Manny Guerrero, D2
Two Careers were gone so far. Ruby and Charming seemed to be pretty well-situated on the golden tribe of Heilala. On my side of things, Abrexa was proving remarkably resilient. She wasn't playing up the Career angle like I'd hoped. She was doing the smart thing and keeping a low profile and at the same time quietly showing her value. If things kept on like this, my worst nightmare might come true. Out of all these worthy kids just trying to live, a Career might be the only one that came home. When I saw one of the camera guys peeking in on us from the woods, I took a welcome chance for some catharsis.
"Hey, you. I got some confessions to make. Titian wants juicy gossip stuff, right? It just so happens you caught me in a bad mood. I shall now tell you everything annoying about my teammates," I said.
"First, my least favorite: Abrexa. She acts like such a quiet little penitent, but she's not fooling me. She's the same as any other Career. She wants to kill everyone on her team and everyone not on her team. She's only acting nice because this time, that's how you win. She doesn't even have the guts to fight in the open. She's a conniving coward."
"Next we have the two from Three, Sparkil and Ash. Sparkil's your average genius inventor wonder child. Three always thinks it's so smart. Maybe the rest of us would be the same if we had access to anything more complicated than sticks and lumps of coal. As for Ash, well, at least he's not stereotypical. The stereotype is that people from Three are smart."
"And then there's Cain. Cain... he... okay, he really doesn't do anything for me to get mad about. He's just boring."
"Everyone wants to like Sherman. He's nice, he works around camp, and he's good in challenges. He's also a pig. He eats twice as much rice as anyone else, and he always wants to cook more. He's also clumsy. He almost crushed me once knocking branches down for our hut."
"Don't even get me started on Hannah and Bailey. It's always 'we'll win next time'. 'It's fun living here'. 'No one will ever die and we'll eat sunshine and rainbows and be friends forever'. At best they're delusional. At worst they just want everyone to feel too guilty to vote for them."
"I don't think there's anything to say about Rahina that isn't already obvious."
"So that's everyone. Don't get me wrong, though. I might be carping about them today, but I usually like them. Except Abrexa. Screw her."
Potato Springfield, D11
I could write my name now. After the first word, it got easier, and it got to be kind of fun. There was a strange thrill in drawing some random shapes and knowing someone else could tell that they meant something. It was like a secret code.
"All of you write?" I asked Camellia.
"Yeah, all of us," she said. "Except maybe Charming. He's dumb."
I took a piece of bark from our pile and scratched some shapes on it with a stick of charcoal. I brought it to Charming at the fire.
"What is?" I asked as I pointed at it.
"It says 'potato'," he said, and held up one hand in confusion. I went back to Camellia.
"He write," I assured her.
"Good to know. Want to learn some more?" Camellia asked.
"Okay," I said. I already knew 'potato', 'Sammy', 'Camellia', 'Charming', 'is', 'a', and 'butthead'.
"Someday you'll have to learn grammar, but that's sort of a waste of time. As long as you get the point across," Camellia said. She made some more scratches on the sand.
"Banana," she said. She held up a banana. "Banana."
"I write," I reminded her. She didn't have to hold up the banana. If she said 'banana' I knew that was what it said. I wasn't stupid. "How write 'good'?"
"Here you go," Camellia said. "G-O-O-D." Letters were harder than words. Camellia said if I knew them I could write anything I wanted, but it was easier to learn the whole word at once.
"Now I write," I said. Potato is good, I wrote.
"Well aren't we modest? But yeah, you're a good guy," Camellia said.
"No me. Potato," I said, and I drew a potato.
"Yeah, those are pretty good too," she said.
"Is good to write," I said. "You good teach me. May potato bless you."
Sherman Betula, D7
"Hey, what are you up to?" I asked Hannah. It was a slow day on the island, and that meant I should work on my relationships. I should always work on my relationships in this sort of game. I had some strengths, but I wasn't strong enough to win alone. We all had to collaborate to have any chance of winning. Or, barring that, to decide who was next to die.
"Eating a coconut," she said.
"I guess I should have seen that coming," I said.
"Nailed it. What are you up to?" she asked.
"Giving you trouble, mostly," I said. "But really, no lie, I just came over to be friendly. It's a social game this year, so I want to be social."
"If this was Manny I'd know it was just a scheme, but you're a cool guy," Hannah said, and she made room for me to sit.
"This is all so weird. It's bad enough killing people face-to-face. This way, I don't know who I've helped to kill until they're dead, and I don't know how guilty to feel," I said.
"I know, right? Might as well have us pull a name out of a hat and see who wins. But then, we're already unlucky," she said.
"Hey... we're both outliers," I said. "Maybe we should talk about what happens if one of us wins."
"That's a good idea. A really depressing idea, but a good one," Hannah said. "I guess we sort of have motivation not to vote for each other. If I die, I'd like to know someone poor still got presents and stuff."
"We should both make sure the other one's families are taken care of, of course," I said.
"If you win, you should buy everything when you visit the other Districts on your tour," Hannah said. "Not because it would be good for me. It would just be fun to buy everything.
"If you win, you should set up a scholarship fund," I said. "I never got to go to school."
"That's rough. I didn't learn much either, but that's just because I'm dumb," Hannah said.
"Do you want a particular grave or anything?" I asked, feeling like a ghoul.
"I don't care. I'll be dead. Stick me in the woods and let the crows have me," Hannah said.
"You seem pretty laid-back about this," I said.
"I don't care about dead stuff. When that happens, well, it's too late," she said. "Did you want anything though?"
Now I feel silly, I thought. "I guess I don't care. Whatever my family wants."
"I'll come visit you," she said.
"I don't know. Isn't it bad enough I'm dead?" I asked. She blew a raspberry.
Time to re-hide the immunity idol! Here's your first really vague clue, to be cleared up by later clues.
Clue 1: Fourteen in the set, get them all, you're on top. Skip the first nine. On the tenth, you stop.
BLOOPER: Soooo Sherman can't talk to Camellia since they're on separate tribes. I have switched it to Hannah since they're most similar in temperament.
BREAKING NEWS: So the idol kind of got found early. Someone who remembered my obsession with mountain climbing from Into Thin Air quickly divined that the 14 referred to the 14 8000-meter mountains and that the 10th tallest is Annapurna. Because of this insider info, I discussed plans with the finder to keep things fair. She was cool about it and says she'll use it on someone else quickly so I can rehide it.
Heyyyy everyone. I just found out Winter's Writing is doing a Resurrection Games and is looking for Tributes. I wouldn't put someone in from my games myself, but I can think of a lot of people I'd like to see again if their submitters nominate them.
