No Excuses

by HVK

While she and the other contestants vacation thanks to the Winchester brothers, Sierra discovers an awful truth that force her to reconsider her actions. Luckily, Cody's there to help. And Noah has a minor meltdown while meeting the Transformers.

Disclaimer: Total Drama Island/Action/World Tour is copyrighted Fresh TV/Cartoon Network. There's also a few things here that I certainly do not own.

...

Sierra stood in the kitchen of the communal beachhouse that her and the rest of the Total Drama contestants had since claimed, and stared at the foe before her; a bag of bread, matching jars of peanut butter and jelly, and half a dozen other sorts of sandwich condiments for her friends that didn't like peanut butter and jelly.

Friends. Ordinary, the unfamiliar word and related concepts would have made her giggle or titter or at least wander around outside and have a conversation with trees about the whole thing (it was more productive than talking to yourself, you only knew what you were going to say half the time), but her mind was occupied with more...unsavory details.

Troubled thoughts arisen. It was becoming difficult to deal with them without being still, finding a place to stay calm and let the churning blaze of constant chaos inside her head go still. That was hard, and Sierra disliked stillness for any reason.

Sierra narrowed her eyes in deep concentration; it was better to focus on anything besides...that. She unsheathed from a nearby knife-holder (fashioned to look like a screaming tiki for some reason) a large knife. It was not a nice-looking knife. There are utility knives, which are small and useful for food preparation. There are butter knives, which are not sharp at all and kind of cute looking. And then there are knives like this one.

It was a knife that had been built with a certain intention in mind. The maker of it had clearly been told to make this plain: "There ought to be no confusion about this knife. There is a safe half, and there is a not-safe half. Anyone facing the not-safe half should be sad. Very sad. Put serrated edges and pointy bits and ominous letters from languages half-forgotten and spoken by the followers of the great dead dread things that should not be. We don't care if it looks un-knifeish, we want this thing to make you sad that someone is pointing it at you. Maybe you will cry. That would be great! We long to collect the tears of people and put them into little bottles. Why, we don't know. Perhaps it just looks good on the mantelpiece..." and so on and so forth. People who demand knives like this are often not in a mental condition to be allowed to tie their own shoes, let alone have sharp things made for them.

It was the completely wrong knife for the task at hand. Either Sierra had forgotten this, or, frustrated by the horrible, horrible thing she now knew and all the troubling questions that had followed, had chosen the most evil knife she could find to express her own inner turmoil.

Sierra took her knife of cleaving and slicing and making people sad and clenched the hilt between her teeth and leaped at the bread, uttering a savage cry of bloodlust and fury and deep-seated existential distress and a small portion of gassiness. If the bread had a voice (and a mind to express it), it would have cried such an awful cry of despair.

But, then, it was just some bread. Only a complete loony would feel sorry for it. And with that sentiment in mind, Sierra did feel a bit bad later, but that hardly counts.

...

The beachhouse currently playing host to the former contestants of the popular (and probably evil) reality TV series Total Drama was, of course, on a beach. Beaches, by neccesity, are often on coastlines or islands, and this was the latter. And this island was a nice island. It had hardly any chainsaw-bear or unusually intelligent sharks or slam-dancing Hungarian werebats at all. (The Total Drama kids had yet to meet any of the last ones, but they held no doubts on the frightening extent of Chris' connections.)

It was also, and this is important, not the site of a fiendish competition over a million dollars that would incite them to sell out their friends or do horrible things or get maimed all for a prize that would be snapped away at the last second or given away in a freak incident. (To be fair though, Duncan was the only winner that hadn't lost his money, or so popular rumor went. No one was quite sure what had become of his earnings from winning Total Drama Action, but then no one seemed terribly interested in that season anyway.)

It was where the contestants of the first three seasons of Total Drama had been invited to nearly half a year after the conclusion of the World Tour. It had been a surprise to them all to get the invitations to an all-expenses-paid, all-summer-long vacation in a very nice island in the tropics following a meeting with the producers, who were sponsoring the whole thing. And, of course, had invited deep deep suspicions. It was, simply, not right: how could something so nice like this happen? What possible evil plan could Chris have in mind for them?

As it turned out, none. He had nothing to do with any of this; Sierra had found this out, after some prodding from the others, by remote-hacking into Chris' day-planner and discovering that he had made a note to investigate the whole thing. (How she knew how to do that and her apparent experience disturbed them all. Much less so, though, when they started taking turns screwing with Chris' schedule.)

Initially, many of them had refused to go; they were simply too paranoid, espicially if this was all being done off the money of the producers of the show, as seemed apparent. Noah had grown more suspicious than anyone else, and having struck up a friendship with Cody and Sierra, had implored Sierra to help him find out just what was going on.

Through the power of forums, chat-rooms, video reports, official reports detailing extreme changes in the producer's lineup, they had discovered that the entire board of directors of the company that produced the show had vanished. Not simply gone into hiding or become quiet, but literally disappeared. More significantly, the people now in charge of the company was a pair of foriegners: two American countryboys named Sam and Dean Winchester. Futher investigation proved that one of them had previously had a warrant out for his arrest, and a site belonging to what Sierra dismissed as 'funny but totally amateur wannabe paranormal investigators' calling themselves the Ghost Facers claimed them to be fake monster hunters. Not to mention big jerks. (There was also a cult following of comic books that beared their likeness; Sierra had liked them for a while, but lost interest when the plot had gotten too intense and grim for her tastes. And when what she called 'ho yay' had become almost intentional.)

The initial theory, from Noah at least, was that the Winchesters were a pair of crazy but clever murdering schemers that had taken over the producer's company through sophisicated legal trickery and then killed them all to secure their positions, which left the question of just what they were being called down there for. Foul play was a likely possibility.

They had gone, nonetheless; Gwen had decided to try and expose them, Courtney wanted to find out what the truth was, Owen was too timid to go against the peer pressure, Alejandro wanted a explanation for why he was still in that damn robot, Heather wanted to know why they hadn't just shot Alejandro into space and be done with it, Noah wanted the satisfaction of everyone knowing he was right, Sierra was feeling bored and Cody would be willing to just do whatever she wanted these days, Eva resented the very idea that someone might try to kill her and intended to do something about it, and the others, somewhat disinclined to go to begin with, were pushed into it by Alejandro and Heather being clever about convincing them.

As it transpired, when the Total Drama kids had finally met the mysterious new executives, the Winchester brothers were not...good material for creepy murdering corporate schemers. Sam was a polite, good-natured guy barely a few years older than them and just bursting with apologies for the company putting them through the Total Drama horrorshow (apparently considering himself karmically responsible for the mess), while Dean was...well, basically he thought it was awesome of the contestants to put up with all that crap. (Also, he thought that Chris was a total man-bitch. Dean had explained this. Repeatedly. He and Duncan got along swimmingly.) And while he didn't hit on the girls (as he was unclear on the differences between minority laws in Canada and America), he was about as subtle in his attraction to anything female that was of a generally human shape as a truck to the face.

They also had the tendency to act a lot like old soldiers at odd moments; not something you expected from a pair of murderers. Strange behavior, yes, but not what Courtney later identified as symptoms of very severe post-traumatic stress disorder. It wasn't quite as odd as the janitor they employed and somehow had managed to follow them everywhere in the building: a man with the odd name of Castiel. He had been...strange was one word for it, but it was too polite. Strange did not seem to apply to a man who appeared out of nowhere while you were in the bathroom and obliquely talk about deep dark hidden secrets no one else knew. Nor did it apply to a man who treated three inches from your face as an optimum distance for talking. And it certainly didn't apply to a man whose shadow was...off. It had moved. And they thought they could see the shapes of something like wings.

Cody sweared that Castiel's eyes had glowed. Like his soul was on fire. That his body had moved wrong, like it was a puppet, something Castiel was just moving around and trying to look human. Noah insisted that it was just his imagination and blamed it on all the weird stuff they'd heard of on their hunts for information on the Winchesters, but Gwen certainly thought otherwise.

Sam and Dean, when pressed on the suspicious and bizarre way they had taken over the company. Dean had insisted that there was nothing weird about it. They'd simply discovered that the producers and executives were all horrible demons and they'd had no choice but to destroy them. And since it turned out that the company, being a lot older than anyone knew, operated on the premise of 'you kill it, you bought it', they had become the new executives. They'd been surprised as anyone and were trying to weigh the benefits of actually having money against having to run a company, neither of them really being qualified for it. (Sam insisted that going to college to be a lawyer was far from training as a business associate.)

There was, needless to say, suspicion. But then Castiel had come in and had...explained things. No one was quite sure just what he had said. No one remembered any words. They had simply come away with an improbably clear knowing that the Winchesters were not murderers, the demon thing was true but absolutely not something they needed to worry about ever, and it was all actually perfectly legal. (As it turned out, it was. Canadian law, owing to obscure loopholes, perfectly permitted foriegners taking over companies if the current shareholders and executives were from Hell. Courtney had complained about the patent stupidity of this.) If they remembered anything, it was only the briefest impression. Of words that were not words. A voice that rang with holy truth. And...light. And Ezekiel, who Izzy and Sierra had been trying to tame and make into a proper pet, had inexplicably been restorted to sanity and proper health.

