The sea floor was bustling, not just with traffic from the fish that dwelled down there, but the contestants and their hosts, as well. Each of them was dressed up in their diving suits, though it was unknown what they were actually doing. Chris stretched his arms out, letting out a yawn before turning to face the camera, almost a bit shocked to see that it was there.
"Ah, I completely forgot to do my intro! Chef, why didn't you tell me about that?" The host leered at his burly co-host, who could only roll his eyes and shake his head, having grown used to Chris blaming him for just about everything. "Anywho…last time on Total Drama: Lost City! Me and the other folks in charge had to work together to come up with ideas for merch, but we found ourselves stumped, thanks to the less than capable minds of the three mega oldies. Surely I would've been fine to do it on my own and all, but they were dragging me down! So, we had the bright idea to put the kids in charge of the challenge. Each team would have to work together to come up with the best idea for merch that they could, to be judged by us, of course. Eventually…"
Chris seemed to trail off as the camera trailed well off to the side, zooming in on Zachary, who was huddled in a large mass of coral. He snickered to himself, soon revealing that, in his hands, there was none other than the blue orb that he had found a strange energy from. Near him, there was Alex, who was following his every order. "Now, my puppet, you must do the sugar plum dance for me!" The adventurer did as he was commanded, not a peep of defiance coming from his lips. "Perfect, bravo! Now, do something more modern…ooo, do some funky spins on the ground!" The orb started to grow brighter and brighter, with each command that was given, though Alex still followed as he was told. "Ah, it's so awesome that I got to find this…thing?"
Zachary looked down at the orb, just now noticing how bright it had grown out of seemingly nowhere. "W-what the heck is up with this thing?" He tapped the orb with his fingers a couple times, only causing it to flash even brighter before emanating a high-pitched, wailing noise. The actor gasped in shock, looking around frantically for some sort of answer, only for his eyes to grow wide when he noticed something in the distance. A massive, white whale, swimming right towards the cast of the show, its jaw unhinged and scooping up everything in its path. He tried to start swimming away, but it was no use. Soon enough, each and every one of the contestants, and their hosts, were swallowed up by the whale…the orb still in Zachary's hands.
The camera hovered over an ocean, quickly descending beneath the water and happening upon Atlantis, zooming in on the wreck of the Chris space station, where the host himself was on his knees, sad that there was an asteroid in his face, while Poseidon patted him on the shoulder and Amphitrite sighed in annoyance.
"Dear mom and dad, I'm doing fine," the camera quickly shifted over to the carnival zone in Atlantis, showing Natt and Anne on a large Ferris wheel, enjoying their time together until it suddenly fell out of place and rolled away.
"You guys are on my mind," down at the controls, Zachary and Amelia were revealed to be messing with them, laughing maniacally until Vicente came over and bonked both of them on the head with plastic baseball bats.
"You asked me what I wanted to be and I think the answer's plain to see," in one of the carnival tents, March and Luna watched Benjamin in awe as he rode a unicycle while bouncing on a trampoline, juggling bowling pins, and holding a torch with his teeth.
"I wanna be famous!" Tony tossed a frisbee at the wheel, causing Benjamin to fall on top of an unsuspecting Bonnie, and the torch to set his shirt on fire before the bowling pins landed on his head, which caused Liz to give him a thumbs up with an evil grin on her face.
"I wanna live close to the sun," out in the ocean, Alex was in his diving suit, trying to catch a sea monkey, but failing utterly, just like he had when it was a space monkey, while Dusty shook her head in disappointment, lassoing the creature back to them, but catching Jett instead.
"So pack your bags, cause I've already won," on the seafloor, Archie studied a squid closely until it shot ink all over his helmet's glass shield, which made Jianne giggle a little bit before wiping it off.
"Everything to prove, nothing in my way, I'll get there one day," not too far from where the two were, Damien and Gretchen ran away from a massive shark, which knocked them off to the side, showing that it was swimming away from Flint, who was throwing rocks at it while Alexis chased after him.
"I wanna be famous!" The camera switched gears to show a submarine, with arcade-esque machines in it that Taylor and Crustacean were fighting over.
"Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na," zooming into a "pod" of sorts near the arcade games, a virtual world that was full of immaculate fantasy aspects and monsters was shown.
"I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be famous!" Nicolás, dressed as a knight, was running in fear as blasts of dark energy were tossed at the ground behind him, each blast destroying part of the ground.
"I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be famous!" the camera revealed Thomas, in dark mage garb, as the source of the blasts, floating in the sky and laughing maniacally until Maggie, dressed as a witch, flew over to him on her broom and tackled him to the ground, making out with him before he blasted the camera with one of the energy balls.
Afterwards, the whole group was seen on a nautically themed aftermath stage, which Sebastian and Haley were at the center of, glaring at each other while all of the contestants, accompanied by Maggie, who was hugging Thomas tightly, whistled.
It was dark, and entirely quiet…well, give for the occasional sound of saliva dropping down from the roof of the beast's mouth down to it's tongue. "Come on, ya bugger," a voice mumbled in the darkness, though it was quite difficult to see who it came from. Suddenly, a light started to flicker from where the voice came from, eventually sparking up entirely from a lighter to reveal that it was none other than Alex. "There we are! What a place to wake up in…one second Ah'm in bed, dreaming about…hanging out with Zach, for some reason…next second, Ah'm in here! Good thing Ah always keep a good kindling stick or three on me at all times!" Sure enough, the adventurer pulled a large stick from his pocket, lighting it ablaze as some sort of torch.
"Hm…floor seems to be right squishy," he mumbled to himself as he bounced up and down on the tongue, trying to make some sense of the situation, though it was still unclear to him what was going on. "And it's rather dark in here…perhaps Ah'm in some sort of underwater cave?" He tapped at the glass of his helmet in thought, though he still wasn't quite piecing it together.
