TDRE: EP III

TOTAL DRAMA REUNION
HAPPY BEGINNING?



Chris is once more standing center stage inside the old theatre in his tuxedo. "LAST TIME on Total Drama Reunion! It was a happy beginning... for some. While Alejandro and Heather were getting together, we found Duncan and Courtney are still at each other's throats. Though it looks like Justin may have just taken the number one spot on Courtney's checklist of bad. DJ is moping around like the world has ended. But most dramatically of all, did you see the way Gwen was looking at Trent? And the man has been completely ignoring her. Is Justin going to be taking the number one spot on everybody's list of bad? ... What is up with DJ? ... What is up with Gwen? ... Well, just stay put and you might find out on this episode of Total Drama Reunion!"


Chris is now sitting in the surprisingly big office on the other side of the front desk. He's in a swivel chair and there are monitors set up in front of him. Chef is leaning against one of the walls with his arms crossed.

Chris looks into the camera and says "Hi there. It's been a bit since the last episode, so let's take a moment to get you caught up. Geoff had himself a pre-season game and had to leave last week. Then when he got back a few days ago Duncan had himself a concert, so he had to go. In the meantime, the interns were sent to collect Team Casino's personal items and are coming back with them today. Oddly enough, Duncan is also getting back today. So as soon as they get here, we can get this thing going. But while we're waiting for that to happen, come join me to do a little spying on the competitors."


The camera moves in on the screen with Courtney laying on one of the couches inside the hotel lobby, reading a book. Katie and Sadie walk up to her from behind.

"What are you reading there?" Katie asks upbeat.

"A book." Courtney answered darkly, hoping they would get the hint and go away.

They did get the hint, but they were there to try and talk to her.

"Ok Courtney, we're here to try and cheer you up." Sadie told her. "You're going to be here for about a year, you can't just sit around and grouch at everyone who comes near you. So what's it gonna take?"

Courtney glared at them and considered many answers. "You're really trying to be friends with me?"

Katie and Sadie smiled and nodded.

Courtney sighed, "No, leave."

Katie and Sadie frowned and scrunched their eyebrows, "But-"

"I'm just not interested." Courtney said as politely as possible. "Thanks, really, but I would rather be alone."


-start confessional-

Katie and Sadie: "She's just so tense. We thought if maybe someone sat down and talked with her she would loosen up." Katie says.

"Yeah," Sadie chimes in, "and no one else wanted to even get near her."

"Probably because she's so bossy and snarky." Katie says.

Sadie nods, "Anyway, we've never really talked before, so we figured it could be fun."

They looked at each other. "Oh well." Katie said.

-end confessional-


In the small hallway on the floor above Courtney, Katie and Sadie; Geoff and Bridgette are sitting and leaning against the wall talking to Cody and Sierra who are standing and leaning against the rail.

"We just knew you two were going to end up together." Bridgette said.

"Oh yeah." Geoff said. "Everyone else thought we were insane but it was so obvious."

"Yeah well, I guess she's not so bad." Cody said with a smile, winking to Sierra.

There was a moment of silence because no one could think of what to say.

"So you're totally married and somehow don't have kids?" Sierra asked. She turned to Cody. "I want kids, we are having kids."

"I know you do, we'll see." He told her quickly.

"Well," Bridgette started, "we're just really busy."

"We are always all over each other, you do have to wonder why it hasn't happened yet." Geoff laughed.

"But with our busy lives a baby just doesn't make sense." Bridgette shrugged off with a smile.

"But now that I've finally got professional football as my career, she can quit her job and we'll be a lot less busy and we'll get around to it."

Bridgette stopped smiling and looked at Geoff. "Would you relax with that?"

"Relax with what? I'm just answering her question."

"You are not, you're thinking because there are people around I won't disagree because I don't want to look like the bad guy."

"Oh babe, come on..."

Geoff and Bridgette continued a small argument and Cody and Sierra looked at each other, trying to talk telepathically and figure out if they should leave or wait.


On the other side of the lobby, DJ and Trent are sitting on the other couch. Trent is sunk into the couch, softly playing his guitar and DJ is sitting, leaning over with his elbows on his knees.

"... And then she dumps me and then I end up here. Definitely the worst Monday ever." Trent sighed. "Ok, so that's me. You're turn. Why are you so upset?"

DJ kept staring at the ground. "I have a pregnant wife back home and I'm going to be here when my child is born."

Trent stopped playing and stared at DJ. "Aw, dude..."

"Don't." DJ told him. "I don't want to get into it."

"Won't go into it... But if you ever want to..."

"I know." DJ smiled at Trent. "Thanks."


Flash back to Chris and Chef.

"Well that explains a lot." Chef said.

"Oh yeah, I actually kind of feel bad." Chris said.

There was a pause.

"But not enough to send him home?" Chef asked with a smirk.

