🄳🄸🄶🄸🅃🄰🄻 🄻🄾🅅🄴 (CAINE X OC)

Kaufmosis

Zooble sighed. "...Speak for yourself. If anyone needs me, then f*&^ off." Just as they walked away, a bunch of gloinks came and took her toy-like body apart. Jax grinned. "Oh no. They killed Zooble." He paused. "Anyways, you wanna get something to eat?"

"Oh! Wait! We should go check on Kaufmo!" said a ragdoll. Pomni and Mallory looked at each other in confusion. "Kaufmo?" Mallory repeated. The rag doll nodded. "Yeah! I'm pretty sure he'd like to meet the two of you."

A bunch of gloinks came and took a chess piece's pillow fort apart. "MY IMPENETRABLE FORTRESS!" he shouted. Mallory giggled. "Who's that?" she asked. "That's kinger," Jax said to her. "He's a bit crazy. I mean, he lost his wife, and–" The ragdoll put a hand over Jax's mouth. "Shut up, Jax! Hey, Kinger!" She called him over. "You wanna come with us to check on Kaufmo?" Kinger got up and bounced over to them. "No, not really," he said. "I think he's gone insane. Last time I saw him, he was rambling about some exit."

 Kinger turned and looked at Mallory. "Hello," he chirped. "Hii, I'm Mallory," she said. "Nice to meet you, Kinger." We stared at each other for a bit, taking in details.

 "W-wait, but..." Pomni interrupted the silence. "Wouldn't Kaufmo knowing about the exit... make it more likely that the exit does exist?" Jax snickered. "Could also mean you have a jumpstart in losing your mind," he said.

Mallory glanced over at Pomni. "I think she has a point, but... the exit kinda drove him insane, right? Maybe you shouldn't obsess over it," she said, smiling awkwardly as her idea earned her strange looks from Pomni. Kinger nodded. "Yeah, he was pretty obsessed," he chimed in. Pomni nervously looked at Mallory, even more confused than before. 

"W-well... I think that I'd like to ask him about it... uh, IF this was real, which it isn't, because it's a dream." She placed her hands on her hips and pretended to be positive about it. Mallory shook her head and looked at Jax for help. Jax smiled. "Heh. She still thinks this is a dream," he said. Mallory walked over to the rag doll. "I don't think we've properly introduced ourselves," she said, a little quiet. "Oh, yeah! I'm Ragatha, sorry, I didn't think of saying hi earlier. You're Mallory, huh?" Mallory beamed. "Yup."

"Good thing you're not as, uh, scared of all this as our Pomni here is. Which is weird, but... we do need an extra hand in convincing her that, you know... there's no exit." Ragatha nervously played with the hem of her dress. "Ah, yeah, of course," Mallory said. She noticed Jax staring at her weirdly from behind. "Uh... turn around," she said, laughing. 

"Gah! Jax, why are you looking at me like that?" Jax shrugged. "I'm fine with doing whatever. As long as I get to see funny things happen to people." Just then, gloink hit him in the face. "Ow- okay, I've already had enough of these things." He pointed to Ragatha, Pomni, and himself. They were going to go find Kaufmo, leaving Kinger, Gangle, and Mallory to help get Zooble back.

Mallory wasn't that thrilled to be paired with a forever sad mask and a mentally unstable old guy, but she wouldn't complain. "Alright. Umm... so where are we going?" she asked. Kinger shrugged. "We'll look around, I guess," he said. Gangle the mask began shaking and crying softly. "Poor Zooble..." she muttered.

-

About 20 minutes later, the three of them came upon a giant black hole in the ground. "Oh god. What's that?" Mallory asked, poking her head into the hole. "Careful! Don't fall there... I'm not sure what I'm looking at here," Kinger said. "I think we saw one of Zooble's pieces go down that hole," whimpered Gangle. Mallory sighed. "I'm sure it's fine. But I think if that's where Zooble is, then maybe we should go in," she suggested. Gangle shuddered. "No! Anything but going down there," she squeaked. Kinger agreed. "It seems pretty scary," he said, staring into the abyss. "Boy, we're not very good at this, are we." Mallory and Gangle nodded in agreement. A few seconds passed before Jax came running up from behind them, carrying a bowling ball.

