The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, Brett asked his mother to tell him more about her experience on Total Drama Island. Brett sat in his favorite chair, and his mother sat on the sofa. She took a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then she began to speak.
The glade looked like a battlefield. Vegetation was uprooted and trampled everywhere, mud churned up by many feet. The partially eaten carcass of a giant tusked beaver, bigger than a grizzly bear, blocked the trail about ten meters away, and a second noshed-on carcass lay farther up the trail and off to the left. Partially obscured from view behind the second beaver lay a motionless form in a red pullover shirt.
As the doubly watchful Muskies filed around the first beaver carcass, Courtney paused to examine it, hoping to determine what had fed on it. During the course of this examination, the onetime CIT discovered that something had staved in the giant's skull. Satisfied that she had learnt all she could under the current conditions, Courtney hurried to catch up to her teammates.
The other Muskies, meanwhile, had gone to the intern, hoping against hope that he wasn't beyond help, although in their hearts they knew better. When they reached the redshirt and got a closer look, D.J. fainted dead away. Beth, looking ashen, turned away and was violently ill, for the body had not in fact been merely obscured from view as the Muskies had supposed.
Izzy said only, "Gross," as if she were discussing the weather.
The late intern was a faintly androgynous girl with short, dishwater blonde hair. Her eyes were open and rolled back into her head. Her build could not be determined with any certainty because virtually everything beneath her smallish breasts was gone, presumably having been carried off either by other beavers or by some scavenger. The hand on her one remaining arm still loosely held a makeshift halberd with a blade of flaked obsidian affixed to a long, sturdy tree branch. The blood on that blade, and the nearby beaver carcasses, suggested that this redshirt, at least, had not gone down without a fight.
Courtney had a suspicion, and quickly verified it when she examined the second beaver carcass. Returning to her teammates, who were still gathered round the fallen intern, she said, "Both of these beavers died from heavy blows to the head." Motioning to the crude halberd, she added, "Probably from that."
Izzy exclaimed, "Are you saying that this chick whacked two bloodthirsty rodents of unusual size by herself? That is so boss!"
Eva noticed that the chest cavity had not been entirely eviscerated and said, "They didn't take her heart. That's fitting."
Ezekiel knelt down beside the body. Grasping the girl's thin necklace, he pulled her army-style dog tag out from under her shirt; for in light of what his teammates had said about her, he thought it important that she be remembered as more than just another anonymous redshirt. The prairie boy inspected the tag and solemnly announced, "Her name was Jo." He then closed the girl's sightless eyes and said a prayer for her brave soul.
Duncan said, "I'd have loved to see this chick go toe to toe with Miss Muscletits."
"I know, right?" Eva replied, not even noticing the delinquent's namecalling. "I'll bet that would have been fun."
"How many beavers she was up against?" Tyler asked rhetorically, for he didn't really expect anyone to know.
"I don't know," Courtney admitted, "but it looks like they're probably pack animals. Normal beavers are kind of social, and I checked out those carcasses. It looks like they were eaten on by their own kind, which is probably why there was anything left of 'Jo' for us to find. Rodents can be cannibalistic that way. I've seen ground squirrels eating roadkill before.
"Gross," Tyler said.
Courtney reasserted her dominance. "We need to get going. We're in the middle of a challenge, you know. I just hope Chris has the decency to bring her home."
"You're kidding, right?" Eva retorted bitterly.
"Okay, the producers," Courtney said, implicitly sustaining the objection. The former CIT looked down one last time at the fallen intern and said, "May she rest in peace." Nor was that any mere formality. Mindful of what Chris had told them about the fate of people who died on Boney Island, Courtney's wish was from the heart.
Some time later, on the other side of the island, the Eagles made a similar, if less gruesome, discovery of their own. Heather had chosen the shorter, more difficult path for several reasons, not least of which was that she thought most of her teammates could use some toughening up. It was also a way of displaying her fitness to lead; for the dragon girl's dancing had endowed her with strong and durable legs, so she expected to be able to negotiate the rugged trail easily enough.
After a time, the Eagles came to a fresh rockslide that had cut across the trail. As they made their way across, the sharp-eyed Cody chanced to look down the slope. A double take followed.
"Guys, look," the former Possum Scout called as he pointed. "I think I see somebody's hand."
The other Eagles gave in to curiosity and saw that Chris hadn't been joking about the recent earthquake's lethal effects. Sticking up a few centimeters from the rubble, perhaps 30 meters below the trail was a human hand, apparently having belonged to someone of African descent.
Heather said, "Let's keep moving. There's nothing we can do here."
"Wait," Sadie said. "There's something I need to know." She and Katie set down their canoe and made their way down to the grisly marker.
