Author's Note: A bit of a shorter chapter for this one, I've been quite busy lately so chapters may be a bit slower. Once again thank you so much to everyone who's supporting the fic so far, counting the newcomers on AO3 at least 20 people have now followed/favourited/left kudos and it really makes me want to keep trying to write this when people are actually liking it.

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The Tell-Tale Man: Thank you so much for the review!

Chapter Four

"So how long exactly is it going to take for us to get there?"

It was the day after Damien's elimination, and Lauren was itching to explore more of the cursed island, she was extremely keen to find anything that was exciting to her, like skulls or dangerous things. Thankfully for her, her new best friend had offered to take her somewhere where she could find exactly that, somewhere where he said he'd been stranded after his last encounter with people from the show. Somewhere full of mutated animals and plants relocated from when Camp Wawanakwa had been a toxic waste dump.

The Fun Zone…

"N-not far now." Ezekiel responded, eyes focused on the path ahead, looking out for any of the other inhabitants of the island. He had to keep an eye out in case one of them attacked them, just because they had accepted him after the events of All Stars doesn't mean that they would play nice with Lauren, but the Scary Girl was relishing in the thought of taking on the mutated beings, surely their screams would be delicious? Just like Damien's, and Priya's, and Ezekiel's all were.

Ezekiel? Lauren still didn't quite understand what she really thought about the Feral Homeschooler, he may have been her favourite on the show, but that was when he was completely feral and just hurting other people. However the last couple of days alone with him on this island weren't exactly… bad? She felt completely at ease when talking to him, she could say or do what she wanted and he never seemed to judge her for it, even joining in with scaring Damien last night. And then there was that nightmare? She still didn't know why she helped him, or why she opened up to him about some of her dark past, and he only confused her more by trying to comfort her in return with that hug, and the weirdest part for her was…

She didn't mind in the slightest when he had hugged her, in fact she kind of liked it, a lot, and that was why she felt so confused about him? Was she just happy to have an actual friend who wasn't completely freaked out around her all the time, or was it something else? She frowned, trying to take in this information, only flashing her creepy smile once more when Ezekiel stopped walking and turned to face her.

"W-we're here…"

They'd stopped in front of a large fenced off area made out of huge trees, a small stone section housing a rusty metallic gate. Whilst the area looked completely sealed off from the rest of the island, there was a small gap in between two of the trees, looking hastily made from the numerous claw marks on the edges. Ezekiel started to push himself through the gap to the fun zone, showing that the gap was just large enough for a human to fit through, and that he was likely the one who made it in the first place. He gestured for Lauren to follow him through the gap into the mutated section of the island, she grinned happily, excited to see this new area, and proceeded to squeeze herself through the gap.

"Do we really have to do this?"

Damien was internally freaking out, true to their agreement last night, the eliminated contestants had to let Chris and Chef know about the whereabouts of Scary Girl, and since he was the only one to actually see her he was the one who had to let them know, Chef Hatchet was waiting in the next room, coming to see to it personally while Chris was busy preparing the next challenge back at Camp Wawanakwa.

"Yes, you do, just suck it up and get it over with!" Axel responded angrily.

"But you said it yourself, do we even want Scary Girl here? You weren't there when she threatened everyone, we don't know what she might do to us when she gets here!" Damien panicked.

"If she were actually going to hurt anyone then she would've done so already. She's probably just trying to spook you, well, more than she has already." Axel said, rolling her eyes at him, behind them Nichelle and Caleb just glanced at each other, thinking that a fight was going to break out between the two contestants.

To his credit Damien did seem to think about what Axel said, it wasn't like he disliked her that much anyway, he was just afraid of what she might do to him when she gets to the resort, besides the attempted murder via jackhammer she didn't seem to actually treat people that badly, she just scared the life out of everyone else. Ultimately he tried to calm himself down, knowing that dwelling on the negatives would just make things much worse for himself and just annoy everyone else, Axel especially.

