Kratogenesis

Mission Profile (I)

"Uh oh. Look! X is about to lose grip of his beloved baskets!" Four pointed at X, who was standing on top of a really long flight of stairs. A distant "Oh no!" could be heard, as X was indeed losing grip of the baskets. Unbeknownst to everyone but Four and X, the baskets were supposed to float away. It was the point of what would be the first challenge since Four and X took over as hosts of the show. "You guys gotta return the baskets to him! The last team to give X their basket will be in deep trouble." Four announced, with an unsettling tone tinging the last few words of the task.

"So, to clarify, that's the first contest of the battle for BFDI?" Lightning was still unsure of whether Four's shenanigans were indeed just them fooling around.

"I guess it is!" Snowball, too, was unsure, but what little he had of wit allowed him to guess that Four was serious about all that.

The teams were then preparing their strategies. Some were going to odd places, others were calculating the fastest and easiest method to give the basket to the yellow variable. Applying said strategies took a while, and some friction was recorded within the teams, but eventually all but two teams were done. It was all down to iance and Bleh.

"We're almost there! I can feel it!" These words were about to be the last uttered before the challenge could be history. Saw, Pencil and Match were about to grab the baskets; it was all just a matter of who was the fastest. Saw was racing up what felt like the longest flight of stairs in history, ready to give that basket to X and call it a day. She was about to reach the last step, when all of a sudden, a green object was seen falling from the sky. What could that have been? A shooting star? It was noon! And it was green! Saw ruled out that possibility; this meant that... Oh my carpenter, a meteor? She couldn't believe her eyes. She wasted no time in giving the basket to X – and thus bring her team to safety, and then she rushed down the stairs. She had to find a safe spot as to minimize any damage by that meteor.

"Hold on!" In the meanwhile, Pen shouted from the ground, hoping to catch everyone's attention. "Is that a basket?"

Intrigued by the question, X squinted their eyes and observed the falling thing. "Hm... That doesn't look like–" Before X could finish the sentence, the meteor touched the ground.

"Wait!" X's puny command was no match for the ensuing shockwave, which knocked everyone unconscious in a few long seconds. X and Saw were knocked off from the stairs and fell onto the ground. Dora, who was following Saw at that point, was also touched by the green ring generated by the meteor.

Once the shockwave went past the initial radius, a long moment of deafening silence reigned. The chatter from before was nullified in an instant. Golf Ball took some time to recover, but once she was standing, she went for Four. "Four! Did you see that?"

Four opened their eyes and managed to sit up. "Whuh? What was that? What happened?"

"The meteor knocked us all down, and I'm feeling weird..." Golf Ball shuddered.

"Huh? I only feel sleepy, but that's how I usually feel, so..." Four stretched, in an attempt to recollect their senses. They then looked around, awestruck by how everyone else was unconscious and how the structures in the plains now had cracks. "Uh oh. That does not look good." Four looked around, waiting for everyone to wake up. One by one, they all recovered from the shockwave. "Alright, is everyone here?" Four looked at the crowd.

Golf Ball looked on, counting all the other contestants. "Hm! I think we're missing someone." When asked about whom it was, she replied: "Saw and Dora are here, but where's the rest of Bleh? And what about the others?"

"Hang on..." Four then became aware of Bleh going into the world's largest oven. "You're right!" Using a special technique, they managed to recover the remaining contestants. "Done!" They looked at Taco. "Has your team felt any kind of shockwave?"

"Well, I remember feeling like I was just bumped from behind..." Taco scratched her head and looked away, as she wasn't quite sure if her explanation made any sense.

"Hey, I felt that too!" Book intervened. Her statement was seconded by the remaining teammates.

"And how did you feel after the shockwave?" Golf Ball joined Four in looking at Taco.

"I don't know... Kinda woozy, as if someone hit me in the head with a baseball bat, y'know?" Taco's words were still marked with uncertainty, as she had yet to understand what was going on.

"Hm. Welp, thank you!" Golf Ball went away.

"Uh... no problem." Taco still couldn't make any sense of the shockwave or the stun.

Golf Ball chiseled away a piece of the meteor. "Yes! This will do!" When Tennis Ball asked her what she was going to do with it, she said she would scan it with the computers in her lab, as was the procedure. "Why wouldn't it work, TB? It worked for everything! Even a minuscule fragment of matter!"

"Hm..." Something was still buzzing through Tennis Ball's head. What if its origin from outer space somehow compromised the results? "Okay." He conceded, not wanting to doubt the technical prowess of Golf Ball's tools. As Golf Ball went to her laboratory, Tennis Ball was still somewhat doubtful that the tools could print helpful results. Oh well.

"Why the long face, TB? This could be the opportunity of a lifetime!"

"Ah, yeah..." Tennis Ball giggled, but he could not shake off that sense of doubtfulness and looming failure that encroached him.