Fulcon
Well-known member
Nah, I want to be surprised.
Not a problem to be solved, but a remark on the thread going into spoiler territory.
I Don't Wanna Be Famous (A Total Drama SI story)
- Thread starter JasonSanjo
- Start date
Nah, I want to be surprised.
Not a problem to be solved, but a remark on the thread going into spoiler territory.
Actually thinking about it now that Geoff and DJ are fighting who would they hang out with now? Trying to think of who and the only other people they can hang with are Jason or Duncan. Kinda sad they are fighting. They were basically a alliance with how friendly they were. Sorta like Jason/Eva unofficial alliance(soon to be official) and Duncan/Courtney soon to be alliance from relationship. Gophers have more intrigue in their team while the Bass have more alliances in the team. Weirdly funny.
JasonSanjo
Your Overlord and Jester
Yeah, the team dynamics are changing, that's for sure. Exactly what is temporary and what is more long-term remains to be seen. Geoff and DJ need to resolve their issues one way or another. Whether Jason and/or Duncan get involved with the whole thing remains to be seen as well. Alliances are slowly forming, some like they did in canon, some not... and some are of course entirely new due to the presence of Jason and different people getting voted off.
If anyone can make up it Geoff and DJ. At least have a higher chance than most anyway but there is the chance their friendship is over. It very much more a game than it was in canon with all these alliances. Heather and Lindsay in a official alliance. Jason and Eva unofficial but soon to be official if my guess is correct. Duncan and Courtney from the possible relationship. Geoff and DJ aren't at this time but could make up. Justin technically isn't in one but is leaning Heather (could change though). Trent is in a weird spot alone that doesn't want to go against Gwen and Heather. Gwen and Owen are leaning Jason because he's being nice to them and Heather pushing them away because she thinks they are under Jason's thumb so so a possible alliance between Gwen and Owen for the time being and joining Jason's alliance at the merge. Lots of factors this time around and Chris must love it.
Very much looking forward to the next chapter and all the possible suffering it could have. XD
cringyusername
New member
i am waiting for the third season and its constant singing it will be fun to read
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Assuming Jason doesn't throw Chris into a jet turbine over it of course
cringyusername
New member
with or with out that it will still be fun
Fulcon
Well-known member
JasonSanjo
Your Overlord and Jester
Quick update: The next chapter is looking to become my longest one yet! I'm already at 6.5k words and I still have several scenes left to write. I will try to finish it by Sunday, but due to the length it may end up delayed by a day or two, just so you all know.
Chapter 12: Das Boot... Camp
JasonSanjo
Your Overlord and Jester
I Don’t Wanna Be Famous
A Total Drama SI story
Disclaimer: Total Drama belongs to Fresh TV Inc. I’m simply borrowing it to tell some stories.
Author’s Notes: The longest chapter yet! I kinda feel like I overused the title “Master Chief” in this one, but maybe that’s just me. And I gotta say, I really struggled with the jokes during the dance routine. Hopefully it didn’t come out too awful. As for the rest of the chapter? Well, I do feel some parts were a bit rushed… and there were some scenes that ended up never happening due to butterflies, as you’ll see (or not, rather); it was probably for the best, though, as the chapter was getting way too long anyway.
Chapter 12: Das Boot… Camp
Chris stood on the dock as he addressed the camera.
“Last time, on Total Drama Island…”
Clips began rolling, showing scenes from the previous episode.
“The teams were given three challenges that tested their trust in their teammates.
“The rock-climbing challenge revealed more than just Heather’s grudge against Gwen, and Trent got the bad end of a blowfish, courtesy of Lindsay.
“DJ trusted Geoff with his pet bunny, but Bunny ended up losing trust in DJ. Some other campers got dropped on their butts, and Jason shocked Heather by showing her his funny side. Yeah. Or is it all just funny business?
“Stay tuned as cold war turns hot on Total. Drama. Island!”
“I swear to you, Duncan, they were totally flirting!”
Duncan looked up from his latest work-in-progress – a piece of wood he was slowly carving into a skull – to regard Courtney as she sat next to him on the steps outside the Bass’ cabin.
“Jason and Heather?”
“Yes!”
“In the medical tent?”
“Yes!”
“When you had a concussion?”
“Ye- You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I dunno, Princess, it sounds kinda far-fetched.”
“I know what I saw,” Courtney said irritably. “And I’m not a princess!”
Duncan shrugged. “Hey, whatever floats your boat, honey.”
“And I’m not your ‘honey’, either!” she snapped and stood up. “You might not believe me, but I’m willing to bet if we went and found Jason right now, we’d see him flirting with Heather.”
“Fat chance of that,” Duncan shot back. He flicked a thumb over his shoulder towards the forest. “I saw him and Gwen go into the woods earlier.”
Courtney’s eyes widened. “What? He’s two-timing?!”
“I don’t think he’s the type,” he returned. “Besides, between those two? Sure, Heather’s smokin’ hot, but she’s- Uh…”
“Oh, she’s ‘smokin’ hot’ is she?” Courtney asked, crossing her arms over her chest as her eyes narrowed.
Duncan’s eyes flitted this way and that, desperately searching for a distraction and finding none. “Uhhh… You know, broadly speaking, there are some guys, who, uh, might consider her attractive…?”
“Pig.”
“Oh, come on!”
“So how come you spend so much time in the woods?” Gwen asked me as we walked through the woods, having already left the main path. It was maybe an hour after breakfast, and my second walk that day. The reason? Well, the two of us decided to hang out, and she suggested going for a walk.
Hey, I never said it was a complicated reason.
I turned my gaze upward, taking in the sight of the sunlight trickling down between the leaves as I pondered the question. “It calms me,” I said after a moment.
“It calms you?”
“I dunno if you noticed, but I get… irritable when I’m around people a lot,” I said. “The forest helps calm me down.”
“Huh.” We walked in silence for a moment before she spoke again, holding up her sketch pad. “That’s what drawing and writing does for me.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I’m not exactly a people person either,” the Goth girl clarified as she replaced the sketch pad inside her bag.
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said dryly, earning me a grin and a light, backhanded slap on the arm.
“Very funny,” she said.
We exchanged a chuckle, then walked in silence for a couple minutes before I spoke again.
“You’re a city girl, ain’t cha?”
“How’d you know?”
“You keep stumbling on roots,” I said, gesturing at the ground. “It’s like you’re used to the ground being flat and even, like a sidewalk.”
Gwen’s cheeks reddened slightly. “I’m that obvious, huh?”
“Yup. Plus, Goths aren’t very common in the countryside,” I continued. “Your clothes aren’t exactly, uh… forest-compliant.”
Gwen shot me an amused look. “Forest-compliant?”
“Hey, English ain’t my first language,” I said defensively. “Sometimes I gotta improvise. It’s not like I’m carryin’ around a dictionary in my pocket.” I gave her a sidelong glance. “I like the corset, though. It suits you.”
She looked at the ground, her cheeks tinged red. “Thanks.”
Internally, I shook my head. This girl obviously wasn’t used to compliments. Then again, neither am I.
I stopped and tilted my head to listen, prompting Gwen to slow down and look at me in puzzlement. “I am kinda curious,” I said after a moment.
“About what?”
“About the person following us,” I answered. “At first I thought it was just an animal passing by, but now I’m pretty damn sure we’re being followed.”
“Maybe it’s another cameraman?” she suggested, glancing at the cameraman – one of Chris’s myriad interns – following close behind us. The young man swept his camera around, then turned to us and shrugged; evidently, he hadn’t noticed anything either.
For obvious reasons, the cameramen weren’t supposed to interact with us directly, and Chris had made it abundantly clear we were supposed to act like they weren’t there… but even now, after nearly a month on the island, it was sometimes hard to do so.
“No,” I said curtly after following her gaze. Upon seeing Gwen’s questioning look, I added, “The person following us isn’t top-heavy like this guy is.”
She blinked. “How can you tell?”
“The sound.”
“Meaning…?”
“When you’re top-heavy, especially on one side of the body, you move differently. It creates a different rhythm and… uh… intonation? Look, I’m not a sound guy. It just sounds different. Whoever’s followin’ us ain’t top-heavy. I’d say… the person is around my weight, with a fairly normal weight distribution, and is trying to sneak but doesn’t know how to move through this kind of terrain at all.”
Gwen stared at me. “You can tell all that just from the sound?”
“Well, it does help that I got a good look at him before he hid behind that rock over there just now,” I confessed, doing an upward nod in the direction of said rock.
Gwen glanced toward it. “Who is it?”
“Trent.”
“Ugh, that’s all I need.”
“You guys fighting?”
She sighed. “Sort of… It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t it always?”
“Well-”
Before she could finish her reply I dashed toward the nearby cliff face we’d been walking towards. Kicking off the ground, I jumped and used my momentum to quickly climb upward. Once I reached the lowest outcropping, I turned and looked down.
“What are you doing?!” Gwen asked, craning her neck to look up at me.
“Losing our stalker,” I said simply. “Come on.”
“I can’t climb that!”
“You were climbing just fine yesterday.”
“I had a rope then!”
I rolled my eyes. Putting myself flat against the rock, I leaned over the edge and reached down with my right arm. “Fine, then consider me your rope. Grab my wrist and I’ll pull you up.”
Gwen opened her mouth, but no words came out. After a moment she just shook her head and reached for my hand. Once we both had a firm grip on each other’s wrist, I pulled her up while using my other hand to push myself back. Within seconds, I’d heaved her up on the outcropping with me.
“There, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?” I asked with a smirk.
“I guess not,” the Goth girl mumbled, her gaze lowered. Then she blinked. “What about the cameraman?”
I looked down to where the cameraman was standing, filming us from below with a sheepish look on his face.
“Eh, he can find his own way up. Make him earn his pay, y’know?”
“Dude, I’m an intern!” the cameraman protested, in a blatant violation of cameraman/camper communication protocol. “I don’t get pay!”
“Yeah, well, sucks to be you, then,” I returned before turning to Gwen with a grin. “Come on, let’s lose these losers.”
The Goth girl giggled. “Okay!”
“Come on, man!”
Ignoring the cameraman, we proceeded up the cliff, climbing from outcropping to outcropping – Gwen occasionally getting some help from yours truly – until we reached the top.
“Alright, that should throw ‘em off for a bit,” I said as I looked down. The cliff wasn’t as high as the one Chris had picked for the previous day’s climbing challenge, nor anywhere near as treacherous to climb, but it ought still provide a substantial obstacle for an average person trying to climb it on their own without help. And if they went around the cliff and walked up the far slope? Well, that would take quite a bit of time… time that we wouldn’t just be spending doing nothing.
“Alrighty, let’s go… this way,” I said, spying an animal trail between the trees.
“Hold on, can we rest for a bit?” Gwen asked then, stopping me dead in my tracks. Her breathing was a bit ragged, I noticed then. “I wasn’t prepared for climbing!”
“Hey, it can’t have been that bad,” I said as I oriented on her with a sly grin. “At least you didn’t lose your skirt this time.”
Her expression soured and her cheeks flushed at that, though whether from irritation or embarrassment I couldn’t say. “Don’t remind me.”
I snickered. “Fine, let’s rest a bit, then continue on. I wanna show you something.”
Gwen blinked as she sat down. “Show me what?”
“Well, you mentioned you liked drawing, so I figured I’d show you something worth drawing somewhere nobody’ll bother us.”
Her eyes widened slightly in alarm a she shot me a look. “Uhhh…”
I shot her a quizzical look in turn. “What?” Then I scowled. “Not me. Get your head outta the gutter,” I said, giving her a gentle flick on the forehead. I pointed. “There’s an overlook further on and up that’ll give you a nice view of the island. Since we lost our stalkers climbing the cliff, it’ll be nice and quiet.”
“Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds cool.”
“And just for the record, I’m not taking my clothes off.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
A couple hours later, we returned to the camp… and were immediately confronted by an angry camper.
“Hey, you, get away from her!”
I blinked and oriented on the speaker. It was Trent, and boy did he look mad; the fresh bruise on one side of his face only accentuated his angry expression. “I beg your pardon?”
“Trent, what’s this about?” Gwen asked, crossing her arms as she regarded her fellow Gopher. “And how’d you get hurt?”
“I got caught in that guy’s trap,” the boy replied, pointing at me.
“Again, I beg your pardon?”
“Yeah, what trap are you talking about, Trent?”
