Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Fanny’s eyes fly open, she immediately sits up, gasping for air. In the back of her mind, she finds herself faintly baffled by the fact that she’s alive at all. But that thought is overpowered by the rush of fear and adrenaline churning in her chest, and for a minute or two she just sits there, gasping for air as the dizzying rush of feeling makes her way through her chest and eventually drains from her body.

No one is a stranger to death. No one on TPOT, anyway. They have a recovery center to mitigate death. Pillow literally goes around killing people for her research, and she doesn’t get in trouble because death barely even matters. It’s just an inconvenience.

Whatever that was… really felt like death. Real, final, terrifying, and impossible to change. She got why the rest of her team was so gung ho about preventing death now if that was what she had to look forward to. But surely she was fine now, right? Her name had been inputted into the recovery center by her team, and she would be given a reason as to why that happened along with a reassurance that it would never happen again.

And yet, she wasn’t greeted with any of that. Instead, she was in… a void. An endless, sprawling white void. In the distance, there’s towering… mountains? Or maybe pillars, striped with different colors and rounded at the top. As her head continues to swivel around, she sees a hotel. But it isn’t her hotel. It feels really awfully designed, because what she can see of it from her distance makes her wonder if all of those windows are in the hallways or if any are in the hotel rooms.

But that is the opposite of what she should be focusing on at the moment. She growls as she forces herself to her feet, head swiveling about the area as she squints. She doesn’t recognize any of this. Not the featureless void, not the weird disconnected fragments of scenery and props, haphazardly strewn about the place. How had she ended up here in the first place? Did it have anything to do with her… unraveling? Is there anyone else here?

Gritting her teeth, she begins to walk around. She gains nothing from just sitting in place and waiting for an explanation to fall in her lap. So she begins her trek, teeth grit.

(It’s not like she likes to think about One. The idea prompts sharp, piercing discomfort in her gut as she remembers what it was like being in her pocket dimension. Sitting, legs pressed against her chest as she glares at the Algebrailian, wishing she could snap or snarl or at the very least bare her teeth defensively, but she couldn’t because her mouth was at the bottom of the fucking ocean!

Making that deal with One was the easy way out. She knows that! Making that deal with One could have so many disastrous outcomes, and being on the hook of a powerful, scheming Algebrailian who seems to have no qualms about finding an excuse to get everyone in her debt just so she can achieve her goals, whatever they may be, felt bad to her no matter what One was planning. Fanny knows she isn’t the only one who’s signed a contract. She’s just too afraid to vocalize it to the world, because she’ll hate the judgmental glares.

God, One was such a powerful Algebrailian, who she can easily imagine in her mind’s eye, sitting on her chair with one leg folded over the other. Powerful and smug and all-knowing and… gorgeous… really gorgeous and… ugh, screw this.

She doesn’t like to think about One. That’s why she leaves all thoughts about her tucked behind parenthesis! Not that she has a lot of thoughts about her to begin with!)

(...God, she has so many thoughts.)

Ultimately, she sets a course for that hotel in the distance. It’s definitely a distinct landmark, and it’s definitely the sort of place that people would flock to. Especially compared to those striped eggs. They are… super generic.

“Echo!” calls a familiar sounding voice, and she furrows her brow. Why would he be here? She hadn’t expected to see him after he was eliminated ages ago. She hears him giggle at the way his voice reverberates throughout the area, although it’s hardly cramped enough for it to be a proper echo.

“Nickel?” she calls, and the coin turns around, blinking in bemusement. “So you’re here too, yeah?” She’d love to skip the small talk and just get to how they both ended up here to begin with but she should have known nothing can be simple when it comes to Nickel.

“Oh! Hiya, Fanny!” he chirps brightly, grinning cheekily at her as he jumps on his heels. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” she counters dryly, head tilted to the side. “Wherever you went after you got the boot from TPOT, I would have thought you would, uh, stay there. Unless I somehow ended up wherever Two sends the eliminated contestants…?” She trails off, nose scrunched up.

“Nah,” Nickel says offhandedly. “I was just lounging around, hanging out with Cake and Coiny, when I started to feel really weird, you know? Kinda floaty and dazed and like I was-”

“Unraveling,” she injects, voice barely above a hoarse whisper. “C-Coming apart, and the kind of glitchiness, and- I dunno.” She shakes her head firmly before she ends up getting too carried away. “I hated it. It felt so much different from my other deaths. If that was even a death to begin with, anyway…”

“Woah, that’s exactly how I felt too! Except in much better words!” Nickel cries with a gasp, his eyes the size of dinner plates. “Thanks for explaining it for me, Fanny Banany!” He smiles at her for a moment, before his face scrunches up in distaste. “Woof. No. I won’t be going with that nickname.”

“Don’t call me that again. I hated that.” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Well, sorry!” he huffs, exaggerating both syllables of the word. “We haven’t had a lot of chances to talk, y’know! You were on iance, I was on BEEP, and then you were on Death Pact Again while I was on Just Not… Give me some time to get to know you, or something like that!” He sticks his tongue out at her, and she just sighs.

“It’s Death Pact Yet Again now,” she grumbles, before continuing “I’m guessing you have no clue about how we ended up here or what this place is, then,” she deadpans, before realizing that if he did, he probably wouldn’t share it with her unless she outright asked. She probably has to be straightforward with Nickel. “... Do you have any clue?” she says slowly, one eyebrow raised.

“Nope!” he says brightly in response. “When I woke up here, I noticed how empty this place was, and I wanted to see how far my voice would carry! And that worked out well for me, ‘cause now you’re here!”

“So you’re not even remotely concerned by any of this?”

“Meh,” Nickel says. “After being trapped for ages and ages in that weird city place Two stuck all of us into, I’m not concerned by a lot of things.” Fanny, with her… previous Algebrailian experience, can connect the dots well enough on that one. She’s pretty sure all Algebrailians have their own pocket dimension; Four with his eternal algebra and One with her comfortable, claustrophobic sitting area and oppressive night sky. Apparently Two has a city. Had they made it so on purpose, to make the eliminated contestants comfortable? That would track. They’re clueless about objects, but they seem kind. Kinder than the other Algebrailians she’s met.

“If you say so,” she mutters, beginning to walk away as she resumes her quest to make it to that hotel. She half-expects Nickel to stay behind, but he skips alongside her, humming a tune under his breath that sounds like some medieval, upbeat adventure song.

“So, how’s TPOT doing?” he prompts after a moment, shooting Fanny a conspiratorial grin. “Just Not is definitely doing great, huh? They haven’t lost at all since I was eliminated!”

“The teams swapped a bit ago,” she replies flatly. “Not that anyone got much of a choice about what team they ended up on… And anyway, that’s not true. Just Not lost right before the teams were swapped, actually.”

