Pencil looked at the clock.
How many... days? Weeks? Months? *Years*? It was all impossible to tell while she was stuck in that Eternal Algebra Class. The exact time period *might've* been stated at some point in time (hah), but the writing utensil had been *completely* out of it ever since she (and everyone else, I guess) was finally able to break free from that mathematical purgatory. She thought she'd *never* see the day. The day where she finally got to see the sun, to feel the grass, to breathe fresh air, to be with... *literally* anyone else other than her classmates. That's usually how things went, after all: you compete, you get eliminated, and then you're forced to persist in this weird limbo for ages and ages until you're just... spat out. When? Whenever the universe decides to give you your five minutes of sunlight, presumably. Usually, that time only arrives once everything is said and done, once the competition ends, once everything's back to... mundane, painful tedium.
But things seemed to be different this time around. Once they were able to escape the confines of that algebralian's strange dimension, they found themselves in the midst of... *another* competition? And under some completely new, similarly alien entity to boot. Weird. But they've survived the Battle for Dream Island, for crying out loud. They've been through plenty, they've been through weirder. And really, this seemed to be *exactly* like its predecessors considering what happened next: they worked *so* hard to finally break free, only to *immediately* be sentenced to yet more time in jail.
What even *is* their deal? How come every single host, from the speaker boxes, to the numerals, to even their fellow living objects, decides that cruel and unusual punishment is the best way to deal with those that got the boot? Not being able to compete was already a painful enough thought for them. Did they fear that they could interfere with the remaining contestants? That's... *somewhat* understandable, but *surely* there'd be at least 2,763 better ways to go about tackling that issue instead of... *this*. Like, come on. *Nobody* deserves this much torture. Not even Needle.
One attempted break-out later, and finally, *finally* they were given a leniency. They'd still be trapped in the confines of that building. They'd still be doing all sorts of boring stuff for the foreseeable future. But one of them, *one* of them, would be plucked out of this miserable life to join the show once more. What'll happen to the rest of them, the ones that weren't favored by the heartless voters? They didn't want to think about that. Once they had that brief glimmer of hope, that singular possibility to consider, they clung onto it for dear life.
Pencil and Match in particular thought about it heavily. Having been in the Battle for Dream Island from the very start, they were confident that one of them was gonna make the cut. Just *which* one exactly... was a question that could wait for later. All they wanted to think about was what they were gonna do once they *inevitably* get out. They've both got a lot of bottled-up emotions, a lot of anger and resentment due to their many, *many* years stuck in the Eternal Algebra Class. They wanted to make up for all that lost time, and they wanted it *badly*. Once they were back in the running, there was nothing and nobody that was gonna stop them from getting... whatever the prize is.
But try as they might to daydream, however, that indisputable fact couldn't be avoided forever. Their fate ultimately hung in the balance of those faceless crowds, the same ones that had sent them down this path of misery and turmoil. And given their track record, they weren't exactly ones to develop a sense of sympathy. The more they gave it thought, the less likely it seemed that they were *ever* getting out. And, once again, it was *just* one of them that'd get the privilege. Getting out of Four's prison was already one fluke, and the universe probably wouldn't afford them another; there's no way the rules would suddenly change to let two of them go free, or something. They can evade the quandary as much as they like, but sooner or later, they'd have to confront it, rip the bandage off.