The indignant Heather called after them, "Hello! We're in the middle of a challenge, remember?" The Wonder Twins paid her no heed, so Heather could only wait impatiently for them to return.
When Sadie reached the hand, she quickly inspected it and found the old burn scar that she had been looking for and hoping that she would not find. She shook her head and said to Katie, "Now we know why we haven't seen Lightning around camp the last couple of days."
When the clones rejoined their teammates and reported their findings, Leshawna said, "I'm sorry to hear that. I liked that big lug."
"More like, you liked his big boy part," Heather sniped.
"And how would you know if it was big?" the homegirl shot back. "Not that I'm not willing to take your word for it."
As their teammates tittered, Heather scowled. "Um… He had big feet, okay?"
"Sounds legit," Gwen snarked, and the bystanders tittered anew.
"Oh… Go jump in a giant beaver pond," Heather snapped, irritated that her dig at the admittedly boy hungry Leshawna had been turned back against her so easily.
The teams reached the "rescue point", which happened to be near the base of Skull Mountain, without further incident. Fire pits had already been marked out, so everyone began to forage for firewood. Most of the Eagles ventured forth singly; but the Muskies, having seen more of the island's hazards, mostly stayed in pairs or small groups for safety.
The portage had left Sadie badly winded, for the trail had been difficult and the butterball's endurance was not great. "My legs feel like rubber," she complained.
"You'll just have to suck it up," Heather replied archly. "This is no time to wimp out on us."
"I know," Katie offered, "Me and Sadie can stay at the pit and arrange the firewood as people bring it in."
"That sounds half good," Heather replied. "Sadie can do that, but that won't be enough work to keep two people busy. Besides, if we leave you both here, all you'll do is gab."
The Thin Twin stuck her tongue out at her overlord, and then stalked off to forage for firewood.
Katie subsequently returned with an armful of usable firewood, then another. The other foragers did likewise, some more efficiently than others, and Sadie dutifully arranged it into four piles. She put the largest pieces into the pit, the midsized pieces in a pile nearby, and the kindling into a third pile, these latter to be added to the main pile when the time was right. The greener wood went into a fourth pile, for its purpose was different. Once the fire was burning well, adding green wood and boughs would make the fire smoke.
On Katie's third trip out, she chanced to spot a small wooden idol on the ground near the mouth of a small cave. This idol was perhaps half again as long as her hand and resembled nothing so much as a miniature totem pole. Wait 'til smarty-pants Noah sees this, she thought, recalling the bookworm's comments at the challenge briefing regarding First Nations artifacts. The idol looked fragile—the wood had clearly been at the mercy of the elements for a very long time—so Katie carefully stashed her prize in her knapsack, packed in grasses and herbs to protect it, and then resumed her search for firewood.
Not long after, she encountered a certain redhead who was heading back to base with an armload of firewood. "Hey, Izzy," Katie called sociably, "Look what I found!"
"Let me guess," the demented redhead replied good-naturedly as Katie dropped her firewood and opened her pack. "A cool beaver skull? Some cool mold spores? Prayer beads of The Great Lamprey Spirit? Don't leave me hanging!"
When Katie presented the idol, Izzy's demeanor changed abruptly. "Ooh, you'd better put that back!" she warned darkly.
"Why?"
"The burial ground is on this part of the island, and that had to come from the burial ground. The legend says that if you take anything from there, you'll be cursed forever! And even if you don't believe in that stuff, which is totally true, you'd have the whole Ojibwa Nation after your butt, not to mention the RCMP. Come to think of it, maybe that's the curse. Although this doesn't look Ojibwa, it looks more Tsimshian, and I have no idea what it's doing out here. We're a long way from B.C., you know, so maybe some explorer got tired of life on the coast and got adopted or something and lived out his days in these parts until he croaked from whatever Tsimshians like to croak from and got buried here. But whatev, I know what you're probably thinking, that the curse couldn't do anything worse to you than what you've already been through, and maybe it can't, but don't be so sure. Besides, you really don't want the RCMP on your case. Believe me, I know, they've been after me ever since that time at that Marine base, which was totally an accident, but try telling them that. I can handle it, but it's not a lifestyle choice I'd recommend for a 'kid who never grew up' like you. Sure, it would be fun to have you be a fugitive from justice with me, but that would mean you'd have to leave Sadie behind, since I'm sure she wouldn't want to be a fugitive, too, especially when she didn't do anything. People are funny that way, you know?"
Izzy's rambling, high-speed chatter had somewhat hypnotized Katie, so the demented redhead snapped her fingers in front of Katie's eyes a couple of times to bring her mind back from wherever it had gone.
