Accursed painted charlatans

On the center stage of the Maleobario circus tent, a man dressed in loud colorful clothes and wearing pale make-up on his face was digging himself out of an oversized pastry he had entered the ring with. Needless to say, this absurd action and entrance elicited a joyous laugh from almost everyone in the crowd. Well...almost everyone.

Zhen Liu had mild grimace on his face as he stared at the absurd acting clown, just enough to express his displeasure, but subtle enough that nobody would notice. He even made sure to mimic laughing as to not stand out from the crowd.

'Ok, multiverse constant: I still hate clowns.'

It wasn't that Zhen Liu was afraid of clowns, in fact, he would normally find them funny. Thomas Lee on the other hand, absolutely detested them.

Back on a certain blue and green planet, when Thomas was still a young child on it, he and his mother went to a little carnival that the local high school was hosting.

The carnival had it's usual games and booths that made use of tickets bought from the students, but the thing that stood out to young Thomas the most, was this giant inflatable clown balloon animatronic.

For whatever reason, the young Thomas Lee was absolutely enamored at the sight of the inflatable clown, so much so that he attempted to charge and hug it, despite all of the "Do Not Touch" signs.

By the time his mother had noticed, Thomas had already tackled the clown animatronic. This is when tragedy struck, as Thomas's tackle was so strong that it cause the clown to deflate right on top of him. Ever since, Thomas was traumatized at the sight of clowns.

(Un)fortunately for the past Thomas Lee, the current Zhen Liu's memory of liking clowns balanced out his past memories of fearing them, leading to a solid distaste for clowns instead.

Whatever good that would do for him.

As the initial laughter of the crowd died down, the clown had fully exited the giant pie at this point. Surprisingly, his outfit and make-up were both spotless.

The pastry clown proceeded to make a big show about seeing the crowd and the state of his pastry, with the music indicating that this was a big mistake on his part. During his fretting however, a second clown walked in from out of nowhere.

The two clowns then began to pantomime a whole story about how the first clown was supposed to deliver the pie for a thing and-

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The following scenes has been redacted from the telling of this story because it was deemed by the author to be too boring and too annoying to write out.

To those who were interested in what this portion of the clown show entailed, here are some keywords: pies, goats, lobster monkeys and a lot of umbrellas.

Oh, and a symphony of banjos.

We now return you to a moment a little later where things finally get interesting again.

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After several mind numbing minutes of antics, shenanigans and performances, none of which set off Zhen Liu's aether senses, something a bit more interesting finally occured.

As the clowns left the ring with their various props in tow, a masked man dressed in a fine shirt and a cape entered the stage with elaborate looking, but ultimately plain set of boxes. They may have been decorated to the nines, but there wasn't a trace of aether coming off of it.

'Huh...magicians are still a thing in a world where... actually no, that makes too much sense.'

"Ladies and gentlemen," the masked magician began to say, "I hope you have all been having a wonderful evening and that the performances have met and exceeded your expectations."

In response to this pseudo question,the crowd cheered with abandon.

"Thank you, thank you. Now for this next performance, I will need two volunteers from the audience. Any takers?"

A chorus of voices filled the tent, accompanied by hands shooting up one after the other, all of them saying some variation of the words: "pick me". Even Zhen Liu's group got caught up in the fever of it all.

"Milady, are you sure it's wise to do so?," Matilda asked Alicia, who's hand was politely risen.

"Oh why not? It's not like I'll be picked anyways."

"You don't want to join in?," Jin Fang asked with a mild touch of concern. From what she observed, Zhen Liu had been looking rather intense since the show had begun, becoming even moreso during the clown show act. She was a tad worried he wasn't having any fun.

"Huh? Oh, uh..."

But before he could give an answer, the magician had already picked his volunteers.

"You two! The two young ladies in the center row, won't you please do us the honors and come down to the ring?," the magician asked while pointing directly at Jin Fang and Alicia. The two girls looked at each other for a moment before shrugging and agreeing to go along for the show.

What's the worst that could happen?

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Off to the side and away from prying eyes, a certain butler and maid had made their way to the backstage area of the tents, surrounded by props used for the various acts and caged beasts both mundane and aether enhanced.

"Well, that's convenient. Our prize is about to pack themselves into a box for us," a clown with a butler like costume observed from the sidelines. "Too bad we can't just grab them now. Too many eyes."

"In...deed..." ,a clown maid by his side agreed, "We..need...a distraction..."

"Like what?"

In rapid succession, the maid clown pointed a finger a pile of rags, a barrel that smelled of oil, a small lamp and the locks of several of the caged beasts.

This in turn caused an invisible force to disperse the rags like flyers in the wind, the barrel of oil to explode and soak the rags, the lamp to sputter and ignite all of the rags and the locks on the cages to burst open.

"There we...go. Now get... ready."

"A bit much...but effective."

Now that they didn't need the clown costumes anymore, the maid snapped her finger once more, as a smoke like aura covered them both...