Review time!
amit .avrashmi: Thanks! This is the VERY LAST CHALLENGE where Alejandro has immunity! :D
Gucci Mane LaFlare: Thanks! I was actually referencing Danganronpa, not FNAF. I'm not a fan of FNAF either, though (because like with many popular things, the wild and oftentimes toxic fandom is what put me off of it).
Joel Connell: Thanks! I fixed it.
The Mandalorian: There won't be an exclusively Ridonculous Race fanfic, but some of the challenges from it are being recycled here.
Concerned Fan: In that case, I think your contact with the author will suffice for the moment. I don't feel comfortable asking other authors to finish their stories, but I'm glad that someone has at least asked at all. And yeah, I heard about Unfinished Business, it's a little sad considering that that was the very fic that really got me started on THD, but I can certainly understand why the author felt like he couldn't write it anymore, that's how I feel regarding a lot of the series I started years ago but have since matured to the point where I don't like how I've structured those canons. (TBH I would've sworn that Sammy was going to win the show had it continued, but a Leshawna victory is also perfectly acceptable in my book.)
Monday, February 19, 2018
"Last time on Total Drama – we climbed the mountain of metal! [Jo climbing down the mountain headfirst] Four teams went head-to-head in a race to the top of Mount McLean. Whoever got their flag first won part one! [the climbers climbing the mountain] Jo came down first, so she won her team an extra dose of security for the second part: find the other team's flags and steal it! [Josee running off with the plastic cage] Thanks to Zoey's ineptitude [Jo finding East's flag], East lost the game, directly leading to her elimination. [Zoey's elimination]"
Chris walked over to the VR machine. "Today we'll be having our fifty-fifth challenge, and you know what that means. That's right, it's another trip into the Total Drama Virtual Reality Generator." He entered the main room and strapped one of the VR helmets on.
A flash of light, and the scene shifted to a world whose sky was orange instead of blue. Chris, now wearing a teal spacesuit, came onscreen. "This challenge is out of this world and into another! Twenty-one contestants remain. Who'll win because they planet and who'll be a failed star? Find out here on
"Total.
"Drama!"
Theme song
*Instrumental*
A camera appeared from the snow-covered bushes, scaring off an alien squirrel with six limbs and purple fur. Another came from a tree, startling an alien flying creature resembling a four-eyed, yellow-green Rhamphorhynchus. The third popped out of a crater, only to be destroyed by a sudden meteorite impact.
Dear Mom and Dad, I'm doing fine
You guys are on my mind
The camera flew through a pale orange gas giant's cloudtops. Brick, DJ, and Geoff were flying in a parasail-like contraption. Suddenly, they were hit by a lightning bolt far bigger than anything that could occur on Earth, and they turned into ash almost immediately.
You asked me what I wanted to be
And now I think it's plain to see
Jasmine trekked across an extraterrestrial plain, where the plants were the coral pink of red algae instead of green. She shielded her eyes as she stood on the top of a hill, looking down at the valley below.
I wanna be famous
Josee and Taylor battled it out in space, the latter managing to successfully blow up the former's ship.
*Instrumental*
Scarlett was reading a dictionary titled "BLORGARG TO ENGLISH" as she conversed with an alien resembling a bipedal, somewhat humanoid pink-furred weasel wearing a pantsuit.
I want to live close to the sun
Well, pack your bags cause I've already won.
Leshawna mopped her brow as she trudged across the surface of a Mercury-like planet, its K0V parent star looming in the background.
Everything to prove nothing in my way
I'll get there one day
Harold gulped as he maneuvered his ship through the remains of a Mercury-like rocky planet that was being torn apart due to its proximity to another, larger planet resembling a younger, molten version of Earth. He eventually got hit by one of the resulting asteroids.
'Cuz I wanna be famous
Noah and Emma, deadpan expressions on their faces, held a little green shrewlike animal up to the cameras. The flashes of the cameras going off all at once blinded them, including the alien.
Na na nana na na nana nana na na na na na naaaaah
Justin ran away from Sugar, who was wildly blasting at everything in her path with a small, brightly-colored raygun that fired blasts of purple-hot krypton plasma.
I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be famous
Alejandro carved his likeness into a mountaintop using a laser, the planet's blue sky dominated by the twin glare of its binary suns. However, an intattentive Cody ran him over with a rover, his crumpled hand twitching lightly.
I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be famous.
Jen dressed a four-armed, candy red-haired, magenta-skinned alien humanoid woman with a purple-toned version of her "default" outfit. The alien girl squealed in delight, revealing her doglike teeth in the process.
*Whistling*
At the campfire, as the other campers I didn't have time to name looked on excitedly, Brick and Jo looked each other in the eyes...and then the red giant in the background went planetary nebula, vaporizing everyone and leaving a small, dinky-looking white dwarf in its place.
