AUTHOR'S NOTE
Wow, five reviews after my last chapter! That is a MAJOR increase on the usual amount I get each update. I look back at the reviews on this story constantly, so it's awesome that I have this many more to heed the words of. :-)
My apologies on the lateness of this chapter- hopefully the length makes up for it. I've been doing a lot of research on character development, and I think I have a better grasp on the characters now. I was going to make this a full episode chapter, but even the first half was taking a while and I was impatient to get another chapter out by today. I'm afraid that due to school starting for me, I may not have much time to update. But, I'll do my best.
TEAMS
TOXIC RATS: Brick, Anne Maria, Cameron, Sam, Dawn
MUTANT MAGGOTS: Scott, Jo, Mike, Zoey, Lightning
ELIMINATED: Staci, Dakota, B
RECAP
It is nighttime, and the crickets are chirping actively. Chris stands on the dock, holding a lit candle in one hand. "Last time on Total Drama Revenge of the Island!: Eleven bumbling buffoons battled it out in a brutal buffet of bombastica! Why all the 'b' words? Because, B proved he was a brave and brilliant improviser who scored big-time for his team- until his bitter teammate Scott botched it on purpose, and B got the boot.
"And now, tonight's challenge is about fear. And everyone knows fear is a dish best served-" A maniacal grin spreads across his face- "in the DARKKKK. MWAHAHAHA- huh?" He turns around to see Chef wearing a peacock-themed bikini, complete with a bush of tail feathers. "Chefff-fuh!"
"Wardrobe is all out of vampire costumes," Chef grumbles.
"It's all scary-" Chris glares at Chef in his costume- "other than that. Right here, right now, on Total. Drama. Revenge of the Island!"
MUTANT MAGGOTS' CABIN
The males have switched bunks. Scott's stuff is now where Mike used to be, under Lightning, and Mike has taken B's former bunk on the other side of the room. Lightning looks content while he sleeps.
Scott sneaks back into their room, unable to repress the smile showing on his features. He walks over to clean jeans and a tank top folded at the end of his bed and changes into them. After that, he lays out the old muddied clothes he was wearing before.
From the camera, we view only his back as he bends over his bunk bed. Soon he turns around with a tied bag made of his dirty laundry and tiptoes to the worn-out suitcase next to his bed. Slowly he pulls open the zipper, then pushes things around inside to make room.
"ACK!" he screams, jerking his hand back. A closed mouse trap digs into his skin. Scott growls and pulls it off, tossing it aside.
Lightning and Mike stir. Scott watches them for a moment until they resume snoring. He shoves the laundry bag in his open suitcase and scurries back into bed, discreetly pulling the blanket over him.
CONFESSIONAL: SCOTT
Scott crosses his arms. "What sort of sick swine would sneak a mouse trap in my suitcase? It can only mean one thing: someone's onto me." He hits a fist on his palm. "I have to get rid of them before they can expose me to the others."
Dakota wears her red intern shirt as a crop top, the ends tied around her waist. She blows an air horn in front of the cabins, with Chris wearing noise-canceling headphones next to her. "RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" Chris shouts.
Scott groans and gets right back up, heading for the door. Lightning's eyes pop open. "I'm up, Coach! Lightning's up!" He jumps off his bunk and runs into Scott, sending them flying out the door and onto the porch.
Lightning gets on his feet, rubbing his head. "Sorry, Scott. Didn't see you there."
"Fine," Scott mutters. As he stands, Mike runs out the door.
"What's happening?" he yells. Everyone is pouring out of the cabins on a tide of noise and panic. They all come to the center where Dakota and Chris stand.
Dakota ceases the air horn. Chris takes off his headphones and grins. "Thanks intern!"
"HUH?" Dakota yells.