"You're that sure I have to put it back?" Katie asked in disappointment.
"I'm serious," Izzy assured her gravely. "I know I'm not serious about a lot of things, but I'm serious about this. I don't want to see you get hurt. More. That thing is solid, 24-karat trouble. Although I'm not sure how many karats pure wood would actually have."
With that, Izzy went on her way. Katie gathered up her wood and returned to the cave where she had found the idol, but the Idol Incident was not fated to end that simply. Katie's damaged short-term memory fumbled the handoff to its long-term cousin, possibly with an untimely nudge from the fabled curse; so when Katie reached the cave, she could not remember why she had returned. With a mental shrug, she resumed her search for firewood.
Meanwhile, Courtney had found an interesting if less dangerous artifact of her own. She had spotted what looked like a piece of heavy paper slowly tumbling in the light breeze. Courtney knew that there shouldn't be any paper on the island except what the campers had brought with them, so she succumbed to curiosity and ran it down. Quickly inspecting the paper, which looked like it might be construction paper nicked from the arts & crafts tent, she saw that it was an unsigned love note, addressed to "The Diamond Maid" and quoting a poem that Courtney did not recognize:
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction-
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher-
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly-
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat-
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility-
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.
Courtney smirked at this puppy love tactic, and idly wondered who might have written the note and whom it might be meant for, and whether it was the giver or the recipient who had dropped it. The fact that Courtney had found the note in that place instead of somewhere else offered no clues, for both teams were foraging the same general area, and she didn't know what to make of the "diamond maid" salutation. As for whom the smitten boy might be, Noah was her first guess, for it stood to reason that a courting bookworm might quote love poems; but Courtney had no idea whom Noah might be crushing on if, indeed, he had written the note. The penmanship offered no clues, for there was no handwritten correspondence to speak of amongst the campers, so they had no way to recognize each others' handwriting.
Courtney decided to hold on to the note in case someone came looking for it, but she otherwise gave it no further thought, for she had better things to do than to expose a crush.
In the fullness of time, both teams assembled impressive brush piles under the direction of former CIT Courtney and former Possum Scout Cody. With dry wood to burn hot and green wood to make the fires smoke, both piles seemed likely to generate smoke plumes that would be visible all the way from Camp Wawanakwa, or even the mainland.
If, that is, the teams could get their fires started. Both teams had been given flint and steel, but nothing in the way of accelerants. Getting the fires going strongly enough for a proper signal fire promised to be a long and arduous process, and the campers knew that their time was limited.
Suddenly, a piercing female scream of mortal terror sounded from somewhere in the forest. The campers, one and all, stopped what they were doing and nervously looked into the trees, listening to see if the scream would be repeated.
"Who—who was that?" D.J. asked, shaking visibly and with a quaver in his voice.
Cody said, no less fearfully but hiding it somewhat better, "There shouldn't be anyone here but us. Is everyone accounted for?"
A quick headcount revealed that Heather was missing.
Beth said, "Oh, my God, if she ran into those giant beavers…"
"That's just something Chris made up," Leshawna insisted nervously. "Isn't it?" The homegirl had little love for Heather, but had no more desire than anyone else to see more blood than this hellish game had already inflicted upon them.
"No," Courtney replied gravely. "They're not." She then told the Eagles about the gruesome discovery the Muskies had made on the trail, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.
As the campers debated whether to conduct a search or stay put, they heard something approaching. It was crashing—or charging—through the underbrush.
Trying not to let her fear show, Courtney said, "Guys, get to your canoes. If that's any kind of large predator, we'll probably be safer on the water."
Everyone did as Courtney commanded, forgiving her bossiness because her directive sounded like a most excellent idea. Scarcely had they launched their canoes when a disheveled Heather stumbled into the clearing and collapsed. Her eyes were wild and she was panting heavily as she raised herself to all fours, lifted an arm to her campmate in supplication and desperately screamed, "Don't leave me here!"
As Courtney and Ezekiel re-beached their canoe, Courtney called back, "Is anything chasing you?"
Not waiting for an answer, Lindsay re-beached her canoe and dashed to her liege's side. Heather, still panting for breath, finally managed to gasp out, "No, I don't think he's chasing me."
With that assurance, the other campers beached their canoes and returned to the clearing, wondering what could cause the normally imperious and levelheaded queen bee to come so thoroughly unglued.
"What's up with you, girl?" Leshawna demanded. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I think I did." Heather gasped, trembling violently.
Courtney crouched down beside her nigh-hysterical counterpart and said in her best soothing tone, "Okay, let's take this one step at a time. Tell us what happened."