(Many of them had come away with a certainty that angels existed, and they were absolutely NOTHING like the diapered baby, love-arrow slinging, disgustingly happy, harp playing, haloed winged human of popular culture. Some of them had mild panic attacks whenever they saw angel figurines, though others found an unsual sense of serenity at the same time.)

So, that bit of oddness had been sorted out, they decided to take the vacation after all. It had been Dean's idea, as his way of saying "I'm the company that kept screwing you over and my incessant guilt complex demands that I prove that I'm really REALLY REALLY SORRY." Then Castiel had talked to them, in a really disturbing and weird monotone, about how obsessing over money and doing all the shabby things they'd done for it. He insisted there was a lesson in how they could never get the money, all their sacrifices being in the service of a false dream. And then he had talked about each and every one of their most messed up and destructive character traits, told them how they had been formed, why they were so destructive to their futures and how it was best for their spiritual and temporal lives to just stop being foolish about it and strive beyond them. Then he'd given them the complete theological works of Clive Staples Lewis and told them to read them all. He would be watching.

(In spite of all that potential ill will, the Total Drama kids were generally on great terms with the Winchesters after they left the company to a good friend of their's. The last Sierra had heard - and she heard so very much - was that Gwen and DJ had become unofficial understudies to the Winchester brothers in the hallowed field of Hunting; the great unknown profession of humankind, tracking down the supernatural monsters that preyed on humanity and killed them or put them to rest as the situation warrented. As it transpired, Gwen had always secretly dreamed of killing monsters for fun and profit, and DJ figured that he was going to go around getting things hurt, it might as well be horrible things that ate people. They had taken up the Vigil, and Sierra was proud of them. On the other hand, she was pretty sure that Dean was pulling a jailbait wait on Gwen. Then again, he seemed a better match for her than Duncan did.)

So. They had cheerfully come to their island vacation, as a consolation prize of sorts. It had, apparently, used to be a summer home for the evil demon producers, but they'd never found the real estate comfortable for some reason. (Castiel claimed it was because 'that island is a holy place, alive and knowing, bourne on the back of a great beast from a spirit-guided world beyond these. Don't go bother searching for it, it can hide itself quite well enough.' There was not a great deal of inquisitiveness into these statements after some initially research, mainly because it didn't go anywhere. And the Winchester brothers had no idea what he meant either. There was some talk about 'the great lion-turtle' or something from Castiel, but that was it.)

Once there, they had quickly taken over the now empty but well-stocked beach house now refitted for their use, and made it their own. (It wasn't quite a million dollars, but their own private island that was technically it's own country was a pretty cool consolation.) Thus, had begun what Harold solemnly called 'the most absolutely perfect super-special-awesome summer EVER'. He and Geoff were still arguing about the name, but since they did so in giant fighting robots that had been inexplicably left lying around, no one complained much. It was awesome to watch. (It'd also become the number one way of any quarrels. It made drama fun.)

They'd been there for a few weeks, and things had...changed, between the Total Drama kids. Being in a large beach house with each other, eating dinner with each other, doing awesome stuff around each other (there was a lot of really cool stuff lying around) and all kinds of weird goings-on they indulged in for the sake of not being bored had changed the dynamics.

No longer were their friendships and relationships burdened with the knowing that somone would be backstabbed for the sake of money. The lingering hurts, the bitterness of betrayal...those remained. Those were problems that had to be confronted. Eva's anger towards the people on her original team from Total Drama Island...Courtney's gradual change into a control freak and the new evil girl...Duncan going behind Courtney's back and cheating with Gwen...Gwen letting him cheat with her...Justin's brief turn to evil...Trent's bout with instability...Cody being nearly as creepy as Sierra (before Sierra lightened up) around Gwen...Sierra's own things...and so few of them were ready to forgive Heather and Alejandro for all the schemes and double-crosses they had pulled. (Bridgette was, but that was Bridgette.)

Yet, somehow, none of that seemed to really matter. The conflicts of the past seemed to have faded away, less than motes in the sunlight. It was almost as if there was something in the island itself that pulled at their better natures, bending their baser impulses and hatreds into naught. It just became better to, if not outright forgive, at least pretend that such things had never happened, to ignore the old grudges. On this island, where the setting sun turned the sky such glorious shades of red-golden, where the waves shone with light until they looked like glass, where the tamed jungles offered so many oppertunites to get amiably lost with the people you could call 'friends'...the injuries and ruinations of a reality TV show seemed ridiculous and unworthy of serious effort.

Alejandro and Heather both thought it was insidious. Welcome, but insidious. No one else really shared their feelings.

And on this island, various routines had been established.

This is not to say that certain...revelations couldn't upset them.

...

Sierra was fully aware of Cody's morning routine. He got up late, showered for a bit, watched cartoons until he got hungry, and came downstairs for breakfast. She planned around it; Sierra felt intuitively that friends ought to do nice things for their friends. She was new at it, and worried that she was doing it wrong. Even though she had been deep in the battle-throes of her combat with the bread and other things, she knew exactly when he would be coming down and seeking nourishment.

So, when Cody finally shuffled into the kitchen with an air of polite puzzlement and concern, Sierra had already finished preparing, and stood in front of the table, minding where she was standing owing to the messes she'd left in her brutality, and waved him over. "Hi," She said.

Cody stared at her, puzzled. Then he looked at the kitchen; peanut butter and jelly stains had gotten everywhere, including the walls, the counters, the ceiling...the drawers had been knocked out of their slides and spilled their contents with such force that knives and forks and sporks and one rather sharp potato peeler had lodged in the walls at interesting angles...shredded stripes of bread littered the floor like spent shell casing at a firing range...

He focused his attention at Sierra, staring at her a moment too long in her pajama T-shirt and shorts, eventually taking notice of how forced her smile looked, the strange distance in her eyes. His attention lingered, until he forced himself to look at what she was gesturing at; a large plate of sandwiches, each one with a tiny flag with someone's face on it.

He wandered over, looking up at her and feeling surprised. (Not because of the sandwiches, he was used to stuff like that.) "Sierra?" He managed to say. "What's all this?"

"They're sandwiches, silly," Sierra said, off-handedly brushing her hair. Ever since her recovery after World Tour, which had gone much faster than seemed medically possible thanks to her absurd resilience, her hair had grown back quicker than usual (and the growth had sped up a bit after coming to the vacation island for some reason), but it was still quite short for a girl's traditional look, barely reaching past her ears. Perhaps because of it's length or a simple whim, she hadn't dyed it and left it a truly deep black. Cody seemed fascinated by the way the light made the natural highlights shine, Sierra thought distantly. Normally, such a thought would have given her reason to get genuinely excited, but she wasn't in a normal mood or state of mind.

Cody stared at her sleepily for a long moment, blinking a few times and clearly trying to get his thoughts in order. Sierra briefly entertained the thought of him falling asleep in the kitchen right there, with her lap as a pillow. (She was certainly big enough for it to work.) "Um," He said eventually. "That's not what I...uh, I mean...what's with all the..." He gestured vaugely at the horrible mess.

Sierra glanced around. "Oh." She shrugged. "OH. Yeah. Uh huh. Um...I was making everybody sandwiches and I got too into it?"

"I'll say," Noah said, walking from behind Cody, rejoining them as the unofficial head of their odd trio. (For some reason, he'd taken to hanging around Sierra and Cody more often.) "I haven't seen a mess this bad since Duncan tried to screw with Cody by taking the candy Sierra gave him as a late birthday present."

"Hey!" Cody and Sierra said at the same time. "We rebuilt the walls and filled the pool back up and found homes for all the jellyfish and mediated for the giant weresharks and feminist-lobby octopus-people and we didn't let Duncan get sacrificed to ancient insanity gods like we promised, okay!"

"...Huh," Noah said with a knowing smirk. "That was a pretty quick comeback for something I said off-hand."

"That...that doesn't mean anything!" Cody said quickly.

"Wait, what's it supposed to mean?" Sierra asked, with a frown.

Noah's smirk only got more infuriating. "Weird, how fast you two get on the same wavelength. And say 'we' so easily. And naturally."

Sierra blinked. "Oh!" She smiled faintly, but only for a moment.

Cody shuffled awkwardly. "...It's not like that..." He frowned, as if he wasn't entirely sure of the validity of this statement. Or, for that matter, if he wanted it to be a valid statement.

"Uh huh," Noah said, unconvinced. "You know, belligerent sexual tension is supposed to be between each other, not expressed at other people. Oh," he added, noticing that Sierra was taking the opportunity to check Cody's backside out, but with less enthusiasm then she normally did. "And your libido's showing, Sierra. Not that you ever bother to hide it, but, y'know. Standards. Try 'em."

"Hey, I have standards!" Sierra said. She paused, and then shrugged dismissively. "...They just operate on a different perception of reality than yours do. "

"And I'm sure we're all very surprised," Noah teased gently.