CONFESSIONAL: DAKOTA
Dakota hits her ears with her palms. She sighs loudly, hearing nothing. "SO AFTER CHRIS AGREED TO LET ME STAY, HE PUT A RESTRAINING ORDER ON THE PAPARAZZI! SO NOW I'M STUCK HERE FOR NO REASON! AND NOW HE'S MAKING ME, LIKE, WORK!" She folds her arms around her waist. "SO NOT COOL."
Anne Maria bursts into hysterical laughter, drawing everyone's eyes to her. She takes several seconds to recover. "Ha!" she says at last, "Blondie's an intern!"
Sam's face lights up. "Dakota, you're back!"
Dakota pulls her ear wider, squinting to hear. "WHAT? SPEAK UP!"
Chef comes into view, pushing a map board next to Dakota. "Challenge time!" Chris declares.
"What, now?" Brick says.
"Can't Lightning get a good night's sleep for once?" Lightning snaps.
"Why in the middle of the night?" Mike says.
Chris grins. "It provides more of an atmosphere, y'know? Your challenge: A scavenger hunt for three creepy souvenirs. Your locations: a haunted forest, a scary pet cemetery, and an extra spook-tastic cave. First team to each location gets a special clue. But watch out for booby traps- I really went to town with 'em. Heheheh. So, move fast! And stick together. You'll be penalized for each member you lose."
Cameron looks uneasy as he points at a symbol on the map. "Um, what does the spider represent?"
"Oh, yeah. There's some sort of gigantic mutated spider running loose on the island."
Exclamations of fear rise up from the campers. Cameron's eyes grow large, his teeth clenched. "WHAT'S ON THE LOOSE?" Dakota yells.
Sam gets close to her ear and shouts, "A GIGANTIC MUTATED SPIDER!"
CONFESSIONAL: CAMERON
Cameron is holding his head. "I have a severe case of arachnophobia. Spiders are just so creepy, literally! Anything with that many legs must be evil. Eugh!" A spider drops on a web next to his head. He leaps away, an arm in front of his face. "GAH!"
"There's nothing to fear but mortal terror itself! By the way, someone has found the invincibility statue," Chris says.
The campers gasp. "Who?" Zoey asks.
"Telling you would spoil the surprise, wouldn't it? Now, get running!" Chris takes the air horn from Dakota and blows it. The campers run off. "Get to work, lackey," Chris says to Dakota.
"WHAT?" she says.
The Maggots are the first to arrive at a loudspeaker tied to a looming tree in the forest. "Whoo hoo, first! That's right-t-t," Lightning sings.
Feedback sounds through the loudspeaker, and Chris's voice comes out. "Welcome to the haunted forest! Your clue can be found at the base of this tree."
There is a pit in front of the tree. Lightning kneels down and reaches into it, grasping empty air. "How deep is this hole?"
"Outta the way, Protein Puff." Jo shoves him aside and thrusts an arm into the hole. She grunts as she swipes at a piece of paper at the bottom, just missing.
"The person with the longest arms should do it," Scott says. "Obviously."
"Since I'm the tallest, I might be able to reach the clue," Mike says. He joins Jo at the hole and reaches down for the note. He quickly grabs it and stands up.
Jo gets up with a frown, which dissolves in a second. "Say, what's on your back there?" she asks Mike.
"Huh?" Mike feels his back and takes off a piece of paper with frayed edging on one side. His eyes fall to the bottom of the paper and widen a second later. "It's a message from B."
"Can I see that?" Scott yanks the note out of Mike's hands. He scans over the paper. "Hmm. Seems like he's pretty bitter about us voting him out."
Zoey leans forward. "Can I see? I mean, if that's okay with you."
Scott forms a pinched expression, bringing the note up to cover his nose. "Ah- ah- ACHOO! Ugh." He wipes up the leftover snot around his nostrils with the now-slimy note. Zoey looks dismayed and disgusted as Scott holds it out to her. "My bad, I needed to do that. At least it's still readable."
She steps back from the paper. "I'm okay, actually."
"If you say so." Scott throws the note into the shadows.
