August 5th

When Golf Ball finally returned to consciousness, she felt more exhausted than she ever had in her entire life; it was like she'd never slept at all.

The awakening was a slow one. Despite her exhaustion, the first thing she noticed was simply a feeling of familiar comfort — one she recognized, but also one she somehow knew she hadn't felt in years. It lasted for several minutes as the rest of her body and mind began to wake. Aches in her feet, one arm feeling lighter than normal while the other was heavier, and a dull pain in the back of her head slowly overtook the initial sense of safety. Urgh. Whatever happened yesterday must have been wild.

Then she thought, Wait... what even happened yesterday? Still groggy, the globule tried to remember. We... we were all walking. It was raining, and then... and... then...

All the memories suddenly flooded back in an instant. Golf Ball's eyes snapped open and she shot up so fast that Pencil — who had been sitting near her — fell off of her chair in surprise. "Gah!" she exclaimed. "Test Tube, she's awake!"

GB didn't relax upon hearing the woodsicle's voice. Instead, she darted her eyes around the surroundings, trying to absorb every little detail. She was in a bedroom with gray wallpaper, lying on top of a nondescript bed. A few feet away, Pencil (who, for some reason, was wearing Lollipop's scarf) was pulling herself to her feet using a wooden chair. There was a window on one wall, and a single small desk with a lamp next to the bed's headrest, but the room was otherwise empty.

Footsteps could be heard. Both girls in the room turned to see a battered Test Tube rush through the doorway, with Pie lazily following a second later. "Geebs! Thank goodness you're awake. How do you feel?"

"I..." Golf Ball blinked slowly. "Why... why are we in my house?" Indeed, she had almost instantly recognized the bedroom as the one that she slept in during her four-year stay in Yoyle City. Once the Firey Speaker Box had decided they'd all be staying there for the remainder of BFDIA, she and Tennis Ball picked the house from the town's outskirts after their first choice was obliterated by the Eiffel Tower.

Pie raised a finger. "We carried you here last night, since we figured the museum would be a bad place for you to wake up in. Pencil still remembered where you used to live."

"Right. The... museum. I... remember going there, and we found that secret passageway, but after, I-" The sports ball halted abruptly upon suddenly registering Test Tube's injuries. The glass container's rim was majorly cracked, she was wearing a large bandage over her face, and even more of her liquid was gone. "Oh my factory!" she gasped, horrified. "Test Tube, y-your eye! What hap-"

"Hey, hey, don't freak! I'm fine!" TT raised her hands to stop her friend from panicking. "The glass underneath my eye is cracked, so I just can't open it until that heals. And if it doesn't... well, there's always recovery."

Despite TT's objections, Golf Ball still tried lifting her right hand to lightly touch the eye patch — until she realized she no longer had a right hand. The globule froze, staring at her handless mechanical arm. "What... where... where is my hand?" Experimentally, she lifted her left arm to compare the double lack of hands, only to find that it, too, had drastically changed; there was now a large copper lance attached to it. "Um."

The other three girls exchanged concerned glances. "...something happened last night that you should know about."

Black Hole floated over to where Four was standing, feeling each and every drop of rain that was unfortunate enough to fall near him get caught in his gravitational pull and disappear. "You called?" he spoke, gently vibrating as he did so.

Seemingly distracted by something, Four glanced his way. "Yeah, I've got an important question for you. How are you feeling?"

The cosmic entity was thrown off by this. Four wasn't the type of person to randomly check up on others' feelings. "Um. I'm actually. Not sure? I've been feeling... off lately. Like, something's constantly making me..." He struggled to find the right word.

"Are you in pain?" Four tried.

"I... I suppose that must be it. Although I wouldn't really know, cause nothing physical can hurt me..."

"Alright, then hold still. I need to kill you."

If Black Hole had eyes, he would have blinked in surprise. "Sorry?"

The numeral pulled out a familiar-looking button, and before the vortex could react, he was zapped out of existence with a loud BUZZ.

