Chapter 13: Domination

The next matchup was Scarlett and Ella. Scarlett insisted that the best idea before we moved onto any plan was to check out the area first to optimize strategy. I figured that was okay, and I could see how she was able to do physically.

Unfortunately, I had very high doubts that Ella was actually going to hit Scarlett with a dueling stick, because that was pretty violent. As it turned out, McLean had the same thought as me. "I don't think this is going to be an interesting match," he said with a yawn, "so let's release Scuba Bear." …What?

On command, a bear geared in a snorkel and oxygen tank jumped out of the water, swatting Ella off the dock before Scarlett even got a chance to get near her. I felt bad for Ella, but she managed to come out of the water okay, so I wasn't too worried. Scarlett on the other hand was still having trouble fending off the hulking creature. She was able to deflect the swipes, but she probably had her limits. Eventually, she was able to navigate around the bear and make it back safely.

Two to nothing. We were so going to win this challenge, and it was not even going to be close.

Scarlett returned, out of breath. "Conditions are fine, with the exception of the bear," she analyzed. "We're good for this run."

I quickly peeked over at the other team, as Ella was finally returning to her group. It looked like they were comforting her from the attack, which was good. Then, I noticed Shawn stepping up to go. "He's up," I told Scarlett. "Are we sending in the bait?"

Max huffed, not fully aware of our plan. "Hmph. Let that bear fill up on the others first."

I honestly didn't know how to convince him at that point. He did make a valid argument. It was why I was waiting for that long. Luckily, Scarlett knew just what to say to him to convince him. "And miss out on an opportunity for evil?" she asked him. "She pulled out the wire the purple boy had. "If you wrap that wire around the stick, it will act as a conductor." Jasmine raised an eyebrow at the two conversing.

Shoot, she was catching onto the plan. The best option would be to deter her from hearing more of what was going on, and keeping her out of the way was my job. "We're doing well, huh?" I asked her plainly, looking over at the two sticks. "Do you think Sky will be a problem?"

Jasmine nodded. "Are you really going to go up against her? Maybe it's best we send Topher up."

I shook my head, keeping a close eye on the other two. Max was finally coming around and was ready to go. "We'll beat Leonard regardless, so I don't see much of the issue. It'll still be a blowout." As I finished, Max ran out onto the dock. I quickly turned to Scarlett, and she waved me back at Jasmine, as to tell me to keep her distracted for longer. I struggled with keeping her occupied. "I'm not concerned today," I admitted. "We'll win."

"I hope you're right about that," she told me. "It'd be bad if we got too confident and lost." Once she said that, I watched as something zipped by me. Max's dueling stick now had a wire and electric eel on it. Did Scarlett intend to shock Shawn? That would really not sit well with Jasmine.

Shawn gave a wave to Jasmine once he hit our end, which was actually perfect to get rid of her eyes on the other side. However, there was something our plan didn't plan for, and that was Shawn realizing what we did. He switched his grip to match Max's, and when they clashed in the center, Shawn's strength simply overpowered Max. It was...hard to watch. Max got clearly knocked into the water, and Shawn made it back safely without any issue.

Sky stepped forward next, and she seemed like she was angry, which I couldn't tell why. "Alright, me next," I said, stepping forward. "I think I should be able to handle it. I was mentally preparing myself to go, and someone stopped me right before.

"When she's winding up, stop moving," Scarlett told me bluntly. "You can see her anger too, right? Play off of it."

I sighed. "Normally, I'd take your word for it, but your plan just messed up. We were lucky to not get penalized for that." I understood that Topher and I were on board with it, but looking back on it, it shouldn't have worked anyway. However, Scarlett was onto something here. Sky would be angry and try and swing at me really hard. If I stopped before she swung, she'd miss and fly into the water...right? Wouldn't know, psychics was hard.

I got a solid run across the docks initially, and Sky and I were about even. She didn't look like she was running at full speed, but I heard her shout...something at me. Some lame trash talk. I'd remember it if it was good.

I carefully watched her, and as Sky got ready to hit me hard, I stopped moving. Sky still swung, missing me by a good distance, and causing her to lose balance herself. Ah, what a good win. I pulled back my dueling stick quickly and slammed it into her head that was still dangling over. Sky proceeded to scream and fall into the water. Huh, Scarlett was right this time. The rest of my jog back was light and victorious.

