Disclaimer: Total Drama Island is copyright to Tom McGillis and Jennifer Pertsch. Team Fortress 2 and its content is copyright the Valve corporation.


In a dank, dark, digital dungeon Noah hung from the wall in shackles, shirtless and beaten. A splash of harshly cold water splashed his face and winced his eyes and cringed the corners of his mouth in pain, all of it reverting back to a total apathy afterward as he looked up with a smugly cocked brow and grin to the virtually suited representation of Chris.

"Hey there, pal" Chris said in his pally voice. "You're pretty smart, so I'll spare you the BS. We caught you cheee-tiing!" His singsong sentence only made the act of water-boarding Noah against a wall seem even more hostile as he splashed more water from his infinite bucket. Noah spat and flipped his hair around with a jerk of his head.

"I guess you did" Noah said with a grin. He was always grinning in the same way to Chris, trying to charismatically play him out, outdo his own counter-current of arrogance. It wasn't doing much. Chris was an immovable object in this world, but at least he could hold onto his own convictions and stay strong with his own air or defiant arrogance surrounding him. "I'm surprised your lacky little interns caught up with me in time."

"Oh, we sent them out to sea to die" Chris made passive mention of. Noah felt a slight loss of charisma but only showed it be stopping his smile. "We thought it was one of them, you know, on account of the betting pools."

"What's the Blue ratio at right now?" Noah asked. "Seeing as their leader just got pulled from the server..."

"About 3 to 1" Chris said swiftly. The Reds are more shooed-in now that you're gone, and if that happens..."

"Tie game" Noah said. "What's the play on overtime worth?"

"No one's bet on that yet" Chris said, rubbing his hands together. "It's just me and Chef right now. The whole crew's against us, giving us a stellar killing if the game gets thrown into overtime."

"And now it will" Noah said, figuring out the plan that was spelled out for him so swiftly. He sounded bored. "You must be very proud of yourself, scamming the already poor members of this godless production even deeper into the gutter. How much money could you possible get into a betting pool among the staff for a reality TV show?"

"Your team hasn't lost yet" Chris said, ignoring the derogatory comments, "but without a proper leader they're sure to fail. Owen's eventual hunger will go unsatisfied without a clever strategy to make up for his absence during an emergency lunch. Without someone to control Izzy through simple orders that she can bend as she wands, she'll go to all the wrong places at all the wrong times!"

"You mad man" Noah droned monotonically. "You've doomed us all."

"Come on, man!" Chris whined, turning around. "I'm trying to engage a a protagonist/antagonist dialogue with you here! Sound at least a little enthused about it!" Noah rolled his eyes and sighed.

"You're a horrible man" he said, still droning with boredom. Chris groaned and slapped his face with his palm. A sudden klaxon beeping sounded from the hallway outside and Chef threw open the door. He had a nasty growling snarl on his face that made both Noah and Chris jump a bit.

"Things are slowing down!" Chef announced. "Both teams are static! They're just enforcing and reinforcing their defense!"

"Nice" Noah said.

"Not good" Chris said while rubbing his stubble.

"What's bad about defensive priorities?" Noah asked. "The strategy is the best part of this game."

"Not in the ratings" Chef said. "It's always boring during the slow-down periods where the teams do nothing but build and camp. Viewers tune out!"

"Our betting pool won't have money" Chris thought out loud "if we all get fired due to our inability to force competition amidst unwilling teens. We're ruthless reality show staff!"

"That's the basis for your pay?" Noah asked. "Seriously, Chris, change jobs. Do infomercials instead. I'm sure you could be the next Billy Mays." Chris silence Noah with a swift hand and walked out of the room with a furrowed brow. When he was alone, Noah smirked and headbutt the air to bring up a digital control panel showing his Hax options. It was appropriately labeled as such, with the title bar of HAX_Operations at the top. He searched through his list until he found the 'noclip' code and gave it a swift headbutt as well. He smoothly moved through the chains and onto the floor where he deactivated the code and was suddenly equipped with a revolver hooked to a small LCD screen with his Hax display streaming across. "Nice" he said.

