Author's Note: I'd like to send a sincere apology to all the reader of the story for the two-week late update. Long story short- life has been rather hectic in these last two weeks. Won't go into details. However, hopefully now everything will go back to normal and I can update weekly once again.
But enough excuses- back to the story. Once again, thanks for all the reviews! Here are some replies to some of them…
Kraven the Hunter: No and No. Wow, a lot of people have been guessing the Sasquat-whatyamaycallit. Don't worry, Heather will definitely doing some investigating…
ChipmunkFanatic: Glad to finally hear from you in a review! I'm glad your enjoying the story so far!^^ Haha, I'm happy whenever people comment on my treatment on Justin the story. He's become one of my favorite characters to write now. You saw my drawings? That's wonderful! I posted new picture of Duncan and Courtney from the last chapter. It's currently my favorite picture I've drawn…. Sorry to say that Owen isn't Louis though their personalities would work. Just like in the movie, Louis and Ray will be played by animals. Oh, I'm happy you loved the movie- the jazz music was my favorite part too.^^
CarmillaD: Wow, I love hearing from your reviews. Yes, the part about Duncan thinking about spider mates killing each other was sexy was like the first joke I thought of when I first thought out the story. Yes, Harold will have a big part in the story. I really grew to love the geek during the second season. He, Duncan, and Courtney are my top three favorite characters (which is strange because they all can't stand each other). As for your guesses for Louis…no. Jeez, I'm really going to disappoint people when I finally reveal who it is. Please don't flame me afterwards!xD
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"There's no way I'm going to Harold for help." Duncan said, folding his arms across his chest, "As if that geek would be much help anyway!"
Courtney was about to snap at Duncan and begin lecturing him about how completely and ridiculously immature he was being at the moment and that, even though she disliked Harold almost as much as he did, neither had much of a choice for assistance at the moment, but the sound of voices stopped her from doing so.
"Now, DJ, where did you say those awful spiders were?" a familiar voice asked.
In a single instant, Duncan and Courtney turned. An icy chill went down their exoskeleton when they saw who was walking down the hallway.
"They just appeared out of nowhere in my room!" DJ whimpered, shaking in fear as he walked besides Heather. "They were horrible! They were the biggest spiders I've ever seen!"
"You poor thing." Heather comforted the large, cowardly teen in a sympathetic voice, patting his back. "Now, you said there were two spiders?" she questioned, raising a brow in confusion.
"Yeah! They almost looked like the one that Duncan had for a pet." DJ told her. "You don't think that those are Duncan's new pets, do you? Do you think they'll eat Bunny?" He fearfully asked.
"Don't worry," Heather said reassuringly in warm tones. A wicked smile spread across her face as she pulled out a fly swatter and a large jar from behind her back. "I'll catch them for you before they eat Bunny and bring them back to…Duncan."
"Aw, thanks Heather! You're the best for doing this for me." DJ told Heather as they walked over towards DJ's room…and towards Duncan and Courtney.
Duncan and Courtney were backed up against the door, watching DJ and Heather approach with eyes wide with fear. Courtney leaned her head sideways towards Duncan and heatedly whispered, "It's either Harold or Heather- make your pick!"
"Oh, it's my pleasure." They heard Heather reply. The raven-haired girl swung the fly swatter, smirking cruelly as it whipped through air with a loud cracking sound. "Can't have escaped spiders running around, can we?"
Duncan never answered Courtney. He was already squeezing through the panel of Harold's door.
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Once inside Harold's room, the two fugitive tarantulas were greeted by the nauseating odor of stale chips and dirty laundry, a floor covered inch to inch with overturned comic books, and echoing sound of a certain red-head geek snoring in his bed.
"Oh my gosh," Courtney gagged, pressing a front leg to where her nose should be, "This place is disgusting!"
Duncan took a big whiff and let out a deep, breath. "Smells just like the boy's trailer."
Courtney gave a sound of contempt and cautiously crawled across the garbage littered floor, careful to avoid a stepping in any sticky left-overs of melted candy and nacho cheese. "Ugh, Harold was only voted off a couple of days ago. There's no way a person could defile a room this quickly." Courtney lifted up the paper spine of a comic book lying on the floor. "The only way to clean this pigpen is by torching the place!" The brown spider gave a backwards glance, expecting to hear a comment from Duncan, only to see that he wasn't behind her. A momentary flare of panic went through her.
"Duncan?!" She stretched up long, eight legs upward, making herself taller so that she could view the room easier. Courtney's expression of concern quickly transformed into one of irritation when she at last spotted Duncan. He was crawling up the wall, going towards the ceiling that was above Harold's bed.