Now it was Nickel’s turn to look confused as he furrowed his brow. “What?” he says. “But that’s- I-I mean, I’ve been keeping track of the people who come to Two’s city! It took ages for anyone to show up after I was eliminated, although I guess Clock did pop up a bit after I did? I dunno, he mentioned something about Two keeping him back and a kitchen! The latest person to show up was Eraser, although he was only there for a second before I poofed and ended up here! To be honest, we had thought something had happened and the show was on hold, y’know?”

For a moment, she’s confused, but she’s quick to sober up when she remembers with a start that Bomby, Bell, Needle and Barf Bag had all gone missing after their elimination. Knowing what she does, she can confidently say that it’s the result of One’s meddling, although who knows what she could want with the four of them. Either way, she supposes the eliminated contestants wouldn’t know any of that, huh?

“Y-Yeah, um… There were two eliminations after you were gone, plus a rejoin from the eliminated BFB contestants from before the split. Pencil and Liy, if you were wondering.” She’s tense, hoping Nickel just won’t ask. She already knows too much as is, and having to actively lie about what she’s deduced leaves a sour taste in her mouth. If Bubble were the one missing, and Fanny was languishing in Two’s pocket dimension without a clue-

Except Bubble isn’t here, is she? So what’s the point of this comparison?

“And the eliminated contestants?” Nickel probes, voice sharp. He’s usually so relaxed and energetic. It’s strange to see that sharp look in his eye. Yet again, he had become rather jaded with his team’s continuous losses on BFB, and he never hid the animosity he bore toward Pillow. His mood swings as dramatically as his speech does, shifting wildly between coherence and blurting out the most nonsensical string of words he can manage.

She bites her tongue, wondering what she can get away with. Finally, though, she sighs and relents. “I know you’re only worried for Bomby, so I’ll limit things to him,” she begins.

Before she can continue, Nickel lets out a breath through grit teeth, looking upset. “No, Bomby was eliminated?!” he whines. “All this time I thought he was still in the game! I was rooting for him! What happened? It was Pillow’s fault, wasn’t it?!” His mood is quick to sharply swing, going from unhappiness to fury within the blink of an eye as he scowls stormily.

“Uh… I don’t really know,” she says in response. “The challenge was, uh, focused solely on our teams, so I couldn’t guess why they lost. But I’m pretty sure Bomby had blamed Pillow before he… disappeared.”

Nickel goes still, eyes going wide and mournful as he draws to a stop. For a moment, Fanny considers continuing to walk just so she won’t have to be stuck in this painfully awkward conversation anymore. But she can’t just drop this news and continue walking like nothing had happened. With a sigh, she stops in front of him, glaring down at the ground as she chews on her cheek. “He’s missing?” he asks, voice sounding startlingly morose.

“Yeah,” Fanny says stiffly, unable to look at him.

“But you guys are looking for him, aren’t you?” he says hopefully, rolling on his heels. “I-I mean, there’s no way you’re just going to let him be gone with no clue where he is!”

“What can we do?” she retorts. She’s not even saying that as an excuse, she’s genuinely curious. What can be done against a scheming, conniving Algebrailian with an obvious hunger for more, someone whose presence most aren’t even aware of? Not that she’s done the eliminated contestants a favor by hiding what she knows about One, although she decides that’s unrelated.

“I don’t know! Use Two’s power or something!” he retorts. “That’s literally what we’re battling for to begin with, remember?! If it wasn’t capable of anything and everything, what was even the point in switching shows?!”

“Because Four and X were lunatics and their prize was lame?” she prompts flatly. Although, honestly, some days she does wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t gone with her gut and thought with her heart instead. If she had followed after Bubble and… well, she doesn’t really know. Watch out for her? Protect her? Act like her knight in shining armor and feel a sick reassurance in the way Bubble would swoon over her? It’s not like she’s forgotten about her. Every so often, Fanny types her name in the recovery center, just to make sure. She just worries, wondering if there’s anyone in the world who cares enough for her to make sure she’s still alive. But every time she does so, it ends up never being necessary.

(That doesn’t stop her from lingering by the recovery center for half the night, typing her name over and over again just to be sure, but that’s neither here nor there.)

“Whatever!” Nickel snaps, teeth bared. “There has to be something we can do!”

“Yeah, actually, there is,” she says with a hum, and waits until she firmly has Nickel’s attention on her before flatly saying “Keep moving. The sooner we find our way out of here and back to TPOT, the sooner you can talk to Two. Sitting here and whining isn’t going to do anything.”

Nickel is silent as he mulls this over, puffing out his cheeks and chewing on his tongue. His brow is furrowed deeply, although to be honest Fanny doesn’t know what there is to debate. It’s not like staying here is going to get them anywhere, and if he truly is so concerned about Bomby, shouldn’t he speed things up so he can spend more time looking for him? Or maybe she’s just impatient. She doesn’t know. Either way, she offers Nickel the stormiest scowl she can manage, hoping that helps to speed things up a bit.

Finally, he tosses his head back and groans, his face all scrunched up. “Fine!” he groans, dragging out the e for a solid minute or so before finally drawing to a stop.

“You done?” she deadpans.

“Nope, just stopping for air!” he says cheerily, and as he takes another breath Fanny leans over and smacks him.

“Quit that,” she says flatly. “I hate your whining, and it’s not doing anything in terms of helping us get out of here. Now, are you going to get moving, or not?”

“Could you carry me?” Nickel asks, mood changing on a dime (or on a nickel, she supposes) as he perks up, eyes going wide and pleading.

“No.”

“Why not?” he whines.

“Why would I?” she retorts. But now he’s pouting again, and she can’t help but groan. As annoying as he is, she would love to keep things moving if she can. So after a moment, she reluctantly grits out “If you’re good and actually listening to me, I…” Nickel perks up at that, eyes going wide and expectant. “...might,” she flatly finishes, her expression dry and deadpan. “No promises. So how about we start moving already? I hate standing still. It’s pointless, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think it matters whether we move forward or not,” he says cheerily. “I think our solution will stumble right in front of us without either of us having to lift a finger!”

“Obviously not????” she hisses through grit teeth. “Why would that-?”

She’s cut off by a voice calling out. “Hello, Nickel, are you over here? We heard your voice, so, uh, we figured, but-!” It’s high pitched yet vaguely masculine.

“You have to be more assertive, Balloon!” scolds a lilting, feminine voice in response. “You can’t stammer so much! It’s not like Nickel’s going to bite!” There’s a pause, before she sheepishly adds “Well, not usually, anyway.”

“Do we know either of those voices?” Fanny hisses, wracking her brains for anyone she knows who sounds similar to that. Some people have the same quality, but none of them sound exactly like that.

“Dunno! But this sounds like that solution I was talking about!” he cries in response. “And I really wanna prove you wrong, so…” He offers her a smile, she offers him a glare, and he calls out “Yoohoo! Over here!”

“Nickel!” she hisses. “What are you doing?! Those people could be the ones who brought us here! That’s why they know your name!”

