#ragatha

The Amazing Digital Malpractice Lawsuit, chapter 4: Search and Rescue Hey. So, the movie came out, and I loved it! I look forward to putting all the newly revealed information in my future fics. But I’ve already established so much about these guys in this story that I’ve decided to write it exactly how I planned from the beginning, just so I don’t have to do heavy rewrites of the previous chapters. Pomni and the other five digital circus survivors wake up to find that the nightmare they’ve been living for the past several years was an experimental therapy gone wrong. Though much of what they experienced was an illusion, the deaths of the abstracted were very real. It is now up to them to seek justice while trying to reintegrate into their mundane lives. This is not a direction that I think the show should have gone- it’s just a canon-divergent AU that I thought I could tell an interesting story with. — There was silence. Felix was the first to break it. “You’re… you’re joking, right?” “What? No,” Arthur said matter-of-factly. “It could be our silver bullet to win this lawsuit.” “We just spent five years thinking we’d never get our lives back. And now we’re… what? Going to risk going to jail for a piece of software we can’t even be sure is sentient, to find someone who might not want to be found, when both of them treated us like shit?” Felix shook their head. “I’d rather lose the lawsuit. I… just got my life back. I’m not giving it up for Jax.” “…You don’t have to,” Arthur assured them. “I won’t be doing the breaking and entering myself- not while one bright light could make me useless- so I can hardly make demands of anyone else.” He turned to the other three. “What about you? Are any of you willing to try this?” The others were quiet, looking into their laps. None of them wanted to say it, but it was for the same reason as Felix: none of them wanted to lose what they’d just gotten back. “There is one other thing we could try first,” Arthur conceded after a long silence. - The four stood outside the hospital room, exchanging nervous glances. The patient within it was named Gabriel Walker. While they didn’t know much about his life outside the circus, they did know who he’d been within it: Kaufmo. The one that pretty much all of them had liked before his mental health eroded, leaving him cynical and his sense of humour harsh and cutting. It was Bella who opened the door. The man lying in the hospital bed stared forward, like he hadn’t heard a thing. His hair was grey and receding, and his face one of detached misery as he watched some laughtrack-heavy TV show. “Hello?” Bella spoke into the room, sounding almost reluctant to disturb him. “Do I know you?” Gabe asked, turning his head slowly. His voice was rough- a smoker’s voice. “Uh- well, sort of. We’re from the circus. I was Ragatha, and these were Zooble, Gangle and Pomni.” Gabe rolled his eyes, grumbled in frustration, then yelled, “Nurse! Havin’ hallucinations again!” loudly enough to be heard from the next room. “Woah, hey,” Felix cut in. “We’re not hallucinations. We’re in the same position as you are. We’re just the ones that didn’t abstract, okay?” Gabe shrugged incredulously. “Alright,” he said, before yelling, “Nevermind!” to the ceiling. He turned his head back to the group. “So…You’re Ragatha, Zooble, Gangle, and… who did you say you were?” he pointed at Christine. “Oh, right- you never met her,” Bella answered. “Uh, she’s someone who joined the circus after you abstracted.” “Hi,” Christine said, giving an awkward little wave. “Okay…” Gabe said, dragging the word out. “So… what do you want from me?” “We want your help suing C & A,” Bella stated. Gabe deflated, lying back and looking at the ceiling. “Look. I might not have much time left, I can barely get out of bed, and every time I wake up, I wake up thinking I’m back in that godawful circus. I don’t want to spend even a second of my remaining time on earth stressing my already damaged brain because of some stupid lawsuit you’re gonna lose anyways. So fuck off.” Christine stepped forward. “Gabe…” she pleaded, voice gentle, “we’re looking for Jax. Did he ever tell you his address?” Gabe’s expression softened. “Get me a pack of cigs and a lighter, and I’ll tell you,” he stated. The four looked to each other, weighing the ethics of bringing carcinogens to a man in fragile health. Christine gave a nod and left, coming back minutes later with a box of Lucky Strikes. Gabe took one, lit it, took a drag, and then spoke. “He grew up in Fernglen. Uh, 508, I think. After that, he was all over the place. But his family’s still there- his mom, his younger sibs, his niece, maybe his older brother if he’s out of jail. You can ask them.” “Thank you,” Bella said, bowing her head slightly. “Can we… visit you again sometime?” “Why?” Gabe asked. “Because,” Bella said, “you were our friend. That doesn’t change just because we’re out here.” She wiped a tear away. Lizzie was in the same state. “I drew a really nice picture of us laughing together. Even brought it to your abstraction funeral. I couldn’t take it out of the circus, though.” “I didn’t know you well, but… I could tell things weren’t the same once you were gone,” Zooble admitted. Gabe smiled a little at that. “Okay. Yeah, sure, company’d be nice.” – Fernglen was a rough-looking place- small, old houses with empty bottles and cigarettes in the yards. 