CONFESSIONAL: MIKE
"It's surprising that B wrote a letter to us, even if he didn't say the words out loud," Mike says. "He might've written something that's important, but then Scott had to go and snatch the letter from me and blow his nose in it!" He shakes his head with a sigh. "Why do I feel like I'm missing something about him?"
CONFESSIONAL: SCOTT
"It was B who put that trap in my suitcase! And he tried to tell everyone that I framed him too!" Scott says. "I knew I was right to kick him off the island." His scowl changes to a smile, and he taps his head. "At least my quick thinking came into gear before it was too late."
"Let me read the clue," Jo says, taking the paper out of Mike's other hand. Just then, the Toxic Rats come into the clearing. Jo huffs. "Great! Now we just lost our lead."
"Hey, it was for a letter from our former teammate," Mike says. "Didn't you wanna know what B had to say?"
"Why would I care about reading Beverly's little rant?" She looks at the Rats. "Let's scram."
The Maggots run onto the path ahead and disappear into darkness. "Should we follow them?" Sam asks.
"We need to if we wanna hear the clue," Cameron says. With that decided, the Rats begin to follow the other team quietly.
Jo slows to a stop after a minute, the others falling in behind her. The Rats conceal themselves behind the thick trees. She turns around to her team and clears her throat before reading the clue out loud. "'Inside a knot is a nest. Your souvenir lives with a pest. Find Polaris to travel northwest.'" She squints at the paper. "Who wrote this, William Shakespeare?"
"I think Polaris is the North Star," Zoey says.
"Is that it?" Lightning says, pointing up at the sky. One star seems bigger and much brighter than the others.
Mike grins, looking up with the rest of the group. "It must be! Great job, Zoey."
"Thanks," Zoey says, her head turned away from him.
"Alright now, Maggots. Since Polaris is to the right of us, it seems we're heading in the right direction. Keep an eye out for a knot or a pest," Jo says.
"Who made you the boss?" Lightning says.
"Me. Because I won the thumb wrestle, remember?"
"That was for the last challenge. Why don't you give someone else a turn, like the Lightning?"
"Fine," Jo says, making his eyebrows shoot up. "You try leading our team tonight. Our fate is in your hands."
Lightning raises his fist. "Sha-score! Lightning's finally team captain!" He points ahead on the path. "Okay everyone, onward!" He sets off at a sprint, and the Maggots follow behind him.
CONFESSIONAL: JO
"Once everyone sees how pathetic of a leader Lightning is, even he will accept my leadership for good," Jo says. "You gotta admit, I'm a genius."
Brick steps out from behind a tree. "Alright soldiers, we're gonna have to hustle if we want to catch up to the Maggots."
The others walk into view. "I'm tired enough already," Anne Maria complains. "I ain't running any faster than before."
"Me- neither," Sam pants.
"The problem is, the Maggots are more physically fit than all of us but Brick," Cameron says. "But as long as we stick together, we can avoid that penalty Chris will give us for every lost member. We might have an advantage over the Maggots in the next part of the challenge if we finish with more members than them. I propose that everyone link their arms together so that none of us gets lost, and if anyone falls into a pit or gets grabbed by the-" he gulps- "mutant spider, we can try to pull them to safety."
The Rats stare at him. "That, is a brilliant idea Cameron!" Dawn says. Cameron smiles at her.
"Where'd you come up with all this?" Brick asks.
"I was just thinking over what Chris said," Cameron says. "Brick should be in the middle of the chain so he can support both sides, since he's the strongest. Come on, let's try this." He links arms with Dawn, who links with Brick, who links with Anne Maria, who links with Sam. Everyone is connected with two other people besides Cameron and Sam, who are on opposite ends.
"What if you're wrong about there being another part of the challenge, and we lose?" Anne Maria says.
"Well, since we're all tired right now, I can safely say this is our best bet," Cameron says. The others nod in agreement, and everyone begins running in a horizontal line down the path.
CONFESSIONAL: CAMERON
"I don't know what came over me," Cameron says. "Oh wait, I do, actually. Inspiration!"
