And we're back with more of my silly little side project. It's been loads of fun experimenting with this cast and season, and this was an unexpectedly sizeable chapter at 16.5k despite the small cast and weird format, so I hope you enjoy!
"Welcome back to Total Drama House Party!" Naomi called out. She was reclining in a swivel chair at her desk. In front of her was a big monitor showing a mosaic of camera feeds from around the house, while a second screen was displaying the status of all the lights, electronics, and some other unknown mechanisms. Her phone was also on her desk, and something that looked suspiciously like some kind of game with anime girls was on the screen, before she quickly put it away. "This is our control room," she explained. "After I gave the tour, we set up shop here, down the street. So let's rewind!"
Naomi snapped her fingers, and some old footage of events in the house appeared. "Previously, our ten houseguests all got settled in their new digs for the weekend." A clip played of her shaking hands with Elijah in the living room. "New friends were made." Another clip showed Scout and Delilah looking at Scout's sketchbook together. "Old enemies were reunited." Tyrone was shown threatening Arnold. "And I was forced to really reconsider my idea of what things could pose as a safety hazard." A last clip showed Kahil's bunk bed collapsing and his bag falling on top of him. "But don't turn in for the night just yet, 'cause the drama never sleeps, and this party is just getting started!"
Naomi casually put her boots up on her desk, then snapped her fingers again, and an instrumental version of the theme song played with a transition of flashing strobe lights.
The camera panned down the street from the control room, until it reached the foyer of the competition house, where someone was hurrying up to the front door. "Special delivery!" he chirped out cheerfully.
Inside the house, the contestants were mostly minding their own business in their sleeping quarters.
"I got it!" Elijah shouted immediately when he heard the knock at the door. He leaped up and ran out of the boys' bedroom and down the hall.
"Naomi never said anything about a visitor," Tala mused, peeking out from the girls' room to watch the debater get the door.
Standing on the porch was a small and stocky black teenage boy, who looked just a few years younger than the contestants. His mess of curly black hair was tucked into an orange beanie, and he was wearing a light gray sweater, black pants, and black boots. His brown eyes had a flustered look as he took in the interior of the house for the first time, all while balancing the large stack of pizza boxes that he was carrying. "Wow… this place is bigger than it looks like from the camera feed."
"My man, what's all this?" Elijah asked.
"Hi mister, I'm Linus Fletcher, and Miss Boomburst delivered me to send- uh, I mean, sent to deliver this." He ducked his head in embarrassment as he tripped over his words, and then shoved the boxes at Elijah. "You guys are going to have to cook for the rest of the weekend, but we thought that we'd give you a break on your first night."
"Pizza? That's so pogchamp of you guys!" Francis called out as he popped up behind Elijah. "Wait a second… are you sure this is a… boneless pizza?"
Linus stopped to think for a second. "Gee, well, I don't know. Maybe I should take a look at the ingredients list or something." He patted his pockets.
At this point, the other contestants were flocking to the foyer. "It's okay, thanks so much Linus!" Elijah practically shouted, then he quickly hightailed it down the hall before someone, probably Mistral, could snatch the boxes from him. The courier was left standing on the front porch, still digging around in his pockets.
Soon the teenagers were all gathered around the kitchen table eating pizza. It was nothing special, just cheese and pepperoni, but some like Francis and Mistral were considerably more excited by the meal. Most of them had elected to just use the boxes instead of getting out plates, and nobody seemed to want to disturb the fancy setup in the formal dining room. "There's something almost spooky about it," Allison remarked. "The table's all set already."
"Yeah, it's like they were just asking for us to help ourselves," Kahil said, making a big show of pulling a silver spoon out of his pocket.
"What's the point of even stealing that?" Allison narrowed her eyes. "It's not like you're going to be taking it anywhere for the next few days, and we share everything here."
"Because it's funny?" Mistral offered, and Kahil grinned at her.
"Exactly." The jinx tossed the spoon up in the air and caught it, as Mistral watched him reverently. "I see something I want? You better believe I'll take it."
Confessional: Kahil
"At first I started stealing things for Naila. It was just little trinkets, nothing that we couldn't buy on our own, but it's just more fun to see what you can get away with. When you're, ah, like me…" He gestured at himself, and right on cue, the lights in the laundry room flickered. "You need to know how to think on your feet."
Confessional: Allison
"It's not that I disapprove of Kahil, I'm not like that. I have a friend back home who always says 'fuck the elites' after all. He's just someone to watch out for."
"This is disgusting." Tyrone glared at his plate.
"You're not being forced to eat anything, Rex," Arnold said condescendingly. "The kitchen is open, if you even know how to cook for yourself."
Tyrone dabbed some of the grease off his pizza with a napkin, and grit his teeth as he tried to ignore the scholar.
Confessional: Tyrone
"I can't believe he's here!" he ranted. "It's not fair!" He stomped his foot, causing the jar of detergent pods to fall off the shelf in the crowded little laundry room. Thankfully he was able to catch it, and he stopped for a moment to examine the 'do not eat' label that someone had taped on the container.
He took a deep breath, then sat down on the chair in the confessional room. "I came here hoping to put high school behind me. And as always, Boreal ruins all of my plans. Why isn't he afraid of me like all the other nerds are?"
"This is great!" Francis said for probably the third time. "Pizza parties remind me of so many nights with the robotics team, I hope that we can all be a squad like them."
"I don't want to be like anyone," Delilah retorted. "That never worked out for me."
Francis still wasn't deterred. "Okay, then what do you want to be?"
Delilah waved her hand dismissively, but it was clear that she wasn't expecting that question. "I mean, I don't fucking know."
"Oh, okay. That's alright." Francis finally got the clue, and stared down at his plate.
There was a brief lull in conversation, but Elijah saw the opportunity and jumped into action. "What makes a pizza different from an open-faced sandwich?" he asked aloud, looking around the table.
Arnold narrowed his eyes at the debater. "Please elaborate."
"If you think about it, they have a lot of the same ingredients. If you put a top bun on a pizza, you'd have meat and veggies and cheese in between two slices of bread. That's totally a sandwich," Elijah explained.
"That's stupid, a pizza is a pizza and a sandwich is a sandwich. End of story," Tyrone responded.
Elijah looked at him smugly. "Those are simply tautologies, so they prove literally nothing. Try harder."
Tyrone just growled at the debater, and for a moment it seemed like he was about to lunge at Elijah from across the table.
Confessional: Elijah
He seemed quite pleased with himself. "The food classification debates are such a classic! You don't need to be a master debater to pick a stance and argue for it, and laypeople tend to feel strongly about it too. In other words, perfect for not just warming up my skills, but also for breaking the ice."
He tapped his chin. "Say, if a tomato is a fruit, is ketchup a type of jam?"
Confessional: Tyrone
"Okay, fine, I admit it! There's way too much grease and not enough protein, but the pizza was actually kind of good… it's definitely not a sandwich though!"
"Hey, maybe it doesn't have to be an argument," Kahil cut in. "Chef's choice and all."
"My dude, are you kidding me? Everything can be an argument, and most of the time it should be. How else would you make the best decisions, if you didn't consider all perspectives? If we just accept that pizza can't be a sandwich, maybe there's some important part of sandwich-ness that we're missing out on!"
"Your mom is a sandwich," Mistral offered, but the hoarder was ignored.
Delilah had been listening quietly the whole time, and finally offered her two cents. "This entire conversation makes no fucking sense."
Confessional: Delilah
She was laughing to herself in the confessional. "It's like one of those games that sucks so much that you can't stop playing it. I normally tune out the chatter but I couldn't look away. Okay, at least they aren't the lying b*tches back home, but I don't know how much more of this pointless stupidity I can take. Is that really the best conversation topic they could come up with?"
Elijah seemed to have accomplished his goal, as the chatter at the table was pretty lively, save for one person, and Scout noticed that Tala was just staring at the pizza box, completely absorbed in her thoughts.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked the mathematician.
It took her a moment to even process that someone was talking to her. "Fractions," was finally her response. "Slices of pizza are such a common tool for teaching young kids about fractions, and I never appreciated that this is because circles have infinite radial symmetries, allowing them to be cut into any number of congruent pieces."
"Oh, I do remember learning fractions with pizza." Scout perked up at that, as if she was excited to contribute. "I drew all sorts of toppings on the pizza because I thought it didn't look interesting enough. Like, who would want to eat such a plain slice?"
"I never had that problem," Tala said a bit sheepishly. "Math was always interesting to me." She laughed nervously, and Scout just gave her a weird look.
"It's funny because, um… there was this joke about fractions!" Tala seemed to just be blurting out the first thing that came to mind. "A man orders a pizza, and he is asked if he wants it cut into eight or twelve slices. He says, 'eight, of course! I don't think I would be hungry enough to eat twelve.'"
Scout thought about that for a moment. "I don't get it."
Confessional: Tala
She hid her face in her hands. "Ugh, why am I always like this? People are unpredictable, they're like the opposite of numbers. Once we get to the challenge, I believe I'll be okay, but I can't do all this unstructured social interaction."
Confessional: Scout
She shrugged. "She seems nice!"
As the guests were finishing up their meal, Naomi's voice suddenly blared out of the hidden intercom. "All contestants, get your butts to the living room in five! We've prepared your first activity for the night!"
"Finally," Tyrone huffed. "You ready to go down, Boreal?"
As usual, Arnold seemed completely unaffected by the quarterback's menacing glare. "Keep telling yourself that," he responded casually, and the others elected to steer clear of both of them.
"What do you think it's gonna be?" Elijah asked as the group made their way down the hall.
"Maybe something with music?" Allison guessed. "I know Naomi likes music."
"I'm hoping it's some kind of get-to-know-you activity," Elijah responded. "That's always a key facet of a game like this, so the challenges should often facilitate it, especially early on. Though it may seem like giving us the opportunity to learn about each other means they're going easy, it also facilitates more drama which makes for better television." He briefly stopped to gasp for air before returning to his rapid-fire explanation. "Besides, do you remember all the fine print on the application—I read it all, obviously—about the background checks and the personal info? There isn't a chance that never comes into play, not to mention that-"
Allison's expression stayed neutral as Elijah continued to talk. She looked around the hall as they walked, noticing there was a portrait on the wall of a guy wearing a straw hat who was riding a donkey cart.