“You worry way too much,” he says, the picture of confidence. “We’re right here!” And now he’s back to yelling. This is a nightmare.

Suddenly two objects appear in view, coming out from behind one of those towering striped mountains the two had found themselves parked by while Nickel had been yelling and complaining. One is a red balloon, or maybe salmon? Either way, he doesn’t resemble the balloon she knows, with both his color and lack of string. The other is a four-leaved clover, lime green. She has a pleasant, cheery air about her, one that reminds her faintly of Bottle.

Nickel seems rather put off by the balloon, muttering “That’s definitely not Balloony…” She supposes the two had been on the same team back before the split, so it makes sense he would be thrown off.

Before the two get too close, the balloon abruptly stops, and the clover gracefully manages to prevent stumbling into him, blinking. “That’s… definitely not Nickel,” he says, looking just as thrown off as Nickel does.

“Yes I am!” he replies, bristling in evident outrage. “My name is Nickel and I am a nickel! Makes it pretty easy to remember.”

“Okay, fine, sure, but you aren’t our Nickel,” the balloon amends, voice flat.

“That’s for sure!” the clover readily agrees, walking over to Nickel and crouching down in front of him. She blinks slowly, each blink palpably bemused. “But you sound just like him! I’m really glad there are differences between the two of you, or otherwise I would definitely be confused. Oh! I’m Clover, and that’s Balloon! Nice to meet you!” She smiles widely and so warmly. It’s definitely a lot different from One’s cold, cunning smirk that Fanny struggles to get out of her head even now.

“Balloon, not Balloon y…” Nickel mutters to himself, still seeming pretty confused by all of it.

“Fanny,” she curtly interjects, and the two startle, as if they hadn’t realized she was even there. “That’s my name. Do the two of you have any clue where we are? I’d prefer to get back home sooner rather than later. I hate this void. There’s nothing to do in it.” She scowls as she looks around impatiently.

“Uh…” Balloon stammers, looking uncomfortable. “W-Well, that’s kind of a long story. Neither of us know what happened after that MePhoneX went through and killed everyone in the hotel, but it has to be something. Everything else is here too, and…” He trails off, swallowing as he looks around, looking really uncomfortable. “I guess it was all just made by MePhone, huh?”

“Yeah, neither of us know what you’re talking about,” Nickel replies. Fanny rolls her eyes.

“I figured.” He doesn’t seem all too bothered by Nickel’s dismissiveness, if nothing else. His hands remain clasped in front of him as he frowns. “It’s… strange that you’re here. All of the things here are things I recognize, and I guess even that other Nickel is a lot like ours, but I’m not sure… Unless… No, that would be awful… And in character for him.” He seems quick to come to a conclusion as he lets out a weary sigh. “What happened before the two of you ended up here?” he suddenly asks, changing topics so abruptly she gets whiplash.

“I was just minding my own business, getting ready to welcome Eraser, when I just…” He scrunches up his face as he mulls it over. “How’d you phrase it, Fanny?”

“Unraveled,” she gruffly concludes, a scowl on her face as she kicks her leg in the air. “I-It felt like… coming apart. Like I was just falling apart and becoming nothing and I was helpless to do anything to stop it-” She swallows. Fuck, she’s spiralling. Would it kill her to stay centered for once? “So. Yeah. That was fun. Happened at a pretty shitty time for me, too, so I’d prefer to get back as soon as I can.”

“Really? Was it during a challenge?” Nickel prompts, leaning forward.

“Obviously not, idiot, since it happened at the same time for us,” she points out, voice flat. “Cake at Stake, remember? It was our team and Team 2 that were up for elimination-”

“Team 2? Who named that team?” Nickel interjects.

“Two themselves, I’m pretty sure.”

“Wow, talk about self absorbed. I’ve never been on a team that was named after me, that’s for sure!”

Fanny shoots him a deadpan look, but doesn’t bother to argue. “Anyway, I didn’t get to know who was eliminated on my team before I… ended up here. I know I was safe, but I’d like to see which of my friends I’d have to say goodbye to. Not that I actually got to say goodbye to them… Anyway.” She clears her throat and turns her attention back to the two strangers, realizing how far she got off track. “Was that any help?”

“Uh…” Balloon says slowly.

“It was kinda confusing!” Clover exclaims, tilting her head as she frowns. “From the way you guys were talking, were you on some sort of gameshow too?”

“Too?” Fanny echoes, leaning forward. “Are-?”

“We sure are!” Nickel crows before she can finish, jumping on his heels as he widely beams.

“You were eliminated ages ago!” she protests, glaring at him. “You didn’t even get to the team swap!”

“Yeah, but you can’t say I wasn’t there,” he cheekily points out, smiling smugly. “Our show’s called TPOT, and it’s a lot of fun! Well, it’s fun when Pillow isn’t killing us.”

As he disgruntledly grumbles to himself, Fanny decides now is the time to interject and elaborate. “TPOT stands for The Power of Two. That’s, uh, kinda what we’re battling for. Two’s our host, they’re an Algebrailian with quote-unquote limitless power, and going with them after the show split was the better bet than sticking with Four and X, since the two are kinda maniacs,” she says offhandedly, shrugging. “I’m still in the show, Nickel’s not. It’s whatever. You guys were also on a show, then?”

“Yeah, Inanimate Insanity!” Clover chirps. “I was on Season 3, while Balloon participated in all three seasons! So did our Nickel, the one we’re looking for!”

“For now, let’s just say the show is on… permanent hiatus,” Balloon says, expression grim.

“Mostly because all the competitors are dead,” Clover adds, voice way too cheery for the words coming out of her mouth.

“O… kay…” Fanny says slowly, frowning. “So you all died and ended up here. That’s fine, I guess. But why are we involved in this?”

“Yeah! I’ve never even heard of this show before!” Nickel adds. “Why are we involved?”

“That’s… a longer story,” Balloon mutters, letting out a sigh. “God, if I were you, this would be the last thing I would want to hear, but I guess I’ve already heard it and… managed it. I suppose. But if you’re here, there can really only be one explanation-”

“Oh my god, just rip off the bandaid and tell us already!” Fanny barks as she interjects. Balloon startles and eventually nods. She swears she can hear him mumble “I guess this will be good practice for talking to Nickel” but before she can call him out on that, she’s caught off guard by a paper flying through the air and slamming against her face, in sync with the same thing happening to Nickel next to her.

Fumbling awkwardly, she manages to grab the paper and stare down at it. What she sees, though, is enough to make her blood run cold, and her grip on the paper tightens so heavily the edge crumples. “What is this?” she whispers, unable to make her voice any louder.

Balloon blinks and shifts in place to get a better look at it. “What is wh-?” he begins, before stopping cold as his eyes go wide. “Oh,” he hisses. “Oh no.”