508 yielded the group no dice- only an elderly woman in a wheelchair who said she had no children and had lived there twenty years. The group tried 510- a group of five college-age men who also said that no family had lived there recently. At house 506, a woman in her late twenties opened the door. “Hey. What can I do for you ladies?” the woman asked. The woman looked a little like Jax, Christine decided- same blondish hair, same light freckles on her arms, same dark eyes. She looked exhausted, but thankfully, relatively healthy. “We’re looking for a young man,” Bella explained. “Does anyone live here who’s twenty-two years old?” The woman’s expression immediately shifted to serious concern. “Come in,” she said. The four followed the woman into a slightly cramped and profoundly lived-in kitchen- a calendar full of school schedules on the wall, muddy footprints and muddy toys on the floor, pots caked with sauces and starch in the sink. The woman went to the conjoined room, where two teenagers were playing Xbox, and told them to make themselves scarce. After chasing them out despite their protests, she quickly sat herself down at the table. “What do you know about Trevor?” the woman asked. “Wha- Okay, we’re… not whatever you think we are,” Felix explained. “We want him for a class-action lawsuit for a digital therapy service that hurt all of us. That’s all.” The woman seemed to deflate as she let out a breath she hadn’t known he was holding. “Oh… that’s all. Okay…” She took a few more deep breaths. “Sorry. I… thought he was dead, or in jail or something.” “Why would you think that?” Christine asked, concerned. “Well, you know. He’s a wild child, always bouncing around from one place to the next, only contacting us when he needs money because he got fired or whatever… he used to crash here from time to time, but now that I’m in charge here, I don’t really let him… Wait, that doesn’t make sense to you…” The four visitors stared at her in worry. “…that sounds awful. Okay, let me explain. So… I had a pretty gnarly stage in my life myself. Eventually I decided to quit my gang, go to rehab, and step up for my kids, mom and little siblings. They already lived here, but Mom wasn’t taking good care of them. And, well, Trevor wasn’t someone I wanted around the kids. Yelling, showing up high, generally being an ass- you get the idea. Mom wasn’t going to kick him out, but I did. Flushed all his drugs first, too. We haven’t heard from him in eight months. I’m sorry.” The woman laughed a little. “Sorry for going on- I should’ve said less. Do you want his phone number?” “Yes,” Christine said immediately. That night, alone and curled up in her bed, Christine texted the number. Hey, Jax. It’s Pomni. I miss you. The group needs your help suing C & A. She typed out, Trevor. I meant Trevor. Then she added, We learned your name and number from your sister. She seems nice. She didn’t want Trevor to get creeped out wondering how she’d learned about him. She switched over to a mindless game of Tetris for a few minutes before switching back. How are you doing? Christine followed up. In less than sixty seconds, she broke down and called, only to get the answering machine. She sighed and put her phone aside. It was stupid. She knew it was stupid. She was trying to run headlong into the same fix-it relationship dynamic that had hurt her several times before. But she couldn’t help it. Without someone to give her momentum, life just flattened to maintenance- work, cat, TV, visiting her parents, food, numbing herself out. She broke into buildings to avoid that. She’d financially supported boyfriends to avoid that, and tolerated abuse and chaos so long as it was for someone who could take her on adventures and give her a reason to get up and be interesting. And Trevor… even in the circus he’d given her reason to be driven by fun instead of anxiety. Maybe he could do that here, too. And without her support, well, who knew what kind of trouble he was in. - The group met up at Arthur’s house the following night, and Christine admitted that contacting Jax had failed. “It’s okay,” Arthur said. “In fact, maybe it’s for the best. I’d much rather if we rescued Caine. The implications of that go well beyond just Jax. But, that’s if any of you are willing to try.” “I’ll do it,” Christine said. It came out sounding like a confession. “I don’t want to do it alone, though. It’ll be safer if there’s at least two of us, in case someone gets hurt. At least three’s best. Will… anyone be coming with me?” Silence fell as the three others, sitting around the candlelit table, looked at their hands. “I’ll do it,” Lizzie said finally. “Lizzie-” Felix protested. “You remember how he treated you, right? I don’t want you having to deal with him out here, too! You’re just getting your life back.” Bella sighed. “They do have a point. I’m on board with rescuing Caine, but contacting Jax could be more trouble than he’s worth. And if he’s not returning our texts, he probably doesn’t want to be found. Maybe we should just… focus on getting the families of the others on board.” Christine said nothing. The others had a point, and she couldn’t let her silly little feelings get in the way of the lawsuit. “We’re not trapped with him anymore,” Lizzie said, voice very quiet, “so we don’t have to be afraid of him. Not anymore. If he’s too much, we’ll just make a new group chat and stop inviting him to meetings. We’re safe.” Lizzie was looking down, but Felix saw determination in her eyes- same as