The next few minutes were certainly interesting.

As most of the alive contestants/Exitors who hadn't attended the party followed Black Hole and Cake to the ruined mansion, the late night air was filled with a flurry of stories being exchanged and powers being shown off. Ruby could be seen running circles around various groups of people and then zooming away to annoy others. Bottle was lifting several objects at once to test her newfound super strength. Even Match and Pencil - neither of which was very popular among most of the contestants - were gathering a crowd by showing off Pencil and having her erase bits and pieces of the ground.

The last one out of the mansion was Balloony, who was carrying an unconscious Lightning. Because his rubber body didn't conduct electricity, he was immune to Lightning's zapz.

"Woah." Cloudy floated over to them. "What happened to him?"

"I don't know," Balloony admitted. He set Lightning down on the ground. "I didn't even realize he was at the party!"

Tennis Ball overheard and walked over. "I can take him over to Golf Ball's underground factory to make sure he's ok."

Cloudy was confused. "What good would you be able to do to him in a factory?"

"Well, it's sort of a factory-laboratory mixture."

"Oh."

Tennis Ball grabbed one of Lightning's arms and gingerly lifted him into the air, but then got bowled over by Ruby. She sped past Balloony and Cloudy and almost knocked over Coiny. "Hey, watch it!" he complained.

"Sorryyyyyyyyyyy!" Her voice faded away.

Coiny just shook his head and completed his path over to Needle. "Needle! Thank goodness you're alright. Where's Pin?"

"Right here!" Pin's voice piped up.

Coiny whirled around, but he couldn't see her. "Ok, nice impression, Needy. But seriously, where is she?"

The slap echoed around the field. "DON'T call me NEEDY! And Pin IS here! She's just invisible!"

Pin briefly flickered into existence, startling Coiny, then disappeared again. "I've been trying to turn visible for a while now, but it's never permanent." She sighed.

Coiny felt around until he poked his finger on Pin's point, then rested his hand on her head. "Hey, I'm sure you'll get it! You just need to keep trying."

"Thanks."

Coiny suddenly felt nauseous. With all the running around looking for Pin a moment ago, he'd forgotten that he had got tipsy on Yoyleberry juice earlier. "Uh oh..." With almost no time to react, he barfed all over Pin, neatly outlining her.

"Uhggg!" Needle complained. "Coiny!"

Coiny wiped his mouth. "Oh gosh, I'm so sorry!"

Pin just spat and sighed again. "It's fine. I suppose I deserved that for barfing on Woody in season 1."

Meanwhile, Golf Ball observed everything from a distance, trying to pick order from the chaos. But there was simply too much chaos. So she decided to extend her legs and tower over all the others. "EVERYONE, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION!" she shouted.

They all stopped talking and turned towards her. Several people gaped at her unnaturally long legs. Huh, she thought. That doesn't usually work.

"Tonight has been... eventful, to say the least." She heard mutters of agreement. "I'm sure you are all extremely confused right now, because I am as well. But I'm going to try to figure out what exactly happened here. So for a moment, would all the objects who were in the mansion when it collapsed please form a separate group from the objects who weren't?"

They complied and began to shuffle around. Golf Ball waited until two groups had formed before shrinking her legs, pulling out a notepad, and quickly scribbling down the names of the party attendees. "Alright," she said after a moment, stashing the notebook away. "Thank you for your time. At some point during this week, I will be calling you all down into my factory one by one to examine you and determine if anything about your body structure has changed, and if it has, what has changed."

A voice spoke up from the crowd. "What if we don't want to be examined?" Blocky.

Tennis Ball set Lightning on the ground and stepped forward. "I'm sure you've all noticed, but several people have suddenly gained strange new... powers. It's quite possible that everyone who was inside the mansion when that enormous energy sphere surrounded us now has a unique ability." He glanced at the red cube peeking out from the group. "That would include you, Blocky."

Excited murmurs rose from the gathering of objects as they began to imagine what abilities they could possibly have. Well, besides the ones who already knew what they could do.

"Again, thank you all for your time," Golf Ball said loudly. "Good night!" She gestured to Tennis Ball and walked off in the direction of her underground factory. TB picked Lightning up by his arms again and followed her.

--------------------

Book watched them go, then detached herself from the rest of the group. Finding a nice burnt tree away from the hubbub of the other objects, she sat down beside it, opened herself up, pulled out a pencil (an inanimate one), and began to write her latest entry. Because of course, in addition to being an HPHPRCC manual, a dictionary, and a BFDI guidebook (among other things), she was also a journal. She usually wrote her entries earlier in the night, but the party had prevented her from doing so that night.

"Dear me," Book mumbled to herself as she wrote. "Today has been extremely hectic. It all started when Four returned the eliminated contestants..." She continued to write and talk for a minute, explaining Four's note in detail.

Then she reached the part where the mansion appeared from thin air. "After Taco read the part about the mansion, it appeared and dropped down on top of Gaty, crushing her-"

Gaty popped into existence next to Book, startling her. "Aah!!" She dropped her pencil and quickly shut her cover, hiding her newest entry.

"Oh. Hello, Book," Gaty said unpleasantly. She looked around. "Where's Four? And what's that random mansion doing here? Is this part of a challenge?"

Book calmed her breathing and stood up. "I... uh, I think I just recovered you."

