Alternate Battle for Dream Island

ABFDI 3c: Are You Smart?

"The fourth contest is a test of memory and basic knowledge. It has-"

"Wait, hang on." Tennis Ball suddenly raised a foot. "Isn't this the *third* contest?" "No, I'm fairly certain it's the fourth." The Announcer replied. "The contest to determine who picks the teams, then the three afterwards." Tennis Ball still wasn't convinced, though. "But earlier you said-" "Shush, sheesh." The speaker box interrupted. "It's not like it actually matters, or anything." Tennis Ball raised an eyebrow. "But-" "Anyway, the team with the highest total score wins." The gray cuboid continued. "The highest-scoring contestant receives a Win Token. Go."

The contestants immediately got their test papers and got to work; much of the Squishy Cherries was quick to start answering (or at least pretend to answer) theirs. Some, however, were less... enthusiastic.

"You better give me the answers!" Flower demanded. "Even if I knew what the answers were, I wouldn't tell you." Pencil replied. "But you *HAVE* to!" Flower shouted. "I order you to do it! We're on the same team!" "No." Pencil flatly remarked. "GRR!" Flower would give the writing utensil an angry slap before storming off. Pencil sighed. "Great start." She remarked. "Tell me about it." Coiny had spent the time folding his paper up into an airplane, throwing it hard and sending it flying straight to Firey, where it would burn up instantly. "Hey!" The flame was quick to notice, and the coin chuckled in response.

"Alright, guys!" Leafy exclaimed. "We may have less members than the other team, but numbers aren't what's important here, it's smarts! I'm sure if we put our heads together and really put work into answering these questions, we're for sure gonna win this one!" Teardrop would give a simple thumbs-up, already working on her paper. Blocky scoffed. "Sounds like lame nerd junk." He'd gesture towards Pen. "C'mon, Pen. Everyone knows the only way we're getting anywhere is if we sabotage the other team." "Well, not that I'm not up for it, or anything..." Pen continued. "But-" "But *what*?" Blocky gave him a mean look. "Uh." Pen trailed off for a second. "Wouldn't that speaker box think that's cheating?" "Since when did *you* care about what's cheating and what's not?" Blocky quipped. "Well, I don't, totally." Pen lied. "It's just that *they* might have something to say about it." He'd point to the Announcer and Golf Ball, who were currently deep in conversation. "Hm." Blocky wasn't too amused. "HEY!" He'd start shouting. "IS IT OKAY IF WE CHEAT?" Neither of the two would end up caring about what he said. "See? We're good." The cube shrugged. "C'mon. Let's go."

The two immediately went up to Bubble; Blocky immediately did what he did best, and before anyone knew it the bubble was no more. Before she had time to recover and fight back, the hexahedron had already picked up her test paper and burned it with Firey. "Hey!" The flame would complain. "What're you gonna do about it?" Blocky smirked. "Sheesh! Firey!" Coiny suddenly interjected. "Stop whining! It's annoying!" Firey's eye twitched. "W-Wha?" He'd turn to the coin creature. "Didn't you see what they just-" "Again with the whining." Coiny interrupted. Come on!" Meanwhile, Blocky and Pen would go on to give Rocky and Spongy a good kick, knocking them out of the race; they'd then collect their papers as well and set them on fire too. "STOP THAT!" Firey shouted at them. "Whining, whining, whining!" Coiny mocked. "GRR!" Those two then did what *they* did best, and before they knew it Firey's test was also nothing but ash. "Look what you've done!" The fire shouted. "Looks like something *you've* done, though." Coiny quipped.

Blocky and Pen were just about to mess with Tennis Ball when Pin finally noticed what was going on and stepped in. "This ends *here*, Blocky." She'd order. "Says who?" Blocky scoffed. "Do I gotta remind you what happened last time?" "You just got lucky." Pin angrily replied. "I'm not gonna let this slide this time!" "Yeah, I have a feeling you *will*, though." Blocky remarked. "Now, step aside, I'm gonna-"

Pin went with the sensible approach and promptly stabbed Blocky.