The Maggots are far ahead of the Rats. Mike and Zoey run at an arm's length apart from each other. She ignores him, staring straight ahead. "You okay?" Mike asks.
"Why- do you ask?" Zoey says in between breaths.
"You just seemed a little distant, that's all."
She smiles at him. "I'm fine! No need- to worry."
Mike runs a hand through his hair. "Right. Well, um, you can always trust me with anything. I know we've only known each other for like, almost four days, but I've enjoyed getting to know you."
"Thanks! Same to you." Zoey looks back forward.
CONFESSIONAL: ZOEY
"I'm a little confused," Zoey confesses. "So yesterday, Mike and I talked a lot with each other. We were on really good terms, you know? But then, later on, he acted as though I was a total stranger, then he sabotaged our team and even fought with Lightning!" Her eyes narrow. "He was acting like a jerk, basically. It makes me feel that maybe he's not the person I thought he was. He seems like a great guy, except for yesterday during the challenge." She lets out an exasperated sigh. "I just don't want to be associated with anyone like the jerks at my school."
Jo points ahead at a tree hole with both teams' colors streaked in paint below it. "That's the knot over there!"
"Whoo hoo!" Lightning races over to the tree and climbs it quickly. His team watches as he blindly searches the inside of the knot, rustling its contents.
He yanks his arm back with a yelp. A giant eye with a dilated red iris has shown itself through the hole. Tentacles the size of the forest trees break out through the trunk. The teens scream all at once, and one tentacle wraps around Lightning's throat and lifts him up. Jo smiles to herself.
"Throw rocks at it!" Scott yells. He picks up some of the scattered rocks on the ground and throws them at the tentacle choking Lightning. Jo, Mike, and Zoey do the same, and the tentacle drops Lightning face-down on the forest floor. The provoked mutant grabs up the stone-throwers and dangles them in the air by their feet.
"Now what do we do?" Mike yells.
"Thanks for nothing, Carrot Top!" Jo says.
"HELPPP!" Zoey screams.
Lightning lifts his head up lying down. "No calamari does that to the Lightning!" He jumps to his feet and climbs the tree up to the knot once more. "Sha-BAM!" His fist slams into the eye.
The mutant's eye shrinks back, its tentacles releasing his teammates and withdrawing into the tree. Lightning digs around inside the hole, and raises a golden key in the air. "Aw yeah! The key!"
He jumps down to the ground where Mike, Scott, and Jo are standing while rubbing their heads. Mike looks around, dazed. "Ouch... Wait a minute. Where's Zoey?"
Lightning, Scott, and Jo scan the trees. "Oh well," Jo says. She lifts two fingers, one after the other. "Two words: dead, weight."
Scott shrugs, but Mike and Lightning stare at Jo. Mike's expression twists. "What are you even talking about? Zoey is a person, not to mention our own teammate!" He turns and calls loudly into the forest. "ZOEY! WHERE ARE YOU?
"It's called a winning attitude. Look it up," Jo says.
"I know what a winning attitude is, and that ain't it," Lightning says with a frown.
Jo turns on him. "Well, get over it, or get out of the way. I'm taking charge now."
"Oh no you don't! Lightning is the leader for this challenge."
"Uh, hello? You got us hanging by our feet from a mutant octopus!"
"How is that my fault?"
"You alerted the creature to us!"
"It lives inside the tree! It would've woken up from anybody!"
Jo's mouth is set in a grimace, not saying a word. Lightning gives her a hard glare. "How about you walk around by yourself with your 'winning' attitude?"
"I think I will." She turns on her heel and walks off into the trees. Soon, the darkness swallows her up, and her silhouette disappears.
Mike climbs onto a branch high up the marked tree. He stands and cups a hand around his mouth. "ZOEY! TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE!"