"Huh??"

Book thought for a moment. She grabbed the pencil, opened herself up again, and quickly jotted down Bubble's name. In a flash, Bubble was suddenly standing next to Gaty.

"Hoo, boy." Book closed herself once more, then looked over at the mansion in the distance. "You guys have missed a lot."

--------------------

"So you think you're invincible?" Cloudy asked.

"Maybe," Balloony responded. He rubbed the back of his head. "That pipe certainly didn't kill me, although it did hurt. I don't want to test it again until I know I can be recovered."

"Everyone! Good news!" Book ran into the clearing with Gaty and Bubble. "I just found out that I can recover people by writing their name on my pages!"

The two friends and teammates looked at each other. Balloony shrugged. "Why not? Hey, Naily!" he called out.

Naily materialized behind him. "Omae wa, mo shindeiru."

Balooony turned around, surprised. "What?"

She chuckled. "Sorry, I just had to say that. What's up?"

"I need you to, uh... stab me." Balloony twiddled his fingers awkwardly. It was a strange request, after all.

"Sure! I love stabbing things!" Without warning, Naily teleported herself several feet into the air above Balloony, then quickly flipped around so that her sharp end was pointing downward. Gravity took hold and drove her straight into the balloon's head.

She made it quite far without popping him - Balloony felt her tip push the top of his rubber head to the point where it almost touched the bottom part - but somehow, he survived. The air in his cranium forced Naily away and caused her to flop on the ground. She stood up and turned around. "Awww!" She seemed disappointed. "I'm going to try again!"

"No!!" Balloony shouted frantically. "Er, I mean..." He regained his composure. "You actually did a good job, but I was just testing something. So thanks."

"Well, anytime you need something else stabbed, just call for me!" She then warped away to go cause pain for someone else.

Cloudy watched her go. "Naily is a very stabby individual," he commented.

Balloony nodded in agreement. "Yeah. I think she's impaled Woody a couple times." He suddenly clapped his hands to the sides of his head, distressed. "Oh my air pump! Woody!"

"What about him?"

"He was at the party, but I completely forgot about him! Wooooooodyyyy!!" Balloony ran off, yelling Woody's name. Cloudy floated after him.

They passed Marker, who had just trapped Liy in an earthen cage. "Go, Marker!" Stapy cheered. "Punish that Foldy-killer!"

"W-wait," Liy stuttered as Marker shrunk the cage around her. "L-let's think about this!"

"Nah, I think you deserve this." Stapy glanced over at Teardrop, who was watching nearby. "Don't you think so, Teardrop?"

"Yup! Liy should be punished for both her recent and previous actions," Teardrop responded.

"Cool, cool- wait." Stapy's jaw dropped open as he realized what just happened. Marker lost his concentration in surprise and Liy's prison crumbled. Even Teardrop herself looked startled.

Liy just chuckled. "Knew it." Then she used the opportunity while everyone was distracted to sneak away from Marker and Stapy.

Ruby zipped over, holding Flower over her head. "HOLD THE PHONE," Flower screeched. "DID TEARDROP JUST TALK??"

"Yup!" TD said in Ruby's voice.

"That's so cool! Hang on. Ruby, put me down." The gem dropped Flower. "Teardrop, you just spoke in Ruby's voice. How-"

TD shrugged. "I dunno," she said, using Flower's voice and cutting her off. The petalled prissy tried to keep speaking, but it was like SHE was mute now. "It looks like my new ability is to 'steal' someone else's voice and use it myself."

Stapy realized that when Teardrop had first spoken a minute ago, she sounded exactly like Liy. The shock of Teardrop speaking at all had made him forget that.

"This is awesome!" Teardrop said, matching Marker's accent perfectly. "I'm gonna go insult a bunch of people I don't like and swear in front of Grassy!" She rushed off excitedly.

"Hmf," Flower pouted. "I just wish I knew what my power was."

"I'm sure you'll figure it out!" Ruby confided.

--------------------

Later that night (technically really early next morning)

Thirst awakened Tennis Ball from his slumber. Yawning, he rolled (literally) out of his bed in Golf Ball's factory and attempted to make his way to the water tap in the dark. But the turning of pages caught his attention. He glanced into the next room - Golf Ball's bedroom - to see the bossy bot herself sitting amidst a large pile of books, a flashlight pointing down onto the pages.

"Golf Ball?" He yawned again. "Are you really still researching at this ungodly hour?"

"Science never sleeps!" GB harrumphed. "And yes, I'm still trying to discover something about our new abilities. But there's absolutely nothing. In our ten years of existence, an event like this has never occurred before anywhere else in the world. The only thing similar to our situation is in a fiction book, where the characters' superpowers are caused by some sort of meteor."

Tennis Ball blinked. An arm emerged from him, rubbed his eyes, and vanished again. "I'd be happy to help you look some more. But not right now. It's 2am - please just get some sleep."

He left the room. GB glanced back down at the page she was reading from a science journal, then sighed. Reluctantly, the sports globule closed the book, turned off the flashlight, and climbed in bed, instantly falling asleep.

A nice peaceful chapter ending :)

A couple more abilities have been revealed hehe, TD's was very entertaining to write

don't really have much else to say here so yeah stay safe and all that good stuff