Kratogenesis

Numbers (XXIX)

The sun had long set; it was nighttime. Tennis Ball was sleeping on his bed, while Golf Ball was sitting on her desk, planning something with Pillow, whom she had invited to her lab just for this occasion. She was admiring something shiny, which caused Tennis Ball to cover himself under the blanket. "There it is!" She and Pillow were looking at the product of many days of work.

"We have replicated the BFDI." Pillow was sitting on a wooden chair, in a posture that would cause important damage to anyone else's body. "Please remind me again why you did this." She yawned.

"Oh, it was just a fun project!"

"How did you grab the source material?" Pillow stretched about.

"I scanned it across multiple intrusions into the vault where the original is kept."

"But what about its powers? How did you transfer them to the clone?"

"I had TV scan the BFDI and its internal components." Golf Ball activated the clone BFDI she had worked on, making it shine for a few seconds.

Pillow rested on the table and fell asleep, letting her body lose its usual rigidity.

Golf Ball grabbed the sleeping Pillow and placed her on the bed, then jumped onto the bed herself. The two then fell asleep.

Tennis Ball noticed a toffee-like body pillow and wasted no time in sleeping on it.

In the morning, Four woke up and felt like something had changed. "What's going on?"

X didn't understand Four's query. "I don't know."

Once the two got out, Four would receive a visual answer to their question. Golf Ball was hosting in their place. Four groaned. "Golf Ball! Quit your shenanigans! I'm the host here!"

"Oh!" Golf Ball took out the clone BFDI she had produced. "Perhaps you were looking for this?"

Four noticed that something was off: the BFDI they had promised at the start of the challenge... How did it end up there? "How did you..." They stopped to think of something appropriate to say. "I thought I placed it into an unhackable safe with no way of viewing or accessing it without my involvement!"

"TV and I replicated it!" Golf Ball smiled smugly. "Bypassing your unhackable security measures was trivial, by the way!"

Four got on their knees, with their jaw dropped. "You bypassed it?"

"That's what you get for setting every password to 'farts'!" X sighed.

Four blushed in embarrassment. "I couldn't think of a safer password! It just came to me like that!"

The two hosts watched in awe as Golf Ball announced the new challenge. A math test, where the highest-scoring team would get a free fruit ice cream, whereas the lowest-scoring team would be forced to make a salad for Golf Ball.

"Long as there's no orange in that ice cream, I'm happy." Four looked at GB, hoping that she wouldn't betray them once again.

Everyone sat down as Golf Ball handed the tests. There were twenty questions, each more difficult than the other. They were given thirty minutes to complete the test. Some breezed through the task, while others struggled, such as Black Hole, who had to ask Pillow to fill in the test for him.

After the tests were handed back to Golf Ball, she and TV corrected them. TV then displayed the average score for each team. iance was the lowest-ranking team, with just three points out of twenty, while A Better Name Than That and Death P.A.C.T. were tied at the top, with three points shy of perfection.

A tie! This had never happened before in the Battle for BFDI. Golf Ball had to think of something, and quick. TV aided her by displaying a matrix. "Ah, yes! A matrix!" Golf Ball smiled. "Guys! The first team to solve this matrix wins the free ice cream!"

Remote couldn't hold her excitement. "I hope it's chocolate–"

"It's not. Golf Ball said so earlier." Tree, however, did not share Remote's enthusiasm.

The two teams looked at the matrix and worked their way to determine its compatibility. Blocky was oh so visibly excited. In fact, he was so excited that he wasn't even paying attention to what was going on.

A few minutes later, Remote submitted her answer. "There ya go."

Golf Ball looked at it and smiled. "Correct! Death P.A.C.T. wins the free ice cream!"

"Yay!" Once the ice cream was given to Death P.A.C.T, however, Remote's joy gave way to severe disappointment. "Oh. It's fruit ice cream." She regained the joy she had lost a few seconds ago. "Oh well!" She devoured it.

Blocky stood up and walked up to Golf Ball. "No offense, but your challenge sucked."

Golf Ball had long prepared a rebuttal for that opinion. "It's essential to determine the best! After all, who would want to give the prize to some idiot?"

Blocky gasped in anger. "Are you implying I'm an idiot?"

"Wha– No, not at all!"

Blocky did not agree with Golf Ball. His anger made him slap her across the plains. "Nobody implies I'm stupid and gets away with it!" He noticed that he had separated Golf Ball from her cherished replica of the BFDI. It would be a shame if he grabbed it!