Trent grit his teeth and crossed his arms as he glared at me. “He set some stones loose so when I climbed after you I lost my grip and they fell on me!”
I simply stared, not quite believing what I was hearing. “What?”
“Are you kidding me?!” Gwen said, exasperated. “I was with him the whole time, he did not set any traps! Those stones must have been loose already.”
“Don’t you get it, Gwen?” Trent asked then, turning off his glare as he looked at the Goth girl. “He’s a manipulator! He’s just using you like he used Leshawna the other day! He probably planned the whole diary thing with Beth just so he could pretend to be a good guy and trick you!”
“Dude, what the hell?”
“Trent, are you even listening to yourself? You sound demented!”
“I’m not demented! Can’t you see he’s pulled the wool over your eyes?!”
As the argument escalated, I noticed we were attracting a crowd. Members of both the Bass and the Gophers were gathering around with expressions of surprise and puzzlement on their faces, and the cameramen roaming the camp weren’t late in making us their sole focus of attention.
Needless to say, it was not the kind of situation I enjoyed. “Okay, guys, can we just-”
“No, we cannot!” Trent interrupted before pointing a finger at me. “I’m not gonna let you sink your claws into Gwen any more than you already have!”
He shoved me. Surprised, I took a half-step back. “Did you seriously just shove me?”
“Trent, stop it!” Gwen demanded, but to no avail.
“So what if I did?” Trent asked and shoved me again. This time I didn’t budge, and instead just narrowed my eyes at him.
At that point, one of our audience members spoke up. “Uh, Trent? Word of advice: you don’t want to start anything with this guy.”
“Butt out, Duncan,” Trent snapped, barely glancing at the speaker. “I know you two are buddies, but this is none of your business!”
“No, man, you don’t get it,” the punk rocker said, his voice rising in alarm. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. Step down before it’s too late.”
“Yeah, listen to him, Trent,” I said, my voice growing deeper in warning.
“Oh, you think your bad boy act is gonna scare me? Not hardly!” Trent shoved me again. “You might have the rest of them fooled, but I-”
“My turn,” I said curtly, cutting him off. I moved my right hand, fingers straight and held together, and put the tip of my index finger against the boy’s chest.
Trent’s gaze went to my hand. “What? You think that’s gonna-”
The fingers of my hand curled into a fist as I thrust forward, focusing my energy into and through Trent’s body. He flew back several meters before stumbling and continuing on, rolling end-over-end until he slammed into the wall of the main lodge and stopped. His head lolled to one side, his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
I blinked. I had only meant to knock him on his ass, not send him flying, let alone knock him out cold. Cartoon physics strikes again…
There was silence.
“Was… was that the one-inch punch technique?!” Eva asked eventually, her voice aghast. “I heard only masters can use that!”
“Not really,” I said, straightening. “It’s actually pretty easy once you learn how to-”
“Wow!” Lindsay gushed. “That was amazing, Jason!”
“Uh, yeah,” I murmured, my attention turning to Trent’s unmoving form. There was drool starting to gather at the corner of his mouth. “Is he okay? Maybe someone should take him to the medical tent?”
“Already taken care of,” Chris said as he walked up to me. Behind him, a pair of interns picked up Trent and started dragging him away. “Man am I glad we got that on camera! It’s gonna be great for the show.”
I covered my face with my hands and rubbed my forehead. “Lemme guess: you’re gonna edit it to make it look way worse than it actually was, aren’t you?”
“You know it!”
I groaned. When I moved my hands away from my face I saw that people were starting to disperse; fortunately, it seemed the other campers were getting used to me performing unexpected physical feats.
Wait, maybe that’s a bad thing…?
I shook my head and turned to walk away, only to find myself faced with Gwen, who had stuck around.
“Oh, hey,” I said, my hand unconsciously moving to scratch the back of my head. “Sorry about all that.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she countered. “About Trent and… everything. Oh, and… thanks for standing up for me.”
“Oh, no worries,” I said dismissively. “But I wasn’t really doing it for you, I was just defending myself. Kinda.”
“Still,” she said, giving me a smile, “thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t see it myself,” Heather said as she sat in the confessional, “but I heard what happened. Trent tried to get Gwen away from Jason and got pummeled for his troubles. Bad news for him… but good news for me!”
She leaned back, looking smug.
“With this, it was easy to get Trent into my alliance. A little visit to the medical tent, some faked sympathy, and he was hooked. With him, Lindsay and Justin on my side, I’m safe from elimination… So now I can finally strike back in earnest.”
Heather smirked at the camera.
“I’m going to enjoy crushing you, Jason! And I’ll start by dealing with the traitors supporting you…”
The following day it was time for our next challenge.
“Listen up you little cockroaches!” came not Chris’s, but Chef Hatchet’s voice over the camp’s PA system. “I want all campers to report to the Dock of Shame at 09:00 hours!”
“Right the fuck now, then,” I said, looking at the sky. I judged it to be almost nine o’clock.
“That means now, soldiers, NOW!” Chef Hatchet confirmed a moment later.
Once we all made it to the Dock of Shame, we found Chef Hatchet dressed in an olive-green tank top and cargo pants – much like my own, though unlike mine his were tucked into the large combat boots he also wore. On his head was a drill sergeant hat and dark sunglasses, in one hand a pointer stick and in the other Chris’s bright red megaphone. Between the outfit and his cartoony muscles, he looked every bit the ‘roided-out drill sergeant.
“Line up and stand at attention,” the Chef barked through the megaphone. “You call this proper formation?! Feet together! Arms down! Eyes forward! Head up!”
With a mixture of shouts and smacks with his pointer, Chef Hatchet got all of us into a proper lineup on the dock, though oddly enough he didn’t separate us by team. By sheer happenstance, I ended up standing between Gwen and Heather.
“Oh, this is gonna be a fun day,” Gwen whispered to me, making me snicker. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who heard her.
“What did you say to me, soldier?!” Chef Hatchet roared at her.
“Um… Nothing?”
“And you will continue to say nothin’ until I tell you that you can say something’!” His chastisement complete, Chef Hatchet turned his attention back to the group at large and began pacing back and forth before us. “Today’s challenge will not be an easy one. In fact, I do not expect everyone to come out alive.”
Owen giggled lightly at that, earning him a quick smack on the shoulder from the Chef’s pointer. “Ow, that hurt!”
“My orders are to make sure that all the babies in front of me drop out of my boot camp except one. The last one standing wins immunity for their team.”
“Uh, what happened to Chris?” Heather whispered. In reply, I simply shrugged.
“Rule number one: You will address me as Master Chief! Have you got that?!”
“““““Yes, Master Chief!””””” we all called out, some more fearfully than others.
Master Chief Hatchet stopped in front Geoff and gave the blond boy a stare-down. “You will sleep when I tell you to sleep, and you will eat only when I tell you to eat! Is that clear?!”
“Yes, Master Chief!”
“Rule number two: When you are ready to give up, you will walk to the end of the dock and ring the bell.” As he said this, Master Chief Hatchet pointed to a bell that had been hung up on a pole at the end of the dock.
“Which brings me to rule number three: Let’s get one quitting before the end of the first day. That day will not end until someone drops out. Now get your butts down to the beach, soldiers, now, now, now!”
“Alright, now we’re talking!” Jason said happily in the confessional, grinning. “I could use a good training camp!”
His grin vanished as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Also, maybe it’ll help DJ and Geoff bond a little. Those two have been at each others’ throats over the whole Bunny thing for days and it’s really getting on my nerves.”
We campers lined up and stood at attention on the beach in front of Master Chief Hatchet. Between us were two canoes. Having made his point about the boot camp, it appeared Master Chief Hatchet had foregone the use of the megaphone, opting instead to instruct us without it.
“Listen up: Each team must hold a canoe over their head. I catch you taking your hands off the canoe and you will be eliminated! And no one eats lunch until someone drops out. Canoes up!”
And so the challenge began with each team picking up one canoe and holding it over their heads.
“This isn’t that hard,” Owen said to no one in particular.
“Piece o’ cake!” Geoff agreed.
“Like the piece of cake you gave Bunny the other day?” DJ asked irritably.
“Hey, man, it was carrot cake!”
“This ain’t a piece of cake, carrot or otherwise,” I spoke up before the exchange could turn into another argument. “Just wait until the blood starts draining from your arms. Trust me, you’re gonna hate your shoulders before this is over.”
At some point, Chris showed up… and climbed onto the top of the Gophers’ canoe, while Master Chief Hatchet climbed onto the Bass’. Obviously this was to make the challenge harder, but given the frankly ridiculous weight difference between the two it didn’t seem all that fair… but then again, the Bass had myself, Eva, DJ, Geoff and Duncan, while the Gophers had… uh… Justin?
Okay, maybe it was fair.
“Come on, you sissies! It’s only been three hours!” Master Chief Hatchet barked at us.
“Looks like they missed lunch today,” Chris commented smugly.
“Mmm-hmm. Guess they just weren’t hungry,” the Master Chief agreed. “Unless someone wants to quit, now…?”
As if in response to his query, Owen’s stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly.
“Don’t even think about it, Owen!” Gwen said warningly.
“Oh, by all means, think about it,” I said slyly, glancing over at the obese teen. “Right now, you could be in the main lodge, eating… oh, I dunno… ice cream. Maybe a strawberry sundae?”
Owen moaned. “Oh, man…”
“Jason!” Gwen snapped at me, to which I snickered.
“What? This is a challenge.”
“Yeah, but-”
“Is there a problem down here?!” Hatchet barked as he leaned over the end of the canoe and glared at us.
“None at all, Major Payne, sir!” I returned promptly.
The man’s eyes narrowed. “You are very lucky I happen to love that movie, soldier.”
“Duly noted, Master Chief!” I replied with a grin as our host for the day retreated back to his seat.
“Suck-up,” Heather muttered just loud enough for me to hear.
“Hey, you’re the expert,” I shot back mirthfully. “On sucking, that is.”
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the most creative comeback, but gimme a break – the burning feeling in my arms was really distracting!
“What?! How dare you-”
“Ah-ah-ah,” I said, flitting my gaze upward in Hatchet’s direction. “Don’t wanna bring down the pain, do ya?”
The Asian girl sputtered angrily, but said nothing and turned away. I snickered.
This was shaping up to be a good day!
This was a horrible, horrible day.
It was well after sundown and we were still standing on the beach, our arms on fire almost as much as the campfire Master Chief Hatchet had set up to illuminate the beach.
“Twenty-five of us went in the jungle that night,” he said gravely, his sunglasses reflecting the fire as he sat in front of it. “Twenty-five came back out.”
Gwen yawned mightily. “What war were you in, anyway?”
“Did I ask you to speak?! ‘Cause I don’t remember askin’ you to speak!”
The Goth girl rolled her eyes. “Whatever. He so wasn’t in a war.”
“Guys… I, I can’t do this anymore,” Lindsay said then. By the time I turned my attention to her, she had already let go of the canoe and was walking toward the dock, her arms hanging listlessly at her sides. “I have no more feeling in my arms!”
“Looks like we got ourselves a quitter!” Hatchet said gleefully as the blonde walked past him.
“Don’t do it, Lindsay!” Owen called out, but to no avail; Lindsay walked to one end of the dock and rang the bell by tiredly smacking her head into it.
I didn’t blame her; given the state of my arms I probably would have done the same in her situation.
With the blonde no longer helping to hold up their canoe, the Gophers collapsed into a pile under the weight. With our victory assured, my fellow Bass and I exchanged grins and smirks of victory before tossing our canoe to the sand.
And then the burning began in earnest as blood rushed back into our arms. As I moaned and weakly massaged my arms and shoulders, Hatchet walked up to Lindsay on the dock.
“Listen here: you have nothing to be ashamed of,” he said comfortingly… only to then pull out his megaphone and shout, “except being a little baby that let your team down!
“As for the rest of you, head to the mess hall. Dinner is served!”
“All right, maggots, open your ears,” Hatchet said once we’d all entered the main lodge, where Chris awaited us along with several trash cans that had been lined up along one wall. “You’ve got ten minutes to eat before night training begins, so get to it!”
There were scattered complaints about the “night training”, but nothing overly vocal… at first.
“Um, excuse me, ‘Master Chief’,” Gwen spoke in a dubious voice. “Where’s the food?”
“You’re looking at it,” he replied smugly and gestured at the trash cans.