South
"Back-to-back virtual reality and field trips," Emma noted. "I don't remember the last time we had something like that."
"It was the internet challenge, followed by the waterfall challenge," Noah replied, finishing the last question on his English assignment. "Since they were the only other time during our stay when a multiple of five and a multiple of eight were in consecutive order."
"Oh yeah. That is how that math works out."
"Wasn't the trip to Niagara Falls the day you two became a couple?" Justin asked out of curiosity.
Emma blinked before looking at Noah. "Wow, it was. Sheesh, I've been here for a while."
"Yeah, I guess it was. I remember how we kinda didn't like each other when we first met," Noah shrugged. "And now? I can't imagine where someone like you has been all my life."
"Turtle Creek," Emma snarked, prompting Noah to chuckle a rare chuckle, which caused her to smile warmly.
"And speaking of a while, guess what today's challenge is?" Chris asked, gleefully popping in from nowhere.
"Probably stupid?" Taylor guessed.
"Wow, what a spoilsport. Nope, it'll be fun! Follow me!"
Confessional – Emma.
"That's what you say about EVERY challenge, Chris. At least half of them are only fun for those of us who have no sense of self-preservation."
VR Building
"Remember your teams from the second challenge you guys ever did?" Chris asked.
"Uh, no? That was in September? It's currently February?" Jen replied.
"Wow, Blaineley said basically the exact same thing. Well, in that case just look for your circles!"
Cody, Alejandro, Leshawna, Brick, and Jen got yellow circles with hearts and lungs on them.
Taylor, Emma, Noah, Jo, Justin, Sugar, Jacques, and Josee got red circles with livers and gallbladders on them.
Harold, Sky, Ennui, and Crimson got dark purple circles with kidneys and bladders on them.
DJ, Geoff, and Jasmine got green circles with brains and eyes on them.
And Scarlett got a beige circle with a spleen and a stomach on it.
"Today's challenge is set in outer space, in the system known as Alpha Chris-tauri!" Chris announced, prompting the kids to groan in embarrassment. "This solar system has eight planets, four rocky and four gaseous, about a hundred and sixty dwarf planets, and about twenty-four gravitationally-rounded satellites."
"How long did it take you to build that solar system?" Harold asked. "It would like, take so much work to get all the orbits like, stable and stuff."
"I'm an astronomy major and this thing's computer is wicked powerful, so about four days," Miranda said from off to the side.
"No one asked you," Chris deadpanned. He cleared his throat. "You'll be turned into aliens that look like the erasers I used in your alien challenge, only more realistic-looking. The goal of the challenge is to stake a claim to as many of the gravitationally-rounded bodies in your solar system as you can. The team that claims the most worlds, that's planets, spherical moons, and dwarf planets, by the time I end the challenge wins! Whichever team gets completely killed first loses! Good luck!"
Miranda pressed a button once everyone had their helmets strapped on, and footage of a black, starry void appeared on the canvas screen...
Sanguine
The five kids looked down at themselves. They'd been turned into aliens of the same species as the ones who'd beaten Chris up at the end of the alien challenge. Unlike their erasers, they were gray-skinned, and as before the girls had shorter horns than the boys. They were all wearing yellow spacesuits.
Jen blinked with all three of her eyes. "Wow...this is crazy."
"Yeesh, all these eyes are giving me some major uncanny valley vibes," Cody winced.
"So...where are we?" Jen asked, looking around. It was twilight now, the sky dark blue and the constellations unrecognizable. The plants were green just like Earth plants, but their leaves only vaguely resembled those of Earth plants; their veins were arranged differently.
Alejandro pulled out a holographic map. The triangle indicating their position hovered over the third planet in the system, an Earth-like world about 95% Earth's in size in the star's habitable zone. Circling the planet was a grayish-black moon roughly the size of Triton. "We are on Planet Alpha Christ-tauri b, better known as Lifey." He blinked. "That is an atrocious name for a planet."
"Would you expect anythin' better from Chris?" Leshawna snarked.
"We should probably stake a claim to our own homeworld first," Cody said. He turned around and noticed that they'd spawned outside of a yellow, monolithic building with their team's logo on its front. "Hmmm...if we have a base like this one, the other teams might have ones on this planet as well. Of course, they might not have spawned in front of them, so they might not know they exist."
"One of us should stay here to capture the other bases," Brick nodded. "The rest of us can go off and hunt for other worlds."
"I will stay here and protect our base," Alejandro said smoothly. "I can handle this all by myself."
"You just want us out of your sight," Leshawna grimaced.