On top of the paper is her name, written with a ballpoint pen. The scrawl is childish, with a bit of smeared ink on the y. Below it is how she used to look before that beam hit the Locker of Losers, and she finds herself grimacing on impulse. It had been really impractical to live like that. Below that awkward, wobbly drawing are the words “hates the show?” with the words “the show?” scribbled out intently to the point of near-illegibility with the word “everything” below it and underlined a few times for good measure, presumably replacing the last two words.

The most damning thing about the page, she thinks, is that the whole thing has been scribbled over, and the page is crumpled, with the words “Scrap and start over” scrawled across the page’s center.

Something about the paper feels so nauseating to her that she pries her eyes away from it in disgust, lips pressed into a thin line. She just doesn’t get what it’s supposed to mean. How is there this paper in front of her with her name and her old appearance, and who made it? In her effort to look away from the paper, her eyes fall upon the paper that had hit Nickel, and she finds herself staring at it out of a sort of morbid curiosity.

The page is structured very similarly to hers. The name at the top is spelled Nickle, though, as opposed to Nickel, with no correction anywhere in sight. There’s a drawing of him, too, the circle uneven and more like an oval than anything. Different from hers are the various words scattered across the paper. There’s the word optimist, scribbled out and replaced with pessimist, which is also scribbled out. The word wild is tucked in the corner, paired with the word unpredictable to the left of the center.

His page has the exact same scribble across the front of it, obscuring most of the information but not rendering it completely illegible. Once again, the words “Scrap and start over” have been written, and acknowledging that makes her feel so horribly sick that she can’t help but shrink back.

“What is this?” she whispers hoarsely once again, unable to keep the current of faint terror out of her voice.

“Jeez, this really isn’t how I wanted it to go,” Balloon groans, running a hand over his face. “Thanks, Clover…”

“You know I can’t control my luck!” she protests. “But if it’s any consolation, our papers were just as bad! Balloon’s had “full of hot air” written on it, and mine said “happy go lucky”. It, uh, really sucked to see.” She loses her cheery attitude halfway through the third sentence, when she mentions her paper, visibly deflating as she stares at the ground. Fanny doesn’t get it. There are worse things to be ascribed to you.

“Okay, cool, so you guys also have papers,” she hisses through grit teeth, obviously frustrated. “What are the papers, though? Who made them? What do they mean? You obviously know. I hate how vague you’re being!”

“...Right,” Balloon says with a sigh. “Let’s go back a bit. Like we said, we’re on a gameshow. And our host is MePhone4. He’s… okay. Selfish, impulsive, can be a bit of a manchild at times, but he’s fine. Was fine, before I…” He swallows, before continuing. “He’s always had the ability to create things, and bring us back from the dead. But it wasn’t until today that we learnt something else about him, too. His power of creation doesn’t just extend to inanimate objects. I-It can also…” He trails off and doesn’t finish, staring down at his trembling hands.

Clover smiles sadly, gracefully continuing. “He told us, after so many people had died and became actual inanimate objects, the truth,” she says, as if that first sentence wasn’t alarming in the slightest. “He had created all of the contestants on his show, among others, with his power. Although he had done it completely subconsciously, so he hadn’t been aware of any of it until… today, I think?”

“Those papers, the ones you’re holding there,” Balloon adds, trying desperately to rally and beat back how shaken up he is by all of this. “Everyone we know has one. Listing out their traits, their… stereotype. How they’re supposed to be.” He wraps his arms around himself as his eyes become wide and watery, Clover resting her hand on his shoulder. “He just made us like this, and he didn’t care that he made us broken! That we were just- We’re- He treated us like toys!”

He yells the final word at the top of his lungs, shaking with the force of his anger. After a moment, though, his shoulders hunch and he stares at the ground, hands pressed to his chest. It’s like he’s deflating now that he got all of that out of his system. Clover’s hand has moved from resting atop his shoulder to being wrapped around the other. He grows self-conscious when he becomes aware of all the eyes on him, and he shifts in discomfort.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “It’s just… a lot. And since I died immediately after being told all of that, I didn’t have any time to process it. I shouldn’t have taken that out on you, though. That’s hardly fair.”

“You’re okay!” Nickel chirps, grinning up at Balloon widely. In response, he flushes, turning even redder than he already is, and looks away. “It’s, uh…” There is where he falters, which makes plenty of sense. It doesn’t matter how relentlessly cheery he’s capable of being. Anyone would be daunted by the reveal that they aren’t real, that they were just created for some show. “You’re right about it being a lot. You would be weird if you didn’t yell! So you don’t have to worry about it.”

“Heh, thanks,” Balloon says sheepishly, rubbing at his arm as he smiles wryly. “You’re a lot better at this comfort thing than the other Nickel is.”

“That’s hardly fair!” Clover protests, frowning in dismay. “He’s emotionally constipated! He can’t help it that MePhone made him like that!”

“You could say that about all of us,” he points out as he leans into her touch, looking amused.

Nickel turns to her, nudging her with his foot. “Are you alright, Fanny?” he prompts, brow furrowed.

“...Why were we made?” she asks, surprised by the sound of her own voice. “T-These papers, they say to scrap and start over. We weren’t supposed to exist in the first place. So what are we doing here?” Why do I exist? She desperately wants to ask that final question, resting like a leaded weight on the tip of her tongue, but it feels too heavy to just release into the air and expect the other three to have any clue what to do with it.

“That… I couldn’t answer,” Balloon says tersely, wringing his hands. “I would say that’s something you would have to ask MePhone, but from the looks of it, we’re going to be… here for a while.” Balloon throws his hands in the air in exasperation as he speaks, gesturing around him.

“MePhone couldn’t bring back Pickle or OJ or- or Nickel,” Clover adds, the final word coming out as a strangled sob. “So I don’t think he can bring the rest of us back, either. If there’s a way… but I just don’t know.”

Nickel watches the scene with a frown, shifting from foot to foot. If she had to guess, he was probably thinking about how he could cheer the three of them up, even though it really wasn’t the time. “Hey, there’s stuff on the back of my paper!” he suddenly cries with a gasp, flipping his paper over. After a moment, though, his face scrunches up. “Hey, Fanny, come read this!” he calls, even though she’s standing right next to him. She just sighs and leans in closer.

The writing on the page is less anything structured and more a list of bullet points. “Character like Coiny?” is the first thing written atop a page. Below it is “Abrasive and easily riled up – similar or opposite of that?” The word opposite has an arrow pointing to the next bullet point, which reads “Maybe someone bubbly and cheerful?” And the final bullet point is “Some form of currency – another coin?” Below that are a list of coins: dime, quarter, yen, dollar coin, and nickel, or nickle, she supposes. It’s still spelt wrong.

Nickel stares at this, expression blank, before he looks up. “So I’m just… what? A Coiny ripoff? Really?” he sputters, looking rather upset by this, which is fair. “I literally know him! We were on a team together at one point! We talk to each other super often! How am I supposed to talk to him without that fact sticking in my head? How am I supposed to look him in the eye? How is this fair?!” The longer he speaks, the more upset he grows, and with the final word, tears pool in his eyes.

