Author's Notes: Hello Fan-fiction fans! Though I've been a fan of Total Drama for some time, this is my first attempt at writing fan-fiction, after only discovering fan-fiction about a month ago. As a result, I would greatly appreciate it if you would leave me a review telling what you thought I did well and what needs to be approved.

Before going into this story, there are two people that I must give sincere thanks to. The first is 's own Strix Moonwing. Her fan-fiction, "Candy for Your Thoughts" was not only the first fan-fiction that I've ever read but also it was such a amazing work that I now have a passion for fan-fiction that never existed before. For that and commutating with me as a friend, I thank her. The second is Akira500 on deviantART. I must thank him for his recent friendship, our great discussions about Total Drama, and his constant and committed assistance with this story.

So what do I have to say about this story? Well, I don't want to say too much about it in this opening. I'll do a more basic summary in the author's notes at the bottom. But I will say three things about this story right here and now:

1. This story will take place at Camp Wawanakwa after Total Drama Revenge of the Island with all of the 13 contestants, Chris, and Chef being trapped there for a few weeks (why will be stated at the start of the still largely conceptual 2nd chapter).

2. While the main focus of this story is going to be Mike, Zoey, and a yet to be named being: many other characters like Dawn, Dakota, and Sam are going to play vital roles and/or have struggles of their own to overcome that are in someway connected to the main conflict.

3. Finally, this story is going to be far darker in tone than Total Drama fan-fiction generally is. The reasons for this will be explained more in the lower comments.

Also, the characters and locations of Total Drama Revenge of the Island are not mine. I would hope that's already known by anyone who will read this story.

So, with all of that being said, let us venture into my first attempt at fan-fiction, the first chapter of "Mad Mikey": Current and Future Unsolved Problems.

Heavy pants and footsteps echoed throughout the vast forest, reverberating against the thick trunks of ancient trees.

Their source was a teenage boy named Mike, one of the contestants on one of those terrible reality t.v. shows. But rather than being on the coast of New Jersey or in a kitchen with a rude British man, he was on an island filled with radioactive mutants.

He was better off here on this island.

Until now, of course.

As if trying to prove that point, Mike tripped in his panic and fell into a small puddle.

After getting on his knees, Mike found that terror gripped his legs. Unable to move in apprehension, Mike looked with fear-glazed eyes at his surroundings.

Trees that were water-soaked and dull were seen all over. Moist witnesses to the events unfolding. As he looked closer, Mike was the details of these depressing denizens of the forest. Their barks were coarse and rough, with patches upturned and the signs of decay present. The branches also were gnarled and entangled, some actually piercing the barks of their neighbors in nature.

Moving his mud colored eyes from the trees, Mike looked down to the mud. But there was no mud. At least none that was visible. The floor of the forest was obscured by an ocean of greenish vapor. Covering a carpet of rotten leafs just beneath its murky surface.

With his knees still anchored in the puddle, in the cauldron of olive tinted decay, Mike heard what has caused his alarm.

A tapping. But not just a tapping, a gentle rapping along the barks of the forest's foliage. But unlike the noises from Poe's Raven, the source was not just anything, but something!

Following the unnerving yet rhythmic tapping, there came a noise, a voice. A voice not much more than a whisper. A whisper full of menace and bile.

"Mike."

The young man with the mocha skin and brown eyes instantly rose to his feet and franticly looked around to find the whisper's source among the witnesses of wood.

He saw no one.

But that didn't stop another whisper laced with ill will to find him; only this one was somewhat louder than before.

"Mike. What are you doing Mike?"

Not wishing to confront their source, Mike fled the whispers. While running, Mike could not help but absorb more features of this forest. Some dim and unidentifiable source shot faint rays of light upon the branches. As if they were blacksmiths, the branches forged from the light monstrosities made of shadow. As those shadows were thrown upon the forest floor, they formed fantastic terrors the likes of which Mike has never seen before.

But these monstrosities were not what the teenage boy with the brown eyes and blue shirt was running from with great haste. What he was running from was no shadow.

At least, not an entire one.

As Mike ran through the endless and jagged maze of trees, he came across a fork in the path. As Mike tried to choose which path he should take, he had a nagging thought.

