[ATTENTION! THIS IS THE FOURTH BOOK IN A SERIES I'VE WRITTEN!! YOU SHOULD READ THE OTHER THREE FIRST FOR CONTEXT!!!]



Beeping and whirring filled the control room of the Light Shimmers' ship as they traveled through space. It had been a few hours since they found their first lost youth, and despite the missing second one still looming over their heads, they were overjoyed nonetheless.

A sky blue shell - adorned with corn blue zig-zags, a triangular-shaped hole, and three shimmers inside - carefully inspected the equipment to make sure everything was in working order. This included checking the energy logs, which was the primary method they used to search for their lost ones. They discovered something interesting on it.

"Sir?" the shimmers asked. The Prime Shimmer, who the blue egg had just addressed, turned on their throne to face them. "There's an odd reading on the energy log."

Prime floated down to the blue shimmers' level to glance at the screen. "How odd?"

The shimmers 'squinted' to get a better look. "It appears to be... portal energy, sir."

"What?!" the Prime Shimmer boomed, startling the other shimmers in the room. "But how can that be? We closed off this universe from multiverse travel ages ago!"

"We don't know, sir. But the energy log doesn't lie."

"Where and when is the origin of this reading?"

The blue egg took another look. "We got this reading a few hours ago, on Earth, sir. In fact, it came from the location of those objects who found one of our lost youth."

They both glanced down at the tiny, green-striped egg, who was watching the conversation happen with mild interest. The blue egg continued. "We must have missed it in all the chaos of the objects' arrival."

Prime returned to their throne. "Set a course to return to Earth immediately."

"Is this a good sort of course correction, or a bad one, sir?" The blue shimmers sounded slightly nervous.

The giant purple egg hmmed. "We don't know yet. But we need to find out how those objects have a portal to another universe. Figure out which universe that portal is connected to, by the way," they added.

"Yes sir."

The Prime Shimmer thought hard. "Let's hope that those objects don't have any hidden malicious intents..."

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

August 1st, 2020, a few hours later

Tennis Ball blinked as the rays of sun hit his eyes, startling him awake. He yawned and stretched, moving out of the sunlight's path. Despite having robotic arms for several months now, thanks to the ingenuity of Test Tube, he still wasn't quite used to the sensation of stretching them. It wasn't unpleasant, though.

He glanced next to him and saw that Golf Ball was still asleep on the burnt grass. It was about mid-morning, but she was a late sleeper. Trying not to disturb her, TB tiptoed away until he was sure she wouldn't wake.

He looked around to see several other contestants up and about, chatting to each other. For reasons unknown, Four was standing on top of a tree, frozen and unblinking. TB spotted Lightbulb around as well, playing rock paper scissors with Marker.

Which reminded him that he wanted to ask Fan something. Turning around, Tennis Ball walked through the nearby portal that led to the IIverse - a silly name for the universe which housed the competition of Inanimate Insanity 2, but nobody could think of a better name, so it just stuck.

He emerged in Test Tube's lab to find her welding away at something. "Hey," he said, but Test Tube was too engrossed in her work to do nothing more but grunt back at him. He shrugged and exited her lab, only realizing after he left that TT had a large crack in the back of her head, and approximately half her liquid was gone. That's odd, he thought. But as long as it doesn't hurt her, I won't pry.

Tennis Ball continued forward, finding Fan typing away furiously on his computer at a table nearby. Something seemed off, but TB couldn't place it at first. "Hi!" he greeted when he reached the table.

Fan looked up and smiled. TB realized he had bags under his eyes, but seemed to be in a pretty good mood. "Good morning, my fine, fuzzy friend!"

"Good morning to you, too." Tennis Ball glanced at the computer screen. "Are you working on your blog?"

"Yup!" Fan shifted the laptop to TB could get a better view. The title of the post Fan was working on read, Aliens Are Real?! The Truth About Cobs!

"Aliens, eh?" Tennis Ball thought back to his own experiences with aliens, which were limited but negative. "What do they look like?"

"Oh, man. I've gotta tell you everything that happened last night! It all started when my egg began to emit this weird noise, well, turns out he, I mean they, weren't really my egg after all..."

As Fan rambled on, Tennis Ball gazed off into the distance and watched Leafy, Clock, and Suitcase chat with each other. The three had grown pretty close after Clock's elimination. MePhone technically couldn't restrict Clock to Hotel OJ as he wasn't an II2 contestant, and Four said that if he returned to Goiky before BFB is over, then the numeral would put Clock into the EXIT. So he stayed here, spending most of his time talking to Suitcase. Leafy also talked to him a lot, sympathizing with him being forgotten by The Losers, and by association, slowly became friends with Suitcase as well.

