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“It’s this way, TB! Come on!”
Tennis Ball ran after Golf Ball through the frost-covered prairie grass, his fuzz and feathers fluffed up against the cold. He’d thankfully molted enough by now that the itching had mostly subsided, and his winter plumage provided better insulation from cold temperatures, something he was very grateful for as the forecasts were calling for snow.
“Golf Ball, slow down…whew, whatever you found must be really interesting if you’re in this much of a hurry.” He panted, staggering over to her where she stood at the base of a hill. “So, uh, where’s the thing you wanted to show me?”
She pointed at the hill. “Right here.”
“…Uh…Golfie…are you feeling okay today?” Tennis Ball asked, confused. “That’s just a regular hill, isn’t it?”
“That was my assumption until the soil samples I took recently came back with abnormally high traces of Yoyle-Metal!” Golf Ball said, and she turned and began to scratch at the side of the hill until the glimmer of metal peeked out from beneath centuries worth of dirt and plant growth.
“That’s…interesting. What is it?”
“It’s a war mech from the Great Yoyle War.” Golf Ball said confidently. “And if my hunch is correct, it’s a Yoylese Praetor model from late in the war. I haven’t seen one of them since I was seven years old! My father was the one who designed them!”
“Do you think it’s still in one piece?”
“Only one way to find out. Now get digging, the rest of the mech is still underground.”
Tennis Ball could swear he heard Fries shout “That’s my line!” from off in the distance.
Digging by hand- or by talon in their cases- was a slow, laborious process and not one that made much progress. After three hours, the two had only managed to uncover four square feet of the approximately 100-foot-long mech, and they were both absolutely exhausted.
“Golf Ball…huff…I think…I think we should take a break…I’m worn out…and freezing…”
“W-w-we can’t s-s-stop now!” Golf Ball said, clearly shivering. Tennis Ball sighed and picked her up by the scruff, carrying her back to the hotel despite her protests.
“We can get ahold of some proper digging equipment later. I don’t want you to get sick again.” He said, as Golf Ball sat sulking (and still shivering) on their shared bed. “Besides, it’s freezing outside right now.”
“But TB, what if someone damages it?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to it, Golf Ball. It’s been there for, what, 600 years and it hasn’t been destroyed yet…not to jinx it or anything, mind you.”
“Jinxes aren’t real, TB.” Golf Ball said. “But…I guess you have a point…it is horribly cold out there right now.”
The two ended up ordering some hot chocolate from room service.
“Why do you like adding whipped cream AND marshmallows to your hot cocoa?” GB asked, looking at the mound of whipped cream sitting atop Tennis Ball’s cup of cocoa. “It seems…kind of excessive.”
“Eh, well…it’s…kind of a habit I developed years ago.” TB admitted. “Growing up my mother used to make me and my siblings drink this…uh…stuff. It looked similar to hot cocoa, but it was…basically ground up bones and tendons and other inedible things mixed together with animal blood and probably some herbs or whatever. It was supposed to make us stronger but it just…eugh, it tasted awful and it smelled even worse.” He shuddered. “Aaand now because of that, I find hot chocolate hard to look at. I like the taste but the sight of it makes me nauseous so I just…either shove it in a thermos or bury it in marshmallows or something.”
Golf Ball shuffled closer to him on the bed and pressed herself into his side for warmth. “So, what was your family like, anyway?”
Tennis Ball cringed a little at the thought of the family he had left behind in Farnorth. His two brothers, his parents, and his extremely unsettling paternal grandfather.
“Well, they were…not pleasant. My brothers Wilson and Artengo aren’t that bad…or at least they weren’t last time I saw them…minus the time Artengo tried to eat my face one winter but I ended up kicking his butt…my mother Racquetball was nice enough by Farnorthern standards…but never really affectionate either. Unless I did something she thought was impressive, which…didn’t happen very often. My father Softball had a…very deceptive name. He’s anything but soft.”
“And then there’s my grandpa, Curveball….he’s…”
Tennis Ball trailed off momentarily.
“Really scary.”
He shuddered.
“He’s what’s called a “Moon-Scorched” back in Farnorth. One of those people who supposedly stared at the Full Moon for too long back when it was still in the sky and was driven crazy by it or whatever. My parents didn’t like letting us around him much because they were convinced he’d sacrifice us to the Moon-Watcher or something. He was always going on and on about nonsense and unfathomable knowledge and arcane secrets and…math, for some reason.”
“Curveball is an odd name for a tennis ball…” Golf Ball commented.
“He’s a baseball, actually. So was my poor uncle Foul Ball….”
Golf Ball stirred her cup of cocoa with the drinking straw it came with, looking down at its dark depths. “I’d never even had this stuff until after Microscope and Petri Dish took me in…rations during the Great Yoyle War meant a lot of foods weren’t available.” She commented.
“…Do you…ever get angry at your father for the whole cryo-sleep thing?” Tennis Ball asked her.