Sierra made a huffy little noise that indicated that either she was trying to disdain Noah's remarks, or that she had a serious nasal blockage.

Cody looked from Sierra to Noah awkwardly; to his relief, Noah seemed content to leave it at that, having walked over to take his sandwich. "Tasty," Noah said after a few bites. "It doesn't taste like mutagenic toxins or the regrets of a thousand undying Aztec zombies at all."

Sierra blinked. "...I told my mom I was sorry about those things. How'd you find that stuff out?"

Noah paused. "...I'm not sure where to begin replying to that."

Sierra shrugged. "I lead an eventful life."

"Moreso now that you've stopped stalking Cody all the time." Noah paused, and added, "Overtly, of course. That leaves a lot of space in your agenda." He raised an eyebrow. "Unless you've decided to fixate on Chris again. Not sure why, but I think we can all see that common sense isn't really your forte."

If he was expecting to rile up Sierra, get an enthusiastic affirmative or a declaration that Cody was the only man for her, he was mistaken. Sierra's eye twitched, her face going blank before she shuddered. "No!" She said, her voice cracking a little. "No. Nuh-uh. Noooope. No way..." She shuddered again. "Yeah. Definitely. No way at all."

Noah and Cody stared; Noah with a sort of fascinated curiosity, Cody with distinctive concern. He was used to Sierra's general gushing of emotional output, and this downbeat behavior was sufficiently unlike her to be genuinely alarming. "Are you feeling okay?" Cody asked, carefully.

Sierra waved her hand around, like she was trying to shoo an annoying fly away. "Me? What, huh? Me? No...no no no, I'm fine. Yeah. Fine. Completely, totally fine..." She walked away, looking ill-at-ease. "I'm, uh, I'm gonna go...somewhere, for that guy at the place about the thing, bye."

She left, Cody and Noah watching her go.

After a moment, Cody looked at Noah. "That was..."

"Uncharacteristic?" Noah finished.

"Not what I would have said, but good enough. Came out of nowhere, didn't it?"

"I'll say," Noah said. He continued to eat his sandwich and tapped a finger against the table, as if timing his thoughts. "Hrm."

Noah liked a good challenge. He liked puzzles. He'd found, to his enduring amusement, that understanding people was a lot like doing a refreshingly challenging puzzle, and he liked to while away empty hours by figuring out the other Total Drama kids. Piecing together, bit by bit, what made them tick. It was rather helpful for Sierra's side-project of getting everyone to put aside their differences and become friends or at least mutally non-aggressive acquantices. Noah thought it was an interestingly farfetched idea, and gave him an excuse to be just a little bit acceptably manipulative.

He thought he had Sierra figured out; the girl never stopped being upbeat and energetic and so perky her attitude could fuel racing cars. (Sierra called it 'being a certified genki girl', whatever that meant.) Clearly, he'd been missing a piece of the puzzle if something like this could happen without warning.

Noah said as much to Cody, who nodded with a frown and said, "She's...been acting weird for a while, really."

"Weird for Sierra? Because saying that she's being weird isn't really that helpful."

"You know what I mean!" Cody took a big bite out of his sandwich, presumably for the energy. "I guess, for the last four days, she's been more...I don't know, moody? Well, not moody. Not testy or anything like that."

"Ah," Noah said. "So it's not a 'female issue' thing."

Cody gave him a look. "...No, nothing like that. She's been...downbeat, I guess. A little bit depressed but not in a sad way. Not really like herself." Cody thumped his forehead in frustration. "I know what I mean, I just can't get the right words out!"

"Getting stressed about it won't help things," Noah said sagely. He glanced down at the table, and the same perceptions finely tuned by years of ascent in the annals of video gaming history had him take note of a few dark hairs lying about the table; Sierra, in her frenzy of sandwich preparation, had left some loose hairs around. Not in the food, thankfully, she'd learned enough sanitary behaviors to avoid that, but probably when she'd brushed her hair back after she was done or something.

Her natural hair color was a deep black, Noah thought. Not really unexpected; they might live in a world where snakes blink and sharks pilot boats and alien technology can be broken in a reality TV for cheap laughs, but the laws of common sense still drew the line at hair colors as absurd as bright purple.

A stray idea drifted across, and he vaugely thought that Sierra's hair color was exactly the same as Chris Maclean's. Noah frowned thoughtfully in mid-bite. Nah, he thought. That can't be it...

He swallowed and thought about it a bit more, considered Sierra's unusual behavior, and concluded that karma apparently did exist and had a sick sense of humor. "Hey," He said. "Cody."

Cody, having been looking out the window the past several minutes, eating his sandwich anxiously and looking worried, looked back. "Yeah?"

Noah finished his sandwich and swallowed. "I think I may have put my finger on just what's bugging your girlfriend."

Cody looked at him hopefully. "What's that?"

Noah waited for Cody to backtrack and point out that Sierra wasn't his girlfriend. Either Cody had completely missed it or simply didn't care, because he didn't say anything about it. Noah filed this away as being interesting, and picked up some of the hairs on the table and pressed them into Cody's hands. "Look familiar?"

Cody glanced at them intently. "...It's some of Sierra's hair. So?"

"The color look familiar?"

Cody frowned and shrugged after a moment. "Uh, yeah, it's Sierra's hair. What are you getting at?"

Noah rolled his eyes, but he didn't point out Cody's denseness. He'd grown used to people being dumber than him in general; one of the reasons he preferred video games to the labors of social interactions in the first place was that it was just so much work trying to find people that you didn't need to dumb yourself down to just to communicate with them. With the friends he had here - Cody, Sierra, Eva, Owen... - that wasn't really a problem, as in spite of the way they acted they were smarter than they seemed. They could be infuriatingly slow, though. "Look at the hairs and think about the color more intently, yeah? Think...uh, well, shorter. Older. More obnoxious skater boy accent. And a lot more jerkass. I had to work for the guy, he's a lot more obnoxious as a boss than a host, believe it or not."

Cody frowned. "Wait...you mean Chris?"

"Give the boy a prize and show him what he's won; a step closer to the fridge horror."

"I don't get it. So Chris and Sierra have the same hair color." Cody paused. "The same hair color...hey, wait a minute." Noah smirked. He could almost see the wheels in Cody's head turning: Sierra's natural hair color being the same as Chris Maclean's...her stories about how obsessive her mom was about Chris...her own crush on Chris...back to the hair color...her recent change in behavior and her revulsion when her crush on Chris had been brought up...

Cody's eyes widened. His mouth tightened. "...That's either the absolutely weirdest coincidence I've ever heard of, or the most disgusting thing I've ever had to think about."

Noah shuddered. "I know. As perverted as Sierra is, she's probably fantasized about him like...that, you know?"

Cody clapped his hands over his ears. "Stop it stop it stop it, I don't need mental images like that!"

Noah scoffed. "Are you kidding? I'm the one that thought of it first, my mental scarring's worse than yours!"

They both shuddered in unison.

"...So," Cody said eventually, looking deeply disturbed. Both of them were thinking about past experiences; all the times Sierra had expressed interest or her little crush on Chris or one of the disturbingly obscure bit of personal information she only volunteered when the subject was of deep interest to her. "...Should we...go after her or what?"

Noah frowned reflectively. "Normally, I'd say it's better to let her work over the horrors on her own, but...this is the kind of situation where that's not really the best idea."

"Yeah." Cody straightened up, a determined look in his eyes. "I'll go find her."

"And when you find her?"

"...I don't know, something? Talk to her, something like that?"

"Making it up as you go along." Noah nodded approvingly. He paused, and smirked. "Funny thing, I was going to suggest that you go anyway."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The reasons being that you know her better than me, she trusts you the most, so on and so forth, power of friendship and love and whatnot...but really, if my theory's right, then the best thing for her to get over a crush that had horrific implications is for you, who she has a more intimate crush on, to go and let her fixate on so she forgets about this."

Cody frowned. "Wait, so I'm like bait!"

Noah smirked. "If you're going to catch a shark, you should throw the chum it likes the most."

"...I really should say something about how messed up that is," Cody said, with a shrug. "But...I don't know, I just can't care that much."

"Mark of a guy that just won't face up to his feelings," Noah said.

"Knock that off, I'm not in love with Sierra!" Cody said, red in the face and an internal voice complaining about lying.

"Your vehemence suggests otherwise."

The laws of drama and narrative contravience state that in moments such as these, something should happen to totally kill the moment. Geoff fulfilled that role, coming from behind to shout, "Hey guys!" in that genial sort of loudness that will make anyone freak out.

"Gah!" Cody and Noah yelled, jumping in surprise, and unfortunately doing it in such a way that they hit their heads together and fell over, hitting their heads on the table and falling over, twitching in pain.

Geoff winced. "Ouch. Sorry, guys."

Cody managed to make a hand gesture that indicated that, unexpected as the sudden outburst was, it and it's consequences weren't the foundation of an eternal feud of blood and death and misery and general unwanted drama.

"I've had worse," Noah muttered into the floor.