"We're not in a cave, you nonce, we've been swallowed by a whale!" Alex could recognize Luna's nagging voice anywhere. He wasn't too excited that she was the first person he heard from, but, nonetheless, he turned around to face her.
"Well, it's sure nice to know that Ah'm not stuck in here alone! Is everyone in here, or is it like…just me and you? No offense to you, but…" Alex chuckled nervously, seeing a growing look of annoyance on Luna's face. He cleared his throat, trying to get past the awkwardness of the moment. "Right then! So, the others?"
"They're in here somewhere…when we got swallowed, we kinda got separated. That, and it's entirely too dark in here to see more than two feet in front of you. It really gives me the chills." Luna shuddered for a moment, soon shaking her nervousness off. "But I'm not scared, or anything like that! As if!"
"Uh…right. Well, Ah suppose we should work together to find the others, then?"
"Do we really have to do that? I would rather just find a way out and leave them to fend for themselves." Alex looked annoyed with that suggestion, causing Luna to groan. "Come on, they're all independent and strong! I'm sure that they'll make their way out of here, with or without our help!" The adventurer clearly wasn't going along with Luna's idea, much to her disappointment. She let out a drawn out sigh before grumbling to herself, "Fine, fine, we'll find the others first, gosh…"
"That's more like it!" He patted the model on the back like a supportive older brother would, though she still looked to be pretty angry about the whole situation. "Hm, well…if Ah we're any of the others, where would Ah go if Ah were swallowed by a whale?"
"Well, knowing Liz, she's probably trying to collect samples of some sort from the stupid whale. You know, doing science and whatever jazz she's usually up to."
Alex snapped his fingers, a smile sparking up on his face. "You're a right genius, Luna! Ah've got no doubt that we'll find her somewhere in the mouth, trying to determine the whale's diet! And where there's Liz-"
"There's Tony!" The two spoke in unison, both appearing to be pretty pleased with how great they were as detectives.
Confessional
"You know, this may be one of the absolute worst possible situations that I could be in, but I did kind of luck out by finding Alex so quickly. I mean, there is no doubt that he's gonna have the easiest time finding a way out of here. The only other question is…well, how did we end up getting swallowed by this whale in the first place?" Luna scratched her chin in thought for a brief moment before suddenly remembering something. "There was that high-pitched noise that came out of nowhere…maybe that had something to do with it?"
Confessional End
Tony reclined himself against the tongue of the whale while Liz picked through its saliva, trying to forage something of use to her. The conman glanced down at the Bolex watch that was built into his suit, only to gasp when he saw that it was entirely busted. "Oh, god! My Bolex! It's…it's trashed!" Liz looked over her shoulder to see her boyfriend panicking, shaking her head in disappointment at the sight. "I swear, when we get out of here, I'm gonna find out who is responsible for this and beat the snot out of them!"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you'll do that, babe. Now, could you keep it down just a tad? Kinda trying to do science here, you know how much it irritates me when I can't focus because of someone whining." The scientist turned back around to continue her work, picking through the muck and eventually coming upon something…peculiar. "Well, well, what have we here?" She lifted the object from the saliva to reveal that it was a glowing blue shard of sorts. Tony moseyed on over to get a better glance at what she had in her hands, only for the shard to float towards his watch, as if some sort of magnet for Bolexs. "What in the world!?"
Tony started to panic, immediately grabbing at the shard and trying to pry it off of his already damaged watch, but it was of no use. It sunk into the surface of the watch, disappearing from sight. "What was that!?"
"I don't know, I just found it and it did that out of nowhere!" Liz, for once, seemed to be entirely stumped by what was going on, but her eye was soon caught onto a strange glow coming from Tony's wrist. "Would ya look at that…" As if something out of a fairytale, the watch was fixed, looking just as sparkly as it was before. "It seems like science has worked another miracle, way to go, science!"
"Science? Psh, that was magic if I've ever seen it! I should know! I was a street magician a while back! I used to make people's five dollar bills disappear!" Tony glanced over at the camera, grinning a cheesy grin.
"There you two are!" Luna called out from the distance, running over to give Liz a hug while Alex trailed close behind her. "Oh, I was so worried about you! That's why, when I found Alex, I told him we couldn't leave until we found you!"
Alex rolled his eyes at the bold-faced lie that Luna had just spun, but he didn't say anything to correct her. "Well, that brings us up to four people…anyone else got an idea where the others may be?"
"Heh, well, I would think that, in a situation like this one, some egoist who always wants to prove that she's the best person around would be trying to beat the crap out of this whale from the inside. Unfortunately, that means that she's likely further down inside of the whale…I'd guess trying to find a way to its heart." Tony got up from the tongue, trying his best to wipe some of the saliva off of him, though it was to no avail.
"That's a great thought, chum!" Alex grinned widely, turning back around to face towards the depths of the whale. "Well, we for sure aren't gonna find anyone else just sitting around here! Let's go deeper!"
Reluctantly, the three that were stuck with the adventurer started to follow him as he trailed towards the whale's throat, leaving the tongue seemingly empty. As they disappeared from sight, the tongue lifted up a tad bit, revealing Zachary, who crawled out from underneath it. He still had his orb with him, although it was cracked, much to his disappointment. "Oh no…oh no…it's all cracky and sad! This is this dumb whale's fault! Ugh, I swear…I should probably follow the others if I want to get out of here…"
The actor started to trail after the other's, though the orb started glowing again, making a quiet, yet still high-pitched noise. He stopped to stare at it, almost as if it was speaking to him. "You're saying that it was my fault that this happened? Because I've been abusing your power? Ha! Don't you accuse me of abusing you, you were a gift given to me by a giant, radioactive lizard! I can use you however I want!" He kept on going down the tongue, grumbling to himself and failing to notice that the orb cracked even more than before.
