Alternate Battle for Dream Island

ABFDIA 14c: Acquired Taste

Once again, nothing interesting was going on in Dream Island.

This was the thing their entire lives (well, the part of their lives that mattered) had built up to, and it was just... *eh*. It was partially because of the lingering, impending, all too inevitable threat of bad news: Golf Ball was still out there, plotting and scheming, coming up with new ways to make them all miserable when they should be out there having *fun*. She was bound to strike at some point, and though she was likely gonna be easy to deal with, they *still* had to do that aforementioned dealing, which was gonna suck no matter what happened. It's just... effort. Far too much effort. More effort than they could be bothered with. There's a reason why they were so content with languishing around in the grassy fields all day, much to the sport globule's dismay. They didn't need much of anything, they didn't *want* much of anything, and life was great. Everything was handed to them on a silver platter, and yet GB was constantly going on and on about mysteries and conspiracies only she could see, trying to rope others into the madness and making them depressed for the rest of time. What kind of life would *that* be? And it seemed like she was *still* at it, despite how soundly she was rejected; it was only a matter of time until she hit her head against the proverbial brick wall again, and it was gonna be mildly upsetting to hear and feel the loud thud.

But at the end of the day, that was only *partially* the reason why; they tried ignoring that little detail as hard as they could, but when things get *really* silent around here (which only seemed to become more and more frequent, much to everyone's horror), the ominous shadow of that underlying trouble would make itself known.

It'd been there since the very beginning, even before the Announcer showed up and turned things upside-down, back when they were still just doing whatever on the grass. They had little to no incentive to do... *anything*. There were an unfortunate few that had some existential problems, sure; Firey would instantly die whenever it rained, Bubble could be popped in a single poke, some didn't have arms for reasons beyond anyone's comprehension. But for most of them, those problems were still somewhat manageable. They could ignore it without *much* issues. They can lie down, bask in the sunlight, let the world pass by around them, and just persist in that state of uneventful existence for the rest of their life.

And yet, they... *didn't*. There was no need to move, but they perambulated about. There wasn't a specific reason for why they had to talk to others, and yet they developed friendships and rivalries. There was nothing to justify picking up language, or opening their eyes, or... *anything*. But they chose, willingly, completely voluntarily, to do it anyway.

To the unfortunate few that had to listen to Golf Ball's incessant lectures, they may have heard her talk about how this was some innate feature built into their consciousness. That there was this urge wired into their brains, one which constantly demanded something new, something different, something exciting. For whatever reason, some statistical abnormality, the mind just isn't content with getting everything it needs to survive; there was always the desire for more, to be something greater than they already are. And that'd push them to break out of their shell, to go outside of their comfort zone, to try new things. And they'd inevitably get themselves into all sorts of worrying and troublesome situations, and so they'd despair, fearing that they'd never get to recapture that feeling of innocence and naivete ever again. Then GB would continue rambling on and on, declaring that *this* was why the pursuit of scientific knowledge or whatever was important, how she and everyone else with a modicum of common sense strives to learn more about the world and how it works, and so on, and so forth.

Nobody wanted to listen to her. They *really* didn't. She was boring, she was insufferable, and now she was trying to steal Dream Island. But as time continued to pass, as the Battle for Dream Island began and ended, as they spent more and more days living on the island of luxury, the more they got that dreadful feeling in the back of their minds, that horrific agony that they never wanted to feel.