"I was over by a cave off that way," Heather explained as she gestured in the direction from whence she had come. There arose a murmur of recognition, for several campers had seen the cave in question. "I crouched down to pick up some stuff that I thought might make a good fire starter…"
"And…?" Courtney prompted.
"I felt something, cold but not like normal cold, you know? I looked up and…" The dragon girl pulled her limbs against her torso in an attempt to control her shaking. It didn't seem to be helping much.
"Don't leave us hanging," Izzy pleaded. "Did you really see a ghost?"
Gwen mused, "Chris did say that there might be some interns' ghosts here. Not only did a lot of redshirts supposedly buy it here, but he also said that the island attracts restless spirits from the surrounding area. And the way Chris goes through interns, he's probably creating a lot of restless spirits."
"It wasn't a redshirt," Heather gasped, as if she were fighting to get the words out. "It was… it was Harold. He was standing there right in front of me!"
For a few moments, the only human sound was Heather's struggle to regain something resembling emotional control. Finally, Duncan spoke.
"Am I missing something here?" the scorner of laws asked. "Sure, seeing Mr. Ninja's ghost would be creepy, but hardly terrifying."
"What you're missing," Gwen explained, "is that we're not talking about natural fear. Ghosts cause unnatural fear. Sometimes, anyway." The Goth shot a glance at Heather and added bitterly, "Couldn't happen to a nicer girl."
Courtney shot Gwen an irritated glance of her own and said, "Gwen, we get why you don't like Heather, and I can't that say I blame you, but this isn't the time."
No, I guess not, Gwen thought, although she said nothing more.
Courtney then said to her campmates, "I really think we need to check this out."
Duncan wasn't so sure. "What if we end up as basket cases like Heather?"
"I'm willing to take that chance," Courtney replied. "It's bound to wear off. Besides, if there's anything we can do to help Harold rest in peace, we owe it to him to find out what."
The future speaker of laws turned her gaze to the campers as a whole and added, "The problem is that we're in the middle of a challenge. Eagles, will you give us a timeout?"
"Say no more," Leshawna said. "I want to know what's going on as much as you do."
"Sounds like a plan," Sadie seconded, speaking for the Eagles' power alliance because Heather could not. "Chris probably won't like it, but that's his problem."
As the campers moved out, Heather grabbed Katie's dress and softly begged, "Don't leave me alone! Please!"
Katie replied, "Sadie can stay with you if you want, but I need to go with the others. I feel like I'm supposed to do something at that cave, but I can't for the life of me remember what. I'm hoping it'll come back to me."
So it was that Katie hustled to join the main group and Sadie stayed with Heather. The butterball didn't really know what to do, so she hoped that her mere presence would help to calm her liege.
After a minute or two, Heather suddenly stopped shaking and said to Sadie, "Okay, I think it's been long enough. I've got a plan, but we have to move fast. That wild ghost chase should keep those losers occupied for a while, but there's no telling if somebody might decide to double back for some reason."
As the girls stood, Sadie smiled and asked, "You're not afraid anymore?" for Heather now sounded like the Heather whom Sadie had come to know and barely tolerate. "I guess Gwen was right about it being unnatural."
"As if Weird Goth Girl could be right about anything," Heather sniffed. "The reason I'm not afraid 'anymore' is because I was never afraid in the first place."
Sadie's eyes widened in wonderment. "Didn't see that coming. That was one heck of an acting job."
Heather grinned. "It was, wasn't it?"
The Dark Queen quickly explained her plan, which required only their nail files and uninterrupted time, but Sadie protested. "That sounds like cheating."
"That's kind of the idea," Heather explained impatiently. "In these elimination games, a certain amount of cheating is expected. Remember when we were building the hot tubs, and the Fish Heads were thinking about trying to steal our stuff? Remember how Chris said that he wished that they'd tried it? Trust me. Even if we get caught, which we might if you delay us with too much protesting, Chris won't do anything."
Seeing that Sadie was about to protest further, Heather said, "I know, I know, I'd rather play a clean game, too, but not at the cost of giving away challenges. The main challenge today is a power challenge, and the Fishies have all the muscle. Without the edge that my plan can give us, we don't stand a chance."
"We might, if we can win the head start for having the best signal fire," Sadie countered.
"You're kidding, right? Nothing against our ex-Possum Scout, except of course that he's a total geek, but which team has the pyro? The deck's stacked against us there, too, and I don't see any good way to sabotage their fire." By this time, Heather was wishing that she could have pulled Lindsay aside instead of Katie and Sadie, for the uberbimbo would have asked fewer questions; but Lindsay hadn't been close enough at hand, and seeking the bombshell out might have aroused suspicion and thereby wasted Heather's admittedly remarkable acting performance.