Owen, being the hungriest – as usual – promptly walked up to the nearest trash can and lifted the lid. After a quick inspection of the insides, he said, “This is the leftover garbage from this morning’s breakfast.”
“Darn right,” Hatchet said, “when you’re at war, you take what you can get.”
Then, to the disgust of everyone present, Owen dug into the trash can and pulled out some leftover food and tossed it into his mouth… and began chewing.
“Well, I can see you’ve got this under control,” Chris said, then immediately added, “I’m off to craft services. Comin’?”
Hatchet nodded and followed the host out of the lodge. “Serve me up some o’ that!”
As the two men left the building, the campers started digging through the trash for whatever contents were at least passably edible. Most of them.
“Oh, I am not eating this,” Heather stated simply and threw her food tray over her shoulder.
“Ugh, me neither,” Courtney agreed.
“Me neither,” I chimed in as I walked past her… to the saloon doors leading to the kitchen.
“Uh, what are you doing?” Heather asked, her voice full of suspicion.
“Getting real food,” I said simply as I ducked under the needlessly locked doors and entered the kitchen.
“Hey, wait, you can’t do that!” Courtney exclaimed. “That has to be cheating!”
“You heard MC Hatchet,” I replied in a playful tone, “when you’re at war, you take what you can get, which in this case is whatever’s in the fridge. You lot can stick with the trash if ya want.”
To my complete and utter shock, no one did. Not even Owen.
“When you’re in enemy territory, you use enemy resources,” Jason said in the confessional. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back while smirking.
“After checking it for booby traps and poison, of course. It’s basic warfare 101.”
Night training turned out to be… different.
We danced on the beach, Master Chief Hatchet leading the exercise from a small wooden stage raised up on wooden poles while the rest of us did our best to follow his movements. The music streaming from the boombox below the stage was some cheap knock-off track, but the movements were not.
“Hey, can’t we at least listen to Thriller when we do this?” I asked aloud as I tried my best to keep up. I had recognized the routine almost immediately, but it had taken me until just then to remember from where.
“Legal couldn’t get the rights in time,” the man returned, not breaking stride for an instant. “Now, shut up and dance, soldier!”
I groaned. While I was in good physical shape and had good body control, I had never learned to dance, and was only able to do as well as I did by mimicking Hatchet as closely as possible. Even so, I felt like I was making a right fool of myself.
“Yeah, shut up and dance, soldier boy,” a mocking voice said, and I shot a cold glare at the person dancing next to me. “If you can.”
It was Heather – the Master Chief having seen fit to “mix things up” by not letting us divide ourselves by our team affiliation – and she wasted no time mocking me once she realized my physical prowess did not particularly extend to impromptu dance routines. Sure, I was doing all the moves, but I wasn’t exactly elegant about it, and I may have overextended once or twice.
“I’m not a soldier boy,” I muttered, though to my chagrin my words only made her smirk grow bigger. Damn her!
Fortunately for my ego, I got my “revenge” a moment later, when Hatchet decided to do the hip thrusting portion of the routine to the right... which meant I was thrusting toward Heather rather than the other way around.
“Mmm, yeah,” I said, making sure to wiggle my eyebrows suggestively as I looked at her hips. My lips split into a grin, and I barely kept myself from snickering. “Nothin’ like moving your hips in tandem, huh?”
“In your dreams, you creep,” she shot back with a disgusted look on her face.
“Hey, hips don’t lie, am I right?” I retorted with a smirk and another pointed thrust.
The glare she sent my way was like a cool, soothing balm for my ego.
“Yeah? Well, you can take your hips and-” The Asian girl cut herself off when the music suddenly stopped, and we both turned to look toward the stage in surprise.
For some reason, Duncan had walked up to the boombox sitting below the stage and turned it off. The punk rocker crossed his arms and looked up.
“One of us drops out, we’re done for the day,” he said simply.
“We’re done when I say we’re done,” Hatchet replied in a dangerous tone. “Now drop and gimme twenty!”
To my mild surprise, Duncan rolled his eyes and obliged, dropping down on all fours to begin doing push-ups.
“Anyone else got anything they want to say?” the Master Chief asked as his gaze swept over the rest of us.
Gwen raised her hand. “Uh, yeah. Can I go to the bathroom?”
“Sure you can,” came the deceptively-sweet reply, “and you can clean it up while you’re there! Grab a mop and make that hellhole shine, soldier!”
The Goth girl blinked, then sighed. “Fine.”
After the dance routine was over with, we once more found ourselves in the main lodge, divided up along our usual team tables.
“For the next challenge you will complete a three-hundred-word essay about how much you love… me,” Hatchet explained. “Anyone who falls asleep or fails to complete the challenge will be eliminated! You have until 03:00 hours.”
For several agonizing minutes I simply sat there, staring at the papers before me as thoughts raced through my head. How the hell was I supposed to write an essay on a person I barely knew? And why I loved him, to boot?
Looking around, I saw most of the other campers seemed to have similar troubles, some simply staring blankly at the papers before them while others were writing and then constantly erasing what they wrote. Even Heather, who I expected to send some mocking words my way, was quiet and deep in thought.
I turned my attention back to my own papers. Three hundred words about Chef Hatchet… Hmm.
Slowly, I put the tip of my pencil to the top of the paper.
I love Master Chief Hatchet because…
“… he takes time out of his day to cook us the food we eat, every single day, three times a day. With nary a complaint nor a grunt of effort, he prepares us the sustenance we need to not only get through the day, but to thrive and conquer the challenges laid before us as contestants on this island. With courage and integrity toward his chosen profession, Master Chief – nay, Master Chef – Hatchet stands between us and the ever-looming threat of starvation. Were it not for his selfless sacrifices we would be little more than skin and bones, unable to complete even the simplest challenge. With his undying devotion to his craft and his seemingly unconditional love for us campers, he is the one who stands head and shoulders above the rest, leading us toward a better tomorrow with his shining example.
“For what is a leader who does not lead by example? A tinpot dictator, a disgusting shell of a man who expects subservience not through devotion and love, but through unearned entitlement and perverted self-love. Master Chef Hatchet he is not, for Master Chef Hatchet has earned our subservience, nay, our devotion, loyalty and – dare I say it? – love through his continued, selfless actions and professional integrity. To a man, Master Chef Hatchet is as a man is to a boy; an object of admiration, a symbol of greatness, a shining beacon of what to strive for. Though the beacon may never be reached in our lifetimes, simply by existing it drives us toward greater things, promising that we, too, may one day become greater than ourselves and perhaps obtain the right to bask directly in the light it shines upon us unworthy souls.
“And so, I shall close this essay by saying simply this: I love Master Chef Hatchet for he is Master Chef Hatchet… and what greater object of love could there be in this, our imperfect universe?”
Ugh, I feel so dirty.
As he lowered my essay, Hatchet revealed he had tears streaming from his eyes. He barely held back a sob and put on his sunglasses, no doubt to hide his teary eyes.
“O-okay,” he said, sniffling and wiping at his cheeks. “You pass. Go on, it’s time for bed… and then report to the playing field at 05:00 hours.”
“Missed a spot there, General,” Duncan said slyly, holding up a tissue for the man to take.
He didn’t. “Boy! Do you wanna run fifty laps around this camp right now?!”
“No, thanks!” Courtney said quickly as she pulled Duncan back. “He’s going straight to bed! Aren’t you?”
As I watched, the Hispanic girl pushed the boy up to the wall dividing the dining hall from the kitchen. They whispered to one another, though with the ruckus of everyone getting up and leaving, I couldn’t make it out. Shrugging to myself, I joined the other campers in leaving.
“You are such an unbelievable suck-up,” Heather whispered to me as we – meaning all the campers save Duncan and Courtney as well as Trent, DJ and Justin, who’d fallen asleep and gotten eliminated – left the lodge.
“Oh, please,” I whispered back, “you’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.”
“I am not!”
I smirked. “Sweet dreams.”
“Up yours.”
“No thanks, I prefer being the one doing the ‘upping’, if you catch my drift.”
I winked at her and Heather let out a wordless noise of disgust and split off from me to walk to the Gophers’ cabin while I headed for the Bass’.
It was less than two hours till the next part of the challenge, after all, and we needed all the sleep we could get.
At 05:00 – that’s five o’clock in the morning for you uncivilized folk – we gathered in front of something I had been hoping would make its way into the challenge at some point or other: an obstacle course.
“You will all run this course until you can all complete it in under one minute,” Master Chief Hatchet told us as we surveyed the obstacle course. “Am I making myself clear?”
“I’m first!” I almost shouted as I raised my hand to the sky.
“Oh, confident, are we?” he asked as he looked down at me. Literally, not figuratively; the man towered over me. “Very well, since you did so well on the essay… I’ll let you go first. Don’t disappoint me, soldier!”
I merely smirked and waited for him to prepare the stopwatch in his hand. Our eyes met and he nodded, then pushed the start button.
I dashed toward the first obstacle: a thick, wooden wall. Despite the mud covering most of the ground, with my momentum it was easy to jump up and climb the wall then drop down on the other side.
Next came a low ramp and several ropes hanging down from a wooden beam suspended above. I leapt off the ramp and grabbed one of the ropes and swung easily to the ramp on the other side, then continued on.
A pair of tires hung suspended vertically, side-by-side inside of a wooden frame. Dashing and then leaping, I reached out for the left tire’s edge with my hands and moved feet-first through it and landed in the mud on the other side. I slipped a little but immediately righted myself and moved on.
A pair of axes came next, suspended from two trees on either side of the course and set to swinging from side to side. Their swings were slow, almost lazy in a way, and it was child’s play to judge the timing and run through unscathed.
And that was that.
“Thirty-two seconds? Not bad, soldier,” Master Chief Hatchet said once I jogged back to his side. “Not as good as my personal best, of course, but not bad.”
“Oh, please,” I said smugly. “I was just feeling out the course. Wanna watch me turn those numbers around?”
The man snorted. “You think you can? Go right ahead… Go!”
This time I was off like a bullet. I hadn’t been lying; now that I knew the course I could put some actual speed into it. By the time I returned, Master Chief Hatchet was staring at his stopwatch and trembling.
“T-t-t-t-t-twenty-three seconds?!” he stuttered before staring at me. “You beat my- I-I mean, uh, g-good job, soldier. Good job.”
“I’ll be over there,” I said, indicating the small, grassy slope next to the obstacle course. On the way I stopped next to a stunned-looking Heather and gave her a smug grin. “Beat that.”
She shook herself and scowled. “Oh, just go sit down, you smug bastard!”
Snickering to myself, I did just that. Sitting myself down on the grass, I put my arms behind my head and leaned back to rest as I idly watched my fellow campers try to get through the course in under a minute. To my surprise, most of them needed multiple tries!
When she was on no less than her third try, Heather had a small accident… that was, she somehow managed to get herself entangled in the swinging-ropes and hung upside down, suspended by one leg.
There was no way I could just leave her there… without having some fun, first.
“So… how’s it hangin’?” I asked as I walked up to her, and I could feel my grin threatening to split my face into two.
Heather was just a tad less amused. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at me. “I hate you.”
“Aww, I like you, too!”
“I hate you so much.”
“Well, I’m not gonna bother you anymore,” I said casually. “I can see you’re all tied-up.”
She took a wild swing at me, then, but all it accomplished was to send her spinning. I walked away, Heather’s curses mixing beautifully with my laughter.
She was so fun to tease!
I laid back down in my spot in the grass and turned my attention to the other campers, and one of them in particular.
Why’s she still running? Didn’t she pass on her first try?
Eva jogged up to Master Chief Hatchet, eager to find out her time.
“Twenty-nine seconds,” he announced.
Eva growled and stomped the ground. “One more time!”
“You already passed, soldier. Three times, even.”
“I don’t care! Again!”
“Listen here, soldi-”
“AGAIN!”
“Okay, okay! Simmer down!”
Eva barely waited for the man to start timing her again before she dashed off toward the first obstacle, fully intent on improving her time. Determination filling her, she quickly climbed the wall and dropped down the other side, mud splattering around her as she landed.
She wasn’t done yet, however, and immediately ran toward the next obstacle.
If Jason can do it in twenty-three seconds, then so can I!
In the end, all the remaining campers succeeded in clearing the obstacle course, and as such not a single person was eliminated.