Fanny allows his outburst to linger heavily in the air for about a minute, Nickel panting heavily while Balloon and Clover steady each other, before she takes the chance to clear her throat. “Right,” she says tersely. “Now we’ve all had an opportunity to feel everything. Now let’s put all of that on the backburner and focus on getting out of here, yeah?”

“Seriously?” Nickel sputters, clearly caught off guard by her attitude. “But- I mean- Aren’t you just as bothered as all of us are?”

“Of course I am,” she says dryly, rolling her eyes as she begins to move forward. Predictably, Nickel falls into line behind her, looking curious to see what explanation she can conjure up. She isn’t expecting for Balloon and Clover to trail behind her too, but she’s pleasantly surprised by the sight. She supposes she is taking the most initiative here, at any rate. “I’m just more focused on finding a way out of here. I’m not just going to roll over and accept death, because I know my teammates wouldn’t accept me being gone.”

“That’s a nice sentiment, but I don’t think it’s quite that easy,” Balloon protests as he speeds up to meet her pace.

“Who knows?” she says in response, shrugging. “You two are just as clueless about all of this as we are, aren’t you?” As they both begin to nod, she continues “Then how can you say anything for sure?”

“Fanny’s right!” Nickel cries, looking determined as he rushes to meet her pace. “Even if we can’t find anything, there has to be other people here, right? Maybe they’ve found something! And besides, this place is super boring! No way I’m going to spend the rest of my life here! Uh, afterlife…?” He trails off, brow furrowed as he mulls over the semantics.

“Yeah,” she says, throwing him a wry grin. “You have to prove you’re more than a Coiny ripoff, right?” That just prompts a loud groan from Nickel, of course.

“Don’t remind me,” he grumbles in response. “I cannot believe I’m just a Coiny ripoff. He literally has arms! How is that fair?! I don’t have arms! Does your Nickel have arms?” He directs the question to Balloon and Clover.

Balloon sheepishly rubs at his cheek, smiling wryly. “Nope,” he responds. “Kinda made a whole alliance based on that fact back in Season Two.”

“-ake fan?!” suddenly calls a voice from somewhere, and Fanny startles, head snapping up as she frowns.

“Did you guys hear that?” she prompts.

“That sounded like Fan’s voice!” Clover responds with a gasp, her eyes wide.

“Fan, and not Fanny,” Nickel mumbles under his breath. “You guys really hate the letter y, don’t you?”

Balloon and Clover are the ones to take the lead, now, driven forward by familiarity and confidence. Nickel and Fanny are the ones to trail behind them now, although honestly she’s frustrated by that. She really doesn’t like having to fall behind and let others boss her around, although if nothing else Balloon and Clover don’t seem like the sorts to readily take initiative. The moment they falter, Fanny will be there to soldier ahead, or something like that.

The group makes their way to a towering wall, which reveals itself to be a screen once they move in close enough. Clustered around it is a brown suitcase, a box, and a bright red fan with yellow accents. The latter seems pretty distraught, staring at the ground as the former tries to comfort him.

As Fanny examines all of them from a distance, Balloon perks up and his eyes go wide as he runs forward, a wide smile on his face. “Suitcase!” he breathily calls as he comes to a stop in front of her.

Her eyes light up as she sees him, and she leans forward, easily falling into a hug. “Balloon!” she warmly replies. When the two disentangle from each other, Suitcase looks past him and scowls. “And Nickel,” she says sourly.

“What did I do?” he whines in response.

“Hang on,” Fan says, squinting. “I know I don’t know him very well, but that really doesn’t look like our Nickel.”

“You’re… right, actually,” Balloon says, squinting at him. “How could you tell?”

“What kind of number one fan would I be if I couldn’t tell apart our Nickel from some common coin?” Fan says brightly.

“Huh,” Suitcase says quietly, shifting warily from foot to foot as she stares at Nickel. He catches her glance and smiles widely, waving excitedly at her, and she shrinks back. “Yeah, that’s definitely not the Nickel I know. He wouldn’t smile at all, and definitely not as wide.”

“Debatable!” Clover replies in a sing-song. Balloon snorts into his hand.

After a moment, Suitcase startles and straightens, eyes going wide. “R-Right! I have to tell you, too! MePhone, he-!”

“-made all of us, yeah, he told us,” Balloon finishes, grimacing. He throws a sidelong glance over to the still-dejected Fan and quickly adds “All the people who were at the hotel, anyway. It’s… we’re still coming to terms with it. It doesn’t help that we ran into these two-” He gestures over to Fanny and Nickel, and she scowls while he beams and excitedly waves. “-who weren’t even involved with the show. They were clueless when they ended up here.”

“Surprise surprise, MePhone’s ruined a lot of people’s lives,” Suitcase grumbles, her expression bitter. Balloon startles, as if he wasn’t expecting that from her, but a moment later his gaze softens.

“So who are the two of you, then?” Fan chirps, leaning forward with an excited glint in his eye.

“Rejected ideas for contestants, supposedly,” Fanny brusquely retorts, rolling her eyes.

“I meant, uh, your names and stuff,” he replies, looking sheepishly.

“All we were made to be was to compete in a damn reality show we aren’t even in, why does who we are matter in the slightest?” she retorts.

“Wow, you’re really bothered by this, huh?” Nickel says brightly, as if he wasn’t just freaking out three minutes ago.

“Says the damn Coiny ripoff!” Fanny retorts, baring her teeth at him.

“Don’t threaten to bite me, that’s mean!” he cries with a pout.

“When did I ever threaten to bite you?”

“When you bared your teeth at me, all scary-like. Besides, you seem like the type of person to bite people,” Nickel says matter-of-factly, not elaborating on this point at all.

“What is that supposed to mean?!” she hisses, turning to him.

“Ack! Don’t bite me, I taste like metal!” he squeaks as he cowers behind Fan, eyes wide.

She rolls her eyes and turns her attention to look at Fan dead on. “I’m Fanny,” she grumbles. “And that’s Nickel. I guess it’ll get a bit confusing, since you guys apparently have another Nickel running around, but I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

Nickel, who apparently stopped being scared of the threat of her teeth after a moment of cowering, adds “Oh! Oh! Fanny said that we weren’t on your reality show, which is true! But we are on a reality show! It’s called Battle For Dream Island! Have you heard of it?”

“You bet I have!” Fan readily replies. “I’m not the number one fan for nothing, you know! It was just the first season, though. I had to put my watch through on the backburner after my life got super busy. From what I’ve heard, though, the show went totally off the rails. I mean, how can you battle for Dream Island again! It was stolen! And aliens as hosts? I’ve met aliens, and they aren’t numbers, they’re eggs! Honestly, of all the ridiculous-”

“Yeah, no, Four and X and Two-” And One, a voice whispers in the back of her mind “-are definitely aliens,” Fanny interjects, voice flat. “Trust me.”

