{BFDI} The Poison in Boinks

The Answer

A billion years is a very long time to be roaming the Earth.

Objects kept the Earth going like a coma patient, reheating the core and preparing to move the Earth in its entirety when the sun hit its red giant phase, but it was still a few billion years before that would happen.

Match had been a police officer all that time, but she was getting bored of her current position. She sat at her desk in the black void of her room. Only the white light from her computer illuminated her.

Her forever home in the underwater city of Clearwater was where she had been investigating the sudden disappearance of Golf Ball and Tennis Ball. The scientists vanished suddenly in space without warning. Many had suspected that they were just too old. Not vanishing because they were old, but because they were tired of living on and on.

Match looked away from her computer monitor and pushed her chair out from her desk. 
She didn't want to believe that GB and TB were really gone for good. She hadn't ever been super close to them.
Gabbs knew nobody could be closer to them than themselves, but they were really important to the world of objects. Those two sport balls were always cutting edge when it came to innovation. Everything they said was practically law.

In a world that seemed to be constantly changing, it was nice to always just be able to see that GB and TB were still the same… until now. 

Match wished she had called them or had said something before they left.
From Golf Ball's last recorded journal entry it looked like they were suffering.

Every past contestant of BFDI was suffering from being alive so long.

Match was too, but she kept herself busy often, and tried not to think about it. Her time would come one day, but now that Golf Ball and Tennis Ball were gone she felt nobody could help her when it did. Other people might be able to understand, but only GB and TB could possibly ever offer a solution. 

Tap!
A tap on Match's bedroom window. 
Tap! 
There it was again. 

Match slid her chair back even further to look out her window. 
A folded blue bandana out in her yard was throwing tiny stones at the window. 
Match did an eye roll and sigh combo and got up out of her chair. 

The window was attached to a balcony overlooking her land, which was cared for by people other than herself. She barely ever used her front yard, but a billion years of interest paid for a lot, and it didn't hurt to pay for a nicely groomed lawn. 

Match walked through the door to her balcony and looked down at the bandana. 
"What like, is this?" She gestured to all of him.
"You're Match right?" The bandana asked. 
"What's it to you?" Match put her arms on the wooden rail and leaned towards him. 
"You're a detective! Can you help me?.. Please," The bandana stood still. 
Match gave the bandana a puzzled look. He looked desperate. 

***

Inside the house downstairs was a smallish library with a fireplace. The ground was made of brick so old it had to be repainted red, and there were dips around the chairs created by Match's feet over the years. 

Match sat in a heavily cushioned chair around the coffee table while she watched the bandana look over the books. 

"Law of Man…" the bandana whispered the title of a book. 
"Man is dead, but it like, doesn't mean we should forget," Match said. 
"Oh.. uh," the bandana awkwardly walked up to Match with their arm out.
"Bandana," He introduced himself. 

Match rolled her eyes. 
"Match," Match said. She shook his hand. Bandana walked to a seat across from her and sat down, twiddling his thumbs.