Chris and Chef went from their virtual reality under their helmets and into the actuality of the cockpit control room to fix the lull in the action they were faced with. They took seats in the corresponding team-colored chairs and cycled through the cameras to see what was going on. Indeed, defense had become a huge priority now. Gwen was leading the Blues in their own defense. She had teamed up with Beth, keeping her healed from a distance while she watched the corridors. Cody's turret faced opposite the desk, watching over the intel form across the room while he was safely sandwiched between it and his dispenser. Leshawna had hidden her array of sticky grenades around the intelligence itself, right under the spinning, hovering briefcase and on the sides of the desk that would be blind to whoever picked it up but lethal nonetheless.

Owen stood behind Cody with his gatling gun whirring and a fancy feeding hat on his head with straws swooping down to his mouth and connecting as one so he could slurp his delicious beverage in the keg he balanced whenever he pleased. Izzy waited lazily in the room, lounging on her side in the middle of the floor with her ax on her belt and her flamethrower sprawled out with her. Trent was up top, guarding the first floor entrance by switching from door to door and scouting as quickly as he could. Lindsay patrolled rapidly between the sewers and the ramparts where Heather, hidden under a pile of hay, lay in wait for her prey. Justin was on the ramparts as yet another defense, occasionally firing a shot to signal to Trent that all was clear by shooting down at the sharks below.

"What's the deal here!?" Chris demanded. "They're just standing around, waiting! There's no action, no intrigue!"

"That's no better then my team" Chef said. "Bunch of lazy good-for-nothings!" The Red team had taken a much more suppressive defense by boarding up the two front doors (literally, with wood) and guarding the other entry points with incredible patience. Tyler, Eva and DJ waited for a word of offensive command at the sewers while Harold stayed down below to stop any intrusive attackers alone. Courtney and Duncan guarded the rampart area, Duncan from the spawn area and Courtney across the way from the straight stairway. Zeke, Geoff and Bridgette were down below guarding the intel which Duncan had trapped with a proximity mine. Sadie and Katie made occasionally patrols through the room and the other lower level halls as mobile sentries. It was a simplistic, moving defense that the Reds wouldn't let up and a great offense already in mid-motion.

"Get a move on!" Chef shouted, pounding the metal console desk. "Come on! Ratings are dropping each second you're standing around doing NOTHING!!!"

"Easy big man, easy" Chris said, patting his back as the terrifying man growled panting breaths. "We can't legally tell them what to do...but we can legally screw with them." The two villainous hosts shared a menacing smirk as Chris reached down to flip a switch and type a string of commands into the console.


In the game, there was a foreboding shudder of the land and a drastic drop of temperature and pressure. The clouds moved in to block the sun and rain began to fall.

"Guess what time it is!?" Chris announced. Fearful gasps rang out in perfect synchronicity as the rain led into a full on torrential downpour, complete with the violent streaks of lightning and loud, roaring thunder. "It's MONSOON SEASON!!!" The sharks looked up with evil grins and licked their fishy lips. As the rain continued to pour the water rose and flooded the sewers. Harold ran out and up the steps, outrunning the water as it climbed the stairs after him, and Lindsay made a sonic sprint out of the room only to stop dead against a wall.

"A flood!?" Gwen exclaimed. "Are you kidding me!?"

"""

"I thought Noah took care of those stupid things!" Gwen exclaimed. She then took a pause and a moment of thought. "Then again, Noah never came back. I wonder what happened..."

"""

"Damn" Eva cursed.

"Don't be totally discouraged" Courtney said. "We may still have an advantage in this kind of weather!"

"How so?" Harold asked. "The sharks are even closer now. Who's to say they won't just start eating the bridge if we try to cross it?" A massive flash and roar of thunder cut him off and flooded the radio channel with static. Courtney tried in vain to contact her team for a few seconds until the communication went back on.

"What was that!?" she demanded.

"Wouldn't want everyone to get too attached to their leaders" Chris said, "so from time to time a bolt of lightning will strike on the telecommunications dishes located at the tops of your bases and screw up your com-links."

"No fair!" Courtney bellowed. "I call technical foul! This is a game of strategy! How can we strategize if we can't stay in contact!?" Courtney became so flustered that she began shooting at the loudspeaker in the corner of the wall with her Tommy gun.

"Calm down!" Chef announced. "The team leaders still have the option of retracting the receiver node from the roof to prevent it from getting hit, but it will reduce the radius for making calls to limit it within the team's own base only."

"Wow" Gwen said, looking at the PA speaker. "That's really cheap, annoying and underhanded of you to do...I can't help but be a little ashamed that I didn't see this kind of thing coming."