Sadie was still unwilling to cheat, but she was running out of reasons not to go along with Heather's scheme. "But if we get caught, or they find out later, how will I be able to look them in the eye?"
With a snort of derision, the Dark Queen retorted, "They won't blame you, because you're too nice for your own good. They'll blame me, but I don't care."
"But how will the editors make it look? I don't want a villain edit," the butterball protested, a hint of desperation creeping into her voice.
"You might already be getting one because you got on Chris' bad side right off the bat," Heather observed dryly. "On the other hand, Sunshine says that the camping challenge made you look like a saint. If the editors aren't already painting you as a villain, they're not going to start now just because you went along with one sketchy scheme. Besides, there's no such thing as bad publicity. If they want to make you a villain, then go with the flow."
Finally, Sadie agreed to help Heather. As they fell to their task, Sadie said, "There's just one thing I need to know."
"What's that?"
"Did you really see Harold?"
"Of course not," the Dark Queen admitted easily. "I don't believe in ghosts."
WOODEN SHIPS AND IRON GIRLS
Heather and her flunky completed their work as quickly as they might, lest they be discovered. They need not have worried, for it was the better part of an hour before the other campers returned. Naturally, they had found nothing—not that they had necessarily expected more, but it still left everyone a bit dispirited.
The teams ended their truce and resumed the challenge. Cody at once set to work on starting the fire, since he was the only Eagle who had actually used a flint and steel fire starter before. Courtney likewise began to work her team's flint and steel, until Duncan suggested a more profitable course.
"Why do it the hard way, Princess?" he asked. "We can just use my lighter."
"I don't think that's what Chris had in mind," the onetime CIT replied.
"So?" the delinquent countered. "Chris knows about my lighter, but he didn't say anything about it."
"You make a good point," Courtney admitted.
"Actually, we can't use the lighter," Izzy noted enigmatically. When asked the reason, the manic redhead explained, "I've got a high-energy fire starter in my knapsack. It'll give us a roaring fire in no time, but it'll make us stand back a little. If you're close enough to ignite it with a lighter, you'll get fried."
"So what are we supposed to do?" Duncan asked. "If we can't use the lighter, then we obviously can't use the flint and steel, either."
"That big magnifying glass," Beth suggested. "The one she used to inscribe Harold's memorial marker."
Izzy gave her ally a 'thumbs up' gesture and said, "Exactly."
"Chris knows about that, too," Duncan observed before Courtney could protest.
"Okay, the lighter and the magnifying glass are fair game," Courtney admitted, "but I'm not so sure about the fire starter. Does Chris know about that?"
"Does it matter?" Duncan shot back. "If Chris really cared, he would have made a rule against bringing in accelerants."
Eva said, "As much as I hate to side with Duncan, he's got a point. You could call it cheating, but you could also call it 'thinking outside the box'. Chris seems to respect that, if he cares about it at all. What he really cares about is drama, and it sounds like Izzy's idea could be pretty dramatic."
The Eagles were able to overhear part of this exchange. Heather sidled over to Sadie and said, "See what I mean?" This could have meant several things, so any Muskies who might have overheard didn't waste time trying to determine what Heather did mean.
Having received her team's blessing, however reluctant, Izzy set down her knapsack and drew forth a lead box. This she opened to reveal an amorphous lump, which she carefully placed into the woodpile. Apart from Cody, who was still trying to get his team's fire started with the flint and steel, the Eagles succumbed to curiosity and were now watching their rivals' byplay.
"That looks like congealed tree sap," Courtney observed. "Is there anything else in it?"
"Yeah, it's mostly tree sap," Izzy confirmed. "There's also dried pine needles, sawdust, aluminum powder, and some other stuff."
"Aluminum powder?" Beth asked. "What's that for?"
"A little extra kick," Izzy explained. Seeing that she now had the attention of the opposing team as well as her own, the firebug warned, "Aluminum burns super-ultra-mega bright, so you probably don't want to look straight at it." No one dreamed of doubting her.
Tyler thought that something seemed off. There was faint but noticeable light where there should have been none. "Um, Izzy? Why is that stuff glowing?"
"That's probably just the californium," the demented redhead answered as if she'd been asked the time of day.
Cody was so appalled that he dropped his flint and steel. "Wait a minute, are you saying that your fire starter is nuclear?"
"Pretty much," Izzy replied nonchalantly as she pulled out her magnifying glass.
As the other campers frantically searched for places to hide, Izzy stood with the descending sun at her back and held her glass aloft. As a beam of burning light smote the softly glowing lump of sap, the demented redhead gazed at the great, gray granite skull formation looming over them and shrieked, "By the power of Grayskull!"
