Disclaimer: Total Drama Island and all of its characters belong to Cake and Cartoon Network.

"It's time for Mattress Skydiving!" Chris yelled over the whirring of the plane's engines. "You've got to jump out of here and hopefully you'll land on one of those soft mattresses! Because otherwise you'd be smushed like a bug on a windshield!" I swore I could hear him chuckling.

Dominic gave my hand a comforting squeeze, which actually helped my nerves a lot. I didn't bother to wait for further instructions from Chris. I jumped out of the plane immediately, sending prayers and several bargaining chips to whatever deity would listen. God, I won't call my brothers the Brat Pack anymore. Buddha, I'll learn yoga. Uh, Zeus, I'll offer up some ambrosia and nectar next time I get to a Greek temple. (Which will be never.) Please, please, please, please don't let me die! Please, please, please, please-

I hit something soft and bounced ridiculously high in the air. I hadn't realized I was screaming until all the air in my lungs was smashed out by a mattress. Someone went into the ground beside me and left a large hole. I hoped for it to be Talia and staggered off to get lunch.

"Hey, Alexis!" I looked up and saw Chris' helicopter hovering not too far away. I ducked away from the whirring prongs of death.

"What?" I said, disturbing memories of that one kiss running through my head. Ugh.

"We have new interns," Chris said, grinning at me. "Go get them and settle them in for me."

Why did his sexual harassment make me his gopher? "What'll you give me?" I demanded, sounding just a teensy bit bratty.

"What do you mean, what'll I give you?" he asked, his eyebrows zooming together. "You have to do what I say."

I leaned closer to the helicopter and tried to look confident. It wasn't too hard. "You'll give me something, or I'll sue for sexual harassment."

I could see the gears in his brain going into top gear, trying to figure out if I could do that. I couldn't. I had checked in that copy of the contract he had given me. There was a specific clause dedicated to it, which showed how well whoever had drafted the contract knew Chris. "Fine," he said. "What do you want?"

Yes! I emerge triumphant because of Chris' lack of knowledge. "A real breakfast for everyone," I said, grinning proudly.

"Yeah, whatever," he said, waving his hand dismissively at me. "Go get the new interns, kay?"

"Yes sir," I said mockingly. I spun around and ran for the dock before he could change his mind.

When I thought about it, it made sense that they hired new interns. We needed to replace the ones we lost. I was getting sick of doing more work to cover the missing people. I tried to figure out how many people were missing. There was Erica, who was hurt in that incident with the mechanical moose. There was the girl who got a concussion in the kart race, the guy who hurt himself in the mysterious explosion in the Arts and Crafts tent, the two people that got bitten by the poisonous snakes, and the one who got mauled by the bear….. I was pretty sure I was forgetting some of them.

"Hello people," I said boredly. The new interns were an even more rag-tag group than we were. There were a pair of twins sucking on lollipops. They looked to be about ten years old. On the far right, the tallest girl I had ever seen was slouching with her hands in her pockets. A guy on the left pushed glasses up his nose, and I put him down for Group C in my head. A girl in the middle had loud music playing from a pair of headphones. I frowned at her. She reminded me too much of Erica. They even had the same hair color.

"What happened to your shirt?" the twins chorused in unison.

Whoah. That was creepy.

I looked down at my shirt and saw that approximately half of it was burned off. "Oh, I was testing that weird fire-breathing dragon Group C built," I said. I paused when I noticed the freaked out expressions I had just induced. I laughed awkwardly. "Well, why don't you guys just head on over to the cabins," I said quickly. "There's an empty space in my cabin, which is on the far right…."

The twins ended up rooming with us. Once they decided to be in our room, there was no stopping them. They kept doing their creepy twin unison speaking thing until I got a great idea. All I had to do was kick out my evil nemesis- that's Talia if you couldn't tell- and move the twins in. Two birds, one stone. And then the score would be- Warrior of Good (that's me): 1. Demon Spawn (Talia): Zip.

