Fan quickly scribbled down another idea and slid it over to the others. "What about this?"

The nearest objects took a look. "Ooh, I like that!" Gaty complimented. "You have a very interesting thought process."

"Why, thank you!"

"I think you should add some snakes to that," Eraser added nonchalantly.

Black Hole disagreed. "Let's not have this end in death, please. Quite a lot of snakes are poisonous."

"But some aren't!"

"Where would we even get snakes, though?"

"...alright, good point."

Trophy twirled a pencil through his fingers, thinking hard. "One of the things they have to do should be something relating to smoothies."

Ruby blinked. "Why?"

"To spite Knife."

"How would smoothies-"

"Long story."

II Nickel strolled over to them. "You all look like you're scheming something. Whatever it is, I want in."

"Right on the nose, Nickel!" Pen exclaimed, looking up from his idea sheet. (So far, it was blank.) "We're trying to plan out a sort of mini competition between Flower and Knife, since they always clash whenever they're nearby each other."

"Love it."

Fan snapped his fingers. "I should go find Team 3. I know a couple members from there would also have a lot of fun joining this. BRB, guys!"

He got up and walked off, ignoring Eraser's fading question of "Did you really just say that acronym?"

Two minutes of walking brought him to the barred-off portal. He slowed, not seeing them anywhere nearby. That's strange. I thought they still would have been working on fixing this.

Quickly closing the door in front of the portal, he switched directions and briskly wandered towards Golf Ball's underground factory. He found it locked and seemingly abandoned. "Hello?" he called out, knocking loudly on the metal entrance.

No answer.

"Hello??" he banged louder, but there was still no response. "Huh..." He couldn't see them anywhere else around the plains, either. Starting to get worried, Fan quickly pulled out his phone and selected Test Tube's contact. "Come on, come on, pick up..."

Click. "Fan! Thank goodness you called, we've got a situation on our hands!"

"Woah, what's going on? Where the heck ARE you guys?? Are you in Golf Ball's factory?"

"What? No, not anymore, we're-"

A deafening whine of feedback suddenly blasted through his phone's speakers, causing him to jump back and drop his phone. He clapped his hands over his ears instinctively, but the damage was already done. Slightly dazed, he heard the feedback rapidly dwindle away before going silent completely.

Carefully, Fan picked up his phone again. The call had ended. "Uh oh." He tried dialing her number again, but this time, it wouldn't even go through. "What in the worlds just happened??"

He decided to try calling Lightbulb instead. Thankfully, she picked up on the first ring. "Yyyyyyy'ello?"

"Hi Lightbulb! Can you please try to call Test Tube? I think she's in trouble, and my phone won't let me call her!"

"Sure-eo, I'll text her right now." The sound of ambient humming and screen tapping came through Fan's speakers. "Odd. My message won't go through. But I have cell service, otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you, duh."

"What about anybody else on Team 3?"

More tapping for another two minutes. "Zilch. I tried both Barfy and the-always-comedic-Cheesy, but neither of 'em went through."

"Ohhhhh boy. Thanks for trying anyway."

"No problemo!" Lightbulb hung up.

Spotting Four nearby, Fan changed tactics and approached the host. "Uh, F-Four?" he started, stumbling slightly on his words. As amazing as Four was, the numeral terrified him. "Can you please try to recover Team 3? I think they're in danger, but, actually, I'm pretty sure they're in danger, well, I'm VERY sure they're in danger, but- but my point is, I don't know if they're actually dead, even if they are in danger, but recovery's worth a shot, don't you suppose?"

No response from the host.

Fan waved a hand in front of his face. "Four? You there?"

Four suddenly blinked and looked down at him. "Sorry, I had to resolve a conflict in the EXIT. What were you saying?"

"Er, could you try recovering Team 3? Please?"

The number held out his hand and a drumroll played as BFB Taco materialized from thin air. She flopped to the ground, not moving.

They stared at her for a second. "...is that it?" Fan asked meekly.

"She was the only dead one on that team at that moment."

"Ah." A mixture of emotions swept through Fan. On the one hand, his friends were alive. On the other, they were quite possibly in some serious trouble, and he had no way of finding or helping them. Both relieved and worried at the same time, he looked off in the distance. "Where are you guys?"

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

"Fan? Fan?? Can you hear me??" Test Tube shouted desperately into her receiver.

"It's no use," Pencil sighed. "With our luck, whatever that weird feedback thingy was has probably interrupted your signal for as long as we're stuck here."

"Anybody else got a phone?" Yin wondered.

Cheesy held up his. "No dice."

"Same here," Barf Bag noted, tapping away at her own device.

Lollipop studied Cheesy carefully. "You know, I heard that you make a lot of word puns. Yet, you've only made a single one that I can remember. Why's that?"

"Eh, I've just fallen out of the habit of making them constantly. Also..." He rubbed the back of his head and chuckled. "I'm kinda running out of ideas."

"Well, let's hope you think of more. Candy factory knows we'll need some comic relief during what I can only assume will be an extremely long trek back."

"Yikes. You're not really sugar-coating our situation here!" *slap*

Everybody groaned, except for Lollipop, who just smiled. "Nice one."

Golf Ball slowly stood up. "As much as I hate saying it, Pencil has the right idea here. Without any basis of location for navigating, our best course of action is to simply pick a direction and start walking until the sun becomes visible again. Then we can wait until the sun sets to figure out which direction is which."

"Thank you for listening to me for once."

"Don't think it will become a common occurrence," GB growled. "You're the one that got us into this mess in the first place, so-"

"Me!?" Pencil protested loudly.

Pie stepped between them. "Calm down. We're all in the same boat here, and fighting won't get us anywhere."

Test Tube struggled to her feet. "Pie's right. Golf Ball, I don't know what feud you have with Pencil, but put it aside for now so that we can escape this..." She looked around. "...extremely monochromatic landscape."

Both girls grumbled but stepped away from each other. Tennis Ball picked up the still-unconscious form of Coiny and carefully tucked him under his arm. "Well, then. Let's get going."

The ten of them randomly picked a direction and began to walk in silence. It would be a long journey. ~ End of day one ~

next chapter's gonna be deep... really deep