"Last time on Total. Drama. Noun! The campers were introduced, Izzy was Marked for Elimination, and Harold was supposed to be thrown in the lake," Chris summarized, glaring at Chef.
"It ain't my fault you wasted so much time introducing the campers, the audience better know who they are by now," Chef complained, crossing his arms.
"Of course they don't! Half of them are bland and forgettable! Anyways, that's all that happened. Today, we may actually get to the challenge! On… TOTAL! DRAMA! NOOOOOOUN!"
*Opening theme that doesn't count towards the episode word count limit*
The lyrics are exactly the same as they always are, but Chris has photo-shopped his smiling face over the campers' faces in the theme from Island. Very, very badly.
"This is the Total Drama amphitheatre!" Chris announced, making a grand sweeping motion with his hand. The campers were too busy wondering how they got there to comment on the fact that he just announced a place that they'd all been to before.
"What the- Weren't you throwing Harold into the lake? Did you drug us or something?" Heather shrieked.
"No, it's just really boring to talk about how we get places, so that part got skipped. Did I pick the teams yet? I can't remember."
Most of the campers facepalmed as Sadie replied, "No, but I'm with Katie! GOT THAT?" The last two words were said with a roar worthy of Eva.
"Gosh! Obviously since you said that Chris is gonna separate you for more drama," Harold pointed out.
"He'd better not," Sadie replied, speaking normally, "Or we'll, like-"
"-totally trash his trailer!" Katie finished.
Chris shuddered. "NO! No, you're on the same team. I didn't have enough time to come up with new team names, so I'm not changing the teams. But since people hate it when the team names get reused, whoever scores the highest on each team can choose their team name."
"Oh ho ho, YES!" Izzy cheered. "I vote for the Krazy Kaleidoscopes! Ooh! Or Noah's Unicorns! Or Team E-Scope! Or-"
"Enough!" Chris interrupted. "I think I will change the teams after this challenge… two highest scorers overall are the team captains!" He gave a side glance to the camera, muttering, "Gotta motivate those cranky kids somehow!"
"Did I mention that you can't use the same talent you used in TDI? Because that's also a rule," Chris announced as the campers ran around frantically trying to prepare for the challenge. No one was paying attention except Ezekiel.
"Hey, Chris dawg, I can showcase my mad rapping skills, eh?" Rapper Zeke asked, holding his bling in the host's face.
"Didn't you say you weren't talented in the last chapter? Curse your lack of regard for continuity, gosh!" Harold ranted, randomly appearing next to them.
He was ignored. "If you want to be embarrassed on national TV, be my guest. Challenge starts in thirty minutes!"
Beth took out her fire baton, but before she could light it Leshawna knocked it away. "Sorry, girl," the sister explained, "but last time didn't go so well, ya feelin' me?"
"But I went back and did the catching class! I can totally do it now, see?" Beth protested, tossing the unlit baton high above her head and catching it without even looking.
"Well, okay," Leshawna said, still a little dubious, "just don't light it 'til the real thing."
Beth nodded and began to create a routine.
Bridgette put her head in her hands. "I totally messed up last time, the surf here sucks, and there's no way I can sing on live TV! What do I do?"
"Think Chris'll let us use making out as a group act?" Geoff asked, not entirely joking.
"He didn't say we couldn't, and I can't think of anything better, so sure. Do you want to practice? " she asked, twirling the end of her ponytail around a finger.
"Babe, you don't even need to ask!"
Cody watched them going at it from the other side of the ampitheatre with the rest of the Screaming Gophers. "So Gwen-"
"No!"
"...I was just gonna ask you what your talent is," he muttered. "I was thinking I'd act out Chris's big scene from Badminton: the Movie to see if he'd give me a suck-up bonus."
"Oh," Gwen replied, suitably chastised. "Sorry. I'm just-"
"-worried Cody will try to steal you from Trent despite you telling him multiple times that you're not interested? Don't worry, Gwen, this isn't that kind of fic! And great job on the exposition, guys, best I've seen so far. I'll help you guys out so we can get to the challenge! I'm gonna juggle chainsaws, Noah's gonna read some Shakespeare, Leshawna's gonna dance, and Big O's gonna burp the alphabet in one go! Okay, I gotta go find two more chainsaws, bye!" Izzy finished before Gwen could say "paranoid". The redhead cartwheeled off, cackling maniacally.
Gwen awkwardly muttered, "Caricatures," then went to help her boyfriend practice his dancing.
Courtney quickly slid out of Izzy's way. "Watch where you're going!" she yelled. "You almost broke my violin!"