"So clearly there must be a social aspect to this challenge, likely with some sort of teamwork. But sure. Naomi does like music," Elijah finished, with more than a hint of smugness.
Allison didn't seem to care. "I'd save your breath for the challenge, since we're going to find it out soon enough."
The contestants gathered in the living room, with some like Tyrone and Elijah shoving to get a space on the couch, while others like Arnold and Mistral preferred to hang back in the corners of the room. However, everyone seemed to be giving Kahil a wide berth, and one of the lamps on a side table seemed to flicker ominously as he walked by it.
"Is there not a remote?" Tala asked, and started to look around for one, when all of a sudden, the large TV mounted on the wall turned on on its own, startling her.
"Ugh, it's you again," Mistral grumbled when she saw Naomi's face on the screen. The loud music that was playing could even be heard through the video feed, and there were some flashing lights in the background, making the DJ's presumed office seem more like a miniature party of its own.
While some of the others were surprised by the host's sudden intervention, Tala didn't seem to be too bothered. "I mean, who else would it be?"
"Me!" Linus called out as he popped up next to Naomi onscreen. "I hope you guys all enjoyed your dinner!"
"It was headed by some spectacular service of course," Elijah said, clearly just sucking up, but Linus shuffled his feet and looked embarrassed at the praise.
"We're set up in our station just down the road," Naomi explained. "And when there's important news for you all, we'll contact you for a house meeting, like we're doing right now."
"Alright!" Allison cheered. "Does that mean you have a challenge for us?"
"I guess you could say that. Now, if you look under the coffee table, you should find an activity for you guys to get to know each other." Elijah snapped his fingers at that but everyone ignored him, especially Allison. "Specifically, what things you have in common."
Kahil started to reach under the table, but Elijah put a hand on his shoulder. "My man, as much as I would enjoy arguing otherwise, given my evidence from all of our past observations I can conclude… that someone else should really be doing that."
"Please, when has anything I've ever done gone wrong?" Kahil responded innocently. All the others looked unamused.
But while he was distracted, Tala quickly darted forward to pull out a tray from under the coffee table, and carefully placed it on the tabletop. On the tray were ten glass bottles arranged in a circle. They were labeled with each of the guests' names, but they were made of frosted glass, so it was unclear what was inside them.
"They're getting us drunk. Told you so." Elijah gave Mistral a smug grin.
The hoarder just rolled her eyes. "I hope yours is poisoned."
Tala grabbed the bottle with her name and shook it. "There doesn't seem to be any sort of liquid inside… wait, Naomi, is this a mistake?" She turned back to the TV screen, where the DJ was watching and waiting for them to quiet down again.
"It's up to you to make a toast, because these bottles will give you a partner," Naomi explained. "You two will have to work together to follow clues, to bring back a party favor to this room."
"What does that even mean?" Delilah asked. "There are all sorts of party favors."
"You'll know what to look for." Naomi just smirked. "And who to look for. Your partners were chosen for a reason, and it might help you to find common ground."
"Epic!" Francis cheered. "It's time to make a new friend!" He dabbed, and Kahil had to duck to avoid getting hit in the head.
"Just great," Arnold muttered. "Spending the night with one of these buffoons is exactly what I wanted."
"Good luck, I'll see you back here soon. Cheers!" was all she said before the video ended.
"Give me my bottle," Tyrone demanded immediately, and Allison frowned but Tala quickly obliged. The mathematician then began to carefully hand out the rest of the bottles to everyone.
"What do we do with these?" Scout held up her own bottle. "Is this really a challenge? Maybe it's a party game?"
"Ooh, spin the bottle! I know how this one works!" Francis cheered, jumping up and down.
"You… do?" Delilah looked at him skeptically.
Francis nodded eagerly at Delilah. "Totally! I heard about it from a friend whose cousin's girlfriend was actually invited to parties." He sighed wistfully. "That sounds nice." He then turned to Scout. "C'mon, I'll show you, look at this!" He set the bottle down in the center of the floor and started spinning it, before taking a step back. He and Scout both watched it spin with awe, while Delilah just looked bored.
After a moment, the bottle stopped, and its neck was pointing towards Scout.
"Poggers!" Francis cheered. He reached out to spin the bottle again, but Scout stopped him.
"Wait, it's pointing at me? Doesn't that mean something?" the artist asked.
Francis just shrugged. "I don't think so. I thought you were just supposed to spin the bottle. C'mon, do you want to try?"
Scout spun the bottle again and the two of them watched it and giggled.
"You two are completely hopeless," Delilah scoffed. "I didn't think this game could possibly get any dumber."
Scout didn't seem to have heard her, as she was still watching the bottle with fascination, and Francis wasn't bothered at all by Delilah's remark. "Wait, you've played spin the bottle before?" he asked, practically with stars in his eyes. "You're so cool! You have to show us!"
She scoffed. "Trust me, you're not missing out on much."
All of a sudden, there was a sound of glass breaking, and everyone turned towards the noise. Kahil's bottle was on the floor, and it had been thoroughly crushed into tiny pebble-like shards, as if it had been ground down instead of smashed.
"How did you manage that?" Tala asked, and Kahil just shrugged.
"I tripped." He ran a hand through his hair. "So there really is no liquid in there," he observed. However, in the glass was a rolled up piece of something.
Kahil picked it up and unrolled it, realizing that it wasn't made of paper, but purple semi-transparent plastic. Upon closer examination, there were some strange markings on it, but he wasn't able to make sense of them just yet. "I should've known they would pull the 'ol' 'message in a bottle' on us. Guess this is the challenge then."
"Alright, so we smash bottles!" Mistral shouted, and despite Allison's cry of protest, she immediately threw her bottle on the ground. "Ooh, it's shiny!" She quickly located her own sheet, which looked a lot like Kahil's. Soon, each of the contestants had found the message in their own bottles by opening them like normal people.
"Wait, you!" Tala called out suddenly, and pointed at Francis. "I, uh, I'm not good with names," she added sheepishly. "It looks like we got the same thing."
"By Floodie Wowers, you're right! Oh, and I'm Francis." He held out his plastic sheet, which was the same shade of green as Tala's. He seemed perfectly fine just giving the plastic to Tala when she put her hand out.
Tala quickly glanced around the room. "By the colors, it seems that everyone here has a designated pair, like Naomi said," she concluded.
"Pogchamp!" Francis cheered. "Let's win this."
"So, Naomi told us that this challenge would help us learn what we had in common," Tala mused. "So what do you do?" she asked Francis bluntly.
"I work with robots!" he responded proudly.
"Robotics and math. Construction and computation. Mechanical and theoretical. Or, how to put it in layperson's terms…" She thought for a moment. "We're both nerds," she deadpanned.
"Oh yeah." Francis nodded. "People call me that all the time at school. Usually before they shove me in a locker."
Tala seemed a bit concerned by that. "That doesn't sound very ideal. I would be a prime target for such… confrontations as well, but I'm always careful about not catching the attention of those people."
"It is what it is." Francis shrugged. "Maybe we'll need to look for some lockers," he joked.
Confessional: Team Green - Tala and Francis
A circular green logo flashed in the corner of the screen, indicating their team, but the laundry room confessional was barely large enough for them both. The two had both decided to awkwardly stand, as there was only one chair.
"I suppose we're going to be working together for the rest of the day now," Tala remarked.
"Yeah, and I can't wait!" Francis made a finger gun at Tala, clearly copying Elijah from earlier.
Meanwhile, the others were following Tala and Francis' lead. "Ayo Delilah!" Elijah held up his own clue, which was a similar sheet of translucent plastic, but this time red. He made his signature finger gun with his free hand. "It's a real pleasure. Let's smash this challenge."
The gamer had also gotten a red clue, but she looked unamused, not even looking up from her clue. "Whatever, let's just get this over with."
Confessional: Team Red - Delilah and Elijah
A similar red logo appeared in the corner of the feed. "What we have in common, huh." Elijah was pacing in the confessional room, which looked pretty silly since he could barely take two steps before having to turn around.
Delilah was sitting in the chair, and she rolled her eyes. "Is it that we have the same pattern of vowels in our names?"
"That does make us kind of awkward to write…" Elijah mused.
"Or maybe it's the dyed hair."
Elijah stopped mid-step, spun around, and turned to face her. "Could it…? No, I highly doubt that it would be something so trivial and superficial," he objected. "Besides, Arnold has dyed hair as well."
"You seem to be an expert on the trivial and superficial," Delilah remarked, and Elijah just frowned.
While the others were pairing up, Mistral was just watching from the corner, and when she caught sight of the right color, she snuck up behind Kahil. She tried to snatch the purple clue out of his hand, but to her surprise, the jinx easily saw her coming and sidestepped.
"Bold of you to try something like that in such a bright and open space," he remarked.
"Try what?" Mistral asked innocently, trying to disguise it as just having stumbled, but Kahil wasn't buying it.
"If I were you, I would try a diversion instead," he advised with a wink. "You can try as much as you want to sneak and avoid attention, but it's just as good if you simply direct their attention elsewhere." Surprisingly, Mistral was listening attentively, almost seeming in admiration of him.
Confessional: Team Purple - Kahil and Mistral
"Purple is my favorite color." Mistral was clutching her plastic purple sheet to her chest while shooting a suspicious glare at Kahil, as if they expected him to take it away, even though the thief seemed pretty relaxed as he sat on the single folding chair in the confessional, holding his own matching sheet.
"You're reminding me more and more of my little sister," Kahil commented.
"I'm no one's little sister!"
"I guess there's a much more obvious reason why we'd be paired up." He stood up and put an arm around Mistral's shoulder while trying to reach into their backpack.
"Don't touch me!" Mistral screeched and flailed around, trying to kick and even scratch him.
Kahil tried to shield himself and ended up toppling over and falling out of the chair. "Geez, okay!"
Meanwhile, Francis and Tala were now sitting at the kitchen table. Francis was watching Tala examining their sheets. The mathematician quickly aligned the markings on the two sheets while holding the semi-transparent plastic up to the light, and they turned out to form a message.