"What on earth are you doing?" Courtney angrily yelled up at him as he crawled across the ceiling.
"Shhhhh!!!" Duncan made a shushing sound and gesture down at Courtney, "I've just thought of the mother of all pranks." He loudly whispered. There was an expression of devious excitement upon his spider face as he made his way to the spot on the ceiling right above where Harold laid sleeping.
"Let me get this straight," Courtney seethed, all four eyes narrowed and glaring up at the ceiling. "We've just been transformed into spiders by evil voodoo magic and right now, the only thing you're concerned about is pulling a prank on Harold!?"
Duncan managed to figure out how to pull a string of silk from his spider abdomen. "You know," he stated, "that's just your problem…" He stuck one end of the sticky silk onto the ceiling surface. "You never try to appreciate the good things in life. You let perfectly good opportunities pass you right by!" With one end still connected with his abdomen and the other end sticking to the ceiling, holding him up, Duncan slowly began to descend downward towards a sleeping Harold. "Me- I'm not like that. I never let perfectly good moments of geek humiliation like this escape me."
Courtney failed to hold back a well-deserved eye roll. "Oh yes, and all those perfectly good moments got you punched in the face and pantsed on live television."
"Oh, hahahaha…" Duncan gave a hollow laugh dripping with sarcasm. The mohawked spider was now hanging right above Harold's face. His loud snores ruffled Duncan's green mohawk with every exhale. Grinning like a Cheshire cat, Duncan began to make loud, creepy moaning noises.
Harold's snore cut off into a loud wheezing grunt; the red-headed boy, still half-asleep, slowly opened his eyes.
"Oooohhhhh…" Duncan creepily moaned wiggling all eight legs.
"Ugh?" Harold sleepily wheezed. His green eyes shot open in surprise at the sight of the large, black and tan tarantula hovering over his face.
"Haaaarroooooolllldddddd...." The tarantula cried in a sinister voice. "I am the ghost of Scrrrruuuuuffffyyyy….coming to haaaaaaaaaaunnntttt youuuuuuuuuuuu!!!"
"You have got to be kidding me." Courtney murmured slapping a front leg over her face out of pure annoyance for Duncan's immature antics.
"AAAGGGHHHHHHH!!!" Harold screamed and promptly, to Duncan's absolute delight, fell right out of bed. Tangling in his bed sheets, the nerd continued yell in fright. "Spare me oh vengeful arachnid! It was an accident! I swear!"
"Hahahahohohoho...that was too good! Hahaha!" Duncan, still hanging from the silk string, was holding his belly, shaking with laughter.
"Are you happy now, you immature ogre?" Courtney crossly asked, front legs folded over her chest.
"HE ALMOST WET HIS PANTS! HAHAHA!"
Harold paused from his terrified screaming and wrestling with his bed sheets as he slowly started to recognize the two voices he was hearing. The redhead pulled the sheets away from his face. "Duncan? Courtney?"
Courtney crawled towards the bewildered nerd and placed a front leg on top of Harold's hand to get his attention. "Right here."
Harold looked down and gave a loud gasp, jerking his entire body in surprise. "Courtney!?" He scooped the brown and purple tarantula into the palm of his hand and held her close to his face, peering at her through his glasses. "Is that really you? Where's Duncan?"
Duncan leaped onto Harold's shoulder. "Like the wakeup call, nerd?"
Harold let out another cry of surprise and fright and stumbled backwards; he slipped on the tangled bed sheets and landed rather painfully on his butt. Harold gave his head a quick shake as if to make sure he wasn't seeing things. One quick look down at the female spider in his hand and the mohawked tarantula now perched on the floor by his outstretched legs told Harold that this was no hallucination.
"What happened to you guys?" Harold asked. "You two aren't were-tarantulas are you?"
"What? No!" snapped Courtney. "We're not were-tarantulas, Harold!" However, now that she thought about it, she wondered whether the truth was any less ridiculous sounding.
"Really?" He actually sounded disappointed as he lowered Courtney to the ground. She crawled off his palm to stand next to Duncan. "Then what happened?"
"Heather is what happened." Duncan said with an angry scowl on his face, eyebrow furrowed. "She and Justin teamed up and pulled some weird voodoo crap on me and changed me into a frinkin' spider to get my million!"
"Tarantula." corrected Harold.
"Whatever." retorted Duncan.
