Don't worry, I'm getting my groove back. And I'm continuing to rewrite Second Chances. I know this isn't something fanfic writers do, but I am trying to be a good writer. So just bear with me.

Aztec 13: Thanks for sticking through the idea. I promise to stick with this story.

A pod opens up. But this was not accidental. Courtney, Duncan and Heather were now opening the pods after Gwen went on to fight the Goliath. The pod contained someone the group didn't expect.

"Hold on. This is Emma from that spin-off!" Heather yelled out.

"Ngh… did someone call my name?" Emma woke up, dazed and chilled to the bone. "Hold on. Who are you guys?"

"Eh… we know someone who competed with you in the race…" Courtney tried to sugarcoat the situation. "Now I know this is weird but… yeah, I'm giving up."

"Come on. Just tell it to her." Duncan says. "It can't be that hard."

"It's not that it's hard to say it. It's the fact that she's here that's in my mind." Courtney says.

"Hey… you're from that gameshow, right?" Emma asked. "Gah… my head hurts."

"Hey. It's okay. Let's get you out of there and brief you into the situation." Courtney says.

"Look out!" Gwen was heard yelling from behind.

Hearing this, the three ducked as Gwen flew into the scene and crashed into Emma's pod.

"Gah! Man that hurts." Gwen groaned as she held her head in pain.

"What the?! What's going on?!" Emma asked.

"Gah… well you see-" Gwen tries to explain the situation.

"Look out!" Duncan yelled.

The Goliath was seen charging at them, already swinging its arms. The three duck downwards to avoid the blow, but due to being slow after just waking up, Emma didn't react in time.

"Ah shit!" Emma yelled.

Chapter 2: From Dusk Till The Future Dawn

"I gotcha!" Gwen quickly acted in seeing the attack.

Gwen stood up and grabbed the arm of the beast inches before it could do damage. Emma was stunned by both the beast and Gwen's increased strength.

"Hey! Are you okay?!" Gwen yells as she struggles in pushing the attack away.

"Ugh… I don't think so!" Emma says. "What is going on here?!"

"Don't worry, the guys will get you somewhere safe!" Gwen says. "Now hurry up, guys!"

Gwen shoves the Goliath away from Emma and seeks to continue the fight elsewhere. The three stood up, relieved that danger won't touch them for a while.

"Come on. Let's get you to the others." Courtney says.

"Hold on, aren't we supposed to help her?" Emma asked.

"You have some nerve thinking we can take that thing on!" Heather yelled.

"Besides, she seems to handle herself surprisingly well." Duncan says. "Even I have to admire her newfound strength."

"Ugh, I can't help at all? Damn." Emma sighed in frustration. "You guys have some explaining to do-"

As Emma gets up from her pod, she accidentally touches the pod next to her, causing it to open up, revealing…

"What the?!" Heather exclaimed. "It's… Chris?!"

"Eh… hehe… what's going on?" Chris woke up in a daze.

"So Chris isn't behind this?!" Courtney yelled out. "Oh! I was just fantasizing about bashing his skull in!"

"Ugh. Courtney, as brash as always." Chris groans. "Anyways what am I doing here?"

"I'll tell you why. I'm gonna beat you to a pulp." Duncan begins to stretch his muscles.

"Oh no, we are not doing that here!" Heather yelled. "I couldn't care less for Chris, but beating him up might attract-"

A roaring sound was heard, as the group notices a Prowler coming at them, hungry for flesh.

"Ah shit! Now look what you've done Heather!" Courtney yelled.

"What are these things?" Emma asked.

One of the Prowlers then pounce at Chris, ready to maul him.

"Gahahaha!" Chris yelled out in fear.

"Shit! Gwen! Chris is in danger!" Duncan yelled.

"I'm still busy here!" Gwen yelled as she was trying to wrestle the Goliath from behind.

Chris dodges the attack by rolling out of the pod and crashing into the floor. As the Prowler crashes into his pod, Chris stood up as he tries to absorb what was happening.

