Alternate Battle for Dream Island

ABFDIA 16b: Contestant's Nightmare 4

The group just kept on walking.

And walking.

And *walking*.

It just... *doesn't* stop. Time keeps on passing, the world keeps on spinning, and things keep on happening. It was pretty clear that absolutely none of the liked what was going on at all; wandering around this dark labyrinth could only be so entertaining for *so* long. They've done this same routine of walking around, wandering into dead-ends, arguing over who caused this latest failure, then proceeding to the next venture around... 2,763 times, give or take. That number has also appeared around 2,763 times, give or take. What's up with that? More importantly, who *cares*? Who cares about *anything* that's happening? Everyone has grown so tired of the constant cycle of things occurring over and over again that even complaining about it has become a cycle of its own. The situation had grown *that* dire. This whole thing, from top to bottom, start to finish, was a whole mess. And they didn't even know how to go about fixing it; they could argue about it with others, talk about what could be done to fix things, or they could be like Teardrop and just refuse to discuss it, continuing with the motions despite it being a complete and utter pain. Because, at the end of the day, the conclusion is all the same. Doesn't matter whether or not they like it, the world will throw these curveballs regardless. Again, and again, and *again*. Repeatedly.

As everyone else continued with their fruitless conversations, the droplet took this (relatively) peaceful moment to truly take in all she had seen throughout her journeys, to really put all the pieces together. She'd been going around and around plenty, long before the sudden appearance of *those* four, and even before Tennis Ball prompted her to do so. What else was there to do, after all? Once TB was part of the equation, however, her movements became restrained to a small quadrant of the entire complex. She'd subconsciously direct herself to keep going around in circles, refusing to go *too* far astray. She knew full well that this was counterproductive, that at some point she was gonna cover everything several times over, and if there weren't any exits to be found... Tough luck. But try as she might to suppress that urge, despite her desire to go out and do *anything* productive, anything useful, she just... kept doing it. Why *was* that? Did she not want to lose contact with that fuzzball, or something? What for? And for that matter, how did she even know that it *was* him? From her end, all she saw was a singular camera spinning around; it could've been *anyone* on the other end. Could've been *anything*.

Whatever. All that's in the past now, and she managed to escape that unscathed. What matters now is... well, *now*. She continued to drag everybody along, looking for an exit, looking for relief that had no guarantee of arriving, especially in a form that they'd be happy with. What if the only way out was to die? Given the way things were going, things sure seemed to be heading in that direction.

Besides that little issue, there's also a bunch of other questions that remain unanswered. One particular conundrum is... well, the fact that this place exists at *all*. What even is this place? Who built it? When? And why? What little they could access, what wasn't locked behind several layers of security, didn't really give them any information; no markings, no symbols, no text, *nothing*. It was just featureless wall after featureless wall, empty hall after empty hall. What little tidbits they could find in their explorations end up not really pointing to anything; all sorts of minutiae about things that ultimately don't matter. Absolutely *nothing* to do with the big picture, the *really* important questions. Riveting.

Teardrop's been trying her hardest, though; while everyone else is bickering about this and that, focusing more on swatting away cobwebs and dust, she was looking at every available nook and cranny, searching for anything that could give them a hint towards *anything*. The place was old, the place was massive, the place was dark, and the place was a *massive* pain. Somehow, that info seemed to both be useful *and* useless. How does that even happen?