"Hey, Princess, wanna be my lovely assistant?" Duncan asked her, carving out lines on a human-shaped target that he'd found who-knows-where with his knife.
"Don't call me that! And no thanks, this time I'm not going to be injured before I can perform!" the former CIT responded. She and Duncan were standing as far away from stage lights as physically possible while still being in the ampitheatre.
"Oh, relax. It's not like the same thing will happen twice. If you won't help me, I'm sure I can find someone else." Duncan looked around and saw a pile of fake gold chains that could only be Ezekiel. Shuddering, he looked away.
Harold suddenly appeared right in front of him. "As long as you go after I show off my mad figure skating skills, I could do it. Even you wouldn't be a big enough idiot to risk your chances of winning on being a jerk."
Duncan shrugged, and continued carving his target so the focus could shift to someone else.
"Wow, you have to actually, like, use a talent this time," Lindsay said to Heather, glaring.
"I'm a ballerina, Lindsiot. What are you gonna do, a photoshoot?"
"OMG That's a great idea! I have this new bikini that Chip'll love, and this reeeally cute outfit I didn't get to wear last season, oh, I should totally have Tyler help me get ready!" Lindsay ran off to find Tyler, who was practicing his yo-yo skills. He was doing pretty good until she glomped him from behind, causing both of them to fall over and get wrapped in the string.
Eva took one look at them and walked away, shaking her head. "Morons."
"Oh my gosh, like, that is so not nice-" Katie began.
"-so totally not nice, I mean-" Sadie continued.
"What'd they ever do to you?"
"I know, right, why would you say something like that?"
Eva, glaring at both of them, snarled, "Because I'm not nice. Got a problem with that?"
"Y'know, we did spend, like, most of last season at the Playa together, Eva."
"Yah, we're not, like, scared of you."
"Okay, maybe a little, like when you get really, really mad-"
"-but not when you're, like, normal like this."
Eva wasn't sure how to respond to this, everybody was afraid of her. "Pfft, whatever. I'm going to go practice my act."
"Go ahead. We need to work on our dance routine. It's going to be-"
"-like so much better-"
"-it'll blow Chris away!" With that, Katie and Sadie left to find a place that wasn't filled with people panicking about the challenge. The closest thing they found was the cliff that needs to be described even though it's the only cliff on the island. It was tall, as cliffs are wont to be, and steep. It overlooked the camp and was the only noteworthy landmark on the island, but not the only one that will be described as if no one's seen it before.
The only one at the cliff was Justin. He was having trouble thinking of an actual talent he had. He'd already used his hotness once, and Chris said no repeat acts. At least he thought Chris had said that, it was hard to hear him over everyone panicking.
Naturally, Justin's mere presence caused Katie and Sadie to faint, but he took no notice. It happened all the time; one day at the Playa Beth had been unconscious for an entire day because Justin had tried to have a conversation with her. He'd complimented her, and that was more than she could handle. This was why he tended not to talk much. Suddenly, it dawned on him that he could use this as a talent! It wasn't technically just hotness. Ten minutes after he fled the cliff to get ready, Katie and Sadie revived and began to practice.
Now that most of the important people had been mentioned, it was time for the actual talent show. A giant crowd of screaming fans led by Sierra had taken over the bleachers, so the contestants gathered backstage. Chris greeted them and, again, explained the challenge.
"Camptestants! You'll be performing your talents for Grand Master Chef who will rate you on a scale from 1, which is totally sucktacular, to 10, which is Chris McClean-like. Also watching will be a bunch of Total Drama fans we found, just for added pressure. Owen! You're up! Did you write an introduction for me to read off?"
"I was supposed to do that?" Owen quickly scribbled something down on a napkin and handed it to Chris.
Chris did his best to read the scribbled on napkin, "Owen is going to birp the entire elfabet in won go."
Owen ran out to the stage, chugged a 2-liter bottle of soda, and burped. "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOCQRSTUBWXYZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!"
All the guys and the crowd of fans cheered very loudly, while the girls looked disgusted. Except for Izzy. "You go Big O!"
A fake drumroll came from somewhere unimportant as Chef revealed the score. "It would've been higher, but you messed up a few times. 6.5! Next up is Gwen! She didn't write an intro, but here she is, doin' her thing!" Chris said, not noticing that his "perfect" hair had been blown back by the force of Owen's belch.
Gwen stood on the stage with an oversized sketch pad, and started drawing a caricature of Chris. Because he wasn't judging her, she added devil horns and a pitchfork. All the campers laughed and applauded her.