“Yup, it’s not CGI or anything!” Nickel brightly adds. “We don’t really have the budget for that. They’re just your normal, run of the mill, absolutely deranged aliens with no concept of morality!”

Fanny sighs. It’s not like Nickel is wrong. But she thinks about the cold, calculating intelligence in One’s eye as she stared intensely at Fanny, waiting for Fanny to sign her contract with such matter-of-fact confidence that she thought there was no chance of saying no. And, well, she had ended up signing the damn thing, so it’s not like her confidence was misplaced. For as clueless as Four, X, and Two can be about how objects actually work, One is aware of it all with a confidence so assured it feels deadly. She supposes all she can do is wait and see if her paranoia is misplaced or not.

“Two isn’t that bad,” she points out instead of vocalizing what’s on her mind, because that would make for a hell of a non sequitur, huh? “They’re just kinda clueless. Gaty’s helping with that.”

“Gaty’s still in the game?” Nickel says, wrinkling his nose. “Huh. Didn’t think she’d make it that far.”

“Says the guy who was eliminated ages ago,” she snips in response. “Shouldn’t you have some idea of who has and hasn’t been eliminated? It’s not like you have much else to do.”

“You literally told me that the eliminated contestants have been going missing lately!” Nickel hisses in response, bristling with indignation. “I can’t know anything for sure, because it’s not like I have any clue what’s happening in the outside world!”

“Are you mad at me for not telling you this earlier?!” she cries, baffled. “I haven’t spoken to you in… ever before this! What did you expect from me?!”

“No! I’m mad that it’s happening at all!” Nickel retorts.

“Then we’re in agreement!” she retorts, before turning away from him. If she had arms, they would be crossed right now. “I hate not being able to do anything,” she mutters darkly as she glares at the white, featureless ground. “But what can I do other than continue competing? Not exactly the greatest situation for either of us.” She’s less worried about the missing contestants themselves and more about whatever One is planning, but it’s not like she can just outright say that.

From there, there’s a depressing, noticeable lull in the conversation as she and Nickel get lost in their own thoughts. She’s aware of several pairs of eyes trained on them, and she turns to glower harshly at all of them, taking satisfaction in the way they turn away from her in discomforted, skittering movements. She would rather be seen as some wild, unstable animal than someone to stare at, someone to pity. If she’s going to get stares, she wants them to be wide eyed and scared, not something nervous and sympathetic. If all she’ll get is pity, she won’t hesitate to go for the throat.

After a second or so of heavy silence, Fan turns to the wide screen casting a shadow on all of them, staring at it with a frown. “If this is MeLife, then…” he murmurs, before pointing a shaking hand to a green icon with a test tube in the center. Suddenly, a test tube appears in front of them in a flash of light, and his expression lights up in an instant, flying forward to tackle the disoriented object in a hug the moment she finishes forming. “Test Tube!” he yells, voice cracking on the second word.

It’s strange how different their recovery process is. She assumes this is the standard for them, anyway, minus the massive screen. For recovery centers, you can feel yourself reforming. She remembers the hand-powered recovery center used back in BFDIA, and how she was unlucky enough to have to have it used for her. It was a slow, painful thing, consciousness coming back to you slowly and bodily functions coming back to you even slower. At least the one used on TPOT was instant. And the recovery process on BFB… the less said about that the better.

But this seems to happen in a blink of an eye. And if their host had made them, it means that he has the power to bring them back, right? It’s like putting tape on a broken toy after you mistakenly break it. So it’s the instantaneous quality of TPOT’s recovery combined with the powerlessness of having to depend on an unreliable host to bring you back, as it was in BFB. Good tempered with bad, she supposes.

She watches as Fan and Test Tube hug each other, warm and distinctly familital. There’s a warm, caring quality about them, visible in the way Test Tube wraps her arms around Fan but doesn’t crush him, which would be easy to do with him being made of paper. Meanwhile, he clings to her with all the strength he can muster, which isn’t much because he’s really scrawny. They hug like they’ve done it a thousand times before, but hadn’t yet realized how easily it could have become the last. They hug like Fanny wishes she could hug Bubble, if it weren’t for her lack of arms and how easily Bubble pops without the aid of yoyleberries.

After the two get their bearings, they turn their attention back to the screen. “This is everyone connected to MeLife?” Test Tube says tentatively, as if she’s looking for something. “So they wouldn’t be…” Fan shoots her a glum look, looking like a kicked puppy. A moment later, the two press all of the buttons, prompting the rest of the still missing contestants to materialize into being.

Immediately, everyone runs forward to talk to others with a decidedly frantic air about them, which makes sense. Whether they were murdered by a rampaging phone or erased from existence, she’s sure none of them got the chance to say goodbye the way they would have liked. She just shifts in place a few times to prevent herself from being trampled.

“Oh thank god, I was getting tired of wandering aim-” begins a distinctly familiar voice with a decidedly different tone to it. That’s Nickel’s voice, undoubtedly, deep and growly, but where the Nickel she knows is bubbly and upbeat, this Nickel is flat and sarcastic, so dry and unimpressed by the world around him it’s palpable and she has to hold her breath to stop herself from choking on it. “Who is that?” he snaps, cutting himself off.

The Nickel she knows perks up as several pairs of eyes turn to him, and he excitedly waves at a nearby baseball. Judging by what she’s seen, she’s just going to guess that everyone here are the names of their objects, no y’s stuck onto the end of their names like she has. Baseball squints at him, eyes flitting back and forth between the two coins. “Yeah, I’m seeing double,” he announces dryly.

“We ran into him while we were wandering,” Balloon explains, and Nickel doesn’t seem to be confused as to who the “we” in that sentence is referring to. Are he, Balloon, and Clover some kind of package deal, then? “Obviously we were able to tell he wasn’t you straight away, but… well, he’s here.” Balloon shrugs helplessly, as if that’s enough to get his point across.

“I don’t even know where here is, Balloon,” he hisses in response. “I’ve been wandering for way too long just trying to orient myself after that MePhone came out of nowhere and- ugh.” He cuts himself off with a shudder, face pinched.

Balloon grimaces as he grabs the other Nickel and steers him away from the group, Clover drifting on their heels. The two begin a quiet, whispered conversation, and if his delivery of “oh you’re not a real person, actually,” is delivered in even remotely the same way as it was delivered to her, she wouldn’t be surprised to hear yelling in the next minute or so.

Not that she’ll complain about the news being broken to those not in the know, of course. Already, there’s plenty of conversation fragments happening. Orange Juice and Paper are tightly pressed to each other, cheeks flushed as they whisper to each other. Salt and Pepper argue with one another in a way distinctly reminiscent of Match and Pencil, and if they treat anyone here like those two treated others… she’s sure they’ll get on great is all.