Confessional
"Ah've been having so many weird dreams about Zach recently, Ah wonder what's up with that? Ah mean, the guy's a looker, for sure, but that personality ain't pretty." Alex shrugged his shoulders, still not sure what to make of the situation.
"Abusing my power? Psh! It's mine! How can I abuse something that belongs to me?" Zachary chuckled to himself, his eyes seeming to be filled with craziness.
Confessional End
"Urk…this thing is so slimy and just…blech. Oh, I think I'm going to hurl…" Damien hunched over where he stood, placing his hand firmly against the wall of the whale's throat, having ventured down there on his own. "Keep it together, Damien, keep it together! Sure, you may have gotten separated from Jianne and Alexis in all the chaos and you may be…a-alone right now…but, you can still make it out of here!" The whale's stomach growled loudly, causing it to rumble violently, startling Damien so badly that he fell back onto his rear.
"N-no worries! It's just a big, hungry whale that has all of us inside its gullet! Nothing wrong with that at all! Just keep taking some deep breaths…deep breaths…" Damien started to do as he said, breathing in deeply to help himself relax, but soon enough, he found himself hyperventilating. "What if we never make it out of here? W-what if the whale dissolves us all in its stomach acid? Are we all gonna turn into whale poop!?" His hyperventilating continued to get worse and worse until the others eventually found him, Luna scurrying over to him and grabbing his shoulders.
"Hey, dude! Relax! Everything is gonna be just fine!" Of course, Luna didn't actually know if everything would be fine, but it wasn't unlike her to lie to change the mood of a situation. Damien's breathing started to slow back to a regular pace as he looked her up and down.
"Oh…it's you. Maybe being turned into whale poop isn't such a bad fate, after all," the broadway boy mumbled to himself, only for Luna to shove him back out of anger. He pulled himself up to his feet, looking over to see the other three that were with her. "...You know, seeing all of you guys together is something I never would've imagined in a million years."
"Hey, we're all trying to get out of here, after all. We're gonna have to put our differences aside…even if it means following Mr. Goody Two Shoes' leadership and all." Liz crossed her arms and mumbled to herself, though Alex ignored the comment.
"By the way, Damien…have you seen any of the others passing through here?" The adventurer asked the boy, who had to think about it for a moment.
"Well, I was with Jianne and Alexis, but they got well ahead of me. But if you guys came from the mouth, I'm assuming that the only other place that everyone could be is further inside of the whale, right?"
"Wowza! None of us thought about that already!" Tony mocked Damien, who rolled his eyes at him. "I can tell you're already going to make a great addition to this A-Team, Captain Obvious!"
"Tony, no need to be so harsh. Everyone's a bit frightened and jostled right now, we just need to keep ourselves focused and make sure that we don't argue too much." The four that were with Alex all looked to be quite adverse to the idea, causing the adventurer to sigh. "It's just until we get ourselves out of here. You can go back to hating each other and whatnot after we're free, deal?"
"Deal!" The four shouted in unison, only getting another sigh from the adventurer in response.
Confessional
"What have Ah just gotten myself into?" Alex groaned, holding his head in his hands as he sat down. "Well, no matter…at the rate we're finding everyone, Ah'm sure we'll make it out of here in no time!"
Confessional End
The group of five continued on down the whale's throat, noticing that there were blobs of, what seemed to be, mucus sitting around in collections. As they walked past them, Luna couldn't help but cringe in disgust from the sight, huddling more towards the center of the group to avoid them. "Not to self, whale's are filthy, nasty creatures on the inside."
"They most certainly are not!" Alex hissed back at the model, "Whales, among all the creatures of the sea, are some of the most wonderful parts of this world and its beauty. Sure, the inside of them may not be the prettiest sight, but nothing that lives and breathes is gonna have a gorgeous look inside its body! The disgustingness of this mucus right here just proves that point! There is beauty, even in the most vile parts of these creatures." Alex slapped the top of one of the mucus bubbles, causing it to burst and ooze out into the throat. Luna screamed, quickly hopping into Liz's arms, though the scientist was unable to carry her, and soon toppled to the ground with her.
"Hang on a minute guys…is that…?" Damien reached down into the mucus, pulling something rather large up from it. After wiping the object off a bit, it was revealed to be none other than Nicolás. The nerdy boy looked around at his surroundings, shocked to see the others.
"Good grief, I thought I was having another dream where I'm an alien baby about to be hatched! Turns out, this is actually real!" Damien set the boy down, allowing him to shake the mucus off of his suit, which caused a lot of it to splash onto Luna. The model, intensely grossed out by this, couldn't help but vomit as it splashed against her. "So, we got eaten by a whale, did we? And Alex is now leading a group of ragtag survivors on their way out of the beast's inner dwellings?"
"Hold on a minute, how do you know that Alex is in charge?" Tony crossed his arms as he stared at Nicolás, seemingly offended by the assumption. "How do you know that one of us didn't start looking for everyone else?"
"No offense, Tony, but I'd figure all of you guys as the type to either panic or try to get out on your own…" Nicolás started rubbing the back of his neck, looking away from the others awkwardly.
"Alright, I'll give you that one. But remember! Assuming makes an ass out of u and me!" Tony grinned at his own statement, though the other five groaned. "Oh, come on! That was clever and you all know it!"
"Alright, enough with all the chit chat!" Alex stepped ahead of the group again, looking at his torch to see that the flame had already claimed half of the stick. "We'd better keep a move on! Ah've only got a couple of these sticks!"
"Well, what happens when we run out of them?" Luna asked nervously as she tried to ignore the fact that her diving suit was full of vomit.
"...well, it would be lights out." Alex pressed on ahead, his ominous statement striking fear in the others and causing them to follow along.
