Finally, *finally*, Lightning was back at home once again.
Living objects, for the most part, don't exactly have homes. For one, their very existence in and of itself is already a fluke, an act of complete and utter defiance against the nature and order of the world and the wider universe; unless you don't care for that sort of thing (which, granted, most of them do), there's *nowhere* on Earth that can truly make you comfortable with the whole 'living' thing. And even getting past all... *that*, there's also the fact that the world is seemingly incredibly hostile to the concept of anything to do with peace and harmonious existence with everyone and everything else. Even before the Battle for Dream Island, most of the contestants tended to cause mischief and mayhem wherever they went. Any attempt to create something permanent, therefore, was very quickly torn down, largely because someone felt like it and didn't have anything better to do with their lives. So, the contestants didn't really have much of a home besides whatever biome they wound up settling in. The grasslands, the sky, the desert, whatever.
But if there's anything the cruel, indifferent universe loves more than anything else, it's taking what's *supposed* to be an *extremely* unlikely possibility, an improbability so absurd and ridiculous that it shouldn't be worth anyone's thoughts, and turning it into reality. If one *really* thinks about it (and most people don't, besides Golf Ball), the fact that a specific arrangement of matter could even come *close* to realizing that it is, indeed, a specific arrangement of matter is *asinine*. There has been 2,763 years (give or take) of intense study into the matter, constant back-and-forth regarding the nature of life all recorded on ancient tomes that have since been buried under metric tons of dirt, both metaphorical and literal, and not a single one ever managed to determine the crucial thing, the all-important difference that makes living things living and nonliving things not. And that's not even saying *anything* about said curse of life then being granted into things that were understood to *not* be alive.
When Lightning first came into existence one day, as soon as he figured out how the world works and all that, he generally considered the great blue sky to be his home. That was where all his inanimate family lived, after all. But it wasn't a particularly *welcoming* home. In those early years, existence was calm and tranquil enough, but perhaps it was a bit *too* calm and tranquil. Besides the occasional storm or tornado or other such bizarre weather phenomena, all one had to look forward to is blue skies, white clouds, and the cool breeze. Despite being perfectly content with his current state of living, despite having absolutely no reason to seek out anything more, despite common sense telling him to enjoy the rest of his life doing whatever he wished, he just *knew* that there *had* to be something more, that life could be more than just aimlessly wandering around for what felt like *forever*.
After all, he was reminded of that every time he looked down.
When the Battle for Dream Island suddenly arrived and turned everything upside-down, he immediately wanted to get in on it, seizing the opportunity to get into the show as soon as it popped up. There were many twists and turns and so on and so forth, but ultimately he didn't make it. And not only did he not make it, he also had to *suffer* for the fact that he didn't make it. Instead of just letting him, along with everyone else that decided to volunteer, go back to their simple little lives, that strange little speaker box decided that the best course of action was to throw everyone into a cramped metal prison, where they'd end up staying for the next 2,763 years.
Well, it *felt* like it was that long, anyhow.
When he and everyone else were finally let out, they were introduced to a brand new world that was entirely foreign to them. The sky above was still much the same, but the grass was purple now, there were these strange structures all over the place, and a tall, ominous mountain constantly loomed over them. Lightning was *definitely* happy that he was able to fly again, but if he gave it any more than 2.763 seconds of thought, it started to feel not quite right. Things were different. Things were off. His time in the Locker of Losers had changed him, changed *all* of them. Probably for the worse.
