“--ickel, Nickel wake up!” someone grabbed him by his sides and shook him.
He groaned “B’loon just...five more minutes.”
“You know Balloony left with Four when the show split, now get up Nickel! Two’s at Cake at Stake but the next challenge will probably be starting soon.”
Uhhh…what? Two? Cake at Stake? Four? Balloony? He opened his eyes, blinking as his vision adjusted to the sunlight. He looked around at his surroundings, the grass was an odd yellow color, but it didn’t look dead. The trees looked normal enough though, with regular green leaves, and a grey building stood tall against the surrounding landscape. A group of people seemed to be standing on small pillars in front of the building. Where was he? A shadow loomed over him, Nickel turned back to look at whoever woke him up. She was a dictionary with a two-toned green and blue cover, a concerned expression evident on her face.
“Nickel? Are you--” her sentence was cut off as a bout of vertigo came over Nickel. The world around him warped as if he had stepped through MePhone’s elimination portal. His ears popped, and he was standing in front of the building he saw earlier, along with forty or so other people.
“Alright, could you just stand over there for me? Yeah, that’s good. I’ll have the elimination area finished soon,” Nickel took a double-take as a green two, like the algebraic number, shooed away a very disgruntled-looking blueberry pie. Nickel looked over to the price tag standing next to him.
“Could anyone exp--” he was cut off as the number started talking.
“Alright, everyone! Sorry for the wait,” they said, “but we’re ready to start the next challenge!” They clapped their hands and the vertigo returned tenfold. His ears popped again, transporting him and six other people to a different room.
The room they were placed in looked similar to a study. Two armchairs sat on a fur rug in front of a crackling fireplace. Two bookshelves stood on either side of it, and the mantle was decorated with tons of bits and baubles. A desk was placed off to one side of the room, messy papers and writing utensils adorned it along with a beautiful stained glass lamp. Next to the table was a china cabinet, although it didn’t hold plates. Inside was a multitude of glass bottles, of all different shapes and sizes, filled with liquids of a multitude of colors. A table was in the middle of the room, glass bottles, wooden boxes, and papers scattered atop it. Most notably was a folder, with the words “for Just Not :)” sprawled atop it in bold handwriting.
“The rules of this challenge are simple: find and complete the puzzles inside of the room to unlock the door and escape! You have to complete the puzzles to escape the room, you can’t break through the walls or the door. The last team to escape their room is put up for elimination. Ready… set… GO!”
The objects around him were spurred into action, the dictionary from earlier and a nail ran to read the folder on the table. The price tag, bomb (is that Bomb???), and pillow looked around the room.
“Alright, there’s a piece of paper with a bunch of random letters on them,” the nail read out.
“There’s also a note that looks like it’s written in some kinda code,” the dictionary added, “Oh wait, false alarm. It was upside-down.”
---
It wasn’t the best start to an escape room, not that Nickel would know how to do one, he’s never gone through one before. Working together with a group of people he didn’t know was...frustrating to say the least. At some point, the nail and the dictionary had devolved into bickering and a fair amount of stabbing. The argument was only broken up when Possibly-Bomb intervened. Nickel would almost call it fun after a while, considering he was on a competition show (or at least he assumed it was, by now he figured out that he wasn’t exactly on Inanimate Insanity Invitational anymore) with seemingly no consequences since he technically wasn’t supposed to be here.
They were far from being first to finish. When their team crashed through the door, out of the dim study, and into the blinding light of the sun, Two announced “And Just Not is safe! This just leaves The Strongest Team on Earth and Team8s still in their rooms!”
Nickel collapsed backward onto the grass, squinting as he stared up into the vast blue sky. He took the time to catch his breath, taking slow breaths in and out after having to run around the room delivering clues, messages, and scrambling out the door so the team he was stuck with didn’t have a chance at elimination. Just because he wasn’t supposed to be in this game doesn’t mean that he was gonna stop being competitive.
He listened in on the conversations around him, maybe he could finally figure out what was going on, or how he even got here. Where even was here? This place didn’t look at all like Inanimate Island or the ‘vacation’ island, he would’ve recognized it if it was. Maybe he got portaled or something to a different part of the world. Though that didn’t explain why everyone thought he was supposed to be here, the dictionary even called him by his name.
A loud and annoying beeping drew him from his thoughts.
“--maybe the malfunction was nothing, GB.” Nickel looked to see a large tennis ball talking to a small golf ball sitting on their head. The golf ball (the tennis ball called her GB?) was using a leg to carry an odd device. It looked like one of those EMF ghost detector things Nickel had once seen in a movie, except it had a small satellite dish attached to it. The device was the source of the slow beeps.
“Though that is possible, Tennis Ball,” (alright so the tennis ball was named Tennis Ball, shocker. Nickel should’ve started guessing everyone’s names a while ago) “but I’ve gotten readings of odd energy signatures, and it is safer to check now than be sorry later.” Golf Ball’s voice was gravelly and the way she enunciated every few words made her surprisingly easy to follow along, minus all the science-y mumbo jumbo. The beeping continued, growing even more and more frequent until it was just one long beep. Nickel scrunched his eyes together as a shadow blocked the sun. After a moment of hoping they would just go away, he opened his eyes and saw Tennis Ball looming over him, Golf Ball still sitting on his head.