Four slowly stashed away the button, before suddenly wincing and putting a hand to his head. Whatever it was that had been corrupting him for the past few days, creating and amplifying his headache, was getting worse and harder to control. He'd begun seeing red, and getting urges to do terrible things. Sure, he'd done terrible things before, but of his own will — he didn't like being controlled. And although killing Black Hole had been his choice, it wasn't for a good reason; he could feel that the mysterious entity overtaking his mind had been on the verge of controlling Black Hole completely. BH had just confirmed it. He knew David had something to do with it, too, but not what or why-

"Four?" a high-pitched voice asked. He rotated to see X staring at him with a confused expression on his face. "What was that about?"

"I don't know," groaned Four. "Something's wrong with me. But I don't know what it is."

"Hmm... will a juice box help you feel better?"

"No."

X put his hand to his chin thoughtfully, then snapped his fingers. "Seven has healing powers, right? How about you go see them? Maybe they'll be able to help you!"

"Yeah... yeah, that's a good idea." Shaking his head, Four readied for takeoff. "Hopefully I won't be gone long."

"See you soon!"

Four launched himself away from the planet, causing a massive gust of air to flatten the scorched grass nearby and almost knock X to the ground. The yellow algebralien watched his friend soar into the sky.

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

It only took around 45 minutes to travel from Earth to the planet of the algebraliens, but it felt much longer for Four. Whatever was inside him seemed to be increasing its control exponentially; in the time elapsed, it had already become much harder to resist.

Upon entering the atmosphere, all stars faded away, and the inky blackness of space began to melt into a lovely cyan. With the last day and a half spent on Earth being under a massive raincloud, it was good to see another blue sky. Four slowed his descent to avoid becoming a flaming meteor, but not by much. Looking around the equation playground below, the numeral saw various other algebraliens playing, messing with each other, or just chilling — but no Seven.

His headache pulsed without warning. Sufficiently distracted, he stumbled upon reaching the ground and skidded forwards a large distance, eventually coming to a stop at the feet of a green being. "Hello, Four!" Two greeted, grinning. "It's been a couple months. Is the show still going well?"

Their smile faltered after seeing the state Four was in. "Oh, jeez. You're not looking so good. Is everything alright?"

"Where's Seven?" Four croaked, struggling to his feet. "Need... healing."

Two glanced around briefly before shrugging. "I dunno. If they're not around here, they could be anywhere. What's wrong?"

"I don't know exactly, I just- GH!" Four suddenly flinched and dropped to the ground again, shaking. "T... too late..." he mumbled, before looking up and meeting Two's eyes. "Use... use your powers and... keep me down."

"Huh? I don't underst-"

"Something's... overtaking me. Something bad. Don't... know what it'll do... when it has control." It was becoming incredibly hard for him to speak. "Just... hold me down until... Seven gets back."

"But w-"

"JUST DO IT!!"

"Alright, alright! Sheesh!" Mildly annoyed but still concerned, Two held out their hands and activated their telekinesis. A green glow enveloped their hands, and a similar shimmer began to push Four to the ground. "This isn't too bad."

After a few moments, Four started to struggle. "Ah ah ah," chided Two, clicking their tongue. "Not so fast, not-Four. The lower the number, the more powerful they are, remember?"

Four continued to struggle, and Two suddenly found that it was becoming a little harder to keep him down with each passing second. "That's odd," they muttered to themself. At this point, the strange sight was beginning to attract the attention of some of the nearer algebraliens.

Another minute passed, and Four's attempts at escape hadn't ceased. Two was starting to actually have to concentrate. "I don't like this." They turned to the nearest number (who happened to be Nine) and called out, "Hey, can you go find Seven? Forty-Four over here needs some help, and I'm starting to have a bit of trouble!"

"No prob, dude!" Nine shot finger guns at them before hopping on their skateboard and rolling away. Two sighed. "Good. Don't worry, Four, Seven'll fix you up in a jiffy."

They turned again just in time to get a hand wrapped around their throat. "T̶̢̳̥̘̿o̴͚̝̊̎̊͠o̸̡͗̽̚ ̵̧̣̭̲̀̒̓̍͐͜l̴̥̟̥̳̓̆͂͂a̷̟̺̍͑͌t̵̔ͅę̸̣̙͇̙̈́.̶͕̔͑̑̑"



(actually there's still like 15 chapters left lmao)