Master Chief Hatchet briefly returned to his normal role of camp chef and served us the regular ol’ gruel for an early breakfast… then informed us the next challenge would be the last, and would begin at 07:00 hours, or barely an hour later. We hurriedly finished our breakfast and prepared for what was to come.
“What you are experiencing is an ancient form of torture,” the Master Chief explained as we all hung upside-down, our legs curled around a thick branch sticking out of a large tree. The three remaining Gophers – Heather, Owen and Gwen – hung on one branch, while the remaining Bass – myself, Geoff, Courtney, Duncan and Eva – all crowded together on a branch on the roughly opposite side of the tree’s trunk, at such an angle that we could just barely see each other.
“By now the blood has begun rushing to your head,” Hatchet continued. “The next stage is nausea, followed by dizziness and a flushed appearance as the blood begins to pool in your eyes. You may experience fainting spells-”
On cue, Duncan’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he slipped off to fall onto the ground.
“Duncan!” Courtney called out in alarm.
“It’s okay, he’s all right,” DJ said after briefly examining the other boy.
Courtney let out a relieved sigh and grabbed onto the branch with her hands. Seeing this, the rest of us did the same, all of us realizing that the Master Chief hadn’t banned such an action.
Well, most of us. Owen tried, he really did, but in the end all his efforts resulted in was him loudly expelling gas. Many of us complained, but none took it harder than Heather, as she hung closest to the boy.
“Having fun over there?” I asked slyly as the Asian girl waved a hand in front of her face while gagging.
“Shut up,” she snapped between gagging noises. “Owen, you’re so disgusting!”
“Sorry,” the blond boy murmured and hung his head in shame… a moment before he lost his grip and fell to the ground with a deafening thud.
“One down, two to go,” I said as I looked over at the remaining Gophers with a slight smirk. “You girls doing okay? It’s four against two.”
“We’re fine,” Gwen replied, meeting my smirk with one of her own. “We can hang here all day.”
“For once, I agree with Weird Goth Girl,” Heather chimed in. “You’re not winning this one, Jason!”
“Yeah!”
“Wow, look at me, uniting people across the land,” I said sardonically, rolling my eyes. I turned my attention to my teammates. “How are you all holding up?”
“I’m doing fine,” Eva replied with a nod. “I do upside-down crunches every single day. This is nothing.”
“I’m… doing okay,” Courtney said hesitantly. “I do feel a little… dizzy…”
With those words, the Hispanic girl slipped off the branch and fell. To her credit, she managed to turn her fall into a flip and land unsteadily on her feet. Straightening, she looked up at us.
“Sorry, guys!”
“Hey, it’s all good,” Geoff called back to her. “I can win this! I live for the head rush, dude! It feels… so… good…”
I sighed as the skater boy slipped and fell off the branch. Unlike Courtney, his landing was unceremonious and from the looks of it probably painful. Duncan and Courtney cooperated in helping him back on his feet.
“Two on two,” Heather said smugly. “It’s just the four of us, now.”
“Sounds like a double date to me,” I said with a sly grin and a wink. “You payin’?”
“You wish, you cheap asshole.”
“Plannin’ on goin’ down, huh? Works for me.”
Heather blinked and then facepalmed with a groan.
Next to her, Gwen looked between us with a puzzled look on her face. “What are you two talking about?”
I looked at her. “Well-”
“You shut up, you perverted freak!” Heather interrupted heatedly before I could answer.
“… Yeah, sounds about right,” I agreed, earning myself another groan from the Asian girl.
Of course, Gwen didn’t look any wiser from the exchange. “Okay…”
“Oh, don’t mind us,” I said to her. “The blood rushin’ to our heads’s makin’ us… uh…”
“… Yeah, it’s just… the blood…” Heather shook herself, then closed her eyes and groaned again as she rubbed her temples. She was starting to look pretty flushed in the face, and I doubted it was because of my jokes. Any moment now, she would drop.
Unfortunately, the same could be said for me; I had been getting steadily dizzier and my thoughts murkier, to the point where I was struggling just to… uh… What was I thinking about, again?
Oh, hey, Heather’s goin’ down, I thought with mentally muffled glee as I watched the Asian girl begin slipping off the Gophers’ branch. I opened my mouth to shoot off a dirty comment, but found nothing coming out but an incoherent gurgle… right before my world started spinning and I found myself jolted awake when my back hit the ground.
“Oh,” I said to no one in particular.
“You went down,” I heard Heather say quietly somewhere nearby.
I craned my neck to, at a rather awkward angle, see her lying on her back not far from me. “So did you.”
We looked at one another quietly for a moment before we both burst out laughing.
Looking back on it, I’m pretty sure it was the blood pooled in our heads that did it, because it really wasn’t all that funny.
We sure as hell laughed a lot, though.
Eva ended up winning the challenge for the Bass, beating out Gwen by a whole ten seconds. Apparently, daily upside-down crunches was the shit for learning how to handle hanging upside-down for extended periods of time. Who knew?
Alas, the boot camp ended up not bonding Geoff and DJ at all, and so their pet-related feud continued unabated, to the annoyance of pretty much everyone… but especially Bunny.
As for who the Gophers voted off? Well…
“Despite everything, Trent still refuses to vote for Gwen,” Heather said in the confessional. “So instead of risking a tie vote, I did the next best thing and had everyone vote for Owen.”
The Asian girl smirked as she waved at the camera.
“Bye-bye, lard-ass! Smell ya never!
“Oh, and Jason can suck it.”
“Look, I have nothing personal against Owen,” Trent said as he sat in the confessional, looking a bit awkward as he looked everywhere but at the camera. “But between him and Gwen? What was I supposed to do?
“Besides, everyone knows he’s friends with Jason. And Heather told me he’s even been throwing challenges because of it! I’m sorry, Owen, but that’s not cool. You had to go.”
End Chapter 12
The roster
The Screaming Gophers: Gwen, Trent, Heather,Cody, Lindsay, Beth, Izzy, Owen, Leshawna, Justin, Noah
The Killer Bass: Geoff,Bridgette, DJ, Tyler, Sadie, Katie, Courtney, Jason, Duncan, Eva, and Harold
A Total Drama SI story
Disclaimer: Total Drama belongs to Fresh TV Inc. I’m simply borrowing it to tell some stories.
Author’s Notes: The longest chapter yet! I kinda feel like I overused the title “Master Chief” in this one, but maybe that’s just me. And I gotta say, I really struggled with the jokes during the dance routine. Hopefully it didn’t come out too awful. As for the rest of the chapter? Well, I do feel some parts were a bit rushed… and there were some scenes that ended up never happening due to butterflies, as you’ll see (or not, rather); it was probably for the best, though, as the chapter was getting way too long anyway.
Chapter 12: Das Boot… Camp
Chris stood on the dock as he addressed the camera.
“Last time, on Total Drama Island…”
Clips began rolling, showing scenes from the previous episode.
“The teams were given three challenges that tested their trust in their teammates.
“The rock-climbing challenge revealed more than just Heather’s grudge against Gwen, and Trent got the bad end of a blowfish, courtesy of Lindsay.
“DJ trusted Geoff with his pet bunny, but Bunny ended up losing trust in DJ. Some other campers got dropped on their butts, and Jason shocked Heather by showing her his funny side. Yeah. Or is it all just funny business?
“Stay tuned as cold war turns hot on Total. Drama. Island!”
“I swear to you, Duncan, they were totally flirting!”
Duncan looked up from his latest work-in-progress – a piece of wood he was slowly carving into a skull – to regard Courtney as she sat next to him on the steps outside the Bass’ cabin.
“Jason and Heather?”
“Yes!”
“In the medical tent?”
“Yes!”
“When you had a concussion?”
“Ye- You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I dunno, Princess, it sounds kinda far-fetched.”
“I know what I saw,” Courtney said irritably. “And I’m not a princess!”
Duncan shrugged. “Hey, whatever floats your boat, honey.”
“And I’m not your ‘honey’, either!” she snapped and stood up. “You might not believe me, but I’m willing to bet if we went and found Jason right now, we’d see him flirting with Heather.”
“Fat chance of that,” Duncan shot back. He flicked a thumb over his shoulder towards the forest. “I saw him and Gwen go into the woods earlier.”
Courtney’s eyes widened. “What? He’s two-timing?!”
“I don’t think he’s the type,” he returned. “Besides, between those two? Sure, Heather’s smokin’ hot, but she’s- Uh…”
“Oh, she’s ‘smokin’ hot’ is she?” Courtney asked, crossing her arms over her chest as her eyes narrowed.
Duncan’s eyes flitted this way and that, desperately searching for a distraction and finding none. “Uhhh… You know, broadly speaking, there are some guys, who, uh, might consider her attractive…?”
“Pig.”
“Oh, come on!”
“So how come you spend so much time in the woods?” Gwen asked me as we walked through the woods, having already left the main path. It was maybe an hour after breakfast, and my second walk that day. The reason? Well, the two of us decided to hang out, and she suggested going for a walk.
Hey, I never said it was a complicated reason.
I turned my gaze upward, taking in the sight of the sunlight trickling down between the leaves as I pondered the question. “It calms me,” I said after a moment.
“It calms you?”
“I dunno if you noticed, but I get… irritable when I’m around people a lot,” I said. “The forest helps calm me down.”
“Huh.” We walked in silence for a moment before she spoke again, holding up her sketch pad. “That’s what drawing and writing does for me.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I’m not exactly a people person either,” the Goth girl clarified as she replaced the sketch pad inside her bag.
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said dryly, earning me a grin and a light, backhanded slap on the arm.
“Very funny,” she said.
We exchanged a chuckle, then walked in silence for a couple minutes before I spoke again.
“You’re a city girl, ain’t cha?”
“How’d you know?”
“You keep stumbling on roots,” I said, gesturing at the ground. “It’s like you’re used to the ground being flat and even, like a sidewalk.”
Gwen’s cheeks reddened slightly. “I’m that obvious, huh?”
“Yup. Plus, Goths aren’t very common in the countryside,” I continued. “Your clothes aren’t exactly, uh… forest-compliant.”
Gwen shot me an amused look. “Forest-compliant?”
“Hey, English ain’t my first language,” I said defensively. “Sometimes I gotta improvise. It’s not like I’m carryin’ around a dictionary in my pocket.” I gave her a sidelong glance. “I like the corset, though. It suits you.”
She looked at the ground, her cheeks tinged red. “Thanks.”
Internally, I shook my head. This girl obviously wasn’t used to compliments. Then again, neither am I.
I stopped and tilted my head to listen, prompting Gwen to slow down and look at me in puzzlement. “I am kinda curious,” I said after a moment.
“About what?”
“About the person following us,” I answered. “At first I thought it was just an animal passing by, but now I’m pretty damn sure we’re being followed.”
“Maybe it’s another cameraman?” she suggested, glancing at the cameraman – one of Chris’s myriad interns – following close behind us. The young man swept his camera around, then turned to us and shrugged; evidently, he hadn’t noticed anything either.
For obvious reasons, the cameramen weren’t supposed to interact with us directly, and Chris had made it abundantly clear we were supposed to act like they weren’t there… but even now, after nearly a month on the island, it was sometimes hard to do so.
“No,” I said curtly after following her gaze. Upon seeing Gwen’s questioning look, I added, “The person following us isn’t top-heavy like this guy is.”
She blinked. “How can you tell?”
“The sound.”
“Meaning…?”
“When you’re top-heavy, especially on one side of the body, you move differently. It creates a different rhythm and… uh… intonation? Look, I’m not a sound guy. It just sounds different. Whoever’s followin’ us ain’t top-heavy. I’d say… the person is around my weight, with a fairly normal weight distribution, and is trying to sneak but doesn’t know how to move through this kind of terrain at all.”
Gwen stared at me. “You can tell all that just from the sound?”
“Well, it does help that I got a good look at him before he hid behind that rock over there just now,” I confessed, doing an upward nod in the direction of said rock.
Gwen glanced toward it. “Who is it?”
“Trent.”
“Ugh, that’s all I need.”
“You guys fighting?”
She sighed. “Sort of… It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t it always?”
“Well-”
Before she could finish her reply I dashed toward the nearby cliff face we’d been walking towards. Kicking off the ground, I jumped and used my momentum to quickly climb upward. Once I reached the lowest outcropping, I turned and looked down.
“What are you doing?!” Gwen asked, craning her neck to look up at me.