Stepping through the door, the four contestants were greeted by Chef. "Ah, there you are. So, you said Damien had seen something on the way here after he got booted?"

Hesitantly, Damien responded, "Y-yeah, it was this really spooky island, had a large skull on the cliff. Scary Girl was on it, and she wasn't alone."

"Boney Island? I'd completely forgotten about it to be honest, there weren't any plans to go off of the island this season since we had to tone down the danger. And not alone? But it should just be the five of you that aren't back at camp?"

Axel stepped forward, "He believes he may have seen Ezekiel on the island with her." She said gruffly.

This got Chef's attention, "The Homeschooled kid, he's there too? Uh oh, I better let them know right away, how'd he look? Is he back to normal or still feral?"

"Still green, but he wasn't attacking Scary Girl when I saw them so who knows?" Damien replied.

Chef sighed, "Look, I'm gonna have to let Chris know about this development. I just hope he doesn't take it out on the other contestants, he really hates Homeschool, he won't be happy to know that he's still somewhere in the area, especially if he's with Scary Girl."

Chef stood up and walked past the eliminated contestants to the door, stopping briefly to turn around and attempt to reassure them, "They'll be fine, I'll let the interns know to bring Ezekiel to the resort as well, kids been through enough, Chris may not want to help him but I'll make sure he's cured soon."

He turned once more and walked out of the room, not noticing the slightly concerned glances the contestants gave each other at the news that both Ezekiel and Scary Girl would be joining them at the resort.

"Wow, look at this place?" Lauren gasped in surprise.

The inside of the 'Fun Zone' looked a lot different to the rest of the island, instead of regular trees and plants, everything looked so… alive, everything was completely mutated by vast amounts of toxic waste, the trees were growing unnaturally, all varying different colours, and many different plants were scattered around, none of them looked like they were natural.

Many different animals could be seen in the distance, and Lauren could tell what they were supposed to be, but the toxic waste had given them wildly different mutations from what they were supposed to look like. There were hairless squirrels shooting lasers from their eyes, there were mountain goats with bat wings flying between the trees, there were two-headed rats scuttling across the patchy ground, and there were giant blind gophers sticking their heads out from various holes in the ground.

"This is… w-was my home." Ezekiel responded.

"It's so colourful, and so dangerous, I like it!" Lauren says, grinning gleefully, looking around at all the pools of toxic waste scattered around the area.

Before Ezekiel can say anything else, Lauren skips off singing to herself, following down a small path surrounded by gigantic spiked mushrooms, large gashes covering parts of the dirt from where tentacle trees had lashed out. He watched dumbfoundedly at the Scary Girl as she effortlessly dodged and traversed past small sinkholes, swipes from said trees and stray shots of flames from various small fire breathing plants. All he could do after watching this was simply sigh, chuckle to himself and begin sprinting after her on all fours.

Lauren? Ezekiel really didn't understand what he really thought about the Scary Girl, he didn't have anything to go off with her but he did admit that his time on the island has gotten so much more interesting since her arrival. Yes she could be incredibly morbid at times and there was definitely some moments were she lived up to the name 'Scary Girl', however to him she was a really welcome addition to what was becoming a boring miserable life on Boney island. He hadn't enjoyed interacting with someone this much since before season two had ended, back when he was still fully human, and he was lying if he said he wanted her to leave any time soon. Ezekiel pondered on that last point for a brief moment, what was it about Lauren that was so interesting to him that he wanted her to stay on Boney Island? Idlily he noticed he'd caught up to Lauren, and decided to leave the thought alone for now and focus on guiding her through the mutated forest.

