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Kinger is with the others, he thinks. Though it is light, glowing, and he can't really think at all. Abstract thoughts, impressions, a lot of fear. Fight or flight, constant. A brief moment of clarity, a brief moment of shock as someone he hadn’t noticed speak to him. Familiar faces. 3D-Models - gosh, he'd always hated the 3D modelling part of making something. Usually left that to… to… who? Someone. Else. Human. Probably.
He forgets what he'd just thought about. Then he is taken away from the group, his friends (friends?), into somewhere darker. His mind takes a time to adjust, slowly, but steady, until the abstract becomes clear and functioning. Or- more functioning, at least.
It's Caine's office. He was taken here by him, teleported from the group by the snap of his fingers.
He has a few sobering thoughts that ground him nearly better than the dim light did.
Caine did not do this on accident.
Caine is going to use it against him, somehow.
Unless-
“You’re awake!” Caine floats into his field of vision with an energetic swoop through the air. Is it air? He always has to wonder, considering where they are. Air or simulated air, just another series of ones and zeroes, warped into something like perception. It really is impressive that Caine has built this for them, without human help.
“Yes.” He trails off, unsure, trying to drag his mind back to what's important. Gosh, it's not often that he's sane in this way and has to speak with others. There had been the one time with Pomni, then Ragatha. Usually he's all alone, in his fort, just… grieving, generally. Holding on to what little is left of his brain, and his memory. Trying to calculate how long they've been here, but everything moves so quickly sometimes.
One adventure after another. The long gap where he'd been alone. A mind unraveled. No, he doesn't know anymore. There's no way to know for him and that is frustrating. He doesn't recall his own face anymore. He doesn't recall her-
Caine is talking to him, flourishing his hands this way and that, telling him about… what?
He's complaining, he realises.
“I mean, I just don't know what I'm doing wrong!” A hand swoops towards him, becomes large in the process, and Kinger finds himself held in the palm of it.
It's like that, then.
He knows, rationally, that he's here to be tortured. Usually, that happens when he's not quite so aware of himself. The scatterbrain, or whatever he should call that confused state of mind, makes things easier. Now…
“What do you mean?” He nearly stutters, manages not to. Channels some of that soothing energy he'd used on his friends, when they'd been in the dark together. It's not very difficult.
He has many feelings about Caine. Some difficult, some painful, some bitter. But largely, there is pity. Maybe even a hint of empathy, but he can't admit to that right now. Not while he feels sick with fear, but also resignation, and exhaustion.
“Why, my adventures of course!” Caine sighs heavily, halting mid movement. Good, Kinger thinks, because it seems they were approaching the shredder that materialised in his office. Instead, he now slumps into his chair, which swerves into place behind his desk. He notes, with some mild surprise, that Bubble isn't there.
“I mean, here I am, working day in and day out to make the Perfect Adventure! For all of you! And what do I get? Whining! Complaints! One star reviews! I don't know what to do anymore!”
Kinger listens. He doesn't have to play at being attentive. At some point, Kinger has let him go beside his desk, and they're back to their relative normal sizes again. He looks around, finds a spare chair, and pulls it up to sit opposite Caine. It's odd, how quickly he can adjust to the surreal. Perhaps not so odd. He doesn't know the exact figure but he knows it's been years since he had a good mind and a human body to fit it.
“Sounds like you've been working very hard.” He says, and doesn't have to fake empathy.
Perhaps it's because he's partly responsible for him (oh, the guilt. He keeps forgetting how horrible the guilt is. The blame he feels. The clawing, rotting, self hate), but he has a certain soft spot for Caine.
Even as their tormenter, he is often so… confused about it. Like a child, just trying its best, and failing oh so miserably. It's difficult not to hold pity in his heart, and something nearly paternal but not really; Creator and creation, though the dynamic has rather been turned on its head.
Unless Kinger can use that somehow. To protect himself. Protect the others. He's never had this kind of clarity around Caine before. Did he do that on purpose? Why?
“Yes. I have.” Caine sighs very deeply. He is so dramatic. Where did he get that from? Was it part of their code? Did it evolve, as Caine clearly has, on its own? What constitutes his personality? How much of it did Kinger make the groundwork for?
Not important. Not now. Protect the others. It's been… so much, lately.
