Time passed. Presumably, anyway; kinda hard to keep track of time when you're stuck in... the void.
When Stapy was first thrust into the Eternal Algebra Class Withfour, he had a *whole* lot of things to worry about. First there were the immediate ones: was he gonna be stuck here for the rest of time? If not, for how long? Until the show ends? Until he gets a chance to rejoin? What happens if the competition ends without him getting that chance? Does he indeed remain stuck there for the rest of eternity? Was he at risk of just suddenly vanishing into nonexistence, fully at the mercy of the laws and whims of whatever this strange realm was? What even *was* this place, anyhow? Were they *inside* Four? Did they shrink? Were they in a completely new plane of existence, entirely separated from the life he once knew? Was there any way of escape? Would Four allow it? Would they just remain stranded here for the rest of time, forced to do whatever the algebralian tells them to, confined to this horrible, small, cramped classroom and its weird surroundings, being perpetually tortured for the remainder of the pitiful existence? And was he *really* gonna be stuck in this existence with them? With *her*?
Very quickly, his classmates told him to stop complaining and just get to solving.
And that indeed became the next worry for the stapler as time inevitably marched on and his fears about this place subsided; well, managed to retreat far enough back that it was *just* a lingering thing in his head. This was his new life now, things obviously didn't make sense, and so there wasn't any reason to continue pursuing those mysteries further. He just had to... live with it. Contend with the fact that the seats clearly weren't designed for him, or the fact that Four, despite having a show to run, always seemed to have more than enough time to show up, ruin what little fun they were having, and dump a whole bunch of questions for them to sink their teeth into until they showed up again to grade them.
Right, this *was* called the Eternal Algebra Class for a reason.
So, numbers, right? Stapy thought he already knew everything there was about them. He could count to a thousand and beyond, having routinely done so while keeping track of how many times he had tossed the dirt. He knew that two and two made four, and minus one is three. And above all else, he knew that they could be *extremely* obnoxious and a total pain to deal with, as has been shown time and time again with Four and his lackey. But upon having his first lesson, he was shocked to learn that not only were numbers all of these things combined, but the things one can do to them went way, *way* beyond what anyone within reason would expect.
It seemed simple enough at first; upon recognizing that their new student didn't know anything about *anything*, Four decided to once again refresh everyone's number knowledge. They counted up to four, counted down to four, added and subtracted things to make four. Cool. Then they learned about multiplication and division, which seemed to just be repeatedly doing those things they already knew how to do. Neat. But then the discussion went on... *strange* direction. Four suddenly started talking about 'square' numbers (isn't that a shape?), square roots (shapes *definitely* don't have roots, they aren't trees), exponents (now you gotta worry about how big the number your writing is?), variables (letters *definitely* shouldn't be part of math), and so on, and so forth. And the algebralian expected them to just... remember all of this. No textbooks, no papers to jot anything down. Nothing but rote memorization and praying to whatever you believed in, which largely meant wishing that the speaker box would return from the skies and give you the *infinitely* more tame punishment of just stranding you in a metal prison. Their perceptions of things had gotten so warped that it was indeed rather preferable.
So, that was the way things were. Stapy and his fellow classmates, whenever they weren't talking or throwing things at each other to pass the time, they were solely and directly focused on doing all these equations. Or were just mindlessly doodling on the things they were supposed to do. The stapler would, at the very least, *try* and give it an honest shot; he could barely remember most of the things he needed, and he always fretted over whether or not he was gonna be the one punished for having the lowest score, but knowing that there was nothing else he could do gave him some sense of closure. Gave him some feeling of control over a situation that constantly threw curveballs and gave him suffering and misery in every turn.