Confessional
"It really is a weird recurring dream to be birthed as an alien…but then again, I think I would much rather be stuck in that dream than to be where I actually am right now!" Nicolás nervously chuckled, though he soon gulped out of fear. "I s-sure hope we make it out of here. We'll totally make it out of here! …R-right?"
Confessional End
The group pressed on, further down the massive throat of the whale, all trying to ignore just how vile their surroundings were. As they kept a move on, something could be heard in the distance, wailing like some sort of banshee. "Ahhhhhh! Help meeeeeeeee!" Alex gasped as he heard the screams, pressing on ahead as fast as he could with the others following closeby. As they came closer to the sight of the screaming, they reached what could only be assumed to be the stomach of the whale. It was essentially a lake full of stomach bile, in the center of which was a small island of food mush.
Alex pulled a pair of binoculars from his suit pocket, using them to look out towards the screaming. The source was none other than the show's host, Chris McLean, with Chef Hatchet. The two of them were huddled up closely together, staring down at the stomach acid that was closing in on them. Chris looked out into the distance, seeing the group of contestants together. "H-hey! Guys, is that you? Oh, I'm so glad you're here! You've gotta help us out of this mess!"
"Yeah, man! This ain't how I wanna go!" Chef called out to them, though he soon noticed that all of the contestants seemed less than interested with their dilemma. "C-come on, kids! You can't just leave us here to get dissolved by whale goo!"
"Eh, I dunno," Liz smirked as she looked out towards them, being the maniacal devil that she was. "I don't really think you guys deserve our help…considering just how awful Chris McLean can be."
"Yeah, if we save you guys, won't you just go back to torturing us the second we get out of here?" Tony suggested, looking over at the others in his group, glad to see that they were nodding in agreement.
"Aw, come on! You can't seriously be thinking about leaving us to melt away here!" Chris got down on his knees to beg and plead, but the rising acid made it impossible for him to kneel and he quickly jumped into Chef's arms. "Alright, alright! You guys know that challenge we were doing before this? The scavenger hunt? W-well, we can gross that entire challenge! No one will get eliminated, we can save it for another day!"
"Meh, Ah don't know…maybe if we got that reward that we were all so excited for during the last challenge…" Alex mentioned to the host, causing him to sigh loudly.
"Fine, we can work something out and get you guys a proper reward! Just save us from this mess!" Chris and Chef looked down at their feet to see that the acid was coming up even higher than before, about to reach them. They both screamed out in fear, thinking that they were done for at this point. It was then that Alex grabbed his handy whip, swinging it out towards them and wrapping them up.
"Ahright everyone! Let's pull on three! One…two…three!" Alex commanded the group that was with him, each of them tugging on the whip as hard as they could, eventually pulling them off of the food island just before it was entirely swallowed up by the acid. They lassoed the two hosts right over to them, though they were both so struck with fear that they had no idea they were already safe until Chris suddenly peeked his eyes open.
"You guys did it! You actually saved us! I promise, you'll get the best reward you could imagine for this feat!" Chris hugged Alex tightly, causing the adventurer to roll his eyes in utter annoyance. "Now, let's get out of here!"
"Not so fast, buckaroo! We need to find all of the others, first! Since you've been in the stomach, surely you know which way they must've gone, right?" Alex leaned towards the host in question, hoping for an answer.
"Well, the little island of food was much higher earlier…we just got stuck on it." Chef mumbled as he turned to face the acid again, soon looking up at the roof of the stomach and pointing to a large hole at the top of it. "The rest of you kids went up there…Jianne was pretty adamant on getting to the bottom of this messing. Well, I think she just wanted to kick the whale's ass."
"That's good enough for me!" Alex cracked his knuckles as he looked up at the exit with determination.
"Uh…Alex?" Nicolás piped up from the silence of the group. "Not to doubt you or anything, but…how exactly are we gonna make our way to that hole? If they had a food mountain to climb earlier, that makes it easy. But we've got nothing…"
"Oh, is that what you think? Well, just watch this!" Alex swiftly cracked his whip towards the hole, latching onto it pretty tightly. "There we are! Everybody, hold on tightly!" Without any defiance from the group, they all grabbed onto the boy, who impressively swung forth with them holding him, pulling them all up and through the hole.
Confessional
"What can Ah say? Ah know how to use one of the buggers!"Alex held his whip up with a prideful look on his face.
Confessional End
Zachary stumbled his way on into the stomach of the beast, noticing the dilemma that the others had just come across. "Hm…I wonder how we're gonna make it up there?" He tapped at the glass, the orb in his hands glowing and making the same noise as before. "Oh, are you really trying to put me down again? I'm lost? There's no way out for me? I should just run back and hope the whale opens its mouth again? Bah! I run from nothing! And as long as I've got you, this is no issue for me!"
The orb started to glow brighter, a beat starting to echo from it and causing the lake of acid to start trembling from the beat. Zachary grinned widely as the beat from the orb got even louder than before. "And this one is for the champions, I ain't lost since I began, yeah!" He took a step forth onto the acid lake, which had seemingly frozen in place, allowing him to stand on it just fine. "Funny how you said it was the end, yeah…then I went and did it again, yeah!"
As the boy sang to the orb, it's beat started to get more intense than before, causing the acid to start forming a staircase out of the frozen acid. "I told you long ago, on the road, I got what they waitin' for…" Zachary started running up the stairs, as they piled up higher and higher with every second. "I don't run from nothin' dog, get your soldiers, tell 'em I ain't layin' low! Hahaha! I am the industry baby! Ain't that right orb?" He grinned down at the orb as he pulled himself up through the orb, looking away from it just as it started to crack more.
Meanwhile, the group had already pulled on much further than they were originally. Alex wasn't entirely certain of where they were inside the whale, but he wasn't concerned with it. All that he was worried about was finding the rest of the contestants. Damien was looking behind him as he trailed along with the group, seemingly worried. "Anybody feel like someone just broke out in a musical number back there, or is that just me?"
