Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The young object wasn’t really one to question her life choices all that often

Sure, maybe she’d made a few mistakes during her seventeen years of life, but who hadn’t? Mistakes were normal. Ultimately, all of it led up to the life she had now anyway. What was the point of wishing she could change anything? 

That’s what she thought up until this point, anyway. 

Her life hadn’t been normal for a good while now. A few months at minimum. She had no idea how long she’d been down here. It wasn’t like she had a calendar or anything, and her phone died after just a couple of days, but it had been enough time for her to witness at least two full moons. That had to mean something. 

Whatever life choice she’d made to cause her to end up here? She definitely wanted to undo that one. Give her a time machine, a memory eraser, or WHATEVER. She just wanted to get the heck out of here. 

‘There’s always a silver lining to every cloud!’ screw that, this sucked. 

She wasn’t all that great at swimming in the first place. The “holding her breath” part just really wasn’t her strong suit. But she was sure that even someone who could do that pretty well would agree that having to swim through who-knows-how-much water just to get to a stupid underwater lab is a bit overkill. 

This was way beyond her range of skills and experience. She was SUPPOSED to be a young actor! Not someone who had to solve puzzles and figure out how to save herself. 

Sure she’d only acted in commercials up until now– but that still meant something, okay?!

How did the people that owned this thing get in there, anyway? Did they really have to swim all that way each time? She couldn’t imagine having to make the trip that often. 

She was completely and absolutely soaked through with water by the time she actually made it to the lab. And even then, she wasn’t done with it all. She had to go BACK out into the stupid water to turn the stupid dials to unlock the STUPID door. 

It was just really annoying. She wasn’t having a great time. But whatever she had to do to get out of there, right? There was something down here, there had to be. 

She waved her hand in front of the door’s motion sensor, and it finally came open with the sound of air hissing. 

There was really no telling what was going to be on the other side of that door. She wasn’t really great at preparing herself, but she’d brought a very crudely crafted spear she’d made. That would have to do to defend herself if anything tried to attack her. 

Almost immediately, she was met with a very loud buzzing sound. Something was clearly here that didn’t like her intrusion. Given the electronic whirring that was also present, it was definitely something robotic. 

From behind a half-transparent support against one of the walls, a hovering robotic figure appeared. It emitted another loud buzz, and she immediately knew it was after her. 

It was completely composed of metal, from its body to the “arms” attached on either side. One ended in a claw-like mechanism that looked rather sharp, and the other with a pretty bulky taser. A bright red alarm atop the robot had begun to light up.

The machinery looked pretty old. Compared to everything else she’d seen so far, it looked very out of place. Almost as if it was supposed to be something expendable. 

It probably was. The bugs around here were pretty vicious, she’d come to realize. Putting something super high-tech in charge of defending the lab against them would just be a waste of materials. 

Instantly, the robot darted towards her. She wasn’t given much time to react, and just barely managed to push herself away from it before it clamped down on her with its claw. From this close, she could see letters scribed into the taser arm of the robot. TAYZ.T. 

Wow. How clever. 

Taking a second to read what was written on the robot turned out to be a super bad and awful idea. With a single mechanical buzz, the robot jerked and grabbed the side of her body with its clawed hands. While trying to struggle free without ripping herself, she met with the taser on the other hand.

Searing pain shot through her body as she jolted backwards. The sound of fabric tearing was very loud and present in the otherwise quiet, echoing room. Two of her pins dropped to the floor with a metallic click, and she quickly scooped one up into her hands. 

This wasn’t worth it. She could try again later, but this wasn’t worth it. 

She broke free from the TAYZ.T, ignoring the electricity that zipped through her limbs and body. She turned to face the robot just long enough to stab her spear right into its vent, making it crackle with whatever the robot equivalent of pain would be. 

She didn’t have the time to gather all of the pieces of herself, but that could be done when she returned later. Right now, she needed to get the heck out of there. 

As fast as she could, she bolted over to the hatch in the floor. She kicked the button beside it, the only way she knew how to press it given it was pretty much the size of her. The two sides of the hatch split apart, and she realized how grateful she was for the pressure that kept the water from flooding in and taking the entire lab out. 

She let herself fall back into the water, taking in as much air as she could to make the trip back up to the surface. The electrical burns on her arms and body stung with each move she made, but she had to persist. She had to get back up to the surface. She wouldn’t let the water claim her. 

This was a failure. All of it. A failure. 

She needed to take a different approach.

——————

She was waking up in a room that was almost eerily quiet. She never really liked having to wake up in the first place. Being taken out of the comfort of unconsciousness and instead having to function like a real object day to day? Not fun. But, more importantly than that, why was she waking up now?

The young object shifted, trying to stir herself awake. She had school today, right? If she was supposed to be waking up, wouldn’t her alarm be going off? It wasn’t like her to wake up in the middle of the night for no reason; she could usually sleep through just about anything. She made an attempt to roll over, immediately bumping into something to her left that echoed with a quiet thump.

…

Okay.. did her bed usually feel this cramped? Sure, she had a bunch of stuffed animals on it, but nothing that solid. 

The feeling of her arms pressed against her metal base was much more uncomfortable than she would have expected it to be. It was certainly amplified with the added feeling of her bracelets digging into her wrists. She moved her arms around, trying to get into a good position to push herself up. Turns out that wasn’t a very easy thing to do right then. Rather than moving her arms behind her, they jerked slightly by her side before bumping into the walls beside them.

No, yeah, her room definitely wasn’t small enough to meet two walls at once. Not only that, but she always took her bracelets off before she went to bed so she wouldn’t lose them. But there they were, right there on her arms. 

What was happening here? 

Thankfully, the surprise of it all was enough to fully wake her up, her eyes snapping open. Though, the pitch-black area she was in didn’t really return much in terms of visual stimuli. 

Without being able to see anything, she didn’t really have much to go off of other than the feeling of the walls pressing against every surface of her body. Maybe if she’d been thinking a bit more rationally she would have realized the obvious solution to this problem, but unfortunately for her she wasn’t thinking all that rationally. 

The more she pressed against them, the more she realized how suspiciously the walls felt like styrofoam. She was able to dig her fingers into the little gaps that could be formed between the groupings of the material. But that didn’t really get her anywhere. 

She dragged her hand against the edges of the rightmost wall until she managed to hook her fingers into what felt like a seam. She jammed her hand into the seam as hard as she physically could without injuring herself, and was pleasantly surprised when she heard a distinguishable clicking noise. She wriggled her fingers, realizing that a slight gap had opened between the top and bottom parts of the wall. 

Whatever I’m in, I think I just opened it. She readjusted both of her arms, pulling her right hand back out of the gap in the wall and back into the hole with the rest of her body. It took a bit of awkward maneuvering, but she eventually managed to place her palms onto the “ceiling”. With one firm shove, she pushed the walls apart just far enough for a burst of light to flood into the room. She squinted, trying to see through the sudden shift in lighting to get a better view of where she was. 

When that didn’t quite work, she opted to just get out of there. She drew in a deep breath, pushing the walls apart with as much effort as she could manage. After a moment or two, she was finally able to open a gap large enough for her to wriggle through. 

She propped the gap open with one of her arms as she slowly lowered the other one from the ceiling. Once she was sure she wasn’t immediately going to be crushed if she let go, she pushed herself through the gap and fell to the other side right before the two sides slammed back together. Her glass body clinked against the ground, and only then did she realize that she probably should have thought about the risks of just falling out of that thing before she did it. 

She pushed herself to her feet, wobbling a bit before straightening herself out and instinctively dusting herself off. No cracks, right? Good. After realizing her backpack had fallen halfway down her arms, she took a minute to pull the straps back up to her shoulders. She looked up, raising one of her hands to shield her eyes from the light. 

Now.. where was she?

Certainly no place she could recall. Judging by the dirt walls surrounding her, she had to assume she was underground. But the brightness of the place seemed to imply otherwise. She looked up, squinting. That was definitely the sky up there. 

So she was clearly underground, but there was no roof. She woke up in a weird giant container that was suspiciously her-shaped, she didn’t recognize any of her surroundings, and now she was surely developing a headache. Quite the promising situation. Not awful and menacing at all. 

Come to think of it, wasn’t she just walking home from school? How in the world had she ended up here?

“Wh.. Lightbulb?” 

Lightbulb nearly jumped out of her skin at the utterance of her own name. She’d been under the impression she was the only one here. This certainly changed things. 

She immediately spun around, trying to put a face to the voice she’d just heard. At the very least, it was a familiar one. Someone she shared two classes with. 

“Oh, hey. Uh.. Baseball, right?” she asked. 

Lightbulb wasn’t even sure if he’d heard her question, because he didn’t respond. She just had to assume her guess was right. He was standing a few feet away from her, right beside the thing she’d woken up in. From an outside view, she realized it looked a lot like a case of some kind. A very, very big one. 

“What are y- what are we doing here?” he asked, confusion very evident on his face. 

Lightbulb blinked, unsure of how exactly she was meant to answer that. “You mean you don’t know?” 

Baseball glanced around, his confusion only seeming to deepen. “Should I?” 

“Well I don’t know, that’s why I asked,” Lightbulb shrugged. “I have no idea where we are either. I just woke up here.” She fidgeted with the beads of one of the bracelets wrapped around her arms.

Baseball frowned, before sighing. “Yeah, me too. I was hoping there’d be someone around here that would know what was going on, but if it’s just you then I have no idea what’s happening right now.” 

From behind Baseball, Lightbulb noticed the lid of the case thing start to shift. “It might not be just us, actually,” she said, pointing towards the object of her focus. 

Baseball turned around to see what she was talking about just as the case’s lid popped all the way open. It slammed into the dirt wall behind it with a pretty loud crash sound, showering dirt chunks and rocks down to the bottom of the hole they were in. A few fell into the case, but it didn’t seem to deter whoever was in it right then. 

“I think the situation might be getting worse,” Baseball said, his earlier confusion being replaced with what now sounded like worry mixed with exhaustion. 

Another object stood up inside the case and jumped out over the edge. Lightbulb wasn’t sure if it was lucky or unfortunate that it was another person she recognized. 

He stood where he was for a moment, his brow furrowed as he looked around in every direction except for where Baseball and Lightbulb were. When he finally turned far enough for them to be in his field of vision, he immediately tensed up. 

“You two!” he began walking towards them, still just as tense, “where are we? Do you have something to do with this?” 

Baseball backed up until he was nearly right beside Lightbulb. “What? No! We just woke up here, in that thing.” He pointed with one of his feet towards the now-open case. 

Lightbulb put her hands on her hips, “yeah Knife, calm down. How would we have anything to do with this, anyway? I mean, seriously.” 

“It is kind of a fair guess to make, though,” Baseball pointed out. “There’s nobody else around that could be responsible for this. But still, I doubt any of us could.” 

Lightbulb let her arms drop to her sides. “Exactly! That wouldn’t make sense. For one, where would any of us have gotten a case that big?” 

Knife turned around just long enough to get another look at the case before turning back. “Where would anyone get a case that big?” 

“And for another,” Baseball apparently decided to continue Lightbulb’s point, “I just can’t personally see any of us having the ability to not only kidnap the other two but also lock them AND themselves into the case. It just doesn’t make sense.” 

“Well how else do you explain this, huh? I don’t see any other explanation-”

“AUGH-”

The three of them were promptly ripped from conversation upon hearing a startled yell and the sound of someone hitting the floor. 

Lightbulb slowly moved to look around Knife and figure out who was also stuck with them in this situation. The new object slowly pushed herself up off the floor, shaking her head once she’d done so. Finally getting a good look, Lightbulb realized she did recognize her. Just barely, but it was enough. For a second she contemplated trying to guess her name, but Baseball beat her to it. 

“Suitcase?” 

Suitcase’s attention immediately snapped towards the three other objects. “Baseball?” She blinked, her eyes shaking slightly, “what’s going on? Where are we?” 

“We got kidnapped,” Knife answered plainly. Lightbulb resisted the temptation to punch him in the arm for it. That was not going to help the situation.  

“What?” Suitcase’s eyes widened, and it was hard not to notice her legs start to wobble slightly. 

Lightbulb slightly shoved Knife aside, putting herself better into Suitcase’s view, “well, hey, we don’t know that.” 

Baseball grimaced, “we don’t really know anything right now. We’re still just speculating.” 

“And until we do know something,” Lightbulb countered, “let’s maybe not assume we’ve been kidnapped.” 

Before another argument could begin between the three of them, Suitcase broke apart from the spot she’d been standing in and walked past them. She passed just close enough to Lightbulb for her to notice Suitcase had been muttering something to herself, but not close enough for her to actually make out what she’d been saying. 

Just as it looked like she was going to walk right into one of the dirt walls, she took a turn and disappeared behind it. That was the first time Lightbulb realized that there appeared to be a path between the walls there. 

Lightbulb stared after her. “Why have none of us thought to check that out yet?” 

Knife and Baseball didn’t reply. Instead, they began to follow Suitcase through the path. Lightbulb huffed at them blatantly ignoring her question, but decided to follow them anyway. After all, this was probably their best shot at getting out of there. Or at least at figuring out where they were. 

Lightbulb stuck to the right wall, making sure she had something to follow if this ended up being a misleading direction and they had to turn back. It didn’t feel too necessary, though, considering there were no other branches that they could possibly get lost in. She ran her hand along the wall as she walked. Something about it felt weird, but she couldn’t quite place her finger on it. Heck, something about their entire situation felt weird, so that could have been a huge part of it.

She could tell that they were getting closer to the surface as they walked the path. Both because it seemed like it was going upwards and because their surroundings were getting brighter and brighter. Lightbulb stared at the ground, tracing the grooves of the loose dirt floor and separating the chunks in her mind. For something that was very clearly dirt, it sure felt a lot like they were walking on rocks. 

She was startled into looking up when her hand broke apart from the wall and met nothing but air. She paused in her tracks, stopping just fast enough to not walk straight into Knife. Her previous experience with him told her that would not have gone over well. 

Lightbulb squinted, looking up from the ground to figure out where they were. They’d obviously broken the surface, but why had everyone stopped? 

It was much easier to see through the brightness now that she’d been in it for a few minutes now, so it didn’t take too long for her vision to clear and for her to figure it out. Lightbulb was certainly right in her assessment that they’d made it past the dirt walls they’d been confined in, which was good. What wasn’t good, however, was the fact that the only thing they could see around them was grass. A lot of grass. Literally nothing but grass. 

What was worse, though, was that it was due to the fact that they were shorter than it. Shorter than the grass. There was absolutely no way that was right. 

Lightbulb rubbed her eyes, blinking them a few times. And yet, no matter what she did, that was still where they were. On the ground, surrounded by nothing but dirt and grass that reached far above their heads. At least that answered the question about why the case was so big. But at the time it created a MILLION NEW QUESTIONS. 

Nobody said a word. 

Beside her, Lightbulb could hear Suitcase’s breathing become slightly more heavy. She reached out to put a hand on her head and hopefully help her calm down, but Suitcase flinched away from her. 

“This can’t be real, right?” she reasoned, “there’s no way. This has to be like.. A dream or something.” 

Lightbulb scratched underneath one of her bracelets, “I can’t say I’ve ever had a dream this vivid. But I guess that wouldn’t matter if you’re the one dreaming.”

“I don’t think any of us know each other well enough to dream about this,” Knife said.

Baseball turned to him, “do you think it’s impossible to dream about someone you aren’t friends with?” 

“Are you just having dreams about strangers on a daily basis?” Lightbulb asked. 

“That is not what I said, I’m just saying-” Baseball shook his head, “y’know what, this isn’t the point right now. We have to figure out where we are.”

Knife crossed his arms, “yeah? How are we supposed to do that when we’re the size of BUGS?” 

Lightbulb glanced back at where they’d emerged from the ground, the only place around them that wasn’t completely shrouded by grass. Even then, it didn’t give away any answers. It was nearly impossible to get a good look at their surroundings from where they were. “I’d like to know that, too, actually.” 

“I don’t know right now, okay?” Baseball sighed, “that’s why I said we. Trying to figure out where we are is our best bet to getting out of here. I know it seems.. pretty much impossible right now, but there’s not much else we can do.” 

Lightbulb bit down on the inside of her cheek. That was true. Both about it seeming impossible and about there not being much else they could do. It was either they try to figure out where they were or they just stand around forever and die. And Lightbulb really did not prefer the latter. She lightly tugged at the ends of her coat, really angry that she hadn’t decided to wear something with pockets that particular day. 