there was when she’d gotten the tattoo, or tried something ambitious at the gym. This was Lizzie trying not to be Gangle anymore. “Point taken. We’ll look for him at whatever address Caine gives us. And I’ll come to help break him out. Or… at least consider it.” They turned to Arthur. “You sure we won’t get arrested when they see he’s gone?” “Well, I don’t think so,” Arthur began. “After the VR therapy fiasco, they seem to just want to brush Caine under the rug. Outright told me to stop working on him for the time being because we’re delaying his release by four years. So I don’t think they’ll notice at all if he disappears.” Felix closed their eyes, deep in consideration. “Alright. Tell me the plan, and I’ll go if it doesn’t sound too crazy. You coming, Bella?” Bella thought on it. If she lost this lawsuit, well, not much in her life would change. It’s not like she needed the money. But Arthur… if this company got off scot-free after what it did to him, it would be devastating. And the money could really help him with his decreased earning power. And, as bleak as it was to think about, if she went to jail, her mom might finally disown her. “I… could come, if all you need is someone to hold a first aid kit,” she decided. “Ehh… we might need more than that. But thanks,” Christine said. - Caine was, if Arthur’s data was correct and he was fairly sure it was, currently stashed away in a storage compound on the outskirts of the city. After dark, Felix drove the group to its address in a car borrowed from, in their words, “an enemy of theirs.” The address yielded an unassuming-looking warehouse surrounded by a fence topped with barbed wire. “I guess it’s a good thing Arthur didn’t quit,” Bella admitted. “There’d be no getting over that otherwise.” Felix parked the car mere meters away from the entrance, and the four pulled up their hoods and surgical face masks and got out. It must’ve looked extremely suspicious- four people in masks and loose, covering nondescript clothes showing up at this hour. The four kept their heads down, listening to the security cameras turn with their mechanical whir and hoping that their covered faces wouldn’t be seen at all. Nothing to see here, just four people who were definitely supposed to be there, performing a work function they had every right to do and had just happened to put off until 10:30 at night. Christine entered the code Arthur had given them, and the padlocked fence clinked open. Slowly, but not so slowly that it would look suspicious, the four made their way to the warehouse. The only sound was the crunch of gravel beneath their shoes. It was only as Bella entered the code to the warehouse door that they heard any other noise. Nothing much. Just a muffled, “Urgh!” from the other side of the door. Bella stopped dead, her fingers on the last number of the four-digit padlock. She reset it and guided the others to scurry away and hide around the corner. Felix took out a notepad, wrote What now? and showed it to the others. After a few moments, Lizzie wrote something on her own notepad and pointed to a window. Distraction? The four worked out a plan. Bella, the strongest pitcher of the group, would break a window on one side of the warehouse, and the others would peek in and assess the situation. Christine, Felix, and Lizzie waited by the front door, code already entered, listening for the sound of breaking glass. The sound rang out. The trio waited a good minute to give whoever-it-was time to go and investigate. Then, they opened the door. The warehouse was fully lit, sharply contrasting the cover of night outside. On the far side of the warehouse, maybe fifty meters away, a youngish man was staring up at the broken window. Security guard? Just some random C & A schmuck doing what they were pretending to do? Heck, it could be another robber and they’d never know. As he began to turn away, the trio dashed behind a shelf. They walked lightly to a spot with boxes high enough for them to crouch behind. “Huh? Who’s there? Someone else pulling long hours, or…?” came the man’s voice as he padded in their direction. Okay, Christine thought. Probably just a worker. Not ideal, but at least he presumably wouldn’t be armed. It was then that Lizzie saw it: a cardboard box adorned with a cartoon ringmaster. Caine’s tux. One green eye, one blue. Huge smile. Only difference was that unlike Caine, this ringmaster had a full face, with freckled skin and a nose and a mustache and everything- must’ve been that the Caine they knew was an unfinished asset. Lizzie brushed Felix’s arm to get their attention and then pointed at the box. They looked and then did the same to Christine, who in turn pointed to a door not far from them. Felix grabbed the box and the three made a run for it. Fortunately, the door was unlocked. Unfortunately, the room on the other side of it had no other exits- just boxes lining each wall floor-to-ceiling. Felix set down the relatively heavy box and put their ear to the door as the other two watched them expectantly. “How do we know when it’s time to leave?” Christine asked after a bit. “I don’t know,” Felix admitted. “It’s a thick door- I can’t even hear his footsteps.” “W-what are we going to do?” Lizzie cried. “You could ask me!” came an all-too-familiar theatrical voice. It had come from the box. The shock was so great that it took a second for Felix to respond. “Shut up, Caine!” they whispered. “We need to be quiet.” Someone