Moments later, the lump began to flare, and Izzy shrieked, "I… have… the pow—oh, crap, I used too much! Hit the deck!"
The others were way ahead of her, and had taken whatever cover they could. Several campers had taken to the water and were sheltering beneath inverted canoes. Izzy likewise decided that she would be safest with the fishes, and had barely got beneath the waves when the enhanced tree sap detonated with nigh-atomic brilliance and the power of a tornado.
Some 200 kilometers to the northwest, a helicopter team of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was returning to its base in Sudbury from a routine assistance call when they saw the flash and subsequent mushroom cloud from Izzy's fire starter. Alarmed, these officers of the law quickly took a bearing and called in to report what they had seen. The pilot then changed course sharply, seeking to triangulate on the great smoke plume before it dissipated. This done, they returned to base, for they needed to refuel before investigating the matter further.
The campers who had remained on land were shaken but not seriously hurt, thanks to local topography that had directed the shockwave over their heads. They gingerly lifted themselves from the dust to find that the blast had scattered the top of the Muskies' woodpile, but what remained was now burning fiercely. Conversely, the Eagles' hard work had been for nothing, for the blast had scattered their entire woodpile to parts unknown.
As Tyler and Eva emerged from the water and carried their shield canoe back to the beach, Izzy popped up between them and said, "Yep, definitely too much californium."
"You could have gotten us all killed, you know," Eva chided much more calmly than one might have expected of her. The rage-prone Amazon knew Izzy well enough by now to know that it was pointless to get angry with her, for the demented redhead would not understand Eva's anger.
"But I didn't, did I?" Izzy countered cheerily. "No harm, no foul."
"Define 'harm'," Eva retorted wearily as she surveyed the destruction. Izzy's atomic fire starter had flattened the entire forest on that part of the island, igniting several small brush fires in the process. The trees had been either uprooted or broken off, depending on how firmly they had been rooted.
Minutes later, the campers heard an approaching helicopter, which they presumed to be carrying Chris and Chef Hatchet. The host and his aide, who was piloting the craft, had been holding position several kilometers away, the better to judge the signal fires' long-distance visibility; so although Chris and Hatchet had felt the shockwave, it had posed no real danger to them.
Having nothing better to do, the campers watched the chopper approach until an ominous crack sounded behind them. The mountainside had taken the full force of the blast, and it had been a little too much. The campers turned just in time to see Boney Island's signature skull formation break loose from its age-old moorings and come thundering down the mountain, breaking up into an unrecognizable pile of rubble. The vast rockslide would have flattened everything in its path if there had been anything left in its path to flatten.
"Way to destroy a national landmark, Muskies," Chris chided via his trusty bullhorn. "But hey, I'll bet it's going to put the ratings through the roof, and as long as I'm not the one who can be held liable, it's all good.
"This part of the challenge was to build the best signal fire. I didn't say anything about collateral damage. Since the Muskies were the only team to actually get a fire going, they get the point!
"Muskies, you get a five-minute head start back to camp. You'll also get the challenge reward, win or lose. Eagles, you can't do anything to prepare while you're in the 'penalty box' except talk about your game plan, if any.
"The five minutes starts… now!"
The Muskies wasted no time in launching their canoes. As the Eagles watched them go, Noah said, "That's just great. Now we won't have a chance."
"We still might," Cody said, trying to project an optimism that he didn't really feel. "It's a long way back to camp, so people will have to pace themselves. We might be able to catch up without burning ourselves out. Maybe."
Heather added, "We also have an ace in the hole." The Dark Queen then explained what she and Sadie had done. The Eagles' reactions were mixed, and largely echoed the original philosophical disagreement between Heather and Sadie. Even Heather's enemies, though, had to give credit where it was due for the dragon girl's acting performance.
Chris called down, "Eagles, go!" The Eagles responded eagerly to his command.
Ten minutes later, Tyler and Eva were approaching the midpoint of the course, with the other Muskie crews trailing behind. Although the heavier Tyler would normally have sat at the stern, Eva had insisted that he sit at the prow for the return trip, the better to keep an eye on him and to rein him in if his enthusiasm should get the better of him. They were the Muskies' best hope for victory, Eva thought, so it would not do for Red Jock to burn himself out in his zeal.
Eva suddenly felt that something was wrong. Her paddle was passing through the water much more easily than it should, which threw her slightly off balance. Even as the steel maiden instinctively looked down to see what the problem was, D.J. called out from the nearest canoe, "Eva! You've lost your paddle blade!"