“How are we even supposed to start, though?” Suitcase asked, her voice seeming a bit steadier now than it had been before, “it doesn’t look like there’s anything around here but us. What clues would we even be able to find that would help us figure that out?”

“To be fair,” Lightbulb chipped in, “all we can really see right now is grass. Anything could be hiding behind this stuff and we’d have no idea.”

Baseball smiled, “exactly! We just need to walk around for a bit. I’m sure we’ll find something that will help us here. I doubt we’ve just been dropped off in the middle of nowhere.”

“And if we have?”

“We aren’t going to think about that right now, Knife.” Baseball turned in a few different directions, visibly considering the options. It didn’t really look like he was getting anywhere with that tactic. “Uhm.. Lightbulb! You choose where we go.” 

Oh. Lightbulb perked up, a bit startled at the decision suddenly being thrust upon her. “Alright then. Let’s see..”

Pretty much any way she turned looked exactly the same. Clumped together grass that overlapped just enough to make various eligible pathways, tightly packed dirt and pebbles strewn about, and the occasional sprig or two. No path really seemed any “better” than the others. Which, unfortunately, made picking just one of them immensely difficult. 

Okay. how about this. She held out one of her arms, index finger outstretched towards the path closest to her. She changed directions three times, finally stopping on the fourth path. Four seemed like a pretty good number for this, so she decided to go with that one. “I think we should go this way.” Without waiting for an answer, she began to walk towards it.

“Did you just pick at random?” Suitcase asked, evidently hesitant about following her. 

“No, I had a formula.”

It only took a few seconds for Lightbulb to hear the crunching of dirt behind her. It wasn’t exactly a hard decision, she presumed. Baseball did say it was up to her to choose the direction. If they didn’t like her method, then they were more than welcome to go get themselves lost somewhere. That didn’t really seem like an ideal outcome for anybody, though. 

“So before we actually figure out where we are,” she started, trying to spark up any semblance of a positive conversation, “what are everyone’s theories about where we’ve ended up?” 

“Uh, I don’t know,” Suitcase muttered, “but hopefully somewhere close to home.” 

Baseball let out a slight chuckle, “that would be great, wouldn’t it? What are the chances we’re just in the yard of our school?” 

“Probably very low,” Knife said. “Why would we be shrunk down and put right beside our own school? Seems pointless.” 

“Hahah! Pointless,” Lightbulb turned slightly to shoot a beaming smile in Knife’s direction. “I get it.” 

Just before she turned back around, she was able to catch Knife’s eyebrow’s scrunch up. “..What??”

“Yeah,” Baseball’s voice dragged a bit, “you’re probably right. It’s still something to think about, though.”

“I guess? But I wouldn’t get my hopes up for it” 

Knife sped up slightly until he was walking essentially side-by-side with Lightbulb. He may have been a few inches in front of her, but she wasn’t really paying enough attention to tell. He probably could have been walking directly in front of her and she wouldn’t have noticed. She was too focussed on trying to follow this path to wherever it led and getting them out of there. 

Just when she started believing that this trail of grass was going to go on forever, she brushed past the final blade and was met with nothing but air. It felt very weird. 

She came to an abrupt stop, looking around for any sign that there was something here that could help them out. Bad idea. Almost immediately, Suitcase bumped into her from behind and the two of them fell to the floor. Just an inch away from where her face landed in the dirt, a rock was nestled into the ground. A bit more to the left and they would have had a pretty big problem on their hands. 

Luckily, no shattering was in the books today. At least not yet. After giving herself a moment to process, Lightbulb shoved herself back up to her feet once again. “You alright?”

Suitcase shook her head, but Lightbulb wasn’t sure if that was an answer or just her trying to get dirt off of her own face. Lightbulb reached down and helped her to her feet, pulling her up by her handle. She wobbled a bit, but ultimately was able to stand again. “Thanks.” 

“You have to be more careful than that, Suitcase.”

Baseball was immediately met with an exhausted sigh, “yes, I know.” 

“Is there anything up there?” Baseball asked. 

Lightbulb shrugged, “I didn’t get the chance to check before I got shoved to the ground.”

She coulda sworn she saw Knife roll his eyes out of the corner of her vision, but there was no proof of him doing such when she turned. “Have YOU checked?” 

Knife didn’t answer her, but the fact that he didn’t was answer enough. 

Lightbulb walked past the forest of grass and into the more open patch. It wasn’t too big, maybe about the size of an average backyard? Lightbulb wouldn’t know, her family lived in an apartment, but that felt about right. At least compared to them. Given how small it appeared they were, it would probably be a much lesser area to a normal-sized object. 

There were a few rocks, a few raised patches of dirt, and some little plants peeking through the Earth and scattered about. None of it was particularly eye-catching though. None of it was even all that noticeable. Not when compared to the GIANT MACHINE in the middle of it all.

“Well, uh,” Lightbulb turned back around, “there’s definitely something here.”

Chapter Text

“Well, uh, there’s definitely something here.” 

Lightbulb’s words hit Knife before he could even process what he was seeing in front of him. Like she’d said, there was definitely something. Something huge. 

Whatever it was, it was certainly some type of machinery. If the metallic glare over the entire thing didn’t give it away, then the obvious wiring wrapping around the surface would have. 

Baseball and Suitcase walked up until they were right beside Lightbulb and Knife. Nobody said anything, but Knife could assume they were all thinking about the same thing. What the heck was that?

Once he realized nobody else was going to do it, Knife rolled his eyes and began to approach the machine. Nothing about it really seemed out of the ordinary. Well, other than the fact that it was a random giant machine laying in the middle of the same patch of grass they’d just been dropped into. But, y’know. Other than that it was pretty normal. 

He walked around to one of the machine’s other sides, noticing two circular gaps of matching sizes leading to the internal parts of the machine. They were already easy to see through the glass casing on the side, but getting a closer look inside wouldn’t hurt, right?

Knife turned around to look at the other three he was stuck there with. “Well? Are you guys afraid it’s gonna bite you?”

“I don’t think getting bitten is one of the main things we should be concerned about when it comes to approaching random machinery that’s like a hundred times your size,” Baseball said. 

“Yeah,” Suitcase agreed, “there are other reasons. Like, maybe, getting electrocuted?” 

Lightbulb played with one of her bracelets, “I dunno, I think being bitten is a valid concern.”

Knife couldn’t help the expression he made after hearing her say that. “Lightbulb.. It’s not alive. It can’t- HOW would it bite you??”

She gestured at the machine, “it could still crush us! That counts.” 

“That isn’t biting, though,” Suitcase almost whispered, seemingly just as confused about Lightbulb’s logic as Knife was. 

Giving up on trying to understand what she was getting at, Knife turned back around and headed towards the machine. Once he reached one of the circular gaps, he took a look inside. 

“If you die I’m not going to your funeral.”

“You were never invited, Baseball.” Knife ran his hand along the opening of the gap before ducking inside of the machine. 

After a moment, he poked his blade back out, looking at the other three. “See? Nothing happened!”

Lightbulb smiled, immediately perking up. “Alright, good enough for me! C’mon guys.”

She sprinted over to where Knife was, hopping into the machine and joining him in the investigation. Baseball and Suitcase still seemed more hesitant, but eventually they made their way over as well. 

From the inside, the workings of the machine were completely exposed. They could see every wire, every connector, every piece that probably brought the machine to life when it was activated. Truthfully electrocution was a very valid concern, but Knife didn’t really care about that right now. What he did care about was figuring out what this thing was and whether or not it had anything to do with them being the size of bugs right now. 

Right in the center of the machine was an elevated disk that rose just above the glass that covered the machine’s top. Right below the disk was a circular gap in the glass, just wide enough that Knife could probably push himself through it and get up to the top of the machine if he tried. He walked over to the center just below the disk and reached up.

Unfortunately for him he was just too short, and his fingertips only grazed the glass rim of the gap. He huffed, dropping his feet flat to the floor. He turned around to scan the inside of the machine, trying to figure out where Lightbulb had ended up. After a second or so, he spotted her in one of the corners studying a bolted wire.

“Hey, Lightbulb!” he called out. She turned to face him instantly, standing up. He was honestly a bit surprised.

“Yeah?” 

“Can you boost me up a little?” he asked, “I’m trying to get up to the top of the machine but I’m not tall enough to reach it.” 

Lightbulb rolled her eyes in such a way that Knife couldn’t decipher whether it was genuine or playful, but walked over from the corner of the machine nonetheless. “Yeah, I can help. Why do you wanna get up there anyway?” 

“Obviously there aren’t any controls from in here,” Knife said, shifting his arms so that Lightbulb could hoist him up, “I wanna see if there’s any up there.”

Lightbulb managed to lift him up just high enough for him to reach out and grip the raised disk itself. He used his arms to pull himself up, wiggling out of Lightbulb’s grasp (which, admittedly, wasn’t all that hard to do. She was willing to let go of him the second she saw he’d grabbed the disk).

It took a little bit of awkward maneuvering, but he managed to push through the gap and climb up to the top of the machine. Now he could not only see the entirety of the inner workings of the thing, but he could also see the outside. Around the disk were three metal rods sticking up out of the machine and pointing towards the sky. Each one had a ball shape at the top and a short metal plate that dipped towards the disk right under it. Metal wire coiled around each rod, connecting to its base. 

Turning just a bit allowed him to see one of the sides of the machine, where the glass stopped and gave way to knobs and buttons. “Yup, there are definitely controls up here. Any of you coming up?” He looked down through the glass. 

All three of his unwilling companions stared up at him. Suitcase especially seemed a bit hesitant, “uh, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that can also fit through that gap.” 

Lightbulb put her hands on her hips, turning towards Baseball and Suitcase, “well then there’s an easy solution! Suitcase, you let Knife pull you up there, and Baseball and I will see if we can find a way up from the outside.” 

“Wait, why can’t I come with you guys?” Suitcase asked. 

Knife couldn’t exactly read Lightbulb’s expression through the glass, but he could tell it shifted, “well, you can fit through the gap, right?” 

“I mean.. yeah, probably.” 

“Then you’re good to go! C’mon Baseball,” Lightbulb shot her a thumbs up and ran out, dragging Baseball along by the straps of his bag. 

Without any other options, Suitcase just kind of shuffled over to the center of the Machine. Knife could see her clearly now, her face lining up with the open gap. He kneeled down and bent over the opening, “so do I just.. pull you up by your handle?” 

“I can’t exactly reach up there with my legs.” 

“Yeah I guess that’s true. Okay, hold on,” Knife dropped himself against the disk, reaching his left arm through the gap. He almost had to press his face against the metal to reach Suitcase’s handle, but he managed. He was careful to avoid grabbing the bow that was tied around it, choosing to stick to the other side. 

In one swift movement, he pulled her up through the gap and onto the top of the machine. She stumbled for a moment before steadying herself on her feet. 

“See? Easy!” Lightbulb’s voice sounded from behind the two of them. They turned around in time to see Lightbulb climbing over the side of the machine, Baseball right behind her. “There’s a branch just against the machine on that side, by the way.”

“Wh-” Suitcase sputtered, “that looked so much easier!”

Knife tapped his foot on the glass of the machine, “what matters is we’re all up here, and we have some stuff to figure out.”

Baseball turned to the controls that Knife had spotted before, “you mean like these buttons?” 

“Yup, exactly those buttons.” 

Knife broke off from the group and made his way over to the controls, trying to see if he could make out what the writing under them said. Beside the buttons were two knobs, one labelled “science” and another labeled “power”. He didn’t want to risk messing with either one just yet. 

As for the buttons, there were also two. One was labelled “target” and one was labelled “activate”. The target button was glowing slightly, giving off a dulled yellow light. 

Baseball walked up beside Knife, also looking at the buttons. “Wow. Wonder what those do,” he said, a sarcastic edge to his voice. 

“God, you really need to start h-” Knife caught himself and immediately paused. 

“Huh?”

“Nevermind,” Knife shook his head. He stepped closer to the “target” button, leaning down to get a better look at it. He shot a quick glance up at the rods sticking out of the machine. There had to be a connection there, right? 

Only one way to find out. Knife pushed himself up to his feet, stretching out for just a moment before jumping on the button. Knife’s action was immediately followed by a very loud buzzing sound that rang through his ears. His vision flashed and the air around him heated up as a sharp laser of light shot down to connect with one of the metal rods. 

All four of them stared at the laser, nobody moving an inch or saying a thing. Well, until Baseball turned around to look at Knife, “KNIFE??”

Knife turned back to meet his eye, “what?” 

Baseball looked completely baffled by Knife’s actions, just staring at him for a few seconds. “What the heck was that?” he finally managed to say after a moment, “we had no idea what that was going to do!”

“Yeah, and we do now,” Knife pointed out. “How were we supposed to figure out what it did if we didn’t press the button?”

“Where is that even coming from?” Suitcase asked, still staring right at the laser. 

Knife shrugged, “no clue, but it’s gotta be from somewhere.” 

He followed the line of the laser, realizing it was connected from the machine to a tall, pointed device a while away. “Nevermind, I’d have to assume it’s coming from that thing.” 

“It doesn’t seem like that’s the only one,” Lightbulb said, pointing first in one direction and then in another. Sure enough, when Knife looked in those directions he saw two more pointed devices. 

He crossed his arms, “why is there only one laser that’s working, then?” 

Baseball nudged Knife slightly, gesturing over towards one of the metal rods. Knife hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a laser connecting that one, it was just super weak and flickering. “That one looks like it’s trying to work, but something’s messing with it.” 

“And that one’s blocked!” Lightbulb added, pointing towards the third rod. 

“Blocked?” Knife turned to her. 

She nodded, “yeah, don’t you see the grass that’s blocking it? The laser shot from that thing, but it can’t touch the machine because there’s grass in the way.”

And she was right. Just a bit away from the machine was a blade of grass with a circular glowing mark against it, and behind it was the beginnings of the failed laser. Huh. 

“Well if we want to figure out what this machine does,” Knife said, “we’re gonna have to deal with those lasers. How do we get that grass out of the way?” 

Lightbulb shrugged, “maybe we can try pushing it? Grass isn’t that hard to break, right?” 

It was worth a shot. 

The four of them walked over to the branch that Lightbulb and Baseball had used to climb onto the machine and used it to get down. They immediately made their way over to the grass blade that was blocking one of the lasers. This seemed like the easiest thing to deal with for now, since they had no idea what was weakening the other one. They just had to hope that was something they’d be able to deal with, too. 

The first thing that Knife did once they reached the grass was to grab it and try to move it. Pushing was first, which didn’t really work at all. All he managed to do was slightly ruffle the grass. Pulling was next, which for a moment seemed like it would work. He managed to drag the grass out of the way just enough for the laser to pass it and connect with the machine, but it wasn’t a position that he could hold forever. The second he let go of the blade of grass, it fell right back in front of the laser. 

“Okay, plan B,” Lightbulb clicked her tongue, “Knife, cut it down.” 

Knife blinked at her, “with what?” 

“I don’t know, you’re a knife.” 

“I’m not gonna use my own head to cut down a blade of grass!” 

Lightbulb gave an exaggerated dramatic sigh, “fineee, anyone see any particularly sharp rocks around here that we could use instead?” 

“We shouldn’t need to look for that right now, I don’t think,” Baseball chimed in. He looked down towards where Suitcase was standing, “Suitcase?” 

Suitcase understood immediately and opened herself up, kicking something out of the case part of her body and onto the ground. She quickly shut herself before Knife could get a look at any of the other things she had in there. 

“Oh dang, why do you just carry around a boxcutter?” Lightbulb asked, leaning down to pick up the thing Suitcase had dropped. Sure enough, it was a boxcutter. 

Suitcase kind of glanced away, “I have to open boxes sometimes at my job, after school. I’ve had it for a few years and it’s kind of dulled down, but hopefully it works.” 

“It should be able to do the job,” Lightbulb said. She turned back to the grass blade and began cutting through it with the boxcutter. 

It wasn’t a swift one-swipe-and-the-grass-fell action, and she had to saw back and forth a few times to actually make a cut, but eventually she managed to get through the blade of grass. 

Nobody accounted for where it was going to land when it fell, though, and they all had to quickly move out of the way to avoid being crushed. It was like a really thin tree while they were this small, and none of them wanted to test what it would feel like to be squished by one. 