"Look at this!" she called out excitedly, only to blush when she saw she had caught Delilah and Elijah's attention. Francis gave Delilah a sheepish wave.
"What's that you got there?" Elijah asked. "That's good to know." He smirked at Delilah, who was now fiddling with their red clues and trying to copy Tala.
Confessional: Team Green - Tala and Francis
"Sorry, maybe I shouldn't have said that aloud," Tala apologized. "Sometimes I get carried away when solving my puzzles, but I have to remember that these people are my competition."
"It's like the legends of high school robotics, Kean Damen and Floodie Wowers, always say! Coopertition is key, so we can use the power of friendship to learn and better ourselves!" Francis said, trying to reassure the mathematician, but she just looked confused.
It took her a few tries, but after seeing Tala, Delilah managed to stack the sheets correctly and reveal the message. "There are puzzles like this in games too, where you need to get the camera angle just right in order to progress," she recounted.
"Or, like, in real life too," Elijah snarked. "When you can, y'know, move your head."
"Were you the one who figured this out, or did I?"
"Technically speaking, Tala did." Elijah made a finger gun, only for Delilah to just roll her eyes, and then grab him and drag him along.
"Let's just get away from these people before we give them something." As they were walking aimlessly, Delilah showed the clue that was revealed, which had three crude cartoon pictures: a baby, a meteor, and a calendar. "Okay, this is… not exactly what I was expecting."
"Maybe it's one of those rebus puzzles. Do those pictures make a word or phrase?"
Delilah shrugged. "The calendar could be, like, the date a baby is due."
"Or the date a meteor appears… or is that meant to be a comet? Semantics are highly important in a case like this."
"Of course I know that," Delilah snapped. "You're talking to the person who has 105% achievement completion in Scape of RuneCraft, and that means I found all the Easter eggs," she bragged. "Maybe we should be thinking if the number 4 on the calendar means anything."
Elijah squinted at the clue. "That would be April?"
At this point, they weren't walking anymore, just standing in the hall puzzling over the clue. "Alright, do we even know every place in the house that it could be? The first thing I do when a new zone is released in RuneCraft is just try and fill out my mini-map."
Elijah rolled his eyes at the comparison, but finally nodded. "Sure, I can get behind that. I like to lay out all the facts before I make a decision. So the dining room and living room are behind us, and we're just coming up to where our dorm rooms are. But I doubt Naomi would put it in there. Why would they make a girl go into the guys' room, or vice versa?"
Delilah narrowed her eyes. "Grow up."
Elijah was surprised by the harshness of her tone, but he took it in stride, as he continued down the hall, opening the very next door that they came to.
Back in the living room, some of the other contestants were still coupling up. Tyrone noticed that Allison had a yellow sheet, same as him. "Give me that!" He tried to grab the plastic sheet from her.
Allison quickly snatched it away. "Hey!" she protested. "We have to do this together."
"Says who?"
"Says me." Allison put her hands on her hips and didn't flinch, staring Tyrone down even though he towered almost a full foot over her.
Confessional: Team Yellow - Allison and Tyrone
"Well, it's pretty obvious what we have in common." Allison crossed her arms.
"As athletes, we're used to winning and we'll stop at nothing to achieve our goals, and demolish anything that gets in our way," Tyrone announced.
"And we're strong team players that can also share our competitive spirit to uplift each other." Allison looked at him pointedly.
"That sounds stupid."
"Well, we're working together, whether you like it or not!"
Allison showed Tyrone her clue, which looked like a rudimentary floorplan of the house. "I think that this looks pretty useful."
"I just got some dumb numbers." Tyrone's clue had a blank grid with labeled axes, like a graph, and some kind of complex looking mathematical equation underneath. The light yellow of their clues made them the most obviously transparent out of all of the colors.
"Well, we can put the grid over the map." Allison put out her hand, and Tyrone reluctantly handed over his clue. She stacked the two. "We probably have to graph the equation to see where to go," the tennis player reasoned.
"They gave the jocks a math problem? Is this their idea of a joke?"
"That's okay, we don't need to—hey Tala!"
"Don't!" Tyrone interrupted, dragging Allison away from the kitchen before she could get the mathematician's attention. "We don't need help from the nerds."
"Fine, be like that." Allison flopped back down on the couch and took a closer look at the completed clue. "Well, this doesn't seem too bad, it's just trigonometry."
"You actually care about that stuff?" Tyrone asked incredulously as he sat next to her.
Allison shrugged. "Well, I figured I might as well try my best in school." She grabbed a pen that was on the coffee table.
"Yeah, right, there's no way. I know how much time playing a sport can take up."
"Okay, I don't care that much, but my parents were pretty strict about me keeping my grades up," Allison admitted. "But I really focused on learning how to get my homework done quick." She then lowered her voice. "So I would have time to sneak out at night," she finished with a mischievous smirk.
"Well, that's dumb. Don't you need to wake up early for practice?"
"It works for me, and shouldn't it not matter what I do, as long as there are results? It doesn't stop me from playing well," Allison said stubbornly, then set her pen down, having finished with the equation. "I think I got it." Sure enough, it seemed to be highlighting a path to take on the map.
"I guess that leaves us then, Arnold!" Scout declared cheerfully as she held her blue sheet, then she looked around. "Wait, Arnold?"
"Right here." He seemed to materialize from the corner of the room, and strode up right behind Scout with a heavy sigh. "…regrettably." Sure enough, the scholar was carrying a similar blue sheet.
Scout didn't seem at all deterred. "This is such a pretty color, right?"
"It's a little too gaudy for me, but I suppose it fits your taste rather well," Arnold remarked as he looked Scout over, and the artist didn't seem to realize it was an insult.
Confessional: Team Blue - Arnold and Scout
"Look, we're both blue too!" Scout put a hand on the jacket tied around her waist, though it was a much brighter shade than the one Arnold was wearing.
"I have no interest in aesthetics. Or people, for that matter."
"C'mon, I know at least one of those things can't be true, 'cause you have the best aesthetics of anyone here."
Arnold stared at Scout for a moment, as if he wasn't sure how to react to the compliment. "Okay, I suppose I have a style," he admitted. He tossed his head and his bangs covered one eye.
"That's the spirit! Now, there has to be something we're both interested in," Scout responded.
Arnold scoffed. "We might have to dig pretty deep for that."
"Don't worry, I have an idea about the clue," Scout assured him. "C'mon!" She beckoned him back out of the confessional.
Tala and Francis were now alone at the kitchen table, examining the green sheets. "How curious," Tala murmured. The message consisted of an outline of a strange fish with a long body and a pointed snout, with a caption: "How old am I?"
"Maybe we should go to the pool?" Francis suggested.
"I haven't seen much of the backyard," Tala admitted. "But that seems logical enough."
"I was there earlier today, I can show you!"
As Francis led Tala outside, the mathematician was deep in thought. "I know that I've seen a fish like that before… why am I thinking of the Tuvalu myth of the eel and the flounder? The body shape doesn't match at all."
Meanwhile, Francis was sitting on the edge of the pool, peering inside, but the setting sun was beginning to make it harder to see. "I wonder if there are any fish in here." That earned him a funny look from Tala. "Or maybe there used to be fish in here," he revised his theory.
They were interrupted when Scout and Arnold stepped out onto the patio.
"Hey guys!" Scout called out.
"What's up, gamers?" Francis greeted.
"You figured out what these papers mean?" Arnold asked Tala.
"Yeah, it was such an interesting puzzle!" Tala said excitedly. "All you have to do is- wait…" She was holding up her and Francis' sheets, but her eyes widened and she quickly snatched them away before Arnold could see them. "I'm not telling you!"
Francis looked a little apologetic, but nodded.
Tala headed over to the pool where Francis was looking, and lowered her voice to whisper to the memer. "I remember now, it's a gar. How long have they been around? Or could it be about their lifespan? Maybe the library has something on gar age…"
"Wait!" Francis suddenly shouted, interrupting Tala's rambling as he leaped to his feet, but in his excitement he lost his balance and fell forward into the pool.
But just as she reached the edge of the pool, Francis suddenly popped up on the surface, treading water with surprising ease.
"Gar age!" he shouted. "Could it mean the garage?"
Confessional: Team Green - Tala and Francis
Francis was drying himself off with a towel and beaming proudly. "Water game confirmed!" he cheered, as Tala stared at him in amazement. "It's not just a dream for my robot, I like to swim too. I'm just glad I didn't have Dozie's controller in my pocket."
"They seem to be getting along," Scout remarked as the nerds took off and headed back inside the house.
"Are you saying it's my fault that we're not instantly the best of friends?" Arnold challenged.
"Hey, I never said anything like that."
Arnold scoffed at her. "Don't expect me to be your best buddy, but we do need to find this 'party favor.' I'm not about to let Rex win, he would be completely insufferable about it. You really think that out here is the best place to look?" he asked.
"We're blue, and water is blue!" Scout pointed at the pool, as if that was a completely obvious solution to their clue.
"There's more to the papers than that, I'm sure. It seemed like the others were going off of some kind of message."
"Well, I'm going to look around! We can see the whole house from out here, so maybe I'll spot something!"
Scout ran off before Arnold could react, but he didn't seem to care. As she set out to look around the backyard, Arnold was still looking at their messages. "These markings look like parts of letters," he realized.
After a bit, he was able to find the right alignment and hold the sheet up to the light. "Fenrir devoured his prey," he read aloud. "That certainly sounds like it would garner art from the darkest corners of the internet."
"Fenrir, like the wolf?" Scout asked, suddenly appearing back next to Arnold holding a random twig in her hand. "I can look for a wolf. Or… what do wolves eat? Rabbits? Pigs, like in fairy tales?" Just as soon, she was gone. But as she continued to wander around the yard, she tripped over something in the dim light and fell.
"How unfortunate that the sun is setting." Arnold suddenly shined a flashlight over Scout, allowing her to see the root she had tripped on. "I always carry a reading light around, along with my book, so I can pretend to ignore people whenever I want," the scholar explained bluntly as Scout was brushing the dirt off and getting back up.