"Nice work," Topher told me. "Way to beat her down. Now we're up by three." Oh, so we were. That was incredible. I had just taken down one of the largest physical threats of the game, and it'd be easy to convince her team to get rid of her...with the exception of Sugar. But, Sugar was going to vote for Ella. I could ignore that, get Leonard and Ella to vote Sky...Shawn wouldn't team with Sky on a vote...oh, it'd be risky, but I'd be able to manage it.

Topher got ready to go next, and he looked ahead while laughing to himself. Since the other four had gone already, his opponent was Leonard. It was sad for him, but Topher still seemed like he wanted to secure this point badly. "Nervous you're going to lose?" I taunted him, "you sure look like it."

"I just want to make this as clean as possible," he admitted. "I can't risk getting my hair wet. It's a national treasure, you know." Ugh, what arrogance. People who are like that make me mad. By the time I had a clever retort thought up of, Topher was gone, running ahead to grab another dueling stick. As he got ready to swing at the wizard, he was hit by a...mild inconvenience.

Scuba Bear had returned, and this time he was angrier. As soon as he got up to the docks again, he swatted Topher off into the water, which meant no point for us. It also made Topher at the same level as Max. Sad. Scuba Bear then directed its fire over to Leonard, and I was about to writhe in pain over how much that bear was going to knock him over.

But...it never came. Instead, Ella began singing from over on her side of the docks. She sang loud enough in an effort to make the bear distracted, I guess. However, the singing had a different effect that I wasn't expecting. The bear suddenly stopped being hostile, and swayed along with the music. With no one in his way, Leonard easily got to the other side and they got a point. They were only down by one.

Topher pulled himself up to the docks. "Annoying, but there was no way around it." I personally didn't care. We were winning, and now that everyone had gone, we could send up whoever we wanted. We all stopped as we heard Scuba Bear let out a roar, and then it dove into the water, in the direction of McLean.

The bear tried taking a few swipes at the host, but Chef was there quickly to pull it away. Impressively, he got the bear to stop attacking simply after grabbing it for a while. Topher let out a huff when Chef got the bear to calm down. "I could have done a commercial or something if that bear attack lasted longer."

I rolled my eyes. "Can we not plot to ruin that man for a few minutes? Let's win this challenge first, because you're in danger if we don't!" I pulled him out of the water, and stepped forward again. "I'll take this round. Jasmine, you go next." I looked across the dock and saw that Shawn was my opponent.

"Unlucky," Topher told me. "He's probably their ace. If you need motivation, just pretend she's Samey." Ugh, that was lame. I didn't need some lame comparison to knock him into the water. As far as I was concerned, Shawn was the biggest threat to me playing a normal game anyway. We both began running, and grabbed our sticks. I was honestly considering just running past him to try and make it safely with another point, but if I could knock him in, I would.

Shawn took a swing at me on my way back, which I dodged with relative ease. Then, we began clashing more and more, eventually ending with both of us over the edge. "You should...give up," I said in between breaths. "It wouldn't be smart to keep this up."

"I can't!" he yelled at me. "I can't let you get my brains!" What? Was he doing that thing Topher suggested? That wasn't fair, I said I wasn't going to do it!

Well, I guess I had no choice then. "Fine, then you'll pay for everything!" I summoned up a large amount of strength and overpowered him by digging my heels into the dock and shoving him forcefully. With no sight of the bear, I quickly ran back, earning us our fourth point. I heard McLean going off about my quick victory, but I paid it no mind. That was small compared to what was coming.

"That was crazy!" Jasmine said to me as I got back. "How'd you manage that? Shawn's really good!"

"She did what I suggested," Topher said with a hint of snark in his voice. "There's no way you were able to actually just summon that strength without taking my advice."

I let out a huff. "Fine, I may have taken your suggestion, but then why don't you show me how it's done?" I shoved Topher forward, indicating I wanted him to go, and since I was the team leader, what I said, went.

Topher laughed as he got ready to go. "Hah, must have struck a nerve there," he teased. Once he said that, he ran forward before he had the chance for any more retribution. Topher's opponent was Sugar, which would be a challenge for him. With the bear out of commission still, it would come down to who would take the other out. I heard them yelling stuff at each other, which sounded lame from that far away. Wait, was everyone doing that trick? No, it was still lame. Although, Sugar was pretty lame.

