Alternate Battle for Dream Island

ABFDIA 8a: It's A Lot

Golf Ball was *still* fixated on that shiny new puzzle.

Tennis Ball spent basically an entire day locked up in his little corner, doing whatever he could to pass the time and take his mind away from all of... *this*. Not the crushing weight of dread and fear, mind you; he knew if he took his eye off that for even a second, something would instantly shift and render them completely helpless to stop what's coming.

No, he didn't want to think about *her*. About GB. About that bozo-brain bossy-bot and her funny doings.

Most of the day was spent just looking at Teardrop instead, watching her as she roamed about the complex, looking for any sort of way out. From what they've managed to put together, the place was *massive*. All sorts of twisting passageways, winding corridors, a whole bunch of strange architectural oddities and non sequiturs that made the place one big labyrinth, a maze with no exit. *Seemingly* no exit, anyway.

*Surely* a place as massive as this had to have a few of them. Even if they were to assume that this place was built by a speaker box- as it most likely was, just *look* at it -there were still a number of assumptions they could make based on what they've seen so far. Once again, the place was *huge*. Doing a few quick calculations in his head, Tennis Ball estimated that it'd take a large group of people a large number of years to even excavate the place, let alone furnish it to this degree. For that excavation to be done, however, they needed to actually get there first; and for them to get there, there had to be a way down. And *assuming* that the universe doesn't work in strange and mysterious ways (that part's still a bit of a work in progress), a way down can also function as a way up.

This way up was bound to be massive; TB envisioned a massive tunnel, with some similarly-sized mechanism of locomotion that allowed one to go up and down as they wished. After all, everything here had to be transported *somehow*, and he found it highly unlikely that the Announcer (or someone like him) would be fine with just *pushing* it. That'd just be absurdly inefficient. There was also likely going to be several of these, dotted throughout the complex; as has been stated many times before already, like a broken record, this place was *vast*. And stored inside were a lot of things that were also large in size and scope; it'd most likely be a nightmare to squeeze these things through such narrow paths and whatnot. There should also be a number of other smaller tunnels to the surface, for ventilation or emergencies or whatever. Maybe they'd even get to find a tunnel that wasn't dug by mechanical hands, maybe they'd find evidence that they weren't the first to fight this battle. Would that be a good thing? Would it be bad? Was it better or worse to know that someone had gone before them, embarked on the perilous journey into the unknown, and quite clearly didn't live to tell the tale?

Well, why should he focus on all these hypotheticals?

Tennis Ball would keep his eyes on the prize; the very boring, very unremarkable, very unfulfilling prize. Teardrop would spend hours and hours going all over the place, searching every single nook and cranny for even just a single sign of the way out. Meanwhile, TB could hardly bring himself to look away, fearing that the *very* moment he became distracted was the moment TD *finally* encountered trouble.

It's a bit strange, isn't it? The fuzzball didn't give it much thought up until now; one shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, after all. But really, if he actually thought about it, it didn't seem to make much sense whatsoever that they *hadn't* encountered a hindrance or two along the way. No signs of any other life, no barriers and pitfalls to inconvenience them. Nothing. Just more of the same, silent, listless exploration. Hours upon hours of dark hallways and silent rooms. Hours became days. Days became weeks.

Though the voice in the back of his mind kept sowing the seeds of doubt, he couldn't help but theorize on what's going on. Could he have lucked out? Did hacking into the cameras do more than he gave it credit for? It *would* have some precedent, after all. Plenty of discoveries have been made completely by accident, or even whilst doing something completely different. It seemed to be the fate of all scientists to just... *randomly* stumble upon something that'll change the world. TB and GB had done it plenty of times already, in fact; having nothing better to do than completely revolutionize science in ways that hadn't been seen in 2,763 years had its benefits. All that was left to do was get anyone to actually... care.