This is Inanimate Insanity 2, I swear!

1.3 Choosing Pathways

Marshmallow slid the silver laptop onto her lap and lifted the screen. She laid her hands on the black keys and tapped her fingers a few times while she waited for the computer to turn on.

It has been a few days into the competition, and Marshmallow had gotten to know her new teammates a little better.

Test Tube was an eccentric, green haired science geek. She went off on tangents after every other sentence - which were always on scientific topics that Marshmallow didn't comprehend. All she could do was sit, nod, and hope that she wasn't asked any questions (which she was - but Test Tube distracted herself again before she could answer). Marshmallow could tell how passionate she was about science. But besides that, she did learn a few other things: Test Tube was excessively generous. Her parents were the classic immigrant parents who worked day and night at the local soup kitchen, spending their lives scrubbing dishes and saving enough money to give their children what they did not have. Test Tube, in that sense, was also just as willing to sacrifice herself to help others. Marshmallow also learned a lot about how bad Test Tube was at judging when to help others. She figured Test Tube was bad at judging a lot of other things too, but kept quiet.

Then there were the twins. Despite their identical looks, Cherry and Sherry vastly differed in personality. Sherry was meek and quiet, shy and kind. He wore thin round glasses, and often spent his time reading rather than socializing. Marshmallow sometimes read over his shoulder when he wasn't paying attention, but startled him once he noticed. Cherry, on the other hand, was loud and outgoing. He was also very pushy - a poor mix with her own shyness, and she quickly found herself badgered when her answers to his personal questions were not satisfactory. She made a mental note not to talk to him unless needed.

Yin Yang was a mysterious one. He kept to himself most of them time, and brushed off any sort of interaction. Marshmallow could hear him muttering incomprehensible phrases to himself. But she also noticed he was occasionally a nice person; polite, respectful, and sometimes helped fix things and made food. However, other times he was violent, but that was normally just yelling.

Marshmallow never talked to Tissues, and was hoping she never did; from what she observed, he was not the most sanitary person. He always had some issue with his nose, his eyes, his hair was always unkempt, and there was this distinct smell around him that she couldn't stand. Thank goodness he was all the way and the end of the hallway from her room.

When the screen on her laptop finally turned blue, she typed in her password and immediately opened up the browser. In the search bar she entered two words: Fan Blogs.

Something about Fan scared her. He seemed friendly on the most part, and hardly showed any malice in his demeanor. However, his words always seemed to push her buttons, and his actions against her seemed almost... Intentional.

Within a few minutes she learned a few new things about her teammate. One, he really did have a blog, and two, he was a force to reckon with. His fan base was huge, and based off of the comments section, they were the type to mob against anyone who criticized him. She pictured his face, his narrow eyes with stormy irises and tanned skin, his swept hair and petite nose, and could not see any sort of charm in it. His posts, though flashy, were blank, and had no substance. She didn't understand Bubble's fangirly behavior when he was the subject. She really didn't.

She scrolled through a few of his recent posts- a few selfies showcasing his room, and various snapshots of their daily lives - Apple and Test Tube sitting next to each other in the dining room, Yin Yang cooking, Paintbrush staring into space... But as she scrolled through the pictures, she could confirm one thing.

"Bubble wasn't lying..." She remarked. "There are no pictures with me in them."

~~~