"""

"I did" Heather said in a warbling soprano. She laughed haughtily and brought a knee up to her hands. "I'm always in step with Chris and his crazy antics. I've been absorbed by the body of wisdom that is reality television, and I had anticipated this twist long before it was actually implemented. After all, in a hot and dry desert combat situation, what's more annoying and unexpected than a flash flood? And sharks?"

"""

To such an end Heather ran for a spawn room and immediately changed into a sleek, all black wetsuit with a Blue V-shaped visor over her eyes. Her knives stayed on a belt across her chest and her sword stayed sheathed across her back while her digital watch was under a protective layer of touch-activated, water proof material where all of her stealthy commands could be triggered. She ran for the ramparts, stopping to watch Justin flip his wet hair and gaze at his rippling, glistening wet abs in astonishment for just a moment, then she made a long leap into the water below and swam below the sharks that circled above.

"Hey guys" Justin called to his team, "Heather's going on the offensive. Should we change up the operation soon?"

"No way" Gwen said. "We've got the lead right now. We're three up with only eight captures left in the entire day."

"It's barely been over an hour" Cody noted. "At this rate we should be done well before dinner, let along nightfall."

"Mmmmm" Owen moaned, "dinner. Chicken Pot-Pie Lasagna!!!" Izzy reconnected his feedtube with his mouth and he slurped the hunger-satiating liquid, remaining calm and collected and most importantly focused.

"Let Heather go" Gwen said. "We'll maintain radio silence with her to give her an advantage."

"Maaan" Izzy whined. "I wanna go too!"

"Your gun wouldn't work right" Cody noted. "It's raining cats and buffalo out there. The only way to effectively take on the offense is to use your napalm and that runs out too quick to be useful."

"Oh yeah" Izzy said as she fell down to her butt on the floor again. She yawned and curled up with her ax, cuddling it into her face, and began resting. Gwen gave her a quick heal as the ax slice in her face had taken a thin slice of her health away.

"Yo Gwen" Leshawna said, popping up from the desk. "Why don't you take someone and lead an offensive front while I stay here and manage defense. We can take the receiver on the roof down while we're at it to keep communication smooth."

"That's a good idea" Gwen said. "Alright Beth, let's go. Leshawna, you're in control here."

"Yes, ma'am" Leshawna said with a snappy salute. Gwen and Beth ran out for the straight staircase while Leshawna hid back behind the desk with her regular grenade launcher out and her hand steadily placed on the trigger for her mines.

"""

"That's right!" Leshawna said, puffing out her chest. "Nothing's gonna get by me now! No wall's gonna fall while Leshawna's in charge of it! You can consider this base on lock-down!"

"""

"Alright team" Courtney said, hailing her forward offense, "it's time. Proceed across the bridge with extreme discretion and storm the Blue base. Leave whatever survivors you want, just take out their legs first so they can't chase you down."

Eva, Harold, Tyler and DJ all got ready to charge out into the sheets of solid rain. The sharks made dips with their sleek fins up and back under the water, circling and ducking under the bridge, waiting for a meal to pass by. Eva revved her gatling gun, Harold checked his knives and pressed a button on his fedora to activate an umbrella to ascend from within his own hat. DJ checked his uber gauge, which was full, and Tyler did stretches until he lost his balance and fell forward.

"Alright" Eva said, "this is gonna be simple and quick. Tyler, you go out first and break through their defense. Harold, you go up top if you can. Me and DJ will go straight through and help Tyler clear a path once he's taken care of the stragglers above ground."

"Got it" Tyler said, flashing his affirmative thumb up. Harold gave a nod which shook his umbrella hat and made it jiggle on the thin metal stilts that held it up. Eva glowered at the novelty item, stopped her gun and snatched it away, provoking a girly shriek from Harold's throat. Eva leaned in and got in his face, which had once again shifted to that manly and confident sternness that he was used to wearing.

"You've got one job to do" Eva said. "Kill Izzy. That's it. Anything else you do is unnecessary."

"Extraneous would be better" Harold noted "because anything else I do would still benefit the team but in a manner that was not previously designated as my purpose and thus would be over what is needed, not completely uneeded."

"Oh" Eva grunted. "Right. Anything else you do will be extraneous, and we don't need anything extraneous happening. Got it?"