Lightbulb stepped back to admire her handiwork as the laser shot past the chopped down grass blade and connected with the metal rod of the machine. “See? We got this.” She was about to walk back to the machine before pausing, “oh right, here’s your boxcutter back, Suitcase.” 

Suitcase nodded, opening the gap in her case just wide enough for Lightbulb to slip the blade back through it. “Now we just have to figure out why the other laser is flickering, right?” 

“Seems about right,” Baseball agreed. “What do we think this machine is gonna do, anyway?” 

Knife stuck his hands into the pockets of his jacket as they began to walk in the direction of the weak laser’s source, “personally I’m hoping for it turning us big again. I don’t want to deal with being tiny anymore.” 

“Of course that’s the ideal situation,” Baseball said, “but whoever or whatever put us here wouldn’t just leave that thing so close to us if it was just going to make us big again. That would kind of defeat the whole purpose of shrinking us in the first place, wouldn’t it? Right?” 

Lightbulb shrugged, “we still don’t know WHY we’re down here or who’s responsible for it. For all we know it could be some really super complicated prank that was only meant to last a few minutes.” 

“Who would invent shrinking technology for a prank?” Suitcase asked. 

“I don’t know, someone maybe.” 

“But why us?” Knife asked. “I mean, we’re just four random students. We’re not even all in the same grade. The only thing we all have in common is that we share ONE class with each other.”

Suitcase mumbled something to herself before pausing and speaking up, “wait, we aren’t the first group of people to go missing in that class.”

“Yeah, obviously, we’re the last four left in there,” Lightbulb said, her voice noticeably trailing off towards the end of the sentence as she began to mess with one of her bracelets. Knife didn’t even need to look to know she was messing with the red and orange beads. “WAIT-! You don’t think that there’s a connection there, do you? Like, maybe we’re not the first ones to be shrunken down like this?”

Knife rubbed the bridge between his eyes, “Lightbulb, obviously we’re-”

“Hold on, it does kind of make sense,” Suitcase interrupted. 

“Okay, sure. Enlighten me. How does this make sense?” 

Lightbulb locked her fingers together as they continued to walk, “well eight months ago, four people in our computer science class went missing, right? And four months ago, four more people in our computer science class went missing. And what happened today? The four of US went missing!”

“Woah- hey! We aren’t ‘missing’,” Baseball argued. 

“Not yet,” Lightbulb agreed, “but if this machine doesn’t turn us big like we’re hoping, it only takes a few days for us to be considered missing just like the rest of the students in our class. Come on guys, you have to admit that it makes sense.” 

Knife squinted at her, “so what, our computer science class is just cursed or something?”

“Probably not cursed, but SOMETHING freaky is going on,” Lightbulb shrugged. “But if this is the case, then there’s the chance that the other eight are somewhere around here.” 

“After eight months?” Knife raised an eyebrow, “there’s no way Balloon isn’t dead by now if he was out here.” 

“Hey, don’t say that!” Suitcase picked up the pace of her walking so she could catch up to Knife, “Balloon would be perfectly fine!”

“I mean, if you want to tell yourself that-” 

Knife was immediately interrupted by Lightbulb sharply nudging him in the shoulder, “seriously, knock it off.”

He pulled his arm back and shoved it back into his pocket.

Baseball cleared his throat, evidently trying to cut through the tension in any way he could, “soo.. what do you guys think is going to be weakening the laser thing?” 

“My only hope is that it’s something that we can easily deal with,” Suitcase answered. “If this is something that’ll make us big again, I don’t want to lose the chance.” 

“None of us want that,” Lightbulb said, dropping her arms to her sides. “I’m thinking maybe it’s an electrical problem. Y’know how lights will flicker sometimes if they aren’t connected properly? Maybe something like that.” 

“That sounds possible,” Knife agreed. “That doesn’t sound like something we could really deal with, though. If it’s an electrical problem, what would we even be able to do to fix it when we’re this size?” 

Lightbulb snickered to herself, “I could probably charge it up if I tried. Just a quick zap and we’re good to go!”

“I don’t think that’s actually how electricity works,” Suitcase countered. “Also.. does anyone else hear that?” 

“Hear what?” Knife asked. 

“That squeaky.. chittering sound?”

They all paused, stopping in their tracks to listen for the noise that Suitcase was describing. For a moment they all were about to pass it off as nothing, but then Knife heard it too. 

“Oh yeah, there’s definitely something around here making noise,” he confirmed. “What in the world..”

“Whatever it is, it sounds alive,” Baseball said. “A creature of some sort, maybe?”

“What creature would be small enough that we could barely hear it from here?” Knife asked. Nobody could give an answer.

They continued walking, slower this time. Every so often they would hear the chittering again, and when it happened they would look around for the source of the noise. 

Lightbulb held out her arm, pointing upwards, “I think that’s the leg of the device thing, which means we have to be really close.” 

“There’s a cable running down it that way,” Suitcase pointed out. “Maybe if we go there we’ll be able to see what’s causing the flickering.” 

They quickened their pace again, almost ignoring as the chittering grew louder and more frequent. Just as they were about to approach the cable, they realized the noises were layering on top of one another. 

There were multiple of these things, and there were a lot of them. And yet, somehow they still hadn’t run into a single one. 

They turned the corner around a particularly large rock and stopped dead in their tracks. There, right in front of them, scattered around the ground, were a bunch of bright red shapes skittering across the dirt. Dozens of lawn mites spanned across their vision. Their legs spanned out on either side of their bodies, latching into the dirt and pushing them forward. Even from this far away Knife could tell they had just enough fuzz on them to make them look even grosser than he already thought they were. 

While most were walking in the dirt, a few had climbed up onto the cable they’d been following. Their piercing mouthparts sunk into the outer casing of the cable, exposing wiring in a few patches along its length. He could hear the occasional zapping of the wires as their fangs cut it just a bit too close. 

“Please tell me this isn’t what we have to do to fix the laser,” Suitcase said, though her tone of voice showed that she knew that wasn’t something they could truthfully say. 

Baseball turned away from the crowd of mites, “how are we even supposed to deal with that? There’s so many of them, and there’s only four of us! All we have to deal with them are our hands and feet.” 

“We could stab them with Suitcase’s boxcutter?” Lightbulb suggested. Her words made Suitcase instantly look like she was about to vomit. 

Knife crossed his arms, “that’s still only one weapon. That isn’t exactly going to get us anywhere.”

Lightbulb looked around for a bit, visibly thinking his words though. After a moment or so, she immediately perked up and bent over to pick something up off of the ground, “well, if it’s weapons we need…” Knife was sure the thing she was holding as she stood up had to be the smallest pebblet on the planet, but with how small they were it was larger than the hand it was being held in. 

“I guess it’s time to improvise.”

Chapter Text

“What are you even DOING?” 

To be fair, Suitcase was wondering the exact same thing. But Knife could be a bit quieter about it. Who knew if those mite things could hear him right now? If they could, that would definitely screw over their chances of attacking them. 

“We wanted weapons, right?” Lightbulb asked, as if that made any of her current actions make any more sense. 

“Well, yeah?” Knife half-relented, “but still, what are you doing?” 

Although her hat kind of shielded her eyes from Suitcase’s view, she coulda sworn Lightbulb rolled her eyes just then. “Improvising some weapons? Come on, pay attention, Knife.” 

“Okay?” Knife glanced from Lightbulb, to Baseball, to Suitcase, and then back to Lightbulb. “And how are you-”

Lightbulb raised up one hand, which was holding a dull, rounded pebblet, and swiftly brought it down against something she was holding in another hand. It didn’t take Suitcase more than a second to realize that what she was was holding in her other hand was another pebblet. Well.. two more pebblets was more accurate now, since it had just broken in half. 

Lightbulb smiled, hopping back up to her feet with a triumphant “aha!” She dropped the duller pebblet onto the ground and passed one of the pebblet halves to her other hand. She looked up at the other three objects, holding out both of her hands to show them what she had been doing. 

Oh. She made spearheads. 

Okay in hindsight that should have been way more obvious to them than it was, but in their defense–

Yeah no there is no defense for that they were kinda stupid. 

“Like I said, I am improvising weapons!” Lightbulb’s smile widened just enough for it to also showcase her annoyance at Knife’s impatience. “We don’t have any real weapons, so this is the best we’ve got.”

Baseball blinked at her a couple times, “how do you even know how to make those?” 

“Mango signed Fan and I up for a lot of lesson things when we were younger,” Lightbulb shrugged, “like.. preteen years. Knife can vouch for it.” 

All eyes were on Knife now. “Uh, yeah. I can vouch for that I guess. We were in the same scouts program.”

Lightbulb nodded, “yup. We were also signed up for some crafts class as well. Woodworking, maybe? Whatever it was, spears were one of the things we were taught how to make. Knife wasn’t with us for that one. ” She turned and began to search for… something. 

“That… doesn’t seem like the safest thing to be teaching a bunch of preteens how to make,” Suitcase voiced. 

“Probably not, but I don’t think they really cared,” Lightbulb shrugged. She paused in front of a growing sprig that jutted to about her mid-body and reached over to yank it out of the ground. For a few seconds it seemed like the plant’s tiny roots were going to keep it in place and prevent her from picking it, but it eventually gave in and Lightbulb was able to pull it free. “Soo.. are any of you gonna help me make these, or what?” 

With those words, Knife immediately broke from where he was standing and walked over to help Lightbulb. Not really knowing how she could help, Suitcase chose to continue sitting off to the side. She watched as the two of them worked, pulling a few sprig stalks out of the ground and sprouting plant buds from their safety in the soil. She decided to stop paying attention when Lightbulb bit into one of the sprigs to pull its two halves apart. 

“I feel like there’s a better way she could have done that,” Baseball said, breaking through the silence that the two had been sharing. 

Suitcase leaned into the grass blade behind her just slightly, “and more sanitary. I mean, that thing just came out of the ground.” 

Baseball sounded like he was trying and failing to stifle a laugh, “be careful, you’re starting to sound a bit like Soap there.” 

Suitcase turned to him with her best attempt at a stern look, which immediately shot him down. “Right-! Uh.. sorry…”

“It’s not like the people you’d need to be apologizing to are around right now,” Suitcase shoved away a pebblet with her foot, “I wasn’t all that close with her."

“Yeah, maybe, but I still-” 

Whatever Baseball was about to say got immediately cut off by Lightbulb running back over to them, spears in hand. She smiled, holding out two of the makeshift weapons to Suitcase and Baseball, “spears are crafted and ready to kill some creepy crawlies!”

Knife looked almost disturbed by her word choice, resting the spear he was holding against his shoulder. “Lightbulb I swear you have to be one of the cringiest people I’ve ever met.” 

Suitcase reached out to “grip” the spear that she was offered between her teeth. She had to immediately forgo any criticisms she had about whether or not the sprig stalks were sanitary enough for Lightbulb to bite considering the only way she could hold the spear was with her mouth. 

Once the spears were no longer in her hands, Lightbulb crossed her arms. “I think the word you’re looking for is charming, thank you very much.”

“That is certainly not the word that I was looking for.” 

“Guys, can we just focus?” Baseball muttered past the spear he was holding. It was barely even possible to understand him, but Suitcase got the basic gist of it. “We gotta kill the bugs and get the laser to work.”

Suitcase nodded, “if we wait too long the mites might actually chew through the wires. Then we’d have no way of figuring out what that machine does and if it can get us back to our normal sizes again.”

Lightbulb spun her spear around in her hand, “yeah, you’re right, that would be pretty bad.. How are we gonna deal with them, though?”

“…Lightbulb you did all that work to make the spears and you don’t even have a plan??” Knife looked like he was about one more stupid comment away from being completely done with her. 

“Well obviously I have a plan,” Lightbulb rolled her eyes, “we’re gonna use these things to kill the mites. The problem is approaching them without them spotting us first.” 

“They’re just bugs,” Baseball pointed out, “how hard could sneaking up on them be?”

“Sure they’re just bugs, but they’re DOZENS of bugs that are practically the size of small dogs,” Knife reminded him. “If we don’t have some sort of strategy, we’re just going to get swarmed.”

Baseball didn’t look any more convinced, “we’re going to get swarmed no matter what. I don’t think anything’s going to change that.”

“Yeah,” Suitcase agreed, “it’s not like we can kill all of the mites at once. Even with the spears, there’s only four of us. As soon as they realize we’re attacking them, they’re going to attack back.”

Knife rolled his eyes, looking more and more annoyed with them as time passed, “the point is that that’s ALL we want to happen. We want to be the ones to start the attacking so that there’s less time for THEM to attack,” he practically spelled out for them, “do you understand now?”

“Oh,” Suitcase vocalized, “OH. Okay, I get what you mean now.” Suddenly she felt very, very stupid. 

Knife looked a bit relieved, “yeah. So, we need to figure out how to kill a few before they notice us.”

It didn’t seem like anybody had any suggestions for a whole second and a half, until Lightbulb suddenly perked up with a confident “I think I’ve got it!” She pointed towards Knife, “Knife, since I’d imagine you’d be the best out of all of us at climbing, you sneak around the rock to the ones that have gone up the wire. If we can pick some of them off first, then we’ll only have the group left to deal with, and protecting the wire will be easier.” Knife nodded as the instructions were given to him. 

Lightbulb turned away from him and pointed at Suitcase instead, “and Suitcase, you sneak around the other way to the cave the wire goes into, just in case there are any more of them down there. 

Suitcase had not been expecting that. Her mouth opened slightly, dropping the spear she’d been holding to the ground. “Wait- why me? Why can’t you or Baseball do it?”

“You’re the smallest,” Lightbulb reminded her, “so you’re the one who’s most likely going to be able to fit if the cave gets too tight. Neither of us would be able to do that, just like we couldn’t fit in the gap of the machine.”

“But-” Suitcase fought for any way to argue against having to do this, “won’t it be dark down there? You’re the Lightbulb, not me.”

“You have a flashlight, right?” Lightbulb asked. 

Did she see that when I took out the boxcutter? Suitcase glanced between Lightbulb and Baseball for a few seconds. “Yeah, I do… but I can’t carry it AND the spear at the same time.” 

“That has a pretty easy solution,” Lightbulb shrugged, “you don’t need to carry the spear in your mouth.”

Lightbulb bent down to pick up Suitcase’s dropped spear, “here, open up a little.”

Though hesitant, Suitcase listened. She only parted just enough for a completely flat hand to fit in the opening, but apparently that was enough. Lightbulb slid the spear into her inner case, pushing it through to the other side. Suitcase immediately closed back up to the best of her abilities. 

It felt weird to have some random object preventing her from being able to close. It was not comfortable. But that didn’t seem to stop Lightbulb. 

“There you go! It’ll work about as well as keeping it in your mouth, but this way you can also carry a flashlight,” Lightbulb smiled, clearly proud of herself. 

Suitcase shuffled her feet a bit, “I guess..”

Lightbulb nodded confidently, “alright then! Knife, you go do your thing. Suitcase, you go do yours. Baseball and I will fend off the group until you get back.”

Knife started backing away, “alright then. Good luck to you two.” 

He turned around on his heel and began leaving to the wire. 

You two, Suitcase noticed, meaning Baseball and Lightbulb I’d assume. Not me, who is about to go BY MYSELF into a dark dirt cave to fight bugs BY MYSELF. No. I don’t need to be wished luck. She bit the inside of her lip as she walked towards where the wire disappeared into the earth. 

Whatever. I don’t need luck! I can do this myself.

She stood in front of the earth opening in front of her. She didn’t even need to walk in to see that it was practically pitch black in there. Not ideal, but she could do this. She had to do this, now. 

Suitcase opened up a bit, shaking out the flashlight she kept inside of her case. She almost dislodged the spear that Lightbulb had placed there, but managed to keep it safely in the opening. 

Once the flashlight had fallen to the floor, Suitcase closed back up and picked the item up. One click and the flashlight was on. There we go. See? Not so bad. Taking in a deep breath, partially blocked by the flashlight she was gripping quite uncomfortably in her teeth, she stepped into the cave.

“OKay bugs,” she mumbled into the empty air, “I am going to hope for my sake that you aren’t too durable… because I need this poorly made rock spear to be able to kill you.”

As she walked deeper into the cave, albeit slowly, she began to wonder if there were any bugs down there at all. Maybe she wouldn’t HAVE to kill anything by herself! Maybe she’d be alright!

But that hope vanished immediately as the cave echoed with a high pitched chittering sound. Instantly, Suitcase began wishing that Knife had wished her that luck after all. 

