Alternate Battle for Dream Island

ABFDIA 5b: Get Back

Tennis Ball was checking the cameras again.

One after another. View after unchanging view. He'd keep his eye on each for around ten seconds or so before moving on to the next; it was a delicate dance between making sure each one received enough attention to ensure nothing was happening, but not *too* much as to miss something potentially important in all the others. He'd stare, unmoving, unthinking, only blinking in the brief window of time where the change in cameras was being processed. He then scanned everything, from top to bottom, left to right, then did the same thing all over again for the next one. And the next. And the ones after those, too.

It was something he had turned into a science at that point, something to occupy his mind and body in the days full of nothing. Though the efforts always seemed futile... well, *all* things were, but who cares? It was something to keep his dread at bay, something that allowed him to sleep at night. Well, early in the morning, and well into the day.

Most of the cameras, he had come to realize in the intervening time, were all scattered throughout the same location. When he first discovered the network, there were two clusters. The first one, now destroyed, consisted of an array that observed the Battle for Dream Island and its many locations and contests. Quite a few in the apartments, some in the PRISON, plenty in locations that just didn't seem to make any sense. He'd investigated it once or twice before, and cameras that should *definitely* be suspended up several feet into the air just... aren't there. He'd check his DDS, then at the supposed location, then back at the screens. The whole situation was just... incongruous. Infuriating. Maddening. Insanity.

The other cluster was located in... a place. *The* place, as Tennis Ball had decided to call it. Dark, depressing complex of a place. Dull grays, dim lights, the works. Reminded him somewhat of Golf Ball's Factory, made him chuckle a little bit. He took what little humor he could get in these trying times. These *very* trying times.

A while back, he took note of all the familiar details, all the things he could see on multiple cameras, and from there was able to construct a rough map of the place. The place was *massive*, with vast, winding corridors that stretched on for who knows how long, going to places with indeterminate purpose and construction. Held things that he couldn't quite work out the design of; partly because it was too dark to discern the finer details, and partly because... he *just* didn't know. It was a big maze, and inside was a bunch of smaller, proverbial labyrinths. It was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. TB has spent quite a while now clambering for a key; *surely* there was one, right? Surely there's a reason for this. For *all* of this. They might not know it yet, they might never figure it out, but this place was here for a reason.

One after another. View after unchanging view.

Tennis Ball remembered the last time he did something vaguely like this. Experiments were a constant part of their itinerary, and plenty of those involved procedures, observations, *whatever* that required the two balls to intensely stare at something for hours and days on end, watching and waiting for even the slightest change in the environment, something to jot down for the record, for future generations to make use of. As time continued to drag on in this stuffy little bunker, he tried his best to recall something *somewhat* more exciting than this, and yet, with his mind so full of so many things, all he could remember was... that. Him and her, standing close to one another, staring at the exact same thing. For science.

They did that whole routine around 276 times, according to his last count. Most of the time, it did eventually result in *something*; if it didn't, after all, then why would they do it? Despite their best efforts, however, there was still always the slightest chance of failure, some room for error, the tiniest possibility that things could go awry. Maybe things could go in an unexpected direction, maybe the experiment could fail catastrophically, or maybe *nothing* will happen. Nothing, and more nothing, and yet more nothing. Nothing for so long, nothing that they might mistake for being the buildup to something, a something that'd never arrive. Whatever the case may be, they'd write it down for posterity and hope that tomorrow was better than today.