Sure enough, the business end of Eva's paddle was floating in their wake. The paddles were of two-piece construction, with a hollow metal shaft and a blade of hard synthetic rubber. A single stout screw held the blade in place. This arrangement meant that a damaged blade could be replaced without having to replace the whole paddle. It also meant that breaking the paddle down to a more compact form for transport required only a Phillips head screwdriver. The tip of a metal nail file would do in a pinch.
Tyler had also heard D.J.'s warning, so he quickly reversed course and Eva retrieved her paddle blade, but they had lost precious time. To make matters worse, they had no spare screws, nor anything else that might serve to secure the blade. Eva decided that the best way to prevent the blade from coming off again was to keep her hand on the joint at all times, but that obliged her to take shorter, less efficient strokes. The jock and jockette might still be able to win the challenge for their team, but Eva was now racing with the proverbial one hand tied behind her back.
Not long after, though, Tyler likewise lost his paddle blade. Because he was in the forward position, Eva quickly spotted the problem and so they lost less time retrieving Tyler's blade than they had with Eva's; but it presented the same risk of coming loose again, so Tyler also had to alter his stroke for the worse.
"Of all the crappy luck," Tyler griped rhetorically. "We had this win in the bag."
"Luck, nothing," Eva shot back. "We've been sabotaged."
Over the next several minutes, several racers suffered similar accidents. First, Duncan; then, Ezekiel; and D.J. not long after.
Nor were the Eagles immune. Noah, Katie, Sadie and Leshawna suffered paddle malfunctions in due course, for that was part of the plan to divert suspicion. The difference was that the saboteurs had spared the strongest Eagle crews (Heather/Lindsay and Cody/Gwen) whilst sparing only the weakest Muskie crew—Beth and Izzy. Nor was it an accident that Heather's more expendable allies had been victimized; for the race would turn on the first of each team's boats to finish, not the last.
Although neither Heather nor Lindsay were experienced paddlers, both proved reasonably good at it, and both had good stamina—Lindsay from her gymnastics and Heather from her dancing. So it was that, by pushing themselves a bit harder than they would have liked, the Dark Queen and her most faithful vassal caught and passed one crippled Muskie crew, than another, and passed Beth and Izzy into the bargain. In that last case, Izzy threw into her rivals' path a blob of something designed to explode after contacting water, but that gesture was mostly for show. The explosion looked impressive on camera, but was neither near enough nor powerful enough to cause Heather or Lindsay any significant problems. Izzy had probably just wanted to see an explosion and judged that moment to be as good as any.
At last, Heather and Lindsay drew near to the only crew standing between them and victory: Courtney and Ezekiel. From Ezekiel's paddling technique, Heather could see that he had felt the saboteur's sting; but he was not a skilled paddler to begin with, so it hadn't affected him much. Courtney was paddling normally, and seemed to be saving her strength for a sprint to the finish. Perhaps that was why Courtney's paddle blade had not yet come loose.
Heather's plan to sabotage the Muskies' paddles had deliberately left much to chance. If her intended victims had spotted the damage before setting forth from Boney Island, they might have been able to correct it there, so it was necessary that the paddles appear sound at first. Accordingly, Heather and her reluctant accomplice had removed the screws and twisted the blades back and forth enough to break any incidental seals that might be left over from assembly at the factory, but had taken no further action to help the blades come off quickly, lest they come off too quickly.
In any case, Heather had no idea how many strokes it would take for her and Sadie's handiwork to become evident. Indeed, the need to trust to luck was largely what had convinced Sadie to help Heather in her nefarious scheme. After all, the Dark Queen had said with that silver tongue of hers, if they were not meant to win by underhanded means, then the Muskies' paddles would simply not come apart and no one would ever know that anything had ever been amiss.
Heather and her vassal drew up right alongside Courtney and her protégé, obliging both crews to paddle only on the outside. Heather taunted, "Eat our wake, Fish Heads! Hope you're in the mood for marshmallows!"
"Nice try, your Highness," Courtney shot back, "but I can hear that you're out of breath. You're the ones heading to Marshmallow City!"
"And we've got more muscle, eh?" Ezekiel added.
Heather retorted, "That's what you think!" as she raised her paddle from the water and brought it over her head in a glittering arc of water droplets.
The Dark Queen knew that her opponents had assessed the situation all too well. No longer willing to trust to luck, Heather had decided that more aggressive action was now called for.
Heather's target was Ezekiel's head, but her attack was slow and badly telegraphed. It had to be, if it were to have enough power to be anything more than an irritant; for the lightweight paddle shaft was not designed for striking, and Ezekiel's toque made for decent armor against such things. So it was that, before Heather's blow could connect, Courtney parried Heather's paddle with her own.
