatha’s grip to flutter her ribbon up and down Jax’s ears.

What a maestro of chaos Pomni felt like, encouraging the offensive orchestra to play Jax like a fiddle. He was a proper mess now, gayly shrieking with such fervor that he’d lost any strength to fight or flee. Wiggling weakly but laughing enough for them all, Jax hung like a hilarious piñata from their hands, never once offering an answer to earn his freedom. Fine, if he was still having fun, then Pomni actually didn’t feel all that bad about enlisting the help of their friends, nor for using their combo attack as a prelude to that inspired idea.

(Her friends might have wondered, as did she, if it had actually been Evil Pomni to accompany them back to the circus. An identity question for another day.) Pomni let her grin grow feral and wide, teeth sharpening and pupils dilating, before chomping down on Jax’s side. It was a a mischievous mauling; though her teeth looked sharklike and scary, Pomni was actually being quite gentle. She didn’t want to hurt him--anymore. Today.--so she made her attack sound more aggressive than it was by uttering exaggerated nom nom noises. If the sound added to the sensation, she couldn’t tell, with how hard Jax was already laughing, but it did make their other friends snicker. Their other friends, who hadn't let up on the back end of the onslaught, compounding with Pomni's newest addition to the sensations. Just to see if she could push him that much farther, Pomni didn't even slow her fingers as she unveiled her biting move. Her fingers were still going, wiggling into the pocket of Jax’s overalls to get all the closer to the extra sensitive spot on his avatar. It was layer upon layer of sensation stacked upon one another, intensity exponential, all topped with the cherry of Pomni’s pointed teeth nibbling along his ribs and practically tasting the thunder of his hammering happy heartbeat.

Jax held his own for a pretty impressive thirty seconds. “Three!” he wheezed through wailing laughter. “Three! Threeheeheehee!”

All actions slowed to a halt at Jax waving his white flag. Primed to expect a trick though, Pomni kept her hands threateningly near his stomach, even as she sat back and ran her tongue across her jagged teeth. “What was that?”

Heaving in air with a ragged cough, Jax sagged in the arms of his captors, pointedly looking at none of them or the jester who'd questioned him. Even as his gaze darted away, his grin was still present on his face, albeit dazed with the echo of hysteria. “Three, okay?”

“You--” Pomni started, then sighed, shoving him in the stomach before withdrawing her hands. “Three centipedes in one room is just overkill, you know that, right?”

“Well,” and Jax’s grin took on its usual mischievous sparkle as his eyes lifted, “technically, there are only two in your room.”

All other gazes in the room followed his, looking up at Ragatha. Herself, Ragatha had sent her eyes heavenward with a long, exasperated exhale. Practiced with a new response, she forwent her usual admonishments and shoved her hands under Jax’s arms, digging her fabric fingers mercilessly between his ribs. Zooble and Gangle had loosened their grips on him enough that, when laughter burst once more from his lips, Jax collapsed backward against Ragatha’s legs, unable to hold himself up and finding no escape as Ragatha followed him to the floor.

“There you all are! I’ve been looking all over for you!”

Kinger’s appearance drew the attention of the group members who weren’t otherwise occupied. He emerged from the hallway, waving excitedly and eyes shining. Ignoring or unbothered by the chaos of Ragatha and Jax’s one-sided scuffle, Kinger went to Pomni, offering a hand to help her to her feet.

“I have to thank you, Pomni--and you, too, Ragatha!--for all these beautiful additions to my collection!” Kinger tugged open the collar of his robe to reveal three centipedes, strokes of red, green, and blue snuggled in the white fur. “I hope you don’t mind that I went and got them myself from your rooms; this first little devil let it slip that he was expected to be surprised by his friends.”

Ragatha moved so fast to keep from looking at the leggy creatures that she seemed to glitch, just suddenly standing facing away from the group and leaving Jax to slump to the floor with cartoon stars circling over his head. “Not at all, Kinger. I’m glad you found them,” said Ragatha without turning around. She leaned over Jax, crossing her arms. “And you can be glad, too; you get to live another day.”

“Joy,” Jax coughed.

Zooble shifted subtly to stand between Ragatha and her little phobias, watching as Gangle began the walk with Kinger back to the dormitory.