"That I do. Now, get off mi planeta!" He pointed a plasma rifle at the other four and they hastily scrambled away. "Excellente."
Choleric
Choleric's competitors were wearing red spacesuits and had spawned on a large, rocky planet about 80% the size of Venus with a thinner atmosphere. "Man, it is hot out here," Jo complained, attempting to wipe her brow before realizing that she was in a spacesuit. A small wiper came down from the inside of her helmet and wiped her brow for her. "Oh, thanks."
"We seem to have spawned on the second planet of this star," Noah said, inspecting his map. "Planet...Scorchy. Yeah, Chris designed this all right. Anyway, we should get a good read on the layout of this system before we do anything."
Justin looked over the map himself. "Okay, so there's eight planets in this system. In order from the Sun we've got planets Melty, Scorchy where we are, Lifey, Dusty, and then an asteroid belt with eight dwarf planets. Then we've got planets Gassy, Ringy, Bluey, and Coldy, which are gas giants and therefore unclaimable directly, followed by another belt with the remaining 152 dwarf planets. Lifey has one round moon, Gassy has three, Ringy has eight, Bluey has two, Coldy has four, there's a round moon around one of the dwarf planets in the asteroid belt, and the remaining five round moons orbit dwarf planets in the comet belt."
"'Dwaff planit'?" Sugar asked. "That sounds mighteh fake."
"It's a recent thing," Noah replied. "Big enough to be more-or-less round, too small to chuck other things about your size out of your orbit and bully the little bits of rock that are left."
"Weren't Pluto changed 'cuz astronomers hated it?"
"No, it was because we found a more massive dwarf planet called Eris that, were Pluto a planet, shouldn't exist anymore. That and the noticeable lack of Pluto Trojans."
"Astronomy aside, I think we should target Planet Melty first," Emma said. "The map says it's in alignment with Scorchy right now, so it should be pretty easy to get there."
"After that, I believe that the planet Chris named 'Bluey' should be our next conquest," Josee added. "Chris said we need to take all of its round moons to take a gas planet, and Bluey has the fewest moons for us to take."
"Good idea. Josee, you and Jacques can go try that," Noah decided. "You should also try to nab at least one of the dwarf planets in the asteroid belt on your way back. Justin, you're with me taking Melty. Jo, Emma, try to take Dusty."
"What about us?" Taylor asked indignantly.
"Yeah, what d'we do?" Sugar snorted.
"Stay here and keep the other teams from taking Scorchy," the Scheming Cynic replied. "I don't know if Chris gave different point values to different classes of object, but he probably did. If we lose our claim to Scorchy, we might lose a lot of points."
"If you say so," Taylor sighed, retrieving a red flag from hammerspace and planting it into the ground. A white +50 outlined in light cyan appeared next to her like a point notification. The flagpole was quickly compressed and flattened by the immense pressure of the planet's atmosphere, which, while less massive than Venus', was still forty times the mass of Earth's.
Confessional – Jo.
"We live in a world where we have practically invulnerable spacesuits and spaceships," Jo complained, "and we still can't make a decent flagpole?" The confessionals were held on the bridge of a spaceship. "Wait a minute, who's driving this thing?!"
Melancholic
Melancholic's members were wearing dark purple spacesuits. "Wow," Crimson said monotonously, looking out at their distant star. They'd spawned on the largest of the dwarf planets in the outer belt and in the system as a whole, DP 9, a ruddy world colored in shades of orangey-brown and beige roughly 5% larger than Pluto diameterwise and with a similar mass to Eris. A small, gray, spherical moon in the waxing gibbous phase was slowly rising from the northeast. "We're so far away from the light. Born in the darkness to which we shall return."
"Uh...I think you lost me," Sky admitted. "So...Harold, you're smart. What should we do?"
"Hmmmm..." Harold pondered, rubbing the chin of his helmet in thought. "I think we should focus on capturing like, most if not all of the dwarf planets out here. We've got more than enough to get a pretty big lead if we get a lot of them."
"Then I shall claim it, even though I do not think one should own a world that is not their own," Ennui said emotionlessly. He pulled out a dark purple flag from hammerspace and slowly jabbed it into the icy ground. A +10 appeared next to him. "Harold, you are quite clever. If we claim all of these planets that never came to be, we should have at least 1520 points in all."
"Depending on how much the planets are worth, of course," Harold remarked. "Those gas giants might be worth a lot."