“Losing our stalker,” I said simply. “Come on.”
“I can’t climb that!”
“You were climbing just fine yesterday.”
“I had a rope then!”
I rolled my eyes. Putting myself flat against the rock, I leaned over the edge and reached down with my right arm. “Fine, then consider me your rope. Grab my wrist and I’ll pull you up.”
Gwen opened her mouth, but no words came out. After a moment she just shook her head and reached for my hand. Once we both had a firm grip on each other’s wrist, I pulled her up while using my other hand to push myself back. Within seconds, I’d heaved her up on the outcropping with me.
“There, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?” I asked with a smirk.
“I guess not,” the Goth girl mumbled, her gaze lowered. Then she blinked. “What about the cameraman?”
I looked down to where the cameraman was standing, filming us from below with a sheepish look on his face.
“Eh, he can find his own way up. Make him earn his pay, y’know?”
“Dude, I’m an intern!” the cameraman protested, in a blatant violation of cameraman/camper communication protocol. “I don’t get pay!”
“Yeah, well, sucks to be you, then,” I returned before turning to Gwen with a grin. “Come on, let’s lose these losers.”
The Goth girl giggled. “Okay!”
“Come on, man!”
Ignoring the cameraman, we proceeded up the cliff, climbing from outcropping to outcropping – Gwen occasionally getting some help from yours truly – until we reached the top.
“Alright, that should throw ‘em off for a bit,” I said as I looked down. The cliff wasn’t as high as the one Chris had picked for the previous day’s climbing challenge, nor anywhere near as treacherous to climb, but it ought still provide a substantial obstacle for an average person trying to climb it on their own without help. And if they went around the cliff and walked up the far slope? Well, that would take quite a bit of time… time that we wouldn’t just be spending doing nothing.
“Alrighty, let’s go… this way,” I said, spying an animal trail between the trees.
“Hold on, can we rest for a bit?” Gwen asked then, stopping me dead in my tracks. Her breathing was a bit ragged, I noticed then. “I wasn’t prepared for climbing!”
“Hey, it can’t have been that bad,” I said as I oriented on her with a sly grin. “At least you didn’t lose your skirt this time.”
Her expression soured and her cheeks flushed at that, though whether from irritation or embarrassment I couldn’t say. “Don’t remind me.”
I snickered. “Fine, let’s rest a bit, then continue on. I wanna show you something.”
Gwen blinked as she sat down. “Show me what?”
“Well, you mentioned you liked drawing, so I figured I’d show you something worth drawing somewhere nobody’ll bother us.”
Her eyes widened slightly in alarm a she shot me a look. “Uhhh…”
I shot her a quizzical look in turn. “What?” Then I scowled. “Not me. Get your head outta the gutter,” I said, giving her a gentle flick on the forehead. I pointed. “There’s an overlook further on and up that’ll give you a nice view of the island. Since we lost our stalkers climbing the cliff, it’ll be nice and quiet.”
“Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds cool.”
“And just for the record, I’m not taking my clothes off.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
A couple hours later, we returned to the camp… and were immediately confronted by an angry camper.
“Hey, you, get away from her!”
I blinked and oriented on the speaker. It was Trent, and boy did he look mad; the fresh bruise on one side of his face only accentuated his angry expression. “I beg your pardon?”
“Trent, what’s this about?” Gwen asked, crossing her arms as she regarded her fellow Gopher. “And how’d you get hurt?”
“I got caught in that guy’s trap,” the boy replied, pointing at me.
“Again, I beg your pardon?”
“Yeah, what trap are you talking about, Trent?”
Trent grit his teeth and crossed his arms as he glared at me. “He set some stones loose so when I climbed after you I lost my grip and they fell on me!”
I simply stared, not quite believing what I was hearing. “What?”
“Are you kidding me?!” Gwen said, exasperated. “I was with him the whole time, he did not set any traps! Those stones must have been loose already.”
“Don’t you get it, Gwen?” Trent asked then, turning off his glare as he looked at the Goth girl. “He’s a manipulator! He’s just using you like he used Leshawna the other day! He probably planned the whole diary thing with Beth just so he could pretend to be a good guy and trick you!”
“Dude, what the hell?”
“Trent, are you even listening to yourself? You sound demented!”
“I’m not demented! Can’t you see he’s pulled the wool over your eyes?!”
As the argument escalated, I noticed we were attracting a crowd. Members of both the Bass and the Gophers were gathering around with expressions of surprise and puzzlement on their faces, and the cameramen roaming the camp weren’t late in making us their sole focus of attention.
Needless to say, it was not the kind of situation I enjoyed. “Okay, guys, can we just-”
“No, we cannot!” Trent interrupted before pointing a finger at me. “I’m not gonna let you sink your claws into Gwen any more than you already have!”
He shoved me. Surprised, I took a half-step back. “Did you seriously just shove me?”
“Trent, stop it!” Gwen demanded, but to no avail.
“So what if I did?” Trent asked and shoved me again. This time I didn’t budge, and instead just narrowed my eyes at him.
At that point, one of our audience members spoke up. “Uh, Trent? Word of advice: you don’t want to start anything with this guy.”
“Butt out, Duncan,” Trent snapped, barely glancing at the speaker. “I know you two are buddies, but this is none of your business!”
“No, man, you don’t get it,” the punk rocker said, his voice rising in alarm. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. Step down before it’s too late.”
“Yeah, listen to him, Trent,” I said, my voice growing deeper in warning.
“Oh, you think your bad boy act is gonna scare me? Not hardly!” Trent shoved me again. “You might have the rest of them fooled, but I-”
“My turn,” I said curtly, cutting him off. I moved my right hand, fingers straight and held together, and put the tip of my index finger against the boy’s chest.
Trent’s gaze went to my hand. “What? You think that’s gonna-”
The fingers of my hand curled into a fist as I thrust forward, focusing my energy into and through Trent’s body. He flew back several meters before stumbling and continuing on, rolling end-over-end until he slammed into the wall of the main lodge and stopped. His head lolled to one side, his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
I blinked. I had only meant to knock him on his ass, not send him flying, let alone knock him out cold. Cartoon physics strikes again…
There was silence.
“Was… was that the one-inch punch technique?!” Eva asked eventually, her voice aghast. “I heard only masters can use that!”
“Not really,” I said, straightening. “It’s actually pretty easy once you learn how to-”
“Wow!” Lindsay gushed. “That was amazing, Jason!”
“Uh, yeah,” I murmured, my attention turning to Trent’s unmoving form. There was drool starting to gather at the corner of his mouth. “Is he okay? Maybe someone should take him to the medical tent?”
“Already taken care of,” Chris said as he walked up to me. Behind him, a pair of interns picked up Trent and started dragging him away. “Man am I glad we got that on camera! It’s gonna be great for the show.”
I covered my face with my hands and rubbed my forehead. “Lemme guess: you’re gonna edit it to make it look way worse than it actually was, aren’t you?”
“You know it!”
I groaned. When I moved my hands away from my face I saw that people were starting to disperse; fortunately, it seemed the other campers were getting used to me performing unexpected physical feats.
Wait, maybe that’s a bad thing…?
I shook my head and turned to walk away, only to find myself faced with Gwen, who had stuck around.
“Oh, hey,” I said, my hand unconsciously moving to scratch the back of my head. “Sorry about all that.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she countered. “About Trent and… everything. Oh, and… thanks for standing up for me.”
“Oh, no worries,” I said dismissively. “But I wasn’t really doing it for you, I was just defending myself. Kinda.”
“Still,” she said, giving me a smile, “thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t see it myself,” Heather said as she sat in the confessional, “but I heard what happened. Trent tried to get Gwen away from Jason and got pummeled for his troubles. Bad news for him… but good news for me!”
She leaned back, looking smug.
“With this, it was easy to get Trent into my alliance. A little visit to the medical tent, some faked sympathy, and he was hooked. With him, Lindsay and Justin on my side, I’m safe from elimination… So now I can finally strike back in earnest.”
Heather smirked at the camera.
“I’m going to enjoy crushing you, Jason! And I’ll start by dealing with the traitors supporting you…”
The following day it was time for our next challenge.
“Listen up you little cockroaches!” came not Chris’s, but Chef Hatchet’s voice over the camp’s PA system. “I want all campers to report to the Dock of Shame at 09:00 hours!”
“Right the fuck now, then,” I said, looking at the sky. I judged it to be almost nine o’clock.
“That means now, soldiers, NOW!” Chef Hatchet confirmed a moment later.
Once we all made it to the Dock of Shame, we found Chef Hatchet dressed in an olive-green tank top and cargo pants – much like my own, though unlike mine his were tucked into the large combat boots he also wore. On his head was a drill sergeant hat and dark sunglasses, in one hand a pointer stick and in the other Chris’s bright red megaphone. Between the outfit and his cartoony muscles, he looked every bit the ‘roided-out drill sergeant.
“Line up and stand at attention,” the Chef barked through the megaphone. “You call this proper formation?! Feet together! Arms down! Eyes forward! Head up!”
With a mixture of shouts and smacks with his pointer, Chef Hatchet got all of us into a proper lineup on the dock, though oddly enough he didn’t separate us by team. By sheer happenstance, I ended up standing between Gwen and Heather.
“Oh, this is gonna be a fun day,” Gwen whispered to me, making me snicker. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who heard her.
“What did you say to me, soldier?!” Chef Hatchet roared at her.
“Um… Nothing?”
“And you will continue to say nothin’ until I tell you that you can say something’!” His chastisement complete, Chef Hatchet turned his attention back to the group at large and began pacing back and forth before us. “Today’s challenge will not be an easy one. In fact, I do not expect everyone to come out alive.”
Owen giggled lightly at that, earning him a quick smack on the shoulder from the Chef’s pointer. “Ow, that hurt!”
“My orders are to make sure that all the babies in front of me drop out of my boot camp except one. The last one standing wins immunity for their team.”
“Uh, what happened to Chris?” Heather whispered. In reply, I simply shrugged.
“Rule number one: You will address me as Master Chief! Have you got that?!”
“““““Yes, Master Chief!””””” we all called out, some more fearfully than others.
Master Chief Hatchet stopped in front Geoff and gave the blond boy a stare-down. “You will sleep when I tell you to sleep, and you will eat only when I tell you to eat! Is that clear?!”
“Yes, Master Chief!”
“Rule number two: When you are ready to give up, you will walk to the end of the dock and ring the bell.” As he said this, Master Chief Hatchet pointed to a bell that had been hung up on a pole at the end of the dock.
“Which brings me to rule number three: Let’s get one quitting before the end of the first day. That day will not end until someone drops out. Now get your butts down to the beach, soldiers, now, now, now!”
“Alright, now we’re talking!” Jason said happily in the confessional, grinning. “I could use a good training camp!”
His grin vanished as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Also, maybe it’ll help DJ and Geoff bond a little. Those two have been at each others’ throats over the whole Bunny thing for days and it’s really getting on my nerves.”
We campers lined up and stood at attention on the beach in front of Master Chief Hatchet. Between us were two canoes. Having made his point about the boot camp, it appeared Master Chief Hatchet had foregone the use of the megaphone, opting instead to instruct us without it.
“Listen up: Each team must hold a canoe over their head. I catch you taking your hands off the canoe and you will be eliminated! And no one eats lunch until someone drops out. Canoes up!”
And so the challenge began with each team picking up one canoe and holding it over their heads.
“This isn’t that hard,” Owen said to no one in particular.
“Piece o’ cake!” Geoff agreed.
“Like the piece of cake you gave Bunny the other day?” DJ asked irritably.
“Hey, man, it was carrot cake!”
“This ain’t a piece of cake, carrot or otherwise,” I spoke up before the exchange could turn into another argument. “Just wait until the blood starts draining from your arms. Trust me, you’re gonna hate your shoulders before this is over.”
At some point, Chris showed up… and climbed onto the top of the Gophers’ canoe, while Master Chief Hatchet climbed onto the Bass’. Obviously this was to make the challenge harder, but given the frankly ridiculous weight difference between the two it didn’t seem all that fair… but then again, the Bass had myself, Eva, DJ, Geoff and Duncan, while the Gophers had… uh… Justin?
Okay, maybe it was fair.
“Come on, you sissies! It’s only been three hours!” Master Chief Hatchet barked at us.
“Looks like they missed lunch today,” Chris commented smugly.