"That's cool, what type of things do you read?" Scout asked, but saw that Arnold had his nose buried in his book. "…hey, wait a second!" she protested.
"This seems like the right place," Allison declared. She was looking at her and Tyrone's clues. She had drawn over the grid, graphing the equation they were given, and was using it like a map.
The clues had brought them to the master bedroom, tucked away at the very end of the hall. "There's another bedroom?" she marveled.
"Really? Why are they making us sleep in those stupid bunks, then?" Tyrone demanded. "I'm taking this bed for myself." But as soon as he sat down on the bed, he gave an angry roar. The giant queen bed didn't have a mattress, which had been disguised by some artful fluffing up of the sheets, and Tyrone basically fell through the blankets and right onto the hard metal frame of the bed.
"They want us to live together and work together," Allison pointed out.
"I'm great at working with people. All they have to do is give me exactly what I want." Tyrone sat up and rubbed his sore back. "It works in football, and I'm sure it will work in Total Drama."
"Does that make you happy?" Allison asked.
"Yeah, I'm happy. This is my happy face." Tyrone pointed at his glaring face, and Allison looked unamused.
"I used to think about sports a lot differently," the tennis player revealed. "Everyone wanted to win more than anything, to the point where a loss just broke you, and where you would do anything to put others down. I realized that not taking things as seriously made me a lot happier."
"Well, if you're not serious about this, then why don't you just give me the clue and let me take over and win the challenge myself?"
Allison still wouldn't yield. "Because that's not how winning the challenge works, we need to work as a team!"
"Tennis isn't even a team sport," Tyrone scoffed. "You guys must have it easy, just a bunch of stuck-up preps staying in your lanes and not giving anyone trouble."
"Oh please, tennis culture is awful. The preps are more cutthroat than anyone, and they're all so boring and rigid. I bet the dude bros that just run and tackle each other don't have any stress or drama."
"No, football culture is worse!" Tyrone shot back, and Allison was surprised by his sudden anger. He glared for a moment, trying to think of a way to elaborate, but finally, he instead turned on his heel and stormed off. "I don't need your yapping, I'm finding this clue." He opened the door to a massive walk-in closet attached to the bedroom.
Allison just shrugged to herself, before going to check the dresser drawers.
Confessional: Allison
Even though the flashing yellow circle in the corner of the screen indicated her and Tyrone's team, Allison was sitting alone in the chair in the laundry room with her arms crossed. "Of course I want to win, and of course I don't think Tyrone is being that helpful. I'm trying to be patient with him, since he's clearly got a lot on his mind. But this isn't the right way to be doing a team challenge."
Kahil was waiting while Mistral fiddled with their team's plastic sheets, as the hoarder had refused to let him anywhere near her own clue. "Wherefore art thou, Romeo," the hoarder finally read.
"Huh, you didn't strike me as a thespian." Kahil chuckled.
"No, dumbass, that's what the clue says." She gestured agitatedly with the plastic sheets. "And I don't speak old people words."
"Not even that scene? Everyone knows it." Kahil thought for a moment. "Well, I almost wouldn't have. I guess I'm lucky that we covered Romeo and Juliet after I broke my leg while making instant noodles, or I would've totally skipped class."
"One, how the fuck do you break your leg while making noodles?" Kahil just shrugged, so Mistral continued. "Two, I never went to high school. Those goons just couldn't handle me." They cracked their knuckles.
Even though Mistral seemed proud to be sharing this fact, Kahil didn't seem to care. "Well I guess I'll just have to finish this challenge on my own," he said with a shrug.
"But I have your clue!" The hoarder waved the purple sheets in his face.
"Well, you just told me the message, so I don't need it anymore."
"That's not how that works!" Mistral wailed. "You can't abandon me!" You need to tell me and work with me, or it won't be fair." She stomped her foot and wiped away some tears.
Kahil laughed and ran a hand through his hair. "I don't think I could play fair even if I tried- whoa!" All of a sudden, Mistral grabbed the collar of Kahil's jean jacket and lunged at him with something sharp glinting in her hand. "Holy sh-"
Mistral raised her small knife, and used it to cut the string of Kahil's necklace, leaving the gold key to fall into their waiting hand.
"You do the challenge with me," the hoarder demanded. "And I'll give you your shiny back." She shoved the key into her backpack. Kahil was still in shock, realizing how much more poorly the hoarder's stunt could have gone for him. Hearing no response, Mistral added, "You said it yourself nyehehe, make a distraction."
"They let you bring a knife in here?" Kahil finally asked. "They checked my bags and took all of my stuff."
"I took it from the kitchen," they responded as they carelessly played with the knife.
After a moment, Kahil started to laugh, completely recovered from his surprise. "Nice going, Misty! This is going to go well for us, I just know it!"
"Don't call me Misty!" Mistral pointed the knife at him, but he only put his hands up and laughed even harder.
"C'mon, let's go!" He beckoned for Mistral to follow him, though the hoarder hesitated. "If we're following the tragedy of Miss Juliet, we'll be looking for a balcony."
"Naomi said that finding out what we have in common could help us." Elijah leaned against the wall in the hallway and made a finger gun at Delilah. The two didn't seem to have made much progress on their clue. "Sooo, tell me about yourself."
The gamer raised her eyebrow. "That's really the best line you've got?"
"Would you prefer I ask you your opinion on the economy?"
"Point taken," Delilah said, pulling a face. "I'm VexingVixen655 of the Sycamore Guild. We're ranked on the global leaderboard in the online RPG Scape of RuneCraft, and I know the story and the world of the game inside and out. Besides that there's not much about me. So what's your deal?"
"Well, I've lived in more US states than I can count on my fingers, since Mom has to travel for work. I've always been interested in arguing with people, from a purely intellectual standpoint, and…"
As Elijah spoke, Delilah was examining their clue, but the debater didn't notice she was checked out.
Confessional: Team Red - Delilah and Elijah
"I've had plenty of experience dealing with people that just love to talk. It's so easy to just distract them by getting them going about themself if you don't want to be bothered with questions."
Elijah cleared his throat. "I'm still here!"
The gamer just ignored him.
"So I do debate and you play video games, what even is the connection there?" This had been iterated about three times already, but Elijah felt the need to keep thinking aloud. "Wait…" He then snapped his fingers. "Maybe it's not us that have things in common." He held up their clue with the three images. "Meteor, baby, and calendar."
"April," Delilah corrected.
"Okay, meteor, baby, and April."
Delilah looked between the three little pictures for just a few moments. "Shower."
"What?" Elijah asked.
Confessional: Francis
He was still in the confessional, toweling off his wet hair after falling in the pool. "Shower? I hardly know 'er!" he yelled triumphantly.
"Meteor shower. Baby shower. April shower," Delilah explained, condescendingly slowly.
Elijah rolled his eyes. "I get it. But which one? I assume the girls have a shower attached to their room too?"
"Wait, boys shower?" Delilah asked sarcastically.
"Oh, who needs to grow up now?" Elijah challenged. But as they bickered, they walked past another door, and the debater opened it to reveal a massive bathroom.
"This is so tacky, the bathroom is larger than my whole bedroom back home," the gamer remarked. There was a counter with two sinks, the faucet handles looking like they were made of crystal, with a mirror above it.
"We've got a lot of ground to cover, or maybe we'll find new clues along the way." Elijah cracked his knuckles. He made a big show of going over to the cabinets. He opened the first one and began to rummage through it.
"Find anything?" Delilah asked.
The debater pulled out a bunch of small tubes and pump bottles. "Who needs this many different kinds of lotions? …ah, I guess we do, for the next few days at least!"
"You're supposed to be looking in the shower, Lotion Boy," Delilah snapped. She pulled back the curtain in the back of the room to reveal an old-fashioned bathtub with ornate clawed feet. "Though there's not very much to look at in here…"
The scene switched to Tala and Francis. The nerds had made it into the garage, which was completely dark.
"I wonder what kind of car a house as extravagant as this one would have," Tala mused. "Or cars."
Francis then located the light switch and flipped it, causing the area to be illuminated by some flickering fluorescent lights. The two of them looked around, only to realize that the garage looked rather barren, with no car, just some shelves and a few cardboard boxes.
"This reminds me of the storage closet some basketball players once locked me in," Francis remarked, which earned him another concerned look from Tala.
"I guess they removed their vehicles before letting us run wild," Tala concluded. "I would too. Now, the clue said 'gar age,' but now that we made it, where to now?"
"I'm not sure." Francis gave a carefree shrug. "But we've gotta start somewhere!" He went to the nearest shelf and opened one of the boxes.
"Perhaps it's something related to what we have in common," Tala suggested.
"Didn't we figure that out already?" Francis asked.
"Well, all we know is that math and robotics are the same, well, genre, right? But what specifically is the point of overlap? Math is everywhere, at least that's the way I think about things. And I imagine that robotics requires many different moving parts… figurative as well as literal."
"I've worked on all different parts of the process," Francis recounted. "There's designing… that's a lot of math for the dimensions," he listed out. "Fabrication is even more of that, you have to measure out every piece. Electronics is basically just ones and zeroes, but hey, those are both numbers. And programming has a lot of processing data from sensors and stuff." The memer then pointed at a workbench that had a bunch of different tools and blueprints. "Maybe that's a good place to start?"
"Well, I've looked everywhere," Scout announced dejectedly, as she flopped down on the table on the backyard patio, sitting across from Arnold. She had finally given up on picking through the shrubbery.
"And I still don't know what the monster in Norse mythology has to do with anything," the scholar admitted, setting their clue back down on the table.
"Usually when I can't solve something, I forget about it and try and do something else," Scout declared, suddenly cheerful again. "Soooo… any ideas why the two of us were paired up? I still think it's blue, but I also think you're supposed to be the smart one."
Arnold put the clue to the side and gave a small nod. "That certainly is one way to go about life, and avoidant tactics do have their place." He thought for only a moment as he scrutinized Scout. "It's quite simple. We're both outcasts," he concluded.
Scout frowned at that, and tried to think of something she could say to protest, but she couldn't. She sighed. "Yeah, you could say that. But I've been trying to be more serious. But you seem like someone who would have lots of friends."