The pair spent several minutes running through the mutated forest together, Ezekiel doing his best to guide Lauren around the many dangerous obstacles that the Fun Zone had to offer, not all of them however, mainly the sinkholes as he didn't want Lauren to suffer a similar fate of mutation. Some of the mutated animals had tried to intervene, seeing Lauren as an enemy similarly to how they'd seen most of the contestants in prior seasons, however one animalistic growl from Ezekiel quickly put an end to that, recognising the Feral Homeschooler as one of them. Lauren just giggled eerily in response, not too pleased that he scared off the mutant animals, however letting him off seeing how scared of him some of them looked, the laser squirrels in particular.

Eventually the duo found themselves reaching a small clearing in the mutated forest, trees parting to a small murky swamp-like area, in the middle of the swamp lay several small mutated Venus flytraps, all surrounding a much larger one lying in the centre. The smaller ones had their mouths closed, while the large one in the centre was wide open, exposing the flower inside its mouth that served as its sensory receptor.

Lauren smiled and began to walk towards the mutated plants when Ezekiel held an arm out in front of her to stop her. She frowned and turned to argue with Ezekiel when a huge root connected to the biggest Venus flytrap suddenly swept past where Lauren was going to walk.

"S-sorry eh. Larry's j-just a bit territorial when i-it comes to its c-children." Ezekiel whispered to her, trying to not disturb the mutants too much. "A-Apparently some of the others tried t-to steal them l-last season." He continued.

Lauren just nodded in response, staring in shock at the roots sweeping across the clearing that would have wiped her out if she had kept walking.

"I suppose I did want things here to be more dangerous." She said as she grinned once more.

Ezekiel smiled at that statement while looking around the clearing, eventually seeing a smaller path leading out from the clearing, past where Larry's roots were sweeping through.

"There." Ezekiel showed Lauren. "F-Follow my lead."

Ezekiel ran on all fours across the clearing, Lauren skipping behind him. When the roots swept towards the pair, they both jumped up and grabbed hold of some vines to swing over the roots. After landing, they carried on, both rushing to the other end of the small swampy clearing before the roots could make another pass at them.

Eventually they were both able to make it to the other side, Ezekiel and Lauren both looked back at the mutants, seeing that they hadn't noticed them running through, they then proceeded to smile at each other playfully, finding some enjoyment out of the situation.

"Shall we continue then?" Lauren asked him, Ezekiel nodding happily in response as they both continued down the path away from the small clearing, neither of them noticing the large shadowy figure watching them from the trees nearby, its hungry toothy grin visible for all to see.

Chef Hatchet for once, was a nervous man.

After his brief trip to the Playa Des Losers to speak to the eliminated contestants about the whereabouts of Scary Girl, he'd spent the short trip back to Camp Wawanakwa thinking long and hard about what to do next regarding the two currently somewhere on Boney Island.

The interns he'd sent out the other day as a search party had already been instructed to head there as soon as possible, and were instructed to only report to him and not Chris. He knew Chris would have a meltdown over Ezekiel still being on the island and his number one priority for the new seasons was to make sure that Chris didn't go too far off the rails, hearing that his least favourite contestant was still out there would not help things in the slightest.

However he also knew he couldn't keep this hidden forever, the time between Pahkitew Island and the new seasons was spent helping out at a day care, something that helped to soften his once icy heart, not to say that he never cared about people beforehand, however deep down Chef knew that he wouldn't have considered helping Ezekiel during the prior seasons of the show.

Chris wouldn't help him, if anything Ezekiel would be used against the other contestants in challenges until one of them snapped and tried to kill the other. Chef didn't want that, not anymore, the feral kid needed helping, and he was hoping that Damien was right about what he saw, that Ezekiel and Scary Girl were seen getting along on that island and not fighting each other.

He hammered in the final nails for the last wooden structure needed for today's challenge, hoping that the contestants don't get too injured during said challenge. Chef hoped that maybe the thrills from this challenge compared to the last one will put Chris in a much better mood, maybe then he can tell Chris about the situation regarding Ezekiel and Scary Girl without the host getting too mad.

End Chapter

Author's Note: The Day care mentioned in Chef's last section was a reference to Total Dramarama. And who could that shadowy figure be?