CONFESSIONAL: LIGHTNING
Lightning throws his arms in the air. "Jo doesn't even make any sense! He's constantly trying to be the leader over everyone, yet he doesn't care about anyone at all. It's like he thinks we're all his little pawns or something. And then there's Mike, who does all these random impressions and tried to make our team lose yesterday. All I can say is: me, Scott, and Zoey are the only normal people on our team."
The Rats run to where the Maggots are standing, their arms still linked. "Hey, where'd the rest of your team go?" Anne Maria asks Scott and Lightning.
Lightning opens his mouth, but Scott clamps his hand over it. "We were just going to meet up with them," Scott says. He yells up the tree, "Mike, we're going with or without you!"
Mike climbs down the tree. "Fine, I'll come. But we have to keep an eye out for Zoey."
Scott laughs. "She's with the rest of the team, remember? Now c'mon." He runs away with a confused Mike and Lightning on his tail.
Cameron watches them go with suspicion in his eyes. The rest of the group looks at the marked tree. "There are the team colors!" Dawn says, pointing at the red and green paint streaks.
"It must be the knot with the nest!" Sam says.
"Leave this to me, teammates," Brick says. He unlocks arms with Dawn and Anne Maria.
"Wait, Brick!" Dawn's voice is urgent, and he turns around. "I sense danger is near."
"A proper soldier never cowers in the face of danger." Brick marches up to the tree and scales it up to the knot, then rummages around inside. He takes out a key and shows it his teammates. "I believe this is it!"
The Rats cheer. Then, they gasp as a spider web from above shoots onto Brick's head and pulls him out of sight. The key drops onto the grass.
Dawn shakes her head at the ground. "We get a penalty for each lost player," Sam says, his voice shaking.
Cameron looks thoughtful. "We still have more than the Maggots."
"And how do ya know that?" Anne Maria demands.
"Mike basically said that Zoey disappeared, which means that he, Scott, and Lightning are only meeting up with Jo- if they're meeting up with anyone at all. It's possible Jo might've been captured too."
"But Scott said Zoey was with the rest of their team!" Sam says.
"I'm certain he was lying about that, based on Mike's and Lightning's reactions. If Jo wasn't taken and was waiting for the rest of the Maggots alone, she'd be a goner by now based on quickly Brick was caught the minute he went by himself."
"Well, I guess that means we should stick together at all times," Sam says.
"Yup," Cameron says. The four Rats close the gap where Brick once stood between them, and begin moving. Cameron picks up the abandoned key as they pass by it.
Lightning, Scott, and Mike run down the path toward a distant graveyard. "What were we lying to the Rats for?" Lightning asks Scott.
"We don't want them to know about our lost teammates, do we? Otherwise, they might think they have a chance at winning and work harder to beat us."
Lightning nods. "At least you're working for our team. I swear, some of our teammates are working against it."
Scott looks at him with an eyebrow raised. "Like who?"
Lightning speaks quietly. "Jo may think he's helping out the team, but he's no team player. And Mike tried to keep the flag away from me and Zoey yesterday so we'd lose."
"You mean, two people were sabotaging our win during the challenge?"
"Yeah! Crazy, right?"
"Wow. I must say, our team is full of traitors."
"Which is why we have to vote off Mike next if we lose," Lightning whispers.
The two look at Mike, who has been giving them curious glances. Scott gives a small nod. "I gotcha."
"Uh, what are you guys talking about?" Mike inquires.
Lightning has a hostile look in his eyes. "Oh, we were just discussing what we might find at the next stop," Scott replies.
CONFESSIONAL: MIKE
"Since yesterday evening, I've had this feeling that Lightning doesn't like me," Mike says. "I keep seeing him glaring at me. And then Zoey wouldn't even meet my eyes when we talked..." He rubs the back of his head. "And now she and Jo are gone out of nowhere. What if something happened to her? Er, I mean 'them'. Yeah... it's just nerve-wracking."
Jo trudges through the forest, paying no attention to the softly hooting owls, the crickets chirping, or the scuttling noise in the treetops above. Her face is expressionless, and she blends in as a shadow among shadows.