In the end, Topher and Sugar ended up knocking each other in the water, which meant that both lost the point. Honestly, it was a win. Sugar looked bad, and that put her out of the running to go again before Ella and Leonard, and we still had Jasmine saved for when Sky went.

Speaking of, Sky showed their team's hand, and sent all three of the power players first to try and scare us. It wouldn't work. Jasmine nodded at my signal to send her, and she got ready to go. "Finally, a fair opponent," I head Sky say as she ran over to our dock. Ugh, if she was getting on my nerves. Eliminating her would just be too easy.

Jasmine and Sky also clashed for a while, but Sky could only hold out so long to Jasmine's raw strength. The giant easily won out in the end, leaving us at only one win to go. It also meant that Sky messed up real badly, having lost twice. I decided that Sugar could wait, and Sky probably wouldn't mess up like that again. Once we won, I could work on getting her out.

It looked like Leonard was going up, so in other words, they were giving up. Scarlett stepped forward for us. "I'm not so physically capable," she admitted, "but even I can handle a buffoon." At the final horn, Scarlett took her time getting across, to conserve her energy. Once she met up with the wizard on her way back, it only took a few swings before he got knocked in the drink. As Scarlett came back, we all cheered.

"Kinosewak wins again!" McLean told us. He then tossed us our takeout dinner, which looked worse than the poison apple Shawn taught me about. I'd probably pass on it and resort to the berry stash.

On our way back to the tree fort, Topher approached me. "A solid victory today," he said. "I didn't do so great, but that's behind me."

I rolled my eyes. "Hey, work me out of this," I asked him, "I want to get rid of Sky."

Topher raised an eyebrow as the fort became in sight of us. "What's to work out? Just get three votes. You have two locked down."

"I know," I told him, "but I want to drop suspicion of me, so it'd be hard for me to go over there and get that last vote. I avoided Shawn last time, and I really don't want to deal with Sugar." I looked at him right in the eyes. "What I mean is, you get that last vote."

Topher pondered it for a second, but eventually came to the right answer. "Fine, I will do what it takes," he promised, "but I need something from you." Ugh, what a pain. But, I suppose he was helping me, so there was no way around it. "We need a new host stealing plan, or you need to distract Jasmine and Scarlett long enough for me to do my initial plan."

"Well, you're not going to do that," I reminded him, "because that plan was stupid." I let out a sigh. "If you can handle Sky tonight, I'll have a plan by the time you get back." It was the least I could do. Besides, sending him to handle everything completely cleared me of guilt.

As Topher left, I was alone, and had only one goal- to figure out how to topple McLean.

My best option to do it through connections was Chef. That man had been putting up with the host man for years, and he's been awfully silent about it. If I had a way to approach him easily, I would have. Problem was, there wasn't, and on top of that, he had been even more elusive this season than ever before. It was such a pain to even try and locate him. Considering there was a chance Topher went down before I even had a chance to find Chef, I had to toss that option out the window.

So, if I couldn't do it even close to fairly, I'd have to do it as unfairly as possible. And that required me to play dirty. I needed to find a way to make sure these producers don't get away with letting him back, and to put Topher in his place. As long as Topher was able to hold his own and display his prowess, he'd be fine. But, the big problem still came back to McLean. He had been unnaturally clean so far, with no real terrifying challenges. The shock thing was a bit excessive, but it never really put any big strain on us.

Surely there was a way to catch him slipping. His whole facial hair thing today was a start, but I didn't think it was going to be enough. We had to do more to McLean to make him keep going further and further, and to do that, we had to keep playing offense. By the end of next challenge, we needed to make him do something else.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't have much of a plan for Topher when he got back. Our best option would be to wing it as we found opportunities, and without being near the host with the exception of around challenges, then we'd have to take every opportunity we could while the challenges were happening.

In defeat, I waited for Toper to return, which took some amount of time. It was still satisfying though, because after he got back, I'd only have to tear through eight other people to win, and just seven to hit the finale. I wasn't very concerned about most of them either. Things were looking very up, and while that was dangerous to thing to think, I still felt safe.

In a bit more time, Topher finally returned. "Well?" I asked with haste, giving him no time to think.

"Well," he admitted. "We got an interesting result." Ugh, of course we did.