"Then mister fairy tale here," Courtney continued, shooting Duncan a dirty look, "kissed me and changes me into one as well!"
"Oh, oh, oh, hold up!" Harold held up the palms of his hands for silence, glancing between the two tarantulas. He lifted up a questioning index finger. "Let me get this straight my spidery ex-cast mates- the vixen-like, bald-headed Heather…
"Full-headed." Duncan mumbled under his breath, keenly remembering the beautiful, yet strangely animated, set of black hair that Heather now adorned.
"...and Justin were the ones responsible for turning you into a tarantula, using some really cool and totally mystical voodoo magic?" Harold inquired to Duncan. "And then you kissed Courtney, and she got turned into one as well, am I correct?"
Duncan blinked. "Uhh…yeah. That pretty much sums it up."
Harold stared down at them and grew strangely silent. For a many seconds, all the tall, lanky redhead did was stare at the two transformed spiders before him as if slowly taking in all the bizarre information he had just received.
Then he giggled.
The tiny giggle turned into a chuckle before growing into a full rib-splitting roar of laughter.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!" Harold's skinny body shook as he continued to loudly unleash hysterical laughter. He was laughing so hard that he fell to the ground.
Duncan and Courtney glared respectively at guffawing nerd respectively, annoyed that he was taking in such amusement at their misfortune.
"It isn't funny!" the Courtney crossly snapped.
"I'M ALMOST WETTING MY PANTS! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Okay, laugh it up already!" Duncan ordered, beginning to get fed up with the nerd's jubilant mood. He crossed his front legs over his black chest, which strangely still had a little tan skull-shaped circle in the dead center of it, and said, "Once you're done, you can help us change back!"
Harold's laughter abruptly came to a halt. Being the speedy one, he was on his feet in an instant; to both Courtney and Duncan's surprise, there was an almost angry look on his freckled face.
"Oh yeah?" Behind his glasses, his green eyes were narrowed hostilely. "Why should I help you?" he demanded, speaking directly to Duncan. "You can't boss me around anymore. In case you haven't noticed, my tiny adversary, I'm bigger and stronger than you now." There was a smug, almost victorious, smirk on Harold's face as he said this.
It set Duncan's blood boiling. Oh, oh, that nerd was going down! His front legs were curled into tiny fists and the hair covering his tarantula body was bristling with indignation and fury at Harold's jabbing insult. Nobody, especially not this four-eyed loser, said that they were bigger and tougher than him!...Except Chief.
"Is that so?" Duncan spat, all four eyes narrowed into dangerous, icy blue slits. If he still had sleeves on, then he'd be rolling them up about now. "WE'LL SEE ABOUT THAT!" With a spartan-like war cry, Duncan launched his spider self at Harold's face.
Harold screamed and showed the same reaction as he did when Scruffy had done same thing- wildly thrashing his arms around and crying, "Get it off! Get it off!"
"HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT NERDLING?! NOT SO TOUGH NOW, HUH?" Duncan yelled, clinging to Harold's face. "STILL THINK I'M TINY?!"
Harold managed to grab hold of Duncan and pulled the vicious tarantula off his face, flinging him onto the floor. Duncan landed on all eight legs and slid across the room. Fanged teeth clenched, the mohawked tarantula lifted his upper body up and stood, glaring at Harold on the other sides of the room. Harold, likewise, did the same, facing the enemy spider in an almost western-style stand off.
"So the time has finally come, my mohawked nemesis." Harold wheezed, glaring at across the room at the tiny spider. "It's time to finish what we started in season one!"
Duncan popped the knuckles of his front legs. "Should have never left your underwear on the floor, Doris!"
"You may now be like the fourth most dangerous spider in the world," Harold proclaimed, getting into a kung-fu stance, "but not even you will be able to beat my mad skills!"
"Okay, really guys!" Courtney cried from the sidelines, glaring at both boys and their stupid immaturity. "Is all this really necessary? Don't you see we have bigger issues to deal with at the moment?"
"Nothing is bigger than honor, Lady Tarantula!"
"Sorry, babes, but the loser has had it coming since day one!"
"Can't we just talk this over like civilized human-beings?!"
"For honor!" Harold shouted, running towards Duncan, yelling out a battle cry and swinging a pair of his favorite nun-chucks.
"For being an absolute loser!" Duncan growled, crawling as fast as he could towards a charging nun-chuck wielding Harold.
"….YOU'RE BOTH IDIOTS!"