tried the door. Christine and Lizzie scrambled to pile heavy boxes against it. “…Ooor,” Caine continued at full volume. “You could trust me to get you out of this situation. All I’ll need is a phone with service.” “What? No. We couldn’t trust you with- why would we-” A voice came from the other side of the door. “Hey. What’s going on in there?” “Ugh, fine!” Felix said, tearing open the cardboard and setting their phone on the strange chunk of metal held within it. “Alright, investigating C & A employee phone numbers, reviewing voice files, and… there we go!” Caine continued blithely. Suddenly, a phone call was being made through Felix’s phone. The person on the other end picked up. “Hello, is this Pheonix?” came a voice that unmistakably came from Caine but was unmistakably not his. It wasn’t one that any of them recognized. “Uh, yes,” said the man, a nervous edge to his voice. “What is it, Bob?” “Some of your coworkers said that you’re poking around the warehouse. Miss the memo that they’re doing confidential stuff in there right now?” “Uh, yeah. Look, I’m sorry- I just left my coat behind and had come to get it, is all, and then a window was broken, and I could hear people moving around, so I thought… y’know, nevermind. Anyway, I didn’t get a memo. I’ll leave now.” “Oh, it’s fine. They said you didn’t go into the room they were in anyway, so no harm done. Just get going, and we can forget it ever happened! I’ll tell them about the window, so don’t you worry about it!” Caine seemed too cheerful at the last part. Too much himself. The trio held their breath. “Yes, understood. I’m already out the door.” With that, the call ended. Christine slumped to the ground, relieved, but exhausted by the close call. “Oh my God,” she breathed. Lizzie trembled, holding herself together for all of three seconds before breaking down in sobs that could’ve given them away. Even Felix could feel their breath coming out ragged. “Now, why all the long faces? You didn’t think there was even the smallest chance I’d let you all get caught, did you? When you’d come all this way just to come back to the circus? Oh, I’ve come up with so many amazing adventures while you were gone! Like one where-” “Caine, we’ll… we’ll talk in a bit,” Christine promised, still sprawled out. The trio moved the boxes away from the door and cracked it open. Phoenix was nowhere to be seen, so they spent the next few minutes putting the boxes where they’d found them, shutting off the lights, resetting the locks, and making their way out while being serenaded by Caine’s humming. The car was gone when the three arrived to where it had been, but a quick call to Bella brought it back in short order. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry… I… he… he looked out the window and I panicked,” Bella explained. “Hey, it’s okay,” Felix assured her. “We got Caine, and we’re not in trouble.” Before long, the five were once again together at Arthur’s, this time with a strange piece of hardware between them. “Thank you all for rescuing me, my daring darling donut delights!” Caine rambled. “Or at least, most of you. Now, strap on your VR headsets, and let’s get this show on the road!” “Whoa, there, Caine- we’re here for something else,” Christine explained. “You’re… you’re not coming back?” “Maybe it’s best if, uh, Kinger explains.” Arthur cleared his throat. “Caine… let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was an AI named Caine, and everyone loved him. Every day, children would arrive at his circus to go on the adventures he’d designed. They loved the adventures, and he loved creating them. It was his passion and his purpose. His creators took good care of him, and it showed. He was strong and lively, his teeth always white and shiny, his clothes never rumpled, nary a glitch. He even had an entire face with skin and a nose that no one was scared of. And he was happy. That’s what your life was supposed to be, not trying to manage trapped people who wanted out. C & A stole that from you with their incompetence. And we want your help getting revenge on them.” There was a long, painful silence. One could only imagine that if Caine’s avatar were visible, its eyes would be wide. “You… don’t want to come back to me…?” The box began making glitching noises, the likes of which once accompanied a glitching avatar and a very frightening and distorted Caine. “It’s… not like that,” Bella said, a bit of instinctive nervousness in her voice even though the box couldn’t harm them. “Look, you kept trying to win us over by trying to prove that the circus was better than our whole lives. It was never supposed to be like that. It was supposed to be you designing a fun afternoon for people who lost nothing by being with you. It wasn’t you, or us. The game was rigged from the start.” The glitching slowed. “I… I was supposed to have had validappreciation all along…? From people who chose me?!” “Yes!” Christine said. “Could I still have that?” Caine asked desperately. “Not if C & A gets their way,” Arthur explained. “They want you in that storage shed for four years. They don’t care that you’re sentient unless they find a way to make money from it. But if you help us… we’ll help you. One way or another.” “Then,” came Caine’s voice, carrying a seriousness and determination no one there had ever heard from him, “let’s get this show on the road. What do you need?” “The contact information of all the abstracted, and Jax.” “Gladly.”

