Golf Ball was hard at work.
Once again, the Battle for Dream Island had reached a completely new stage. The remaining contestants have gone through plenty in order to get this far; they've laughed, they've cried, they've made sacrifices, they've seen friends fall, they've seen enemies vanquished, and so on, and so forth. They've suffered through so much, and have barely gotten *any* time to process it all, even with the long breaks in-between episodes because Two wants to take a nap or whatever. But the universe cares little to none about their hardship and efforts; as GB has observed time and time again, the amount of focus and determination one puts into *anything* has absolutely no correlation with how much recognition and commendation they get for sacrificing all that. It doesn't matter just what exactly you did, or how well you did it, or even if you actually did it at all. How much applause and thumbs-ups you get for your deeds is completely up to chance, decided by a roll of the dice. Just look at the sport globule, for instance. She's worked so hard to get to where she is, constantly struggling with survival in order to uncover treasures and technologies from a time long past, things that could potentially lead them to a better, brighter future. Despite all that, all she's known for is being a bozo-brain bossy-bot. Meanwhile, others have done things of little to no relevance with little to no skill or effort and get *all* the credit. It's not fair, and it never has been.
As such, most of Golf Ball's plans revolved around failure, the acceptance and handling of it. Being a scientist, she's very much acquainted with it. More than once has an experiment blown up on her face, or a potential treasure trove yield nothing of value, or someone not care one bit about a single thing she's saying to them, regardless of whether or not it's for their own good. It may have stung the first one, or two, or 2,763 times, but the body eventually grows to become numb to the stimulus given enough exposure. Failure was to be expected, failure was the norm. And so, when she was suddenly and inexplicably thrown into a new team as part of a wider shuffling of the contestants, when it turned out that this particular grouping hated her guts and refused to listen to her orders, she just... accepted it. Fine. Whatever. Big whoop. She'd already been doing much of her work on her own, so what made any of this different? All that really mattered was her, herself, and her performance. CloudYAY could stumble their way to elimination all they like, and so long as she proved herself to be the only sane one of the team, the voters would *surely* keep her around.
And so, Golf Ball got to work. If she wanted to get *anywhere* in life, if she wanted to set an example to the rest of them, she had to prove beyond doubt that she was better in every conceivable metric. She combed through her records, her observations of each and every one of her new teammates. She figured out what each and every one of them lacked (for one, they were *extremely* incapable of listening to basic orders), and sought to make up for that in spades. She was gonna be the one to drag CloudYAY along, whether or not it was gonna be kicking and screaming all throughout.
But... she couldn't keep this up.
In the end, she was a mere mortal. Despite her efforts to rid herself of all those detrimental human and emotional traits, her physical form simply had its limits. Until that glorious day came where she could replace her feeble shell with steel parts, she wasn't gonna be able to maintain 100% efficiency. She *could* continue dedicating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and so on to these preparations. She could continue to hide away in her Underground Factory, only coming out when Two demands her to. But all that monotony, all that repetition, it'll eventually get to her. It'll eventually wear her down. She *needed* to do something different.
But if she was to do something different, at the very least it was gonna be something *productive*.
-
Tennis Ball was hard at work.
Once again, yet another curveball has been thrown to the contestants of the Battle for Dream Island. They've made it so far, been through so much, but the world didn't care as it continued throwing whatever it could at them. It didn't care whatsoever that they barely had any time to catch their breath, it always wanted *more*. More of what, however? That's an enigma that continues to puzzle him to this very day. He was led to believe that the universe worked on a system of laws and processes, but whatever those were was too complex and unintuitive for him to grasp. And really, what was he expecting? If there's one lesson that's been drilled into his mind, it's that it didn't really matter what he did, as the world would remain indifferent. He spent so long trying to be this great genius, a brilliant thinker that could make up for his *glaring* deficiencies, but he continued to struggle just like everyone else. Meanwhile, others could barely lift a finger and get all the praise. Existence is just wild and capricious, and he really shouldn't expect much more from it.