Her feet didn’t want to move. They wanted to stay cemented right in the floor below her. But she had to keep moving. She was given a job, and she couldn’t just fail them like that.

One more step. And one more. Just one more. That’s all she had to think about. Just each step after the other. She’d be alright. She’d be fine. She’d be-

Her thoughts were interrupted by a shrill, high-pitched squeal and the sound of scurrying legs. She almost screamed as a bright red shape lunged out at her, swiftly rotating her body to jab it into the wall with her spear. She thought her heart might tear itself out of her chest. 

As she began to pull away, she saw the mite’s legs twitch, and push, and writhe. It wasn’t dead. She’d stabbed it, but it wasn’t dead. She had to go farther. With as much force as she could, she jerked the spear farther into the bug, piercing straight through it with a sickening crunch and sinking into the dirt wall. 

Suitcase felt like she was about to throw up. Right then and there, she felt like she was about to throw up. But she swallowed the feeling back. She had to persist. She had to get through this. She had to get home. 

This is no different than if I was killing these bugs at my normal size, she told herself, it would be fine then. So it’s fine now. Even if it is super, super, super…

She shook the mite free from her spear, almost gagging as a string of yellowish goop dragged from the body to the weapon. ..super gross.  

Suitcase walked away from the evidence of her brutality, disappearing farther into the cave. 

As she pushed on, she heard the occasional sharp sparking sound. The same sound she was hearing from the exposed wiring on the surface, but louder. She had to be close, then. 

He tried to ignore the fact that continuing on meant the almost guaranteed chance that she would have to kill another one of the mites. Or the fact that it felt like the walls of the cave were actively trying to force themselves around her. That didn’t matter. It was fine. She was fine. She was great. This was definitely what she wanted to be doing with her life two weeks before becoming an adult. 

She walked around a corner, and that’s when she spotted it. More of the wire was jutting out of the wall, surrounded by the burnt corpses of bugs that had dug just a bit too deep past its rubber casing. Their legs stuck up into the air, curled in on themselves. Their little red bodies were crisped black, and their faint patches of fuzz were shriveled. Only two of the bugs around it appeared to be moving anymore. But even that was too many. 

One immediately spotted her, leaping towards her with its high-pitched calls. Suitcase slammed the thing into the wall with her spear, this time learning from the one she’d had to attempt twice and exerting much more force the first time around. She heard the crunch, and immediately knew the thing was dead. 

This was not helping with the walls. She felt even sicker.

The second mite seemed rather preoccupied with pulling at the rubber of the wire. It didn’t even seem to notice Suitcase approach. That’ll be a good thing. Hopefully. 

She slowly crept over to the wire, trying her best not to alert the distracted bug. It never seemed to pay her any mind. She almost felt worse. The others at least had warning beforehand. This one didn’t even know she was there. 

But it was jeopardizing the only clue the four of them had on how to get home. Besides, this was the job she was given. She couldn’t go back without completing it. 

She sucked in a breath past the flashlight, jerking slightly as she jabbed the spear into the distracted mite. One of its legs broke off from the contact, falling to the floor with a few extra muscle memory twitches. But that wasn’t enough. She hadn’t killed it. 

The bug fell backwards, into the gap between the dirt walls of the cave and the wire it had been chewing on. It gave its call, hissed, and hobbled out from under the wire towards Suitcase. 

The girl felt terrible. She felt awful. She felt totally and absolutely sick. She couldn’t fight back her scream this time, kicking the thing away when it got close enough to bite at her. She was mere inches away from knowing exactly how its fangs felt pierced into her skin. 

She couldn’t. She couldn’t. She couldn’t.

She drew the spear back, slamming the pointed end down where she thought the bug was. Sure enough, its exoskeleton crunched under her force.

Suitcase stepped back, taking in a few deep breaths. She tried not to look down at the bug, much more squished and crushed than the others had been. Yellow sludge oozed and pooled from the cracks, bringing the nausea back up and into her throat. 

She continued on, trying to ignore it. It wasn’t there. That’s all she had to tell herself. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t there.

After a while, the wire disappeared back into the wall. She continued to follow the cave, but it didn’t appear to emerge again for a long while. Just the packed dirt lining the walls.

It really made her wonder what made a cave like this. At first, she’d figured that it was just the empty space where the wire had been shoved, but if it was still going into the wall and leaving large enough gaps for Suitcase to walk through, then that didn’t seem to be the case. 

She almost considered turning around for a few seconds. If there was no more wire to protect, then she could leave, right? But no. One step farther and she heard the recognizable sparking sounds of the exposed, rubber-less wire, along with the excited chittering of the bugs. 

Great. 

She crept along the wall, keeping watch on the ground for any stray mites that weren’t attacking the wire. This time, it seemed as though there weren’t any. Just the scattered toasted bugs and the living one that was on the verge of joining the rest. 

Suitcase glanced at it, uncertain on how she should approach this one. Jabbing at it didn’t seem to work last time, because the bug was too far away from the wall. So what would?

She shuffled forward, nearly dragging her feet as she did so. There was no way her socks weren’t absolutely filthy by now, anyway. Just like the last preoccupied mite, this one didn’t seem to take any notice of her approach. Instead, it continued sinking its fangs into the rubber of the cable and yanking backwards. As if they hadn’t already done enough damage. 

Suitcase almost felt bad about their efforts, too. They were trying so hard to accomplish a task that was destroying them. Whenever they made any more progress, they’d just get electrocuted. Then the next bug would continue on as if nothing happened. 

But maybe if that’s how they worked, then Baseball was right. They’re just bugs. 

Suitcase stared at the mit for a second longer, before turning back a bit to position her spear. Raise up, WHACK. She jumped backwards. 

The bug’s weird little body made contact with the exposed, sparking wiring. Instantly, Suitcase heard the swift zap go through its body as the thing curled in on itself. Its legs twitched once or twice before going still. 

The burnt body that remained fell to the ground with all the others. The smell was awful. Sickening. She had to keep walking. 

She hoped and hoped to not hear the sparking again. If there was no more sparking, then there were probably no more bugs. If there were no more bugs, then she wouldn’t have to be doing this anymore. She could just put her flashlight away and walk out of there.

But no. The universe didn’t want to listen to her hopes and wishes. Instead, the universe wanted to hit her with ANOTHER SPARKING SOUND deeper into the cave. 

The first thing she noticed when she approached the exposed wire was the lack of any additional mites surrounding the area. That was a good thing, at least. 

The second thing she noticed was a pile of rocks against the far wall. Curious, she shone her flashlight on them. They shimmered under the light, little flecks of… something glittering within them. But what was most important to Suitcase was that the light still went past them. 

There was more to the cave, but Suitcase wouldn’t be able to reach it. She didn’t have to reach it. She could leave after this one. She could not have felt more relieved to learn that information. 

She repositioned the flashlight in her mouth one more time. Get it together, Suitcase. This is the last one you have to kill. You can do this. 

She didn’t want to burn it again. That approach made her feel a bit too bad. But she also knew she couldn’t do what she tried the first time, since that didn’t work and only ended up with a much more mangled and harmed bug in the end. She didn’t exactly want these things to suffer, even if they grossed her out a ton and were impeding her ability to get back home. 

Suitcase stood there for a few moments, juggling a few different ideas in her mind. None of them sounded particularly appealing to her. Nothing sounded particularly appealing to her in this situation, but she couldn’t do nothing. She had to do something. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. 

Immediately she regretted this action as the items she kept in her case rattled about. She froze, staying as still as she could. This, of all things, seemed to alert the distracted bug of the presence of another being, something she definitely DIDN’T want the thing to know about. 

She wasn’t quite sure if it was just the shaking of the light or the rattling sound itself, but it didn’t matter to her. She practically held her breath, tensing every muscle in her body like she was about to get hit by a car or something. 

Despite her preparation for an attack, one never came. The bug simply lowered its head again and began to pull at the rubber. More sparks flew from the wiring, giving more light to the cave for their split second of existence. 

Suitcase couldn’t be in the place any longer. She knew that much. She had to act fast. 

She adjusted the spear just a little. She had one last idea, and she was sincerely hoping that it would work. This time, she really held her breath. She took one step back, turning slightly so the spear was pointed at the bug. And then she ran. 

The tip of her spear pierced into the bug’s exoskeleton with a crack and a squelch, driving it into the wall. No extra movement, no struggle, just one more dead bug to add to her increasing pile. 

And she hated it. 

Suitcase took one final step backward, watching uncomfortably as the bug fell to the ground behind the wire. At least, to her benefit, the wire concealed its body and she didn’t have to look at it anymore. To be safe, she circled the perimeter of the cave, shining her flashlight into any especially dark corners. But it didn’t seem as though there were any mites left. 

Great.

She kneeled down, dropping her flashlight out from between her teeth and tucking it back into her case. Sure, she still had to leave the cave, but she didn’t want to see anything anymore. None of the evidence of all of the mites she had killed to get this far. She didn’t want to see them, and she didn’t have to. 

Suitcase sat there for a second, not really eager to get up and run to join the other three in killing more mites. Maybe if she just sat in the cave for an hour, she could pretend that there were a bunch of bugs in there that kept her busy. 

But she doubted that would be believable. Baseball, at the very least, would immediately assume it was a lie. He’d believe that if there really were that many bugs in there, Suitcase would come out to get help before even attempting to kill any of them herself. 

Truthfully, that might have been right. 

If the FIVE she’d killed already made her feel sick and overwhelmed, Suitcase couldn’t even imagine how she’d be feeling after any more than that. 

She would have to leave. The darkness wasn’t comforting her at all, anyway. 

Suitcase pushed herself up to her feet and began to walk back. 

As she drew closer and closer to the exit of the cave, she could feel more anxiety bubbling up. What if she went out there and the other three were completely swarmed? She wouldn't be able to save them, there was no way. She tried to clear her head of the thoughts, but it was really difficult when there were so many of them. 

Just like it didn’t take too long to get to the cave from the rock, it didn’t take too long to get back to the rest from the cave. Contrary to what her thoughts had been proposing, Baseball, Lightbulb, and Knife didn’t seem to be struggling at all. In fact, from what Suitcase could gather, it seemed like they were.. done?

Baseball and Lightbulb were standing off to the side as Knife shook an appearingly recently-killed mite off of the end of his spear. Baseball no longer had his spear in his mouth, and it was instead being held in Lightbulb’s other hand. 

Lightbulb was the first one to notice her approach, “oh! Hey Suitcase! You done with the cave?” 

“Yeah,” Suitcase forced her voice to lay steady, “there were a few mites chewing at the cable, but they’re dead now.” She opened up enough to toss the spear out of herself. “What happened out here?” 

“Well,” Baseball started, “after Knife killed the bugs that were on the wire, none of the rest really tried to climb up. So we just had to clear out the group that was already down here and wait for you to come back. Knife and Lightbulb were a lot faster at it than me.”

Lightbulb shifted Baseball’s spear in her hand, “to be fair, you were having to use your mouth. We were able to use our arms.”

Suitcase looked up at where the flickering laser had been before. Now the flickering was no longer there, and the laser was instead one steady line all the way back to the machine. “Does that mean we can head back now?” she asked, “to see if that thing works?”

“Yeah, we should be able to now,” Knife nodded. “No more of those things are on the cables, and the laser is working. Plus, it’s getting darker and I really don’t want to be out here.”

Knife picked up Suitcase’s spear as they all began to gather up their stuff. Suitcase was about to ask him why he wanted to keep it if they were likely going to be big again in just a few minutes, but she decided to keep her mouth shut. Knife still freaked her out a little, and she didn’t want to risk it.

Lightbulb began to lead the way back to the machine. Suitcase let herself fall into line behind her, not even putting an ounce of thought into her movements aside from following Lightbulb. She didn’t exactly want to think about anything right now, but that proved to be incredibly difficult. 

She hoped with complete and total sincerity that when she became big again she wouldn’t think about killing the mites as such a big deal. It felt wrong to hope that, but it was what she hoped. Maybe she would feel less bad when she was no longer only about four times their size. 

Lightbulb stopped walking, and Suitcase almost ran directly into her. Again. Luckily, this time she was able to stop in time. From the look on Baseball’s face, though, he definitely realized how close she’d gotten. 

“Alright!” Lightbulb clapped her hands, “let’s get back up on that machine and see what that second button does.” 

They all began to walk up the branch in a line, filing together on top of the machine. Knife broke free from the group first, walking over to the buttons. Suitcase tried to keep up with him, but it wasn’t as easy. The air on top of the machine was very, very hot, nearly sizzling with the heat of the lasers above her head. It made it incredibly hard to focus on just about anything else. But hey, it was something distracting.

“The ‘activate’ button is glowing now,” Knife pointed out. 

Suitcase looked down, discovering that, indeed, it was in fact glowing. Maybe a bit more faintly than the target button, but it was still glowing. 

Baseball walked up behind the two, looking over Suitcase’s head at the button. “So.. are you gonna press it?”

“Can you give me two seconds?”

“You weren’t even moving-”

“What part of ‘can you give me two seconds’ do you not understand?” 

“Knife,” Lightbulb interrupted the two before they could get too deep into back-and-forth bickering, “just press the dang thing.” 

Knife turned back around, shaking his hands out. Suitcase took a step back, and Knife stepped onto the button, forcing it down with the pressure of his feet. 

The next few seconds were surely eventful. One second, it seemed like nothing was happening. And then the next, the brightness and heat of the lasers had disappeared completely. Suitcase didn’t even have the time to really process that before they were back again, even brighter and hotter. In fact, they were entirely too bright and too hot. Suitcase couldn’t see a single thing, and she couldn’t feel a single thing. 

She sealed her eyes shut, nearly collapsing in on herself. Was this the process, or was this something entirely different? Was she just about to be disintegrated right there? Just a tiny spot of ashes on that machine? She wasn’t quite hoping for that to be the case. Not quite guilty enough about killing those bugs. 

And then the light vanished. Suitcase opened her eyes and, hesitantly, she looked down at herself. She still looked the exact same, and the appearance of the machine under her served as evidence that she hadn’t grown at all. So what in the heck was that??

“Well.. we’re definitely still small,” Lightbulb pointed out, as if that wasn’t incredibly obvious by now.

While Knife was in the middle of giving a frustrated “yeah, clearly” when he was interrupted by a crash. A very, VERY loud crash. Not only that, but an accompanying boom that echoed through Suitcase’s head for a few seconds after it had already ended.

Suitcase blinked a couple of times, turning herself in the direction of the sounds. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together and figure out what had just happened. Oh my god we just blew something up. 

“What was that,” Baseball nearly whispered. 

“Um-” Suitcase stuttered out, “should we go check that out?”

To Suitcase’s surprise, she saw Knife shake his head at the side of her vision. “Like I said earlier, it’s getting way too late. We’d never make it over there before it’s too dark. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t want to take that risk.”

“We’d have Lightbulb,” Baseball pointed out to him, “and Suitcase’s flashlight. Wouldn’t we be fine?” 

“It’s not just being able to see,” Knife clarified, “it’s also the fact that we are in no way prepared for the things we’re inevitably going to find out here. We weren’t even prepared for those mites back there. If we run into something bigger this late, we’re screwed.” 

“So what, are we just going to sit around forever and never check it out?” Lightbulb asked. 

Knife stuck his hands into his pockets, and it was just bright enough for Suitcase to be able to tell he was moving his fingers around something in his right pocket, “we’ll check it out first thing in the morning. For now, though..”

Before he said another word, Knife lowered himself until he was sitting on the machine. It was only then that Suitcase realized she was also on the “ground”, but for some reason she wasn’t able to get up. She’d never realized she was so exhausted already. 

“We need to get some sleep.” 

Chapter Text

If there was one thing that Knife was right about, it was that they all needed to get some sleep after the day they had. Waking up tiny and having to kill a bunch of giant bugs with spears would certainly do something to your energy levels. And not a good “something” either. Baseball couldn’t say that he got a great night’s rest, but some sleep was better than nothing. Even if his sleep schedule was gonna be all kinds of jacked up after this. 

They’d all decided to camp out on top of the machine for the night. It was incredibly cold and not at all comfortable, but they had to make do. They weren’t going to risk sleeping on the ground. Those mites were certainly not the only bugs that were roaming around down there. Baseball didn’t even want to know what would happen if they were suddenly ambushed by a spider or something in the middle of the night. 

That morning Baseball sat up, blinking his eyes a few times. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to get used to the lighting difference when he was this small. Hopefully he’d never have to. 