At some point as she stares down at the ground, awkwardly kicking at it with her foot as she scowls darkly, she hears the other Nickel let out a loud cry of “What?!” and she finds herself wincing in sympathy. She doesn’t know him at all, and if the reactions of the others are anything to go by, he isn’t anything like the Nickel she has somewhat more familiarity with. But it’s disturbing news to learn, isn’t it? That you aren’t real at all? That your entire existence was at the whim of some phone you hadn’t even met?

Well, that was more on her side of things, but still. It’s a lot. She wouldn’t be surprised if someone was upset about learning the news. She would be surprised if someone wasn’t, to be honest.

Knowing that everything you are and will ever be is only present because of some words scrawled onto a paper in pen is disconcerting. It gives one a nice crutch to lean on, an easy excuse to summon at a moment’s notice. It’s not my fault I’m like this. It’s just how I was created.

Fanny is rather fond of that excuse, she finds. It allows her to be dismissive of things that would have otherwise heavily worn on her mind, an easy way out of any sort of self reflection. She knows it’s something she shouldn’t be so intent on clinging to, but how could she not be? Self betterment is… difficult, to say the least. Wouldn’t it be soothing to know that all of your flaws and deficits were baked into you upon being made? That every time you manage to overcome them, you achieve a Herculean feat?

(She knows she’s playing a dangerous game when it comes to One. Allowing her to operate in the background and never say a word about it is certainly one of the worst ideas she’s had. Her excuse is that she won’t say anything about One until she does something, but she already has, hasn’t she? There aren’t four missing contestants for no reason. There’s still a contract bearing her signature, a debt that One is obviously hungry to pay.

But she thinks of her wide, shiny eyes, staring down at Fanny with a look so intimidating and predatory that she feels terrified by even the memory. One knew all too well what she was doing, an eerie sort of competence that distinctly set her apart from the other Algebrailians. It was horribly unnerving. She wonders if she wants to see the eyes again and feel trapped by them or avoid them at all costs.

It’s probably bad that the answer to that idle ponder is both. It’s probably bad that she’s way too far gone. She wants to be scared by it. Instead, she’s just… She just wants…

She just wants to see Bubble again, she supposes.)

Suitcase is quick to rally everyone when the surrounding conversations reach a lull, a sharp determination set ablaze in her eyes. She explains her plan for escape sharply and succinctly, and even if there are plenty of questions left hovering in the air, intense and pertinent and leaving plenty of what ifs in their wake, Fanny is down immediately. It’s an actual, tangible plan, and even if it doesn’t get them out of here, what do they have to lose? They’re already dead.

As Suitcase talks, she turns to Nickel, nudging him softly. “So?” she prompts. “Have you decided what you want to do?”

“I’ve decided that I haven’t heard any better ideas!” Nickel says brightly. “Besides, I can’t stay here! I have plenty of things I have to do! My odds are pretty good if TPOT ever has a rejoin-” Fanny, for one, sincerely doubts that, but she decides she won’t say that. “-and so long as I’m not stuck on a team with Pillow again I know I’ll thrive. Besides…” He sobers up, staring at the ground. “Who else is going to look for Bomby, right? I’m one of his closest friends. I have to look out for him.” He looks up, his eyes blazing with determination. “So that’s my decision! Pretty cool, huh?”

“You don’t need validation from me, you know,” she says bluntly, rolling her eyes, and he sheepishly sticks out his tongue in response. “But I do agree with you. I don’t want to spend the rest of eternity in this void, at any rate. What’s a reward without a little risk, right?” She shrugs, looking away from him. Nickel’s reasons for his decision are pretty selfish, but then again, so are hers. She can’t bear to never be able to see the people she cares about again, knowing the possibility of reunion was just a few steps away.

“Right,” he agrees, shooting her a conspiratorial grin. She just nudges him in response, letting out a huff as she does so. She can’t believe she feels an odd sort of camaraderie with Nickel, of all people, even as she finds him completely unbearable. It’s a strange dichotomy that she’s awfully amused by.

As Fan and Test Tube grab a shining orb suspended in midair, claiming it to be the thing that allows MePhone to make things to begin with, Cherry (or would it be Cherries? There are two of them) press the call button on the MeLife screen before any of them can say otherwise, and much to Fanny’s surprise, MePhone actually picks up. He looks… like a phone. What else is there to say, really? His background is a blue gradient, and… yeah, she’s got nothing. This is her creator, huh? She doesn’t know if she should thank him or bite him.

“You’re alive?” he cries, voice cracking with overwhelming relief. “You’re all-?!”

“Yeah, hi, I’m part of this conversation now,” the other Nickel interjects, shouldering his way past Suitcase and the other objects as he scowls. “Hey, asshole, why the fuck did I have to run into a scrapped version of me in this place, huh? He has the same appearance and voice and name as me and everything! What the hell is the deal with that?”

MePhone’s face goes pale (well, pale for a phone’s) and decidedly guilty, as if he’s fully aware of what the other Nickel is talking about and feels horribly guilty about it. Her Nickel perks up and jumps up a few times. “Hiya!” he says brightly, climbing up on Baseball much like he had done to Tennis Ball back home.

“Jesus, we’re doing this now?” Fanny grumbles. “And get off of him, Nickel, you can’t treat him as if he’s TB! TB doesn’t even like you!” Nickel pouts as he hops off the ball, grumbling under his breath, and Baseball offers him an apologetic smile. She gets the sense that he’s close with the other Nickel, and thus has a soft spot for this one. Probably not an advisable strategy, but she decides not to object to it for the time being.

“I-I didn’t- I thought I didn’t- Um,” MePhone stammers, looking lost.

Fanny just rolls her eyes. “You thought because you scrapped us we wouldn’t be here?” she mutters, but it’s so quiet that her voice carries through the crowd regardless. “Maybe you should get a better handle on your subconscious, then.”

From there, Fan and Test Tube push their way to the front, and she contents herself with skulking in the background, just visible enough for MePhone’s eyes to be drawn to her every so often and go all funny as his face scrunches up in guilt. Maybe it’s vindictive of her to feel a thrill every time MePhone’s guilt makes itself known, but why does it matter? For all of the flaws they have built into them, at least the other contestants can content themselves with knowing that they got to fulfill the purpose they were made for.

But she was just… cut loose, sent out into the world to figure out her own purpose. If she focuses, she thinks she can remember an audition of sorts, one that came before her BFDI audition, and the flat, unimpressed face of the man in the chair as he pressed a ballpoint pen against his temple. She remembered feeling crushed when she never got a call. She felt like she had to compete somewhere, she just didn’t know how.

At least she had made her way to BFDI eventually, even if participating meant she had to remain cramped in the LOL for years on end, boredly waiting for her time to finally come. Being there for so long hadn’t bothered her, because she didn’t have anything to go back to. At least now she knows why.