“I used to…back when I was a kid. It felt like he’d abandoned me. But then I got older and I realized…I probably wouldn’t have even made it to adulthood if he hadn’t done that.” She shrugged. “It still hurts, everything that happened. Especially knowing that…everything I knew as a little kid is basically gone. And I mean…everyone goes through that to some extent but…not to that much of an extent. Heck, I’m probably the only person in this entire building who knows how to read Yoylese, and that’s because it’s the alphabet I was taught how to read and write in.”
“…Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened if the whole Great Yoyle War never started?”
“Well, for one thing, we wouldn’t have met because I’d have died of old age centuries ago.” Golf Ball pointed out. “Would I trade knowing you for the war never happening? Eh…honestly, probably not. Call it selfish, but I’m too attached to the life I have to give it up for some alternate history or whatever.”
A day later, the two of them had managed to acquire enough digging equipment to properly unearth the massive mech. Slowly but surely, over the course of a single day, the ancient mechanical marvel was freed from its tomb. It was a Praetor, all right. The sleek, lithe and agile structure of the mech gave it a silhouette reminiscent of a theropod, with a long, powerful tail for a counterweight, intimidatingly sharp-looking but primarily aesthetic jaws that encircled a powerful laser, a false cockpit set upon the head (the real cockpit was located in the heavily armored chest region of the mech), and all manner of sharp and pointy bits here and there.
“Wow…so that’s a real war mech…” Tennis Ball said. He was standing beside the right foot of the massive machine, and he estimated it stood at least as tall as a fully-grown Davidian, perhaps even taller.
Golf Ball was already poking around the chest region of the mech, and eventually after a while of searching she located a hidden door. “Look! I found the cockpit entrance!” She peered inside the controls as a cloud of centuries-old dust was kicked up from the door being opened. The cockpit was in good condition, minus one rather ghastly detail: the long-dead remains of a Yoylese soldier, a hairbrush specifically, still strapped into the pilot’s seat. Their limbs were mummified, only remaining attached to the body by a thin layer of papery skin and desiccated, crumbling tendons and flesh. Their eyes had long since disintegrated, but their mouth remained visible, hanging open in a permanent grimace with the dehydrated state of their gums making their teeth look unnaturally long.
“Ouch.” Golf Ball winced.
“What? Did you hurt yourself?” Tennis Ball called, running over.
“No, I’m fine. Just…uh, well…found the mech pilot.” She moved out of the way and let Tennis Ball have a look. He took one look at the body and stumbled back, scrambling away and then walking off a short distance to vomit.
“Gross!” TB gagged. “Eugh…”
“TB, we’ve both seen multiple dead bodies before.”
“Yeah, but never like…THAT…” He shuddered.
“…I wonder if they can be recovered somehow.” Golf Ball pondered. Tennis Ball looked at her incredulously. “Golfie, uh….you sure that’s a good idea? What if they turned into a zombie instead? Or something else horrible happened? Can a body that old even be recovered?”
“Only one way to find out!” Golf Ball announced. Tennis Ball cringed. This is a bad idea…he thought.
Getting the body out of the cockpit was a delicate and frightful affair, especially when the left arm broke off and poor Tennis Ball had to vomit again. Eventually, though, he and Golf Ball managed to move the corpse of the long-dead hairbrush out of the mech and onto the snow-covered ground beside it.
Tennis Ball immediately volunteered to go get Four, not wanting to be near the musty old cadaver for much longer and knowing that Golf Ball had a much stronger constitution when it came to such morbid things. Dissecting animals was one thing, but other objects…especially if they still had arms and legs…eugh…
Four (who was not particularly enthusiastic about being dragged into this, only showing interest when TB pointed out that Two probably wasn’t powerful enough to pull this off) looked disinterestedly down at the corpse in front of them, his eyes narrowed in disgust. “Did you dig up a gravesite or something?”
“No, we pulled them out of this mech.” Golf Ball said. “Can you recover them?”
Four poked the hairbrush in the side with a claw. “This is a tall order, even for me. How long has this person been dead for?”
“At least 600 years.”
Four gave Golf Ball an incredulous look. “Eh, forget it then. Even I can’t recover someone who’s been dead that long. Let them rest in peace, and burn or bury them before you end up causing another zombie outbreak or something.” He turned and walked back to the hotel.
Golf Ball sighed. “So much for that…” She muttered. Tennis Ball looked at her, noticing her rather sad expression. “I was kind of hoping they’d be recoverable…then I…you know…wouldn’t be the last citizen of Old Yoyleland anymore…”
“…Not…not that it’s really all that important.” She added quickly.
Tennis Ball sighed and walked over to her. “Hey, look, it’s okay to be…homesick? Time-sick? I dunno what the word for it would be but…it’s okay for you to feel that way. Sometimes I even miss things from Farnorth.”
“Now, come on, let’s get this poor hairbrush a proper burial.”
“Actually, they should be cremated according to Yoylese funerary tradition. Go get Firey, we’ll need a live fire for this.”
Golf Ball had only witnessed a Yoylese funeral once growing up, when an elderly inhabitant of the bunker had died, but she had committed it to memory like she had done with so many other things. A funerary pyre was constructed of dry sticks and twigs, and other highly flammable materials, and then a fire-object of one kind or another would be sought out to light the pyre once the body of the deceased was placed upon it.