"Oh no way." Chris answered, grinning. Chris then looked back to the screens and grimaced. "You know, this is really boring actually. They're all just sitting around and talking. Look at this Chef; Beth, Lindsay and Tyler are sitting in the Theatre... Alejandro and Heather are in the Courtyard... Gwen's by the fountain, messing with her laptop... Justin is in the Theatre, oh look there are Katie and Sadie going back to him... and everyone else is just in the Cafeteria. I mean, what-"

An intern walked in and interrupted his rant. "Mr. McLean, we're finally back with last week's winner's prizes. And Duncan just got back, he's on his way here as we speak.

"Great!" Chris said, jumping in excitement. "Let's get this party started!" Chris walked to the front desk and pulled out earplugs.

"What about the prizes?" The intern wondered.

"Just put them in their rooms." Chris waved off, putting in the earplugs and then he pushed a button under the desk. The alarms went off and everyone inside the hotel screamed in fright and covered their ears. Everyone not inside the hotel made their appearance a few seconds later and Chris shut off the alarm.

"Alright competitors, are you ready for your next challenge?!" Chris yelled in excitement, taking out the earplugs. "Well check this out!"

Chef rolled a giant board into the room while an intern dragged a covered, overstuffed wheelbarrow and stood next to him.

Chris pointed to the board. "This is a magnetized board." He then points to the wheelbarrow. "Inside the wheelbarrow are metal puzzle pieces. Each team will get one of each and will have one hour to complete their thirty piece puzzle so... Good luck and go!"


All three teams went after the closest board and wheelbarrow and uncovered their puzzle pieces, only to have the top layer of pieces cling to the bottom of the board instantly. Everyone exhaled loudly and then started prying off the pieces, the weaker people nearly knocking themselves out on the weight of each piece no longer carrying itself.

"Cheese and crust, are these things ALL metal??" Bridgette cried.

"Why yes," Chris answered smugly, "yes they are. And ya'll better stop staring at me like that and get to work, the clock's a tickin'!"

"Well how about a ladder or something?" Courtney asked, reaching her arms out to emphasize her annoyance. "I mean seriously, how are we supposed to get to the top?"

"A ladder or something?" Chris laughed. "Well that's not challenging! Besides, you're smart kids, figure it out."

Courtney turned to Heather. "And how come you aren't saying anything?"

"I've got nothing to say." Heather replied with a simple shrug.

"What?" Duncan asked a little shocked. "Since when?"

"Since I grew up and got over this show." She answered strongly. "You should try it some time."


-start confessional-

Heather: "Everyone keeps expecting me to turn into this overactive, plotting b*BEEP*. Well I'm still a b*BEEP*, but I got what I wanted from this show." She smiled. "I even have Alejandro now and some of the talks we have are seriously straight from a Lifetime movie, it's so surreal and I'm actually really happy." She lifted an eyebrow and her swooning smile turned into a smirk. "Courtney and Duncan better watch it though, I may be grown up, but there's still only so much I will take."

-end confessional-


"Come on you guys, we can do this!" Sadie cheered, instantly breaking the tension that had begun to form. She lowered her voice before speaking again, "And I have an idea! I say we put the all of the pieces on the board and have a few people scramble them around while the others make sense out of it."

Katie chimed in with "That way we don't have to hurt ourselves or waste time standing around holding pieces and digging through the wheelbarrow."

"That sounds like a great plan." Justin told Katie and Sadie with a wide smile.

"I actually agree." Duncan said in surprise. "Let's do it."


Tyler's team was heading nowhere fast. Izzy was sitting on Owen's shoulders and playing with a puzzle piece that had a question mark on it, Eva was getting pissed at Noah and Ezekiel for just standing around, Beth and Lindsay were gossiping and making predictions about this season's romances, and Tyler was just admiring Lindsay and occasionally placing a puzzle piece randomly on the board.


Gwen's team, by sheer luck, had already put a couple of pieces together and was arguing about it. It looked like it was supposed to be a word and a period, but the word was long and the letters didn't make sense.

"Ok, so the image on the puzzle is actually just a bunch of words..." Geoff said slowly.

"But that can't be right, that's not a word, that's a bunch of letters." Bridgette said. "We must have put the wrong pieces together."

"It's a puzzle, each piece will only fit where it belongs." Harold told them.

A light bulb went off in Sierra's brain. "Maybe the letters are supposed to be scrambled." She thought out loud.

Everyone looked at her confused.

"As far as puzzles go, this is easy." She told them. "Maybe the actual puzzle is figuring out what the words say."

"That is definitely like Chris to put a puzzle inside of a puzzle." Trent said plainly.

"Well let's find out." Gwen said while turning to the board. "We have A-R-U-T-E-S-E. That could be arutese? ... Searetu? ..."

"Erestua?..." Bridgette put out.

"Tears?..." LeShawna put out.

"Missing a couple of letters there." Harold told her.

"Well where's your contribution?"