"That's probably just you being the weird theater kid that you are," Chris snickered as he mocked the boy, though Chef swiftly elbowed him in the side.
"They coulda left us back there to die man, don't be instigating right now." The co-host grumbled as he walked past his boss, getting an eye roll back from him. They kept pressing ahead, eventually coming to a crossroads that had four paths, including the one that they came from.
"Hm…it seems that it forks a bit here. Well, what do you guys figure we should do? We're gonna have to stick together if we want to make it out together." Alex looked at his group for ideas to see that Liz was tapping at something down on her wrist. "What're ya doing that for?"
"Well, if I remember correctly, this suit comes with microphones that we can sync up with each other…you know, so we can talk to each other underwater." The scientist continued to pry at the operations that were available on the wrist of her suit until it suddenly lit up. "There we are!" Her words echoed throughout everyone's helmets, signifying that they were back to working as they regularly did.
"That's great! We can split into three groups to find the others! After all, Ah'm sure that they probably got tired of each other at this point and split up, anyways." Alex looked over the group for a moment, tapping at his helmet as he thought of how to split up the groups. "Ahright, let's have…Damien, Chef, and I in one group, Liz, Luna, and Tony as the second group, and Nicolás and Chris as our last group!"
"Aw, come on! You're really gonna stick me with the nerd? His survival skills can't be that high, he'll get us killed!" Chris pouted, though upon seeing the glares he was getting from the others, he quickly took his concerns back. "Fine, fine, I'll go with Nick the Nerd. But I'm in charge of our group, you got it?"
"Whatever you say…" Nicolás continued to mumble to himself, though it was too difficult to understand exactly what he was saying.
"Now, me and mah boys will head down this path here," Alex gestured to the path that was most centered, having Damien and Chef walk closer to him. "You guys can decide which of the other two paths you're going to go down, just make sure that you let us know if you find anyone down there. If we get lost, we'll meet back in this spot. Everyone crystal on the plan?" The adventurer looked around at the others, not getting any disagreement back from the rest of them. "Awesome! Tallyho, adventurers!"
Alex charged down the path that he had picked for him and his group. "Man, don't say tallyho, that's so lame," Chef grumbled to himself as he followed along with Damien closeby him.
"Well, if that just leaves these two paths…I say we take this one." Liz gestured to the path that was the most on the left, looking back to Tony and Luna. "I'm sure you two don't have anything against going with my plan?"
"Well, actually-" Tony was quickly cut off as he saw the seething glare shooting back at him from his girlfriend. "Nope, that path is perfectly fine with me, no complaints here! I would never disagree with you, babe, heheh…"
"Of course, Liz! You know, as your best friend, I'm always gonna agree with your bright ideas!" Luna patted Liz on the back, causing the scientist to look up at her and gasp out of shock. "What? What's wrong?"
"Er…well…you don't look so great right now…" The scientist gestured to Luna's incredibly pale face, which was as it was likely due to the vomit in her suit.
"Well, the sooner we get out of here, the sooner we don't have to worry about me dying, right? Let's just go and get this over with as soon as we can!" Luna immediately pressed down the path, with Tony and Liz shrugging before following her and leaving Nicolás and Chris together.
"Well…I guess that just leaves this one other path, then…" Nicolás glanced at the path on the right, gulping before he took a nervous step towards it. "You can do this…you can do-"
"Aw, quit being such a baby and just go down the path already, sheesh!" Chris grabbed the nerdy boy by the arm, tugging him along with him as he pushed down the third path. "I swear, I have to do everything by myself these days. You kids can be so useless sometimes!"
Confessional
"Why did I have to get stuck with Chris on my team? Not to doubt Alex's leadership but…I mean, this is Chris we're talking about! He's kinda the worst guy around here!" Nicolás groaned, soon looking off to the side, revealing that Chris was sitting in the confessional with him. "No offense…"
"How was that not supposed to offend me!?" Chris shouts at the boy before crossing his arms and turning away from him. Nicolás could only sigh at the mess that was his partner.
"I'm gooooooood, I'm so gooooood right now!" Luna was wobbling back and forth as she held a thumbs up to the camera, soon falling back onto the floor with a loud thud. "A-okay!"
"I'm getting really worried about Luna…she seems to be really sick. We need to make it out of here quickly…" Liz, for once, did actually seem to be quite worried for the sake of the girl that she used to hate more than anyone else in the world.
"We kinda lucked out, getting put in the same group as Alex and all. I mean, I'm sure that we're all gonna make it out of here rather quickly with his leadership!" Damien smiled brightly and looked next to him. "Ain't that right, Chef?" Chef, who was next to him, flashed a thumbs up to the camera, but didn't say anything.
Confessional End
Nicolás and Chris continued on down their path, although they were staying entirely silent, due to just how much they despised having to work with each other. Chris eventually started to whistle to himself to break the silence, but it was as if he was entirely tone deaf and had no idea how to whistle in tune. The nerd glared over at the host, though he didn't look back at him at all. "You know, some of us have ears that we would like to keep intact. Undamaged by bad whistling. Do you get what I'm saying?"
"Hm, I dunno, I have a really hard time speaking socially awkward nerd. Maybe I'd be able to understand you a bit better if you could sprout some hair on your chest!" Chris grinned at his partner, the glar not fading from his face. "Aw, is the little dweeb mad at the super hot reality tv host? I'd be jealous too if I were where you are right now."
"Psh, why would I be jealous of you? You don't even have any friends or anything! Why would I want to be you?"
"Are you suggesting that you have flocks of friends waiting to hang out with you every waking moment of the day?" Nicolás gasped and reeled back from the nasty comment. "Meh, I don't really feel like talking to you anymore, so, if you don't mind, I'll go back to whistling and minding my own business."