“So, do they have names?” Gangle asked, tentatively holding her ribbon hand out to one curious crawler.

Kinger gasped. “Jax! You’re on the floor!”

“Kinger?” Gangle prompted, only jumping a little when he shrieked at her tapping him on the shoulder. “Do all of the bugs in your collection have names?”

The two disappeared in the shadow of the hallway. “Oh, thank you for asking! You know, they don’t, but I’d bet they would love some.”

“I could help you brainstorm some ideas, if you wanted.”

“Oh! Wouldn’t that just be dandy of you!”

Their conversation faded from intelligible to just excited tones in the distance. Zooble touched Ragatha’s arm, and she turned around with a grateful, tired smile.

“At least, we’ll all sleep easy,” Zooble said, nudging Jax with their pincer as they stepped around him. “So, you’re welcome, bunny boy.”

Jax lifted a hand to flash them a middle finger, but the motion was so heavy and uncoordinated that it didn’t warrant a censor bar.

“Good night, guys,” Ragatha said, following Zooble but trailing a bit, looking at Pomni with a questioning eyebrow. Pomni gave her a little wave and a thumbs-up, and Ragatha chuckled, reassured. She mirrored Pomni’s gesture before walking after Zooble.

Once again, it was just Pomni and Jax in the room. Though she was feeling the day finally beginning to weigh on her, Pomni didn’t go with the others and crash on her bed as she had been so ready to do a half-hour earlier. No, she had put Jax through the wringer (rightfully), and she would have felt bad leaving him alone to recover. She did feel awkward just standing there in the meanwhile, after all the chaos of the evening. Her hands felt itchy with inactivity, so she rubbed her palms together and clasped and unclasped her fingers.

After a few minutes, Jax’s breathing had evened out, and he pushed himself up to a sitting position, shaking out the wiggly shape his ears had taken on. He noticed Pomni’s presence and scoffed, tipping his head toward her. “I'm too beat to get you back; you don't have to pretend to be nice and wait around to placate me.”

Pomni mimicked his movement, tilting her head to one side. “I'm not pretending.”

“You should be,” he tried to threaten, rubbing away the phantom tickles under his arms. “After that, I'm not taking it easy on you next time.”

“Fair enough,” Pomni said with a smirk and a roll of her eyes. “But I won't either.”

Jax shook his head, looking away from her, and the smile that spread upon his face was warmer than the digital sun, softer and more sincere than any that Pomni had been basking in that night. “I knew you were gonna be trouble.”

Somehow, that was the nicest thing Jax had ever said to her. Pomni ignored her rosy cheeks and snickered at that thought. She gave her hands something else to do by holding them out to Jax. When he reached out to take them, Pomni pulled them back, grinning. Jax didn't let her revel in the moment, using his long reach to grab her hands anyway. Pomni pulled against his hold to keep from being brought back to the floor, leaning backward and digging her heels into the floor. Giggles, contagious and easy, overtook both of them and their tug-of-war. Apparently done with being bested for one evening, Jax slackened his grip, causing Pomni to stumble, and shot to his feet, swinging her up onto his back. Pomni squeaked in preemptive terror, but she slowly relaxed as Jax wrapped his arms around her back, holding her securely to her perch with, incredibly, no funny business. His hands were dangerously close to where he'd learned and promised to attack without mercy, but his fingers were safe and still. “You really trust me back here?” Pomni asked, crossing her arms and resting him on his shoulders.

“I trust that you know I'll drop you if you try anything,” Jax replied, grinning back at her. “This is a free ride. How about you try being grateful? Even if the altitude change makes you wanna hurl.”

He jostled her but didn't let her fall, and she flicked the back of his head. Unbothered, Jax only snickered, and Pomni rested her chin on her arms. Tiredness sank into her body all the faster in such a comfortable spot, warm and with a gentle rhythm of Jax’s breathing and bobbing sway of his gait. “But how do I know you won't drop me just because it's funny?” Pomni asked, her eyelids drooping closed.

“Guess you'll just have to trust me, too.”

Pomni snorted. “Great, we’re both doomed.”

#ticklish!jax

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