Arnold looked at her incredulously. "I very much do not. Outcast is a strange word. I just prefer to be left alone, really. Most of my peers respect that. But the worst part was my family."
"Tell me about it. My parents were always telling me to stop drawing and pay attention, because artists can't get good jobs," Scout recounted.
"They always dragged me along to Uncle's house and made me babysit my new cousins," Arnold added. "There were entirely too many people in one room, and I despise babies, they're just helpless lumps of meat."
"They made fun of me for not being able to tolerate the spice of kimchi."
"They threw a fit when I got my hair bleached and straightened, they said I was disrespecting my heritage."
"I still care about them, of course, we're family."
"But it can be a lot sometimes, and I need a break," Arnold finished, and Scout nodded.
Confessional: Team Blue - Arnold and Scout
Arnold gave a small smile. "Perhaps I read you wrong at first."
Scout seemed a lot more excited. "I have friends, I think, but we never get to talk about things like this, much less understand each other."
"Most of the people here have been more tolerable than expected. Perhaps my standards were skewed by… one person in particular." The scholar's expression hardened.
"What's Tyrone's deal anyways?" Scout asked Arnold, and he just rolled his eyes.
The scene switched back to the bedroom where Tyrone was searching with Allison.
"Tyrone, come out of the closet!" Allison called out.
There was stomping coming from inside the wardrobe. "What did you say to me?" the quarterback demanded angrily. "I'm not fucking gay!"
"I said, come back out here and look at this?" Allison reiterated, confused.
"Oh."
Confessional: Team Yellow - Allison and Tyrone
Tyrone was sitting in the chair with his arms crossed, and he looked like he wanted to sink into the floor in embarrassment.
"Do you want-" Allison began, but Tyrone shoved her away.
"Stop talking!" he demanded.
Allison was carefully cross-referencing the map she had graphed out with the layout of the room. "I wonder how precise this was meant to be," she thought aloud. "The path leads to this room, but does it matter what the exact location of the endpoint is? There aren't many places to hide things right in the middle of the room." She looked at the bed, and then up at the ceiling. "What do you think, Tyrone?" she asked, but it was clear she was starting to grow weary of him.
The quarterback was just sulking in the corner of the room, and he didn't respond.
In the hall, Kahil and Mistral were headed back towards the foyer. "Come to think of it, I didn't see any stairs anywhere," Kahil commented as he strutted down the hall. He was playing with the silver spoon he had snatched, throwing it up into the air and catching it, until one time he threw it too high. It hit the ceiling and knocked down a chunk of plaster that fell on his head, causing Mistral to laugh at him. "Yeesh, I didn't think a house as nice as this would be falling apart on me."
"That seems like a skill issue," the hoarder said snidely. "And stairs are for wimps. When I'm out late and I don't want to wake my Papa, I'll always climb up to my bedroom through the second floor window," she recounted.
"Really, I actually do that too!" Kahil responded. "Naila always throws a rope down for me." Mistral scowled at that, and Kahil began to understand. "Guess it's easier when I have a sister to watch my back," he added more quietly.
For once, the hoarder was silent.
Kahil opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. He and Mistral looked up at the house, and for a moment they were both stunned by the size of it.
"Looks even bigger than the house where my Papa works," Mistral murmured.
"There has to be a way to get to the second story somehow." Kahil began to walk around the side of the house. "There's a little balcony up there. I heard that one girl with the blue cap talking about climbing a tree," he recalled.
Mistral took a moment to scan the yard and plot a path up a big tree that had a branch hanging over the balcony. "If she can do it, I definitely can. No sister needed," she remarked.
"So you'll climb up and tell me what you can find?"
"Yeah loser, stand back and see how this works, Mistral style." The hoarder still seemed a little defensive, but they made a big show of rolling up their sleeves and approaching the side of the house.
"Hey, could I hold your backpack for you?" Kahil asked mischievously.
"Don't you fucking dare!" They quickly snatched it away from him.
Back in the bathroom, Elijah was standing inside the tub, staring up at the showerhead. "You know, how do we even know that the clue refers to the shower in this bathroom?" he remarked suddenly.
Delilah yawned. "I thought you've already been yammering on and on about how it can't be the bathrooms in our rooms? Like, what other shower is there?"
"How about… a sprinkler shower?" Elijah continued. "Could it be on the front lawn? Oh, or, is there a nursery or place with a crib for the baby shower? Or even a play on words on 'showing' something? I'm starting to think that we should be prioritizing breadth over depth here."
"Get to the point."
"Why don't we split up? See, I'll stay here, and you can scout out some of the other potential leads."
"I guess that makes sense," Delilah started to say, but Elijah was already pushing her towards the door.
However, as soon as the gamer left the bathroom, she heard a click. She stopped in her tracks, and began to piece things together. "Wait a second."
Inside the bathroom, she could hear Elijah cackling. "Have fun out there, I'm solving this clue on my own!" he shouted.
Delilah didn't respond, only staring at the locked door incredulously.
"I'm so gonna win this challenge!" Elijah called out.
Delilah started to walk away.
"Uh, don't panic too much or anything!"
The gamer just rolled her eyes. "Typical."
Confessional: Delilah
"He wants a reaction. That's what all of these people want. So of course I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction."
Confessional: Elijah
"I thought she was gonna stay. Maybe she would want to bargain with me, or at least be forced to talk to me. I shouldn't have done that, what am I ever gonna get done alone?"
Back in the garage, Tala and Francis were still looking through the numerous boxes and bins. "A lot of this seems like… props, or decorations," Francis noted. He was looking at a shelf with a huge plastic chandelier and some paper lanterns.
Tala was examining another shelf that was full of paper plates and cups, plastic utensils, and similar items. "I guess it makes sense there would be a lot of party stuff. Maybe we can use some of this for the weekend. It's a bit wasteful but I really don't feel like doing dishes."
"Yeah, I get you! When I was little I dreamed of making a robot to do all my chores. That was what got me into robotics in the first place," Francis explained. "Dozie can… sort of clean my room, but mostly just by pushing stuff around on the floor."
"Wait, look at this." Tala held up a black plastic box with a handle. It was decorated with stickers of fish.
"Is that some kind of toolkit?" Francis asked.
Tala sat down and set the box down on the ground to examine it. "I think it's a tackle box."
"That's not a very strong attack," Francis commented as he squatted next to her.
"I mean, it's a box to store fishing gear." Tala unlatched the box and opened it, to find a picture of a gar, identical to the one in the clue, on the inside of the lid. "That looks promising."
"Epic fish moment!" Francis cheered. "Or should I say, it's the gar age."
Inside the box were many small compartments that held hooks, fishing line, different types of bait, and other fishing-related trinkets. "Whoever owns this must be really organized," Tala said, in awe. Scanning the rows of compartments, she finally pulled out a small disk made of transparent green plastic, like a coin. It had an emblem of a ruler and protractor on it. "This must be it."
"Like you said, we're the nerds. Or the engineers. Let's get back to the living room!"
"Careful…" Kahil murmured, as he nervously paced underneath the balcony that overlooked the front lawn, while Mistral inched along a branch of a nearby tree. She was still wearing her backpack but it didn't seem to bother her, as she was trying to get up closer to the balcony.
Confessional: Kahil
"What am I saying? I don't do 'careful,'" Kahil scoffed.
Mistral leaped from the tree branch and grabbed the railing, nimbly scrambling over it and onto the balcony. The hoarder detected the glint of something purple wedged between two wooden planks almost instantly, and she grabbed it without a second thought. "Badabing badaboom, that's how it's done!" she gloated childishly, as Kahil whooped and pumped his fist in the air.
For a moment, she was completely transfixed by the object, but then she shoved it into her backpack. Just as quickly, Mistral vaulted over the balcony railing and was preparing to jump back onto the tree to get down. However, her backpack snagged on a nail and she lost her balance. Instead of steadying herself, she grabbed her backpack first, and fell over the edge. Despite their earlier confident act, they instantly panicked, screaming and flailing around. Kahil ran to catch her before she hit the ground.
"Don't touch me!" Mistral immediately writhed away from Kahil and fell onto the lawn.
All the while, she still had a death grip on her "hoard," and she quickly retrieved her new treasure. It was a small disk made of purple translucent plastic with an engraving of a coin on it.
Confessional: Team Purple - Kahil and Mistral
"It's a coin. With a picture of a coin on it." Kahil looked unimpressed. In the corner of the tape, their team logo, previously just a plain purple circle, blinked and gained the same marking as the etchings on the coin.
Meanwhile, Mistral was holding their new treasure to the light and squinting at it. She looked a little bruised herself but was acting like nothing had happened. "If you look more closely, the coin in the picture also has a design of a coin on it. Does it go even further?"
"Whatever, it makes sense." Kahil shrugged. "We do both like coins." He took out a coin of his own and flipped it up into the air, but it hit the bare lightbulb on the ceiling and shattered it, causing everything to go dark.. "Not again!" he groaned.
Scout and Arnold were still sitting on the patio, but their silence now seemed more comfortable. Arnold was reading his book with his flashlight, while Scout was staring off into space. Neither of them seemed to care much about the competition anymore. "I guess I'm not really cut out for this clue solving thing," Scout said apologetically. "At least the sunset is pretty." In front of them, the sky had turned orange.
"When you go far north to the Arctic circle, the sun never sets at all," Arnold said, finally looking up from his book. "They call it the 'land of the midnight sun.' Imagine what it would be like if it was bright all the time."
"How would you know when to go to sleep?" Scout wondered aloud. "But at least that's better than no sun at all."
After another moment of watching the sun set, something finally occurred to Arnold. "That's what the clue meant. Fenrir's prey… in the myths, he swallowed the sun," he realized, and as Scout pointed at the horizon, he followed her finger down to where the sun was just setting. "Where is the westmost point of the yard?"
As the sun sank lower on the horizon, it shone through a small gap in the fence.
"Well, the right direction is a good start. Let's find Fenrir's treasure!"