"You can count on me" Harold said with a salute. Heather invisibly crept past the gathered fighters, making her way silently and stealthily to the ramparts in her super-spy wetsuit. She had perfectly circumvented their modest defenses and was now in the perfect place to cause some mischief. She grinned under her black suit just as a cache of grenades spawned in the wide room that led to the ramparts. A perfect opportunity.

The Red offensive team charged into the rain with Tyler leading the way and Harold doing a ninja-grade acrobatic flip from the ground to the wall and finally up onto the top of the bridge where he became invisible and stalked through the rain as a ghost. Justin saw the charge coming and reported it just as a blast of lightning shook the sky and shot to the Red receiver that hadn't gone down yet. As a result, the team was momentarily deaf from static.

"Copy Justin" Gwen said, receiving his call just as she and Beth came to the ground exit. They ran to the door and delivered a well-placed rocket to Tyler's feet. He was tossed up, the entire bridge shaking, and then slammed back down with his foot thrust through the rotted, soaked wooden boards.

"Ah, dang!" he exclaimed. Eva stopped a step behind and prepared to help him out, but she was too late. A shark with its huge gaping mouth wide open, burst up and gulped Tyler into its jagged jaw, startling the hell out of him and DJ. "...mommy..." he whined. The shark closed its mouth gingerly and fell back into the water. Tyler died soon after, an icon of a shark around his body as the cause.


"Fire on the Bridge!" Gwen shouted. Justin gave her a nod from up top, following her pointing and commanding finger and Beth was close enough to hear her. They fired at the bridge, hoping to capsize it while Eva and DJ were still hopelessly floating and wetting their feet to the chaotic waves. Harold made a desperate, flying leap over to the ledge and grappled onto it with both his hands and a helpful dagger, then attempted to drag himself up, ducking back down when Justin shot a rocket straight for his face.

"They're trying to take the whole thing down!" Eva exclaimed. She stomped her foot to the floorboards, making them creak, and revved up her gun. Gwen pulled Beth aside and forced a retreat back into the building while Justin finally managed to get the roof broken away. It collapsed on Eva who merely shrugged the wood away and tore through it in a rushed advance. A shark chomped the section of the bridge she was just on, effectively cutting the whole structure in two. Eva made it to solid ground and proceeded, unhindered, into the Blue base. Justin was taken out while he reloaded and a new Justin, Harold in disguise, rounded the corner just as Gwen and Beth came up.

"Hey girls" Harold greeted in the guise of Justin. Gwen stopped healing Beth, drew out her bone saw and made a running stab through Harold's chest, disengaging his camouflage and doing massive damage.

"""

"Wow!" Beth exclaimed. "Talk about great instincts! Gwen spotted Harold even in his perfect Justin disguise. It was kinda sad at first, watching Justin die like that, but the fact that it was really Harold sort of softened the blow."

"""

Gwen pushed Harold's dead body back as it morphed back as an empty shell and swiped the blood from her saw.

"How'd you know!?" Beth asked, all full of wonder and idolatry.

"Huh?" Gwen asked. "I didn't. I just thought, you know, he might be a spy so I stabbed him."

"Oh" Beth said, looking dejected but still trying to remain optimistic. "That's good...keeping your guard up is important!"

"I'm surprised he's already dead" Gwen said, noting his oddly limp body. "It wasn't an instantly fatal attack. It wasn't even a critical hit..." The truth was that Harold had used his last ditch cloaking maneuver, the same one Heather used earlier, and left his illusion of a body behind while he took on the guise of Trent and ran over to the battlement spawn point with his sword gripped tight. He only had one health left, so he couldn't be caught until he found health.

"""

"The key to being a spy" Harold explained "is not only a mastery of the intrinsic and deadly arts of the ninja and the various ninja off-shoots, but a keen awareness of one's self in the world. You must move with the quickness to avoid the world's eye and duck into cover as quickly as possible to lie and wait for the next opportunity. It requires a certain quickness...a ninja speed."

"""

Meanwhile, the other ninja, Heather, had expertly crept past the forward defenses and was now stalking after Sadie and Katie, not even bothering with her stealth. They were too busy chatting and gossiping away to notice the obvious black figure tip-toeing after then with a sword drawn.

"Ugh" Katie scoffed. "Duncan and Courtney are seriously creasing me. I think I'm getting wrinkles from scowling over them."

"I know!" Sadie agreed exasperatedly. "It's like, get a room, you know? And if they did, it'd be a room with all of us already in it and they'd be like, 'get out' and we'd just be like 'no way, we were here first!' and she'd just throw around her stupid leader rank and force us out or something."