"Oh no, I'm not gonna sit here and listen to your god awful whistling until we make our way out of the whale! I swear, if you even start that up for one more second I'm going to-" Nicolás was taken aback and hushed up when Chris suddenly placed his hand over the glass of his helmet where his mouth would be.
"Sh, sh, sh! Do you hear that?" Chris glanced around, and sure enough, there was a noise calling in the distance. It almost sounded like…sobbing, of sorts. The duo trailed further down the path, getting closer and closer to the noise, and eventually stumbling upon a rare sight. Amelia was sitting upon a mass of sorts, crying her eyes out.
"This is so stupid! I can't believe I've been swallowed by a whale! Is this how my career ends? Devoured inside a whale and never to be seen again?" The actress continued to wail in horror, not bothering to look around her and see that the two were standing right there. Nicolás shuffled over to her, lightly tapping her on the shoulder.
"Hey, are you okay-" He was swiftly cut off by her punching him right in the gut and knocking him to the ground. "Ow, what is wrong with you!?" He scooted back on the ground as Chris laughed at him.
"You can't just sneak up behind me like that! Can't you see that I'm practicing my crying actress routine for when I get back into the big scene?" Amelia rose from her seat, turning to face the two of them and crossing her arms and furrowing her brow. "Well, what are you two staring at me like that for? Shouldn't we be finding our way out of here? God, I really do have to do everything around this place, don't I?"
The actress passed by the two of them while Nicolás struggled to get up from the ground, Chris still laughing like a hyena. "Man, isn't it awesome that we ended up finding her of all people? Ah, this is gonna be so funny!"
"Urk, your definition of funny and my definition of funny are two different things." Nicolás tapped away at his wrist for a moment, pulling up his microphone so he could speak to the others. "Hey…uh, guys? We found Amelia, so that's another one off the list. That just leaves…er…Taylor, Gretchen, Jianne, Alexis, Natt, Dusty, Vicente, Flint, and Zachary…right?"
"Wow, good job, Nicolás! You know how to make a list of names!" Liz's microphone called back rudely, causing Nicolás to sigh. "Oh, calm down, would you? You don't have to throw such a hissy fit over a little backhanded comment or two."
"Yeah, Nicolás, no need to be such a baby about things!" Tony called back, only causing the nerd to get even more annoyed with them before cutting the feed to his helmet so they couldn't hear them.
"Let's just follow along Amelia, I'm tired of dealing with you guys and your nastiness." The nerd grumbled more and more as he followed Amelia, with Chris behind him, still laughing obnoxiously. "I seriously can't believe we got stuck with all the jerks to find the rest of us…you'd hope that we could at least get someone like Natt here to help us. Speaking of Natt…I wonder where he ended up?"
As the three kept on going, focus shifted to Natt, who was sitting along in the middle of a path, having not seen anybody strolling by for a good long while. "Being alone again…man, isn't this just great. I can't believe I got separated from everybody…"
"And I'm sure you're just waiting for a savior to find you!" Natt turned his head to see that Zachary was standing there, holding his orb with a great look of pride on his face. "Don't you worry, Natt! We'll be sure to find our way out of here together! As long as you do everything I tell you to, of course!"
"Eh…? Why would I just let you be the boss of me like I was some sort of…" Natt couldn't help but drift his gaze down to the orb, which was glowing again. His eyes were lost in it, and suddenly, he had no control over himself anymore.
"That's right, listen to what I tell you! Now, lead the way to the others! We need to get out of here!" Upon Zachary's command, Natt immediately turned to face further down the pathway before walking down it. The actor laughed maniacally as he followed his puppet.
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"Zachary is the coolest guy ever, I have never met anyone in my life that I admire more than Zachary, all hail Zachary!" Natt chanted in a way that didn't even sound remotely close to how he usually talked.
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Liz, Luna, and Tony were going along the path that they had chosen, with the scientist keeping a close eye on her unlikely friend. She leaned towards her boyfriend, nudging him lightly to get his attention. "Tony, I really have a bad feeling about Luna…I mean, it surely isn't healthy to be walking around in a suit like that."
"Eh, probably not, but at this point, we've only got like..what, nine people left to find? We'll be out of here soon enough, I'm sure. Besides, she's doing just fine! Look at her go over there!" Tony gestured to the ill girl, who was dancing a familiar dance from a musical, though it was hard to put a finger on what it was exactly.
"One singular sensation, every little step she takes," Luna sang in an oddly pitch perfect voice, twirling a cane that she had gotten from…well, completely nowhere. "One thrilling combination, every move that she makes! One smile and suddenly nobody else will do," the model tapped her feet in a rhythm and did a flip, landing perfectly centered. "You know you'll never be lonely with you-know-whooooooo!" With that last note, she launched the cane out of her hands, causing it to fly in the distance, crashing against a wall and falling to the ground.
The group looked over towards where the cane had ended up, seeing none other than Dusty and Vicente sitting together on the ground, startled by the flying object. "H-hey! I didn't expect anyone to come looking for us…we thought we were done for!" Vicente breathed a breath of relief, smiling at Dusty, who had her arms crossed. "What's the matter?"
"Hmph, I don't wanna go along with those rascals! Knowin' them, they're gonna try to get us dun killed er something!" The cowgirl rose from her seat, turning her back to the group of three, adamant that she wouldn't go with them.
"Dusty, I know me and you haven't always gotten along super well…but we all want to get out of here alive, and we need everybody to do that. Besides, Luna's really sick right now…I'd rather not waste time bickering when we could be getting out of here." Liz's speech seemed to have no effect on Dusty at first, much to her dismay. "Fine, fine…don't come with us. Tony, Luna, let's get out of here."
The group of three turned back towards the path that they had originally followed, walking along it, sadly. Liz tapped into her microphone, speaking softly and dejectedly. "Guys, we found Vicente and Dusty, but they-"
"But they're right here!" Dusty piped up, having run after the group after a sudden change of heart. Vicente was right behind her, of course. "We're all together, ayup! No need to worry about us!"