"Treasure!" Cody shouted in excitement, causing Geoff, Bridgette and Sierra to cover his mouth.

Gwen got excited and whispered, "So that's it, the puzzle comes together to make a sentence and then we have to unscramble the words so that it makes sense."

"So let's hurry up and finish putting the puzzle together," Geoff announced, "the clock's a tickin'!"


Forty-three minutes in and Duncan's team was the first to realize that they could not complete their puzzle. There was one piece in the bottom right corner that was missing. Courtney approached Chef and Chris but they shooed her away. The team started arguing once more, except for DJ who was staring at the board and thinking. Four minutes later he was the one to figure out the sentence. The sentence said "Look in the seventeenth of the second". His team stopped arguing instantly and stared at him dumbfounded.

DJ smiled and shrugged. "My wife and I play a lot of Scrabble."

"Way to go DJ!" Duncan shouted in excitement. "Now what does that mean?!"

The team stopped again and thought about it.

"I hate riddles." Alejandro sighed.

"Room 217." Heather said calmly. "I'll bet anything that the last piece of the puzzle is in the seventeenth room of the second floor."

Justin's face lit up, "That's got to be it! Wow, I never thought I'd say this but way to go Heather. You are awesome."

Heather simply rolled her eyes.

Chef shouted, "Ten minutes left everybody!"

"Ok, we need to head to there now." Courtney ordered them just before running up the stairs.

The rest of the team then followed her example and ran to the room.


It wasn't but a minute after The Resources had jolted up the stairs that Team Casino started making their way to room 246 as fast as they could. They searched the dark, dusty room until Trent finally found the puzzle piece behind the nightstand. They made their way back to the lobby the exact same time Duncan's team did and were about to place the piece in its spot but then the alarms went off.

"The Resources wins it with just a few seconds left to spare!" Chris announced.

Duncan's team jumped with joy while Gwen's and Tyler's team groaned.

"That was a close one, seriously." Chris said through laughter. He then turned to Swinging Security who only had about half of the pieces up. "Except for you guys... What umm, what happened?"

Tyler's team looked at each other with curiosity on their faces, but no one had an answer.

Chris shook his head and returned his attention to Duncan's team. "Alright winners, here you go." He threw a small bag at them that Duncan caught. "Inside are the only keys to the pool. Yes, pool. Thanksgiving is coming up and we're obligated to send you home for it. While you're all gone, we're going to put a pool together. And you, The Resources will have the only access to it. You know, besides me and Chef."

The Resources cheered, grabbed their keys and separated, going to their friends. Duncan made an "L" with his fingers, put it to his forehead and pointed it at Gwen playfully as he made his way over to her. Gwen responded by making a "V" with her fingers and putting it to her mouth, and then made a gesture with her tongue that had to be blurred out. They laughed and punched each other in the arm.

"Come on," Duncan told Gwen, "I overheard the interns talking about everyone's prizes while I was on my way in, let's go get those movies from your room and take over the theatre."

"Sounds like a plan." Gwen remarked happily. She stopped and grabbed her room key from a pocket then threw it to Duncan. "How about you go get them and I'll meet you there. I'm going to hang with LeShawna for a bit."

Duncan saluted her in a coy manner and then headed to a nearby room on the floor level.

Gwen watched him leave cautiously and then made her way to Trent who was back on the couch with his guitar. "Can I have a seat?" Gwen asked shyly.

Trent looked up to her with no expression and said a quick "sure" before going back to playing softly.

Gwen sat down timidly and said, "So everyone's prizes are sitting in their room. What did you ask for?"

Trent didn't look at her. "My chopper."

Gwen smiled. "Wow, you finally got that chopper you wanted. That's awesome."

Trent stopped playing and sighed, still not looking at Gwen. "Why are you talking to me?"

Gwen frowned. "I miss being your friend. Why are you still mad at me?"

"You know why."

"Trent come on, that fight with Duncan was about four years ago."

Trent looked at her now, an impatient look on his. "And you're still defending him."

Gwen's sadness turned to ill temper. "He was just angry," she stated, "and YOU hit him first. Or do you not remember that part?"

Trent turned back to his guitar, irate, and started playing again.

Gwen shook her head abruptly and said "fine". Then she got up and went to her room only to come right back out with Duncan.


-start confessional-

Trent: "I admit I could have handled that better... But after everything he said, everything he DID and she's still his BFF and..." He moaned grouchily and leaned back. "I just don't get it."

-end confessional-


Chris McLean was sitting and staring at the monitor and smirking. "Wow, tension."

Chef nodded.

"Some people just don't know how to let things go." He giggled then looked at another screen and frowned slightly. "Unlike Alejandro and Heather who are kind of making me sick."

Chef huffed, "You're just jealous because you and Mil-."

"Whoa, this show is not about me!"

Chef turned to the camera and said, "Remember to tune in next time for another episode of Total Drama Reunion!"