Phlegmatic
Phlegmatic's contestants were wearing green spacesuits. "Wow, that is...big," Geoff said, taking in the view of Planet Bluey, which, as its name suggested, was blue. The ice giant was quite a large one at that, being exactly halfway between Uranus and Saturn diameterwise, a massive set of dark gray rings gracing its equator and a darker blue storm swirling across its northern hemisphere. Phlegmatic had spawned on Bluey IX, one of the planet's other 37 moons that weren't round; Bluey IX was shaped rather a lot like a potato, only gray instead of brown or red or yellow or indigo. Bluey I, one of the two spherical moons that Bluey hadn't turned into rings yet, peeked out from behind the disk of its frigid parent, half the size of Earth's moon, its surface pale silver and pockmarked with craters.
"Wish I could say the same for our team," Jasmine said crossly. "There's only three of us left."
DJ gulped. "Defending this planet might be tough if there's only three of us."
"No sweat, brah, I'll claim our moons and then guard our planet from like, Al and stuff," Geoff said warmly. "You two should like, focus on getting one of the other ones."
Jasmine retrieved her map and considered it. "Alright, the inner two gas giants are on the opposite side of the Sun, so it looks like it's Coldy for us. DJ, help me claim Coldy's moons, then I'll head back here and help Geoff guard it."
DJ gulped. "Y-you're gonna leave me all by myself? In space? Space is so lonely! Especially Coldy, that thing's three billion miles from the Sun!"
"Which is exactly why we're going to claim it," Jasmine grinned. "We're so far away from the other teams that we might have an easier time defending it."
"Oh, you're right!" DJ visibly felt better about his mission and joined Jasmine in their spaceship, while Geoff went to work flying off to Bluey I.
Choleric
"Hey, Em?" Jo asked as they approached Dusty, a Mars-like world in every way but its size; it was roughly 2.3 times wider, large enough to retain a somewhat thicker atmosphere of carbon dioxide and dinitrogen. Orbiting the planet were five small, asteroid-like moons formed from an ancient collision between it and a fairly large dwarf planet, much like how Mars' own moons had formed.
"Yeah?"
"Where do you think Scarlett ended up?"
"I don't know, but considering the 'special' nature of Team Leukine? Probably as something really, really dangerous. Let's be careful."
"Bah! How dangerous could one person be by herself?"
Confessional – Emma.
"Famous last words."
Leukine
Scarlett blinked. Or tried to, at least. Why can't I move my eyelids? Or my lips? She looked down at herself; she wasn't an alien like the other kids were. No, she was a massive, towering G0V yellow dwarf star at the heart of the system. She was its sun.
"Scarlett!" Chris said from a small probe orbiting her. "You've got a special job. As the star of the show, quite literally in this case, it's your responsibility to make sure that the aliens don't stray from their homeworld. The number of spaceships that you down with your solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and general gravitational influence will determine your placement in the game!"
Understood. In fact, I shall test it right now.
"Huh?" Scarlett responded by burping out a flare (accompanied by a burping sound effect) that short-circuited Chris' probe, causing it to explode, ejecting him from the game.
I feel so much better now, she chuckled darkly (ironically) to herself.
Sanguine: Cody, Alejandro, Leshawna, Brick, and Jen.
Choleric: Taylor, Emma, Noah, Jo, Justin, Sugar, Jacques, and Josee.
Melancholic: Harold, Sky, Ennui, and Crimson.
Phlegmatic: DJ, Geoff, and Jasmine.
Leukine: Scarlett.
Phlegmatic
Geoff planted a green flag on Bluey II, a larger, grayer moon roughly the same size as Europa. A +25 appeared next to him, followed soon after by a +200. "Wow, 250 points!" Geoff exclaimed. He frowned. "But...Chris said there's like, a bajillion dwarf planets farther out. 250 won't be enough points for our team to win compared to fifteen hundred or so."
He brought up his own holographic map and studied it. Specifically, he studied Ringy, a yellowish-peach world that the map said was halfway between Saturn and Jupiter in terms of size and two-thirds of Jupiter's mass. "Eight moons...and it's big, too! It must be worth a lot of points! I think Jasmine will be coming back pretty soon, so I should try to get it before anyone else does."
Entering his spaceship, he fired up the engines and left. However, Geoff being Geoff, he severely underestimated how big space was. As a result, his trip would take him far longer than he thought it would.
More than enough time for Jacques and Josee to arrive in Bluey orbit.
"Geoff's negligence is going to cost him!" Chris said in the real world. "But how much will he pay for the damages? Find out after these messages."
Do da do da doo. Commercial break!
"And we're back!" Chris said, still in the real world. "If someone," he said crossly, indicating a still-engrossed Scarlett, "hadn't bumped me out prematurely, I'd be able to see your progress."
"You can see their [d word] progress out here jus' fine, Pretty Boy," Chef grunted, jerking his thumb backwards to the canvas screen.
"Oh, right, the screen."