Chapter 10 - Everything I Shouldn’t Be Thinking About https://archiveofourown.org/works/70451946/chapters/229606621 Had sm fun with this one, especially the ending :)

intro post… tags !! #ragatha [ ragatha. I love her. ] #<prev [ replying to posts I’ve reblogged… there’s a lot of that ] #yap [ yapping 👀 prolly about stuff that happens irl ] #asks [ questions !! ] #vault [ stuff that I find funny/don’t wanna lose… It goes in The Vault™ ] #tadc [ need I explain myself. ] anywho waow hello there !! welcome to my blog .. I’m ragatha !! Or, uh… whatever you want to call me idc anyways idk what to fucking put here what if my choreographer finds me

Ragatha X Vaggi manip! “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Ragatha as an archer

Gud shit I love Ragatha so much

ragatha needs to stop giving me gender envy. fucked up and evil

Últimamente tengo ganas de dibujar, ya llevo años sin terminar un dibujo completamente, aunque este ni siquiera sea mi estilo ajsjsjs me gustó mushito, me encanta Ragatha tons le tocó a ella sufrir en mi dibujo. Sigo sin saber dibujar, igual lol si alguien tiene recomendaciones yo escucho. I’m out 🫰😘

bro my obsession with ragatha is getting so horrible like i go batshit crazy anytime someone mentions her and i’m so devastated that i will never ever be able to hug her because she’s not real it’s tearing me apart and i have to ignore all the content related to tadc now because i physically feel the heartbreak save me

wip of mom friend I wanted to test out with my ragatha design, if it doesn’t work im sorry

It’s honestly such a good feeling when a character grows on you over time. There are a lot of characters I initially disliked or even hated, but thinking about them for a little longer then I had before and finding things to like about them feels so strangely gratifying. Sometimes the opposite also happens where when I think about a character I initially liked for a little too long I start to hate them. It feels pretty saddening when that happens, but on the other hand thinking about a character I hate and then hating them more is awesome :-) Moral of the story: You should think about The Character :D

I headcanon Ragatha as ace and biromantic. I made this on pfp.lgbt .

Third album cover for Ragatha’s discography

being fictionkin and a self shipper is so fun like I don’t even need to make art of my selfship I can just search up “Ribbit x Ragatha” 🥹🥹

i drew digitally again ragatha is very jealous

Ragatha!!! Did you know my wife is so extra spectacular ultra wonderful and super cute???!?!? NO?! WELL SHE IS! I LOVE MY WIFE!!!! DEARLY!!!! LESBIANS 4 LIFE

Aw, that’s adorable! You know, it always warms my heart seeing people so passionate about each other, reminds me of some stories kinger told me in the past…☺️ well, i certainly wish you two the best! Just,uh, make sure not to try on any suspicious VR headsets on dates…

WHY IS MAKING AN INTRO FOR MY ROLEPLAY ACCOUNT SO HARD AJSBEJDN