Though frightening, there was a faint feeling of the familiarity in this forest. Had he been here before? Could there have been more in the air than the smell of rotting leaves, like the aroma of nostalgia, perhaps? Not knowing why, Mike ran down the path on the right.

"Oh yes, do try that again. That's bound to work this time!" The unseen terror taunted the frightened teenager with scathing sarcasm. It was getting louder still.

In his sprint, Mike took a closer look at the trees all around him. He saw a most paradoxical sight. While some trees were damp to the point of saturation, others looked as if a massive fire had taken place. These charred trees had trunks reeking of soot and branches devoid of dying vegetation.

Then, Mike tripped again, this time over a fallen tree. You would have thought him to be one of those bimbos in those old science fiction films. Aside from not having an ample bosom, Mike differed the most from them in that he actually realized something by himself. Cleft chins be damned!

As he picked himself back up, Mike noticed that he was in the middle of what appeared to have been the center of a massive explosion. Surrounding him were trees that had been not merely not knocked down but uprooted by some great force. Forgetting for a moment his fear, the boy in the blue shirt ran his hand along the nearest tree that was still standing. He saw that the soot came off the bark and clung to his hand, leaving a long handprint along the trunk.

As he examined the soot from the tree in his hand, Mike was hit by a realization.

"This happened recently. Maybe even within the past 24 hours?" He thought to himself.

Though the sixteen year old couldn't support this claim in any way, he was certain.

Even so, he was wondering what had caused such a scene? What massive event affected these mighty and imposing trees as if they were mere saplings? Was it still happening?

"Wondrous isn't? That even in something so foul and dead, the universe finds a way to make it even more so." The voice spoke, yet with a subtle sense of longing and regret.

That went unnoticed by Mike as he ran once again.

He didn't get far.

Before him, Mike saw a massive network of vines covered in thorns. Then, a colossal boom was heard. A sound of thunder. Mere moments later, a bolt of lightning flashed in the otherwise featureless sky far above. As the surge in the sky shined, the thorny mangrove before him formed a face.

While some of the thorns formed into filed fangs that was not what disturbed him. It was that otherwise, the face he was gazing at was so much like his own.

Vertical columns of interlocking vine made the mirage of Mike's spiky hair. Others formed circles, with decayed lumps of foliage creating the masquerade of mud colored eyes.

Then, the charge of a second electric whip cracked across the sky. As the flash fell to the forest floor, Mike Saul the brown eyes of the mangrove Mike change to faint green before returning to their brown beginnings.

As if on cue from an unseen script, the sinister silence was broken by the voice's next lines of dialogue.

"You can't run from me Mike. No more than you could your own shadow."

Spurred by this latest thinly veiled threat, Mike did something he was sure he would regret. He climbed his way into the fanged mouth of the mangrove Mike.

Almost immediately Mike wanted to kick himself in the ass for making this choice. But he didn't because that would have made his current predicament only worse. As the teenage boy worked his way through, his body was receiving many small cuts from the many small thrones surrounding him. He felt the pain but the fear was too great.

Adrenaline was coursing through his body.

Someone should really bottle it!

Finally freeing himself from the mangrove's biological bowels, Mike came to find a massive cliff before him. It's dark and imposing mass filled the lad's vision and mind.

Hearing a bump from the thorns, Mike quickly turned away from the rocky monolith and darted his eyes all along the foliage. Panicking at the prospect of being trapped, the teenager in baby blue didn't see the thick line until it snaked down to him.

With it still spluttering, he grabbed it.

Hand by hand, pull by pull, Mike moved himself over the uninviting mountainside. After what seemed to be an eternity, he finally reached the top of the cliff. Finding more forest, he ran again.

"Enjoying yourself? Run Forrest! Run!" The invisible menace spoke in a mocking manner.

Following yet another bout of running (no wonder why he was in great shape), Mike found himself in a small clearing.

There were the same massive and daunting trees as elsewhere but here there was no space between them. Realizing he would not be able to proceed here, Mike turned around to go back the way he came.

Smack!

Finding himself on the ground, Mike looked up in horror. The way he came was now blocked by equally tight trees.

He was trapped!

"You like it? I call it 'The Mousetrap'." The voice so familiar to Mike by now beckoned.