Phlegmatic
Coldy was a pale blue world about 20% smaller than Neptune, its pale gray rings thin and slightly tilted, its atmosphere almost uniform save for a few errant white clouds here and there. It had ten moons in all, moons Coldy I through IV being the four grayish-brown ones in hydrostatic equilibrium.
Jasmine planted a flag on the innermost moon, which was Coldy III, a moon roughly the size of the dwarf planet Makemake; shortly afterwards, a +25 followed by a +100 appeared. "That's great!" DJ said when Jasmine met back up with him.
"It sure is, mate," Jasmine agreed. "With this, we've got 450 points. We're doing pretty good."
And then they weren't, because a white -25, -25, and finally -200 outlined in dark red suddenly appeared. "What was that?!" DJ yelped.
Jasmine's eyes narrowed. "A sign that Geoff abandoned his post and Bluey got taken by somebody else. Stay here, I'm going back to Bluey."
Confessional – DJ.
"I mean, it'd make sense. Geoff probably didn't want to wait for us to come back before he tried hunting for more points." DJ sighed. "It's nice he wants to help us, but he still should've waited. Bluey's only got two round moons, so there's probably a lot of people who see it as easy pickin's."
Sanguine
Brick and Leshawna arrived at Gassy, which at 100,000 miles across and twice Jupiter's mass was easily the largest planet in the system. It was a dull peach color, its clouds striped with lighter and darker shades and its rings faint and dusty. The largest of its eighty-five moons, Gassy I, was roughly the size of Venus and was covered in a patchwork of gray-green and black ice underneath its silvery pure nitrogen atmosphere.
"Wow, that's so...beautiful," Brick said, trying to wipe a tear from his third eye but failing. A wiper came down and did that for him.
"Sure is," Leshawna agreed. She whistled. "Dang, that's a big moon. It musta been a planet that got caught. Either that, or this thing is so big it can make big moons."
Brick checked his map. "Well, it doesn't orbit backwards, and I think moons that are captured always orbit backwards, so I think it's the second option."
Leshawna shrugged. "It don't matter. What does is whether or not anyone's taken it."
Brick checked the map again. "Nope! All of the activity's either inside the asteroid belt or outside of Gassy's orbit. Right on the orbit? I think this is a good spot."
The instant he finished speaking, their ships suddenly started being pulled backwards. "Wait, what? HOW?!" Leshawna yelped as they were yanked out of Gassy's orbit and pulled into the asteroid belt. Brick managed to dodge a peanut-shaped blackish-gray asteroid in time, but Leshawna was not so lucky.
"Uhhhh..." Brick gulped. "Maybe I should...wait a bit until I try to take Gassy for my team."
Distantly, Scarlett chuckled to herself, a low, rumbly sound that set every last one of Brick's hairs on end.
Confessional – Brick.
"Mom, can you pick me up? I'm scared. Of outer space," Brick whimpered.
Phlegmatic
Jasmine groaned when she saw the red flag that was now occupying the spot where their green one had once stood. "Are you having a go at me right now?!" she complained. "Geoff had one job! Wait until I got back!"
"That was our job as well!" Josee, grinning sadistically, said as her spaceship revealed itself from behind The Survivalist. "Funny how that works out, non?"
Jasmine whirled around to face her opponent, but not fast enough. Josee blasted her with a shot of red-tinted plasma from her ship's cannons, and Jasmine was ejected from the game.
Meanwhile, Geoff had finally reached Ringy. "Whoo!" he said, sighing in relief as the yellowish-peach striped visage of Alpha Chris-tauri e came into view. "This was a lot farther than I thought, brah!" He spotted Ringy V, the outermost of the planet's spherical moons, a small world resembling Enceladus in every aspect except size (it being far larger than the actual Enceladus, far closer to Ceres diameterwise). "Alright, one moon already! I'm gonna getcha!"
But he started going in way too fast, almost as though something was pushing him from behind. "Whoa! Am I in, like, a tractor beam or somethin'?" he asked, turning on his ship's cameras.
No one.
"That's...creepy...AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" he suddenly shrieked as Ringy V filled his vision too fast. His ship crunched into the icy ground, ejecting him into the real world.
Back in the real world, Geoff panted. Then he saw Jasmine. "Uh...you okay?"
Jasmine sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation. "Geoff, why did you abandon your post? I told you to stay put in case someone tried to take Coldy away from us!"
"I thought we might need a buncha points to win," Geoff replied. "So I went to Ringy since it's big and has a buncha moons."
"Your journey there took exactly enough time for Jacques and Josee to steal Bluey from us!" Jasmine retorted. "And DJ can't defend Coldy all by himself!"
