Chapter Text
"Yeah, I know! She was so surprised!"
I try to remember what I had said back then, all those years ago. Before everything went wrong. Before I sat on the rooftop of Two's hotel, listening to somebody tell me that I could go back and change everything. Before I listened to them, and was sent back in time. Before... I lost everything.
"Uh... Really?" I reply, trying to sound surprised.
"Oh, for sure!" Match says. "It wasn't very big—just a little bug—but Flower went crazy!"
Flower. I don't think I've seen her since BFB. I wonder how she's doing now?
"Wow, Flower must be really scared of bugs!" I say, stifling back laughter.
“OMG, Pence-Pence! Do you see that?” Match asks.
“See what?” I ask, pretending not to know.
“The sky…” Match points up. “There’s, like, a big crack in it.”
Even in the past, One will never escape me.
“Huh,” I reply. “That’s… strange.”
“Do you know what that means?” She tells me. “We’re gonna die!”
“How?”
“The world’s probably ending!” Match exclaims. She’s not entirely wrong. “Like, um, the sky might fall!”
“Match, this isn’t Chicken Little,” I scold. “We’ll be fine.”
I stare at the device, contemplating. Have things already gone wrong? Should I restart? How would things go differently if I did? My mind is whirling with thoughts, making be barely paying attention to what Match’s saying.
“Maybe the, like, others will know,” she suggests. “Let’s go ask them!”
Match takes my hand, running to where the other objects are, and I follow. I take the device with me, just in case. I stare at it again. It’s a blue box, with a small screen, two yellow star buttons on it—which I assume are to go back and forward in time—antennae, and a sticky note attached to the bottom, saying, If things go wrong -Your friend One ;D in loopy cursive handwriting.
“What’s that?” Match asks, pointing to the device in my hand. She reads the note left on it. “Who’s One?”
Restarting seems very tempting right now. Match can’t know. She can’t know about One, and the device, and how I went back in time to fix my mistakes, so me and my friends could be together again. Should I even continue?
“Nothing important,” I lie. “One’s… um, my friend.”
“Can I meet them?”
“No. They live really far away.”
I press one of the star buttons on the device. I go back in time to when our conversation first started, different colors and what had just happened swirling around my vision. It only takes a few moments, much shorter than when I had first gone back in time, before I’m back to where we started.
Match repeats what first started our conversation. I purposely position myself to block the crack in the sky from Match’s vision, but that might be impossible. The device is behind me, too, so she can’t see that.
The conversation goes the same way it did when I first went back. However, this time she doesn’t mention the crack in the sky or anything like that. Maybe things will be normal this time. Maybe I won’t have to reset again. Right?
Maybe things will… finally be good with Freesmart and I this time.
Match and I talk about Flower being scared of bugs, and how she thinks she’s so fabulous. I know I need to act like my old self, but I don’t even remember who I was before I was trapped in the EXIT. Maybe that’s a good thing, though, because it means I won’t make the same mistakes again. After all, that’s why I’m here.
I can see the crack in the sky slowly get bigger, inch by inch, every moment I’m in this timeline. I try to act like it doesn’t exist. I wonder if Match will notice this time. And if she does, will I have to reset again?
Whatever. If something goes wrong, I can always fix it.
Anyway, the Announcer thing introduces to us our first challenge, and the prize we’ll win. I’ve already done this before, obviously, so I know what to do. Once we get onto the balance beam, I start pushing people off of it, hoping it’ll make me win (old habits die hard). Ice Cube, Match, Bubble, and I form an alliance. Everything goes the way it’s supposed to, at least for now.
For the first time in a long time, I feel happiness. Joy. I’ve missed it. All I’ve focused on before I went back was winning, winning, winning. Right now, winning doesn’t matter that much. The worst that’ll happen is if you’re stuck in the TLC, but I’d rather have that than be stuck in the EXIT for six years. I won’t have to worry about Four and losing my friends and being eliminated again to deal with the EXIT all over again. Now, the worst I’ll have to go through is being trapped in a gray box with the others. It’s a fair trade.
Maybe this One creature isn’t so bad. Maybe they’re not like all the other algebraliens, who have caused me nothing but pain and suffering, especially that Four.
Maybe they can help me.