Knife and Lightbulb were already awake, getting their bags ready and situated. Baseball had decided to just keep his bag tied around himself for the night to avoid the hassle of having to ask someone to help him re-fasten it. Normally he’d have his sister to help out, but that wasn’t exactly an option right now and he really didn’t feel like asking Lightbulb or Knife for help. Unfortunately, that certainly hadn’t helped with how uncomfortable he’d been. 

He turned to his right, nudging Suitcase with his foot. “C’mon Suitcase, wake up.”

She stirred slightly, her eyes straining open. “Wh.. huh?”

“We’re going to go check out the explosion, remember?” 

“The wha..” Suitcase sat up, her face twisted in very evident confusion for a second or two. “Oh, right.”

Lightbulb raised both of her hands in the air and clapped them as loud as she could. “Alright everyone! Gather up!”

Knife rolled his eyes, “you don’t have to call us like that. We’re already all in the exact same place.”

Lightbulb shrugged, “just wanted to make sure. Everyone knows the plan, right?”

Everyone answered with their own unique chime of agreement, causing her to smile. 

“So.. are we gonna leave now?” Baseball asked. 

Lightbulb looked like she was about to nod, before her eyes widened and she let out a quick “oh!” She kneeled on the ground, flipping her backpack to be in front of her and opening it up. She reached into the bag and pulled something out. 

“Is.. is that a granola bar?” Knife blinked at her. 

“Yeah,” Lightbulb said through a mouthful. “I have more if you guys want some. It’ll probably do us good to eat right now.” 

“Please,” Suitcase stood up, suddenly seeming much more awake. She was staring at the granola bar in Lightbulb’s hand like it was some holy object that had descended to save her soul or something. 

Knife glanced between Lightbulb and Suitcase before making his decision. “I guess, if it’s an option.” 

“I’m…” Baseball took a slight step back, “I’m good.”

Lightbulb paused from her passing around of granola bars to stare at Baseball. “Oh come on, Baseball, it’s breakfast! Most important meal of the day, y’know. Besides, there’s not really anything else around here to eat, and it wouldn’t be a good idea for any one of us to go without.”

Despite not really feeling up for it, it was hard to refuse again with three sets of eyes staring at him and awaiting his repeated answer. After a moment or two of hesitation, Baseball sighed and accepted the offering of a granola bar. 

“So what do you all think is gonna be at the end of that explosion?” Suitcase asked after taking a moment to eat a bit. 

“You want my honest opinion?” Knife raised an eyebrow, “I think we’ve screwed up big time.”

Lightbulb turned to him, “huh? Why?” 

“Explosions don’t just happen for no reason, Lightbulb,” Knife sounded incredibly annoyed at having to explain this to her, “which means that machine was probably connected to something vital that we just destroyed. If that ‘something’ had anything to do with us getting home, then that’s going to be a big problem.”

Suitcase’s mood and demeanor immediately shifted, “wait, you don’t actually think we’ve done that, right?” she asked Knife, concern and worry both very evident in her voice. 

“I’m just saying we can’t rule it out as a possibility, and a very likely one at that,” Knife shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s impossible for it to have been harmless.”

Baseball stood up, putting himself between Knife and Suitcase, “well we don’t know until we go check it out, right? That’s what we’re going to do. Let’s not make any assumptions until we see for ourselves.” 

“I was just answering a question that she asked,” Knife seemed disinterested in Baseball’s attempts to smooth the situation over. 

Lightbulb elbowed him in the arm, “coulda been nicer about it, though. She was asking for theories, not for you to make her anxious.”

Knife rolled his eyes, “whatever. Let’s just get going before it gets too late in the day.”

“It’s morning,” Baseball pointed out. He knew Knife was just trying to avoid owning up to his own words, but it was still a stupid excuse. 

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Knife ignored him. 

Lightbulb stretched her arms behind herself, “It’s best to set out as soon as possible anyway, I guess. Don’t wanna be missing for too long.” She laughed a bit, “one night and you can easily pass it off as staying over at a friend’s house, but two days in when people start calling the police. At least that’s when my parents call the police. But at this point, if I was them and I only had one child of three that wasn’t missing I’d probably call the police if she was even one second late to get home after school.” 

Baseball turned to her, “how can you just say that? And so casually?” 

“Because they could be HERE,” she answered, “if there’s even a chance, that immediately brings my hopes up. 

Suitcase nodded. “She’s right. If the others in our class that are missing are also here, wouldn’t we want to find them before we get big again? It wouldn’t be fair to just get ourselves home and potentially leave them here. 

“Yeah,” Baseball agreed, “but there’s also the chance that they’re not here. I don’t want to think that’s the case either, but if we spend days or even weeks looking for them then that’s more and more time we spend not getting home.”

“I’m sure they can’t be too far,” Suitcase tried to reason, “I mean…”

Knife stepped down off the top of the machine, “if everyone that’s gone missing this past year is here, then that means that they’ve had four months to a year to walk around. Who knows how far they could be now?” 

“Well.. when you put it like that it sounds a lot less likely that they’re still–” Baseball immediately shut himself up when he realized how Suitcase and Lightbulb were looking at him. 

Lightbulb shook her head, “look, I’d KNOW if anything happened to Fan or OJ, okay? SIblings know these things. I mean, OJ broke his arm when he was out once and I knew something had happened before he even got home. If there was something even more serious going on…” she hesitated, “I just think I’d know, alright?” 

“Is that how that works?” Suitcase asked.

Baseball glanced back at her, “no, not normally.” 

“Honestly I do kinda believe her there,” Knife said, surprising baseball. “She’s always had some weird connection with her siblings. I’ve never understood that whole mess.”

“Well maybe you’d understand if you had a better relationship with your family,” Lightbulb shot him a large, toothy smile. “Anyway- we definitely need to make an effort to look for everyone. Four groups of students from teh same class going missing at four-month intervals can’t be a coincidence, especially since the first five to go missing were from the previous year. There has to be SOMETHING going on.”

She walked to the edge of the machine and hopped down, beginning to walk in the direction they’d heard the explosion from. Baseball and Suitcase scrambled after her. 

Since Knife was already off the machine, it took him no time at all to begin following the three of them. He fell behind Lightbulb a bit, purposefully matching Baseball’s pace. He gestured towards Lightbulb, “see she’s normally so airheaded and then she goes and spouts stuff like that.”

“We all have our strengths,” Baseball replied. “It’s not that hard to figure out, anyway.” He picked up his walking speed a bit. “Oh, and if you have any more suspicions about how we’ve basically just killed ourselves, try to keep them to yourself. You’re freaking Suitcase out, and we don’t really need that.”

Knife huffed, keeping his slower pace instead of trying to catch up with Baseball again. 

Suitcase scooted into the empty space between Lightbulb and Baseball, “how far away do you think the explosion was?” 

“It had to be pretty far, right?” Baseball started, “I mean, if it was closer I think it would have been louder.” 

Knife chuckled, “once we start seeing things that are on fire I’m sure we’ll have found it.” 

Lightbulb turned to glare at him, “Knife.” 

“What?” he held his hands up as if he was trying to defend himself, “I’m being constructive this time.”

Baseball sighed, “y’know.. If we do have to spend a lot of time finding everyone else, or even just getting home, there are a lot of things we haven’t really thought of yet.”

Lightbulb raised her eyebrows, “like what?” 

“Well, you had granola bars in your backpack today, but what about tomorrow? Or even LATER today? And we may have been able to sleep on the machine last night, but who knows where another safe sleeping location might be? There’s just no way they mites are going to be our biggest problem. What about the weather? What if it rains? Or what if we run into other bugs out here?” 

Suitcase bit her lip, eyebrows furrowing, “wait, yeah, what about spiders? What if we run into one of those?” 

“Spiders aren’t that scary!” Lightbulb giggled, “they’re kinda cute to be honest.” 

“They won’t be when they’re a hundred times your size,” Knife smirked while Lightbulb’s back was turned. 

“I guess that’s just a bridge we’ll have to cross when we come to it.” 

“But if it’s a crumbling bridge,” Baseball stepped a bit faster, “which it kind of is, then you should at least think about HOW to cross it before you get there.” 

Lightbulb paused, “we don’t need to get literal about the bridge. The point is, it will be better for all of us to not think about the hypothetical giant spiders unless we see them. In THAT case, we can figure something out. But for now it’s best to not get ourselves worked up over a problem that might not even exist.”

“I’m only worried that our spears won’t be strong enough,” Suitcase butted in. “I barely had enough force to piece through the mites. There were a few that kept coming after me even after I stabbed them.”

Baseball felt himself involuntarily cringe, “gross.” 

“Yeah, imagine being there.”

“I’d rather not to be honest-” 

“Regardless,” Lightbulb interrupted, “let’s just try to keep hopes high right now! Best case scenario is we find everyone, immediately figure out how to un-shrink ourselves, and then be on our merry way. Let’s just hope that the best case scenario is the real thing for now.”

Knife leaned forward, “when it turns out that it’s not, are you gonna stop being in charge because you're out of ideas?

“I’m not ‘in charge!’” Lightbulb argued, “we all have a say here”

“Do we?” Baseball asked.

“Wait, can I go back to the food issue?” Suitcase reminded them of one of Baseball’s undiscussed points. “How many granola bars do you even have?” 

“Four more.” 

“Great,” Knife stood up straight again. “So that’ll last us one more meal, and then what? We just die of starvation? What a way to go.”

“Well we’d have a while until we die of starvation,” Baseball said, “I’m kinda more concerned about water after our water bottles run out. But I don’t think water would be that hard to find around here.” 

Lightbulb smiled at Baseball’s admittedly horrible attempt at optimism. “I’m sure we’ll figure things out! Like, there’s gotta be food sources around here.” 

She looked around for a second, before immediately running over to something. A pretty large patch of small mushrooms growing around a big stone jutting out of the ground. The mushrooms were white, and bundled together kind of like a bouquet. She plucked one of them out of the bundle, holding it out for the rest of them to see, “like just look at these mushrooms!” 

“Don’t eat random mushrooms you find on the ground. Even edible mushrooms should still be cooked-” Suitcase started to say, before stopping herself as she realized Lightbulb was already eating the top of the mushroom. 

“Too late!”

Knife raised an eyebrow, looking from Lightbulb to the half-eaten mushroom in her hand. “Well, I’ll make sure to tell Paper Lantern and Lemonade that you died being an idiot. It’s what they would have wanted.” 

Lightbulb shook her head as she plucked a bunch more of the mushrooms from the rock and shoved them into her backpack. “It’s an experiment!” she stood up and rejoined the group so they could continue walking, “if I feel sick, then we know not to eat them. But if I don’t, then we have another good food source!”

“That’s not a safe wat to experiment with foods that could possibly kill you,” Baseball mumbled. 

“Well how do you think people did it before we had charts and stuff?” Lightbulb asked him, as if that made anything better. “They took the risk! It’s not like I have a book about what mushrooms are and aren’t safe to eat on hand right now.”

Suitcase tilter her body slightly away from Lightbulb, “do you even know how bad the effects of poisonous mushrooms can be?” 

“I am being resourceful,” Lightbulb responded, not really answering, “you brought up a food issue, and this is my way of trying to solve it! I am helping.” 

Knife pushed his way past Baseball and Suitcase and back to the front with Lightbulb, “let’s just get on with it, yeah?” 

They began to walk in silence, which Baseball supposed was a nice change. None of Knife’s “predictions” that just made everyone feel terrified about what was to come, and none of Lightbulb’s forced positivity. 

Baseball appreciated her attempts, he really did, but it all came to be a little too much. They WERE in a dangerous situation. Lightbulb trying to act like everything was all fine and dandy wasn’t exactly what they needed right now. They needed to stay optimistic, sure, but not at the cost of realism. 

The truth was that it might take a while to get back home, but they would do their best. They wouldn’t just let each other die out here. They would try to get back home, and they would try to find everyone else. But if they weren’t able to, Baseball would ensure they at least stuck together through it all. 

It was the least he could do at this point. 

Baseball’s steps grew unsteady on the uneven ground, even as he tried to keep his eyes glued to the dirt below his feet. But it wasn’t just the ground that was making him feel unsteady. 

Just like everyone else, there was the possibility that he had people he cared for out here. There was Suitcase, right beside him, but if their theorizing was correct then Nickel was out here, too. He didn’t want to think about what could have possibly happened to him. 

It had been about eight months since he’d gone missing. Baseball tried to deny it to himself for the longest time, but when Nickel didn’t come back that hope very quickly dissipated. He, Balloon, and two other kids from their class just disappeared one day. Nobody had any idea what had happened to them. Just poof, gone. 

People passed it off as some freak tragedy for a while, and some even speculated that Balloon and Nickel had something to do with each others’ disappearance. It was no secret that they weren’t on the best of terms, especially to those that were friends with either of them. They tried to let go of it for a while, mostly due to Suitcase, but a few days before their disappearance there was a pretty significant fallout. It was no wonder people had their theories. 

But those ideas faded as soon as the news spread that Marshmallow and Soap had gone missing as well. They had nothing to do with the situation, so it was very unlikely that they would have gotten tied up in that mess. The rumors disappeared completely when another group went missing four months later. 

Baseball had done his best to help Nickel’s family put up posters, but he never turned up. But now… now there was a chance. 

He’d give anything for it to be more than just a chance. 

Baseball glanced to his left where Suitcase was. He wondered if she was looking forward to them rediscovering Nickel at all. She had been pretty mad at him before it all, but who knows, maybe your friend that you’re mad at going missing is enough to soften your opinion of them. 

Suitcase blinked a couple of times and then glanced towards him, resulting in him immediately looking away and towards the sky. 

There was something he hadn’t noticed before. 

“There’s an apple tree in this direction,” he said, “do you think that’s where the explosion came from?” 

Knife tilted his head, looking in the direction of the tree. “Well that’s where the smoke seems to be coming from. There was probably something built beneath its roots that we blew up.” 

“Guess we’re going for the tree, then!” Lightbulb said, as cheery as ever. “And y’know what a tree means? Possible shelter and potential new food sources!”

“It also means bugs,” Knife added. “Bugs hang out in trees.”

“They do do that, yeah.” 

Lightbulb began to climb a raised portion of the ground that Baseball soon realized was actually a raised root from the apple tree. “We should be fine, though. As long as we’re fast enough travelling there. If we go fast, then nothing will even notice we’re there!” 

“...And if we’re not?” Suitcase prompted. 

Lightbulb hissed a bit under her breath, “welllll I hope you all can run!” 

Suitcase shoved herself up to the top of the root, “wow, that sure is reassuring.” 

Knife was the next on the root, and he and Lightbulb helped Baseball make his way up to the top. It was even more difficult to remain steady while up there, but it wasn’t like he had much choice. The only other way around the apple tree was a super long path around the roots, and that would take entirely too long and be much more dangerous. 

The four of them climbed up the roots until they reached the base of the apple tree. The roots were much closer to each other up there, and it became a lot easier to traverse. The overlapping roots and fallen branches from platform to platform became fairly easy to maneuver around after a moment or so of walking. 

Baseball was almost sure that it would be an effortless walk to the explosion before they came across a gap between roots that was just barely too far apart to jump and too dark in between to properly judge if they could go down to just walk around it. 

However, there was one way they could get across. A bridge. 

A single leaf passed between the closest parts of the gap, one side caught in a slit in the root itself and the other held down by the overlap of the root beside it. It didn’t look all that strong, but it would work if they managed it right…

“Do you think we can make it across on that?” Suitcase asked, squinting at the two locations where the leaf was caught. 

“Only one way to find out!” Lightbulb hopped over to where the leaf met the root, taking the first step. 

Baseball held his breath, half expecting the leaf to break from the root and for Lightbulb to plummet to the ground. But she didn’t. Surprisingly, the leaf managed to hold her up. 

“Tada!!!” Lightbulb did a small twirl. “C’mon!” 

Lightbulb stayed on her corner of the leaf as she let Baseball, Knife, and Suitcase pass by her. Baseball felt almost sick walking across the leaf. It swayed under their feet, threatening to drop them to the darkness below. 

“I really don’t like this,” Suitcase mumbled.

He was relieved when he stepped onto the root on the other side, finally letting himself breathe. Knife followed close behind him, and Baseball almost missed the way he instantly backed away from the leaf a few steps. 

Suitcase and Lightbulb were halfway across the leaf when Baseball noticed one side of it beginning to dip. He moved to warn them, but he wasn’t fast enough. One half of the leaf collapsed right beneath Suitcase. 