"Could be worse," Cody agreed.

"HEY GUYS!" Tyler yelled from behind Geoff, spooking Cody and Noah again; they both jerked and hit their heads on the underside of the table.

"OW!" Cody said.

"Son of a Calcutta sewer dweller!" Noah cursed.

"That's an weird swear, bro," Geoff said. "Also: ouch. Again."

"My grandparents come from Calcutta, India. You have no idea how NASTY the sewers there are."

Tyler scratched his head. "Did I miss something-SAMMICHS!" He immediately made a beeline towards his sandwich. (There was much surprise that he could take even a cue as obvious as that.)

"Sweet!" Geoff helped Cody and Noah up. "Mysterious sandwiches are awesome. But where'd they-"

"Sierra," Cody said promptly. "She made some for everyone."

Tyler paused in the middle of eating his sandwich. "...I didn't do anything to tick her off or anything, did I?" He stared at his sandwich with abject horror.

"No, she's just being her warped variation on nice," Noah said. "Either that or working off nervous energy from something."

"Oh," Geoff said, eating a sandwich without fear, mainly because he lacked much sensibleness when Bridgette wasn't around but mostly because he liked Sierra, in much the same way that he liked everyone that wasn't a jerkass. "Cool, bacon sandwich."

"I thought you didn't eat meat anymore," Cody said.

"Only when Bridgette's around." Geoff paused and looked around, as if Bridgette might be standing right there to bring down the apocalyptic wrath of a granola girl discovering her boyfriend indulging in forbidden contraband. "...She's not around is she, this isn't some kind secret test of character she and Sierra cooked!" He whirled around on Cody. "Oh crap, that's exactly what this is, isn't it! You gotta tell what it is! Bros oughta tell what their girls are up to when they're getting your bros in trouble!"

"Sierra's not my girlfriend! I think," Cody said.

"I thought you were into Gwen," Tyler said, perplexed. (Admittedly, this would be the case with most any problematic situation. Tyler approached problems the same way a newborn kitten approached anything unfamiliar; with confusion and cautious curiosity before it went full-bore and hurled itself into the fray.)

Cody gave him a look. "Um...yeah, that's kinda a long story, I guess I sort of grew out of it, other stuff came up and, oh damn it, I got distracted, gotta go, bye!"

He ran off. Noah, Geoff and Tyler watched him go. "Huh, little guy's in a hurry," Geoff observed.

Noah agreed with a quiet but perfectly audible mumble, not explaining anything. (Who went around explaining everything to everyone, anyway? Noah had, of course, never heard of the idea of a Mr. Exposition, but that was just as well.) He wished, vaugely, for something interesting to happen, for he was bored now.

The door that led to a patio outside opened, and Owen came stumbling in. "Little buddy!" He cried. "You're not going to believe it! It's aliens! Aliens!"

"Again!" Tyler exclaimed, recoiling in utter horror. (Being probed was a secret nightmare of his.)

"Yeah! Uh, wait, not those kinds of aliens, these are totally different-"

There was a tremendous rumbling from outside. Noah peered outside and saw that there was a gigantic mechanical being standing outside, it's body resembling parts of red semi-trailer in places; a grill and windshield that had split to become the torse, legs with the wheels and engine in them, massive arms with truck-sides changed into forearm armor, and so on. Notable was it's head, which resembled a blue helmet with glowing blue lenses for eyes and, covering most of it's face, a plain face-shield.

"Greetings," the machine-titan intoned, in a voice so filled with noblity and gravitas that every word it said was a grand proclamiation. "I seek confirmation: you are the humans commonly known as the Total Drama contestants?"

"...Yes?" Noah said.

"Ah. Excellent. Very good indeed."

The machine-titan gestured to a number of similar, though generally smaller, machine-titans that also looked like they had vehicles in their composition. "I and my companions have traveled far to come to see you..."

"Yo," Said a small one (relatively; DJ, for example, would have barely come up to it's knees); it looked a lot like a yellow convertible-type with black stripes. "What's up?"

"...Hi," Noah said carefully.

Geoff, who was more adaptable, said, "Awesome finish, dude." The yellow robot appeard to grin. It was hard to tell. "Long way, huh? Did you, what's the word, fly through the stars or whatever to come here!"

"Psh," Said the robot, who had chosen to call himself Bumblebee for the convienience of humans, who would be utterly unable to prounounce his true name. "Sounds cool, but flying through the stars is pretty stupid, man! But yeah, we get around. And to get here!"

"Cool," Owen said. "Uh, why?"

"And who are you?" Noah asked, feeling a great existential dread, as though what little made sense in his life was about to drop out.

The great machine-titan chose that moment to explain himself. "I am Optimus Prime. Once the leader of the faction of our people that called ourselves the Autobots, some of whom stand before you. Once, we of the planet Cybertron stood together, great builders and makers that traveled across the worlds of this universe and many others. Some sped the evolution of life, for what higher cause is there than the love of life itself? Other took the savage beasts of the worlds they found, and changed them so that they began to think and feel, and love as true sentients. And still others sought to find knowledge and great leaps in our technology, to evolve us all as a people. And other's goals were not so lofty, but yet, we were still one.

"That all ended on a terrible day, long before the distant-most ancestors of the human race ever existed. A disenfrachised miner whose name could be rendered into your comprehension as Megatron, roused the seeds of rebellion and hatred until our race was split into two; those who followed Megatron deceived us all, betrayed all we ever stood for, and so we have come to know them as the Decepticons. We who stood against them, who honored our ancient ideals of freedom and righteousness know ourselves as the Autobots."

"You don't have to be a jerk about it," A large and rather menacing looking alien robot in the back muttered.

Optimus Prime continued, giving him a patient hand signal. The humans remained silent and listened as he spoke. "Our war endured across countless generations by our own standards. Your entire species' existence is less than the blink of an eye in the time span of our Great War. Your pyramids were constructed in a span of time that would take less time for us to blink in comparision. Your empires of Rome and Babylon rose and fell, bloody conquerers like Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan climbing to power and dying...we have seen things like this on a scale that would dwarf your histories with the smallest and meanest of them. I do not mean to sound presumptious...but these are the briefest ways for me to make my point."

"How do you know about all that stuff on our planet?" Tyler asked.

"Internet."

"Oh."

"And now...a great thing has happened. Something...new has happened, because of your planet. We have come here for that reason, and it is vitally important to many of us. Do you know what that is?"

"Something of yours that could end this war crashed into our planet and the big bad Megatron guy wants it?" Noah suggested. "No doubt pulling us into your war in the process."

"What? No, no, certainly not, the Great War ended some time ago. What I mean is..." Optimus Prime leaned in, his mighty face close to the window. "Before I explain in earnest, might we Autobots be given the honor of your autographs?"

"What."

"We could take you with us into space when we leave!" A larger and excitable looking Autobot said, this one having large sword-arms. (His name, or his terrestial alias, was Sideswipe, but it wasn't about to come up anywhere.) "We could go into space and have space adventures and laugh at the Tau for being silly and drink space sodas and ride giant alien bunnies! And beat up everything that looks at us funny. It would be awesome. Espicially after we hit the Space-Australia pubs. Go Space Broncos!"

"So awesome," Geoff agreed, even though he barely understood what half of that would entail.

"...Why do you want our autographs?" Noah demanded. "You're giant alien robots. Why in the world would you want our autographs! We're just reality TV stars! We got an award snub, we suck!"

"We do?" Tyler said.

"Yep!" Sideswipe said cheerfully. "You suck pretty hard sometimes."

"Aw."

Optimus Prime inclinced his head. "That may be so. On your planet. However...the galaxy you reside in now exist in a state of unprecedented peace, all conquering ambitions and evil plots laid to rest due to a complicated series of events that you are directly responsible for. You see...you have, without realizing it, begun true galactic peace among thousands of alien civilizations."

Noah stared. "What."

"Ooh, ooh!" Owen said. "Was it because you guys watching our show made you realize that all that evil mean stuff was just like us chasing the money and being jerks a lot, only on a bigger scale and with more murder?"

"Partly," Optimus Prime said. "For the most part...it appears that your constant willingness to abuse yourselves for that elusive million-dollar prize as well as the absurd challenges you were pushed to, and the constant amusingly gratuitous injuries you subjected yourselves to, were so entrancing that billions of aliens watched them every premier night...including the world leaders, queens, emperors, warbosses, priest-kings, hive-mind superiors, generals and others in charge of the war machines, including our great enemy Megatron."

"All those jerks became so distracted by the show, they basically forgot to run their worlds and stuff?" Noah guessed.

"Precisely. Many great heroes, revolutionary leaders, heroic loyalists and other people became aware of this opportunity and fought; countless cruel regimes, dictatorships, genocidal rulers, or the simply misguided and other such forces have been cast down since the first season. With them gone, defeated, dead or simply removed from power, we warriors of freedom and heroism have been free to institute proper systems of government that truly work, avenge the fallen races and restore them when we could, give restitution to the hopeless. Evil itself has been dealt a great and terrible blow, and we warriors of Good have taken a mighty step up the mountain of eternal battle; all thanks to you. Because of you, the galaxy of which you are a tiny aspect of has become a truly nobler place. Irkens...Skrulls...Kree...Cybertronians...the Imperium...Eldar...Orks...Yeerks...Cybermen...Yautja...these and other cultures have abandoned the evils of their regimes, been reformed or simply given life to new ways for them to live.