"Deej won't hafta worry 'bout that much longer," Leshawna grunted from the back of the room where she sat, waiting for the game to end. Jasmine and Geoff turned around to see DJ's ship, orbiting Coldy, get shot in its engines by Crimson's. The ship plummeted into the atmosphere of the planet below, and the VR helmet popped off of DJ's head, firmly returning him to his native reality.
"Uh...hi guys," DJ gulped. "I guess that means we lost if we're the first ones out."
"Well, maybe one of the other three won't get as many points before they get kicked out," Geoff reasoned.
"Geoff?" Jasmine sighed.
"Yeah?"
"Please, just...stop helping."
Chris appeared in the room, startling the four teens. "Ah, delicious and nutritious drama! Part of a balanced breakfast! But I have something else to say now." He put his own helmet back on and appeared in the Virtual Reality once more.
Alpha Chris-tauri system
"Alright!" Chris said, back in his probe. "Phlegmatic is out! Now, I think I should tell you that when a team gets eliminated, anything they had claimed prior to elimination will be theirs forevermore! Meaning you can't claim Coldy! It's locked!"
Chef appeared in the virtual world as a massive satellite with a face on it. He fired a beam of orange laser light at Coldy, covering its system to the orbit of the outermost moon, Coldy VII, in an orange laser light mesh net. "You touch it, and you die," Chef said plainly.
"With that, Phlegmatic's score is fixed at 200 points! Since Phlegmatic got completely killed off first, though, they also lose! But only one of the three teams remaining can win!"
Choleric
"I don't suppose we get to know how the other teams are doing?" Justin asked Noah as they approached Melty, a planet halfway between Mercury and Mars in terms of diameter and triple the former's mass (putting it at about sixty percent of the latter's). It orbited its star so close that it was tidelocked, its surface partially molten on the star-facing side. Unbeknownst to them, an arc was forming on Alpha Chris-tauri's surface.
"Chris never gave us point tallies midway through before," Noah shrugged. A +10 suddenly appeared next to them. "Huh, Jacques and Josee must've nabbed another dwarf planet. Okay, that means we've got Scorchy, Dusty, Bluey, and two dwarf planets–" another +10 "–three dwarf planets in the asteroid belt, so that puts us at a score of 380. We're doing pretty good, all things considered. Now let's take Melty."
Justin grinned. "I thought you'd say that." But before they could descend onto the subterran's surface, a rumbling noise put him on edge. "Uh...w-what was that?"
Noah turned his head and saw a mass of charged particles coming their way. "Incoming coronal mass ejection," he said. His eyes widened. "Justin? I think I know what happened to Scarlett..."
You guessed correctly, Scarlett said smugly, having made the CME while they were distracted, shorting the circuits in their ships when it hit them and causing their ships to explode, ejecting both. The wave of charged destruction slowly began to sweep outwards.
Confessional – Justin (real world).
"Okay, a sapient star? That is terrifying." He shuddered.
Choleric
Fortunately for Taylor and Sugar, Scorchy's thick atmosphere protected them from the radioactive onslaught when the flare arrived a few minutes later. It did not, however, protect them from tidal interactions; Scarlett gave the terran a squeeze, and a volcano erupted, drowing the Brat Queen and the Pageant Prat in lava.
Sanguine
Alejandro, lazing about in his team's base, got an alert. "PLANET BEING CONTESTED," blared the alarm on his desk.
"Who would be stupid enough?" Alejandro muttered, rolling out of his chair to look at the surveillance screen. He grimaced. "Of course." Emma and Jo had found their team's base on a distant continent on Lifey's southern hemisphere.
"People are never smart enough to leave you well enough alone," Alejandro sighed as he exited his base and headed for his ship. His jaw dropped. "WHAT?!"
While he'd been lounging about in his base, a slew of alien raccoon-like animals had found the ship and were disassembling it, only these creatures had three eyes and brown fur with white underbellies unlike Earth raccoons. When Alejandro approached his ship, they hissed at him, and one particularly bold animal decided to maul him.
Confessional – Emma.
"I guess that's the challenge of trying to keep a habitable planet in your possession. The local wildlife might not take too kindly to it." She shrugged. "I guess I should be thankful that our team's base was at the south pole and therefore didn't have much of anything."
Suddenly, the CME arrived, shorting out the confessional and removing Emma from the virtual world. In the real world, Emma looked quite confused by this turn of events. "Aren't confessionals...removed from direct continuity?"
"At this point I do not even know anymore," Josee sighed, having been removed from play herself during her return flight to Scorchy.
Sanguine
Cody and Jen had accompanied Brick as they left Gassy's orbit, having just claimed it and Ringy for their team. "Don't worry, Brick," Jen said reassuringly. "We'll be alright."
"Y-you sure?" Brick gulped. "Because Leshawna getting thrown into the asteroid belt by...something doesn't put me at ease."