"Tell me about it" Katie said. Sadie turned around to face her, tired of talking away from her. Heather jumped out of view. "It's like they've never heard of being discrete."

"James knew how to be discrete" Sadie said with a very playful hinting tone. Katie began giggling.

"He couldn't be discrete" she said with a giggle "if it was spelled in permanent marker on his forehead!" That nostalgic little remark provoked a mad cackling from both girls over the memory they seemed to share. Heather saw that they were both keeled over themselves with laughter and took the opportunity, not to kill them, but to avoid them and move past them into the corner-turning hallway that lead straight into the intel room. She peeked around the corner briefly and saw just how well defended her objective was. From her belt of perfectly round, shiny grenades she took one and activated it. A holopgraphic clone appeared and Heather used it as a model for a moment to gauge how she really looked in her new outfit. Deciding she liked it, she wound it up and gave it a toss.

"Incoming!" Geoff shouted. Heather, an image of her that is, zoomed in and delivered a stern punch to Geoff's chest. It was actually the dense grenade hitting him and then pushing off with a mechanism to keep up the dummy's movement while Zeke's turret shot at her in total futility. The fake Heather flipped elegantly past the rockets and seemed to simply ignore the bullets. Heather set a timer for the next grenade and threw it clear across the room, into the straight hallway. The grenade activated and made the new image Heather charge in from the hall to deliver a swift kick at Bridgette's heel.

"Another one?" she said. She fell down and the grenade-controlled hologram stomped down on her throat. The grenade, in reality, was balanced and gripped with blunt grapples to her trachea. Geoff spun around and blasted his girl with a rocket, destroying the grenade just as Heather came in with the last on running along side her in perfect harmony. The fake picked up the briefcase while the other Heathers rolled away and attacked Zeke. The intel was picked up and, a moment later, the mines were detonated in a base-shaking explosion.

"Take that!" Duncan shouted. He leaned out from the metal wall on the battlements and made a mortar launch all the way over to the Blue battlements where he had seen Trent ducking in and out. They were engaged in a somewhat awkward battle, with the real Trent down in the entrance on the ground trying to snipe him out while fake Trent up top made his paces to keep up his appearance. Harold's plan was backfiring as the real Trent was cornering the battle-lusting Duncan.

Back down in the intel room the halls leading to and from the little room were pouring with smoke. The grenades had blown the entire room to hell and back. Heater was the only on undaunted by the attack. Zeke's body protected her from the aftershock, a favor she repaid by killing him and Geoff and bridgette under the shroud of confusion. Her clones had done an excellent job, and she only wished that she had more to use for her escape. She scooped up the intel and started walking through the smoke with her digital visor seeing through the smoke and picking up the incoming forms of Sadie and Katie. Heather turned and left the other way in a sprint, leaving Katie and Sadie to be the first living to the scene and the first to take the blame for letting it happen.

"""

"You know" Sadie began with Katie sitting next to her, "I'm tempted to just take my ears off before Courtney has a chance to bitch them off herself."

"Oh, totally" Katie said with a nod. "And hey, if we both take our ears off we can use that sign language we learned and be deaf buddies!"

"Oh my gosh!" Sadie gasped. "That's a totally awesome idea! It'll be like having a secret language!"

"Yeah!" Katie exclaimed in reply. She began signing to her to communicate that she loved her friend. Sadie mimicked her movements and widened the gap she made to represent it. Katie made a swooning and then a giddy giggling motion that Sadie joined her with.

"""


"The Red intel is mobile!" Chef announced.

"Thatta girl!" Leshawna cheered. "You go Lindsay!"

"Go where?" Lindsay asked, stepping into the intel room with a confused look. Leshawna was startled to see her there and not carrying a briefcase.

"Wait a sec" Leshawna began. "You didn't pick it up?"

"Pick what up?" Lindsay asked. "Was I supposed to get us food or something? I think I forgot..."

"Foooooood" Owen lowed. His mannerisms, in the absence of solid foods, were becoming more and more similar to that of a cow. He just ate and guarded, standing perfectly still against the wall with his gatling gun up in his arms. Izzy continued to sleep, kicking her legs an rolling around occasionally. Cody flinched when she made barking sounds, which she did quite frequently and followed them with manic, tired laughter.