"So many of the darkest times in thousands of cultures so ancient your entire history is less than a blink of the eye has ended, dawning in ages of enlightenment and noble brightness...and it is thanks...to you."

Noah gaped, staggered at the implications. "You...but...that's...I don't...it can't...huh?"

"Cool!" Geoff said, having precisely the opposite reaction, as was Tyler and Owen. "We made the galaxy a better place just because we're basically idiots!"

"Dude!" Tyler said, high-fiving Geoff.

"Isn't this awesome!" Owen said to Noah.

"Please give a moment," Noah said. "I'm trying not to go insane from the absurdity."

"On that note," Optimus Prime said. "Where are the ones you call 'Chris Maclean' and 'Alejandro'? My Autobots, and the Decepticons that have converted to our side, would like to have...words...with them."

"Well, I have no idea where Chris is - luckily enough for him, I suppose - but Alejandro's over there," Noah said, pointing outside.

"Good evening, gents," Alejandro said. "What's all the commotion abou-HOLY CRAP, WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE THINGS!"

"Are you aware that your last name means 'dead donkey'?" Optimus Prime said plainly.

"You are a sadistic manipulative bastard!" Roared Bonecrusher (who had objected to the Decepticon insulting earlier), a massive Decepticon transformed from a minesweeper, pushing the others aside and bearing down on Alejandro. "I hate that! And you voted out Noah! I hate that, he was funny! And then you did...creepy things with that hand muppet...I hate that so much! And then you...became a robot. But now you're not. For no real reason. That sounds like inexplicable discontinuity. And I HATE that...but most of all, Total Drama Action happened, and I HATE THAT SO MUCH! Prepare yourself, human, and pray to whatever gods you honor, for I am taking my hate OUT OF YOUR FLESH!"

"SO AM I!" Roared Ironhide, an Autobot transformed from a massive pickup-truck, huge cannons appeared from his forearms and shoulders. Chainsaws showed up on his lower legs and energy whips extended from his underarms and in general he made a lot of weapons that didn't really fit a truck, but it was still cool.

"No!" Optimus Prime said. "There will be no killing of humans! How many times do I have to repeat myself, Ironhide? Bonecrusher? Sunstreaker?"

"I said I was sorry!" Another Autobot yelled in the back.

More yelling happened. Alejandro was still staring in utter shock. Noah rubbed his head. "For the love of everything that once made sense...I hope Cody's doing better..."

...

Northwards from the little place where they lived on the island, there was a small cliff overlooking the beach; it was a smooth upwards curve from the sloping hills of the house property, arcing upwards into what was really an exaggerated hill, overgrown (but tastefully so) with soft grass and wild bushes and a tall tree of indeterminate species set right behind an odd multi-tiered hexagon made of an unknown substance, with a symbol shaped like a lotus on it.

It all provided a lovely view; of the white sands long ago ground down by the gentle tide and it's swells, of the eternal blue sky overhead and the puffy clouds teased into shape by mecurial winds and luck, of the small collection of shacks below that were of equal use as bathhouses and barbeque pits thanks to the equipment they'd scrounged together...

Sierra liked to sit down on that hexagon; it was lovely for picnics, and when the situation called, a good place to just sit down and think for a bit. She didn't often like to slow down - sometimes she felt like a shark, that to stop moving and thinking and doing was to die - but when she did, it was hard to do it when there were tons of people around to distract you and pull you along and make you forget you wanted to stop in the first place. She absently chewed on some thick stalks of grass she had plucked, and considered that maybe that was the reason things hadn't gone better on the plane during the World Tour.

There had never been a real opportunity to get away and get things sorted out in her head. There had been the bus ride over there and then the plane, and sometimes she'd woken up before anyone else but Cody had always been there so she hadn't thought about just thinking and-

Sierra frowned. Maybe if she had done some proper thinking first, it would have turned out differently. Maybe if she had thought things out, planned properly, Cody would have liked her sooner. Sierra knew herself, and knew that she didn't often see things she really didn't want to. Cody had, at best, tolerated her for most of the season; it was a little painful to think about that he only started to really like her until just before it all was over. Maybe if she'd paid more attention to things, and reigned herself in...

She couldn't stop thinking like that, toying with a new piece of grass. It felt so small, so fragile, so easily torn in her fingers. It took so little to shred it beyond hope of repair.

You could say the same thing about lives, sometimes.

She worried that the same could be said of the newborn relationships she had forged so recently. A hand drifted to the locket around her neck, and Sierra thought that she didn't really know how to handle real people and this had made...problems. She didn't want to use it as an excuse. That wasn't the right thing to do. (A small part thought of her that maybe 'proper' would be a better word; but Sierra had always thought that laws and things like that were silly and for people that would go crazy and be mean if there weren't any and that just didn't seem right.)

Sierra was aware that this sorts of thoughts were not usual for her, but the fact was that her...other problem had led to all sorts of unpleasant considerations, and while it wasn't the most pleasant thing she'd decided to puzzle them through until she found a satisfactory answer. So far...it hadn't really worked out that way. Her brooding had led to her rethinking everything else, looking back to reevaluate her actions and think good and hard until it made her heart start to ache, hold down the little mistakes and dissect them to see how she could have done it better until it hurt.

It also hurt standing still like this, watching her little world pass her by and leaving herself with her own self-doubt and a thousand recriminations. But it had to be done; she couldn't just let the questions lie there.

She jolted a little when she noticed that someone had stepped onto the hexagon beside her; she turned aside to see that it was Cody and looked away in a hurry, fixating on the rolling waves in the distance while the smaller boy (her friend, or so she hoped, she wasn't sure anymore, wasn't sure of anything anymore) sat down delicately next to her, the top of his head a bit below her shoulder.

"Hi," Cody said. Sierra made a little mumble in response. She could feel him looking and her and she looked at him for only a moment, just long enough to see the worried look on his face.

Cody waited, and when no response was forthcoming, said, "Whatcha doing up here?"

Sierra toyed with the grass some more, crumbling it to bits before she let the pieces fall and felt bad for it and wondered why she'd done it. "Thinking deep thoughts," She said, not really thinking her words and just saying the first, honest things that came to mind. "Deep thoughts. Thoughts so deep, if you lived there, they would call you 'Deepy'."

A curious silence met this.

"I wouldn't like being called Deepy," Sierra remarked. "I would run and cry and hide in shame and turn myself into a giant monster and put the Deepy callers in a gerbil house that is actually an aquarium with the water out and the sharks or stuff gone." She paused. "What was I talking about?"

"...I have no idea," Cody said, with a small mellow shrug.

"Oh." Sierra stared at the ocean. It was nice. She wondered what it would be like, to be the ocean. To be so big and all-concompassing, to touch distant shores and the deepest chasms of the sea floor, to host most of the Earth's biomass and so many lost things drifting under the waves, ancient and enduring and witness to so very many things. But it would probably be very wet and Sierra got wrinkly when she was in the bath for barely an hour and decided it wouldn't be that fun. A chance spray of sea foam looked briefly like a tendril or something, and with her brief consideration of the sea life within the ocean the humble octopus came to mind and octopi had tentacles and were sort of alien-ish.

Sierra wondered, briefly, if cephalopods really were the descendents of incomprehensibly alien things from beyond; they looked weird enough for it, and anyway, given the use some cephalopods had for their tentacles in mating purposes it made sense if they were not of this Earth. (Or alternate Earths. Sierra was pretty sure those existed.) Thinking about tentacles reminded her of a really cool game called Blacklight where you played a sentient virus in the form of a woman that shapeshifted and had all kinds of creepy powers mostly rooted in eating people and consuming their biomass. Sierra briefly wondered what it would be like to be such a thing and decided that the stuff you could do would be really really cool except for the whole 'eating people' thing, which was a sour note on the whole idea. It wasn't nice and anyway cannibalism was generally frowned upon. But then she abruptly remembered that the main character of Blacklight was a virus...thing, so wasn't human and technically wasn't a cannibal, but she was still sentient and most sci-fi writers with an idealistic bent generally agreed that if it was sentient it was the same as whatever you were-

Sierra clapped her hands to her head and shook herself, trying to get her thoughts sorted out and simple and organized; trying to be focused when she had a stray thought to snag onto like a kitten with a ball of yarn was like looking at a whole bunch of unneccesary similies and figuring out which one was the stupidest and least neccesary. "I'm doing it again!"

"Doing what?" Cody asked.

"Not staying focused!" Sierra said. "I was trying to think about stuff, really important stuff, but then you showed up and I got all distracted and I saw the ocean and I started thinking about stuff and I got even more distracted and now all I can think about is Great Old Ones and octopi being related and if Alexandria Mercer from Blacklight is technically a cannibal or not and now I don't know what I was thinking about to begin with!"