"Me either," Jen shuddered. "I sure hope Alejandro's standing guard on Lifey."
"Say, I don't think Melty's been claimed yet," Brick mused. "We should head over there and take it."
"Wouldn't it make more sense to try and contest the claim on Dusty, since it's closer?" Cody asked, raising an eyebrow.
"The farther we get away from Gassy, the better," Brick replied, shuddering. "It's like it's haunted." Cody and Jen exchanged an odd look but followed him anyway.
Choleric
"Wow, this is sick!" Jo exclaimed as she entered a red version of Sanguine's base, situated on the icy south polar continent. "Too bad Emma got knocked out before she could come down here, this place is awesome! Well, except for the piles of snow and all, but whatcha gonna do?"
Pressing a button on a nearby control panel, she watched the surveillance cameras flicker to life. In Sanguine's base she saw a beaten-up Alejandro drag himself into the room, but an alien...raccoon? bit his neck out, killing him. The animals started when he disappeared in a flash of blue light and ran away.
Jo shrugged. "Well, if he's gone, then I guess claiming Lifey should be pretty easy." She saw a button marked "CLAIM" and grinned. "Piece of cake!"
But just as she was about to press the button, there was a distant noise. "Huh?" Jo gulped. "Okay, Jo, this is nothing. Just...press the button and–" She was cut off by the debris from Emma's ship impacting Choleric's base at a high enough speed to demolish it, taking Jo with it.
Sanguine
Brick panted as he stuck a red flag into Melty's "back pole", that is, the spot on its surface the farthest away from its star. "Whew, it's hot out here. I hope Cody's doing okay, Jacques caught him by surprise."
Five +10's and one +25 appeared next to them. "I guess that's a yes, then," Jen said. "And hey, no one's taken Lifey! That's a good sign. Maybe we should head out to Scorchy and take it next!" She noticed Brick's spooked expression. "...Brick?"
"THIS PLANET'S HAUNTED TOO!" Brick yelped, flailing his arms in the direction of an incoming meteor, a little one not much bigger than Pahkitew High. However, it was large enough to demolish the two of them where they stood.
Cody panted. "Whew...that was close. Good thing that asteroid came out of nowhere and tore Jacques' ship in half. Now, to claim Dusty..."
But Scarlett wrapped a gravitational hand around Cody's ship and yanked him into her grip. The last thing Cody saw before being kicked back into reality was a burning white light.
Melancholic
Far away, where Scarlett's gravity couldn't reach them quickly, Sky placed a flag on DP 160, a small, reddish world roughly the size of Mimas. "Whew!" she said. "That's all of them, right?"
"I think so," Ennui replied monotonously. "I wonder how the other teams are doing."
They got their answer when they erupted in a flash of blue light...
In the real world, Chris stood in front of a points board on the canvas screen. "Not bad at all, kids! You made a killing out there! Especially Scarlett."
"Where were you, anyway?" DJ asked.
"I was the Sun," Scarlett shrugged.
"So it wasn't the planet that was haunted...IT WAS THE STAR!" Brick shrieked.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, cry about it later!" Chris pressed a button on his remote and numbers showed up. "With 152 dwarf planets worth ten points each and five moons worth twenty-five points each, Melancholic wins with an impressive total of 1645 points! Your prize? A trip to the Hayden Planetarium in the American Museum of Natural History! But that'll have to be after the return trip from the next challenge!"
"Joy," Crimson said monotonously.
"Scarlett, you killed all of Sanguine except Alejandro, all of Choleric, and Geoff. That's thirteen people, well over half the remaining competitors! Therefore, I'm grouping Leukine with Melancholic, making this the first time two teams have ever won the grand prize in a Total Drama challenge!"
"It will be nice to attend a museum with people similarly invested in intellectual pursuits," Scarlett sighed in relief.
"It would be a desirable change of pace," Ennui agreed emotionlessly.
"Now then. Sanguine, you had two terrestrial planets worth fifty points each, one very big gas giant worth four hundred points, one regular-big gas giant worth three hundred points, thirteen moons, and five dwarf planets. You're therefore in second place with 1175 points!"
"My plan worked well, did it not?" Alejandro asked smugly.
"Would've been better if you did anything," Leshawna grumbled.
"Choleric, you had the other two terrestrial planets, one medium-sized ice giant worth two hundred points, two moons, and three dwarf planets. You're therefore in third place with 380 points!"
"Wow, that's safe?" Taylor asked.
"Hey, you weren't the last team eliminated," Chris replied. "Your prizes will be...lemonade, pork sausages, walnuts, bok choi, and waffles, all foods that have been to space!"
"Bok choi and waffles," Emma deadpanned. "I'm getting gas just thinking about it. It's making me miss Owen."