"Chris! Just calm down! We'll get you to the others!" Courtney yelled.

"I don't know what's happening, but I'm not sticking around to find out!" Chris yelled.

The Prowler turns and tries bite Chris again. The guy ducks down and causes the pod next to him to topple over into another one.

"Can someone help me here?!" Chris asked.

Emma acts quickly and tackles Chris from under the Prowler to get him to safety.

"Are you okay?" Emma asked.

"He doesn't deserve to be okay, but we don't want him dead." Courtney says as she moves to them. "Come on, let's get you to the others."

The three run from the scene as the Prowler gets drawn by the gunfire, away from the pods and from Heather and Duncan.

"Good, the Prowler is distracted. We should go." Heather states.

"No way! Who knows how many people are in these pods." Duncan protested against the decision.

"Do I look like I care?! I only followed you and Courtney because I was using you as protection!" Heather yelled.

Suddenly, the two pods that the Prowler had toppled over open up, revealing two more people who hit the cold metal floor.

"Noah?! And…" Duncan tried to recognise the second person.

"Wait, isn't this Emma's sister?! Kitty?!" Heather exclaimed.

"Guh… I feel like brain freeze incarnate." Noah groans. "Where am I?"

"Ugh… my head stings…" Kitty groans.

"Um… should we be worried about the appearance of Ridonculous Race contestants?" Duncan asked.

"I don't know. I don't even know why we're here." Heather states. "Now shut up and let's get them to the others."

"Um… Guys?!" Gwen yelled out.

The two turn and see Gwen struggling to dodge pounces of Prowlers as they continue to pile into the facility.

"Is that Gwen?" Noah asked. "What is she doing?"

"More importantly, what are these creatures?" Kitty stood up after seeing the Prowlers.

Prowlers begin to take notice of the group, and some begin approaching them.

"Ugh, Gwen? Can you help us here?" Duncan asked, beginning to get frightened.

"I'm busy at the moment!" Gwen yelled as she was riding the Goliath's back, moving it to dodge Prowlers coming at her. "I'll try to do what I can! But you guys should run!"

"Oh… shit." Heather whimpered.

"Come on! Come on!" Duncan yelled as he picked up the two onto their feet.

The group runs away from the scene as the pack gives chase.

We then cut to a secluded corner of the facility, where Duncan, Courtney and Heather had rounded up the people found in the pods. Right now, a lot of contestants were gathered from the first three generations. Right now, Emma was the only one of the Ridonculous Race gathered, and she was seen lying on a wall, tired.

"Okay. I know this may look bad." Courtney says to the crowd.

"Look bad? This is bad!" Chris asked yelled out upon hearing this.

"I suppose you have another plan to keep the crowd calm." Courtney backlashes at her.

"Shouldn't the stronger ones help out in the fight? Like, you have fought wild beasts in your time." Emma yelled.

"As a matter of fact, I have a different agenda here than blindly fighting animals!" Courtney yelled.

The two look to see Heather escorting Noah and Kitty as they made their way to the safespot, but for some reason, Duncan wasn't there with them. The group had already left behind a lot of the pack, but only one was left chasing after them.

"Emma!" Noah and Kitty yelled out.

"Guys?! You're here too?!" Emma asked.

"Duck!" Courtney yelled.

The group complies and duck down as the Prowler dives through the air. Having missed the attack, the Prowler landed on its feet and faced the runners as it slid on the metal floor.

"Grrraaaaaaaagghhh!" The Prowler growled out.

"Um… help?" Heather asked.

Thinking quickly, Emma grabs a knife from Chef and runs at the beast, stabbing it from under its front leg. The beast yelps in pain ath lashes at Emma, launching her against the wall. The knife was dislodged and landed near the runners.

"Kah!" Emma yelled. "These things are powerful!"

The Prowler turns to Emma, with it's stance beginning to wobble and weaken.

"Aren't able to walk properly, huh?" Emma taunted.