CONFESSIONAL: JO
"I hate this challenge," Jo snaps. "I mean, a scavenger hunt? Really? I don't even get to work by myself on this one. All my teammates were just weighing me down, so I had to take off. Sometimes, if you want to win a game, you have to do it by yourself."
The sound of small steps gets closer, and the branches on the tree behind Jo bend under the large creature's weight. A thick string of webs streams toward her and hits her in the back, knocking her down.
"Whoa! What the-" More webs wrap around her eyes like a blindfold, then around her body. She struggles to get her arms out from her sides. "Hey! How dare you!"
She feels herself leave the ground. "Where are you taking me?" she shouts. "HELP! TEAM MAGGOT! ANYONE!"
For a long stretch of time, Jo feels the air moving around her as her captor moves from tree to tree. Finally, she is thrust onto a colossal web on the wall of a dimly-lit cave.
Brick and Zoey, also mummified but with their eyes intact, look up at the new victim stuck near the top of the web. "Jo? Is that you?" Brick says.
Jo turns her head toward his voice. "Wha- Sir Leaks-a-Lot?"
Brick's eyes widen. "Hey! Don't call me that!"
Jo smirks. "So it is you."
"Hi, Jo," Zoey says timidly.
"Red! So this is where you went. Do you know where we are?"
"We're in this, um, huge spider web in a cave."
"Excuse me? I got kidnapped by a spider?"
"We all did," Brick says. "It must be the giant mutant spider Chris warned us about, and this cave must be the last location of the challenge."
"Terrific. The final location is the spider's lair," Jo says. "How are we gonna get out?"
"We can't. We'll have to wait until our teammates get here," Brick says. A quiet pause. "Jo? Did you hear me?"
"I heard you."
"Let's hope our team gets here first," Zoey tells her.
"Whatever."
Zoey casts a glance at Brick, who shrugs his webbed shoulders ever-so-slightly. "She's your teammate."
CONFESSIONAL: ZOEY
Zoey lifts an arm by her side, palm facing up. "I don't know what to make of Jo's answer," she says, and drops her arm. "It's like she doesn't even want to be rescued."
The three remaining Maggots pass through the graveyard entrance, which is two lampposts with a plank nailed-in between them. "Welcome to the Wawanakwa pet cemetery!" Chris's voice says through a loudspeaker pole. "In front of you is a wooden coffin, where you will find your second clue."
Lightning comes forward and flips open the coffin lying in the grass. He takes out a tattered piece of paper inside and shows it to Scott and Mike. On it, there are three rows of five random numbers: a red 6 is in every row and also a red 18 in the last row.
The teens wear identical blank expressions. "I guess we look for three 6's and an 18?" Mike says.
"I guess so," Scott says.
"Let's spread out and look," Lightning says. They walk off in three directions: Scott to the left, Mike to the right, and Lightning straight down the middle.
The remaining Rats are still running on the path before the cemetery. "I can't even see the Maggots!" Anne Maria says.
"They're probably in the pet cemetery now," Sam says, huffing and puffing.
"We just lost a lot of strength in our chain without Brick," Cameron tells Dawn. "If the same spider that got Brick tries to grab one of us, we might not be able to hold on."
"Well, we stand a better chance sticking together than staying separate," she says. Cameron nods, still looking worried.
The camera view shifts to Chris in a surveillance room sipping a soft drink. He turns on his swivel chair and faces the camera, with a line of screens behind him showing Cameron's face, Lightning stooping to examine a gravestone, and Mike scanning the trees in the distance for Zoey. "With the Rat's strongest player absent and two members already gone on the Maggots' side, will anyone even make it to the spooky cave? And if so, how can they possibly make it all the way to the finish line? Less gain, more pain, when we return!"
NOTE: This chapter was fun yet complicated to write. I found a lot of potential for interactions in the challenge, especially with the Maggots. Hope you guys liked this update!