Cody blinked. "Was it...Chris?" He said carefully.

Sierra twitched and slumped, casting Cody more into shadow then he already was. She stared at the ground with a morose expression, and absently doodled in the dirt. "Yeah," She said. The fact that she said it so simply, without her usual tendency to ramble on or not know when to stop because her point was already made gave it a certain gravity.

Cody shifted about awkwardly. He didn't know girls; not in the sense that he didn't know any, because to say that would be blatant stupidity, but he simply didn't understand the psychology of women, or at least what he thought was their psychology, drummed into him by a little over fifteen years of pop culture introdocrtrination, rumor amongst his fellow geeks at school and what he generally assumed. (All of which was wrong when it came to Sierra, so he really wasn't missing much.) A good deal of his time had been spent trying to rectify that, to various degrees of failure (and one success, even though it hadn't had anything to do with effort on his part), but the fact that he had so little experience actually being in a relationship with a girl, romantic or otherwise, had led to the unfortunate problem of him having no solid base of data for resolving this situation.

Cody remembered his pop culture. He knew how this sort of thing worked in the movies and decided that since dramatic tension and plot complications always made things worse because people always delayed explanations or beat around the bush, he abandoned restraint and said, "Is Chris actually your real dad and the fridge horror of it freaked you out?"

In the brief instant it took for Sierra to react, Cody had time to hope that his life was not a romantic comedy. Hilarious misunderstandings or wild over-reactions were a lot less entertaining when you were on the receiving end of it, and Sierra was a lot bigger than him; but she only reacted by doing nothing so dramatic; she rounded on Cody, eyes wide and mouth open. "How...how did you know!" She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Did you get a psychokinetic implant in your brain when I wasn't looking? Because you have to tell me if you did! I want one."

Cody would have liked to dismiss it or claim that his own genius had resolved everything, but he didn't like lying to girls, espicially Sierra, even when it was to smooth things over. (Cody would have made a terrible diplomat.) "Noah figured it out," Cody explained, a bit guiltily. He hoped he wasn't getting Noah into trouble or 'helping' Sierra by pointing her at someone she could martyr.

"Oh," Sierra said, sounding a bit disappointed at such a mundane explanation. That faded quickly, replaced by a more awkward mood; she wiggled a bit on the dirt, making a pretty big mark in it. "...That's quick of him," She said eventually. She frowned faintly. "...Did he get you to come over here?"

"It was my idea," Cody said, which was honest enough. Not the whole truth, perhaps, but that wasn't pernitent right now.

Sierra nodded. The corner of her mouth twitched; she thought Cody wasn't being entirely honest, but still, he was here, with her, and that was good.

She resumed staring at the sea-view. It was pleasant to watch; it put the mind in a relaxed mood, which was a bonus in her current troubled state. Cody watched it for a bit, waiting for her, and when nothing seemed forthcoming, he looked at her and said, "Pretty." He looked at the ocean and added, "The ocean looks pretty cool too."

Sierra managed a small giggle and had a momentary impulse to throw her arm around Cody's shoulder and pull him in close until she could use him as a crutch to lean on. "They don't have views like this where you're from." It was a statement, not a question.

Cody smiled awkwardly. If she was trying to put him at ease, it was going around the wrong way, but he liked that she seemed like she was opening up a little. "Do they have them where you're from? I mean...where are you from?"

"No, they don't," Sierra agreed. "Saskatchewan."

"...Huh?"

"Saskatchewan," Sierra repeated. "It's not that far from Quebec, but just outside of it for me to be legally allowed to be there." Sierra had mentioned a few times to Cody that she'd been banned from Quebec and was a bit vauge on the details. "I was born in a place called Moose Jaw. Too many tourists. Not enough pawn bookshops with free Internet."

"Huh." Cody shuffled a bit, unsure and inexperienced at this sort of thing. He decided that honesty was the best policy now. "Sierra...um. So. Chris is your dad."

Sierra nodded, frowning at her feet because it was easier than staring at Cody and giving the wrong idea.

"Um. How did you find out?"

"...I was looking stuff up a bit ago. I did some digging around, you know...looking up what people were saying about Chris' old boy band." Cody nodded and snickered at Chris' expense, and Sierra smiled a little. "I was looking for blackmail stuff; 'cause I was really really mad at Chris because he wanted to leave me in the middle of Drumheller just 'cause I blew up his plane - which is pretty awesome, you know, nobody else blew up a whole plane! - and I found this one interview Chris' drummer gave to Underground - a news group, they were like Celebrity Manhunt of the day, except for underground bands and comics - and I found out some...things."

"Like?"

"My mom was one of their groupies. Which was basically just her and some other girls she paid to do it, because you look silly if you're being a groupie by yourself."

"You did it in the song in Australia. By yourself."

"That was Australia, Cody! It's like lower-class Britain; if you're not epically crazy, you're doing it wrong."

"Oh."

Sierra got back on track, aware that she was about to go into a tangent on a popular gaming setting from Europe called Brighthammer 90,000 which took every single sci-fi trope in existence, combined them with the Rule of Cool and went so far over the top that aliens could feel the breeze. "Well, I read a lot of stuff like that - and checked the other official sources and they confirmed it, and I gotta tell ya it was hard finding it all out, Chris kept this stuff buried - and...uh, my mom's a lot like me, okay? I mean, a-lot-a-lot like me!"

"I figured as much," Cody said. Sierra's occasional mentions of her homelife made that conclusion inevitable.

"Yeah, that's what anyone says. But...my mom..." Sierra fidgeted. "She...uh...doesn't really get it when people say 'no'. She's not mean about it or anything, she just doesn't seem to notice it when people don't like her pushing in or doing her thing."

Cody politely did not say that that particular characteristic had certainly been inherited.

"But...she's my mom. This stuff isn't exactly easy to talk about..." She straightened herself, frowning a bit, and finally said. "Um. One night, uh, the drummer said that my mom was off somewhere with Chris when everyone else was at a party and he followed them for some reason and Chris said something and she said something and he said something that she misunderstood and got all excited and then she...you know...took her crush just a little too far."

Cody blinked. Then understanding dawned in his eyes. "Oh." Followed by a mixture of shock and horror. "Oh."

"Yeah, that's what I said when I pieced it together," Sierra said, wiggling her feet uncomfortably. "Exact same words and inflection, not kidding. I made charts and stuff." She tilted her head downward; with her hair unbound from the usual big swoop over her head, her face was effectively covered by her hair this way. "And then, nine months later...me."

Cody thought that that probably explained a few things about Sierra - not just the circumstances of her conception but also her life to date; Sierra had never mentioned a father figure at all, so she'd probably been raised by her mother alone - but didn't say anything. He wriggled too, looking like he desperately wanted to just leave and forget all of this, but higher responsibilities compelled him to stay with her. "Um, this is probably a stupid question, but does...Chris know?"

Sierra shrugged listlessly. "Who knows," She said. "I guess so. I mean...he knows who my mom is, for sure, I sent him the pictures of our Chris-ceratops like I said because I thought it was still the nice thing to do, and he's smart enough to figure it out for himself, but either he doesn't want to think about it or doesn't care. Probably both." She looked downright miserable as she said it.

"Sierra..."

"I don't think he's that upset about what...you know...happened. My mom, doing what she did to him. I dunno why." Sierra sighed.

"Sierra, it might not...you could be wrong," Cody said helpfully. "I mean...it was just the one time, right? This kind of stuff happens all the time in bands and groupies," He paused and added, "Okay, maybe not like that, but all I'm saying is that-"

"I might not be the bastard child of girl-on-guy crush-assault?" Sierra said bluntly. "I hoped I wasn't. I really really did. So I checked, you know. I haven't found the computer system that can keep me out." She looked guiltily proud at this before slipping back into her dour mood. "I looked up birth records, hospital admission forms - I didn't know they even used computers for this sort of stuff back then! - and all the usual stuff. It all checks out. There's still a slight possibility that I'm some other guy's kid, but I figure the only way to be sure is if we got blood testing done with me and Chris and I don't think I really need to for-sure know that badly." She bit her lip, her eyes watering a little. "Wouldn't solve anything."

She put a hand to her face, trying to look like she was having a migrane. Cody still saw the frustrated tears build up under her hands while she tried to wipe them away without him noticing, so he looked away to give her that small dignity.

When he looked back, she was a bit red on the face, a little puffy-eyed. She was also smiling gratefully at him. "Sierra," Cody said eventually. "That's...that's a nasty thing to have to find out just out of nowhere."