I waltzed off to the mess hall, very pleased with myself, and grabbed a bite of pizza. Yum, my favorite. (Sarcasm) Even the guys were sick of pizza after eating it for almost a week. The twins sat at the table with us when they arrived and smiled angelically at everyone while chomping enthusiastically on pizza. Wait until they've been here a while. They won't be so enthusiastic about pizza then. "Dominic, Patrick, these are our new roommates," I said happily.

"But we only have room for one-" Dominic started to say.

"Don't be silly," I cut him off. "We've got plenty of room for these sweeties."

"Don't call us sweeties," they said together. "We don't like that."

"Woah!" Patrick said, looking at them strangely.

Dominic wasn't so affected by their creepy sideshow twin act. Then again, he wasn't ever bothered by anything much. He was really laidback. Patrick, not so much. I still didn't quite get him, but I guess I liked him nonetheless.

"What's your name? Names?" I corrected myself.

"I'm Lili," the one on the right said.

"And I'm Kiki," the one on the left said.

"Oh look, you have new friends," Talia said, appearing out of nowhere. It was like she had evil powers or something. She showed up when you were least expecting it. "They're cute."

"We don't like being called cute," the twins said, back to speaking together.

"Ehmahgawd." Talia flinched visibly and grabbed Dominic's arm. "They're scary," she whispered.

"Talia, they're little girls," Dominic said patiently. He didn't remove his arm from her grip, I noticed.

"We're not little," the twins chorused.

"Then they're not little girls," Dominic corrected. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen and three quarters," they said.

"Is that legal?" I questioned.

"We skipped a bunch of grades so we got special permission to be here."

"Dominic, I'm scared," Talia whined, taking the chance to press her chest against his shoulder.

"We don't appreciate that."

"Go away, Talia," I ordered.

"Shut up, Alexis." She reached for Dominic's pizza. "Can I have some?" He nodded.

"Could you just go away?" I asked.

The piece of pizza hit me in the chest. "Oops," she said, not at all convincingly. "Sorry, it slipped. I wish my aim with pizza was as good as your aim with shoes." She walked away, cackling like the evil witch that she was.

"That's not cool, Talia!" Dominic said loudly, standing to face the Demon.

Wow, that was the most worked up I've ever seen him. Everyone gaped like an idiot, even me. "O-okay," Talia said unsurely, taken aback by this side of Dominic.

"Apologize," he ordered.

"Yeah," she said distractedly. She paused and shook her head violently. "Wait, no way!" Thank goodness, she had come to her senses. She retreated, leaving me reassured. I thought she was going to apologize for a second there. The world would have ended. California would have sunk into the sea. Pluto would have been accepted as a planet.

Chris entered the mess hall and the room fell silent. "Hello interns new and old," he said. "We've got work to do! But first, we've got a surprise." A sense of foreboding set in. Surprises were not good around here. Not good at all. The dramatic pause wasn't helping a bit. "You're all going to Waffle Haus for breakfast tomorrow!" He flashed me a look that said 'You happy?' There was just one little thing I wanted to ask.

"Will we be the only people in Waffle Haus at 5 AM?" I asked. I borrowed another page from my mother's book and gave him my mother's signature staredown. Come on motherly gaze, do your stuff.

He cracked under the pressure. "Yeah, fine, we'll be there at eight." It was like Christmas had come early in that gross old pizza-smelling mess hall. Chris couldn't get us to stop cheering for a minute straight. "Anyway," he continued when we had calmed down slightly. "We've got work to do, so let's get moving! First, we've gotta assign you new interns to groups. So Lili and Kiki are in Group A, Gary, Charlie-" That was the tall girl. "So are you. Liana-" That was the girl who looked like Erica and even had headphones around her neck. "You're in Group B. Terrence, Group C for you." And glasses kid goes to Group C. Of course.

"Mr. Maclean, we're in the same group as her, right?" the twins asked, pointing at me. When did they get so attached to me?