She let out a panicked yell as she slipped down to the darkness. Lightbulb was quick, though, and she instantly bolted over to catch Suitcase. She wrapped her hands around Suitcase’s handle, and soon Lightbulb was the only thing standing between Suitcase and the unknown. 

“Suitcase!” Baseball could hardly breathe. He was almost tempted to run back onto the leaf, but he knew that wouldn’t help them at all. 

“I’m okay!” Suitcase gasped out, “I think..” 

Lightbulb braced against what remained of the leaf, “I’ve got her! I just gotta pull her up without making things worse.” She let out a breathy, uncertain laugh, “in hindsight, this probably wasn’t a good idea.”

“You think?” Knife said, as if that was helping ANYONE. 

“Don’t worry Suitcase!” Lightbulb shook a bit and began to glow, “I’m… holy crap.” 

“WHAT” Suitcase’s eyes grew wide, now illuminated by Lightbulb’s glow. 

Lightbulb shook her head, “nothing! Don’t look down, okay? Do NOT look down, whatever you do.” 

Suitcase glanced up, and then towards Knife and Baseball, “I can try?” 

Though he knew it was kind of stupid, Baseball’s curiosity got the better of him. He inched towards the edge of the root, looking over to the gap below. Now that Lightbulb had turned herself on, there was just enough light down there for Baseball to be able to make out a shape. 

A very, very large shape. With eight legs and a giant hairy abdomen. 

His breath caught in his throat as he immediately scurried backwards. He tried not to make any sound that would alert Suitcase, but she apparently noticed anyway. 

“SERIOUSLY, what is it????” 

“Just listen to Lightbulb!” Baseball instructed, “Lightbulb, do you need any help?” 

Lightbulb managed to move her feet back a little more so it was met with the stem of the leaf. “Any more weight on this thing is just going to cause it to tilt more. I’ve got this.. Just..”

She drew in a deep breath before pulling her arms as far up as she could. Suitcase fell backwards onto the leaf, almost collapsing against Lightbulb. Lightbulb shook herself back off again, nudging Suitcase to the end of the leaf so she could get off. 

Not wanting to risk losing her balance, Lightbulb opted against standing back up again. She used her hands to pull herself towards the other three, but apparently she still managed to do something wrong. 

The leaf came loose from the other side, and the pathway they’d come from was now falling right into the gap. Lightbulb almost screamed, gripping as tightly to the side of the leaf as she could. The sudden shift caused her to light once again, leaving the closeness of the light as the only evidence that she hadn’t fallen right into the gap. 

“Well.. this isn’t good..” Baseball heard her say. “Uhhh.. give me a second.” 

He saw one of her hands meet with the root before it slipped right back down. 

Baseball heard a quiet shuffling sound, before it was interrupted by a strikingly loud hiss. 

“CRAP okay Knife pull me up!” she yelled up.

Knife stared down at the gap, “what the heck is that??” 

“KNIFE IF YOU DON’T HURRY UP I WILL DRAG YOU DOWN HERE WITH ME!” 

Knife immediately bolted away from the back end of the root that he’d found himself to grab onto Lightbulb’s hand. With one quick pull he managed to drag her up to the root with the rest of them, and she immediately began running. 

Knowing the danger, Baseball didn’t waste any time. He nudged Suitcase, and the two of them began running right after Lightbulb. He made the brief mistake of glancing behind himself and immediately regretted it when he saw the endings of long brown legs peek over the edge of the root. 

As he turned back to focus on running, he saw the unmistakable face of a GIANT, TERRIFYING SPIDER out of the corner of his eye. Yeah, this was exactly what he wanted to be doing on a Saturday morning. 

“So uh.. I think I dropped one of my bracelets on her head–” 

“LIGHTBULB!” 

“It wasn’t on purpose!” 

“BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP!” Knife yelled.

They continued to run as fast as they could possibly go. All worries about the instability of the roots were long forgotten, because they knew if they stopped running that the spider would not.  

It was impossible to miss that Baseball was lagging a bit behind. His heart was pounding in his chest as he heard the scrambling of the spider getting closer and closer to him. Yeah, he was gonna die. This was how he was gonna die. To a giant spider in the middle of nowhere while he was barely larger than an ant. How would they have a funeral for him at this size? 

As he was coming to terms with his imminent demise at the fangs of the spider, he noticed Lightbulb had slowed down to meet his pace. She pulled out one of the spears she’d created before, jabbing it at the face of the pursuing arachnid. 

The spear shattered against the spider’s fangs, but she still managed to lodge the sharpened pebblet into the small gaps of its exoskeleton. The spider hissed again, staggering just enough for Lightbulb to grab the straps of Baseball’s bag and drag him forward. They continued across the roots, and Baseball tried his best to ignore the way the sounds of the spider’s feet began to catch up once again. 

He didn’t think as he crossed over another fallen branch, even as he stumbled and nearly fell. He was kind of trying to Not Die right now, he could worry about whether or not he was damaging his ankles later. 

Just as Baseball was sure he was going to collapse, Lightbulb dragged them all down into another gap in the roots. 

Despite his desire to inhale all the air in the world right now, Baseball held his breath. He wasn’t sure if spiders could hear, but he didn’t want to take that chance. 

He could hear its feet get closer and closer, but it was also obvious that it was slowing down with each step. Eventually, it came to a total stop just above them. 

Baseball shrunk down as far as he could get. He didn’t think he’d be able to keep running. He didn’t think he’d be able to save himself. 

After what felt like an eternity, the creature turned around and began to walk back to where it had been sleeping before. Baseball could finally breathe again, even though it felt like the air was thicker than water. 

Suitcase was shaking next to him, barely able to keep herself standing, “THAT’S what I was dangling over???” 

“I told you not to look down for a reason,” Lightbulb told her.

“I figured it was because of the height or something!” Suitcase gasped, “not a GIANT SPIDER! What even WAS that?” 

Lightbulb glanced up, “wolf spider I think. It had the face. Fan isn’t as big on spiders as insects, though, so I could be wrong on that.” 

Baseball sealed his eyes shut, trying to calm down his racing heart. Finally he managed to draw in a deep breath, but almost instantly he began to cough. 

“God, what is with this?” he forced through his coughing. “Unless I’m just imagining all this smoke, I’m pretty sure we’re close to whatever it was that exploded.” 

“No, we’re definitely close to it,” Knife tried to shield his eyes from the smoke with his hand. “Look at that.” 

Right beside where they’d fallen in was a large stone, and on top of that stone was a charred piece of scrap metal. Purple sparks shared the edges of it, and upon closer inspection of the surroundings there were more purple sparks covering the ground. 

The area was burnt black, and smoke was rising from every surface. No wonder Baseball was struggling to breathe. 

“This has gotta be it,” Lightbulb said, walking up to the stone. “Now we just have to figure out what was here that caused the explosion.”

Suitcase walked past her for a few steps before pausing. “Uh.. maybe the busted open doorway over here?” 

The other three stared at her before rushing over to see what she was talking about. Sure enough, there was a hole carved into the apple tree where it seemed like the entrance to some type of facility or laboratory was housed. 

“Ooh, a door!” Lightbulb at least seemed excited by the discovery.

Baseball was a bit more hesitant, however, “should we go in there?” 

Knife shrugged, “it’s our best bet to figure out what’s going on.” He started walking towards the doorway, and gestured for everyone else to follow him, “let’s go.” 

The doorway opened up to a rather enclosed hallway, and the four of them had to walk in a line to even get through. From the looks of it it seemed like it could have been straight once, but it was now littered with broken holes in the ground and walls. Halfway down a hallway there was a window pointed towards a room, but when they reached the door that would have led to it the entire wall was bent almost in half. 

“There’s no way we’re getting in there,” Baseball commented, just to fill the empty air. 

“We probably could if we tried hard enough,” Lightbulb replied, “but I don’t really feel like it.” 

She looked around a bit more once they reached a more open area, “other than a few areas, it seems like the damage isn’t too bad. Maybe we didn’t mess anything up!” 

“Don’t get too confident about that,” Knife told her, “we still don’t actually know WHAT blew up here.” 

“And we don’t even know what this is,” Baseball added, “for all we know, it might have nothing to do with us going home.” 

Lightbulb blinked at him, “Baseball. It’s a tiny laboratory under an apple tree. There’s no way it has absolutely nothing to do with this mess.” 

“I guess that’s fair.” 

The center of the room featured a large tube reaching from the ceiling to the floor. The tube was made of glass, with a bright purple material flowing within it. Geometric shapes phased in and out of view within the material. Baseball’s eyes hurt the longer he looked at it. 

“There’s another door over there,” Suitcase pointed out. She gestured towards the other side of the room, at a door that Baseball hadn’t noticed before. 

The group of four walked over to the door. There was a glowing green light above it, and an equally as green button right beside it. For a second Baseball wondered if they’d need to press the button in order to open it, but the hissing of the door opening on its own very quickly answered that question. 

The room on the other side of the door was very dark. The small lights that had illuminated the hallways and the opening room seemed to not be present in the second one. To combat this issue, Lightbulb began to glow again, shining a bright light on both rooms. 

It took a second to adjust to Lightbulb’s light when in such close proximity, but at least they could see again. Baseball blinked to clear his eyes, squinting to see what was inside the room they were about to enter. But to his surprise, and empty room was not what they were met with. 

There was an object in there, staring right back at them. Lightbulb’s glow bounced off her glassy surface and made her eyes nearly impossible to see past the glare of her glasses. She stood in front of what appeared to be a large screen with a concerning looking popup in the center. 

If it were any other case, Baseball would immediately be freaking out. However, he recognized this person. Another student in their computer science class: Test Tube. 

One of the kids that had disappeared four months prior.

“Oh,” her voice barely reached him through his own surprise, “hello.”  

Chapter Text

“TEST TUBE?” Baseball’s voice was incredibly loud, especially given the fact that he was practically RIGHT beside Lightbulb. 

Lightbulb had never really gotten a good look at Test Tube. She’d seen her in class before, of course, but she didn’t think she’d have been able to recognize her if she hadn’t seen her face plastered everywhere after she’d gone missing. 

She was wearing the same dark green button-up sweater described on the posters 

“Yes, hi-” Test Tube raised her glasses a bit, allowing them to get a bit better of a look at her face, “Baseball, right?” 

Lightbulb hummed, “lucky guess, huh?” 

Test Tube looked confused, “he’s.. a Baseball.. and we share two classes together.” 

“Shared,” Knife corrected, “you don’t currently share classes with anyone, not for the past four months.” 

Test Tube sighed, “right- yeah.” She stared at the ground for a few seconds more. “It’s really been four months?” 

“Yeah, as of yesterday,” Lightbulb nodded. “Have you not been paying attention to how much time is passing?” 

“We’ve been trying to. Kinda hard to do while you’re out here, away from any sort of technology or calendars.” 

“We?” Suitcase asked, leaning forward a bit more. “Could you specify who you mean by that?”

Test Tube walked away from the giant screen and walked towards them instead, “everyone that’s disappeared in the past… eight months I guess. Mostly, anyway.” 

“Mostly?” 

“And only the past eight months?” Knife added. 

“Yeah,” Test Tube turned back around, walking even farther into the room than the last time. “Unfortunately, mostly. And eight months. I can explain more on the way over there, it will be a lot easier for all of us. Can you guys come take a look at this with me?” 

Lightbulb followed her to her position, ending up this time behind the large screen. Once she got closer to it, she realized the thing had legs. “What is this thing?” 

“A robot of some kind,” Test Tube answered her. “This place used to be behind a locked door that nobody could figure out how to open, but once we heard the explosion we figured there had to be some way in here now. This was already here when I came in.” She looked up at Lightbulb, “did you guys have something to do with this?” 

“The explosion? Yeah kinda,” Baseball answered before Lightbulb got the chance. “We turned on a machine that set off some lasers and they led to this-” 

“Well, then that’s a good thing,” Test Tube pushed against the back of the robot, pulling Lightbulb a bit farther to utilize her light, “without you doing that, we never would’ve been able to get in here.” Test Tube squinted at something, and Lightbulb realized that there was a sheet of paper with a very badly drawn smiley face taped to its back.

Lightbulb tilted her head a bit, “was there a reason you needed to get in here that bad?” 

“Well other than the fact that it’s the only evidence that objects were shrunk before us,” Test Tube walked back to the front of the robot, “we were hoping there’d be something in here that would tell us what the heck happened.”

She took a step back, “however, I think bringing you all back to the bench is a bit more important for now. We can always come back and look around later, with a bigger group. I’m the only one that went this time. Everyone else was either off gathering, catching up on some much-needed sleep, or… just doing more important things.”

“What were you doing with the robot, then?” Knife asked. 

“Just trying to get a better look at it,” Test Tube explained. “I really hoped there’d be some more information written on it somewhere, but all I’ve been able to figure out is that it’s a mepad mini. But that’s obvious from just looking at the meeple logo on its screen.” 

Knife scoffed, “so in addition to branching out into being a high school teacher, he’s making robots now? Can’t he just stick to making phones?” 

Suitcase looked up at him, “Mr. Cobs?” 

“We’re not in class, Suitcase, you don’t need to be formal,” Knife said in place of an answer. “But yes. Cobs.”

Test Tube rubbed between her eyes, mumbling some things to herself that Lightbulb couldn’t quite catch. “There’s a lot of stuff that I’ve gotta catch you four up on, but that can wait until we get back. We should get going. The earlier we get back to the bench, the earlier we can make a plan.” 

She rolled up her sleeves, walking through the doorway and out into the main area of the lab. She picked up a black messenger bag she’d left by the door that Lightbulb hadn’t noticed before. The four other students hesitated for a second or two before running after her. 

“Sooo–” Suitcase started, “now that we’re on our way back to the ‘bench,’ can you explain what you meant earlier? I mean, when you said you had mostly everyone.” 

“I meant what I said,” Test Tube shielded her eyes as they walked out into the open again. “There were two groups that merged into one: the group that went missing eight months ago, and us, the group that went missing four months ago. Keep watch for spiders, by the way.” 

She climbed over one of the roots, placing her hands and feet very carefully to avoid slipping. The other followed a bit slower, considering Baseball and Suitcase both needed a bit of help over the root, but managed to catch up with her nonetheless. 

“I think we’ve had plenty of experience with the spiders around here for one lifetime,” Baseball shuddered. If Test Tube noticed what he said, she didn’t pay any attention to it. 

”Can we focus on the other thing?” Suitcase asked. Baseball shut up. 

“Saying the group from eight months ago and the group from four months ago makes it seem like you would have everyone,” Suitcase continued. “You said mostly, that implies that it’s not everyone.” 

Test Tube bit the inside of her lip, and Lightbulb noticed her uneasy expression when she looked back at Suitcase. “Well..” she sighed, “okay. You should know before we get there. Before we met up with the first group to go missing, which was Soap, Balloon, Nickel, and Marshmallow, apparently Marshmallow had left them. As they said it, she just walked off in the middle of the night once and didn’t come back.”

Lightbulb felt her stomach sink. What did she mean Marshmallow just walked off? Where did she go? Was she okay?

The situation told her there probably weren’t going to be any answers any time soon. 

“That sounds super concerning,” Baseball said when nobody filled the silence, “didn’t anybody try to look for her?” 

“We did!” Test Tube responded, “we just haven’t been able to find her. We’ve been trying to look for Soap and Microphone too, but we haven’t been having much luck.”

Knife’s eyes grew wider, “Soap and Mic are missing too?” 

“Yes,” Test Tube’s reply sounded even more hesitant this time, “that happened after the group joined together. We were separating groups for hunts and to search for Marshmallow and they left together. We figured they were going gathering or even just for a walk or something, but they haven’t come back. So now it’s just Nickel, Balloon, Paintbrush, Fan, and me.” 

Lightbulb flickered her gaze over to Knife, who was subtly biting down on one of his nails. After a couple of steps he seemed to notice her looking at him, because he jerked his hands back down to his sides and straightened out his face. 

“What could have happened to them?” Suitcase asked. “I mean, you’ve been here way longer than us, what’s around here that could have caused them to go missing again?” 

“Depends on who you ask,” Test Tube answered. “Everyone has their own beliefs on where they could be now. Paintbrush of course thinks that they’ve gotten stuck somewhere but that they’re alright. Emphasis on the ‘they’re alright,’ especially for Marshmallow. Nickel isn’t as optimistic. Fan thinks we annoyed them so badly that they ran off.”

