"Well," Jax sat down on the guest bench and brought a Nintendo 3DS out of hammerspace, "looks like our place is right here until someone orders something."
The phone by the register rang, Ragatha quickly picked it up. "Reversi Pizza, can I take your order?"
"That's lettin' em sweat it out," Jax quipped. Pomni, however, just sat there, watching Ragatha take the order down. From the Candy Kingdom adventure, she had always managed to be enthusiastic about their daily LARPing, but that had always struck Pomni as forced, like she was being forced to eat microwaved broccoli in order to leave the table. However, this time, without the Sword of Caine hovering over their heads, doing this human-created adventure, she seemed like she was genuinely enjoying it.
Pomni could understand where Jax was coming from. 2 weeks ago at this time, they were hurtling through null-space together, holding each other tightly as they both escaped Abstraction. From that vantage point, playing a minimum-wage worker in a fast food restaurant would be a significant letdown. Nonetheless, Jax seemed... different somehow. While certainly, coming back from the dead would probably change anyone, she was certain that the other performers couldn't detect the change in her personality; she watched Jax play her game without a care in the world. Rather than playing pranks or cracking bad jokes, she was allowing herself to be alone with her thoughts for the first time that Pomni knew her.
Jax guffawed suddenly, "That Goomba just walked his ass off a cliff." That was, certainly, the first time she had ever found genuine humour in anything that Pomni knew of. She was no longer exuding tension and self-hatred and now had the presence more of a teenage gamer.
Pomni couldn't help but beam at her outburst. "What'cha playin'?"
"Super Mario 64."
Pomni cocked her head, "On a Nintendo 3DS?"
"This is a Steam Deck now, I've decided," she grinned, "Admin privileges."
"Well, and I guess, there was that weird Nintendo DS remake."
"Not this time, Pom-Pom. Original 1996 version right here. Except-- hang on," she threw the console for a spin in the air and caught it in her other hand. "Now, it has models and textures from Super Mario Odyssey."
Pomni brought out a New Nintendo 3DS XL from her own hammerspace and declared, "Now it's 2-players. I'm gonna drop in as Luigi. Actually, no-- Hatsune Miku."
"Sorry, guys, job time," Ragatha came up holding a pizza box. "One large circus peanut and pinto bean pizza with extra sauce for, um..." she looked at the receipt, "1632 West 57th Street, Number 2."
"That was quick," Pomni observed.
"Well, we didn't have any circus peanuts on hand, and Zooble and Gangle are still setting up for the lunch rush, so, I kinda just... made it appear."
"Ugh," Jax groaned, "Why'd you have to give her admin privileges?"
"It was better than Abstracting," Pomni replied.
"Well, can't it wait until I've gotten this star?"
"Come on, Jaxxie," Pomni folded her Nintendo and put it in her pocket, "Let's-a go."
Jax groaned, "Fine. I better get a nice tip, though."
In the carpark, Jax and Pomni got into the delivery car. Jax identified it as a 2016 Honda Pilot, but the make and model on the car itself read "Caine Toothsome"; a cherry-red SUV with the Reversi Pizza logo emblazoned across both sides and a vanity number plate reading "REVPZA1".
"Okay, navigator," Jax said, starting the car, "Navigate."
"Right." Pomni produced a smartphone from her pocket and typed the address to the Reversi Team app. "First, leave the parking lot."
"Real funny," Jax grunted, gunning the car out of the carpark backwards.
"Hey!" Pomni exclaimed.
"What? I drive like this all the time!"
"You probably have an insanely high insurance premium."
"What?"
"Hey, you're a delivery driver in Realspace, could you drive a little less... like you, please? I'm trying to keep my breakfast down."
"Ugh, you are no fun, you know that?" Out on the main road, Jax asked, "Now where to?"
"Keep going on this road until you hit Rochon Avenue, then turn left."
"Rochon Avenue? Where's that?"
"Uh, the app says it's in another mile."
Now underway and with a bit of time to kill, Pomni decided to make conversation. "So... you like the green hair?"
"Black with streaks of green," Jax grinned, "I saw a girl at Hot Topic with hair like this once and I was so jealous."
"Hot Topic?" Pomni chuckled, "That was probably another trans girl!"
