Sun frowned and peered closer at the small shiny object. It was curved into a ball, and gleamed against the light. It was wedged into the wall, deep enough so only half of the ball stuck out. The wall around it was fine, except for a small crack that shot straight upwards from the ball. The ball itself was about the size of a pin.
"How did you get in there…?" he pondered aloud, and began picking at it.
After a few minutes of trying to slide his fingernail underneath the ball and pry it out, it was no further out of the wall than when he had started. It was strangely infuriating. He picked at it again, this time with a bit more vigor. A number of unsuccessful attempts later, he was fed up and threw his hands up in the air, deciding to leave it and go back to his room.
The ball stayed where it was.
But as he began to wander away, he stopped suddenly, almost as if against his own will. He felt the cold gaze of the ball on the back of his neck. What was the shiny metal ball doing stuck in the wall? How had it gotten there? Was it put there on purpose? Or by accident? Why did he care so much?
Sun groaned loudly and gripped at his hair, before turning back to the wall. He needed a plan. A solid, precise plan. Narrowing his eyes on the ball, he sat down, crossed legged in the hall and waited for an idea to hit him.
Instead, time passed by him as he sat idly in the hall, staring at the strange ball.
You see this ball was special. It was strange, mystifying...mysterious. It had no marks on it at all, not even around the edges. It looked as if it had been polished. Who would polish a wall ball? Or was the ball ball previously polished?
These thoughts raced around Suns head like miniature steel balls in a washing machine.
Sun found he was becoming more and more entranced by the steel ball, almost to a point that he couldn't take his eyes off of it. Like it was drawing him in…
"...Sun? Sun!" a voice called in his ear.
Broken from his trance, Sun looked around for the source of the voice. It was Neptune. He was ducked down beside Sun, who was dribbling.
"Wha? Yeah, what's up?" Sun replied, returning his gaze to the wall ball.
"What...What're you doing there buddy?" Neptune inquired, raising a blue eyebrow at his partner's strange behaviour.
"I'm...Eh...Watching the ball." he replied.
"The ball?"
"The ball."
"What ball?"
"The wall ball." Sun nodded to the ball in the wall.
"That wall ball." he confirmed, and Neptune turned to look at it.
He studied it for a moment, and then frowned.
"What is it?"
"A ball."
"I can see that, what's it doing there?"
Sun shrugged.
"It's stuck in the wall."
Neptune took a double take. It seemed for a moment that the ball was staring at him. After a few seconds, his shoulders slumped slightly.
"I can't stop looking at it." he murmured, and slowly began to take a seat next to Sun.
"Yeah…" Sun agreed hazily.
"Have you tried taking it out?" Neptune suggested, his mouth barely closing once his sentence was finished.
"Yeah, at the start...Now...I don't want to take it out anymore."
The two sat in silence in the hall. Students passed them, gave them strange looks and one even ran a hand in front of there faces. When neither reacted, the students left them be, albeit with crudely drawn genitals on the two boys foreheads.
After what seemed like an hour, but which in actual fact was only about fifteen minutes, Blake happened across the two. She stopped in the hallway, before approaching them cautiously. Spotting the ball in the wall but paying little attention to it, she bent down and shook Sun's shoulder. These seemed to break Sun from his reverie.
"Blake…?" Blake noted the fear in Sun's voice and her ears pricked, searching for danger.
"Sun, what's wrong? Are you okay?"
Sun turned his head towards her, slowly, like a door on rusted hinges.
"The ball…It's evil..." he managed to mutter, before turning back to the wall ball, which had taken on a far more serious, serial killer-y vibe.
Blake frowned and looked at the ball that was lodged in the ball, eh, wall. Raising an eyebrow, she began to wonder how it had become lodged there. She stood up and spun on her heels. An evil ball? Was such a thing possible?
She walked to the other side of the hall, before turning and looking back at the opposite wall where the two boys sat. Exactly opposite the ball, on the other wall, was a steel radiator. She looked the radiator over and found a small, ball sized dent in the metal. It pointed at an angle though, and she followed the trail to the steel door handle of one of the doors in the hall.
This was ridiculous. Surely the steel ball hadn't done what Blake thought it had done. Sure enough, the handle had a dent in it, straight in the middle of the holding.
"How in the world…?"
Blake followed it backwards, past the radiator and to a window that sat to the right of the radiator, a good few feet away. A stream of sunlight shone through a small hole in the glass. Blake rushed towards it and threw the window open, leaning out of it and placing a hand against her forehead to block out the bright mid-day sun.
Below was a large patch of grass and a few trees. Below one of these trees sat Ruby, who was fiddling with her massively oversized scythe. Blake called down to her.
"Ruby!"
The redhead looked around, confused as to where the ethereal voice was coming from.
"Blake? Is that you? Are you a ghost?" she said, freezing in place, eyes wide.
"No, I'm up here! In the window."
Ruby looked up and grinned with a wave.
"Oh. Hey Blake! Why are you pretending to be a ghost?" she shouted up, tilting her head slightly.
"A ghost…? No, listen for a second. Did you thro-" Blake stopped, and seriously questioned her line of questioning.
How could Ruby throw a steel ball through a window with enough force to ricochet off of a radiator, a door handle and embed itself in a wall?
"I..Eh...Did you lose a steel ball?"
Good correction, Blake.
Ruby was even more confused at this, but surprise soon spread across her face.
"Of course! Duh!" she exclaimed to herself, and began fiddling with her weapon once again.
Blake stood awkwardly, waiting for her response. After a few minutes, Ruby stood up.
"I have lost one ball bearing, made of steel!" she said robotically, and Blake sighed.
"Ah...Well, I think I found it…"
Soon Ruby had joined Blake in the wall, her weapon still in scythe form.
"I thought Crescent Rose was acting a bit strange lately. She wasn't closing. Now I know why. It must have pinged out while I was practising outside." Ruby told Blake as the two looked at the ball lodged in the wall.
"Sun thought the ball was evil. Now we know that they're both just idiots." Blake said with a sigh.
Now that Ruby had completed the well needed exposition filler, Blake leaned forward and plucked the ball from its lodging, almost too easily. Sun and Neptune snapped from their brainwashed, 1984 style trance in an instant.
"Woah… Where am I?" Neptune said, suddenly feeling incredibly dizzy.
"I can't feel my face…" Sun moaned, rubbing his cheek.
Blake handed the ball bearing over to Ruby.
"Here. Try not let it happen again. I'm afraid it'll get lodged in a busy road or something next time and these two will wander into traffic." Blake said, and Ruby giggled.
"My eyes are so dry…" Neptune mumbled, and Sun began nursing his two sleeping legs.
And so the end came to the tale of the ball in the wall in the hall.
Sun went on to become an acrobat and traveled the world with a circus.
Neptune overcame his fear of water and became a nationally ranked swimmer, before falling asleep and drowning in his cereal.
Blake became a detective and solved the infamous Casual Murder Spree case years later.
Ruby went on to become a literal superhero. Seriously.
And Pyrrha died.
So this was a thing. I hope you enjoyed it. If you didn't, then you're probably not reading this. If you did, then good for you. Yep.