Ezekiel was naturally distracted by the hollow clang of metal on metal, so Courtney cried, "Zeke, keep paddling! I'll deal with Heather!"
Lindsay was likewise distracted by all this, so Heather cried, "Lindsay, keep paddling! Courtney is mine!"
As Lindsay and Ezekiel paddled at the prow, Courtney and Heather traded blow for blow at the stern, each looking for an opening in the other's guard. It wasn't long before both fighters were kneeling, then standing. The canoes didn't make for the most stable of platforms, but this did not trouble the gladiators, for both were surefooted.
Time seemed to stand still as the team leaders strove to overcome each other, the challenge seemingly forgotten. Heather was taller and so had greater reach, but Courtney was stronger and fresher. Meanwhile, Lindsay and Ezekiel glanced at each other and reached an unspoken agreement that they would do their best to pace each other whilst the alpha cats had their fight.
The hour was growing late, so Brett's mother left off her tale and suggested that he prepare for bed.
NOTES:
* The author was determined almost from the beginning that someone, somewhere should refer to Boney Island's giant beavers as "rodents of unusual size". The reference is, of course, to The Princess Bride.
* Jo's last stand (to be described more fully in a later chapter) is based on the death of Gunnar of Hlidarend (Gunnar Hamundarson) in Njal's Saga (a.k.a. The Saga of Burning-Njal and variations), which is one of the most famous, if not the most famous, of the medieval Icelandic sagas. Gunnar's main weapon was a magic halberd, or more precisely a period weapon of unrecorded design whose name is usually translated as "halberd". Jo was chosen for this role because giving the scene its proper emotional impact required that the slain intern be someone whom the reader would recognize.
* The fact that Lightning had died on the same assignment as Jo was originally not going to be revealed until much later in the story.
* Lightning allegedly having large feet refers to the general correlation between the size of a man's feet and the size of certain other appendages.
* Izzy's interest in "cool mold spores" refers to an incident in the canon episode, "That's Off the Chain!"
* "B.C." is a common abbreviation for the Canadian province of British Columbia.
* Chris was originally intended to warn the campers of the curse attached to Boney Island artifacts during the challenge briefing, as in the original. His failure to do so was an authorial oversight that went undetected until after the Twelfth Night chapter was posted. Moving this bit of exposition to the fire building section of the challenge, as opposed to revising an already posted scene, had the advantage of giving Izzy another "mind dump" monologue.
* The original plan for the idol was for Duncan, who doesn't believe in the curse, to find it and slip it into Noah's knapsack as a prank.
* The poem on the love note is "Delight in Disorder" by Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
* The subheading, "Wooden Ships and Iron Girls" is a play on "wooden ships and iron men", a standard poetic description of ships from the Age of Sail.
* Aluminum burns much brighter than the magnesium used in common flares, and aluminum flares can reach brightness of 100,000 candlepower per square inch. The tradeoff is that aluminum is much harder to ignite than magnesium.
* Californium (chemical symbol Cf, atomic number 98) is a transuranic element capable of nuclear chain reaction in much smaller amounts than uranium or plutonium, for example, with Cf-252 having a critical mass of only 6 lb (about 2.75 kg) – about the size of a tennis ball. (Cf-252 can also decay by spontaneous fission, but that can't sustain a chain reaction without critical mass.) This story treats as true the exaggerated claim (from a 1961 Popular Science article) that a californium bomb with a 10-ton yield could be the size of a pistol bullet, because that fits reasonably well with the sight gag in the original episode.
* "By the power of Grayskull" and "I have the power" are the Transformation Sequence catch phrases in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
* The destruction of the Boney Island Skull is based on the 2003 collapse of The Old Man of the Mountain, which incident Izzy mentioned during the challenge briefing.
* The phrase, "an ace in the hole" comes from five-card stud, a card game in the poker family. The first card dealt, and the only one not visible to the other players, is called the "hole" card. Having that card be an ace is a significant advantage because players may not draw to replace any of their cards.
* Heather and Courtney fighting in their canoes parodies a chariot racing scene from Ben-Hur wherein the racers take to whipping each other instead of their horses.
(A/N): I told you in the summary that someone would die in this chapter. I never said it would be a contestant.
(A/N): Since the last update, LTDI has sailed past 5,000 page views, not counting the 600 bogus views that a handful of Brits racked up a few months ago by hitting Chapter 2 (First Night) repeatedly day after day. (Nothing else, just First Night.) Of the 5400 "real" (or at least not obviously suspect) page views to date, over 20 percent have come just since the last update, so it looks like word is starting to get out. Thanks for your support. Now, if I could just get some feedback…