The members of FreeSmart were spending their precious, finite time on this Earth silently guarding the Hand-powered Recovery Center.
Whenever Ruby and friends weren't focusing 100% of their time, effort, and attention on that dumb old machine, they were talking and arguing about how that should be what they're doing. If not that, they were distracting themselves from the fact that that's what they're supposed to be doing. If not *that*, then it was something that they *swear* is related to the task at hand, in ways that your puny little brain just couldn't possibly comprehend. If not even *that*, then... well... It was something. *Anything*. Anything to let the time pass by without issue. Anything that could take their mind away from the painful, never-ending, *boring* boredom.
Before the Battle for Dream Island was even a distant dream for the most deranged, before that speaker box suddenly descended from the sky and changed the world forever for the better- or worse, depending on who you ask -they were all perfectly content on doing things just like this for the rest of eternity and beyond. Prior to BFDI, everyone was just... hanging around in the grasslands. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they played games, sometimes they got up to shenanigans, sometimes they caused chaos. But everything ultimately defaulted back to the ultimate status quo: nothing but a whole lot of nothing, *nothing*, happening everywhere forever. Nothing ever changed, and there wasn't any incentive for things *to* change. They didn't need to do much of anything except... exist. Life was simple, and everyone was happy.
But the universe is a cruel prankster, and so when it saw that there were a group of living inanimate objects that were completely happy with their lives, that had absolutely no complaints about anything whatsoever, it was decided that some trouble was going to be thrown their way to completely shatter that perception of the world forever. The Announcer inexplicably arrived, drew some arbitrary boundaries on the proverbial sand (or grass, or whatever), and that has been the source of much of their conflict and hatred ever since. There were all sorts of grudges and battles that existed beforehand, but it didn't take too long before they were all wrapped up under this single, problematic banner. It was like a metaphorical tortilla, completely surrounding and enveloping this mixed bag of ingredients to form... Some sort of food item. If only it had a name.
And so, the 20 contestants (and a few more afterwards) proceeded to Battle for Dream Island. They fought, they cried, they argued, they died. And in the end, despite *everything* they had to suffer through, none of them ended up gaining the island in the end. Just as quickly as it arrived, it left without leaving a single trace.
Well, except for the one *massive* one, of course.
The contestants couldn't just go back to how they were living back in the old days; that thought seemed completely and utterly ridiculous to them. To think that they were satiated with just existing in a field for years and years! How asinine! There's a life out there to enjoy, so enjoy it! Without *any* prompting whatsoever from outside forces- *totally* none at all -they decided to start a second season of BFDI so soon after the first. What was the prize? Who was gonna keep this whole thing afloat? Those were all questions that could be dealt with at a later date. If they just believed hard enough, *really* hard, then they could maintain their semblance of peace, of order, of a competition in which they can immerse themselves in without issue, where they can be *happy*.
They just couldn't revert back to it. They just *couldn't*. One can't just go on the most spectacular, most amazing, most wonderful adventure in their entire lives, then just be expected to return to boring old monotony without a single word of complaint. To ask for that would be to ask for the impossible, the ludicrous, the ridiculous. They *needed* to battle. It was in their blood. Or whatever was in them that served as blood, if there was any.