“You.” She stated.
“No, please continue whatever you were doing before,” Nickel’s voice was laced in sarcasm, “My day has been great so far and I don’t want to ruin yours by interrupting your…whatever you’re doing.”
“Our Nickel doesn’t understand sarcasm,” Tennis Ball muttered, looking up at Golf Ball. Golf Ball nodded.
“Grab him,” she stated.
Okay. This might as well be happening.
=====
Nickel didn’t quite know what was going on. He woke up on this odd island with a bunch of people he didn’t know. Well, some people were similar to people he knew. There was a different Balloony, though he was red and stringless, not blueish-green and string-ful. He seemed to have noticed something was off early on, judging by the number of worried glances he shot while he thought Nickel wasn’t looking.
Maybe Nickel should ask where he is, and why this other Balloony knows him.
“Hey, Nickel,” think of the devil and he will appear, Balloony walked up to him. “Have you been feeling ok? You’ve been acting off all day and I was starting to get a bit worried.”
“Oh, thanks for worrying but I’ve been doing great, a bit confused about everything and where I am, but great!”
Balloony stared at him, a confused look on his face.
“Hey uh...Test Tube?” the red balloon called out, tilting his head to a blue picnic table where a handful of people sat and talked, though he kept staring at Nickel. One of these people, a test tube, perked up when her name was called.
“Yeah?” She yelled back.
“I think somethings wrong with Nickel.” Balloony kept his eyes trained on Nickel as if the coin would disappear if he stopped looking at him.
The Test Tube walked over to the two. “What’s the problem?” She asked. Balloony vaguely motioned to all of Nickel. “He looks fine to me--”
“You see, my boynoceros? I’m fine.”
“Oh yeah, something is definitely wrong.”
======
Nickel was carried to an underground factory by Tennis Ball and Golf Ball. Didn’t he once overhear Test Tube talking about how she needed to build another secret laboratory?
Tennis Ball sat him down on a table, one that wasn’t completely covered in papers or writing supplies. Golf Ball jumped down from her (was he her lab assistant? Best friend? Second in command?) partner’s head. Tennis Ball began to measure him with a roll of measuring tape. He jotted down Nickel’s width, radius, and diameter, while Golf Ball wheeled over a podium. On top of the podium was a laptop, with tons of other equipment Nickel could neither name nor explain the uses of plugged into it.
Golf Ball grabbed a small, plastic container from one of the machines on the podium. She held it out to Nickel and said “Spit into this, I need a DNA sample.”
“What? I’m not gonna be some lab rat,” Nickel snapped, kicking the container away from him. Golf Ball’s eye twitched.
“If you spit into it we’ll give you a cookie,” Tennis Ball chimed in. Nickel spat in the container.
Golf Ball placed the container back into the machine she took it from, typed out something on the keyboard, and waited. “What are his measurements, TB?” She asked, not looking up from the computer.
“Exactly the same, except he’s about a millimeter thinner.” A ding came from Golf Ball’s computer.
“Hmm, his phenotype is identical to that of our world’s Nickel,” Golf Ball noted as she looked up from the computer. ‘Our world’s?’ Nickel questioned mentally. “But his genotype varies drastically, and while his matter does closely resemble what’s here, there’s still some readings that are completely off.”
“Pshh are you saying I’m in a parallel universe or something? Yeah, like that’s believable.”
Golf Ball stared at him as a beat of silence passed through the factory. “Yes. That is exactly what I am saying.”
“Oh,” Nickel thought for a second, “Wait, do you just have DNA samples of the people here?”
“Irrelevant. A few hours ago, Tennis Ball and I began testing a machine that would hypothetically create a portal to a different dimension.”
“The machine malfunctioned, sadly,” Tennis Ball explained.
“My current theory is that we didn’t feed our invention enough energy. As a result, instead of creating a steady portal, it swapped a person of equal value with a person from a different universe.”
“Which brought me here, and moved a different Nickel there.” Nickel finished.
“Precisely,” Golf Ball commended. Tennis Ball placed a small plate with a cookie on it next to Nickel on the exam table.
“Is there any way to take me back?”
“Well,” Tennis Ball said as his eyes shifted to a charred portion of the factory, where a burnt heap of metal sat. “Not right now, no. But we still have the blueprints and the materials to build the machine. It might take hours to days of construction and adjustments, but we will find a way to get you back eventually!”
=====
“Yup, this is not our Nickel.” Test Tube said, handing Balloony a clipboard. The red balloon looked confused when he glanced over what she wrote.
Test Tube had brought the both of them to the summit of the volcano on the island, where she opened an entrance to a secret laboratory. The lab was very large, Nickel would’ve called it futuristic if it hadn’t looked so lived-in. A couch stood against a wall, pillows and blankets draped over it, the constant hum of electricity stopped the room from falling into dead silence, and even the glass columns with lava flowing in them gave the whole area a warm glow. It reminded him of Golf Ball’s underground factory. It also reminded him of a supervillain’s lair. Which is basically the same as Golf Ball’s factory.