The Prowler tries to jump at Emma, but her acrobatics manage to launch her high above the beast as it crashes into the wall. Observing the situation, Noah notices there were gill-like scales on the back of the Prowler's head. This seemed impossible, but Noah thought of it differently.

"Emma! Keep that thing distracted! Specifically to its left!" Noah yelled.

"Alright!" Emma yelled while still midair.

Emma bounces on the Prowler's nose to get its attention once more. She jumps to her left, and seeing this, Noah grabs the dropped knife and stabs deeply into the gill-like scales, despite his strength.

This caused the beast to screech and wail around in pain. The four manage to regroup as Emma just stands nearby and watches the Prowler in pain.

"What are you doing?! Get back here!" Courtney yelled.

"I've already decided." Emma says. "If you don't want to help your own friend, then I'll help."

"You're seriously going to fight the large ape beast? You have some nerve-" Courtney was then interrupted.

"Look out!" Kitty yelled.

Emma turns as the Prowler goes in for the kill. Unable to react, all she could do was close her eyes.

But… nothing…

"What the?" Emma opened her eyes to see something surprising.

"Eva?!" Courtney exclaimed.

Eva was seen to have prevented the beast from killing Emma, but she had to shove her arm through its jaw to do that.

"Gah!" Eva yelped from the pain of this action. "Are you gonna go or what?! My arm is getting gnashed on!"

"Wait! No! Hand me that knife!" Emma yelled. "If we don't kill it now, it will attract more of these things!"

Eva looked to see the knife still lodged into the beast's gill-like scales. She pulls the weapon out and tosses it to Emma. She hastily approaches the creature's neck and tries to feel for a good spot.

"What are you doing?!" Eva asked.

"I'm trying to find some place to impale it!" Emma yelled.

"Just try anywhere on the neck!" Noah yelled.

"Okay… alright…" Emma prepared herself for what she was about to do. "Ha!"

Emma yells out as she plunges the knife into the top of the Prowler's neck. It thrashed in pain for a bit, letting go of Eva in the process, before eventually falling down, killed.

"Gah! That thing's teeth were sharp!" Eva exclaimed while holding her arm.

"Are you okay?" Noah asked.

"Yeah, I am." Emma states. "Man, that was cathartic."

"You killed a vicious beast! Of course it was cathartic!" Kitty celebrated what had happened.

"Hold on! Where is Duncan?!" Courtney asked.

The group turns to see Duncan with another soldier, far away from them, trying to activate the repulsor device.

"Come on! How does this thing work?!" Duncan says while handling the device.

"I haven't gotten the qualification to know how to work this thing!" The soldier yelled.

"He's still out there!" Emma yelled. "Come on!"

"Oh come on!" Courtney yelled.

Emma, Noah, Courtney and Eva left the area, leaving Heather in charge of the group, approaching the two as they struggle to work the machine.

"Hold on." Noah says. "Let me work this."

Noah grabs the device and tries to look for a compartment. Eventually, he sees a seam in the device and opens it, revealing a small red button.

"Aha! Good job!" Kitty yells in relief.

"Now press it!" Courtney yelled.

This needed no argument. Noah presses the button, and all at once, all the Prowlers react to the high pitched sound being emitted. Then all begin to flee the facility.

"Whoo! Finally! We can finally know what's going on." Courtney sighs in relief.

"Yeah. I have so many questions to ask." Noah says.

"But. Where's Gwen?" Duncan asked.

A thud was heard, and they all turned to see the Goliath, weakened and collapse, with Gwen wrapping around its massive neck.

"Hey guys!" Gwen called out. "I'm glad you're okay!"

The group gathers near the fallen beast, and suddenly, the soldier next to the group took out its rifle and aimed it at Gwen.

"Whoa?! What the?!" Gwen was taken aback by this.

"Are you gonna plan to kill that thing or let it kill any more of my men?" The soldier asked.

"What?!" Gwen yelped. "But… isn't the repulsor supposed to drive beasts like this away?!"

"Goliaths are too angry to be driven by repulsors. So either you kill that thing or let me do it." The soldier states.

"What?! No! I… I can't do that!" Gwen yelled.