Then it added with some small enthusiasm, "But what good is a mousetrap without any cheese?"

With that and an unseen snap of the fingers, lightning began to continuously sparked the sky. Thanks to the added illumination, Mike saw four small trees roughly his size at the center of the clearing.

At least, he thought they were trees. What else could they be? They were clearly covered in the same type of bark and foliage as everything else in this land of depression.

But something wasn't right.

Mike moved towards the four shapes. Slowly and with caution in mind you.

But he still came closer.

Closer.

Closer.

As he approached the closest one, Mike drank in the details. The most unusual details were a top which looked almost as if the leafs were glistening in the light, a trunk with many groves, and one branch that stretched out with one twig at its end extending upward. Said twig being the third of five, the one in the middle.

Then Mike look even closer and saw a face. Yes, this tree had a face. The face was one of smugness and superficiality, even if this wasn't shown in the eyes.

There were no eyes there.

Even so Mike, with a look of abject horror plastered upon his face, barely whimpered one little four-letter word.

"Vito."

This could not be!

"How could Vito not only be here as a tree… but how could he be here at all!" Mike was screaming in his head while the silence of the clearing was equally loud.

Moved by a newly formed curiosity, Mike examined the other three shapes.

The one closest to the Vito tree was far more slender and delicate in appearance. A cluster of its roots, roots resembling those of a Banyan Tree, was raised far above an equally large cluster beside it. Both still reached the rotting earth under the seemingly eternal green mist. Near its eyeless face, Mike found some small patches of red moss and spores. As if it were lipstick.

As Mike understood what he saw, something escaped his lips.

"Svetlana."

Moving right along, Mike found the final two.

One was far more withered than the previous two and its trunk appeared to have been hunched, maybe even broken. Around this trunk there was a long vine, a vine that came from the branch of another tree. This fourth and final tree had a crown of leafs which were flat along the outer rims but contained a large bulb at the center.

It didn't take Mike long to figure out what the names of the two remaining trees were.

"Chester and…" Mike began but then…

"… Manitoba Smith, I presume?" The voice of the faceless fiend chimed in, finishing Mike's thought.

But what startled Mike the most was the proximity of the voice.

It came from right behind him!

Quickly turning his head…he saw it! There it was!

Hidden behind an all-encompassing shroud of shadows.

Only it's eyes were visible, those bright green eyes.

Eyes that had all the seeming of a demon that was dreaming.

After clearly savoring the look of terror on Mike's face, the shade spoke.

"Did you know that they say that the eyes are the windows into the soul? And yet there are no eyes here. Logically, there must not be any souls here as well. I wonder what they would have to say to that. Don't you?"

"What is this place?" Mike finally asked after a few moments of struggling to move his tongue.

Somewhat annoyed that its question went unanswered, the shadow nevertheless answered the teenager's question.

At least one of them would have proper manners!

"This place has no name. I personally call it 'The Forest of the Forgotten'. Where those things that have outlived their usefulness are exiled. But this forest is not friendly. Oh, you can run or hide or struggle but in the end, all but the mightiest or consumed by it. To spend an eternity as an intimate tree, aware of one's self but just another tree."

The cryptic answer didn't soothe Mike's nerves in the slightest. He was terrified but did his best to not sound intimidated as he asked his next question to the shadowy presence.

It wasn't enough.

"W…who are yo…you? What do y…you want with m…m…me?" Mike asked, pulling out those words as if they were his own teeth.

The figure in the shadows remain silent for a few moments but then answered.

"Firstly. I'm not a 'you'. I am a 'it'!"

That last part was spoken with a short but strong burst of anger. But the concealed creature continued in a calm demeanor after a second's pause.

"Secondly. I want everyone you hold dear to be bloodied and broken before me."

Mike had an expression of shock on his face as those words were said with icy contempt.

This either went unnoticed or un-regarded by the 'it' as it continued.

"Thirdly. By this time tomorrow, I will have accomplished exactly that. But enough of these games and this intellectually stimulating conversation, there is much work to be done."

With that, before Mike had a chance to retort or question, a flash of white light engulfed everything.

As Mike was raptured in the blinding light, he felt the sensation of blazing heat while also hearing the final moans of falling trees.

Mike suddenly found himself rising from his slumber, sweat running down his face.