The moment the two were about to collide, Duncan leaped upon Harold's head once again, causing the lanky teen to loose grip of his nun-chucks; they went flying into the air, still spinning around wildly. When then started to come down again, Duncan was on top of Harold's head, violently yanking on the nerd red hair while Harold had hold of four of Duncan's legs and was pulling on them, painfully stretching Duncan's body out.
CRACK! One end of the non-chucks slammed into Duncan…
KA-POW! The other end hit Harold right in the face.
With a moan of pain, both the boy and spider fell into a heap on the ground, completely knocked out. Meanwhile, Courtney, still on the sidelines, had a front leg pressed to her forehead and was shaking her head in frustration at the two boys' complete lack of comprehension.
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About five minutes later, Harold and Duncan, both fully awake, were sitting on floor, sharing an icepack. Duncan, who was still perched on top of Harold's head, eight legs hanging limply from the sides, was clutching the top portion of the ice pack to his bruised spider body while Harold had the bottom half pressed against his own swollen face.
"You know," Courtney said, taking inner pleasure in seeing the two brood in their own self-pity and humiliation. "This is the reason why in most insect groups, it's the females that are dominant."
The two males glared at her, choosing to sulk in cold silence.
Courtney gave an irritable sigh. "Look, let's make get all this out in the open…none of us really like each other."
"Agreed." The two boys murmured in monotone.
"But extreme situations call for extreme solutions." Courtney continued. "I suggest that we, mostly you two, put aside your differences so we can solve this problem."
"I have no problem!" Harold retorted, glaring. "I'm not the one that's a grown eight legs…though that would be really cool." He added wistfully. His voice grew hard again when he said, "there's no way I'm teaming up with this guy." Harold pointed at the spider on his head.
"Same here, Doris." Duncan bitterly spat.
"Oh, will you two grow up and stop this immature feud!" Courtney snapped, glaring at the two. "Duncan, if I was able to forgive Harold for voting me off…."
"You beat me up with a lamppost!" Harold protested.
"I didn't say I didn't punish you first!" The brunette spider growled, but continued to speak in a calmer voice. "Then you should be able to forgive Harold just as Harold should be able to forgive you. In the kung-fu challenge, you two were actually getting along until Owen went and ruined it."
Harold and Duncan lowered their gazes, still unconvinced.
"Harold," Courtney curtly reminded, "do you really want Heather and Justin to unfairly steal the million dollars?"
Harold raised his head, staring at Courtney and then rolled his eyes up towards Duncan in a thoughtful manner, pondering Courtney's words. Having Harold's gaze on him, Duncan looking down and gave a begrudged shrug- the only sign that showed that he was willing to cooperate with the nerd. Harold gave the spiders a good-natured smile.
"Well, I guess we can call a truce until you two are back to normal."
"Really?" Courtney exclaimed, blinking her large, dark eyes.
"Going up against Heather and Justin the way you are now would be an unfair fight, especially with their cool voodoo magic." Harold explained. "You two are going to need my mad skills if we're going to change you back."
"So…you're really going to help us?" Duncan asked, slightly amazed that Harold was going to be on their side.
"Even better," Harold said, gently pulling Duncan from his head and placing him besides Courtney on the bed before heading to the door. "I'll gather some other campers willing to help out!"
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Originally this was going to end with Duncan and Courtney getting into the wild, but Harold and Duncan's feud had become way too long (though I loved every second of it) and I've kept you guys waiting long enough for the new chapter. Actually, I think I prefer it this way because then in the next chapter I can make the wilderness scene longer.
Now, I know lots of readers are probably going to complain about Courtney in this chapter. In most fanfics I read, the writer always makes Courtney carry a large hatred towards Harold. However, what people fail to notice is that since season two of Total Drama, Courtney hasn't shown ANY hostility at all towards Harold (only to Duncan, which is funnier). Yes, she beat him up with a lamp pole at Playa de Loser, but you know what? I'd be pretty pissed off too if some asshole (sorry, I do love Harold, but he was an ass in that episode) cheated me out of a 100,000 dollars. Harold deserved some punishment and Courtney gave it to him. But she didn't hold a grudge once he was justly punished. Plus, in season two, it's clear that Courtney is willing to negotiate with Harold just like Duncan will reluctantly work together with Harold when times call for it. Being transformed into a spider is one of those times. To tell the absolute truth, Duncan, Courtney, and Harold are my favorite characters in the entire series. I love the trio, especially when they interact with one another.
Anywho, that's my two cents. I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter and if you're all still trying to figure out who's Louis, you're going to have to think outside box. Same goes for Ray. Read and review!^^