Tennis Ball was afraid.
Fear is an emotion that is best left unfelt. When one fears, it means that there is something that has gone seriously wrong with one's life. The only things one had to fear was... fear itself. In an ideal scenario, fear should be well and truly far away from any and all things. TB and his *associate* once did all the research and figured out everything one needs to survive: it turns out that it wasn't really a lot. They needed food, but they only needed it every 1,338 days. They needed air, but only sometimes. Everything else... That was just fluff. It was all vanity. Water was once considered one of the great essentials, but then one has to consider Firey, who turns into nothing but smoke as soon as he touches even a single droplet of the stuff. Companionship is also considered one of the greats, but just one look at Needle's life was more than enough to prove that it was all one sick joke.
...Poor Needle.
In theory, in a vacuum, there was pretty much no need for them to fear anything. They lived in one of the most peaceful corners of Goiky, an endless plain that they could explore in just about any direction, an area with basically no predators to worry about. Every other part of the world, as they've learned in violent fashion, is full of all sorts of horrors and monsters that make life miserable and short. But by some pure miracle, just the sheer chance of luck, they were able to settle on a place that was as calm as it could possibly get. A place where they could live the rest of their lives (however long they may be; don't think too much about it) in relative peace and harmony, not needing to think about the possibility that there were other ways to live, and as such there were *many* ways to suffer.
But, of course, this isn't an ideal scenario.
The Announcer fell out of the sky one day, and declared that they were to Battle for Dream Island. Arbitrary lines were drawn in the proverbial sand, and those on opposite sides were made to fight each other. Challenges comprised sick, twisted, humiliating ordeals that caused them to die many times over. Those that weren't able to make enough entertainment for faceless crowds were thrown into tiny boxes, or perhaps are made to endure an even worse fate. All this made it so there were, indeed, plenty of things to fear.
But living beings, having been made to live for countless years in less than ideal circumstances, their skills and capabilities sharpened over countless years of evolution (according to his textbooks, anyway), grew the ability to adapt to such roughness. It became understood that the world was miserable, that there was nothing (pretty much) that could be done about it, and so the only way out was to make things... *slightly* more bearable. They learned how to make do with less, and when the opportunity came to have more, they made sure that they had *much* more. They reframed their idea on what is good not on what they had before, but what they had now. Things could get worse, that much is for certain, but at the very least they aren't dead yet.
Well, as dead as a species with recovery centers can be, anyway.
And so, the contestants of the Battle for Dream Island also learned to adapt. The competition was *very* far from the peace and harmony from living in the vast green fields, but it was still... *tolerable*. Death was a non-issue, and they could always bounce back out. Challenges were painful, but they served as useful learning experiences. For those who could learn, anyway. Nobody ended up winning- even the alleged winner didn't get anything for his efforts -but they also didn't *lose*, per se. Though the competition itself may have ended up going nowhere, its effects were far-reaching. They were able to figure out a thing or two about what life is really supposed to be, how to make do with what little they had, and how they can always rise from whatever rut they fell into and make it out far better than before. The Battle for Dream Island may have destroyed plenty of things, but what little did remain grew stronger as a result of their experience. The contestants were now somewhat stronger, somewhat smarter.