Still feeling the fear, he surveyed his surroundings. He was still in Camp Wawanakwa.

"It was all just a dream, a nightmare. Nothing more." Mike thought to himself.

He felt relief. Then he contemplated how odd it was to feel relief at discovering one was in Camp Wawanakwa.

This was after all, the very same place where he and his fellow contenders were made to endure all manner of painful and humiliating ordeals all in the name of the invisible god of ratings. But he still found comfort in being there, such a strange feeling.

He then looks to his former competitors, all temporary residence of slumber's kingdom. Though each face told a different tale.

Cameron, the black bubble boy who popped his bubble and emerged from it as the man who won Total Drama Revenge of the Island, slept with a confidence that Mike rarely saw in him. Though he would have naturally preferred for himself or Zoey to win, he couldn't be happier for his friend.

But for every winner, there must exist a loser. And in the bunk below Cameron's, Mike found this games loser in the form of Lightning. He had played almost every position in any sport but now he had to add another to that long roster: loser. The marks of an unpleasing man covered the face of the sleeping athlete. It was likely he felt shameful for losing to such a weakling. True that same weakling made a suit of armor in fifteen minutes from some garbage that came complete with enhanced strength, jet propulsion, and energy blasters while all he had was a pot on his head in a plastic plate with nails in it…but still.

Having seen enough of Lightning, Mike turned to the next three beds. The sleeping faces of Brick, B, and Scott were unremarkable. They all more-or-less spoke of some dominant feature: Brick's recently acquired self-satisfaction, B's silent wisdom, and Scott's devious grin, the same one that he had before the dreaded trauma chair and now afterward.

As he was thinking of his fellow males in the cabin, Mike heard something!

Still being somewhat jittery from his nightmare, Mike looked but found relief flowing through him.

It was only Sam.

Unlike the others, Sam was speaking in his sleep. From what little Mike could gather, the videogame junkie must have been reliving some past exploit from one of his many beloved titles.

"Crap…JUMP…wait wait…JUMP…run run…crap run crap run run crap…CRAP… wait…JUMP…JUMP OVER THE SPINNING FIRE…crap crap crap…GRAB THE AXE! Haha! Take that King Koopa! I finally get to meet the lovely Princess Toad…Hey! What do you mean she's in another castle!"

That kid had to get out more often.

Sighing with relief at the gamer's fantasy, Mike closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

"And I think I'm the oddest one in this cabin." Mike thought to himself.

But then, 'it' happened!

There was no major change, no spontaneous sprouting of muscles or instant application of lipstick.

The most that could be said to have changed was the expression on Mike's face.

It changed from one of relief to one far more sinister.

As the lids of his eyes parted, all that could be seen were orbs of brightest green.

Eyes that had all the seeming of a demon that was dreaming.

"Dreams reflect current and future unsolved problems and rehearse their possible solutions." -Alfred Adler as paraphrased in Geoffrey A. Dudley's How to Understand Your Dreams

And there you have it, my 1st attempt at the art of fan fiction. As promised, I shall both give a more basic summary of what the story will become and the reasons for the dark tone.

Basic summary: A personality within Mike, a personality Mike doesn't even know of, takes control over his body. This personality is far more dangerous both in its abilities and intent than any of Mike's previous personalities. As they battle their own demons, both those existing before this new personalities' appearance and those made in its wake, the other teenagers at Camp Wawanakwa must fight to not only save Mike and themselves, but the entire world.

Why so dark: After that scene in "Grand Chef Auto", where you see what some have dubbed "Black Mike", I got to thinking what if it was a secret evil personality. Not too long after that, I formed the basic gist of the story, and it was a gist that very quickly and naturally went to a dark place. It is my intention that this story will be an apocalyptic horror epic with the characters of Total Drama Revenge of the Island.

I must warn the reader that both my upcoming summer job and my concerns over writing the characters in-character mean that it might be a little while before I post the next chapter. Since I already have the basic layout of the entire story thought of, I'm hoping that will make the actual writing process much easier. Anyway, the more reviews I get, the more likely I will be compelled to complete the next part of the story faster than I would otherwise. So please, pass the word on to your friends who are fans of Total Drama both on and not on and leave a review!