She adjusted the strap of her messenger bag, “I think they’re all equally as likely without any evidence of their whereabouts. I’d like to hope that they’re all okay, but we can’t guarantee it until they’re found. And considering that we know Marshmallow got attacked by ants almost immediately after waking up, I have my worries.”

Lightbulb dug at the skin under her nails. That certainly didn’t make her feel hopeful at all. If Marshmallow was that vulnerable, then who knows what had happened to her? She shook her head. She just needed to focus on something better. Get her mind off of this. 

“You uh.. You mentioned Paintbrush and Fan, right? How are they, are they okay?” She forced her voice to lie steady. 

“Oh, yeah, they’re alright,” Test Tube said, and Lightbulb felt like a huge weight was lifted off her chest. “Paintbrush is out getting supplies with Balloon. Fan and Nickel are back at the base, though.”

She paused for a second to look at Lightbulb. “You’re.. Lightbulb, you’re Fan’s sister, right?” 

“YES!” Lightbulb said, a bit too quickly in hindsight. “I’m just glad nothing bad’s happened.” 

“Yeah, sh- Uh– Fan’s talked about you. And Paintbrush, too. They’ll be glad to see you.” Test Tube took an extra couple of seconds. “Well, maybe not about the fact that you’re here- but.. you know, just seeing you in general.”  

“Hold on, Nickel and Fan are both back at the base and neither of them came with you?” Suitcase asked. “Wouldn’t it have been safer than you coming all the way over here by yourself?” 

“Of course it would have been safer. But Nickel is unfortunately recovering from his own stupidity right now,” Test Tube rolled her eyes. “Ran right into an ant nest and didn’t expect there to be consequences. And Fan’s dealing with that and making sure he doesn’t run off again.”

Lightbulb sped up her pace a bit to catch up with Test Tube, “is that like.. a regular thing?” 

“From Nickel? Yeah. He’s gotten into way too much her his size. Spiders, ladybugs, ants-” Test Tube shook her head. “I admire the confidence, but it’s pretty annoying. He’s lucky enough he still has both of his legs, but he’s definitely going home with more scars than the rest of us.”

They continued walking, growing silent for a while. As uncomfortable as the silence made her feel, even Lightbulb had to admit that it might be for the best. She knew Paintbrush and Fan were alright. That’s what mattered to her. 

Surely they’d find Marshmallow soon. And Microphone and Soap as well. Then they could find the other five, and then they could go home! It would be easy, surely. They would have to. 

After a while, Test Tube spoke up again, “so.. how long have you four been out here?” 

“Since yesterday,” Knife answered. “We slept on the same machine thing that caused that lab to blow up.” 

“Have you eaten?” 

“Lightbulb had some granola bars so we ate those this morning,” Suitcase recounted. “And then she ate some mystery mushrooms on the way there, but none of the rest of us ate those.” 

“What did they look like?” Test Tube’s expression suddenly looked very concerned. 

“It was a cluster of small white ones,” Lightbulb explained. “Oh, wait-” She shook her backpack off of her back and unzipped it, reaching in to pull out one of the mushroom stalks. “This!” 

Test Tube’s face immediately softened to showcase her relief, “yeah, those mushrooms are fine. We eat them sometimes, mostly adding them to other things. Just.. don’t try to eat the big ones.” 

Lightbulb zipped the bag back up, biting down on the mushroom that she’d already pulled out. She really had no need to hold onto so many, now. It seemed like they’d have an okay source of food back at Test Tube’s base.

Regardless, a snack wouldn’t kill anyone. Especially now that she knew the mushrooms were harmless, even if they didn’t taste all that good. But lightbulb had eaten plenty of things that weren’t supposed to be consumed, so she was sure she’d have been fine regardless. 

“The base isn’t too much farther away now.” Test Tube assured the group. “We built it on top of a bench not too far from where we’d woken up.” 

“On TOP of a bench?” Knife asked. “Like the seat? How do you even get up there?” 

“You’ll see,” Test Tube said, a proud grin forming on her face. Whatever it was, Test Tube seemed really excited to show them, and Lightbulb was certainly excited to see. 

They were able to see the bench for a while before they’d even reached it. It towered far above the grass that they walked through like a skyscraper. A very weird skyscraper. 

…Okay, not really like a skyscraper at all. But there wasn’t really anything else Lightbulb could compare it to. 

Everyone felt more energized once they realized how close they were to being able to rest again, not to mention the proximity of the people they were dying to reunite with. Lightbulb would have ran hundreds of miles if it meant she’d get to see Fan and Painty again.

They finally reached the base of the bench after a few more minutes, and Suitcase looked like she was about ready to collapse. She wasn’t really the sporty kind as far as Lightbulb could tell, and she already had the shortest legs among all of them. It wasn’t really a surprise that she seemed the most exhausted. 

“We’re basically there,” Test Tube confirmed, looking up the legs of the bench towards the seat at the top. “Ready to see how we get up there?” 

Lightbulb felt jittery with excitement, from a large array of different reasons. One, Test Tube made this seem interesting. Two, she hadn’t seen her siblings in SO long. She was so incredibly excited at the prospect that she’d finally be able to see one of them soon. Three, it would definitely be nice to be somewhere that was more safe. 

Test Tube led them through some stalks of drier grass. It crinkled and crunched with every swaying movement, but it made way for the group easily enough. After passing a couple of rows, the five of them found themselves in a wide clearing. The clearing had the bases of the benches legs on either side, but it also had a raised platform between them that seemed connected to the middle bar in some way. 

She continued walking forward until she reached the platform, with the other four following close behind her. “I don’t think we’ve tried this with a group this large, we’ve only done smaller chunks at a time. So Me, Knife, and Suitcase will go up first, and then I can help you two get up next,” she turned to Baseball and Lightbulb, “is that alright?” 

“Yupparino!” Lightbulb smiled. 

Test Tube nodded, herding Knife and Suitcase onto the raised platform. The setup looked a lot like a balcony, if it weren’t for the fact that it was basically on the ground. There were spirally railings on the side that opened up in the center, and a thick rope in the middle that was secured to the underside in some way. Test Tube reached into her bag, fiddling around for something, “alright, sit down.” 

Knife and Suitcase looked between each other, before Knife decided to ask the question they were both thinking, “uh, why?” 

“This is your first time doing this, trust me you’re gonna want to sit down,” Test Tube finally pulled the thing she was looking for out of her bag, which looked like a small handmade bow and a sharpened arrow.

Baseball’s eyes widened a bit, “what’s that for?” 

“Like I said,” Test Tube smiled, “you’ll see.” 

She looked up at the mid-point between the base of the legs and the seat, about where the rope connected to the middle bar. She settled the arrow onto the string, drew it back, and shot in the direction she was looking. 

Lightbulb heard a sharp splitting sound. She was confused for a second, at least until she realized the platform was rising. It was rising rather fast, actually. 

Test Tube ran over to it, reaching her arm up and jumping to grab ahold of it just in time. She pulled herself up and onto the platform alongside Knife and Suitcase. Lightbulb bet it took a lot of practice and effort to be able to perfect the timing for that. That or she was just trying to show off, which was just as likely. 

Baseball and Lightbulb stayed at the bottom, watching as the three of them rose into the air. A large bundle of presumably heavy items was attached to the other end of the rope, falling to the ground with a loud thud. At the same time, Knife, Suitcase, and Test Tube reached the middle bar. 

“I uh… I hope she doesn’t expect us to be able to do that.” Baseball voiced. 

Lightbulb chuckled to herself a bit. “Nah, I don’t think so. The thing that brought the elevator up is down here now, so there’s nothing to shoot.”

Just from the look on his face, she could tell Baseball wanted to ask how they were supposed to get up there then. But he likely decided it was too stupid of a question and refrained. 

Once the three were off of the platform, Lightbulb realized the bundle was being dragged back to the top. She looked up, and realized that Test Tube and Knife were working together to pull it back up. Ohhh, that’s how they do it.

After a moment or two, the platform was back on the ground in front of Baseball and Lightbulb. They wasted no time in climbing onto it and sitting down just as Knife and Suitcase were instructed to. Now that they’d seen how fast the platform raised itself into the air, they definitely didn’t want to risk trying to stand on that thing just yet. Especially not Lightbulb. 

Once they had settled themselves onto the platform, it began to rise just as fast as before. Even sitting, Lightbulb felt herself wobble. She had to hold her palms down to the platform to keep herself balanced. 

She was almost a little dizzy when the platform reached the top and she stood up to step out. She grabbed onto the railings by the exit to steady herself. “See why I said to sit down?” Test Tube asked. Lightbulb and Baseball nodded in response. 

Test Tube began to pull the bundle back to the top, and Lightbulb joined Knife in helping her out this time. Once it was back up, Test Tube kneeled down. The tie was the same as it was when I left,” she said, “which means the others aren’t back yet. So Fan and Nickel will be the only two there for now.” She pulled something else out of her messenger bag, a rope much like the one holding the platform up, and began to tie the bundle to an exposed nail in the bench. When she was done, she pushed the bundle off of the middle bar. 

It swung in the air for a second, and the platform raised off the ground a bit, but it stayed at the end of the shorter rope tied to the nail. Lightbulb stared at the contraption, rather impressed. “How’d you even think to do this?” 

“It was a combined effort,” Test Tube answered, seeming a bit embarrassed now, “Fan actually came up with the idea, I just helped to figure out how it would work and helped Paintbrush to build it.”

Knife looked at the tied up bundle for a bit, “if you need to be up here to tie that to the nail, how do you get down?” 

“That’s a whole different process, we don’t use the elevator for that,” Test Tube said. “We can show you that later, though. We need to get all the way up and wait for the others to get back so we can talk about what we’re going to do about going back to the lab and dealing with the robot.” 

Everyone gave their own words of agreement and/or compliance and followed her as she led them to another platform a bit away. This time it didn’t lead to another elevator, but instead a staircase. 

“If you’re going to use stairs to get up the rest of the way, why don’t you just have stairs for the bottom, too?” Knife asked and they began to climb up. 

Test Tube shrugged, “stairs wouldn’t have worked as well at the bottom. Up here we have a straight bar to build it on, but down there we’d either have to spiral around one of the legs, which would take a lot of resources, or have a super long staircase that’s vulnerable to damage.” 

“Plus,” Lightbulb chimed in, “who wants to walk up that many stairs?” 

“That too.” Test Tube nodded, “the elevator just.. works better.” 

After a while, they made it to the top of the staircase. Nobody really had enough energy to keep talking amongst each other while they walked up. Sure, it hadn’t been that long since they’d woken up, but they were trying to survive off of a singular granola bar (except Lightbulb) and had already had a near-death experience with a wolf spider. It was very fair for them to be exhausted, in Lightbulb’s opinion. 

“We’re just about there, I promise,” Test Tube said. “I know you’re all probably pretty tired.” 

“We had to kill like a hundred mites yesterday and run from a wolf spider today,” Knife muttered, “I’d say we’re pretty damn exhausted.” 

“Well you’ll have plenty of time to rest while we wait for them to come back,” Test Tube said, “and you don’t have to come with us if we decide to leave today, either.” 

That was true. They could just stay back at the base if they wanted to, and Lightbulb was fairly sure she would. Especially if staying back meant getting the chance to catch up with Fan or Paintbrush. 

It had been FOUR MONTHS since they’d last seen each other. And now the two of them were part of this whole group constructing a tiny base on a giant bench. There HAD to be a story in there, right? 

At the top of the bench there was a trail that seemed to be constructed of chopped down blades of grass and held together with twisted sprigs or leaves. It seemed very helpful, considering it bridged the gaps between the wood that made up the bench. Lightbulb had briefly wondered how they’d be able to cross over the gaps, so she was glad that was already taken care of. 

The trail wasn’t very long, and they’d reached the door of the actual base itself in essentially no time at all. Lightbulb looked up, the base towering well above her head. At first, Lightbulb thought that it was constructed of wood. It certainly appeared that way upon first glance. But once they stepped a bit closer, she realized it was actually built from chopped down weeds tied together with the same type of rope that tied the bundle to the nail. It seemed to be at least two floors tall and bordered by a roughly-made palisade that they’d stuck to the bench with chunks of clay and tied together with more rope. 

It was honestly kind of cool. 

Test Tube pulled the door open with ease, letting the four of them slip in before her. The inside of the building seemed just as big as the outside, with three different doorways upon its entrance. 

“Woah,” Suitcase stopped in her tracks, “you sure put a lot of effort into this.” 

“Yeah,” Test Tube agreed. “Whenever we’re not out hunting or exploring, we’re typically working on ways to make this place better. We’ve gone through like three different designs since we started. It used to be completely made up of grass.” 

She shook off her messenger bag and hung it up on a hook on the wall, something Lightbulb hadn’t even noticed was there. “I mean, when you’re stuck here for so long, there’s no reason you shouldn't try to get as comfortable as possible. Anything to help out with the situation, you know?” 

Everyone nodded. Or at least, Lightbulb did. And she was fairly sure she saw Baseball nod as well. She couldn’t really confirm if Knife or Suitcase nodded, but she liked to assume they did. 

“Anyway-” Test Tube continued, “to the left is basically our storage and crafting rooms. To the direct front leads to the living areas, which are just the common room and the sleeping rooms. To the right are the rooms where we keep food and medical supplies. Nickel will probably be there, but I’m not sure about Fan.” 

Lightbulb heard the creaking of a door somewhere off to the right, and she turned her head to try and figure out the source. Unfortunately it was far enough down the hallway that she couldn’t see, but she did hear the voice that followed afterward, “Test Tube? Are you back?” 

A familiar voice. A very familiar voice. “I heard you talking but I couldn’t hear what you were saying. Are the others back with yo-” 

Silence. 

Lightbulb stared forward. Her eyes met Fan’s, wide and bewildered. But that was soon replaced with recognition, and very clear surprise. Lightbulb could see Fan’s mouth moving, but she wasn’t hearing a word. 

“FAN!!” She bolted forward, tackling Fan in a tight hug that landed them both on the floor. Her shoulder knocked against the stem-constructed floor, but she couldn’t care less. 

Fan coughed a couple of times, clearly not prepared for all the wind to have been knocked out of her. Though it took her a few seconds, she was finally able to catch her breath enough to speak, “Lightbulb? How- what??” Despite the tone of her voice, she was smiling just as much as Lightbulb. 

Tears welled up in the corner of Lightbulb’s eyes, completely betraying her. Four months as an only child had been enough for her, thanks. She finally released Fan from their hug, giving her the chance to actually breathe better. “I can’t believe you’re… HOW?” A million thoughts seemed to race behind her eyes, and after a couple seconds her face fell. “Oh wait.. That means you’re stuck here now too.”

“Eh, it’s- It’s not that bad,” Lightbulb shrugged. 

“Uh,” Knife interjected, “speak for yourself.” 

Fan blinked a couple times, looking over at where the other four were standing. She looked immediately annoyed when she confirmed the connection between the voice and the face, “oh great, you’re here.” 

She shook her head as Knife muttered defensively. “Lightbulb can you help me up? I think you kinda, uh, slammed my head against the ground.” 

Lightbulb hopped up to her feet almost instantly, helping pull Fan up to hers. Fan wobbled a bit, but was otherwise okay. She took a second to readjust her paper folds and make sure they were all creased correctly while Lightbulb turned back around to talk to Test Tube. 

“Soo.. for as long as we’re all stuck down here, you four are welcome to stay here with the rest of us,” she continued, “once Paintbrush and Balloon get back we’ll figure out what to do about the lab. Until then, feel free to make yourselves comfortable. Lightbulb, I’m sure you and Fan have plenty to catch up on. Baseball and Suitcase, Nickel’s in the medical room if you wish to talk to him as well. And Knife.. Uh.. you can do whatever, I guess.”

Knife looked kind of offended that Test Tube seemed to consider him more of an afterthought than anything, but didn’t speak up or say anything about it. 

Test Tube turned back to the group, “everyone understands the basic gist, right? Was there anything I was unclear about?” 

“You said there was a lot we needed to catch up on,” Baseball reminded her, “what did you mean?” 

“Oh, right..” Test Tube bit the inside of her lip, “I could explain everything to you guys right now, but it might be better if we wait for Paintbrush and Balloon to get back. And it would be good for you all to settle in first.” 

Lightbulb shrugged, “I guess that makes sense,” she turned to Fan, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Okay. There is SO much that we need to talk about.”

