If you're interested in what these characters' new personalities are specifically like, I have uploaded quick biographies of all 14 of them on my profile page. If there's a part written down that hasn't been shown off in the story yet, it'll likely be shown at some point in the future.

The two teams of seven reconvened at their temporary bases and did a tally of what they had to work with. Both groups had several pieces of wood and metal to use, along with various tools to help build the statues and any components that could be used to decorate them. Overall, everyone was mostly satisfied with their team's haul, and all of them made their way to their building zones as they carried everything.

The Bears trekked quickly along the shore and farther down the beach. Shawn walked at the head of the group with the stolen wheelbarrow, now filled with the wood and metal they had scavenged; Sugar and Sky, being the strongest members on their team, worked together to lift the heavy bale of hay; Dave and Leonard were holding the rope and the paste, respectively; and Ella was carrying the bundle of dirty cloths as Beardo held the handsaw gingerly between his fingers.

At the back of the group, Beardo looked at the people ahead of him. He took a deep breath, and sidled up towards Ella, who was quietly humming a tune to herself as she walked. He stammered and cleared his throat somewhat quietly, but that was apparently enough to get her attention. She looked at him in confusion, and unfortunately the beatboxer froze on the spot, as new people still scared him. Seemingly noticing his hesitance, Ella put on a large smile and went for the friendly approach. "Hi there! Beardo, right? How's it going?"

Jumping slightly at the rather direct greeting, Beardo quickly tried to recompose himself. "Uh, g-good! And… yourself?"

"Great! I think we got a really good haul!" she answered honestly.

"Oh, yeah, I think so too! I just hope the bear is easy to make… I've never done anything like this before."

"I haven't either. But that's what makes it so fun! Right?"

Her positive vibes were making Beardo grin wider. "I… I guess so! So, uh, I was wondering, back on the blimp- uh, I mean, the zeppelin- uh, the thing, I sorta heard you say something about… bandmates?"

Ella nodded cheerfully. "Yup, I did! I'm in a band! Though we're not all that big at the moment. One of the reasons I joined the show was to promote us, actually!"

"Really?" Beardo asked, intrigued. "What's your band's name?"

"We go by 'The ECKOS'! With a K instead of an H." She started counting on one hand. "Ella, Carlitos, Kimiko, Olivia, and Steven. It's our names put together!"

"That's, uh… pretty clever!" Beardo told her.

-BEARDO-

"I wasn't lying about that, but it's gonna get pretty weird when one of those members splits off," Beardo says to the confessional camera. "What would they be called if Olivia goes? The ECKS? That-" He pauses, thinks on that for a moment, and looks at his hands as he makes an 'X' with his fingers. "…Is a bad example, 'cuz that's actually a rad name."

-END-

"So, what do you play?" Beardo asked her as they kept walking. He seemed to quickly warm up to Ella, and was lightly smiling as they spoke.

"I'm the lead guitarist, plus the lead singer," Ella told him proudly. "Not to boast, but I'd like to consider myself pretty good at them."

"If you're lead on both, then you must have the skill to back it up."

"I'd like to think so! Other than that, I also play the piano, though not as frequently anymore. It's sort of been put on the backburner for now, you know?"

"Ah, yeah, I get that."

"Do you play anything?"

Beardo paused, and waved his hand from side to side. "Uhh, sorta. I know how to play keyboard, but I've been putting my time more into… DJing and beatboxing."

"Ohh! Really!" Ella exclaimed, a grin plastered on her face. "That's pretty cool! I don't know many DJs or beatboxers. Or, any, to be totally honest. Is it tough?"

"It can be, with the wrong crowd. But I'm most comfortable in a booth with the music at my fingertips. Helps me relax."

Ella's genuinely positive smile was infectious. "That's awesome. Seriously. Keep doing what you love, buddy!" Beardo grinned himself, widely but sheepishly at that.

Farther up the line, Sky was beginning to struggle with the bale of hay. She was sucking in breaths quickly as the sweat dripped off her forehead. "Holy crap! This thing weighs a ton!" she cried out. "What's even in here?!"