"Yeah, we do seem to gravitate there for some damn reason. Hey, is there a mall in this town?"
"Uh... I don't know. This is an adventure world, remember?"
"Oh, right. I kinda forgot."
"Jax, are you... enjoying yourself right now?"
Jax laughed awkwardly, "Actually... yeah. And don't tell anyone I said that."
"I won't."
"But, like... it's like you said earlier. I kinda forgot what 'normal' felt like. This is... this is nice."
"It kinda is, yeah. Can I ask a personal question?"
"Shoot."
"Are you going to... you know... change... your body at all?"
"You mean, am I gonna give myself massive mommy-milkers?"
Pomni chuckled awkwardly, "I, uh, I wouldn't have put it exactly like that."
"Boobs," Jax chuckled, "Tits, even."
"Yeah. I mean, you can do that."
"Yeah," Jax replied, "but I'm not going to. Big boobs would only slow me down. And, honestly, I've always been more of an 'ass' girl."
"Slow you down?"
"Yeah, I've got a flow goin' on here, you know? Looney Tunes-type stuff. I just swooce in and out of conversations, I figured out how to fall over 12 different ways without hurting myself, and remember how quick I ran away with that bowling ball on your first day?"
"Were you with us? I was kind of... you know... dissociating a bit."
"Well, my point is, I've developed this whole alternative sense of balance in the Circus. Big boobs would just throw the whole thing out of whack, you know?"
"All the trans girls I saw online talked a lot about how proud they were of their boobs. You know, 'breasting boobily down the stairs'-type stuff."
"Well, why don't you have bigger boobs, then?"
Pomni was caught off-guard, "What?"
"You've got admin privileges, you can change the simulation settings. Why don't you give yourself bigger boobs?"
"Because, I don't want to."
"Exactly!" Jax exclaimed, "Don't get me wrong-- I'm glad all those other trans girls have the racks they so desperately wanted. But, me?" She turned to look at Pomni, "I just don't care about boobs."
"Oh." Pomni glanced at her phone to make sure they were still on track. "Personally, I don't want big boobs because I saw a picture of a pornstar holding a watermelon next to her left boob and her boob was bigger. I was like, what the fuck is this?"
"Either Beshine or Chelsea Charms, then," Jax commented, calmly.
Pomni looked at her with a confused grimace twisted on her face, "How do you even know that?"
"I was a horny pre-teen with a Tumblr account."
"You know you're not supposed to be on that site until you're 14, right?"
"13, actually." She added in an affected Cockney accent, "As far as they were concerned, I was 21 years old and Bri'ish."
Pomni chortled, "Why is it that everyone always defaults to British online?"
"Oh, yeah!" Jax laughed, "You did that, too, didn't you?"
"Yup. I wasn't looking at pictures of plastic boobs, though."
Jax pretend-scoffed, "Oh, hurtful. Okay, Rochon Avenue."
"Turn left onto 57th Street and go for a half mile," reported Pomni.
"And, before you say anything, Pom-Pom," Jax returned to the point, "No, I don't want a huge ass either."
"I suppose there's a pornstar with a huge ass you just happen to know the name of?"
"Randalin."
"Of course."
Jax just laughed.
Pomni smiled. Hearing genuine laughter from Jax was a rare treat. Her phone chimed, "Oh, oh, we're almost there. It's the blue house with... the..." Pomni noticed a large glowing circle in front of the door, "...great, big objective marker in front of it, I guess."
Jax stopped the car and turned it off. "If it weren't for these objective markers," she remarked, "I would have forgotten this wasn't real life." She stopped and stared at Pomni for a moment. "This is your adventure, isn't it?"
"Nope," Pomni chuckled, "Mine's a secret."
"Oh..." Jax muttered, knowingly, as they walked up to the front door, "Saving that for another fanfic, huh?" Suddenly, the phone chimed again, but with a different tone. "What's that?"
"A text," Pomni replied, "It's from Caine. He says--pfft--" she stifled a laugh and simply held the screen up for Jax to read.
Wrong again, Jax!
Just 1 more guess left. Make it a good one! D](8)
Jax squinted at the screen, "D, square bracket, parentheses, eight, parentheses?"