"Heather must have gotten it" Leshawna assumed.

"Seems that way" Gwen reported over the weak signal. "Heather's been gone for a while now, which means we should assume that Harold is somewhere here." Izzy woke up instantly and rolled up to her feet with her ax and a beastly glowering snarl equipped. Owen was the only unaffected by her instant transformation. He was used to it. "Just stay put and get ready. I think Eva and DJ are going to make another go for the-" The connection was cut off. With no lightning and the satellite retracted, everyone took a grim assumption to what it meant.

Gwen was indeed dead, a shot right between her eyes, and Beth died soon after from the swift cutting of Harold's blade. Courtney, who was soaked from head to toe and had an eel dangling from her shoulder, stood glaring in the rampart room.

"Took your sweet time" Harold said, swinging his blade to shake off the blood and sheathing it coolly behind his back. Courtney whipped her hair around and grabbed the eel to rip it off.

"Where'd those things even come from?" she asked.

"""

"Sharks on the surface" Courtney said "and eels, electric ****ing eels swimming between the sewers pipes. I nearly died getting here and the only thing I have to show for it is a twitch and hypothermia! That intel better be unguarded..."

"""

Courtney's face twitched, her left eyebrow and the left side of her mouth both cringing up while her whole head jerked to the left. She was glaring through the pain of the electricity and turned her head to Harold, who seemed to be in perfect health again.

"I need some health" Courtney said. "Do you have any medicine on you?" Harold nodded and pulled a bottle of pills, minor healing power, out that he had been saving. He tossed it and Courtney absorbed it gratefully.

"I move that we should wait" Harold said "until we have some more appropriate stopping power to back us up."

"Good idea" Courtney said. She reached to contact her team but remembered that their satellite dish was retracted and her communications would be useless. "Oh, right...We need to signal them somehow." Harold nodded and turned to the open doorway that led to the intelligence through the spiraling way. Lindsay came up super-fast and gave Harold a solid smash to his chin with the butt of her gun. A mach-speed uppercut! Courtney whipped out her automatic and began spraying and praying. Lindsay took a few hits before zooming past her and sliding into the respawn room to recuperate.

"Damn!" Courtney cursed. "That speedy little bitch!" Harold rubbed his chin on the ground and recovered just as a grenade box spawned in the room. Both he and Courtney caught sight of it and made a reach for it. They froze in a moment and deliberate, silently and mentally, who should get it. Harold's would doubtlessly be something to outmaneuver the Blues defenses but Courtney was the main offensive force at the moment. She would be better to have the grenades as a fighter...

"Take it!" Harold decided chivalrously.

"It's mine!" Courtney greedily exclaimed. "Oh, thank you Harold!" she sweetly said again. She picked it up and was equipped with three matte-gray cubes. She looked at them curiously and shrugged, making a break for the intel room just as Tyler came skidding in from the ramparts and Lindsay started pistol sniping from beyond the impassible threshold of the spawn point. Harold dodged expertly, snaking and slinking through the weaving pattern of bullets until she had to reload.

"Dude" Tyler exclaimed, "I'll take care of this!"

"Weren't you eaten?" Harold asked.

"I'm over it" Tyler said with a wave of his arm. "Just go! Help Courtney! I'll wait for you guys up here!" Harold nodded, went invisible and departed. Tyler took his place and, as Lindsay drew up the metal door, he engaged her eyes with the longing romance of a lover scorned. Lindsay smiled and began tearing up, then exploded forth with her sonic pumps and tackled him across the room, latching her lips onto his in the instant that she could.

"""

"Illegal or not" Lindsay said "we're still boyfriend and girlfriend, and our love is more important than a war!"

"""

The Blue intel room was indeed heavily guarded. A Demo, a Pyro, a Heavy and an Engie with a full sentry and dispenser. Moving past all those obstacles would be a trying act, but Courtney had the iron determination and mad willpower to do so. She had confidence in herself, even against the impatiently pacing Izzy who tapped her ax handle to her shoulder and wore her dreadful mask with no top to expose her amazing tattoos. Owen was completely brain dead now and was only a living sentry to back up Cody's static creation. Leshawna stayed awake with only her own sheer determination and force of will in the sheltered corner, waiting for an excuse.