With a loud roar of “They’re still alive?!” and MePhone’s panicked “Hurry!” the call comes to an end. Fanny scowls at the screen. She can’t even begin to imagine what’s going on in the real world. With a sting of pain, she thinks of her teammates. Just how much time has passed out there? Hours? Days? If only Clock was her for her to keep track. The sooner she can get back to them, the happier she’ll be, not that she’ll ever admit that outright.

Eventually, everyone makes their decision. Not a single person decides they want to stay behind, and even better, everyone seems confident in their goal. She hates indecisive people, and even if most people seem a bit anxious as they line up behind the starting line, no one seems like they’re tempted to change their mind. She just lets out a breath, closing her eyes for a moment as she tries to focus.

Suitcase said that they would see things as they ran. Things to distract and hinder, to get them to hesitate for just long enough for the line to lick at their feet and cause their death. Is it death if they’re already dead? What would come after? Suitcase said something about Bow and Dough coming back as ghosts, but the names mean nothing to her and she thinks being a ghost will come with its own set of problems. She kind of likes being tangible and real, actually. Well, as real as she can be, considering- ugh, never mind.

Fanny turns to Nickel, letting out a sigh as she does so. She knows there isn’t much point in bothering with this, really, but she still finds herself opening her mouth and saying “You worried?”

“About what?” he replies, so wide eyed and innocent it immediately grates on her.

“About all of this,” she hisses in response. “What do you think you’ll see as you run? Do you think it’ll wear on you enough to slow you down?”

Nickel is quiet for so long that she begins to wonder if he had even heard her amidst the murmur of conversation between those who are lined up, and just as she begins to grumble about how much she hates repeating herself, he says “Nothing I haven’t come to terms with.”

And that? That catches her off guard. She’s always known Nickel as relentlessly upbeat and bubbly, random and switching moods at the drop of a hat. Upbeat and generally clueless. Even if there were things that bothered him, she didn’t think that he would ever be fully conscious of them, much less admit to the fact outright. 

“Then you’ll have a much easier time than I will,” she says gruffly. When she gains the courage to look back at him, she’s surprised to see that he's beaming.

“You can do it, Fanny!” he says brightly. “It doesn’t matter what you might see, you’ll overcome it anyway! You always struck me as the sort of person who doesn’t give up, no matter what’s thrown at her! No matter what you see, you’ll be fine!” His grin is so wide it threatens to split his face in two, and Fanny just rolls her eyes, part of her relishing in the fondness the motion makes her feel.

“I hate empty praise,” she grumbles. “But I guess that…” Nickel leans forward, eyes glinting with barely restrained eagerness. “...wasn’t the worst,” she concludes, still eying him, and he cheers, jumping up and down in excitement. Even a backhanded compliment can excite him. Suddenly, that fact feels less bemusing and instead just makes her heart ache.

That’s the last thing she gets to say. Suddenly, there’s a countdown, uneven as voices carry and are muffled down the line, and they all begin to run.

There’s no air here, she thinks, and if there is it’s so sterile it tastes awful in her throat as she gasps with exertion. But the motion of running forward frantically is enough for her fan to whirl to life, and at her side she hears Nickel’s delighted laugh. She would shove him over if it didn’t condemn him to death.

As she runs, visions begin to dance in front of her eyes, fleeting and ephemeral but real in the way they stab at her chest. She sees Bubble, deflating glumly whenever she’s around Match, and the way Fanny’s barked barbs were never good enough to fully lift her back up again. She sees One, sitting in that damn armchair so expectantly, contract hovering in front of her as she hungrily awaits Fanny’s inevitable response. In that vision, she looks far more like some alien monster eagerly stalking their prey than she ever actually did in reality, and she’s so daunted by the rush of emotion she feels that she finds herself skidding to a stop before she can think twice about it.

The stop seems to invite the visions to intensify all the more. Her teammates, former and current, eliminated and still participating in the game, all turning their backs upon her. The time she spent alone, wandering the streets of cities and sleeping on streets, wondering why she always felt so hollow. That had never bothered her before, and yet here it is, rushing back to her. Is it because of the knowledge that she isn’t real? That she has yet to fulfill the one thing she was made for?

Maybe it’s always been fake, everything around her immediately losing what real, tangible quality it had the moment the truth of her existence was revealed to her. Maybe her relationships, her friendship, even her thoughts, are just sand in the wind, slipping through her metaphorical hands and evading her.

Suddenly, she finds that the act of breathing is a Herculean task. Suddenly, she finds that she feels sick. Suddenly, she finds that the idea of standing still and letting that red line engulf her is the only thing she could ever want in the world.

She’s jolted forward by a rough shove from behind her. Disoriented, she looks over her shoulder only to lock eyes with Nickel. “Start running again!” he cries. “I wanna see your fan spin again!” Whether he means it or not, Fanny can decipher the hidden meaning beneath his words perfectly. Don’t give up.

Fanny lets out a breath through her mouth, wishing this place was cold enough to be able to see it pierce the air, and keeps going.

The visions don’t stop. If anything, they grow more intense. But she forces them to wash over her like the ocean’s waves, whether that’s remotely feasible or not. If they can pass her by without much fault, she can convince herself that she’s above all of it. That it means nothing to her.

Bubble is painfully, palpably far away from her, so unreachable that even the idea of seeing her again feels impossible. Even if she makes it to the end of the damn line and bursts back to life in reality, Bubble will remain as distant as ever. Is there ever a world where Fanny returns to her side and the two fall back into easy conversation, Bubble finally voicing all of the bitterness she was so used to swallowing with Freesmart? Is there ever a world where the two can just be together, no shows or teams or asterisks or anything?

She has to. She wants to. She supposes all she can do is see what the future has in store.

For now, she forces herself to run, and from behind her she hears Nickel crow in delight at her spinning fan as he tries in earnest to keep up. She reaches the finish line in a blink of an eye, and yet she feels each second of the eternity she’s spent running as it intensely grates on her. She skids to a stop before crossing it, though, panting and wild eyed as she turns around.

She doesn’t take her eyes off of Nickel, and she doesn’t cross the finish line until he does. She barely knows him enough to feel any level of care for him, even if the fact that they’re automatically separated from the rest of the people here leads to a sort of easy camaraderie. Even if she didn’t care for him at all, she knows there are others who will grieve if he doesn’t make it back from this adventure, she’ll say, in one piece, and she can’t do that to them. She can’t bear to be the one at fault for it. At the moment, she’s responsible for Nickel, so she’ll watch out for him. In that sense, things are pretty clear cut.

The moment Nickel disappears over the finish line, dissolving in an explosion of white light, she mimics the motion, stepping backward as her breathing goes shaky. Her vision goes completely white as she feels herself unravel once more, and she hopes that wherever this line leads, it eventually sends her back to where she needs to go.

Back to her team, her family. Back to Bubble. Back to the looming threat of One hanging over her like an ominous shadow. Back to all of it, good or bad.

Fanny grits her teeth as she steps back and vows that this won’t be an ending, but rather a beginning.