"...and that's what you missed on Inanimate Insanity!" Fan chuckled at his own joke.

TB blinked. "Those shimmers sound incredible. And incredibly unique!"

"I know!!" Fan seemed extremely pumped up. Then his face fell for a moment. "But Cobs... I can barely believe he did something like that."

Tennis Ball winced. "I think I can."

Fan looked at him strangely. "Are you saying you've met Cobs?"

"No, no. It's just... I don't really have great experiences with aliens myself."

"Really? Do tell!"

"Maybe another time."

Fan opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Fries sticking out of Test Tube's laboratory. "Hey, Tennis Ball. The elimination's starting."

"Thanks!" TB always liked to spectate the eliminations. "Fan, would you like to come?"

"Of course!" Fan replied, now excited again. He closed his laptop and hopped off the chair. "Who's up for elimination again?"

"BEEP," Tennis Ball answered right away.

"Oh yeah. Ouch. This is their fourth elimination, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Unlucky..."

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

Nickel breathed a sigh of relief as his name was called out, along with his vote count. He caught the chocolate chip cookie thrown at him with one foot and quickly gobbled it up. "Delicious," he mumbled through a mouthful of sugar.

Four pointed at the two remaining objects. "Cloudy. Rocky. One of you will be joining your two teammates in the EXIT today."

Balloony swallowed nervously, both worried for his friend and because he had food in his mouth. "Oh no..."

"Id'll pe ok, Palloony," Cloudy comforted him in his thick accent.

X ran up to Four. "Ooh, ooh! Can I announce who's eliminated?"

"Sure!" Four said cheerfully. He leaned down and quickly whispered in the variable's ear. X nodded before turning to Rocky. "Rocky?"

Rocky stared at him.

"You're safe!"

Rocky simply opened his mouth and vacuumed up his cookie. Cloudy looked shocked at first, then sad. "Good job, X!" Four patted the yellow algebralien on the head.

"Cloudy, no!" Balloony cried.

The fluffy cloud turned to him. "Well... I kuezz thiz iz the end. Goodpye, BEEP!"

Balloony opened his mouth, but with a shlorp from Four, Cloudy was gone. "...oh."

"Don't worry, Balloony. You still have us!" Nickel said.

"Yah!" Woody agreed, munching on his own cookie.

Four grunted in their general direction. "Not for long."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Hang on." Four began to stretch his arm out, way longer than should have been possible. It went through Test Tube's portal and returned a moment later with Leafy. Dropping her unceremoniously, Four glanced around to see everyone else who had spectated the elimination. "Are all my BFB contestants here?"

X did a quick head count. "I think so!"

"Gasp! Is it time for the next challenge?" Ruby asked, bouncing on her heels.

"Almost. First, I wanted to point out two things. One: this episode will be the twenty-fifth episode of BFB! After the next episode, this season will officially have the most episodes out of all the others!"

"Hooray!" X pulled out a party popper from nowhere and yanked on the string, sending a ridiculous amount of confetti flying towards the contestants.

Flower shook paper out of her petals. "That's cool and all, I suppose, but what's the second thing?"

"The second thing is that with Cloudy's elimination, we've reached 45 contestants." Four smiled. "Which means it's time for the second team phase. We're forming new teams, people!"

~~~~~~~~~~

WOW. I can't tell you how excited I am that this book is finally being published. Initially, I never planned for Crossing Over to have a sequel, or for CO and IDFB: Continued to even be connected. But about... halfway through writing IDFBC, I think? I saw an opportunity to connect the two stories and took it on a whim. From there, it evolved.

I've been working on this story since December, for just about eight months now! It's kind of crazy to think about. (I'd say that the months have flown by, but I think the quarantine last year completely annihilated my sense of time.) I've packed so much into this, trying to create a plot that cleans up as many loose ends from both CO and IDFBC that I could find. I think I've managed to mostly succeed there.

Like all my other books, there's no set schedule for this one. As of the publication date of this chapter (August 1st), I have nine more chapters pre-written, and 95% of the final plot planned out. I'll try to release the pre-written chapters about every week/week and a half or so, but once I run out of those, your guess is a good as mine. (There's a LOT of stuff — I have zero clue on exactly how long the entire book will take, but chances are it'll be pretty long.)

Also: a big thanks to my friend Funfunny8 on Discord for drawing the cover! She's already drawn something else for this series before, back in CO Short Stories, and I love her art style. (I don't know if she's actually gonna be reading this but I figured I should still give credit anyways lol)

I can't WAIT until we get to where the plot really begins to pick up. I'm super hyped overall, and I really hope anybody who reads this enjoys it as much as I have putting it together. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated, including constructive criticism; I don't often reply to comments, but I do read ALL of them. They always make my day.

Anyways, enjoy :)

- Jabe