A tiny plastic clack stopped the room and interuppted Izzy's pacing. The cube grenade stopped right at her feet and she leaned down to check it out. Two tiny red dots appeared on its surface, twinkled at her and then blaster her eyes with blinding lasers! Izzy was totally blinded, her eyes singed with powerful red beams, and she was thrown back in incredible pain.

"GAAAAH!! MY EYES!!!" she screamed. Her panic and pain forced Owen to snap out of his foodless trance and cast his gaze down in worry. Two more dots twinkled and blasted him as well.

"SWEET RONALD MCDONAL THAT BURNS!!!" he shouted. Cody hid behind his turret, refusing to look in that direction where Izzy writhed and struggled on the floor. Leshawna ducked out from her cover and then went back just as the lasers tried to hit her as well.

"It's gotta be Courtney!" Leshawna exclaimed. "She's using lasers!"

"Backup is here!" Justin announced as he came running in, his eyes closed. He was able to find the pain-inducing cube and gave it a swift kick across the room. It whined with a long beep and then deactivated itself. The coast was apparently clear and Leshawna stood up fearlessly.

"Thanks gorgeous" she said, untaken by his appearance and rushed by the need for recovery. "Get Izzy to the dispenser. We need her healed." Owen was rubbing his tearing eyes as the heal stream slowly repaired them. "I'm taking down Courtney!" Leshawna announced, cocking her gun. She made a short march for the angled hallway while Justin dragged Izzy into the corner and set her neatly on the floor. Once Leshawna was gone he just let her stay there and forced Cody to point out the obvious.

"Hey" Cody began, "she's not close enough yet. Aren't you going to-" decapitation. Harold sapped Cody's turret and his dispenser with an expert speed of hand and killed the engineer all at once. Owen had recovered enough to know when an enemy was nearby. He made a powerful punch that sent Justin through the air, only to land elegantly as Harold across the room, wearing a confident little smirk as he held his bloody blade. Izzy sniffed at the air and kept her burnt eyes closed. She could smell him and his terrible cologne, and to that she snarled a glaring grin.

"""

"Only one man here wears that much BO cover" Izzy said, waving her hand in front of her nose. "Jeez. It might be better for him not to wear it, you know? Women are attracted to the primal stench of a hard working man, covered in sweat from working hard in the mines all day, or hunting the meat for the cave at night!"

"""

"Hey Harry!" Izzy gleefully greeted. "Nice to see you! Not that I can see, of course!" Harold twirled his sword in his hands and measured his distance. First, when the dispenser blew up, he took down Owen with his entire reserve of knives. Then, when Izzy charged he attempted to take her head. She heard the sword and rolled under it. She stayed low and made animistic swipes and slashes with her ax that Harold jumped over and blocked. The battle went on just long enough for Courtney to end her own work, terminate the mines that blocked the briefcase and swoop in to claim the intel.

"Red team has picked up the Blue intel!" Chris announced. Gwen respawned just in time to hear it and charged down into the intel room, missing Tyler and Lindsay in the pile of hay.

"What was that?" Lindsay asked, pushing herself up.

"What was what?" Tyler asked. "Oh crap, Courtney! I've gotta intercept the intel!" He jumped up and started sprinting down after Gwen, but not before he turned and gave his girl a pleasant wink and caught her blown kiss.

"""

"War-love ROCKS!" Tyler exclaimed loudly. "We're totally gonna get killed if we get caught, but man is it worth it! The excitement the danger adds just makes it even better!"

"""


The pass was made. Gwen intercepted Courtney just as she winged the intel to Tyler who grabbed it and killed Gwen from behind. He sprinted away while Courtney made her way back down to the intel room to camp. Harold and Izzy were still fighting, a tooth and nail battle. Heather came in with her pitch-black suit and double-teamed Harold with Izzy, killing him with a huge slash down his back, Courtney tried to whip out another grenade but Izzy caught her scent and pounced on her, smashing her face with the butt of her ax until she was dead, allowing Heather the amount of time to strut over and plant the intel, looking like a sexy shadow the entire time.