"Me too," Noah agreed, sighing wistfully. "He loves that stuff."
"And I don't care! Anyway, with one small ice giant worth one hundred points and only four moons, Phlegmatic loses with 200 points!" Phlegmatic groaned. "Meet me at the campfire at eight, Phlegmatic, it's time to vote someone out!"
Confessional – Geoff.
"I gotta vote Jasmine, man. She's bigger and stronger and knows things that I don't know." He wrote JASMINE on a piece of paper.
Confessional – Jasmine.
"Geoff, you're a nice guy and all, but what you did today was completely irresponsible." She wrote GEOFF on a piece of paper.
Confessional – DJ.
"Ohhhhhh, I can't vote for either of them!" DJ sighed as he wrote NO THANKS on a piece of paper. "Guess it'll be a tiebreaker..."
Confessional – Leshawna.
"They only got three people on this team but four confessional slots, so Chris wants me to recreate my first vote," Leshawna explained as she wrote LEONARD on a piece of paper.
"Here's how we do eliminations," Chris said. "We use the marshmallow system here. When I call your name, come get one." Two of the three were colored. "The marshmallows are color-coded to show how many votes you got because drama is the final frontier. White means no votes against you, and the recipient is DJ." DJ gulped nervously.
"Blue means you received only one vote against you. Green means you got more than one vote, but are still safe. Neither are present today due to how tiny our team is." Two colored marshmallows remained. "Orange means you're on the chopping block, and red means you're out. Jasmine. Geoff."
Jasmine and Geoff looked at each other warily.
"Both of you are great athletes. But Jasmine, you were a bit hard on Geoff today. Admittedly, Geoff, you screwed up and cost your team the win. And today we see that...
...
...
...
...
"You're both tied with a single vote each! Time for the tiebreaker!"
Jasmine and Geoff stood in front of two large devices consisting of several rings assembled together. "These things are aerotrims!" Chris explained. "Astronauts and pilots use them to train their balance! You guys will enter these things and whoever pukes first will leave!"
"That doesn't sound like a very challenging tiebreaker," Jasmine noted. Geoff, however, looked nervous.
The two got in and started spinning around. After a few minutes of this, though, Geoff couldn't take it anymore and threw up, staining the snow next to him green. "And Geoff is out!" Chris said. "So long, Surfer Dudes United!"
"Green snow..." Geoff said woozily.
"Yeah, green indeed. What the heck did you eat?" Jasmine asked.
"Chef had some sour apple astronaut ice cream that he didn't tell the others about and I got curious..."
Confessional – Chef.
"Why d'you think I didn't offah it?" Chef groused. "That crap's even worse than my slop!"
Confessional – Harold.
Harold sighed. "It was like, nice to have you around, Geoff, but we can't stay here forever, man. Also, gosh, sour apple astronaut ice cream? Who, like, let that go into production?! Gosh!"
"It was a little fun surprise for anyone who asked!" Chris stood next to Geoff's aerotrim. "Sixty-four down. Twenty remain. Who'll fly to the moon and who'll get frozen solid, because spring on Jupiter and Mars are still really fricking cold? Find out on
"Total.
"Drama!"
He took a step forward and ended up stepping on Geoff's vomit puddle. "AAAAAAAAAAH! MY NEW SHOES!"
Votes:
DJ – didn't vote
Geoff – Jasmine
Jasmine – Geoff
Results: 1-1 Geoff-Jasmine
Eliminated: Staci, Leonard, Tammy, Leshaniqua, Spud, Chet, Dakota (ii), Phil (r), Ellody, Rock, Rodney (t), Anne Maria, Mickey, Jazz (r), Max, Mary, Junior, Zeke (t), Beth, Brody, Scott, Lauren, Brady, Lorenzo, Katie, Trent, Kitty (t), Gwen, Dave (ii), Courtney, Tom, Dawn (t), Izzy (r), Jay, Lightning, Stephanie, Cameron (nj), Ryan, B, Mike (q), Duncan, Amy, Topher, Sadie, Laurie, [Owen, Carrie, Sammy, Tyler, Lindsay, Devin, Eva, MacArthur, Ella, and Beardo] (ii), Bridgette, Sanders, Sierra, Shawn (r), Sam, Heather, Miles, Zoey, Geoff (t)
Known active immunity idols: Josee (Crimson), Justin (Ella)
Future eliminations immunized against: Alejandro (0)
Bonus clip:
In the virtual world, two aliens suddenly appeared. "How did he get our system almost exactly right?" said the male, subtitled because his voice sounded exactly like deer noises to a human ear.
"I swear, if Yeukakis let this guy bribe him with his useless Earth dollars..." griped the female.