"'Sup... fellas..." he panted. Mallory turned around. "Jax, what happened to you?" Jax shook his head. "Nothin'. Just went on a little adventure," he said, out of breath. "JAX! We found the Zooble hole," Kinger cheered. Jax rolled his eyes. "Cool." Worried, Gangle spoke up. "How's Kaufmo doing? I hope he's still not mad..."

Mallory began to zone out as she thought of everything that had happened that day. She thought of how warm Caine had felt when he was grabbing her hand. How comforting. Where had Caine gone? Oh, right. She could vaguely remember him disappearing from thin air. It was something he could do a lot. He was so weird and funny, but everyone seemed to be annoyed or want to ignore him. What even was he? Whatever he was, he certainly was handsome. Now that she was here, she wished that she had asked to come along with Caine instead of doing this stupid in-house adventure.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Kinger's hand pulling her into the hole as a bowling ball hit him, with Gangle following last. Jax jumped in with them. They all rolled into the hole until they landed in front of a giant creature, resembling a slug of some sort. Mallory looked up, panting. The creature towered over her as Mallory shuddered. "Insect collection?" Kinger murmured. "I think it's a nest," Gangle replied. Mallory stood up and stared at it. She wasn't that big; the thing could eat her whole if she wanted to.

The Gloink queen, as it called itself, tried seeming intimidating, though Jax wasn't having it. 

Mallory couldn't help but giggle as Jax replied, nonchalantly. "You know, you could have asked for my consent before forcing me to see something completely and utterly disgusting," he said. The Gloink queen growled. "How despicable," it said. "A rabbitoid that runs mouth in the presence of my royal figure." Mallory chuckled. "There's nothing royal about this thing," she said, pointing at the Gloink queen. It stared at her, taken aback. Kinger cleared his throat. "Well, as a royal myself, I'd like to kindly ask if-"

Kinger paused as he saw Zooble being carried by gloinks. "Ohh, there's Zooble!" He smiled. "I'll get them," Mallory said, having nothing else to do. She'd just been watching the group until this point, and she wanted to contribute. She grabbed Zooble's head and picked it up. "W-well... what about the rest of the body...?" She muttered to herself.

The Gloink queen continued to ramble on about how foolish they all were. "Do you not realize that EVERYTHING must be gloinks?" it growled. "I am gloinks. You will be gloinks. God will be gloinks!!" Jax rolled his eyes. "This is dumb and weird." Mallory, meanwhile, was still struggling to find the rest of Zooble's body parts. "S*&^," she muttered but remembered about the censors. She jumped back, letting go of Zooble's head, letting the Gloink queen eat it up. "NO!" Mallory groaned. Jax snickered but covered it up with a cough.

As the queen and Jax were arguing, Jax's statement was cut short by the abstracted Kaufmo falling through the roof and onto the Gloink queen. 

Mallory shrieked and scampered onto her feet, forgetting about Zooble. Luckily, Zooble somehow launched themself onto Kinger. "Oh! Thank god you're okay!" he exclaimed. Mallory didn't want to leave the others, so she just lingered near the elevator. Jax and Gangle sat there, watching Kaufmo beat up the Gloink queen. "You're right! How are we gonna get out of here??!" Kinger shouted.

Mallory pointed to the elevator and stared at Kinger. "Oh. Right. Sorry."

The gang calmly went up the stairs, trying their best to ignore the wailing of the Gloink queen. While Jax and Zooble argued, Mallory's brain just then began to take in all the information she had just experienced again.

 "Wait... why's Kaufmo... so insane? I mean why's he a big a@# creature?!" Her head was spinning, and though she could tolerate most of what was going on, things were getting a little out of control. Jax turned away from Zooble and looked at Mallory "Uhh... well like you said yourself, he's gone insane. I mean, Kinger's at the border, but he's not fully... crazy." Mallory gulped. "That doesn't make sense..." she whimpered. Jax shrugged. "You'll get used to this place."