The past few days have been a little... different.
Once again, the Battle for Dream Island has reached a late enough stage that necessitates a shake-up in the teams, the arbitrary groupings designed to further instigate conflict among the contestants even more than the desire to win already has. Golf Ball is lumped into yet *another* team filled with people that hate her guts, that will do *everything* in their power to avoid doing anything she says, even though she ultimately has their best interests in mind. Fine. Whatever. That was already an expected outcome, a joke with a known punchline. She'd been planning for such an inevitability for *years* by this point.
One thing she *hadn't* anticipated (as much, anyway; she *always* thinks about every reasonable possibility) was her and Tennis Ball being separated in the process of the Team Swap. The two had remained on the same boat throughout the competition, the only thing capable of stopping them being the elimination of one or the other. Though GB constantly reminded herself that this, much like all other partnerships, is temporary and could give out at any moment due to the capricious, enigmatic emotions of others, she was more than happy to exploit that collaboration for the time being. Though self-reliance and self-sufficiency were her ultimate goals in life, she couldn't deny that there were a number of scenarios where having an extra set of hands (well, feet), or an additional brain, could help *immensely*. She had gotten so used to having that privilege, spent so long assured that she had at least *one* person by her side, that the sudden change caused her to be... a *bit* more surprised than she expected.
Though GB and TB were *far* above immediately turning on each other because they were now arbitrarily assigned to different groups, this change in the status quo was gonna present quite a few issues. The fuzzball now had other priorities to take care of, a team to manage under his benevolent leadership (which, if she had played her cards right, should be of *absolutely* no difficulty for him to do alone). Those responsibilities eat up quite a lot of time, time that has to be taken away from *somewhere*. He'd no longer have much time to go down to the Factory, to help her with experiments and tests, to discuss all the wonders and mysteries of the universe, and so on, and so forth.
After a bit of deliberation and debate, they eventually came to the conclusion that they would continue on their mission, their desire to lead everyone into a new golden age of unprecedented scientific and technological progress. They were just gonna have to do it... their own way. Until they were once again able to work together without much interference (can't be long now, given how quickly everyone's disappearing), they were gonna have to conduct their operations largely independent of each other.
To facilitate that, they were gonna have to construct a brand new factory for Tennis Ball, one where he can do everything in his itinerary without having to disappear into the underground, keeping himself in sight of the rest of his team. Setting up such a facility, with its stringent requirements to ensure a *perfect*, controlled site for experiments, was gonna take quite a lot of time and effort. The past few weeks have been dedicated entirely to that endeavor. They tried their hardest to get everything established amidst an environment that was growing ever more turbulent and tumultuous; the other contestants obviously pestered them and tampered with sensitive equipment, Two often appeared in the most inappropriate times and distracted them with a challenge or two, and mysterious forces continued to lurk in the background, striking and throwing curveballs when they least expect it.
Which brings Golf Ball to what she was doing at this very moment. It's day... 27, give or take, of this whole charade, and it still didn't feel like she was *anywhere* near being done with it. The new Factory continues to be woefully lacking, Tennis Ball's new team continues to pull him away to do a bunch of irrelevant things, and the constant fears surrounding the latest developments continue to plague them. What's been happening to the recently eliminated contestants? Why do they keep apparently disappearing, their fates somehow being outside of Two's jurisdiction? Was it something to worry about? Was it something to *fear*? All those questions, and many more, bothered them tremendously, and brought people to GB a little bit more than usual, wasting her time with all sorts of foolish inquiries. As much as she *wanted* to know all the answers, she had to begrudgingly admit that she didn't have the slightest clue as to what was going on. That's always a bit embarrassing.