"I think that's supposed to be Caine in emoticon form."
"Ugh..." Jax sighed, "So, Caine is listening to us?"
"I don't know. Caine, are you listening to us?" They waited, looking at the phone screen. They stood there for most of a minute, anticipating another text from Caine saying something like, "Yes, I can hear you," but none ever came.
"Hm," Pomni mused, "I'm gonna take that as a no."
"Well, good," Jax huffed, "The last person in the world I need to know about my sexual tastes is fuckin' Caine." She knocked on the door.
About half a minute later, the door opened to reveal a generic, faceless NPC, except this one looked somewhat different.
"Oh, thank god you're here!" she exclaimed in a harried, feminine voice.
"I don't think I've ever seen a pregnant sketch dummy before," Pomni remarked under her breath.
"What was that?"
"Oh, uh, that'll be $23.94. You... selected cash on delivery."
"Is that supposed to be a pun?" she asked, accusingly.
"No, ma'am," Pomni replied, half-jokingly, and pointed at Jax. "She's the funny one."
Jax held the pizza out of reach, "And there's nothing funny about a customer who doesn't pay."
"Oh, right," the NPC replied, "Sorry, I've been scatterbrained pretty much solid for the past 39 weeks. Who knows why?" She chortled and handed a 30-dollar bill to Jax. "Here, this is all I've got. You keep the rest, I don't care." She snatched the pizza away and slammed the door.
On the way back to the car, Jax looked disenchantedly at the money and asked the air, "Hey, Caine, am I supposed to take a 30-dollar bill seriously or what?" However, there was no response. "Caine? Caine?"
"Well," Pomni offered, "He did say he didn't know what was going to happen. Wait, look on the back."
Jax did so. The obverse side of the bill showed a picture of Caine and a banner that read, Yes, It's Legal Tender! "Huh. I guess it's legal tender."
"Six dollars and six cents. Is that enough of a tip for you?"
Jax looked at her askance, "Holy shit, you're good at that."
"What?"
"Math."
"I was an accountant, Jax. And, in case you're wondering, that's about, like, 25 percent."
"How do you do that?"
"I dunno," Pomni shrugged, "It just comes naturally."
As they got into the car, they heard a siren approaching. "Is that the cops? Did that lady give us phony cash?"
"I knew it!" Jax prepared to leap out of the car, but slammed the door shut again just as it was about to be traumatically amputated by an ambulance. "Let's get outta here."
"No, wait," Pomni rolled her window down and leaned out, "It stopped outside the customer's house!"
Jax chuckled, "Pfff--what?!" She also leaned outside the car.
NPC paramedics piled out of the ambulance with a gurney and entered the house; Jax and Pomni looked at each other in disbelief. Shortly, they returned with the customer NPC, plainly having very strong contractions. Panting, she exclaimed, "Wait! I never even got to eat my pizza!"
Jax dropped back into the car. "Oh, yeah. We're so outta here." She turned the car on and hit the gas before Pomni even had a chance to sit back down.
"Ugh! Jax! What the hell?!"
"What? I didn't want to get in their way!"
Pomni grunted as she returned to her seat and snapped on her safety belt. "We weren't in their way!"
"Well, sorry for... almost making you fall out of the car."
"I don't want an apology, Jax."
"I wasn't-- I wasn't trying to hurt you. I just... I'm sorry, okay?
Pomni sighed, "It's whatever."
"Remember those demons I said you didn't know about?"
"One of those is ambulances?"
"No! Like, not exactly," Jax faltered, "I mean... never mind."
"Do you want to talk about it, or no?"
"No."
"Okay. That's fine. We don't have to talk about this ever again, right?"
"Right," Jax agreed, with a hint of relief to her voice.
Pomni glanced at the speedometer. "Jax, you're speeding."
"So what?"
"So, there's a traffic cop up ahead." As she said that, they passed through the radar beam, registering fifty miles per hour in a thirty-five zone, and the police car turned its siren on to pursue them.
"No, there isn't." Jax waved her hand and the cop disappeared. "Admin privileges." It was pretty clear, she was no longer enjoying herself and she just wanted to get back to the restaurant as soon as possible.