She nodded, blinking furiously again, like she was trying to keep back another crying fit. (She'd had a few, when her crushing issues had become too much to take anymore.) "That's not the worst of it. I mean...I was crushing on him. I was crushing on him! And he...he's like my dad. That's just.." She shuddered violently, and Cody half-expected her to pop out of her skin. "It's wrong on so many levels. I used to write steamy fanfiction about him, for the love of Mr. Gygax! I did a whole epic campaign over a guy I based in him in Black Dog Studios World of Grimness setting, and, and a whole bunch of other stuff only he's really my sort-of dad and that's wrong on so many levels!" She rocked back and forth. "...My toes are cold. The older guy I was crushing on is my dad (probably) and I spent a ton of time kissing up to him and thinking about him that way-" Cody blanched in disgust. "And making fanclubs about him and I want to throw up when I think about the stuff I did and nothing I did in the World Tour feels right and now my toes are cold! Lousy unseasonable cold flashes."

A thought occured to Cody and without thinking about it (dispite the fact that uninitiated people-contact bugged him a little) he put his hands on Sierra's exposed toes, apparently not noticing the way she went completely still out (with a brief thought of what is he doing?) tucking his fingers under them and squeezing ever so lightly here and there. "Does that feel better?" He asked, rolling a pinky under the littlest toe on her right foot. "Warmer, that kind of thing?"

Sierra wriggled uncontrollably with a completely goofy grin, shivering in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with coldness or disgust or self-loathing and everything to do with the fact that her real crush - the one that was an actual nice guy - was rubbing her feet. She squealed something in the affirmative, a warm flush turning her cheeks a lighter shade, and she stifled a disappointed groan when Cody pulled away, looking embarrased but pleased with himself. That bright-eyed and big gap-toothed grin did wonders for her self-doubt. "Yep," She said. "Not cold toes. No cold toes. Not cold at all."

"'Kay!" Cody said cheerfully. A concerned look dawned. "...Guy-friends are supposed to do things like that, right? Warming toes is part of the not-a-bad-thing code of girl-guy relations, right?" He scratched the back of his head. "Because, I have to tell you, I'm making this up as I go along."

Sierra thought that Cody was much too good at this to be an amateur. (But then she probably would have thought that no matter what he did, still too infautuated with him to see his faults yet.) "You're kidding!"

"No way. I mean..." Cody grimaced. "I know I used to act like a ladie's man or whatever and show-off and stuff, but really...that's something I'm not. I'm just the kid that runs in there like an idiot and hopes like hell that I don't break myself because I got in over my head." He paused, and warmly added, "You can pull that sort of thing off, Sierra. Not the idiot bit, please don't take that the wrong way! I mean...uh...darn it, I can't make it sound right! Felt better in my head...what I mean is that you can just run into crazy stuff and make it work. You can charge into something you know nothing about and at the very least make it through and shrug off whatever hits you because you're cool like that. I'm lucky if I can make it through without being broken. You?" He smiled, with the kind of earnestness that made her completely crush on him and never look back way back when she started watching the show. "You break whatever you run in to."

This time, Sierra didn't resist the urge to reach down to the smller boy, slip her arms under his unresisting shoulders and pull him into a tight hug. She had to awkwardly balance him on her thighs so that his chin could properly hook over her shoulders instead of get squished into her chest, but this seemed to meet with some approval from him; he put his arms around her back, hands coming to rest on the space under her shoulderblades and hugged her back, nearly as tightly and warmly as she was hugging him.

It felt real. His smaller, weaker frame bearing her weight with surprising ease, trembling with the tightness he held her with. The coarseness of his unwashed hair, pushing against the side of her face by the wind. The excited beat of his heart, they were so close she could feel it through his chest. The feel of his boyish body, solid in spite of his self-confessed weakness against her larger mass, which was pleasantly squashing against him and he wasn't trying to get away for once.

She hugged him tighter still, blinking furiously against the hot wetness on her eyes; she didn't want to ever let go, like if she let him go he might fall away and disappear forever. Cody hurredly inhaled, accurately predicting his ensuing inability to breathe properly, and when Sierra finally found the courage to let go of him, he quickly sucked in air so she didn't notice.

They both sat back. "...Cody?" Sierra said after a moment.

"Um?"

Sierra bit her lip. "Do you...like me?"

"Yes," He said at once, without any heisitation. "Wait, why?"

She anxiously rocked a little. "...I saw the reruns. Of World Tour. The things I...did."

Cody colored a little. "Oh."

Sierra turned away from him, too mortified to look at him properly. A moment passed before she felt able to speak again. "Stealing your toothbrushes. Sniffing your stuff. Pretty much molesting you all the time. Being creepy all the time. Violating your personal space and not paying attention when you didn't like it, which was always. Not listening to you. And when I kept getting you hurt."

"Those times in Africa were accidents."

"...That doesn't make it any better," Sierra said, frowning. "I don't like excuses. People talking about why they did something or what made them do it, none of that's real, it doesn't matter. What people do...that's real. That matters."

Cody said nothing. This sounded philosophical, and with Sierra, that was novel enough to warrent continued attention.

"...I've never liked rules that people just have to listen to because it's the rules. I don't like the idea that's the only reason people act good. Because they'll be punished if they don't behave." A more determined gleam came to her dark eyes. "I think some really old writer from the 1900s or sometime said something like, uh...'Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one'. That's what I believe, Cody. That people should do the right thing all the time because they want to, not because they have to."

"...Kind of like that thing about the worst way to get into Heaven is by doing good things because it'll get you in there, not because they're good?" Cody guessed.

Sierra nodded enthusiastically. "And it's supposed to be done the other way around. Yeah." Her smile faltered. "...I don't want to make excuses for anything I do. If I use an excuse that's even for a good reason...I'll start doing it for bad ones."

"You're not a bad person," Cody said sternly, as if to cut off that line of reasoning.

"I feel pretty neutral right now," Sierra admitted. "And not the benevolent 'don't care about alignment' kind either."

"After the stuff we have to do in Total Drama? I don't think any of us can really be that good." Even as he said this, Cody didn't look happy.

"'Cept Bridgette," Sierra pointed out. "The worst she did was kiss a pole."

"Well, that's Bridgette. She's practically a saint. Only without any martyring going on."

"Unless you count being suckered by 'Al'." Sierra snickered cruelly. (Somewhere else, Alejandro sneezed and shivered. But that might have been the giant robots who just would not stop calling him Al.) Her expression softened. "...I bet his life sucked like Heather's does." That did sound a bit like an excuse for his actions, which Sierra disapproved of, but that was her way of looking at things; she didn't expect anyone else to see things the way she did.

"I guess." Cody relaxed. "Sierra, I-"

"Cody?"

"Huh?"

Sierra fidgeted. There was something she needed to know, had to know, lest the not-knowing gnaw at her like an irritable beaver with severe emotional issues. "Did you ever hate me?"

Cody froze. "Urk?"

She glared at him. "I mean it! Tell me the truth and I'm so awesome I'll know if you're lying so make it easy on us all and tell me the truth! Did any of the things I do ever make you...hate me?"

Cody frowned. "I don't-"

"Please."

He didn't say anything for a moment. As Sierra looked more despondent, starting to reach an inevitable and painful conclusion, Cody sighed. "Sierra. If you want me to be honest, then I guess I have to. When we first met...before I liked you more, I thought you were...annoying. And weird. Mostly weird. But lots of annoying too. Those things you mentioned? Yeah...that was a big deal for me to have to deal with every day on that plane."

Sierra's expression was carefully blank. She made a slightly too-quick motion instructing him to go on.

So he did; it sounded like it was a uphill battle for him, getting the words out and honest without being hurtful. "Always being all over the place...stalking me...saying things I really don't like having people hear and just touching me all the time...I didn't like it. At all." He bit his lip, and choked out, "You scared me sometimes."

Sierra couldn't manage to look at him while he kept talking.

"I mean...I knew you were trying to be nice, I think, but...I don't know. I couldn't really get it. I mean, I never had any girl even think about me like that before you, so...it sort of came out of nowhere. I didn't know how to deal with it." He frowned. "You scared me and freaked me out and I never I wanted to go back to being ignored before then..."

Sierra could feel her eyes watering up.

"...But I never hated you."

She looked at him. "...Really?"

Cody nodded. "I said I would be honest." He smiled. "And...honestly, you were the only one who ever listened to me. Even Gwen ignored me and she's my friend. Probably because of all that fighting between her and Courtney and Heather. But, what I want to say is...I felt like I was doing it all by myself sometimes. Heather and Courtney never even listened to me, but you did. Sometimes it felt like it went out the other ear, but you still listened. Remember the commercial challenge in Japan?"

"Yep!"

"We only won there because of you and me." He smiled faintly. "And...the times like when we were doing the commercial and you weren't going crazy over me? That was...nice. It was like having a friend."

It was simple and honest. That was probably why Sierra didn't immediately think he was just trying to sugarcoat things. "But you had friends. Have them."

Cody laughed sourly. "Yeah. Either on other teams and therefore opposed to me, or too busy bickering to register my continued existence." He shrugged, as if to say that he was used to it. The profound borderline indifference of it, as if he was so inured to it that he almost didn't care anymore, was painful for Sierra to have to acknowledge.

She patted him on the shoulder. "I did."

"Yeah." He shyly put his hand over her's. It was a small gesture, but one with meaning behind it; it wasn't so long ago that he had gotten nervous just being near her. It made a statement, an acknowledgement that things had truly changed between them. "I know."