“What do you mean?” Balloony asked, flipping through the papers on the clipboard.
“I mean he’s from a different dimension.”
“Ohhh that makes a lot of sense,” Nickel acknowledged, drawing the two’s attention to him, “I overheard Tennis Ball and Golf Ball talking about making a machine to do that.”
“Haven’t you gone to a different dimension, Test Tube?” Balloony asked.
“Well, yes and no. That was a parallel universe. It was still our dimension, just a different timeline. Plus I got there using time travel, and I don’t think this was a result of time travel. Not to mention my other dimension travel machine is back at the hotel where I left it. I didn’t exactly expect to have to use it,” she chuckled sheepishly. “But if I built it once, I can build it again!”
“How long is that gonna take?” Nickel asked, he didn’t want to be far away from TPOT for any longer than he’d have to be, Two could start a challenge at any minute and he wanted to be there for it.
“Oh well, uh, maybe five to six hours, more or less? It all depends on how focused I am,” she had already pulled out blueprints and began tinkering with some bits of technology while they were talking. “Maybe the people from your dimension will get their device finished first, and you can go home sooner. Balloon hand me that screwdriver,” she pointed over at a small screwdriver, Balloon (no “y” at the end, Nickel noted) gave it to her.
“So what are things like in your world?” Balloon asked, looking over at him.
“Oh, well I’m a competitor in a reality TV show called Battle For Dream Island, the current season is called The Power of Two after Two and Four split the show.”
“Two and Four?”
“They’re the hosts! I’m pretty sure they called themselves algebrailens once.”
“Aliens kidnapped Fan once,” Test Tube piped up, Nickel didn’t know who Fan was.
---
In the end, it was Test Tube who won the race of which world’s smart person™ could finish the dimension traveling device first.
“Alright I think I got it working!” she exclaimed, holding up a device that looked eerily similar to a gun Nickel once saw in a video game. She aimed the invention at a wall of the laboratory and pulled the trigger. From it opened a swirling cobalt and sea-green portal. Nickel and Balloon only got to gawk at it for a few seconds before Test Tube grabbed the two of them and jumped through the vortex.
The world melted together into a multicolored pinwheel until the three of them were dumped out face first (well, Test Tube and Nickel fell face first, Balloon landed on his feet after gracefully floating to the ground) onto yellow grass. Nickel stood up and shook the dirt from his face while Test Tube got up and made sure none of the liquid inside her had spilled.
“This is it!” He had only been gone for a few hours at most, but he already had missed being here on TPOT. He turned back to look at Test Tube and Balloon. “Thanks for getting me back, good luck finding your Nickel,” now he had to go find his team and fill them in on everything that just happened.
---
“Was he being sarcastic?” Test Tube muttered to Balloon as they watched Other Nickel walk off.
“I don’t think so?” Balloon responded. “We should go find Nickel, didn’t uh...this world’s Nickel mention a Golf Ball working on a dimension traveling machine?”
“Exactly my thoughts, we should check there first.” She paused, “Wherever there is.”
---
The two had wandered around the landscape for a while, Test Tube occasionally stopped to collect dirt, grass, or rock samples which slowed them down a fair amount. At some point though, they stumbled (literally, Test Tube tripped and face planted for the second time that day) upon a small stretch of green grass with metal stairs leading down deep into the earth.
The two snuck down the stairs, careful just in case something were to go wrong or if the place turned out to be dangerous. A red light flashed on and off from the ceiling, an alarm blared out through loudspeakers. “INTRUDERS IN THE FACTORY. INTRUDERS IN THE FACTORY,” it droned. Test Tube and Balloon bolted down the stairs, throwing caution to the wind. They made it to the bottom, only to be met with a large metal door slamming shut in front of them, a screen on a nearby wall lit up, displaying the image of an irritated-looking golf ball.
“Who are you?” She demanded, “Who do you work for? Why are you here--”
“Wait wait, I know them,” a very familiar voice cut her off, Nickel appeared in the screen’s view. Balloon’s eyes lit up with relief when he saw him. “Let them in,” the video feed cut out, and the door opened with a whirr of moving parts.
---
Nickel should not have let Test Tube and the two BFDI scientists talk for as long as they did.
His dimension can deal with one mad scientist and her lab assistant, none of them can deal with a pair of them scheming together.
But alas, Test Tube drew out the blueprints for the dimension traveling device she built, took into account Golf Ball and Tennis Ball’s constructive criticism, and together the three of them made adjustments to the device all while making plans to meet up in eachother's dimensions to share notes, findings, and theories. He even overheard Test Tube talking about meeting geniuses from other other dimensions, just the thought was enough to fill Nickel with dread.
Currently, he and Balloon sat at a table in the laboratory, waiting for Test Tube to be finished talking so she could portal the three of them home.
“Y’know this is like when your mom sees someone she knows at a grocery store and they stand there talking for hours while you wait to go back to the car,” Balloon muttered, absentmindedly. Nickel barked out a laugh.