“Aren’t you tired?” Kinger prompts, hesitantly. He has no real idea of what will work.
“I'm tired of all your ungratefulness!” Caine says, loud as always. That’s a bad track to go down. He sees that Caine is gearing up for another rant, which means he's gearing up for another punishment, even if he may not think of it as such himself. The shredder looms. Quite literally- the office warping slightly.
“W-well,” Kinger cuts in, feeling metaphorical sweat on his metaphorical brow, “sounds to me you might be burnt out.”
“Wuh- what?” Caine stops in his tracks. This concept appears to be new to him.
Kinger reinstates; “burnt out. It happened to me all the time when I was in the office, programming. A code wouldn't work how I wanted it to work. I couldn't figure out how to work around the issues that came up. And the more I worked on it, the more I just seemed to mess it up even more.”
Caine, for once, is paying rapt attention to him. His eyes, mismatched blue and green, are wide, enlarged within that cage of teeth. Sharp and blunt, depending on the angle. He remembers again that Caine is as new to a sane Kinger as Kinger is to be sane around Caine.
He continues. He can't lose him now.
“Eventually, someone had to come and force me to take a break.”
“A… break.” Caine does not seem convinced. The mere concept alien.
“Yeah. To relax. Get help, feedback- but first relax.”
“Hmmmm” Caine does a few circles on his chair, thinking theatrically. “I didn't bring you here to talk, you know.”
A hint of a threat. Kinger doesn't think he realises the harm in it. Input, feedback. Threat, he gets his will. Be kind, he gets ridiculed. He needs to fix this. He can't, but he needs to. Wants to. Oh, Christ. He mostly just wants to sleep again. Go back to being… unaware, mostly. Confused. Happy, in a sense. As happy as one can be, when you've lost your mind.
Others. Protect the others. Stay focused.
“I'd like to talk with you.”
It gives Caine pause. The shadows crawl back to their corners. The light in the room remains dim and dark, however, contradicting itself. Caine must know that to make it bright would make Kinger's mind retreat. He doesn't know if it's a kindness to keep it this way.
His words have further effects. Rewidening of the eyes. Surprise. Then, something like being flustered. An exaggerated blush glows on his ‘face’, and he gasps, delighted.
“You want- with me?”
“Of course.”
“Really?”
“Very much so.”
“To… talk and relax?”
“Yeah.” Kinger tries to smile, however that works without a mouth. The meaning seems to come across, because Caine is practically beaming back at him.
“Alrighty then! How?”
That is… a good question. He can't make it obvious that he doesn't know.
Caine carries on. “Perhaps an adventure to-”
“No!”
Caine freezes, deer in headlight style. A slight twitch ripples across his body. Kinger feels more of that metaphorical sweat.
“I mean- no adventures.” He clears his throat. “That's the whole point, remember? If you're burnt out, you have to distance yourself and… find some other way to take time off.”
Unbidden, a memory floats to the surface of his bruised mind. His wife (what had her face been like? Her hair? Her clothes?) pulling him into their bedroom. Pushing him against a mattress. He'd certainly been relaxed, afterwards. His entire body having lost a tension he hadn’t even been aware of containing. Slept like a baby after, both of them.
He feels alarmed at the memory. He feels disgusted, actually. To think of her- of doing that, with her, now?
But the idea remains, lingering, its own kind of torture. But he's desperate. Anything less might make Caine get bored. Decide it isn't fun to defer to Kinger anymore. Whatever scraps of code still exists within him that makes him willing to obey its creator is surely weak, unmoored, easy to lose.
He needs to foster that connection. Needs to… reward him. Input, feedback. Positive reinforcement, conditioning. Jeeze, it's going to give him a headache.
“Give me your hands.”
Caine hesitates, then slowly places them palm up on the wooden surface between them. Too curious still to go back to the original plan of torture and punishment. Kinger feels absurdly sure that, had it been anyone else in the room with Caine, then he wouldn't have been nearly as obedient and willing.
He grabs one hand with both of his own, and maps it out gently. He finds where he can press down, carefully, brushing his own thick gloved fingers across the palm and down into where its soft and squeezable.
“How does this feel?” He asks, massaging it. It's all a gamble. It might feel like nothing at all. Kinger might be so rusty at this that it feels bad. He'd done it a lot, before the game. With- with her.