"""

"Alright, man" Tyler said, pumping his arms to ready himself. "Let's do this! I'm gonna tell you why I'm afraid of chickens, alright? You better be grateful! Only two people in the world know this up until now! So, when I was a kid my parents took me to a farm, to see the animals like the cows and stuff for a school project or whatever. Anyway, I had a lot to drink before hand, I mean a lot! Like an entire marathon worth of hydration. Eight juice packs, if I remember right. Anyway, we split off from the scheduled tour group because my old man thought they were blowing hot air the whole time, talking about business stuff at a farm or whatever, and I had to take a leak. 'Just go wherever' he said, 'who's gonna be able to tell?' So I went over as far as I could to a fence and pulled down my pants to take a leak. Along comes a chicken...looking for a worm...." Tyler took a break to hyperventilate and gather his composure to continue. "Long story painfully short, it found one, and ever since then I was afraid of chickens. Especially when they can jump up about waist high...ughhh..." His shudder and retreat into a fetal position concluded his confessional.

"""

Tyler made his mad dash across the ruined bridge, dodging the sharks as they made their leaps and jumping up to the battlements with a climbing hand. Trent tried to shoot him away but he had a much more pressing concern. Eva had emerged from the flooded sewer and was revving her gun just behind Trent. He ducked outside, amid a netting of unexploded grenades, and was blown to smithereens by Duncan. Eva continued to march onward into the Blue base just as she saw that Courtney had died.

"Figures" Eva said with a scoff. DJ had taken a moment to ring out his do-rag which he still wore despite the mafioso theme he played into as a white-coated doctor. "She jumps into a pit of lions and expects to walk out. What is she, a saint?" DJ smirked at the ascertain, more than certain that it was purposefully sarcastic. In any case he knew that Tyler was home free with no one to stop him, and now he would enter the proverbial lion's den where a true beast lurked and waited...

"Up you go" Heather said, pulling Izzy to her feet and throwing Courtney's dead body off to the side. "You okay there, girl?" Izzy rubbed her head, then her eyes which still had the most terrible stinging sensation. She was still blind, obviously, as her eyelids had been burnt shut and blistered orange and red. "I think you should try and find the nearest health pack."

"No!" Izzy exclaimed, shooting up a hand in defiance. With her eyes gone her other senses experienced a drastic spike in efficiency. She could hear and feel the stomping footsteps of Eva up above as the big girl began her march down below, and she could hear Heather's tight suit creaking to the rhythm of her breathing. "I like this! It's cool! It's like I can see the world in a totally new way...except I can't see anything! I'm like a blind samurai or something, or one of those slashers who hunts his victims by smell!"

"Couldn't you do that before?" Heather asked.

"Well yeah" Izzy said "but this makes it more fun because I'm blind! Hehe! Just wait until the next sorry little sucker comes knocking on this door to heaven. They're gonna find out that it only goes STRAIGHT TO HELL!!! MUHAHAHAHHAAA!!!" Her cartoon villainous laughter was abandoned by Heather who slipped out to make another run for intel. In the Red base, where there was no forward defense or interception, Tyler made a clean break for the intel room where only Zeke was working to reset the defense with a finger in his nose. He looked up and waved with his wrench as Tyler passed by and delivered the intel by slamming inattentively into the desk and flipping over it.

"Damn!" Tyler shouted. "That smarts!!!"

"""

"I'm sure this is just as shocking as it is unbelievable" Heather began with a great deal of worry in her voice. "When I was young, I was a totally fat, acne-ridden, unpopular trash-girl. That's what the girls used to call me, ever since I tripped and fell into the girl's bathroom trashcan. Trash-girl. There. Happy? Months of weight loss trials and surgery and the guilt form it all successfully repressed, now the whole damn nation knows my secret! I never did this to...what did I do to deserve..." Heather shut up and stormed away. She realized anything she said was a loaded question full of irony.

"""

"That's one" Eva said as she stomped down the stairs. "I hope they're ready, cause we're about to land number three!"

"Then we'll only be one behind" DJ said hopefully. "We might still rebound outta this." At his hopeful little whim they both ran through the halls and leaped over Leshawna's body. Heather watched them, invisible and heading up the spiraling walkway, and smirked under her black suit. Within that room there was a monster, blind yet powerful, and Eva was charging straight forward like a walking flank steak. Izzy heard her footsteps and grinned a fanged smile. It would be an epic battle indeed...


...but it will have to wait until next week! HA! Now we see Noah breaking free from his digital chains. What other dangers will he have to overcome to get back in the action. Can he return at all? Will the Reds make a comeback? Will Tyler and Lindsay abandon the war entirely and just lock themselves in a room together? Will Geoff and Bridgette beat them to that idea??? How will audiences test with Heather's new personality and her sexy black suit!?!?!? Find out next time on Total.
Drama.
Team Fortress!!!