Back inside the house, Kahil and Mistral were running down the hall, with Mistral holding their purple coin up triumphantly. But on the way, they nearly collided with Tala and Francis, who were just coming back in from the garage. Tala was holding a green coin of her own. Mistral quickly pushed past them, but Kahil tripped while trying to follow her, and hit the ground hard.
"Whoa, are you okay?" Francis skidded to a stop, but Tala grabbed his arm.
"He'll be fine. I need to see what the end of this challenge looks like."
Confessional: Team Green - Tala and Francis
Tala looked remorseful, but just a little bit. "I mean, it's Kahil…"
"I guess so. He can survive anything," Francis said, trying to reassure himself more than anything.
"I was thinking more along the lines of him trying anything on us," the mathematician admitted.
Tala and Francis ran for the living room after Mistral, who had disappeared around the corner. Thinking fast, Kahil grabbed the edge of the fancy carpet that was lining the hall and yanked it, causing both team members to lose their balance. As they fell in a heap, the coin flew out of Tala's hand. Francis fumbled and tried to grab it, but Mistral darted back in and easily caught it.
"Nice distraction," the hoarder admitted as Kahil got up, completely unharmed.
Confessional: Team Green - Tala and Francis
"Yep, it's Kahil," Tala repeated.
"I didn't realize that carpet thing could actually work!" Francis said cheerfully, not caring that he and Tala both looked a bit bruised up. "I thought that only happened in cartoons."
"It probably only works with very specific material properties of both the rug and the floor. I recall something about coefficients of friction… I'm going to be thinking about this for the rest of the day, aren't I?"
Neither Tala nor Francis made any effort to take the coin back, seeming surprised more than anything, as the thieves got away. "That was kind of cringe," Francis groaned.
"Do you think that's against the rules? What does that mean for the challenge?" Tala asked as she gingerly got back to her feet.
"Well, there's only one way to find out! We still solved the riddle and everything."
Meanwhile, the purple team had already run off. Mistral immediately hopped onto the couch in the living room, sitting on top of the backrest. "Nyehehe, those losers didn't even put up a fight," she gloated. "And it looks like we're the first ones here."
"Do we have to do something?" Kahil asked, while Mistral was now playing with her two coins.
But right then, the TV turned on again, and Naomi appeared on the screen. She was still sitting at what appeared to be her desk, but now the lights were off, replaced by, inexplicably, a flashing disco ball in the background. "Congratulations, purple team! You're the first ones to make it back, and I think you deserve a toast." She held up a cocktail, which was in a coconut shell. She was briefly startled to notice that the coconut had an eldritch looking face on it, but she quickly got back down to business. "But I'm sure you two know the reason why I paired you up, and don't know if I should be encouraging you, as the two delinquents," she added wryly.
"That sounds like a you problem," Mistral retorted, sticking her tongue out at Naomi.
Naomi frowned. "Do you want your prize or not?"
"Yes, of course!" That finally got Mistral to behave, as she leaned towards the screen eagerly.
"You win… a box of doughnuts for breakfast tomorrow!" Naomi pressed a button on the soundboard at her desk, causing a sound effect of a crowd cheering to play and some confetti to appear, but it was clearly just a special effect on the screen.
Mistral didn't seem too happy with that. "Tomorrow? Can't we have them now?"
Naomi looked skeptical. "You want to eat doughnuts at midnight?"
"Hah, I don't see why not!" Kahil responded.
"Okay, I respect that… Linus!" Naomi called out, and the intern with the red beanie quickly rushed up to her.
Confessional: Team Purple - Kahil and Mistral
Kahil shrugged. "Delayed gratification has never been my thing. I live in the moment, 'cause anything could happen next and mess up all of your plans."
"If I know I'll have doughnuts later, there's still a chance that someone will try to take them away from me," Mistral reasoned, as she clutched her backpack to her chest. "Something like that will never happen if I've already eaten them."
Before Naomi was about to turn off the TV, Mistral suddenly stopped her. "Wait, what about this?" She held out the green coin that had been taken from Tala and Francis.
"Yeah, we're overachievers, we beat the challenge twice," Kahil added with a wink.
Naomi chuckled. "Oh, I saw what you guys did. I'd hold on to that for now, those coins will be important later."
Confessional: Team Purple - Mistral and Kahil
"Later? What's with all this delayed gratification?" Kahil whined, and Mistral pouted.
That was when the doorbell rang, and Mistral immediately pushed past Kahil and bolted out of the room.
"Don't you dare try that on me!" Kahil shouted and ran after her. "We're splitting those! And I mean evenly!"
But his words fell on deaf ears, as Mistral practically snatched the box of doughnuts straight out of Linus' hands.
"Wah, don't do that!" the intern protested, with a somewhat terrified expression.
Confessional: Mistral
She was leaning her entire body weight against the door of the laundry room as she clutched the box of doughnuts. She hadn't even opened the box, she was just holding on to it.
Kahil banged on the door. "Are you gonna share or what?"
The night was growing longer, and the sun had completely set at this point, but in the backyard, Arnold and Scout had used the last rays of light to find the right place to look. The westmost point of the yard was in the corner where two segments of the fence met. Arnold used his flashlight to search in the cracks and holes between the wooden boards, while Scout was digging in the dirt.
"How do we search, when we don't even know what we're looking for?" Arnold mused, starting to get irritated with the challenge. "What does a party favor mean anyways?"
"Naomi said we would know when we find it, so I guess we have to just try lots of different things!" On the other hand, Scout's enthusiasm hadn't faded at all. "But my guess is that it's, like, some kind of buried treasure! This was basically just a treasure hunt!" She sighed. "Man, I've really been missing out by not playing Spin the Bottle until now."
"You really think that's what the game-" Arnold started to correct her, but trailed off and just shook his head to himself. With his height, he was almost able to see on top of the fence, and he was checking for any hidden markings. "I doubt that this rusty nail means anything."
"Maybe I should climb a tree?" Scout suggested.
Arnold narrowed his eyes. "...in the dark?"
"Okay, maybe I just like to climb trees," Scout admitted. "Digging makes more sense, anyways. See, that's because Fenrir is a wolf, so he's basically a dog, and dogs dig holes to bury bones."
Arnold said nothing, but his expression showed that he didn't buy it at all.
Confessional: Arnold
"I thought maybe I had finally found common ground with someone, but it doesn't change the fact that Scout is tiresome to be around. How does she have that much energy? But I suppose I'll take anyone that's not Rex."
"And, besides that, we're following the sunset," Scout continued. "That's when the sun basically disappears into the ground, so shouldn't we be going lower?"
"That part… actually makes some sense," Arnold admitted.
"C'mon, you're just thinking so much about your 'land of the midnight sun' that you forgot how the sunset works," Scout teased.
Arnold ignored her, and stood on his tiptoes and continued to look along the top of the fence, until Scout interrupted him again.
"Whoa, no way!" the artist shouted excitedly.
"You found something?" Arnold asked.
"Look at this worm!" She held up a big scoop of dirt with an earthworm wiggling around in it.
Arnold was so startled that he dropped the flashlight. He looked away in disgust. "Get that thing away from me!"
"But why? They're so cute!" Scout held the worm right in front of her face, but as it squirmed around in her hand, it cleared away some dirt and revealed something shining blue. "Wait… is this your treasure, Mx. Worm? Arnold, this worm has a hoard, like a dragon!"
Arnold recomposed himself and retrieved his flashlight in time to watch Scout gently setting the worm back down in the dirt. She then picked up the blue object and brushed it off to reveal it was an oversized plastic coin, same as the ones that other groups had found. It was etched with a design of an open book with a scene of some distant mountains.
"That has to be it, right?" Arnold asked.
"We found the worm's treasure!" Scout cheered. "Let's go show Naomi… wait, maybe we should bring the worm back too?"
"No!" Arnold snapped before Scout could start digging in the dirt again.
Elijah sighed. "Well, I guess it's just me and the lotions now." There was now a large pile on the bathroom floor of various soaps, lotions, and other assorted hygiene products, all from big brand names. He had been rummaging through the cabinets underneath the sink.
Confessional: Delilah
"I've been listening at the door for a bit now," she revealed. "I wasn't expecting to get much out of it, but Elijah… really likes to talk to himself for some reason," she scoffed.
Confessional: Elijah
"I don't really like being alone. I need people to talk to, and if that's myself, then so be it. You might think I sound silly, but I sure don't think I sound silly."
"I really underestimated how much Delilah just… doesn't care," he admitted. "It's gonna be difficult to find an advantage against someone like that. But I can still start by winning the challenge for us."
The debater was still muttering to himself as he continued to look through the bathroom cabinets. "Could the actual pictures in the clue have any meaning? Would it be with the baby powder? Or the allergy meds since April is allergy season?"
He finally found himself back in front of the shower. The shower head was above the ornate bathtub, and he scrutinized it once more. "Where do you hide something inside a shower?" Out of ideas, he reached for the crystal knob and turned on the shower.
As expected, he was instantly met with freezing cold water in the face. He screamed, which even startled Delilah while she was pacing back and forth in the hall, and slipped and fell backwards into the tub.
Confessional: Elijah
"The last mansion I was in, I almost drowned in the pool! Clearly, you can't blame me for being on edge."
Elijah fumbled for the knob and managed to turn off the shower, only for water to just start coming out of the faucet into the bathtub. Eventually he managed to turn that off too, but he was already drenched at that point. He just sat there in the tub, completely bewildered, and could've sworn he had heard Delilah laughing at him from outside the room.
That was when he saw something red glinting in the tub. He quickly snatched it up before the water drained. "Must've come out of the faucet, gross," he muttered. He stood up to avoid the water and held it up to the light, revealing an oversized red plastic coin. It was etched with an image of a butterfly.
Elijah thought for a moment about what to do as he tried his best to wring some of the water out of his clothes. He elected to put the coin in his pocket and then stepped out of the bathtub.
He then reached for the door… only to find that the handle was stuck. He tried it again, jiggling it more forcefully, and then tried to push the door open, but it still wouldn't budge. "Hey!"
"Oh, I don't know what happened. Something must've gotten stuck," came Delilah's voice from the other side, with what was clearly fake surprise.