The scream was more than enough to take Leafy right out of her tranquil state, immediately rushing to see what all the commotion was about. "What's going on here?" She'd ask. "PIN STABBED ME!" Blocky screamed. Leafy then looked at Pin. "Is that true?" She'd inquire. Pin considered the good old tactic of lying, but figured that wasn't really necessary. "Yeah, I did." She'd get straight to the point. "But only because your teammate here hurt several of *my* teammates!" She'd walk over to her, looking her in the eyes. "If you don't want me handling your teammates for you, you better do the job. Alright?" Leafy grew unnerved. "WHAT'RE YOU WAITING FOR?" Blocky shouted. "DO SOMETHING!" Leafy angrily sighed. "I'm with Pin on this one." She'd respond. "WHAT?" Blocky was bewildered. "That wouldn't have happened to you if you were just *nice*!" Leafy continued. "Consider this your lesson and think about what you did!"

The leaf then returned to resume her answering, only to find Firey in the middle of melting Ice Cube, with Match panicking on the sidelines. "Hey, hey, hey!" Leafy would step in. "What's *this* for, huh?" "What do *you* think?" Firey replied. "You guys mess with us, so we'll mess with you." "What, you think *I* had anything to do with what Blocky did?" Leafy grew angrier. "I thought you'd know better than that!" "Well, he's on *your* team, isn't he?" Leafy was close to snapping. "Still, that doesn't give you an excuse to do the same thing! It's common sense that you shouldn't just-" Teardrop, though she wouldn't say anything, clearly had enough of this; she'd quickly make her way over and put Firey out. The several few seconds after the screams subsided were *extremely* awkward. "I..." Leafy struggled to stitch the words together. "I don't really know what to say about-" Teardrop, now a bit smaller due to that, just gave her a thumbs-up then got back to answering.

Blocky and Pen had taken a few minutes off to recover from that... incident. "She's a bit right, you know?" The writing utensil remarked. "Normally I'd say otherwise, but..." The cube looked at his arm, still in a rather sorry state after some makeshift bandaging. "Yeah, maybe a different approach is needed." He'd stare blankly for a moment, looking for something, *anything*, to make up for things. Within a few seconds, his eyes became fixated on something; beside the two hosts, still deep in conversation, was something rather interesting. "...Are the test answers just... *there*?"

Leafy was *finally* finished with her test, and was now just checking her teammates to make sure they weren't up to no good; she initially wanted to just spend the time resting, but after two back-to-back disasters, it was clear that that just wasn't going to happen. She was looking for those two troublemakers when her eyes just so managed to come across Woody. As he was wont to do, he was just sitting there with his test paper, whimpering and shuddering as if he was afraid of it. Like touching it would make him die *instantly*. Leafy walked up to him. "Woody, what's wrong?" She'd ask. Of course, that question provided no good answers; the piece of balsa just looked up, stared at her, then started speaking all sorts of nonsense. "You're afraid you're gonna get a question wrong?" Leafy pretended like she understood, since that was the most polite way of going about it. After Woody responded with equally incomprehensible noises, Leafy nodded. "Well, don't worry about it!" She'd continue. "Sometimes we just make mistakes, and we can't help it. That's the way things are! There's no need to worry about it so much; there's a life out there to enjoy, so enjoy it!" She'd then pick up a pencil and place it on Woody's hand; the sudden gesture immediately set Woody off, and he'd start flailing his arm around to get the thing away. He'd be able to do precisely *one* scribble on the paper before the pencil rolled away. "See?" Leafy maintained her smile. "You're already doing great!"