The sun sank below the horizon as the flames climbed higher into the winter air, the fire steadily consuming the body until all that remained was charred fragments of bone and bits of melted plastic.
“Where do you think they went?” TB asked her, and it took Golf Ball a moment to realize he was referring to the hairbrush, or rather their soul. Golf Ball herself was not much of a believer in the afterlife, considering that the only memories she had of the times between her own recoveries were…fragmented and unpleasant visions of some kind of horrible, distorted underworld, but she did recall the old Yoylese legends she’d heard back in the bunker during her youth.
They told of a place called the Underworld, which was not so much the true afterlife but rather a trial through which the souls of the deceased had to navigate in order to reach one of two places: The Sun-Space, which was where most souls went after journeying through the Underworld, and The Cold-Space, where only the souls of the most utterly, irredeemably wicked objects went.
“They’ve probably found their way to the Sun-Space by now.” She said after a moment of thought.
Most Goikian belief systems followed a similar school of thought in regards to the afterlife. The general consensus seemed to be that upon death, an object’s soul first went to a place that served as some kind of test or purgatory. The ancient Yoylese had called it the Underworld, Farnorthern folk religions (the current Gensec had banned open belief in any form of the supernatural, deeming it a sign of weakness) had varying names for it (the one Tennis Ball had heard the most growing up was the Korppi-Havgen, or Place of Ravens, thanks to some odd legend about the souls in said place being menaced by giant ravens on their journeys through the realm.
Research into such things had basically become nonexistent upon the introduction of recovery centers. Death itself became nothing of much severity, at least for anyone fortunate enough to have access to a Recovery Center.
The newcomers, the former Inanimate Insanity contestants and their host and co-hosts, regarded death with much more gravity. They had experienced a seemingly more permanent form of it not too long ago, after all.
Presently, MePhone4 found that memories of that dreadful massacre were haunting his dreams tonight. He thrashed around in bed, a horrible dream weaving its way through his digital mind.
He was in the hotel- Two’s hotel- and yet, in defiance of all logic, everyone had been rendered inanimate. Everywhere he turned, he found bodies. Even MePad and 3GS were not spared.
Terror and nausea took hold of him as he fell to his knees, hearing a frightening low honk as heavy footsteps shook the floor beneath him. MePhone looked up at the figure approaching him, its dark and expressionless screen marked only with a yellow-and-green X as it reached out its terrible, sparking claws towards him…
The MePhoneX was then struck by a spear of light which impaled its screen and sent it falling backwards. “Begone, foul nightmare!” A reverberating, and by this point familiar, voice boomed from behind MePhone. He turned around as the scenery of the nightmare began to dissolve into a blur, and was met with the now all-too-familiar spirit of the deceased Prime Shimmer.
“Thanks…” the phone said wearily. “I…haven’t had one this bad in a while…” he admitted. He walked over to the spirit and leaned against them with a sigh. “I just…I dunno, I feel weird lately. Like something bad is about to happen. It’s probably just my nerves or something, though…”
The Prime looked at him with worry. “I am afraid that there is a legitimate threat on the horizon, MePhone. The individual who killed me seeks to take your power for themself.”
MePhone froze. “What?”
“They appear as a blue number one, and lure in unsuspecting prey with deals or attack those who cannot adequately fend them off when nobody else is around.” The Prime said grimly. “Please, for your own safety, stay nearby at least two others at all times. It does not matter who you are with, but you will not be safe alone.”
“I should tell Two about this…” MePhone said. “That…sounds like a member of their species.”
“I believe they are a member of your green friend’s kind. Although I have reason to suspect that Two is already aware of their presence.”
“Two knows?”
“To an extent, they seem aware. But they may not be the best defense against this marauder…rather, more likely, that label would go to Four.”
“…That actually makes a lot of sense…Four is…kind of terrifying, honestly.” MePhone said. “So…one of those…number people killed you for…for your power? And they’re working with Cobs for some reason?”
“I believe they may have tricked him into signing away his own autonomy to them. He does not seem to have realized this, though.”
“…Is it bad if I find that cathartic?”
“Quite frankly, no. After he spent so long treating you like a tool, it is only fitting that he get a taste of his own medicine.”
Four paced the halls of the EXIT, hearing their own clawsteps echoing off the extradimensional structure within his head. He did not come here much anymore, now that the EXITors were gone. But, it was time once again for him to pay a visit to the only voluntary resident of the EXIT.
They slowed to a halt in front of a darkened room, one that appeared at first glance to be a jail cell. Four, however, knew better. This cell was not meant to keep its inhabitant trapped. Rather, said inhabitant had asked for the bars to be there, for their own protection.
Four tapped on one of the bars and peered into the darkness. “Three, I know you’re in there.” He said. “Are you doing one of your meditative things again or are you in the mood to talk?”
A pair of eyes looked back at Four from the depths of the cell. “You better not be asking me to leave…it’s not safe out there, especially now that she’s free.”
“You could have at least told Two so they’d quit asking me where you went.”
“It’s better if they think I’m dead or cut contact with them. They don’t need to get involved.”
“News flash, Three, but your best friend is already involved.”