There are three things needed to get an excellent start to the day: eggs, toast, and coffee. Even if she was going to die that day, the gooey texture of a runny yolk would give her enough comfort to face the day. Ever since Pencil was old enough to have a full cup of joe, she had been enjoying the same meal every morning.
"Good morning Pence-Pence," Match said while walking into the kitchen, "ooh, what's for breakfast?"
"Nothing much, I've got some eggs and toast if you want," Pencil replied.
"Eww, what? No!" she revolted, "I only eat things that are like organic, vegan, non-GMO, gluten-free, dairy-free, low fat, plant-based, responsibly sourced, and with no carbs. You would seriously, like, eat that garbage?"
"Alright, one serving of air coming right up. And while you're at it, can you check if Pen and Bubble are up yet?"
Match grumbled and stormed off. Pencil giggled to herself, knowing that whatever rules Match was following would be discarded in about three minutes. Some things become too predictable once they happen a few hundred times.
She was about to grab a few more ingredients from the fridge when she heard knocking sounds from the front door. Pencil ignored the noise and continued to fry her egg, assuming they would go away. A door-to-door salesperson was not on her list of things of acceptable distractions. But they did not leave, continuing to pound on the door with increasing force. Fearing that the door might snap off the wall, Pencil finally went to open it.
Standing outside were two objects, one a red cube, the other a pink rectangle. Upon closer inspection, the pink guy was a parallelogram. Neither were familiar to her memory. She looked out and saw a beat-up white van in the driveway. Nothing good happens in white vans.
"Can I help you?" she asked with an edge of sarcasm.
The red cube, who had been twiddling his thumbs up until this point, said, "Yeah, we're here looking for our friend Pen. His phone's location led us here."
Pencil stood there with a blank expression on her face as she wondered why Pen's friends would come looking for him at her house at eight in the morning. Suddenly, she burst out in laughter.
"Oh! You two must be his roommates that left him stranded without a key!" she coughed out while wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, "Yes, he's here, come on in."
Just as Pencil took them in, Pen stumbled down the stairs. The pink guy, Eraser, appeared to have noticed the ball-point brain and waved out towards him.
"Hey, Pen! How you doin'?" Eraser asked.
Pen sighed, ignoring Eraser and went toward the kitchen. Considering that those were the same people that had left him to rot, Pencil let his rudeness slide. She didn't have the first-person experience of being abandoned in a rickety apartment hallway, but she did have the bare minimum of empathy. It was also generally not a good thing to get into the personal issues of her employees, even if they were key-forgetting idiots.
"Tough crowd, huh?" she smirked, playfully elbowing Eraser.
He shrugged aimlessly and dragged Blocky back out to the front porch. Pencil watched as Blocky got into the driver's seat, rolling down the windows just before leaving.
"I'll see you at home!" Blocky yelled from the moving vehicle.
She turned around to find Match standing a foot away from her with the same pouty expression stuck on like glue. They traded glares for a moment, piercing each other's gaze with frozen daggers. The classic staring contest; Pencils always win staring contests.
"Are you gonna give up or what?" she challenged.
Match scoffed, "Yeah right, as if!"
Pencil continued to stare down her opponent with steely determination whilst enjoying the gentle breeze coming from the open door behind her. From her peripherals, she noticed Bubble wolfing down an entire yoylecake she had lying around from a week ago but was too engaged to question it. After an unspeakable amount of time, Match finally gave in to the need to moisten her eyeballs.
"You win this round, Pence-Pence," she announced in defeat, "but I'll, like, beat you another time."
"I'd like to see you try," Pencil boasted, "now if you'll excuse me, I think Bubble may have eaten another whole cake."
She strolled into the kitchen to indeed find Bubble sat down at a table with two empty cake trays in front of her. Even though she was not a dietitian, there was no way that having two pastries the size of microwaves could be healthy. What was even more impressive, however, was that she couldn't see any cake inside Bubble, who was transparent.
"Hoi Pensoil, oi hope yoi're okoi with me eating all thois cake," she reasoned.
Pencil coughed, "Err, sure. You do you. Anyway, I have to go to work with Pen now. If you and Match want to stay here, by all means, go ahead. Just don't eat the couch, okay?"
Bubble happily nodded, which meant that she agreed to at least one of the conditions provided. The last thing she needed when coming home from the first day of her business would be half the fridge gone. To be fair, her only employee was also snacking on a thin slice of purple cake.
"Good morning boss, I bagged your meal for you!" he greeted, handing her a brown paper bag.
"Uhh, thanks? I don't understand why you felt the need to bag my breakfast. Also, stop calling me boss."
"Well, time is running a bit late, and your egg has almost set on fire."
She looked at the clock, confirming Pen's statement. It had been the second day in a row Pencil was late to something. And because the last time resulted in extensive property damage, the likelihood of survival was not very high. She grabbed the keys from the table.
"Come on Pen, we've got a speedometer to fill!" Pencil exclaimed.