Time, regrettably, marched on. The remaining contestants that still had their papers either kept on answering, finished up on answering, or just didn't bother on answering. The arbitrary amount of time the Announcer reserved for doing the challenge inevitably ran out, and they had to move on whether or not they wanted to. "Boop. Time's up." The speaker box announced. "Turn in your tests." Everyone then did just that; Leafy would end up having to ferry over Woody's test paper for him. "Hm." The Announcer scanned the stack in an instant. "I did not receive a test from Bubble, Coiny, Firey, Ice Cube, Rocky, or Spongy. But for the ones I did get, here are the totals."

A television that everyone swore wasn't there before promptly displayed the results. The scores for the Squishy Cherries were listed to begin with, each one being revealed one at a time for added suspense; Flower only got three of the 20 questions right, which was a surprise to absolutely no one. "So what?" Flower shouted. "I'm sure none of you did any better!" She was promptly proven wrong with Pencil's score, which was six. "Well, you would've been right if we were playing golf." Golf Ball remarked in a half-hearted attempt at a joke; Pencil tried her hardest to find it funny. Pin was up next, getting 14 out of the 20 questions correct. She'd quickly sigh in relief upon seeing that result. "Well, look at that." She remarked. "Almost as if studying *isn't* a waste of time, huh?" She'd glare at Coiny as she spoke. Finally, Tennis Ball, shocking nobody whatsoever, got a near-perfect score of 19; though he'd try his hardest to not seem to upset about it, he *really* wished it was perfect.

Finally, it was Grape Time; Blocky would be first, and he'd shock everyone by doing what Tennis Ball couldn't, getting a perfect score. There was quite a lot of gasping from everyone paying attention. "Well, well, well." He'd chuckle. "Studying pays off, huh?" Leafy and Match were up next, getting completely unremarkable scores of 11 and seven, respectively. Then Pen gave everyone *another* shock by getting a near perfect, tied with Tennis Ball at 19. "*Seriously*?" The ball himself grew irritated. "No one else thinks this is suspicious?" "Well, why would it be?" Blocky quipped. Teardrop was up next, and it was revealed that she got 15 questions right; no one was particularly interested in that one, though. Finally, Wood'ys score was also revealed; in the *third* shock everyone would receive, the final twist in this series of ups and downs, he got a score of... one. *Amazing*.

"The Squishy Cherries got a total score of 42 out of the possible 80, and the Squashy Grapes got 73 out of 120." The Announcer announced. "Since the Grapes had an unfair advantage, we will be using averages instead." "How did *that* happen?" Pin angrily remarked. The speaker box then did a quick bit of maths in his head. "The Cherries had a total score of 42, and there were 4 of them." The speaker thing continued. "That means that each of them had an average score of 10.5." "See?" Flower interjected. "I didn't do that bad!" "The Grapes had a total of 73, and they were 6 in all." The Announcer continued. "They had around 12.2 points on average; the Grapes retained a higher average, so they win for the first time ever." The Squashy Grapes then immediately celebrated their first victory in the Battle for Dream Island, with Blocky and Pen especially ecstatic about it.

While they were celebrating, however, Golf Ball would whisper a thing or two to the speaker box. "Hang on. Let me double check with my test answers." He'd turn to where they would be. "Wait. Where are the test answers?" He'd do a quick scan of the place, finding out that the answers were now closer to Blocky than they were to him. "Blocky and Pen, you two obviously cheated." He announced. "*WHAT*?" Blocky shouted. "How could *I* have cheated?" Pen chimed in. "I didn't even get a perfect score!" Leafy wasn't all too amused, angrily glaring at them. "Your scores will be set to zero." The Announcer continued. "The Grapes now have a total of 34 out of 120, with an average of around 5.7; so they lose, and one of them goes home. And Tennis Ball wins the Win Token."

"Aw, come on!" Blocky jeered.

-

"Come on, come on!"

Eraser, standing on top of Snowball, tried his hardest to punch through the roof of their new metal prison; even with all his might, however, the thing just wouldn't budge. "Alright, that's enough!" Snowball shouted. "You're starting to sink into me!" He'd shake him off, sending Eraser down to the ground. After taking a moment to recover, the *totally* manly one groaned. "What *IS* this place?"