“We DO!! Okay, come on.” Fan shook Lightbulb’s hands off of her shoulders and led her down the hallways that Test Tube had said would lead to the sleeping area. It didn’t take too long to reach, and Fan pushed the door open to the inside. Lightbulb looked around the room.

It was honestly kind of nice. Much nicer than Lightbulb had been expecting. Sure, everyone was sharing one sleeping area, but at least it was put together rather well. Each person appeared to have a bed of their own, even if they could hardly be classified as such. They looked more like scratchy makeshift mattresses with grass blankets held together with a thin thread-like material Lightbulb had yet to see. It wasn’t thick like the fiber ropes they’d been using. It was much thinner, and upon closer inspection it appeared to be actually woven from spider silk. 

It was impressive, actually. 

Fan led Lightbulb over to one of the beds, gesturing for her to sit down. Fan followed soon after, sitting right beside her. 

“I genuinely… I can’t believe-” Fan struggled for words, “do you remember anything?” 

“I was just walking home. Bada bing bada boom I’m waking up in a weird briefcase with terrible brain fog and no recollection of how I got here.”

“Seems like that’s the same for everyone so far. I can't speak for Marshmallow, but everyone else was walking home last they remembered before waking up.”

Lightbulb hummed, “weird. I wonder what happened between then.” 

“Well-” Fan cut herself off before continuing anymore. “I’ll listen to Test Tube and try to refrain from rolling you all we know so far until the others get back, but we have figured some things out. So.. it’s been four months, right?" 

“Four months,” Lightbulb confirmed, “four terrible, terrible months. You guys really haven’t seen OJ? Anywhere?” 

Fan shook her head, “not a sign of them. No OJ, no Paper, no Bow… nothing. And nothing of Marshmallow, either.”

“Do you think they’re even out here? I mean, of course not Marshmallow, SHE’S out here, but the others..?”

“By all accounts they have to be. They’re a part of all of our theories and everything. It’s just… this place is clearly bigger than we can easily traverse, especially while maintaining a safe and consistent base like this. But we depend on more supplies than we can carry, and it just isn’t safe for us to wander around with nothing.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Lightbulb bit her nails, “it just sucks. I’m so, sosososo happy to know you’re okay at least, and Paintbrush too, but I’m terrified for OJ and Paper. Even Bow…”

“We’re scared for everyone. We wish we could just guarantee their safety, but unfortunately we can’t.” 

Lightbulb sighed, trying to shove her worries aside for now. “Other than that, what’s been going on with you? I’d tell you how I’ve been doing, but it’s just a lot of schoolwork and definitely not moping around–”

“A lot of building, clearly,” Fan gave a breathy laugh. “I mean, I didn’t help much with the construction part, but I did help with the blueprints. It’s honestly been kind of fun. You know how in elementary school they’d make us make science projects out of popsticks? That’s kind of what it’s been like, just bigger. Figuring out how to make the most structurally sound popstick house. And thank gosh we figured it out, because we’ve already been attacked by mosquitos like… three times,” Fan counted each time on her fingers before landing on the numbers. “If it weren’t for the fortifications and the weapon ideas from Balloon, and Microphone before she left, we’d be dead. But that’s probably not what you want to hear. I’ve been doing well, all things considered. I, uh, realized something while I’ve been out here that I should probablyyyy tell you about.”

“Oh, really?” Lightbulb’s interest was suddenly incredibly caught. Did this have something to do with why they were all here? It couldn't be, right? Fan had agreed to wait, just as Test Tube had said. What else was there to realize out here?

“It’s nothing bad, don’t worry!” Fan clarified, noticing the expression that had begun to cross Lightbulb’s face. “At least I can guarantee that with you in particular. But, uh, I kind of realized I might uh.. Beeeeee trans???. So, uhm… she/her, sister, girl, y’know” Fan visibly tensed a bit when she finished talking, as if she was expecting the reveal to make Lightbulb mad regardless of her own identity.

But the opposite happened, as it was obviously going to with Lightbulb being the one getting told. She immediately broke out into a smile, grinning from ear to ear, “that’s great, Fan!” She immediately enveloped her sister into a tight hug, “I’m really glad you were able to discover this about yourself! I mean, I know from experience how freeing something like that feels.” 

Fan laughed a bit, her breath against Lightbulb’s shoulder. “You already knew, didn’t you?” 

Lightbulb bit down on the inside of her lips to avoid immediately giggling at Fan’s accusation, “welllll–”

Fan broke the hug apart, “you DID, didn’t you?” Despite the tone of her voice, she didn’t sound all that shocked at the news, “ oh my god, was I really the last one to find out about my OWN gender dysphoria??” 

“I wasn’t gonna say anything!” Lightbulb insisted through a series of traitorous giggles. “It’s just you’ve always seemed to be uncomfortable getting called our brother, in the same way I did. It’s why I started introducing you as my twin specifically more often. But I wanted you to figure it out for yourself if you were trans or not. I wasn’t gonna make that decision for you.” 

Fan sighed, shaking her head, “yeahh, that’s kinda what Paintbrush said. You were definitely nicer about it though, I think they were five seconds away from calling me an oblivious idiot.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Paintbrush. I’m not surprised in the slightest. They’d mentioned suspecting it a few times before in passing.” 

“I mean,” Fan hummed, “you’re trans, OJ’s trans, Paper Lantern’s trans.. I’m not surprised people suspected it based on that alone. But EVERYONE? And BEFORE me? I’m gonna have to ask Trophy and Salt about it when we get back home, because I SWEAR if they say they suspected it too..” She rubbed the space between her eyes. “Besides that, how’ve they been? How’s Apple been?” 

“Trophy and Salt have been.. alright,” Lightbulb started, “they do miss you, though. They helped me put up the posters when you first went missing. But they’re holding it together.” She glanced off to the side, “Apple, though? She’s… not great. I’ve basically been the only one talking to her. She did try to hang out with Teddy Bear and her group for a while, but I don’t think it was received very well. I hope she’s gonna be okay now that I’m out here, too.”

Fan sighed. “I hope so. First Bow, then Marshmallow, then Paintbrush and I… I can’t even imagine how she’s feeling. God, if only Dough didn’t graduate last year!” She flopped backward into her bed. “Sorry to dump all of these questions on you. Paintbrush doesn’t really like to talk about it long enough for us to come to our own conclusions, and Test Tube didn’t really know Apple or any of the rest of us enough before this to help. She listens, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not the same as asking someone who actually knows these people.” 

“Yeah, no, I get it. Don’t worry,” Lightbulb lied down next to her. “Soo, you and Test Tube talk a lot then? I mean, I assume so, given she was the first one you mentioned rather than Balloon or Nickel.” 

“Yeah,” Fan appeared to perk up a bit more, “well, I mean, we kinda have to, right? Being stuck out here and everything. If we didn’t talk to the people we were stuck with, we’d probably end up killing each other.” She talked quickly, like she was trying to explain away some word or action that Lightbulb hadn’t even caught. “But, yes, we do talk often.” 

Oh, there it was. Fan averted her gaze, but that wasn’t enough to disguise the fact that her face had somehow managed to glow an even brighter red than it already was, something that Lightbulb hadn’t even thought was possible for her to do. Clearly, Test Tube wasn’t some random other girl Fan just HAD to talk to out of necessity. But Lightbulb wouldn’t push it. Fan could talk when she wanted to talk.

Fan pushed herself back up into a sitting position, “oh! But that isn’t all I have to talk about. Hold on just a second.” 

She stood up off the bed and raced toward the corner of the room. Lightbulb realized she hadn’t even looked over there the entire time she’d been here. Wow, she really did miss a lot, didn’t she? 

Fan picked something up off of a structure Lightbulb couldn’t make out from that far away (curse leaving her glasses home the same day she happened to get kidnapped) and rushed back over. Lightbulb noticed the object she picked up in her hands, which looked kinda like a weird white rock from that distance. 

“Look at this thing!” Fan held the object out for Lightbulb to see. Now that it was closer and in focus, Lightbulb realized what it actually was. 

“Wh-” she could hardly form actual words, “what the.. did you steal an ant egg? Fan.” 

Fan lowered the egg, an offended expression plain on her face, “no!! Well.. okay, I stole NOTHING. It was Balloon and Nickel that did it. Just to see if they could, how crazy is that?” Fan sat back on the bed, cradling the giant egg in her arms. “We’re gonna give it back as soon as we can,” she explained, “but until we do, I’ve been making sure nothing happens to it!” 

Lightbuilb hummed, “well at least you weren’t the one that stole it. That makes me feel a bit better.” 

“Of course I wouldn’t steal it,” Fan wrapped her arms around the egg, “we literally have no way to take care of this thing the second its egg stage is over. We don’t exactly have gasters or the ability to perform trophallaxis. It would just be incredibly wasteful to keep an egg around that we won’t be able to keep alive as soon as it hatches. I really don’t know what Nickel was thinking with that plan. We’re gonna give it back.”

Lightbulb tilted her head, “I dunno Fan, you seem rather attached to the little guy.” 

“Oh yeah, I know, I’m gonna cry when we give it back,” Fan said, looking down at the little egg in her arms. “But it’s what it needs, right?”

“Fan, Lightbulb, they’re coming up the elevator,” Suitcase informed them from the doorway. 

“PAINTBRUSH!” Lightbulb had already almost forgotten they were coming back too. She jumped up off the bed and ran down the hall. Suitcase and Fan followed close behind her. 

They weren’t there yet when Lightbulb got out there, of course. They still had to walk up the stairs, but she would be there to surprise them when they made it. 

Would it be a good surprise? Fan was excited to see her, but she was also upset once she realized what it meant. Paintbrush would surely be excited to see her, too, right? Which meant they’d probably also end up upset. 

Whatever. It wasn’t Lightbulb’s doing, and it wasn’t her fault. Paintbrush would react however they reacted. She was here regardless. 

She could hear Balloon’s voice just outside the door, but not enough to hear what he was talking about. And then, there. A reply from Paintbrush. They were close. 

The door opened, slowly. Balloon’s hand appeared around the door's edge before he did. His backpack hung on his arm with one strap. The other, snapped and useless, dangled and dragged on the floor. That’s gotta be annoying. She also happened to notice his lack of shoes. 

“We caught a lot of aphids,” he called out to the two he could be certain were in the base still, “but still no sign of-” he stopped dead in his tracks, the words pausing on his tongue.

“BALLOON!” Suitcase ran across the room toward him, basically headbutting him in the stomach in the attempt at a hug. 

Balloon at least got the message and wrapped his arms around her. “Suitcase?? How are you here? Why- Oh my god…” 

“I’m just so glad to see you! It’s been so long!” Suitcase’s voice was slightly muffled. “I’ve been so worried..”

“Don’t be, I can handle myself!” Balloon’s smile came back to his face, “I’ve been careful.” 

Suitcase stepped back, “where’s Paintbrush? They’re with you, right?’ Lightbulb caught the quick glance Suitcase made in her direction. She’s asking for me. 

“Yeah, they’re coming,” Balloon answered, “they had a bit of an issue with their bag, so they had to deal with that. They should be here in a moment.”

Lightbulb immediately felt relieved by his words. When Paintbrush hadn’t come in with him, she’d gotten suddenly nervous. Even in spite of hearing their voice just moments prior. But they were okay, just running a little late. 

She heard approaching footsteps from outside the door behind Balloon, and Balloon moved out of the way. “Why were you just standing in the doorway? I can open it myself.” 

“Yeah, sorry. I just… turn around.” 

Paintbrush paused, their confusion evident even though Lightbulb couldn’t see their face. They turned just as instructed, and their expression quickly shifted from curious to surprised, and then from surprised to shocked. “LIGHTBULB?” 

She didn’t even have the chance to move before Paintbrush was squeezing her into a suffocating hug. She kicked her feet, wrapping her arms around their shoulders, “PAINTY!!!”

“How did you get here?” They asked, letting her lower herself to the stem floor.

Lightbulb sighed, “I’ve probably heard that question a hundred times today. We have no idea.” 

“Sorry, I imagine you have,” Paintbrush shifted their painters’ bag strap on their shoulder. “It’s just… I can't believe we weren’t able to figure everything out before you got roped into this mess.”

Their words struck Lightbulb as odd. Had they been expecting her to show up here? That’s what it had sounded like. What was it exactly that they knew that she didn’t?

“How long have you been here?” Paintbrush asked her. “Have Test Tube or Fan told you anything?” 

“No,” Knife answered for her, “they wanted us to wait for you two to get back before they told us what you guys know.” 

“Well, that’s good to know. At least it’ll give us more perspective.” Paintbrush glanced over Lightbulb’s shoulder at Fan, “Fan has plenty of theories that we haven’t been able to confirm yet. Having her as one of your only sources probably wouldn’t do very well.”

“I won’t try to pass off unconfirmed theories as the truth!” Fan huffed, “I’m not stupid!”

“Can someone bring Nickel and Baseball out here?” Paintbrush asked, leading to even MORE questions in Lightbulb’s mind. Nobody had told them about Baseball being here. Why were they so sure of it? “Baseball needs to hear this too.” 

“I’ve got them,” Balloon sighed, “I’ll be right back Suitcase.” 

As they watched Balloon disappear down the hall, Fan turned to glare at Paintbrush, “you are SO lucky I told her already.” 

Paintbrush shrugged, “I figured you wouldn’t wait.” 

“Wait, what are we talking about?” Knife asked. 

Fan rolled her eyes, “Paintbrush not even waiting until they confirm I’d come out to anyone to break out the she/her pronouns. And Knife I KNOW you’re one of the ones that was trying to predict it so don’t even pretend to be shocked.”

“Oh, I wasn’t going to,” Knife smirked, “but I’m flattered you think so highly of me. Good for you for finally figuring it out, or whatever.” 

It didn’t take long for Balloon to return, with Nickel and Baseball following close behind him. Looking at Nickel, Lightbulb was caught a little off guard. He had a large scar crossing over his face, one strike just barely missing collision with his eye. If it was just the one side, Lightbulb wouldn’t be as surprised, but the scar was perfectly symmetrical, mirrored on the other half of his face and meeting just below his other eye. 

“Woah,” Suitcase stared at him. “What happened to Nickel?” 

“He got attacked by some ants or something,” Paintbrush answered simply, “he’s got a bad habit of picking fights he can’t win with the bugs out here.”

“It wasn’t ants!” Nickel argued, frustration evident in his tone, “how many times do I have to tell you guys this? It was some weird glowing thing! Ants don’t glow like that.” 

“Nickel WHAT is out here besides bugs and spiders?” Paintbrush balled up their hands. 

“Clearly SOMETHING.” 

“Is this the ‘recent injury’ you were talking about?” Knife turned to Test Tube.

“Yes. It was only a couple of days ago,” Test Tube glanced over the angered coin. “He keeps repeating that it wasn’t a bug-”

“Because it WASN’T!”

“-but I don’t get why he’s so insistent. We already know he’s gotten attacked by bugs in the past.” 

“I’m so ‘insistent’ because it WASN’T a bug! I’m not stupid! If it was a bug I’d just say so!” Nickel’s face was slightly red. Whether it was from embarrassment or anger, Lightbulb could not tell. Maybe a little mix of both. 

Test Tube shook her head, as if Nickel was a little fly buzzing around her head and mildly annoying her. “Anywayyy, Balloon, I know you just went out, but these four managed to get that locked laboratory door open. The one at the roots of the apple tree? Would you be able to go back out to check it out with me?” 

Balloon cringed slightly at the suggestion, glancing back at Suitcase for a blinking moment. He sighed, “yeah, I’ll go back out. I can’t believe you went out there by yourself in the first place.”

“Fan had to make sure Nickel didn’t get into anything else,” Test Tube shrugged, “and I wasn’t gonna wait for you two to get back to check out a literal explosion. Good thing too, because they likely would have moved on by now if I had.” 

“Yeah, we weren’t gonna stick around there for very long,” Baseball shook his head, “as soon as we realized it wasn’t gonna help us get home, we were gonna move on.” 

Fan glanced at Test Tube, who bit the inside of her lip. “Well, it might have a bit more to do with it than you think. MAYBE.” Test Tube tapped her foot on the ground. “Before we leave– Fan, mind explaining the theories we’ve come up with?” 

Fan smiled widely, her hands tapping against the side of her body. Her glee did not falter for a single second as she turned to look at the four newbies, “oh, with pleasure.”