She flushed, but kept her hand there for a moment. But prudence required more, and she eventually pulled her hand back and finally said, "Cody...about all the things I did to you, being overbearing and crazy and stuff, everything you didn't want that I did, I'm-"

"No, don't say it," Cody said hurredly. "I'm fine, really, you don't have to-"

Sierra wasn't about to take that. She had something to say, and she refused to let it stay unsaid. No excuses. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything I did. I'm sorry I was a creepy stalker fangirl and didn't be a real friend sooner."

Cody stared up into her eyes, watching her lip tremble and her eyebrows narrowed sternly. His expression wasn't clear enough for her to read. She didn't know what he was thinking. Without warning, he leaned in and gave her another tight, earnest hug. "...It's okay," He said quietly. "It's okay. I...I, uh...how can I say 'I forgive you' without sounding all formal and corny and stuff?"

She hugged him back, more gently than she ever had. "That sounds good enough for me." She dared to hunch over a bit and give him a quick kiss on the top of his head, which was easiest for her to reach. He tilted his head up, and she feared she'd crossed some sort of boundary, but she then felt otherwise when she saw the warm look on his face, the increasingly familiar gap-toothed grin and a slight blush.

(For a moment, it occurs to Cody that suggest that he likes her. He doesn't; that seems too much right now, too premature. It would make things too complex, and he doesn't want to make too much change too fast. It might be good, be even the best thing to do, but he's afraid to risk what little he has. He loves her, cares for her, he knows that for sure, but in what capacity, he's not entirely certain.)

Sierra pulled him up and in for another tight hug, one hand behind his head and pushing the whole of him against her; he squeaked once in surprise, but gave in at once. "Cody?" She murmured.

"Yeah?" He said, his voice a bit muffled by her volume.

"When I found out about me and Chris...I started thinking. Not good-thinking. I...I couldn't tell if the other things I felt about were real too. My crush with him? Perverted and wrong. I didn't know if anything else about me was right." She hugged him tighter still, but not enough to stop him breathing or make him uncomfortable. "You're real," She said simply, happy tears in her eyes. "Yeah. This feels real."

Cody squeezed her back as best as he could, her greater mass crushed against him in a way that was...comfortable. In the months after World Tour and before Sierra had come down to his town, he'd grown to miss it. It scared him how much he had missed it. But not anywhere as much as he'd missed her: Sierra's infectious energy, unwilling to just falter for even a moment, the sheer fun she brought into every waking moment...he'd only noticed it when it was gone, and he was able to miss it so badly it hurt. Without thinking about it, he hugged as though she might again disappear, and leave him alone forever this time.

Sierra, for her part, was reminded of just why she had become so badly infautuated with Cody. Not Duncan, the bad boy; not Geoff, the everyman's cool guy; not Trent, the sanest and safest of all the guys (but admittedly that wasn't really saying much); and not Justin, the estrogen brigade bait.

Cody wasn't big and handsome like the others were, he wasn't tall or athletic, he was second only to Harold in geekiness (though to Sierra, geekiness was a favorable point) and he certainly wasn't one of the stronger campers, lacking that essential force of personality required to make it far in the game. Even so, he was a genuine nice guy. He was able and willing to put aside his romantic feelings to make the girl he liked happy, to take all the abuse the world could throw at him with a smile and an upbeat attitude. She'd felt herself break a little when he finally, ultimately gave up, but the fact that he simply refused to act as depressed or morose as he had deserved after being mauled by a bear had made her feel different sorts of things. That kind of earnest dedication to moving forward, no matter what...that was something she admired. Something she loved.

They hugged. And that was enough for them both right now.

Incidentally, they were also both completely unaware that Bridgette, DJ and Gwen had wandered down their way, having been occupied with finding the two of them to let them know about the weirdness that had begun with the giant alien robots that were also fans and had only escalated from there.

They stopped in mid-step, noticing Sierra and Cody in a very...delicate moment, the two geeky teens of highly disparate statures still unaware of the newcomers.

"...Awwww!" Bridgette said, clasping her hands together, overcome by the sheer unexpected cuteness. "I knew they'd be cute together, and they so are!"

"Awwww!" DJ echoed, smiling like a dope at the sight of it. He turned to Gwen and said, "See, I told you they'd hook up soon."

"Huh," Gwen smirked and shrugged. "Whaddaya know. I was hopin' Cody would give up and go along with her sooner or later, but I wasn't expecting this much sooner." Privately, she was relieved that this meant that Cody would be forevermore off his crush on her...but she didn't want to say that out loud. It sounded self-serving and cold.

A moment passed. DJ, Bridgette and Gwen glanced at each other, feeling a bit uncomfortable now about intruding on this obviously private moment.

"Should we tell them?" DJ said, referring to Sierra and Cody. "About the...y'know. That?"

Gwen glanced over to where he was gesturing; down near the beachhouse, where a number of the giant robots were helping Geoff set up what he promised would 'be the most aweome rocking-est party EVER', something that Harold insisted was an absolute must for the world's first authencated encounter of the first kind with real aliens. (The ones they had seen in challenges didn't count, those aliens were jerks. Even moreso than the Decepticons.) "I think they'll figure it out on their own soon enough," Gwen said, noticing that a pair of the giant robots (the twins Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, she believed, though she wasn't sure how giant alien robots could even have twins) were having an amazingly violent mock-fight after getting bored and were falling and rolling and leaping in their general direction.

So they left it at that, and retreated to the relative safety of being around Optimus Prime or one of the others big enough to help protect them, trusting that Sierra and Cody would figure it out when it did.

In the meantime, though, those two had other business to attend to.

...

A/N: Another Cody/Sierra one-shot, but this took me nearly a week and a half to write up and finish. I blame being lazy.

This story serves two primary purposes: more character exploration, and examination of several ideas I've had. Some of them, such as Sierra's dad being Chris, came from TV Tropes Wild Mass Guessing Page for Total Drama Island. Others, like Sam and Dean from Supernatural taking over the company that produces the in-universe show by complete accident, was of my own invention. (You can tell, can't you?) I'm thinking of using this as the springboard for various other stories and one-shots. I've got an Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover in mind, but I'm not sure whether to write out a fully-chaptered story for it or not.

Sierra making the sandwiches was inspired by a Youtube video of a guy making a sandwich, God of War quick-time gameplay style. She's more successful at it, obviously.

Would anyone be interested in a 'Gwen and DJ learning from Sam and Dean' story? Because it sounds like an interesting idea to me. (In case any Supernatural experts are interested, this has no particular connection to the official timeline; if there was an Apocalypse, it was averted. I see the Winchesters here as actually being Hunters from Hunter: The Vigil, with a bit of the Reckoning put in, both being games from White Wolf's World of Darkness setting. Which would mean that Total Drama takes place in the New World of Darkness. Why does that make sense?)

Avatar fans may have a clue as to what the heck this island is and what Castiel meant by 'Lion-Turtle'.

I now see Cody, Sierra and Noah as forming something of an unofficial geek trio. (Harold, being the uber-geek, is in a class all his own.) I'm not sure why, but they'd be an awesome group of friends. GEEK POWAH!

I may have made Sierra a bit crazier than usual, or at least more random. How's that work for her character?

I get a lot of strange things when I write stuff like this. For example, I put in the Transformers and the news that the show helped usher in galactic peace in what was otherwise a fairly serious story about Sierra and Cody bonding. I kept it anyway, because it was funny, and also because it added a bit to my theme of 'consequences' and stuff. Or something like that.

Avatar fans may yet again recognize that platform thingie Sierra is brooding upon. (It was hard to figure out how to describe that thing; I rewatched the episode and couldn't come up with anything until Aang said "It's a hexagon' before something clicked.) Any theories on the connections here are welcome. (Also, I think Sierra would be a Firebender.)

Sierra's weird thought-hopping is actually based on what I can understand of my own non-linear chain of thinking.

I love Coderra, and this story was full of lovely Coderra fluff. I also used it to explore an interesting idea; my first Cody/Sierra story got a lot of love for NOT using the usual 'Cody tells Sierra off, apologizes later, kissiness ensues' theme, so I got to thinking, and decided to REVERSE the idea, of having Sierra apologize to Cody for the stuff she's pulled. Of course, they're friends, so he doesn't think it's neccesary.

I also believe that Sierra's alignment is Chaotic Good, so I decided to implement signs of that here and there. (It involved making her a bit more wordy and philosophical than usual, though.)

That last bit before switching out on Sierra's thoughts was influenced on my thoughts about just why Sierra would like Cody so much. The ideas range quite a bit (she wants a nice non-threatening guy and might have had some relationship troubles in the past; she has domineering tendences and so went for the meekest guy there; she just really likes guys smaller than her; she's a massive geek and so was drawn to the guy that just own up to his geekness; and others) but one that intrigued me was the idea that Cody's defining characteristic, the over-excited eager kid, got her attention, and I decided to use that.

...I seem to be picking up story entries by now. I hope to eventually have at least one story in all of my fandoms!