"That's great, mates!" Alex shouted back through his own microphone. "Ah think we're about to come up on some of the others so we'll have to cut ya out for a moment or three, but we'll keep in touch!" The feed soon cut from the microphones and Liz turned to face the couple with a smile on her face.
"Oh, don't y'all get the wrong idea er nothing. I still don't much care for ya, but Luna getting out of here and being healthy again is more important than our little rivalry. We can resume hating each other after we all find a way out of here, ayup!" Dusty beamed and took to the front of the group, scooping Luna off of her feet and carrying her. "Now, scientist, lead us to safety!"
"Momma?" Luna looked up at Dusty with sparkling eyes before suddenly vomiting again.
"Yeesh, we need to get her to the nurse, stat!" As the cowgirl spoke, Liz took the lead again, heading back along the path with her now group of five.
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"Yeah, Dusty can definitely be a bit harsh at times, but when it comes to doing the right thing…well, she knows to put the safety of others first. And that's part of why I like you so much!" Vicente smiled at Dusty, who was sitting next to him.
"Aw, shucks, come here, you!" She swiftly pulled him in, placing a kiss on his cheek and making him blush intensely.
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Flint was running throughout the many twisting and turning paths of the whale's insides, occasionally punching at the walls of it, trying to injure it. "Come on, you stupid fish! Spit me out so I can go back to winning this challenge! If you don't spit me out, right now, I'm gonna…I'm gonna tell on you! Yeah, let's see how big you are when you end up getting fish detention! Not so tough, now, are you?"
Flint laughed at his own cleverness, completely unaware that Natt and Zachary were coming up behind him. Eventually, he turned to face the two of them, a bit startled at first. "Holy heck, I didn't see you guys coming! Huh, that's odd…I don't remember you having those swirly eyes like that, Natt. Kinda looks cool on you. Super ominous, actually. What do you think, Zach?"
"What do I think? I think…that you will also fall under my control!" The maddened Zachary held his cracked orb forth, getting Flint's attention with it. The speedster was quick to fall into a trance just like Natt had. "That's right, you feel like listening to my every order now, don't you?" Flint only nodded in response, getting a boastful laugh back from Zachary himself. "Now, the two of you will make sure nothing comes at me from behind or in front! Boy, it sure is nice to have a following again!"
Zachary continued to laugh like the maniac he was truly turning into, with Flint trailing behind him and Natt still leading the party. Unbeknownst to him, the orb was starting to crack, yet again. They pressed on ahead in search of the rest of the group. Elsewhere, Alex was with Damien and Chef, each of them looking on ahead down their path, as they could've sworn they saw some of the others. "Man, it's so hard to tell with how murky it is down here…and these torches ain't helping much." The co-host grumbled to himself before suddenly slipping and falling forward, thanks to how slimy the innards of the beast were. "Aw, man! I ain't never looking at a whale the same way again."
"I know…this place is nasty. I can hardly stand it…well, outside of the occasional music number that I can just sense going on somewhere in here. It's like it's calling me or something!" Damien snickered to himself, soon humming the tune that Luna was previously singing. "Man, that really is a great musical! I've been cast for it once, it really was a lot of fun to be a part of!"
"Which one are you talking about?" Alex turned back to look at Damien, his curiosity being piqued.
"Ah, you know, a Chorus Line! It sure is a great one…I've seen it so many times with so many different casts. Definitely one of my favorites of all time!"
"Psh, you seriously think that a Chorus Line is one of the best musicals of all time?" A familiar voice called out in the distance, soon revealing its owner to be none other than Taylor, who was standing down the trail, with Gretchen right next to her. "There's hardly any adrenaline pumping through that show's veins, it makes me fall asleep everytime I see it! Now, Sweeney Todd? That's a musical with some oomph to it! Blood, guts, and horror! Gotta love it!"
"I mean, there's nothing wrong with Sweeney Tood or anything, but I just think that a Chorus Line is-" Damien soon cut himself off, realizing that he was arguing with a brute, and that, surely, this would go nowhere for him. "Ah, whatever…it's just a good thing we found you guys! That just leaves Jianne, Alexis, Flint, Natt, and Zachary!"
"Dang, you guys have caught up with that many people already? Once the paths started to fork, we all got a little bit lost." Gretchen rubbed the back of her neck with a bit of an embarrassed smile on her face. "Eh, now that I think about it…earlier when we are all in the stomach, I remember seeing most of everyone…but I never saw Zach at all. Was he back with you guys at all?"
"Zach? You know, Ah haven't actually seen him since…well, it would've been yesterday. Ah had this weird dream about him last night, and then Ah kinda blacked out all of today. At least until we got swallowed by the whale." Alex tapped at his helmet again, soon shrugging it off. "Eh, Ah'm sure we'll find him down the line somewhere! There's still a lot of whale to keep searching, right?"
"Yeah, I guess you've got a point. I'm probably just over worrying about nothing. We'll definitely find him down there somewhere." Gretchen stretched her legs out, "Gotta say, I've gotten really clammed up just standing up here. Oh well, I know at least Jianne and Alexis are dead ahead of us! Jianne said something about teaching the whale a lesson of sorts?"
"That's great! Well, folks, let's press on and finish our quest, right?" Alex grinned before taking lead of the group again, tapping down on his wrist to get access to his microphone, though it didn't seem to work at all. "Eh? That's odd…fella, are any of your microphones working?" He turned back to face his group, but to his shock, every single one of them was missing from the scene. "Fellas? Where did you all go?" He tried to take a step back towards where the rest of them had gone, only to slip on the uneasiness of the ground beneath him.