The fake drumroll came back, and it was revealed that Gwen had scored a 6. Later, Chef told her that if Chris didn't sign his paycheck, he would've given her a 10.
"Next we have Heather, who's actually doing what she said this time and dancing for us! Not sure what she's dancing to, she never told anyone important, namely me, what song to play."
"What are you talking about? I specifically said-"
Chris interrupted, "So I'll choose for her! How does Soulja Boy sound to you?"
"I'm a ballet dancer! That song is the exact opposite of ballet music!"
"Don't care! Heather, everyone!"
Heather just stood there as Soulja Boy started playing. Her dance routine wouldn't fit the rhythm of the song, but she needed to win invincibility and be a team captain if she wanted to make it past day one. She wouldn't put it past the rest of her team to bomb their acts just to get rid of her. No one was thinking of doing anything of the sort, because everyone tends to forget they can do anything other than play fairly until there's a clear villain, but Heather didn't know that. Her only options were to 'crank that soulja boy' or try to do ballet anyway. She chose both.
She improvised with whatever ballet moves even mildly fit the tempo and rhythm of the song. She also did the soulja boy dance when she couldn't come up with a move fast enough. When she finished, only Harold, Ezekiel, Lindsay, and Geoff applauded. But only out of politeness, except for Geoff, who just really liked Soulja Boy and had been cheering and singing along throughout the whole performance.
"Heather, I'm ashamed of you. I expected better. 4 out of 10!" Chris announced, getting more applause than Heather's performance.
"It would've been better if you'd played the song I was prepared to dance to!"
"A true dancer can dance to any danceable dance, eh. Maybe you just ain't a true dancer," Ezekiel said in a horribly misguided attempt at calming Heather down. Fortunately for him, Heather was too far away to hear him.
Leshawna strutted across the stage before Chris could announce her. "Make way for the real queen," she said, shoving Heather off stage, because karma's always a bitch in the first couple chapters.
Odette's Dance from Swan Lake began to play. Heather ran to try to rip Chris's head off, but was stopped by a thick layer of plot armor. "You jerk! That was my song! I'll kill you!" she shrieked.
"Silly Heather, no lasting harm can come to me, I'm the host with the most! And flying off the handle is Eva's shtick, not yours. Just sit down and watch Leshawna dance."
Leshawna began to "dance". While normally everyone would be appalled, seeing her hip hop and breakdancing inspired moves set to that song was so surreal that no one could react.
"Yeah baby! That's how I roll!" she shouted once the song ended. The crowd roared with applause, and Harold leapt into her arms.
"That was the most bootylicious boogie I've ever seen. Give daddy some sugar!" he wheezed. Leshawna gave him a kiss on the lips, Harold's favorite place to be kissed.
Chef held up their score, including the new Not-Heather bonus of half a point. It was a 5.5 with a question mark drawn after it. "So far, Heather's looking like a shoe in for Worst in Show."
"Are you judging a dog show or a talent competition?" Courtney asked.
"Ehhh, maybe. It is Heather," Chris answered, ignoring Heather's furious glares.
Izzy was tired of waiting for Chris to read her introduction, so she gave it herself. "And in this corner, from somewhere in Canada, weighing in at why should I tell you, the juggling juggernaut, the Kaleidoscopes' awesome leader, Sergeant E-Scope's Lonely Hearts Club Band! I guess it's not really a band, because it's just me, and I'm not even doing music, but I wanted to reference the Beatles! Is that so wrong?"
"It's only okay if you do it in moderation. We wouldn't want a whole chapter to dissolve into nothing but references to a band, even if it is the Beatles," Chris explained. Izzy and Harold nodded, and everyone else looked even more confused because they lacked the capabilities to see beyond the fourth wall.
Holding up two boring-looking juggling balls, Izzy motioned for the crowd to be quiet. She then threw the balls at Tyler and pulled out three knives. She started to throw the knives into the air, but got bored of them before she could get a real rhythm started. Letting the knives drop to the ground, she grabbed a chainsaw, a live fish, and Beth's fire baton. Then things got interesting. "Irene! Stop almost dying! Dead fish are waaay less fun to watch than live fish!" she scolded her fish as she threw it between the chainsaw and the fire.
"Okay, I'm cutting you off. Your act is taking too long. 8 out of 10!" Chris yelled. "Lindsay, you're up!"
A spotlight shone on Lindsay as she stood on the stage wearing her new bikini. What color was it, you ask? It was the same blue as her head scarf. "10 out of 10, no, wait, 11 out of 10! Best act of the night by far!" Chris cheered.