"Now, now, soldier. She doesn't want to resort to that." Blisk says as he approaches the group. "So just keep the sucker there so we can put it down."

"But that's just as bad. I'm not participating in killing this thing." Gwen states. "I can't go through with this! Not again!"

"Hold on, what?" Emma asked.

"Eh- Duh- I mean- I can't have this on my conscience!" Gwen yelled.

"Alright, fine. I'll do it." Eva says while cracking her knuckles.

Eva approached the beast as it was still held by Gwen, and in a swift motion, snapped the neck of the Goliath by the head, killing it instantly.

"There. It's dead. Now your sissying won't be able to endanger more lives." Eva said sternly.

Eva walks to the others as Gwen watches, stumped by the sight.

"Come on. Let's go wake everybody else up." Eva says.

Seeing that the problem was over, the group decides to go to the pods and wake everybody else up. Gwen just stood and stared at the downed beast.

"Hey, Gwen. Are you alright?" Emma asked as she approached her.

"Oh, yeah… alright." Gwen says silently.

"What was it you said back there? I heard you say something about not going through it again?" Emma asked.

"Oh, that? I was just… stuttering. I was just stressed about the situation that I got the wrong words out." Gwen says.

"I understand. These kinds of things aren't exactly easy to do." Emma states. "You know, for a goth, you seem to care a lot about life. You have those environmental vlogs, right?"

"Hmm, yeah." Gwen smiled at this. "And if you want to know, I just chose this look. I just think the aesthetic looks good on me."

"True. Kitty has had a share of aesthetics tried on and she never had a good goth look." Emma states. "She once told me she was slightly jealous of Crimson and Ennui because they pull off the style without effort."

This small conversation distracted Gwen from the thoughts in her head. Though she was intending to talk out a storm so she can be out of the fogginess for a while, Kuben Blisk taps her shoulder to get her attention.

"You come with me. Let's continue our discussion." Blisk says.

"Oh, right. Guys? Do you want to come?" Gwen asked.

"I'm down." Duncan states.

"I've got nothing better to do. Why not?" Noah states.

"Just let my men handle this. You already have a lot on you." Blisk says.

Hearing the last statement, the group looks at each other in worry, but follows Blisk anyway. They return to the table where Gwen and Blisk initially conversed, but since there weren't enough chairs to go around, a lot of them just sat on the floor.

"I have to applaud you all for being able to help out in this predicament." Blisk says. "Most people would just cower as they try to escape."

"Yeah. I guess." Gwen says as she glared at Heather.

"But I have to break it to you. You're stuck here." Blisk says.

"Of course, we are now prisoners." Heather groaned.

"Oh, no. Far from it." Blisk says. "What I mean is you're stuck in this time."

"What does that mean?" Kitty asked.

"It means… we were stuck inside those pods for a really long time." Gwen says. "Chris wasn't the one who put us here, as you see."

"Well then who did? You can't just say something that absurd and not let us know the full of it." Courtney says.

"It was… Scarlet. From Pahkitew." Gwen sighed. "It looks like she put us here in this predicament."

"Seriously? Now this has just piqued my interest." Heather states.

"Just watch. I don't think whatever appears in this file will be good." Gwen says as she picked up the hologram device and threw it onto the floor.

Yellowstone Facility Log 1: The Goal

The recording starts with the camera looking around the facility, being in way better condition than it was today. The camera then turns to an observation room, where Scarlet was seen drinking coffee.

"It's already a year since I completed this facility and I forgot to record a log." Scarlet chuckles at herself. "Guess that goes to show how focused I am in doing this."

"Now I know that nobody else will ever look near the direction of this place, but self isolation is a choice and I need to find ways to make sure it's safe." Scarlet states. "The project is about rearranging an organism's biochemistry or body structure. Or you can call it mutation if you want."

Scarlet grabs the camera and shows it to a large container tube filled with a strange liquid.