"No clue!" Sugar said to her. Conversely, she wasn't having much trouble. "Could be anything. Like a year's supply of sausages. Or a dead body!"

Sky cringed, but didn't drop the hay. "Ew! Don't joke about that!"

Sugar laughed heartily. "Aw, there probably isn't one in this thing, silly!" she insisted. "'Least not a human one."

"That really doesn't make it any better!" Sky countered.

"Actually, it might! If it hasn't been dead for all that long, we can get Chef to cook it up for us!"

Sky heaved a mighty sigh at that. "And that just makes it worse."

"I… don't know if I want to eat anything that hasn't been properly preserved," came Dave's voice from behind them.

"Neither would I," Sky said to him. "But at the same time, I'm also not too excited about what we'll actually be served. It's so going to ruin my diet."

"Diet?" Dave asked. "What are you dieting for? You're already thin as a twig."

"Not for losing weight, but maintaining it. I'm a runner on my school's track team, and I've got to keep up a certain amount of mass and muscle to stay on it."

"Ohh," Dave said, and then nodded. "Sorry, I didn't realize that."

"That's fine, not many people do," Sky said, a smile on her lips.

-SKY-

"It's because I'm so short," Sky confesses. "I'm the smallest on our team, but despite that I've also got some of the fastest times among them all." She proudly grins. "Great things can come in small packages, you know."

-END-

"So, uhh, what sorts of foods do you eat, in that case?" Dave asked.

It was obvious he was just trying to start a conversation, but Sky indulged him regardless. "I'm a vegetarian, so I stick with food groups that don't involve meat."

"Wouldn't that be hard to do as a runner?"

With a chuckle, Sky said, "Actually, you'd be surprised."

Unbeknownst to them, Sugar was actively listening to their conversation, and narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

-SUGAR-

"Sky thinks she can form an alliance right in front of me?" she asks the camera, and then laughs hysterically. "It's so cute that she thinks she knows how this pageant works. You can't be showin' your hand that early! You gotta make 'em think they're winnin', and then blindside 'em when they least expect it! Everyone knows that! That's the play smart people go for!"

-END-

Meanwhile, the Salmons had deposited their supplies at the base of a seemingly random tree. Large stacks of wood and metal were all piled up relatively evenly, and the rest of their scavenged items - the paints, the broom head, the glue, the rope, and the rocks, sticks, and boxes of nails - were laid nearby.

"How on Earth do you lose a wheelbarrow?" Jasmine was asking Scarlett and Max, a look of ire directed at them. The vast majority of the Salmons were red in the face and breathing rather heavily, having been forced to carry the vast majority of the supplies. Amy and Sammy were sitting up against the tree and fanning themselves in the heat, while Max himself was laid out flat on his back as Scarlett sat next to him.

"As I've said already," Scarlett replied testily, "there was a grizzly bear in the vicinity. I was not about to risk life and limb over something as mundane as a class-two lever!"

"A… what?" Rodney asked, standing by the pile and taking inventory.

Scarlett frowned. "A wheelbarrow. A wheelbarrow is a class-two lever."

"It's true," Max said weakly, a floppy arm raising upwards. "A wheelbarrow is a class-two lever. Also, I heard the same thing. Bears make terrifying noises."

"Heard, but didn't see?" Jasmine asked.

"Correct," Scarlett answered for the two of them. "I've studied the calls of aggressive wildlife, and trust me, I know what the sound of an angered grizzly bear sounds like."

Jasmine and Rodney shared a look, before they both shrugged. "Well, alright. As long as we're all in one piece," Jasmine said. "'Sides, we got here quick enough anyway."

"That's because you didn't let us take a break," Amy moaned. "Do you know how tough it is for me to run in heels? In the woods?"

"Maybe you shouldn't've worn them here of all places," Jasmine countered.

"Well what else was I supposed to wear with this outfit?" she asked back, gesturing to her clothes.