When Tala and Francis made it to the living room, still licking their wounds, there was no one there.
"Where did they go?" Tala asked, looking around in confusion. "There's no way we could have beaten them."
"There's always a chance!" Francis declared, but the mathematician shook her head.
"Welcome back!" Naomi's voice called out as the DJ appeared on the TV screen. "You have something for me?"
"So, about that…" Tala said.
"Nah, I'm just messing with you." Naomi waved a hand dismissively. "I know what happened."
Francis gawked at the screen. "How-"
"It's nothing extraordinary. I've seen all your cameras," Tala pointed out.
"Fine, be like that." Naomi pouted. "But yeah, I know you don't have your coin with you."
"That also means you saw that we solved the riddle and found the coin?" Tala asked hopefully.
"Yeah, sure, it looked like that was what you were doing." Naomi gave an indifferent shrug. "The garage's cameras aren't very good. Not exactly the best party venue and all."
"So did we complete the challenge or not?" Tala blurted out, growing impatient, but immediately flinched afterwards and looked apologetic.
Naomi quirked an eyebrow. "Yeah, I'm marking that 'did not finish.' That means you're automatically gonna be in last," the DJ confirmed. "Unless…"
"Unless what?" Tala demanded.
"Unless you can find your coin again. Whatever that looks like."
"Got it." Tala nodded, and Naomi and Francis could both already see the gears turning in her head.
"You're in second place right now. Good luck." As soon as Naomi finished speaking, the screen turned off.
Confessional: Team Green - Tala and Francis
Francis seemed a little surprised by Tala's sudden intensity. "It's okay, it wasn't our fault we lost."
"This is a puzzle," the mathematician said sheepishly. "I have to see this through. Figure it out."
"So, how are we going to get it? Do you think Kahil and Mistral will let us borrow the coin?" Francis asked.
"Somehow… I don't think they will," Tala said wearily. "But we have some time, I hope. I haven't seen any of the other teams around."
Back in the master bedroom, it looked like a hurricane had hit. Tyrone was searching everywhere without any regard of the space around him, recklessly pulling the sheets off the bed, wadding them up, and tossing them to the side. Through all of it, he was completely silent, aside from the occasional slam of dresser drawers.
"I already looked there," Allison told Tyrone as he was approaching the nightstand.
"I don't care. You probably missed something." He pulled on the nightstand drawer a little too forcefully, and the entire thing came out. He shrugged to himself and set the empty drawer down to the side. "Useless thing," he grumbled.
At that, Allison finally snapped and marched over to him. "Look, your head's clearly not in the game right now, and I won't stand for that. You need to talk to me, because we're a team."
Tyrone finally stopped and looked at Allison. "Oh, you wanna be a team so badly? Maybe we should be a team for the rest of the game," he said, somehow still framing this as a threat.
Allison frowned. "Oh, really, now you want to collaborate? Well, here's one condition." He grabbed Tyrone's arm before he could throw another pillow to the side.
Tyrone growled at her, but after a moment, he took a deep breath to calm himself, then lowered his arm.
"You need to tell me what you're so upset about."
Whatever semblance of control Tyrone had gained, he immediately lost it. "That makes no sense! What does how I feel have to do with the competition? My feelings have never mattered, and I'm proud of it!"
"Why are you making this so difficult? It doesn't have to be a huge revelation! I'm an athlete too, so I just know it's important to eliminate the distractions that keep me from achieving peak performance. And it's clear that you're distracted," she added, more gently.
Tyrone sat down on the floor, then abruptly flopped backwards, lying on his back on top of the pile of pillows and blankets that he had been tossing around. "I'm just so angry that he's here!" he ranted. "The nerve that Boreal must have, to come here and follow me like this."
"Wouldn't he be feeling something similar?" Allison sat down as close to him as she dared and leaned on a pillow.
"Of course not. He loves this. He only cares about tormenting me."
"Really, now. The only reason he even applied to this show was so that he could come after you," Allison said sarcastically. "He spends every waking hour trying to think about new ways to insult you and make you feel bad, and when he goes to sleep he dreams about it too."
"Exactly!" Tyrone declared.
"What makes you think you're that important? You're being self-centered. You're just a person. We're all people. We all have our own things to do. Sure, Arnold and you don't get along, but I seriously doubt that he thinks about you all the time."
Tyrone looked at the floor and murmured something intelligible, and Allison cocked her head.
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."
"I think about him all the time," Tyrone repeated, only a little bit louder. When he finally made eye contact with Allison again, he looked downright terrified.
Before the tennis player could respond, he suddenly stood back up. "Happy now? Let's get back to this challenge."
Confessional: Team Yellow - Allison and Tyrone
This confessional was almost identical to their previous one, as Tyrone was completely silent, arms crossed as he slumped down in the folding chair. Allison looked at him expectantly, but he just shook his head.
After a bit, Tala finally found the challenge winners in the kitchen. Mistral was stuffing her face with doughnuts, while Kahil was leaning dangerously far back in his chair as he flipped his purple coin up in the air.
"Heeey guys," Tala greeted Mistral and Kahil nervously.
"What do you want?" Mistral snapped at her. "…actually, scratch that. I know exactly what you want."
"What can we say?" Kahil gave a smug grin. "You should've held on to it tighter."
Mistral was a lot less friendly, and pulled out her knife. Tala quickly got the idea and backed up.
But after a moment, she squinted at Mistral. "Wait a second. Did you take that from the kitchen?" The hoarder just shrugged.
"You can interrogate us all you want. If you really want to know, we already threw the coin out," Kahil spoke up.
"Why would you do that?" Tala looked distressed at this thought, maybe even more distressed than when she had been threatened with a knife. "You could need it for something later! This clearly is going to be a piece of a bigger puzzle."
"And so? I don't have to solve all the puzzles, I just have to find a way to be the first to find the prize." Kahil shrugged, waving the purple coin around carelessly.
Tala frowned. "You're bluffing," she declared, but she didn't seem completely sure of it.
Confessional: Team Purple - Kahil and Mistral
Mistral held the green coin up to the camera proudly. "Nyehehe, she suspected nothing."
Kahil turned to her in shock. "Wait a second, I thought you said you hid that?" he asked.
"I would never let go of any of my treasures," the hoarder declared, as she quickly put the coin back in her backpack and clutched it to her chest.
Meanwhile, Francis was aimlessly driving Dozie around the halls, when he came across a strange sight. Delilah was sitting with her back against the wall next to the door of one of the rooms leading off from the hall. The handle of the door had been jammed with a broom. She didn't even seem to have a clue with her. She was just staring into space.
Francis paused for a moment to contemplate, but then he just ran straight up to Delilah and sat down next to her. "Hey gamer, whatcha doing here?"
"Long story, I guess. You've already finished the challenge, right?" Delilah asked.
Francis flinched a bit at that, but he quickly nodded. "...yeah."
"And why are you all wet?"
"Long story," Francis repeated.
Confessional: Francis
"Maybe I should've been helping Tala. I told her I would go check Kahil's bunk… or what's left of it anyways, since no one can hope to get anywhere near anything of Mistral's. But I got distracted when I saw a friend!"
Suddenly, there was a banging coming from inside the room, and both of them turned in the direction of the noise. "Let me out!" Elijah shouted.
Francis turned to Delilah for an explanation, but she just giggled and shrugged.
"I know you're out there! Can we be done with this now? I solved the clue and found the damn coin!" Then, there was a loud thump followed by a cry of pain, as if Elijah had kicked the door.
"And why should I believe you?" Delilah called back.
"You… didn't want to search with Elijah?" Francis asked, trying to piece together what was going on.
"He was the one who wouldn't let me in," Delilah responded.
"Wait, who else is there?" Elijah was clearly listening to them too. "Francis, my man, you've gotta help me out, she's just crazy! Naomi is gonna have something to say about this!"
Francis wasn't sure how to deal with this. "Um, why are you guys trying to lock the door on each other anyways?"
"He made me leave the room so he could keep whatever junk we're supposed to be searching for to himself," the gamer finally explained. "Soooo… I decided I wouldn't let him out."
"And what good is that gonna do for both of us?" Elijah yelled.
"Fine, I'll unlock the door… but only if you give me the thing you found."
"Slide it under the door?" Delilah suggested.
"Uhh, nah, I can't do that, it's pretty big."
Delilah turned to Francis. "What even is the party favor we're looking for?"
The memer had no problem just giving this information away. "Oh, it's this plastic coin thing!" he said helpfully.
"Francis," Elijah groaned. "Fine, take the damn thing."
"That wasn't that hard, was it?" Delilah responded. She took her time picking up the red coin that Elijah slid her way, before removing the broom so the debater could open the door.
"It all worked out in the end," Elijah responded, with more confidence than he probably should've had.
Scout and Arnold were now standing in front of the onscreen Naomi in the living room. "Look, we got this from a worm!" Scout said excitedly, waving the blue coin around. "Though I'm surprised it wasn't a sea-worm. You know, because you gave us blue, like the water and stuff."
"I've already told you that line of reasoning was a dead end," Arnold said wearily.
"The worm has nothing to do with anything," Naomi confirmed with a slight grimace. "But you two can still be early birds, as you're the second group to complete the challenge."
"So there was someone ahead of us," Arnold stated, looking around in confusion. "Did they turn in for the night already?"
Naomi shrugged. "It's their loss, the party is just getting started." She stifled a yawn. "Water or not, you guys must know why we paired you together now," she continued. "Besides the blue jackets, of course."
Scout nudged Arnold and gave him a triumphant look when Naomi mentioned their color scheme. The scholar didn't respond, instead turning to the DJ quizzically. "There are quite a few reasons."
"Um, because you guys both like books?" Naomi responded, as if this was completely obvious. "Specifically, adventure stories."
Scout and Arnold both gave Naomi confused looks. "I thought he only read boring history stuff," Scout said.
"And I would never concern myself with silly imaginary fairy-tales," Arnold added disdainfully.
"Yeah, you were the last two left," Naomi admitted.
"I guess that's what the drawing on the coin means," Scout realized, turning it around in her hands and looking at the etched book on its surface.