"The concept of universally viable and safe mutagen is highly unlikely to ever see the light of day, because of the body's natural instinct to reject foreign materials and that any changes to the cell's DNA causes it to destabilize and die or create tumors due to failed self destruction." Scarlet explains.

"Now this tube is filled with something that isn't quite technically mutagen, but it's close enough." Scarlet states. "Its purpose is to be able to stabilize cells so that they don't die or grow into tumors. It's only a matter of manual rearrangements and lots of duplucations. It's a take on mutation people are far too simple to try. They think injecting themselves with a specialised serum is enough."

"Now the goal of this project is to properly experiment with mutation, and luckily I already have three subjects just finished with their own mutation." Scarlet says.

Scarlet turns her camera to the glass and shows the large amounts of cryogenic pods sitting in the facility.

"Pure Japanese technology. Too bad for the people I raided this tech from." Scarlet smirks. "And I didn't have to find random fuckers as test subjects. The contestants of Total Drama are better because of their diversity in strength, stamina and resistance to diseases. And besides, anyone who can even put up with Chris' shenanigans is pretty good in my book."

Scarlet then places the camera on her desk and finishes the last of her coffee.

"I'll be going. I have to turn on the cryogenics so that the mutations calm down." Scarlet says. "If I'll be the first one to ever crack the case proper mutations, all the governments of the world will have to pay me a fortune for a mere hint of my information."

End Log

The information was flabbergasting. There was the fact that Scarlet was the one who kidnapped them. And there was the fact that they were in Yellowstone; possibly incredibly far from Ontario. But the most important thing to take note of was the fact that…

"...I'm a mutant?" Gwen muttered in shock.

"Why is that the first thing you come to?!" Heather asked. "We were all kidnapped, had some shit put into us and were used for testing!"

"Calm the fuck down, Heather. Of course she's taking it like this." Duncan states. "I'm sure we'd all freak the fuck out if we found out about stuff like this."

"I've got a bad feeling about this." Noah states. "Do you guys even realise the bigger picture here?"

"And what is that?" Courtney asked.

"It means there's a chance that a few more of us…" Emma gulped. "...are mutants. Scarlet seemed to have taken the liberty of not showing who else was mutated."

"But Gwen's act of beating the living shit out of the Goliath shows that we have less of a chance of that happening than expected." Kitty states.

"Does that actually cushion the blow? Yes, the mystery of more mutants has been narrowed down, but there is still a guaranteed chance that some of us are mutants." Emma states.

"Did you find any more files?" Gwen asked.

"Unfortunately this was the only one we could recover. It dates back to 2013." Blisk states.

"And what year is it?" Gwen asked.

"2766. I know that's seems impossible to take in so just…" Blisk sighs in trying to explain. "...let it sink in. I won't waste my energy to do it hastily."

Hearing this, Gwen and her companions look at the opening of the facility, wondering what's outside.

"Can… can we?" Gwen asked.

"Sure. Why not?" Blisk asked. "We'll be moving out soon, so take it in while it lasts."

Blisk stood up and walked to the opening of the facility. The group chooses to follow him as they begin to get filled with uncertainty.

They go through the destroyed metal wall and make their way through the dirt and stone hole that leads to the outside. A short trek and adjustment to the sunlight later, and the group were able to see the area they were in…

"Yellowstone…" Gwen mutters.

The group found themselves in a mountainous area near a coniferous forest. There was almost nothing in the area signifying human activity.

"Nobody is here…" Kitty says.

"Well, not exactly. There is a base camp a few miles that way." Blisk says as he points towards the forest. "And I think our job here is done."

Blisk takes out a flare gun and shoots upwards into the sky, hoping to signal the men there. But even after a bit of a wait, there wasn't a response. Not a transmission, not a signal, not even another flare.

"Something's wrong…" Blisk says.

"What? Really?" Heather asked.

"Come on. Let's leave now." Blisk says.

And that is it. The second chapter of the second chance of writing Second Chances. As you might probably see, Gwen has something bad in her past, but would rather not talk about it. What is it? More clues can be found as well as a new danger that awaits them in the next chapter.