Jasmine stared at her in bafflement, but then shook her head. "We can talk about that later. Let's just focus on getting this thing started. First, we need a foundation. Topher, hand me that base you got, we'll go from there."

No response came from any of them, and once they realized that they began looking around in bewilderment.

"We appear to be down one," Scarlett observed passively.

"So we are," Jasmine agreed. "Where'd that mongrel get off to?"

Max gasped, raising his head up. "You don't think the bear got him, do you?"

"Yeah, no, I highly doubt that."

"Someone should go look for him," Rodney said, his hands full of building material. "The rest of us can figure out how to make a fish without something to cut up all this stuff."

As Jasmine complained about the lack of proper tools, Amy's eyes widened.

-AMY-

Amy leans on the confessional wall with a delighted grin. "Sooo… Topher's pretty hot. He knows how to make that superstar look work. Plus I think he's got some sort of cologne on and it smells so good-" She clears her throat and has the decency to look embarrassed. "Uh. Don't air that please. Anyway, I figured this would be a good opportunity to try and get to know him better. He seems pretty cool, so, you know, it might be worth my time to try and get closer to him. And hey, maybe sometime down the line, I can rope him into an alliance with Sammy and me. That would be pretty awesome."

-END-

"I'll go look for him," Amy offered, standing up.

"Really?" Sammy asked, casting her a confused glance. "But, aren't you still tired?"

"Eh, I'm over all that," Amy said dismissively. "Be back soon!"

She dashed out of the clearing surprisingly fast for someone complaining about running through the forest in heels. "Try not to get mauled by the bear," Scarlett called out after her. "We need you alive to help finish the challenge!"

"Don't worry, I know what to do if I see it!" Amy called back to her.

Scarlett frowned. "For some reason, I doubt that."

Sammy stared after her as she ran away, before simply shrugging and standing herself. "She'll be fine, she's tough. So, anyway, how do we start this?"

"I was thinking of starting with a base and working our way up," Jasmine told her, "but that's obviously not possible at the moment."

"We're just gonna have to make do without it for now," Rodney said. He was holding the rocks and sticks, eyeing them critically. "I managed to snag a bunch of nails before the timer blew, but couldn't find a hammer. Think we're able to make one out of this stuff?"

Scarlett stood then as well and examined what he was holding. "It's possible. You'll need something to keep it held together, however."

"Liiiike the rope?" Sammy suggested, holding it up.

"Yes, like the rope," said Scarlett with a nod.

"Good idea, Sammy," Rodney said, and suddenly dumped the materials he was holding into her open hands.

"Whoa, wait, what-" Sammy, not being particularly strong, nearly dropped everything as he did so.

"Can I get you to start making the hammer?" he asked her, and then swiftly turned to Scarlett. "You can glue the pieces that Jasmine and I break apart together," he said, and then finally turned to Max. "And you…"

The shorter boy was still lying down, though his head was tilted backward and he was looking off into the distance. "You guys ever realize how much birds look like bats when you look at them upside down?" he asked the others, seemingly unaware of the orders being dished out.

Rodney, Jasmine and Scarlett all gave him odd looks, while Sammy was the only one who tried turning her head upside down to take a better look.

"You, ah… can paint when we're done." Rodney then grinned and took a large pile of the materials off to the side. "Let's get to work, people!" he called out enthusiastically.

As he left, Sammy was eyeing her hammer parts in distress, and Scarlett was staring after him in mild ire. Jasmine was the only one who had noticed this.

-JASMINE-

"Something tells me these lads and lasses aren't taking too kindly to Rodney's orders. It's not enough to just tell them what to do all willy-nilly. You gotta know who has what skills, who's got experience doing what tasks, and so on. The main job of being a leader is to know who's working for you, not to send out the first person you see to do the work. I'm gonna have to start stepping in if this keeps up."

-END-

As Sammy continued to look at the pieces in her hands uncertainly, Jasmine strode over and put a hand on her shoulder. "You don't have to do this if you're not up for it, you know."

"Really?" Sammy asked, giving the taller girl a surprised look.