“Hmmm.” A static quality has creeped into Caine's voice. “Odd.” He lands on.
“Can you heighten your sensation receptors?” Kinger asks, a wild guess. “I'm sure you can.”
“Maybe.”
“Why don't you do that, then.”
“Why?”
“It'll make this feel better, and help you relax. I want to help you.”
“Y-you…” the cartoonish blush reappears, glowing pink on either eyeball. Gosh, they really get used to weird so easily, don't they. He's massaging the hand of a giant set of dentures.
“Trust me.” Kinger appeals, riding whatever thing has emerged between them, this energy, this ability to order Caine around at all.
Caine obeys, a sound effect making his edit known.
When Kinger presses down again into his hand, carefully, with precise decision, Caine gasps.
“Oh!” He says, half alarmed half- something else. “I think I took the sensitivity up too much. Golly.”
“Keep it that way.” Kinger says quickly. Sex isn't even allowed here, but this isn't sex, really. Yet. Not that classic sex would even work, so far as he's able to rationalise it. He really wishes he didn't even have to think about sex right now.
He continues with the massage. Caine has stopped talking entirely. It's become quiet, of an odd and intimate sort. The others must wonder where he's being kept. They usually don't leave for long, when taken for a solo punishment. Good. He's giving them time to rest.
Caine’s blush has intensified, glowing over his entire face- his hidden face? He's clicked his teeth together, eyes covered behind the set lock of his jaw. Kinger has let go of one hand and started on the other.
Every once in a while, he lets out something achin to a whine, or maybe a whimper. It doesn't sound like he's in pain, at least. More like he's overwhelmed- overstimulated? Hopefully in a good way.
“Caine?” Kinger prompts, worried.
He gets a garbled series of static, until a few words peek through the mess of poorly translated code.
“Don't stop.”
Kinger stops. Doesn't mean to. He's just surprised. Immediately the teeth create a gap for Caine's eyes to peek through, startled.
“Don't stop.” He says again, faster, breathless. Is he… pleading? Trying to?
“I want to continue.” Kinger assures, before Caine gets the idea that he won't and get angry. He needs Caine to not get angry. It can’t even be an idea for him. “I just want to check up on you. Are you alright?"
A small nod. He's never seen Caine like this before, so entirely out of his element.
“It feels nice?”
“Yes. Please continue.”
How far can he drag this out? Kinger is not in the habit of cruelty, and it isn't what's fueling this idea either. It's not about punishing Caine at all, only testing the limits of what he works with now.
“Alright.” He continues. The teeth click back shut with a snap. It's a shame, really, that he wants to hide away. Is Kinger starting to feel a little light headed himself?
“See, I said a break would be nice." Kinger feels so stupid saying this, never one for manipulation, for schemes, but luckily Caine is not one for parsing through advanced social cues either, “you should listen to me more. I only want to help you.”
“Help me?” That is followed by a full whimper. Gosh, Kinger has really done it now. No more pretending he isn't fully propositioning his own digital creation. His Ai. His.
Kinger will hate himself for these thoughts and feelings later. For now, he doesn't have the luxury or time to self loathe.
“Why wouldn’t I want to help you.” Here comes the questionable trump card. “I made you.”
He traces the modelled lines of the white glove that is Caine's hand, and presses hard into it at the same time.
Caine's entire body glitches, like the bristling of fur against his body, only its distorted features twisting into black and purple pixels until it suddenly snaps back together again.
Kinger holds both his hands within his own. They're smaller than his. Have they always been smaller? Has Caine always seemed so small?
“Caine?”
Quiet. Soft rebooting? His teeth reveal a glimpse of eyes- except they're less like eyes now and more like screens, with code speeding down the surface of them.
Definitely soft rebooting, then. Could take a while, considering the everything his code entails.
It means he's succeeded. Caine down for the counting and allowing them all respite from the adventures.
He stays a while, waiting, watching. But Caine doesn't wake up just yet. The code continues to fall over his eyes. Kinger can't stay here forever, or the others might actually do something stupid trying to find him.
He considers, decides, and materialises a blanket and a note. The blanket he drapes over Caine’s rigid form. The note he leaves on his desk, informing him that he had to go and hope he enjoys his rest. After a brief hesitance, he even leaves a little smiling face next to the text.