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"All hail Zachary, all hail Zachary, all hail Zachary!" It was a rather large gathering of contestants and the two hosts at this point, each of them under control of Zachary and his orb. The man himself sat off to the side, laughing like a true supervillain, before eventually hacking and coughing from all the laughing.
Confessional End
Alex fell down onto a mushy surface, soon struggling to pull himself back up to his feet. He looked dead ahead to see that Jianne and Alexis were huddled around a pulsating mass of flesh, presumably the whale's heart. "A-ah! There the two of you are! We've been looking for everybody, but now that we've got you, that should be just about it! Heheh, Ah did get really worried about you!" He took a step towards them, but they were entirely silent and still. "Er, ladies? It's me, Alex! We're gonna find our way out of here!"
They both turned to face him, each of them with their eyes swirling, as if in some sort of trance. "Ah! Blimey, what's wrong with you two?" They started to walk towards him, causing him to back up a few steps. "H-hey! What are you guys acting like that! We gotta get out of here, r-right? So, why are you guys pushing me into the wall here?"
"All hail Zachary, Zachary is the king of Atlantis!" The two girls shouted at Alex, bringing nothing but utter confusion to him. Soon enough, some maniacal cackling echoed from where Alex fell from. He looked back up to see the mob of people that were holding Zachary up on a throne.
"Zach? W-what's going on here? Why are they chanting your name like that?" Zachary continued to laugh as his puppets slid their way down to Alex, holding him as delicately as they could. He leapt off of his throne, landing directly in front of his teammate.
"You know, this is quite a sight, ain't it? I asked you so long ago to be a part of an alliance with me, but what did you say? You said no! You laughed at me!" Zachary looked out of the ordinary, if anything, he seemed to have a lack of sleep about him. "Look at me now, Indiana! I've got an army around me! And it's all thanks to this!" He proudly held the orb up, laughing as he stared at it. "It's beautiful, isn't it? I call it my BatOrb! Perfect for an actor of Batguy, such as myself!"
"You're delusional!" Alex backed up a bit, though the two girls were quick to grab him by his arms so that he couldn't move at all. "What!? Let go of me!"
"Oh, Alex…it's no use! They're all under my control, and now…you're gonna be too!" Zachary held the orb directly in front of Alex's face, though when the adventurer looked at it, it seemed to have no effect. "Eh? Why aren't you falling under my control?"
"W-well maybe that thing just doesn't work on me or something!"
"Psh, come on now, Alex! I've used the orb on you several times before…in fact, I was just using it on you before the whale came and swallowed us up! It's so funny to make you bend to my every wish!" Zachary laughed some more before completely deadpanning. "But if it isn't working anymore, I suppose that only leaves us with one more possible option. Orby! Why don't you take us out of this whale, already?"
As Zachary ushered the command to the orb, it started to glow brightly, much to Alex's shock. The inside of the whale started to rumble and shake violently out of nowhere while Zachary continued to laugh like the maniac he truly was. Soon enough, a wave of pressure shot each and every one of the contestants, and the two hosts, out through the blowhole at the top of the whale. Alex couldn't help but scream in horror as he went speeding through the ocean, eventually bursting through the bubble that Atlantis was held in. The pressure pushed him all the way to the fish bowl.
"Urk…what on Earth…" Alex struggled to pull himself back to his feet after the pressure. Sure enough, each of the others ended up right in front of the fish bowl as well. Before he had a chance to make a dash for it, he was grabbed by Chris and Chef. "Chris! Chef! Please! You guys've got to let me go! We gotta put a stop to Zachary and his madness!"
"Bahahaha! Come on, little Alex! It's no use telling them to stop…they're all under my command!" The boy had gone mad. He thought that he was in control of the orb, but it was really the orb that was in control of him. The orb cracked even more than before, and the light that used to shine so brightly was nothing but a flicker at this point. "Now…since this just isn't having an affect on you anymore, I suppose that just leaves me with one option."
"What are you talking about?" Alex struggled to fight his way free as the two hosts carried him deeper into the fish bowl.
"Oh, Alex, I think you know exactly what I'm talking about. My dear friend that could've been my closest ally, Alex Parkinson…you…"
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"...are eliminated!" Zachary shouted the final two words, laughing maniacally as the two hosts let go of the adventurer, causing him to fall directly into the Water Slide of Shame, which led all the way down to the Submarine of Losers. He continued to laugh, growing more and more maniacal in tone until, suddenly, something miraculous happened.
The orb was glowing far brighter than ever before, and this got everyone's attention, freeing everyone from Zachary's clutches, though they all had no idea what was going on exactly. "Eh? Orby?" The boy looked down at it out of shock, only for it to suddenly fizzle out, crumbling into many small fragments that had no glow to them at all. "Ack! Orby! You're gone! You're..who am I talking to?"
Zachary looked around to see that all of the others had fallen into a deep sleep. There wasn't a single clue about what it was that happened, but he felt the same fatigue that they were feeling. With a loud yawn, he let himself plop down into the grass, drifting off to sleep, just like the others. The only one who knew anything about what happened was Alex…and he was long gone.
Author's Notes:
*And our next contestant bites the dust due to the wackiness of Zachary and his blessing, or curse, that was brought to him by Zodgilla. For this episode, I was really shooting for a more cartoony vibe where wacky, mystical stuff can happen. I had a lot of fun writing this one…I mean, start to finish, this has been one of my absolute favorite episodes that I have ever written as far as all of my seasons go. It's sad to lose Alex, but making him the main character of this episode was so much fun. He was surely the right guy for this job.
*We've only got one more episode between this one and the next Aftermath. With that in mind, know that I will be asking you all for questions for some contestants at the end of the next episode.
*Songs Used: INDUSTRY BABY - Lil Nas X; One - A Chorus Line
*Placements: 22nd - Crustacean; 21st - Thomas; 20th - March; 19th - Benjamin; 18th - Archie; 17th - Anne; 16th - Alex