"'Course you don't. What would you rather do?"

"Umm…" Sammy looked around with squinted eyes, and then settled on Max. "I kinda wanted to paint, honestly."

"Then let's talk to him about it," Jasmine said. Sammy smiled and dropped the supplies to the ground, and the two of them walked up to Max, who was still lying down. "Say, mate, would you mind if Sammy took over the painting job?"

"If you don't mind, that is," Sammy added, pressing her index fingers together shyly. "I'm, um, not very good at tying knots."

Max looked them over suspiciously, and stood to his full height, which was not very impressive compared to Jasmine. "Am I being forced out of this position?" he asked in a dark tone.

The girls looked at each other, and shook their heads in unison. "No, not at all. If you want to keep the job, then that's fine," Jasmine told him.

"…Oh." Max replied, eyes wide open. "Then in that case, sure, I don't mind switching."

"Great!" Jasmine said. "You can start the gluing, when we're ready. If that's alright with you?"

Max nodded happily. "Yes, that's fine. I have a vast and extensive history with this sort of thing."

Sammy frowned again. "With… gluing things together?"

He gasped and put a hand on his chest in shock. "Well when you put it like that, it doesn't sound like anything at all!"

-MAX-

"One of my pastimes involves making models of various things," Max tells the camera happily. "Ships, animals, giant death robots with functioning lasers - scaled to size, obviously. I like to go for the more complicated constructs, but I suppose a flying fish made out of mouldy wood will have to do this time."

-END-

"Sammy's on paint, Max is on glue," Jasmine listed, pointing to each of them, "and we can get Amy and Topher to help you guys out when they get back."

"Sounds good to me," Sammy said, with Max nodding.

"Righteous," Jasmine said with a grin. "Now all that's left is-"

"Here," came Scarlett's voice, as her hand stuck itself in front of Jasmine holding a perfectly crafted hammer using the materials from before. "I took the liberty of creating the hammer, as no one else was doing it."

"Oh, wow!" Sammy said in awe as Jasmine took it from her. "That looks great! Thanks, Scarlett!"

"Of course," she said, a hint of pride in her voice. "Whatever helps the team, etcetera."

-SCARLETT-

"From the little we've seen, it can be surmised that Jasmine and Rodney have two very different styles of leadership," Scarlett explains in the confessional. "Rodney distributes orders with no cause for concern. He expects you to perform the action, regardless of your personal opinions on the matter. Jasmine, meanwhile, identifies what your strengths are first and then assigns you a role that suits your skillset. One is based purely on getting the task done, the other ensures that it's done to the fullest extent." She pauses, and smirks just ever so slightly. "This, clearly, tells us which of the two is the bigger threat."

-END-

Near the shoreline, progress on the statue was going smoothly enough. The team had separated the different parts of the bear up by person - Shawn was given the feet and legs, Ella the hands and arms, Sugar and Beardo the torso and waist, and Leonard the head, with Dave on wood-cutting duty and Sky playing the role of the supervisor. Only the head had been finished by that point, and Leonard had been reassigned to helping Dave deliver the materials to the others. With everyone working separately, the parts were not exactly made with everyone else's in mind, so there were some discrepancies between them.

Shawn, having already finished the feet, was now working on the legs. They were looking rather rough, and it was difficult to make out that they were supposed to be the bottom half of a bear. As Shawn dipped his dirty cloth into the little glob of adhesive paste in front of him, he yawned loudly and went to cover his mouth at the same time. Unfortunately, this was with the hand that held onto the sticky cloth, and he ended up getting paste on his face and in his mouth with a rather humorous splurt. He instantly gagged and started spitting everything out in a hurry. "Ugh, why did I do that?!" he said to himself.

"Maybe you should fix that sleep schedule of yours," Dave said to him as he and Leonard approached with more materials. "You look like you're about to pass out every other minute."

Shawn sighed and quickly wiped the rest of the paste off of him before it stuck. "Yeah, I know. But no matter how often I try or how often I get in trouble for it, I always find a good horror movie that won't make me sleep for weeks! It's a vicious cycle, man."