“Mmm-hmm. Guess they just weren’t hungry,” the Master Chief agreed. “Unless someone wants to quit, now…?”
As if in response to his query, Owen’s stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly.
“Don’t even think about it, Owen!” Gwen said warningly.
“Oh, by all means, think about it,” I said slyly, glancing over at the obese teen. “Right now, you could be in the main lodge, eating… oh, I dunno… ice cream. Maybe a strawberry sundae?”
Owen moaned. “Oh, man…”
“Jason!” Gwen snapped at me, to which I snickered.
“What? This is a challenge.”
“Yeah, but-”
“Is there a problem down here?!” Hatchet barked as he leaned over the end of the canoe and glared at us.
“None at all, Major Payne, sir!” I returned promptly.
The man’s eyes narrowed. “You are very lucky I happen to love that movie, soldier.”
“Duly noted, Master Chief!” I replied with a grin as our host for the day retreated back to his seat.
“Suck-up,” Heather muttered just loud enough for me to hear.
“Hey, you’re the expert,” I shot back mirthfully. “On sucking, that is.”
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the most creative comeback, but gimme a break – the burning feeling in my arms was really distracting!
“What?! How dare you-”
“Ah-ah-ah,” I said, flitting my gaze upward in Hatchet’s direction. “Don’t wanna bring down the pain, do ya?”
The Asian girl sputtered angrily, but said nothing and turned away. I snickered.
This was shaping up to be a good day!
This was a horrible, horrible day.
It was well after sundown and we were still standing on the beach, our arms on fire almost as much as the campfire Master Chief Hatchet had set up to illuminate the beach.
“Twenty-five of us went in the jungle that night,” he said gravely, his sunglasses reflecting the fire as he sat in front of it. “Twenty-five came back out.”
Gwen yawned mightily. “What war were you in, anyway?”
“Did I ask you to speak?! ‘Cause I don’t remember askin’ you to speak!”
The Goth girl rolled her eyes. “Whatever. He so wasn’t in a war.”
“Guys… I, I can’t do this anymore,” Lindsay said then. By the time I turned my attention to her, she had already let go of the canoe and was walking toward the dock, her arms hanging listlessly at her sides. “I have no more feeling in my arms!”
“Looks like we got ourselves a quitter!” Hatchet said gleefully as the blonde walked past him.
“Don’t do it, Lindsay!” Owen called out, but to no avail; Lindsay walked to one end of the dock and rang the bell by tiredly smacking her head into it.
I didn’t blame her; given the state of my arms I probably would have done the same in her situation.
With the blonde no longer helping to hold up their canoe, the Gophers collapsed into a pile under the weight. With our victory assured, my fellow Bass and I exchanged grins and smirks of victory before tossing our canoe to the sand.
And then the burning began in earnest as blood rushed back into our arms. As I moaned and weakly massaged my arms and shoulders, Hatchet walked up to Lindsay on the dock.
“Listen here: you have nothing to be ashamed of,” he said comfortingly… only to then pull out his megaphone and shout, “except being a little baby that let your team down!
“As for the rest of you, head to the mess hall. Dinner is served!”
“All right, maggots, open your ears,” Hatchet said once we’d all entered the main lodge, where Chris awaited us along with several trash cans that had been lined up along one wall. “You’ve got ten minutes to eat before night training begins, so get to it!”
There were scattered complaints about the “night training”, but nothing overly vocal… at first.
“Um, excuse me, ‘Master Chief’,” Gwen spoke in a dubious voice. “Where’s the food?”
“You’re looking at it,” he replied smugly and gestured at the trash cans.
Owen, being the hungriest – as usual – promptly walked up to the nearest trash can and lifted the lid. After a quick inspection of the insides, he said, “This is the leftover garbage from this morning’s breakfast.”
“Darn right,” Hatchet said, “when you’re at war, you take what you can get.”
Then, to the disgust of everyone present, Owen dug into the trash can and pulled out some leftover food and tossed it into his mouth… and began chewing.
“Well, I can see you’ve got this under control,” Chris said, then immediately added, “I’m off to craft services. Comin’?”
Hatchet nodded and followed the host out of the lodge. “Serve me up some o’ that!”
As the two men left the building, the campers started digging through the trash for whatever contents were at least passably edible. Most of them.
“Oh, I am not eating this,” Heather stated simply and threw her food tray over her shoulder.
“Ugh, me neither,” Courtney agreed.
“Me neither,” I chimed in as I walked past her… to the saloon doors leading to the kitchen.
“Uh, what are you doing?” Heather asked, her voice full of suspicion.
“Getting real food,” I said simply as I ducked under the needlessly locked doors and entered the kitchen.
“Hey, wait, you can’t do that!” Courtney exclaimed. “That has to be cheating!”
“You heard MC Hatchet,” I replied in a playful tone, “when you’re at war, you take what you can get, which in this case is whatever’s in the fridge. You lot can stick with the trash if ya want.”
To my complete and utter shock, no one did. Not even Owen.
“When you’re in enemy territory, you use enemy resources,” Jason said in the confessional. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back while smirking.
“After checking it for booby traps and poison, of course. It’s basic warfare 101.”
Night training turned out to be… different.
We danced on the beach, Master Chief Hatchet leading the exercise from a small wooden stage raised up on wooden poles while the rest of us did our best to follow his movements. The music streaming from the boombox below the stage was some cheap knock-off track, but the movements were not.
“Hey, can’t we at least listen to Thriller when we do this?” I asked aloud as I tried my best to keep up. I had recognized the routine almost immediately, but it had taken me until just then to remember from where.
“Legal couldn’t get the rights in time,” the man returned, not breaking stride for an instant. “Now, shut up and dance, soldier!”
I groaned. While I was in good physical shape and had good body control, I had never learned to dance, and was only able to do as well as I did by mimicking Hatchet as closely as possible. Even so, I felt like I was making a right fool of myself.
“Yeah, shut up and dance, soldier boy,” a mocking voice said, and I shot a cold glare at the person dancing next to me. “If you can.”
It was Heather – the Master Chief having seen fit to “mix things up” by not letting us divide ourselves by our team affiliation – and she wasted no time mocking me once she realized my physical prowess did not particularly extend to impromptu dance routines. Sure, I was doing all the moves, but I wasn’t exactly elegant about it, and I may have overextended once or twice.
“I’m not a soldier boy,” I muttered, though to my chagrin my words only made her smirk grow bigger. Damn her!
Fortunately for my ego, I got my “revenge” a moment later, when Hatchet decided to do the hip thrusting portion of the routine to the right... which meant I was thrusting toward Heather rather than the other way around.
“Mmm, yeah,” I said, making sure to wiggle my eyebrows suggestively as I looked at her hips. My lips split into a grin, and I barely kept myself from snickering. “Nothin’ like moving your hips in tandem, huh?”
“In your dreams, you creep,” she shot back with a disgusted look on her face.
“Hey, hips don’t lie, am I right?” I retorted with a smirk and another pointed thrust.
The glare she sent my way was like a cool, soothing balm for my ego.
“Yeah? Well, you can take your hips and-” The Asian girl cut herself off when the music suddenly stopped, and we both turned to look toward the stage in surprise.
For some reason, Duncan had walked up to the boombox sitting below the stage and turned it off. The punk rocker crossed his arms and looked up.
“One of us drops out, we’re done for the day,” he said simply.
“We’re done when I say we’re done,” Hatchet replied in a dangerous tone. “Now drop and gimme twenty!”
To my mild surprise, Duncan rolled his eyes and obliged, dropping down on all fours to begin doing push-ups.
“Anyone else got anything they want to say?” the Master Chief asked as his gaze swept over the rest of us.
Gwen raised her hand. “Uh, yeah. Can I go to the bathroom?”
“Sure you can,” came the deceptively-sweet reply, “and you can clean it up while you’re there! Grab a mop and make that hellhole shine, soldier!”
The Goth girl blinked, then sighed. “Fine.”
After the dance routine was over with, we once more found ourselves in the main lodge, divided up along our usual team tables.
“For the next challenge you will complete a three-hundred-word essay about how much you love… me,” Hatchet explained. “Anyone who falls asleep or fails to complete the challenge will be eliminated! You have until 03:00 hours.”
For several agonizing minutes I simply sat there, staring at the papers before me as thoughts raced through my head. How the hell was I supposed to write an essay on a person I barely knew? And why I loved him, to boot?
Looking around, I saw most of the other campers seemed to have similar troubles, some simply staring blankly at the papers before them while others were writing and then constantly erasing what they wrote. Even Heather, who I expected to send some mocking words my way, was quiet and deep in thought.
I turned my attention back to my own papers. Three hundred words about Chef Hatchet… Hmm.
Slowly, I put the tip of my pencil to the top of the paper.
I love Master Chief Hatchet because…
“… he takes time out of his day to cook us the food we eat, every single day, three times a day. With nary a complaint nor a grunt of effort, he prepares us the sustenance we need to not only get through the day, but to thrive and conquer the challenges laid before us as contestants on this island. With courage and integrity toward his chosen profession, Master Chief – nay, Master Chef – Hatchet stands between us and the ever-looming threat of starvation. Were it not for his selfless sacrifices we would be little more than skin and bones, unable to complete even the simplest challenge. With his undying devotion to his craft and his seemingly unconditional love for us campers, he is the one who stands head and shoulders above the rest, leading us toward a better tomorrow with his shining example.
“For what is a leader who does not lead by example? A tinpot dictator, a disgusting shell of a man who expects subservience not through devotion and love, but through unearned entitlement and perverted self-love. Master Chef Hatchet he is not, for Master Chef Hatchet has earned our subservience, nay, our devotion, loyalty and – dare I say it? – love through his continued, selfless actions and professional integrity. To a man, Master Chef Hatchet is as a man is to a boy; an object of admiration, a symbol of greatness, a shining beacon of what to strive for. Though the beacon may never be reached in our lifetimes, simply by existing it drives us toward greater things, promising that we, too, may one day become greater than ourselves and perhaps obtain the right to bask directly in the light it shines upon us unworthy souls.
“And so, I shall close this essay by saying simply this: I love Master Chef Hatchet for he is Master Chef Hatchet… and what greater object of love could there be in this, our imperfect universe?”
Ugh, I feel so dirty.
As he lowered my essay, Hatchet revealed he had tears streaming from his eyes. He barely held back a sob and put on his sunglasses, no doubt to hide his teary eyes.
“O-okay,” he said, sniffling and wiping at his cheeks. “You pass. Go on, it’s time for bed… and then report to the playing field at 05:00 hours.”
“Missed a spot there, General,” Duncan said slyly, holding up a tissue for the man to take.
He didn’t. “Boy! Do you wanna run fifty laps around this camp right now?!”
“No, thanks!” Courtney said quickly as she pulled Duncan back. “He’s going straight to bed! Aren’t you?”
As I watched, the Hispanic girl pushed the boy up to the wall dividing the dining hall from the kitchen. They whispered to one another, though with the ruckus of everyone getting up and leaving, I couldn’t make it out. Shrugging to myself, I joined the other campers in leaving.
“You are such an unbelievable suck-up,” Heather whispered to me as we – meaning all the campers save Duncan and Courtney as well as Trent, DJ and Justin, who’d fallen asleep and gotten eliminated – left the lodge.
“Oh, please,” I whispered back, “you’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.”
“I am not!”
I smirked. “Sweet dreams.”
“Up yours.”
“No thanks, I prefer being the one doing the ‘upping’, if you catch my drift.”
I winked at her and Heather let out a wordless noise of disgust and split off from me to walk to the Gophers’ cabin while I headed for the Bass’.
It was less than two hours till the next part of the challenge, after all, and we needed all the sleep we could get.
At 05:00 – that’s five o’clock in the morning for you uncivilized folk – we gathered in front of something I had been hoping would make its way into the challenge at some point or other: an obstacle course.
“You will all run this course until you can all complete it in under one minute,” Master Chief Hatchet told us as we surveyed the obstacle course. “Am I making myself clear?”
“I’m first!” I almost shouted as I raised my hand to the sky.
“Oh, confident, are we?” he asked as he looked down at me. Literally, not figuratively; the man towered over me. “Very well, since you did so well on the essay… I’ll let you go first. Don’t disappoint me, soldier!”
I merely smirked and waited for him to prepare the stopwatch in his hand. Our eyes met and he nodded, then pushed the start button.