Chris' eyes widen a fraction of an inch. "That's so creepy. They're like a scary-" He trailed off, a maniacal grin growing on his face. "Movie," he finished. "Group C, I need you to get me a chainsaw!" Oh look. Evil genius had struck him. "Group B, go into the city and get all the scary movies Blockbuster has. Chef will drive you."

"Say what?" Chef yelled, popping his head into the hall from the kitchen.

Most of Group B groaned. "Not with Chef," one guy moaned.

"I told you to stop calling me that!" Chef barked. "I don't even cook for you darn kids."

"But you will," Chris said ominously.

"I refuse to take these brats anywhere!"

"You can take the helicopter," Chris wheedled, dangling a set of keys from his index finger.

Chef was out of the kitchen with the keys in hand before I could blink. "Move it maggots!"

Group B stood and followed him with most of them looking like they were about to burst into tears. I felt bad for the newbie. Her first experience interning here would be in a helicopter with Chef.

"Group A, wait for me in the Arts and Crafts tent," Chris ordered, scurrying away with a evil look on his face.

"What's he up to?" the twins chorused.

"Why do you keep doing that?" I snapped.

"Doing what?"

"Never mind."

We found out soon enough what Chris had in mind. He spent the entire afternoon attempting to scare us witless. Most of his attempts to frighten us failed miserably.

"Can we take pity on the dude?" Dominic suggested.

"After everything he's put us through?" I said incredulously.

"He's taking us to Waffle Haus tomorrow," Dominic said, as if that showed Chris had turned over some sort of new leaf.

"That's because I forced him to!" I burst out. I realized what I had just said and wanted to smack myself in the forehead, but with all the bumps on the head I received in the past few days, I didn't think I could afford to lose any more brain cells. At least nobody else was near us. For some reason, they were still amused by making popsicle stick men.

"How'd you do that?" he asked curiously.

"I said he had to do me a favor if I greeted the new interns," I said miserably. That was sort of the truth.

"And he agreed?"

"Yes," I snapped.

"Really?"

"You don't believe me?" I nearly bit his head off there.

"Nah, of course I do," he said. He grinned and the dimple appeared again. I don't know why, but that dimple made me feel guilty. I hate guilt. It's a dumb emotion.

A 'ghost' dangled in front of our faces. The oh-so-scary ghost was made of tissue paper and a cotton ball. I could also see the string it was dangling from.

"Eek," I said flatly, batting the homemade ghost with my hand. "Get some better props, Maclean."

Chris' phase of frightening people came to an end by the end of the day. He did indeed get some better props. I nearly had a heart attack when I found a giant human-sized cockroach standing in the shower stall. The unfortunate Group B girl who was forced to wear the costume apologized non-stop for a long time. I wasn't nearly as scared by the strange costume Chris decided on in the end. (A hook, chainsaw, and a mask? Seems that this murderer is trying a little bit too hard.)

When I thought about it, that afternoon was the most relaxing I'd had in days. I tried not to think about it because the idea that being scared out of your wits a few times was relaxing to me now frightened me. I was in the communal bathroom, recovering from the giant cockroach scare, when I heard an angry scream.

"ALEXIS!"

Oh, the sweet sound of revenge. Looks like Talia discovered that I moved all her stuff into that bear's cave. I walked back to the cabin from the communal bathroom, humming a happy tune.

"What is this child doing on my bed?" Talia demanded to know once I was inside the cabin.

"Big Sister Alexis said we could have these beds," Lili and Kiki said in unison.

"Why'd you say that, Big Sister Alexis?" Talia said. She crossed her arms across her chest and tried to give me a staredown. Hah. Nice try, Demon Spawn. My mother invented that pose.

"You can't turn out kids like them," I said, my victory already in sight.

"No, but I can take your bed," Talia said smugly.

You're a thousand years too early to try and defeat me, Demon Spawn. "You can try," I said. "If you can find your stuff."

Obviously she hadn't realized her stuff was missing before that moment because her face contorted into new expressions of anger. "I'm going to kill you!" she shrieked.

I laughed and went to take a shower. Alexis: 2. Demon Spawn: 0.

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