"Sounds like it," Leonard replied as he and Dave set their materials down. "Have you considered watching a different genre of film? There's a lot of good fantasy ones out there."

Shawn looked at him blankly. "Fantasy… horror?" he asked.

Leonard paused and thought it over a bit. "Yeah, honestly. You'd be surprised how scary they can make something so basic as goblins and orcs look."

"Oh, sweet," Shawn said with a smile. "I'll look some up when I get home."

Dave smacked Leonard on the arm. "Don't give him more to watch!" he chastised.

"Heh, sorry," Leonard said lightheartedly.

"Look," Dave said to Shawn with a sigh. "We need you at your best right now, and your best isn't you falling asleep with paste on your face. Think you can hold up until the end of the challenge?"

"Don't worry about me," Shawn said, his smile turning confident. "I've pulled plenty of all-nighters before. It, uh, didn't exactly help my grades, but I know what I'm about, no sweat."

Dave remained unconvinced, but simply shrugged. "Well alright then. We'll keep supplying you with wood and metal. The legs are… uh, coming along, so keep at it."

"You got it," Shawn replied, going right back to work. After a few minutes of rubbing paste on the legs, he let out another big yawn, and on reflex he once again covered his mouth with the paste-covered cloth. He spat it out immediately. "Oh, come on-"

-SHAWN-

Shawn looks at the camera with a frown. "My sleep schedule's not as bad as it seems, I swear! Sure, I may end up falling asleep when Mom's home schooling me. And when I'm playing games online. And when Dad's teaching me how to drive. But I'm fine whenever I do anything else!" He stares at the camera for a moment longer, then scratches his head. "Not that I… really do much else…"

-END-

"How are the arms going, Ella?" Sky asked her teammate as she walked up to her.

"Great!" the singer replied, grinning up at her. She had finished one and was working on the other, though to call them arms was generous. "I've never been the best at arts and crafts but I'm really enjoying myself!"

Sky chuckled lightly. "That's… great! I guess." She moved on from her, allowing Ella to resume working and humming, and approached Sugar and Beardo. "And how's the torso doing?"

"It's good, I think," Beardo told her, though he didn't sound very confident.

"It's better than good!" Sugar corrected. "This thing'll be the best part of the whole bear! I can feel it in my bones!"

Raising her brow in surprise, Sky looked at the piece in question and had to squint in order to make out what exactly it was. Slowly, she said, "Uh… Okay, cool!" She began the trek over to Dave and Leonard and then quietly said to herself, "At least she's enthusiastic about it."

The second the athlete turned away, Sugar's grin dropped and she frowned. "'How's the torso going'?" Sugar whispered in a sarcastic voice. "That girl thinks she's so much better than us, giving herself the… the super job. Maybe one of the rest of us wanted to be super?"

"Uh," Beardo stammered, looking at the pageant queen worriedly. "Are you… doin' okay, girl?"

"Never you mind," Sugar answered immediately, and stood and left the area. "I gotta go to the little lady's room. Keep workin' for the both of us, you hear?"

"Wh- hold up-" Beardo tried to stop her, but Sugar just ignored him and kept going. He looked down at the unfinished torso and sighed. "I ain't got a clue what I'm doin'."

Elsewhere, Topher could be seen walking through the woods, whistling merrily to himself, with the shield he stole from Leonard held firmly under an arm. A moment later, he made it to the outhouse, and he took a few moments to look around for anyone before slipping inside.