"Chris, stop rigging the competition for Lindsay just because you like her boobs!" Heather complained. "I thought Chef was judging this, anyways!" A perfect ten flashed on the Chef-O-Meter.
"I'm giving her a ten to prove I'm not gay!" Chef proudly proclaimed.
"That's not fair!" Courtney protested.
"I'm hot! Why didn't I get a cover-up ten?" Heather complained.
"Fine! She gets a 9.9999999," Chef yelled over them and all the other complaining campers.
"Whatever, at least it's not a ten," Trent said, shuddering.
"Now that that's over, Trent's going to show us that he's not only good at musical things by dancing!"
The fake drumroll started up as Trent took to the stage. This author got tired of doing a rubbish job of describing dancing, so now his act's done. It was apparently good enough to earn a 7 on the Chef-O-Meter. Trent shrugged.
"Next up, we have, eliminated waaaaay back in episode TEN because the Bass kind of sucked, Beth, who will hopefully not burn down the stage!" Chris announced.
A large group of interns that would be instantly recognizable to the readers as the entire ROTI cast stood by wearing protective suits and holding fire extinguishers as Beth took the stage. She twirled her fire baton increasingly rapidly, passing it from hand to hand, almost dropping it several times. The Gophers kept glancing at the interns whenever she slipped up. To finish her act, she threw the baton into the air where it managed to set half of the interns on fire before coming back down. Somehow she caught it.
"Hmm, you just burned up half the intern corps, but they were whiny and annoying and hard to feed. 2 point penalty! 4 out of 10!" Chef declared. And Chris saw that it was good.
"Performing a scene from a cinematic masterpiece, Badminton: the Movie, in the Gemmy nominated role of moi, Cody!"
Dramatic lighting hit the stage as emotional music started up. Cody was standing by the generously provided zombie props (aka the rest of the interns), brandishing a badminton racket. He swung it at a few of them and said Chris's most famous line as the music swelled. "It's not badminton, it's GOODMINTON!" He continued hitting interns with the racket. "Heck, it's GREATminton!"
Cody wasn't going to get the suck-up points he'd been aiming for because Chris wasn't judging him. Chef was, and he knew a bad actor when he saw one. So Cody only earned a 3.5 for his efforts. That's what he deserved for assuming sucking up would make him win.
"Next up is the moment I've been waiting for all night-"
"It's not night"
"SHUT UP! Justin's going to show us that he's not just hot, he's talented," Chris whined.
A row of female interns were standing on the stage. Sexyback started playing along with the fake drumroll as Justin stepped up to show his stuff. He posed as he walked and several of the girls fainted on the spot. One of them was just standing there, who will be described later. "Sorry, you're not my type."
After he heard that, Justin turned his charms up to 11 for the last girl in line. He didn't even have a chance to say anything before she toppled over. He smiled at Chef and waited for his score.
"Omigod, he killed Staci!" the nameless intern with blonde hair wearing pink that everyone knew was Dakota screeched.
"That bastard!" The… screw it, Sam, wailed.
"For both repeating your act from last season, doing a bad job at it, and killing a valuable intern, you get a 1. Oh, and to prove I'm not gay."
Blah, blah, blah, boring transition.
"Now, for the last act that can possibly fit in the timeslot for today, Noah is going to do something very boring," Chris announced.
"There's nothing boring about the greatest dramatist in history!" Noah protested.
"But I thought you were doing something by some old dead guy, not me," Chris replied.
"I said the greatest dramatist, not the greatest douchebag. Although I can see how you confused yourself with a dead guy, considering your career is dead enough that you already started another season."
The Chefometer flashed a perfect ten and Chef burst into applause.
"I didn't start yet, but whatever," Noah muttered as he walked off the stage to wild applause from his team.
The screen started fading to black as Chris shouted his closing dramatic remarks. "Will the Bass manage to outscore the Gophers, again? What talent could Tyler possibly have? And will Chef be able to support himself without this season's paycheck? Find out next time on Total. Drama. NOUN!"
After the screen had completely faded Harold could be heard saying, "GOSH! If you're going to have an arbitrary and impossible word count limit in the first chapter, you should use it in all of them! Idiots!"
AN: Hey guys, this story is hopefully gonna update sooner than bimonthly but where it stands right now that's what we're looking at for a schedule. So obviously we have a bit of a tough decision coming up... and we've already made it, but it's time to ask anyways: vote Zeke out first to make fun of the canon trend or keep him around for "character development" to make fun of the fanon trend?