I dashed toward the first obstacle: a thick, wooden wall. Despite the mud covering most of the ground, with my momentum it was easy to jump up and climb the wall then drop down on the other side.
Next came a low ramp and several ropes hanging down from a wooden beam suspended above. I leapt off the ramp and grabbed one of the ropes and swung easily to the ramp on the other side, then continued on.
A pair of tires hung suspended vertically, side-by-side inside of a wooden frame. Dashing and then leaping, I reached out for the left tire’s edge with my hands and moved feet-first through it and landed in the mud on the other side. I slipped a little but immediately righted myself and moved on.
A pair of axes came next, suspended from two trees on either side of the course and set to swinging from side to side. Their swings were slow, almost lazy in a way, and it was child’s play to judge the timing and run through unscathed.
And that was that.
“Thirty-two seconds? Not bad, soldier,” Master Chief Hatchet said once I jogged back to his side. “Not as good as my personal best, of course, but not bad.”
“Oh, please,” I said smugly. “I was just feeling out the course. Wanna watch me turn those numbers around?”
The man snorted. “You think you can? Go right ahead… Go!”
This time I was off like a bullet. I hadn’t been lying; now that I knew the course I could put some actual speed into it. By the time I returned, Master Chief Hatchet was staring at his stopwatch and trembling.
“T-t-t-t-t-twenty-three seconds?!” he stuttered before staring at me. “You beat my- I-I mean, uh, g-good job, soldier. Good job.”
“I’ll be over there,” I said, indicating the small, grassy slope next to the obstacle course. On the way I stopped next to a stunned-looking Heather and gave her a smug grin. “Beat that.”
She shook herself and scowled. “Oh, just go sit down, you smug bastard!”
Snickering to myself, I did just that. Sitting myself down on the grass, I put my arms behind my head and leaned back to rest as I idly watched my fellow campers try to get through the course in under a minute. To my surprise, most of them needed multiple tries!
When she was on no less than her third try, Heather had a small accident… that was, she somehow managed to get herself entangled in the swinging-ropes and hung upside down, suspended by one leg.
There was no way I could just leave her there… without having some fun, first.
“So… how’s it hangin’?” I asked as I walked up to her, and I could feel my grin threatening to split my face into two.
Heather was just a tad less amused. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at me. “I hate you.”
“Aww, I like you, too!”
“I hate you so much.”
“Well, I’m not gonna bother you anymore,” I said casually. “I can see you’re all tied-up.”
She took a wild swing at me, then, but all it accomplished was to send her spinning. I walked away, Heather’s curses mixing beautifully with my laughter.
She was so fun to tease!
I laid back down in my spot in the grass and turned my attention to the other campers, and one of them in particular.
Why’s she still running? Didn’t she pass on her first try?
Eva jogged up to Master Chief Hatchet, eager to find out her time.
“Twenty-nine seconds,” he announced.
Eva growled and stomped the ground. “One more time!”
“You already passed, soldier. Three times, even.”
“I don’t care! Again!”
“Listen here, soldi-”
“AGAIN!”
“Okay, okay! Simmer down!”
Eva barely waited for the man to start timing her again before she dashed off toward the first obstacle, fully intent on improving her time. Determination filling her, she quickly climbed the wall and dropped down the other side, mud splattering around her as she landed.
She wasn’t done yet, however, and immediately ran toward the next obstacle.
If Jason can do it in twenty-three seconds, then so can I!
In the end, all the remaining campers succeeded in clearing the obstacle course, and as such not a single person was eliminated.
Master Chief Hatchet briefly returned to his normal role of camp chef and served us the regular ol’ gruel for an early breakfast… then informed us the next challenge would be the last, and would begin at 07:00 hours, or barely an hour later. We hurriedly finished our breakfast and prepared for what was to come.
“What you are experiencing is an ancient form of torture,” the Master Chief explained as we all hung upside-down, our legs curled around a thick branch sticking out of a large tree. The three remaining Gophers – Heather, Owen and Gwen – hung on one branch, while the remaining Bass – myself, Geoff, Courtney, Duncan and Eva – all crowded together on a branch on the roughly opposite side of the tree’s trunk, at such an angle that we could just barely see each other.
“By now the blood has begun rushing to your head,” Hatchet continued. “The next stage is nausea, followed by dizziness and a flushed appearance as the blood begins to pool in your eyes. You may experience fainting spells-”
On cue, Duncan’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he slipped off to fall onto the ground.
“Duncan!” Courtney called out in alarm.
“It’s okay, he’s all right,” DJ said after briefly examining the other boy.
Courtney let out a relieved sigh and grabbed onto the branch with her hands. Seeing this, the rest of us did the same, all of us realizing that the Master Chief hadn’t banned such an action.
Well, most of us. Owen tried, he really did, but in the end all his efforts resulted in was him loudly expelling gas. Many of us complained, but none took it harder than Heather, as she hung closest to the boy.
“Having fun over there?” I asked slyly as the Asian girl waved a hand in front of her face while gagging.
“Shut up,” she snapped between gagging noises. “Owen, you’re so disgusting!”
“Sorry,” the blond boy murmured and hung his head in shame… a moment before he lost his grip and fell to the ground with a deafening thud.
“One down, two to go,” I said as I looked over at the remaining Gophers with a slight smirk. “You girls doing okay? It’s four against two.”
“We’re fine,” Gwen replied, meeting my smirk with one of her own. “We can hang here all day.”
“For once, I agree with Weird Goth Girl,” Heather chimed in. “You’re not winning this one, Jason!”
“Yeah!”
“Wow, look at me, uniting people across the land,” I said sardonically, rolling my eyes. I turned my attention to my teammates. “How are you all holding up?”
“I’m doing fine,” Eva replied with a nod. “I do upside-down crunches every single day. This is nothing.”
“I’m… doing okay,” Courtney said hesitantly. “I do feel a little… dizzy…”
With those words, the Hispanic girl slipped off the branch and fell. To her credit, she managed to turn her fall into a flip and land unsteadily on her feet. Straightening, she looked up at us.
“Sorry, guys!”
“Hey, it’s all good,” Geoff called back to her. “I can win this! I live for the head rush, dude! It feels… so… good…”
I sighed as the skater boy slipped and fell off the branch. Unlike Courtney, his landing was unceremonious and from the looks of it probably painful. Duncan and Courtney cooperated in helping him back on his feet.
“Two on two,” Heather said smugly. “It’s just the four of us, now.”
“Sounds like a double date to me,” I said with a sly grin and a wink. “You payin’?”
“You wish, you cheap asshole.”
“Plannin’ on goin’ down, huh? Works for me.”
Heather blinked and then facepalmed with a groan.
Next to her, Gwen looked between us with a puzzled look on her face. “What are you two talking about?”
I looked at her. “Well-”
“You shut up, you perverted freak!” Heather interrupted heatedly before I could answer.
“… Yeah, sounds about right,” I agreed, earning myself another groan from the Asian girl.
Of course, Gwen didn’t look any wiser from the exchange. “Okay…”
“Oh, don’t mind us,” I said to her. “The blood rushin’ to our heads’s makin’ us… uh…”
“… Yeah, it’s just… the blood…” Heather shook herself, then closed her eyes and groaned again as she rubbed her temples. She was starting to look pretty flushed in the face, and I doubted it was because of my jokes. Any moment now, she would drop.
Unfortunately, the same could be said for me; I had been getting steadily dizzier and my thoughts murkier, to the point where I was struggling just to… uh… What was I thinking about, again?
Oh, hey, Heather’s goin’ down, I thought with mentally muffled glee as I watched the Asian girl begin slipping off the Gophers’ branch. I opened my mouth to shoot off a dirty comment, but found nothing coming out but an incoherent gurgle… right before my world started spinning and I found myself jolted awake when my back hit the ground.
“Oh,” I said to no one in particular.
“You went down,” I heard Heather say quietly somewhere nearby.
I craned my neck to, at a rather awkward angle, see her lying on her back not far from me. “So did you.”
We looked at one another quietly for a moment before we both burst out laughing.
Looking back on it, I’m pretty sure it was the blood pooled in our heads that did it, because it really wasn’t all that funny.
We sure as hell laughed a lot, though.
Eva ended up winning the challenge for the Bass, beating out Gwen by a whole ten seconds. Apparently, daily upside-down crunches was the shit for learning how to handle hanging upside-down for extended periods of time. Who knew?
Alas, the boot camp ended up not bonding Geoff and DJ at all, and so their pet-related feud continued unabated, to the annoyance of pretty much everyone… but especially Bunny.
As for who the Gophers voted off? Well…
“Despite everything, Trent still refuses to vote for Gwen,” Heather said in the confessional. “So instead of risking a tie vote, I did the next best thing and had everyone vote for Owen.”
The Asian girl smirked as she waved at the camera.
“Bye-bye, lard-ass! Smell ya never!
“Oh, and Jason can suck it.”
“Look, I have nothing personal against Owen,” Trent said as he sat in the confessional, looking a bit awkward as he looked everywhere but at the camera. “But between him and Gwen? What was I supposed to do?
“Besides, everyone knows he’s friends with Jason. And Heather told me he’s even been throwing challenges because of it! I’m sorry, Owen, but that’s not cool. You had to go.”
End Chapter 12
The roster
The Screaming Gophers: Gwen, Trent, Heather,
The Killer Bass: Geoff,
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Lets start with Courtney and Duncan. Courtney is pretty convinced that there is at least a attraction between Jason and Heather but Duncan is confident there isn't(he is pretty close with Jason so he would know and he might be the closest to Jason maybe). Oh Courtney didn't like what Duncan said. Probably why some of their scenes aren't in so they aren't in a relationship(yet anyway). Duncan might need to do something.
Nice and peaceful scene between Jason and Gwen. Learning more about each other and their hobbies. Little funny Jason went through this entire thing on sounds and ended with just saying he saw Trent. Yes Jason make Gwen seem like the pervert(XD). Also nice to show her a location where she can draw to her hearts content.
Oh Trent. If you had any chance left with Gwen before you just destroyed it man. Was so confrontational it basically brought everyone to watch. Jason and Gwen got to be curious how Trent made some of his claims. With this Trent is very much against Jason and Jason gaining more points with Gwen. Do got to give Duncan some respect for trying to convince Trent to stop though(more knows how it will end so might as well try). Maybe Jason and Gwen will think about Beth and the diary from this?
Now for the challenges. The canoes basically went the same way but with a little more talking and banter. DJ and Geoff still aren't getting along(surprised they had carrot cake.....Chris doing right?). Yeah not surprising everyone followed Jason to the kitchen for real food(love the justification). Now the dance floor happened how I saw it would and it was great(with the thrusting it had to happen). For the essay I loved probably more than I should have(loved it made Chef cry). Jason finished the course first obviously with Eva being second but Eva wanting to beat Jasons score(Jason is basically her measuring stick). Then finally the hanging challenge. Eva was made for this part of the challenge. Gwen is good but not good enough against someone who has experience.
Now it makes sense that Owen was voted off(sad that my theory was wrong but it makes sense). Heather is basically safe now to at least the merge but Gwen is basically alone on the Gopher team now(Trent won't vote for her but you know). If the Gophers lose the next challenge Gwen has a high chance of being voted off. Unless Justin goes with Lindsay which could happen if Jason threatens his face or make a promise to make his life hell if Gwen is voted off(assuming the Gophers lose the next challenge anyway). Gwen will probably hang with Jason more after this.
And finally we are at the Heather part. The back and forth between Jason and Heather was just perfect. The taunting was just funny. Very curious how this looks to everyone else. Can see Gwen asking Jason and he basically just says its funny and he knows it annoys Heather. Would Trent see this as Jason trying to turn Heather or as taunting/insults? Courtney probably saw it a flirting again with her earlier experience.
Nice and peaceful scene between Jason and Gwen. Learning more about each other and their hobbies. Little funny Jason went through this entire thing on sounds and ended with just saying he saw Trent. Yes Jason make Gwen seem like the pervert(XD). Also nice to show her a location where she can draw to her hearts content.
Oh Trent. If you had any chance left with Gwen before you just destroyed it man. Was so confrontational it basically brought everyone to watch. Jason and Gwen got to be curious how Trent made some of his claims. With this Trent is very much against Jason and Jason gaining more points with Gwen. Do got to give Duncan some respect for trying to convince Trent to stop though(more knows how it will end so might as well try). Maybe Jason and Gwen will think about Beth and the diary from this?