Arnold frowned. "So that means…"
"All the stuff you said, about being outcasts and feeling out of place with our family?" Scout started.
"Irrelevant," Arnold said with a baffled expression. "It makes me even more amazed that I managed to connect with the likes of you."
"That… that's a good thing. Right?" Scout lowered her eyes. For the first time, she finally seemed to be catching on to Arnold's rude tone.
Naomi shrugged. "Hey, our background checks can't find everything."
Confessional: Arnold
"I suppose the weight of all those things I told her does not change just because it wasn't what we were intended to do. It just… still feels unpleasant, exposing myself like that."
"As you were the second-place finishers, we delivered a little something for you," Naomi continued. Scout perked up at that but Arnold still looked pretty stoic. She then turned to Linus, who seemed to be sitting next to her, but the top of his beanie was the only thing visible behind a massive stack of paperwork. "You really left that unattended with Mistral running around?"
"They were distracted," the courier reassured her. "Besides, it was just the scraps left."
Scout and Arnold had gone out onto the porch, where they found a small flimsy box with the season's logo sitting there. Arnold picked it up and opened it.
Scout peered inside, and saw it was full of doughnut holes. "I don't get it," she said after a moment.
Confessional: Naomi and Linus
The two of them were recording a confessional in the office break room, which seemed to be decorated with even more streamers and confetti than the actual party venue.
"Um, you know that's not actually how doughnuts are made anymore, right?" Linus pointed out, as he was pouring two cups of coffee for them.
"It's still pretty funny."
The two both snickered and high-fived, congratulating each other on the joke.
Just as Naomi and Linus were returning to the control room with coffee, unnecessarily loud footsteps and the aggressive slam of a door heralded the next team to arrive. Naomi quickly connected to the TV again, and looked a bit surprised to see them.
Tyrone held up the yellow coin. "See, we beat your dumb challenge."
"It should be pretty obvious why you two were paired up," Naomi commented.
"We're the two strongest competitors," Tyrone declared immediately.
"And it's because we both play sports," Allison added pointedly.
"That's what I meant."
Naomi nodded. "And for that, you two… take third place."
"Seriously?" Tyrone burst out. "What happened?"
"Alright." Allison clapped her hands, but her tone seemed more strained. "That's fine. We'll just have to come back for the next set."
Confessional: Team Yellow - Allison and Tyrone
The yellow circle in the corner of the screen flashed, and a symbol of a flexing arm appeared on it, matching what was etched on their coin.
"It wasn't too difficult to search once we split up the work, right?" Allison asked.
"Don't talk down to me like that," Tyrone snapped. "I was still the one who found the coin. But it would've been better if we had won."
"A lot of other sports are about winning," Allison recounted. "But tennis is more about not losing. You're competing to be the last one to make a mistake, so it's… always hard for me when something goes wrong. But at least we have each other to rely on now, right?"
"Whatever. I guess all I care about is beating someone's ass."
"Some of us would appreciate it if you used your inside voices," a voice suddenly said.
"Have you two been here this whole time?" Allison asked in shock, as she turned to the couch to see Arnold and Scout were sitting there.
Tyrone seemed downright furious that Arnold had beaten them. However, Arnold didn't seem to be paying him any attention, and immediately went back to his book. He was sitting on the couch with Scout as they were looking at some illustrations of snowy landscapes.
"Maybe you were right," Tyrone admitted to Allison.
The tennis player arched an eyebrow. "Oh? I've said a whole lot of things that you said weren't right today."
"Not about everything, of course!" Tyrone insisted. "At least, just… the part about Boreal just being another person. I need to stop thinking about him. I'll just let him be. As long as I'm the one to win in the end, I'll get the last laugh."
"You're welcome."
"...thank you," Tyrone muttered and looked away. "For listening. Most people just run away from me."
"And is that their fault, or yours?" Allison countered, but then she put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Well, I'm not like those people, so I can say I'm glad to help, and let's just come back stronger. The only thing that sucks more than losing is losing two in a row."
Confessional: Allison
"Tyrone better know that he needs me. I'm not gonna boss him around like he thought he could do to me, but he needs to try to make it work too. You can't play doubles if you don't trust your partner to cover the other lane."
"Did you find anything?" Tala confronted Francis in the hall, and immediately launched into an analysis. "I talked to Mistral and Kahil, but as expected, they weren't cooperative, and they even seemed to be trying to confuse me." She then finally noticed Elijah and Delilah were walking with him. "Did you also fall in the pool?" she asked Elijah as he tracked water down the hall.
"I don't want to talk about it," the debater muttered, a sentence that was rarely heard from him.
"We're the last ones, aren't we?" Delilah asked.
"Um, about that…" Tala started to explain, but they had already reached the end of the hall.
When they entered the living room, the other three teams were all waiting for them, and so were Naomi and Linus onscreen.
"Ayo DJ Boomburst!" Elijah called out and made finger guns as Delilah held up the red coin with a disinterested expression.
"Ayo Team Red!" Naomi made a finger gun back at them. "You are in fourth place."
Confessional: Team Red - Delilah and Elijah
The red logo in the corner of the screen finally revealed the etching on their coin, which was the silhouette of a butterfly.
"A butterfly, huh. Is there a butterfly shower? Or maybe it just refers to the phenomenon of the butterfly effect, like how the actions of one person can be enough to change the world!"
"We're social butterflies," Delilah stated bluntly. "We're both popular. Or maybe we used to be. Makes sense, since all the information the show seemed to have on me was seriously outdated."
"Heh, can't argue with that," Elijah said proudly.
"I can. I have two friends I play games with, which is two more than you'd probably expect, but I probably wouldn't get a butterfly achievement."
"You have friends online?" Elijah asked dubiously. "I could never, that's clearly the inferior form of relationship, and I need to talk to people face to face."
Delilah narrowed her eyes as she remembered something. "Didn't you say you moved a lot? If not online, how do you keep in touch with your old friends?"
Elijah looked away. "I guess… I just don't."
"Wait, if we're fourth…" Delilah looked around the room, seeing all five teams. "That must mean that you didn't find your coin?" she asked Francis.
"Well, we did, but then we sort of… lost it again," the memer explained, and started to elaborate further, but Tala looked at him and shook her head.
Naomi cleared her throat, but it wasn't too effective via the screen, and conversation continued.
"Everyone shut up!" Elijah shouted, slamming his fist on the coffee table as if he had a gavel.
Delilah rolled her eyes. "Bold words coming from you."
"Thank you," Naomi said. "What I was saying was, it looks like all the coins have been found, one way or another, so I'm calling this challenge over. Good night."
"Wait, that's it?" Tyrone asked incredulously. "That's the entire challenge?"
"So… what even was the point of ranking us?" Allison asked.
"Prizes have already been distributed to the top two teams," Naomi recounted casually. "They might share if you're nice." Mistral quickly double-checked her backpack to make sure all her doughnuts were still there. The DJ then yawned. "Well, it's finally time for me to turn in, it's like two in the morning. We've got more party games in store, and there's a lot of the house left to see, so you'd better hold on to your coins 'til tomorrow."
"Hold on to your coins, huh?" Kahil repeated. He looked pointedly at Tala, who seemed a little intimidated. "That's easier said than done." He winked.
Confessional: Team Purple - Kahil and Mistral
"Well, it seems that these coins will be important for something tomorrow, and we've already collected two of them," Kahil said with a mischievous grin. "So, what do you say we try and grow our collection later?"
"I had fun today, and I'll never say no to messing with these losers more," Mistral affirmed. The hoarder hesitated for a moment, then reached into their backpack, and handed Kahil a single doughnut.
He stared at her, shocked.
"Don't get used to it, loser," they snapped. But all of a sudden, a bottle of fabric softener randomly fell over on the shelf and spilled all over the doughnut in Kahil's hand.
He shrugged. "I've eaten worse."
Confessional: Tyrone
"I need to sleep well. If anyone starts snoring, they're fucking dead. And I'll be holding on to this. I definitely don't trust Allison to." He held up the yellow coin.
With that, Naomi disappeared and the television turned off. At this point, most of the contestants were looking pretty tired, save for Mistral who was running on about half a dozen doughnuts.
"I don't know about you guys," Allison started. "But I need to get to sleep."
Tala nodded. "I can't imagine being much more productive this late."
"I think I need another shower," Elijah grumbled, still trying to wring out his shirt.
Confessional: Tala
"I still have a lot to think about. What do we each need a coin for? Could it be competitive or collaborative, and how will Kahil and Mistral having my coin affect the puzzle? But I, um, sometimes solve problems in my sleep. There have been times where I've woken up and suddenly had a new idea on how to approach a math problem. It's still a mystery, but we have two days here."
Confessional: Scout
"Sooo, I wasn't paying attention for most of Naomi's talk, but she was right that we haven't even seen the whole house yet. Wait a second, wasn't there a whole upstairs area? How do you even get there?" She clapped her hands excitedly. "Alright, the first order of business tomorrow is doing some exploring!"
Back in the control room, Naomi had fallen asleep at her desk, somehow balancing in a very precarious position with her legs on the desk and her chair tipped backwards. "Wait, Miss Boomburst! We forgot to record-" Linus called out, but she had her headphones on and couldn't hear a thing. "...the outro," he finished, looking a little dejected. "Wait a second…" He suddenly had an idea.
Linus got in front of the camera and began to narrate. "Hi Dad, look, I'm on TV! Gee, my first day on the job has been crazy, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. So we'll see you next time on Total! Drama! House Party!" Right before the video cut off, Naomi started snoring in the background.
Duos this episode:
Team Green (Nerds): Francis and Tala
Team Red (Populars): Delilah and Elijah
Team Purple (Delinquents): Kahil and Mistral
Team Yellow (Jocks): Allison and Tyrone
Team Blue (Outcasts): Arnold and Scout
I don't have much to say for this one. It was a fun chill story to return to, while I'm also laying the groundwork for a season that hopefully feels pretty unique, and I really enjoyed getting to pair up everyone this chapter. With no eliminations, I'm really looking forward to developing endgame plots for everyone. Concrit is very much appreciated per usual!
Playing Next: "In a tidal wave of mystery, you'll still be standing next to me"