Alternate Battle for Dream Island

ABFDI 10a: Crying

At some point, Tennis Ball grew numb to the water he was soaked in.

He'd grown numb to quite a lot of things; he stopped caring about how people made fun of him for knowing so much, or when they started complaining when it took over his life, leaving him with pretty much no time at all to hang out with friends, or do anything fun, or do... well, *anything* in general. He got used to GolF Ball's initial belittlement of his intellectual capacity, taking ages and ages for her to finally consider him as her equal. He got used to the nerve-wracking fear that came with descending and ascending through the stairs of her Factory. He got used to the deafening silence that permeated the place, just as GB liked it. He got used to the cold. He got used to the isolation. He got used to staying up for days on end, keeping a very close eye on some experiment to record the results as accurately as possible. He got used to being pushed around, being used as a ball. He got used to around 2,763 other things, according to his latest estimation; most recently, he got used to this competition. This Battle for Dream Island. To him, it was yet another pain, one in a long line of similar ones provided by this cruel, indifferent universe. One which seemed so resilient, so stubborn, so unwilling to give up even the slightest revelation, even a little bit of knowledge on how *anything* worked. Tennis Ball had been through it all.

So why did *this* one stung?

Night had well and truly set in, plunging the already-dark gorge into near-total pitch black; it took them several minutes, perhaps up to an hour, for their eyes to gradually get used to the whole thing and eventually see at least a few feet ahead of them. TB had settled down, floating on the water on his back. He'd do nothing but look straight up, look for any sign that anyone or anything was coming down. Not even to save them, really; he was just looking for *anything* interesting.

"Still thinking about it, huh?" Pin asked; Tennis Ball groaned. "Yeah." He'd mutter. "Especially since we're stuck in all... this." He'd shudder at the thought. "Wouldn't GB know by now? Wouldn't she get *something* to pick us up? Or has she *really* become that busy? That..." He'd trail off. Pin nodded. "If you don't wanna talk about it, then don't." She'd interject. "I can tell when it's just... not the right time." The pushpin awkwardly look away. "Just tell us if you see... *anything*, okay?" "Mhm." With that, Pin would swim away; given his limited vision, and given how the others mostly whispered to themselves (a lack of personal space does that to you), *and* given how he was floating, he basically had *nothing* to lock onto. Nothing to sense. Nothing to feel.

Nothing.

He could vaguely remember the first time Golf Ball told him about how he should stop caring about others; it's somewhat embarrassing to admit that he doesn't have an eidetic memory, but GB told him to focus *specifically* on experiments and results, and so the finer, non-essential details got lost to time. It had been a particularly nasty failure, an outcome he was *really* wishing on just... didn't show up. All that time waiting, all that time panicking, it had all been for nothing. The failure really got to him; eventually, he became fully convinced that his beloved GB would see him as a failure after this folly, wasting *her* resources and energy for *his* failure. He'd ask her about this dilemma, and to his absolute shock, she'd just... shrug it off. "It happens." She'd flatly state. "That's just what happens when you work on this sort of thing; sometimes things just don't work."

He was flabbergasted when he first heard that; he'd quickly open up, admit all his worries about her disowning them, only for Golf Ball to once again dismiss them. "Seriously?" Though the memories were hazy, the words still stuck out like she said them yesterday. "Even if I *was* mad, why would *you* care? I'm not you."

The thought astonished him; he could just... not care about what anyone else thought? Having endured so much for being big and clumsy, he thought it was absolutely unthinkable. Surely the logical course of action would be to fight back, to prove them wrong. He looked up to Golf Ball and became smart himself because he thought that was the way to do it. And yet...