Now for the challenges. The canoes basically went the same way but with a little more talking and banter. DJ and Geoff still aren't getting along(surprised they had carrot cake.....Chris doing right?). Yeah not surprising everyone followed Jason to the kitchen for real food(love the justification). Now the dance floor happened how I saw it would and it was great(with the thrusting it had to happen). For the essay I loved probably more than I should have(loved it made Chef cry). Jason finished the course first obviously with Eva being second but Eva wanting to beat Jasons score(Jason is basically her measuring stick). Then finally the hanging challenge. Eva was made for this part of the challenge. Gwen is good but not good enough against someone who has experience.
Now it makes sense that Owen was voted off(sad that my theory was wrong but it makes sense). Heather is basically safe now to at least the merge but Gwen is basically alone on the Gopher team now(Trent won't vote for her but you know). If the Gophers lose the next challenge Gwen has a high chance of being voted off. Unless Justin goes with Lindsay which could happen if Jason threatens his face or make a promise to make his life hell if Gwen is voted off(assuming the Gophers lose the next challenge anyway). Gwen will probably hang with Jason more after this.
And finally we are at the Heather part. The back and forth between Jason and Heather was just perfect. The taunting was just funny. Very curious how this looks to everyone else. Can see Gwen asking Jason and he basically just says its funny and he knows it annoys Heather. Would Trent see this as Jason trying to turn Heather or as taunting/insults? Courtney probably saw it a flirting again with her earlier experience.
cringyusername
New member
Is this from Kengan asura
JasonSanjo
Your Overlord and Jester
The butterflies are swarming, aren't they?
Yeah, on the one hand, I really enjoyed the boot camp aspect... on the other, for some reason they decided to go with mostly static challenges despite everything else available to them. It was kinda weird.
Yeah, their relationship is still more-or-less on track, but due to butterflies it's developing more slowly than it did in canon. For now they enjoy each other's company and do a fair bit of understated flirting.
The Jason/Gwen interaction and the Trent confrontation scenes were the big ones I skipped from the last chapter, and is the primary reason this one ended up as long as it did. I wanted to showcase proper character development outside the challenges, and those scenes are what I came up with. The Duncan/Courtney scene at the beginning was obviously new, though, as it referenced the events in the medical tent in the previous chapter.
Yeah, Gwen has zero interest in Trent after his major screw-up in this chapter.
It has been shown irregularly throughout the season that the campers occasionally receive desserts (perhaps after dinner every other day? It's not explicit, from what I've seen). The dessert being carrot cake in this case? That was Chris wanting to stir up trouble. When watching the episode, I couldn't stop thinking "The kitchen's right there, and it has saloon doors... Why aren't you raiding it?!" so I figured the SI me wouldn't miss it, either. And you wouldn't believe how many times I had ro rewrite the banter during the dance routine to make it actually flow properly and not veer into overly graphic territory. I do have a bit of a dirty mind, but I usually keep it to myself, so it was difficult balancing things in a way I felt was both appropriate for the fic and believable given my own (and thus the SI's) personality. The essay started with the fade-out of Jason thinking, and then I started writing the tail-end of Chef reading it, and then I figured "what the heck" and just went ahead and wrote the whole thing. Yeah, Eva wanting to beat Jason's time on the obstacle course was one of the first ideas I had for this chapter, and it allowed me to give her a little more screen time. And obviously the hanging challenge was going to go down to either Eva or Gwen, and I figured Eva had more experience with that sort of thing and gave her the win.
Yes, Heather's finally doing her part in "striking back" against Jason... It took her a while to get there, but she did. As you say, Gwen is now basically alone on the Gophers, and is very much in Heather's sights. I haven't watched the next episode yet, so I'm not sure how the butterflies will affect the outcome... we'll have to wait and see.
Thanks! I was concerned maybe I made it a bit too one-sided (with Jason getting more zingers in than Heather), but at the same time, I didn't want it to escalate too much in this one chapter. Some more reactions to it from the other campers will be in the next chapter, assuming I can fit them in without making it too stilted and awkward. Courtney definitely saw it as more flirting, while Trent probably saw it as Jason trying to mentally unbalance Heather as part of his schemer M.O..
Glad you liked it! And yes, I plan on having people react to the banter a bit more in the next chapter, though as I haven't re-watched the next episode yet I'm not entirely sure what form it'll take. We'll see.Pft.
Heather and Jason are flirting, but at least Jason is only doing it to get under Heather's skin.
Then Courtney...oh, this is going to be rich!
Thanks for the chapter. Made me happy.
Nah, it's a real-life technique, said to have been developed in southern China for use in fighting in tight spaces on boats and in alleys.
The mini-documentary here gets a few details wrong - for instance, while it is an exercise in Wing Chun, the technique most likely existed long before its incorporation into Wing Chun, and it is often used at greater distances than just one inch, despite the common name - but it's still a decent presentation of the technique and its effect. Note that the effects were a bit more spectacular in this fic thanks to cartoon physics.
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Marxgreyjoy
Member
of the people volunteered, lewshawna, and harold are swapped out, without owen the gophers probably catch trent on the bed, no harold and no leshawna and no bridgette means jeff isnt trying to show off a tatt and does better at moose riding, whoever is swapped out in the gophersis probably as componentat cartoon physics moose riding as leshawna, probably still a tie going into the final challenge
cringyusername
New member
@JasonSanjo question in season 3 will the songs be different with jason
That is what I figured. Courtney not seeing his more nice side and saying Heather was hot slowed it down a bit, It will happen just will take a bit longer.
Do love the interactions you are adding in. Builds up the characters and could also add butterflies to the mix. As Gwen and Jason get more comfortable with each other they might share more things and get closer(with Jason being the only person Gwen likes left she'll want to hang with him). Using old scenes to add to the story.
Not surprised that Gwen is over Trent completely now. Trent made accusations on her friend that she knows isn't true. Trent very much convinced himself its true though(Heather very happy with this).
I knew Chris did it!! Yeah it was a little weird they didn't go to the kitchen when they left the room. Very happy Jason did that and got some regular food. Yeah you could of done so many things with the thrusting. Probably the best you used the line you did. Glad you added the essay part. It was very sweet that Chef read it. The other campers probably didn't do as good job with the essay. Happy you gave Eva more screen time and a chance to win them the challenge. This challenge just fitted her.
Heather finally has room to relax for a bit(or at least that's what she thinks). Gwen is in trouble and the only way I can think to save her if they lose next is Jason getting involved. Have not watched the next episode yet but maybe events will line up for Jason to take action and play the voting game. Jason and Gwen can easily guess that Gwen is in trouble with the facts they have and Jason actually likes her(one of the few people that he does on this island) would try to help.
The banter was pretty even between Heather and Jason. It will probably continue in the next episodes. Ah Trent seeing the scheming in action huh(XD)? Looking forward to it. Most probably saw it as banter though.
You would think that would be the case but challenges like this are pretty popular. In Survivor there are challenges like this that you need to hold something, stand on something or focus on something that the longer it goes on the harder it gets. Its the "who will last the longest?" to the watchers and builds up(obviously they do little timeskips for the watchers until it shows something interesting).
JasonSanjo
Your Overlord and Jester
It's pretty much as you say, with Owen gone the Gophers have a better (but not guaranteed) chance to catch Trent. And Geoff not showing off his tattoo could potentially give him a better chance at completing the moose riding challenge, but again, no guarantees. I won't spoil anything about who ends up replacing Leshawna for the Gophers, but I will say I have some humorous ideas in mind for how it'll play out.
Some of them might be. I haven't watched season 3 in forever and don't really remember much of the lyrics, but with different people participating there's big chance the lyrics will change to some of the songs, or even that some songs will end up being replaced entirely. That's still a long way away, though.
Something like that, yeah.
Thanks! I do try to get character development in when I can.
Pretty much. Trent's still not over her, though, and he honestly believes Jason is just using her, so look forward to more shenanigans from him in future chapters... assuming he doesn't get kicked off the island.
Thanks!
Yes, things changed from dire to pretty much safe for Heather in the space of only a chapter or two, and now it's Gwen who's in danger of getting voted off. I just watched the next episode, and I'm not sure who will win. I do have some ideas for who will replace who and how those parts might play out, though. Regardless of who wins, I plan on adding plenty of comedy to the challenge.
Oh, yeah? Maybe it's me overthinking things, then. Wouldn't be the first time. And yes, the banter will definitely continue.
Yeah Trent might be joining Geoff in the creepy pick up girls club if this continues. Long he still on the island this will continue.
No problem its true!!
Heather is pretty safe. That doesn't really mean her alliance is safe. Just watched the episode so will be in a spoiler. Looking forward to the funny suffering.
I get it man. I overthink things sometimes If you can't tell from my theories. XD
Lots of things not in this episode. Leshawna and Harold means no poem thing(could be happening at loser hotel though). Not completely sure how much this will give you to write more social. Finally gonna have Gwen and Jason talking about the diary and suspecting Heather? And Jason making his alliance?
Now for the challenge. You would think Owen being gone would help with the first challenge(it will but not that much). If Trent falls like canon its gonna be hard to move the couch to the position they need(sleeper sofa's can be pretty heavy and Chris seems to picked not the best) and falling that high is gonna have Trent pick up speed fast so not confident they can do it. Even if they can if both teams do it is it a tie or it go to the first person to land on the couch?
Now for the second challenge. With Geoff having his pants on and actually being ready he will last longer. If your putting Justin in to replace Leshawna I'm not sure he can win. Justin is good physically but not the skills. Very much a you choice on what happens really.
Now for the third challenge. The placement can very much determine who wins or ties. Who is skiing for the Bass is either Jason for the facing Heather or Courtney going for the weakest player like Lindsay. Not completely sure how Jason or Courtney would do but I'm confident they'll see Heather trying to cut the rope to make them lose. Lindsay surprisingly does well this challenge. If Duncan isn't the driver then maybe Jason or Eva?
Now for if the Gophers lose. Gwen is on the chopping block if something doesn't happen. Maybe Jason wants to get back at Heather for trying to cut the rope in the third challenge and to help keep Gwen in the game(hope Jason does something). Jason would have to threaten Justin because Heather and Lindsay are in a alliance(threaten to mess his face up if Gwen is gone). Trent won't vote for Gwen so if Jason can get Justin it be three votes for Lindsay(Trent won't vote for Heather). Well Heather tried to convince Trent to vote for Gwen so Trent might not of liked that and guess that's what Heather will do next if they lose.
Now for the Bass if they lose. Gonna be either Geoff, DJ or Courtney(most likely the formers from the Bunny situation). Very much depends on what happens in this episode.
Now for the challenge. You would think Owen being gone would help with the first challenge(it will but not that much). If Trent falls like canon its gonna be hard to move the couch to the position they need(sleeper sofa's can be pretty heavy and Chris seems to picked not the best) and falling that high is gonna have Trent pick up speed fast so not confident they can do it. Even if they can if both teams do it is it a tie or it go to the first person to land on the couch?
Now for the second challenge. With Geoff having his pants on and actually being ready he will last longer. If your putting Justin in to replace Leshawna I'm not sure he can win. Justin is good physically but not the skills. Very much a you choice on what happens really.
Now for the third challenge. The placement can very much determine who wins or ties. Who is skiing for the Bass is either Jason for the facing Heather or Courtney going for the weakest player like Lindsay. Not completely sure how Jason or Courtney would do but I'm confident they'll see Heather trying to cut the rope to make them lose. Lindsay surprisingly does well this challenge. If Duncan isn't the driver then maybe Jason or Eva?
Now for if the Gophers lose. Gwen is on the chopping block if something doesn't happen. Maybe Jason wants to get back at Heather for trying to cut the rope in the third challenge and to help keep Gwen in the game(hope Jason does something). Jason would have to threaten Justin because Heather and Lindsay are in a alliance(threaten to mess his face up if Gwen is gone). Trent won't vote for Gwen so if Jason can get Justin it be three votes for Lindsay(Trent won't vote for Heather). Well Heather tried to convince Trent to vote for Gwen so Trent might not of liked that and guess that's what Heather will do next if they lose.
Now for the Bass if they lose. Gonna be either Geoff, DJ or Courtney(most likely the formers from the Bunny situation). Very much depends on what happens in this episode.