Alternate Battle for Dream Island

ABFDIA 12a: Flighty

Tennis Ball had finished up on packing quite a while ago, but he was still pretending like he wasn't.

To tell the truth, he *really* didn't need a backpack full of all sorts of navigational equipment; that was gonna be a bunch of extra weight he was gonna have to drag along from miles on end, slowing him down and making things more treacherous, but he also picked up a number of niche skills over the past who-knows-how-long that made the stuff redundant. He knew all of this, and he knew how absurdly inefficient it is. He knew that he was wasting time, time that could be spent doing other, infinitely more efficient things. But he did it anyway.

He spent much of that time glued to his DDS, frantically tapping all sorts of buttons. The relentless search for Teardrop's whereabouts, any possible leads towards what happened to her and the labyrinth she was stuck in, continued on. He supposed that there wasn't much activity going on in Goiky; for as long as he had been keeping records, there was absolutely *nothing* here besides empty, dead, endless stretches of grass. As such, he shouldn't expect to pick up that many signals. In the unlikely event that he manages to get something, probability is on his side. But he'd been at it for half an hour now, going through all the methods he found through meticulous trial and error in a seemingly futile effort to get something, *anything*. Anything to give him the briefest glimmer of hope that he hadn't just lost yet *another* thing, yet another *person*, so near and dear to him.

Golf Ball eventually wandered her way over to him, deep in thought and aimlessly perambulating; she'd notice that the fuzzball was still sitting there, still in her sights, and it angered her immensely. "TB, what're you *DOING*?" She'd shout; Tennis Ball would momentarily be taken by surprise, though that'd quickly give way to anger. "Golfy, I'm still not done packing!" "Really?" The dimpled despot wasn't buying it this time. "It doesn't look like it." TB groaned. "Just because you don't understand what I'm doing, doesn't mean that it isn't anything important. I'm currently-" "Oh, I think I know what I'm looking at." The bossy-bot replied. "You're wasting your time! *Our* time! Every second you trash is a second *they* exploit!" She'd march on over to him and give him an angry kick to the leg; nothing too painful, but enough to prove that she meant business. "Get going, *NOW*!"

The clumsy one briefly considered explaining things further, but that little voice would quickly be met with fierce opposition from the rest of his head; how many times had he already tried that, and how many times had it failed? "*Fine*." He got up, presuming he could continue at it once he was up at the surface. He'd put on the backpack (the specifics of an armless person wearing something that requires shoulder straps is fascinating, but ultimately irrelevant), then promptly left without another word.

The journey up was tiring. Not because he was a fat, clumsy sphere that constantly risked tripping and falling (well, *partly* because of that), but because it was dark and cramped. Whenever he wasn't thinking about how much of a tight squeeze it was, he was thinking about... *everything* else. Golf Ball, Goiky, the series of events that led him down this unfortunate and miserable path. How many times had he gone down this depressing little road, this dead-ended train of thought? 2,763 times? Maybe more? But it just kept on playing, on repeat. A story that just wouldn't end, despite being far past its end.

After being momentarily blinded by the sunlight (which he hadn't seen in a good while), he immediately got to the entire purpose of this escapade; he quickly got to exploring... for all of two minutes. He'd set up camp in a nearby spot, just out of sight of the base, where he'd spend the rest of the day. He'd take out his DDS, use his technical skills to make it automatically search for signals, then... he'd wait. Just kept on waiting.

An hour passed, then two, then several more. With each and every attempt to get *any* info from the world beyond, Tennis Ball grew more and more despondent. Teardrop could have perished in any number of ways by this point, and if that happened, that'd be a *massive* setback. She could get recovered, of course, but tracking her whereabouts in that situation would *also* be a tedious chore. It was just... *Ugh*.