-TOPHER-

"So the way I see it," Topher begins, sitting down and cleaning his star-shaped sunglasses with a cloth. The shield sits directly behind him on the outhouse seat, "is that this island is, for the most part, filled with trusting people. It kind of has to be, when the first half of the game runs on teamwork. And when people trust each other, betrayal hurts even worse than it normally would." He places his glasses back on his head. "My strategy is to plant any seeds of doubt I can into these guys, and watch the ensuing drama unfold from there." He raises the pitch of his voice and speaks in a mocking tone. "'Oh, you guys became friends? Well I heard she's just stringing you along!' 'He told you he's gonna take you to the finale? Oh, honey, you must not have overheard his confessional earlier…'" Topher chuckles darkly to himself and crosses his arms. "It'll be child's play, really. There are so many targets to choose from, and I have so many ideas to use! It's all for the sake of the drama, obviously, but I think I'm actually most excited to see the reaction of-"

"Topher!" comes Amy's voice from outside the confessional. "Where are you?! We need you for the challenge!"

"Speak of the devil and she shall appear," Topher muses with a sly smile. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my cue."

-END-

Amy walked up to the confessional, though she made sure to stand a few feet away from it. The smell, as always, was terribly uninviting. "The door's closed, so that means it's occupied… Hey, Topher, you in there?" she called out, hands cupped around her mouth. "And if it's not Topher, do you know where he is?"

The door opened up suddenly, startling Amy, and out walked Topher with a charming smile and stink lines wafting off of him. He winked casually at the blonde, who looked away with an awkward laugh and a blush.

-AMY-

Amy dramatically fans herself with a giddy look on her face. "Wow… He's even able to make coming out of a bathroom look hot…"

-END-

"You were looking for me?" he asked her, his smile never wavering.

"Uhh…" Amy took a noticeable few seconds before she replied. "Yes! Yeah. We, uh, we need your shield thing. For the base of the statue. Sooner rather than later."

"Well, I'm your guy for that." He reached back in and grabbed the shield and slung it over a shoulder. "Let's take a walk, shall we? And maybe we can… get to know each other better."

He placed a hand on Amy's back and pushed her along towards their base. Amy, unexpecting the contact, giggled like a dork and allowed him to lead her along.

A little while later back at the beach, the Bears had just put their statue parts together and were admiring their work. It was rough, with the wood and metal clashing and causing it to look like a science experiment gone wrong, but it was the best they could do with the materials they had on hand.

"Welp, it looks like crud," Dave said, examining it up and down.

"That's because we're not done, you goof," Ella said to him, elbowing him lightly in the arm. "Once we get the hay on there you won't even see the ugly undersides."

"Sounds like a metaphor for humans," Beardo mused, running his fingers through his beard.

Ella snorted. "Could be. I'll have to use that in my next song. Anyway! Let's cut open that hay!"

She shouted this over to Shawn, who yelped out of his drowsy state and hastily saluted, apparently forgetting about the rusty hacksaw clutched in his hand. Luckily, it was the flat end that hit his forehead. "Sir, yes si- Ow!"

"Umm," Sky started, approaching him with wide eyes, "maybe somebody else should take the saw."

Shawn looked at the tool as he winced in pain, and slowly passed it to her. "You know, maybe you're right."

Walking over to it, Sky took the time to cut through the ropes holding it together, until it all came unfurling apart and covering the beach in hay. "We'll have to start putting paste all over the bear before we can do anything with this," she instructed, stepping into the hay to try and bunch it into several small piles with her feet, "more than what we've already used, and then-"

She stopped herself when her foot hit something metal. Everyone's focus was drawn to the noise. "What the…" Sky sifted through what was underfoot, and saw that there wasn't just hay in the bale of hay. Stuffed inside the roll, and what had been helping weigh it down from the start, had been-

"A sword?!" Leonard screamed, practically shoving Sky out of the way to get a look at it. "No way! Is it real?" He grabbed the hilt and attempted to lift it, but only got so far before his arms gave out and dropped it again. "It is real! I can't even hold it!"

It was visibly old and rusty, but it was a legitimate sword all the same. Its blade was as long as Leonard's arm and its simple hilt and handguard were a light brown color, and it looked as if it had seen its fair share of battles (which was highly unlikely, but who even knew with this show).

"Hot dog," Sugar said in surprise, leaning down to get a better look at it. "Who'da thunk something like this was gonna be in there?" She rubbed her chin in thought. "Still, sorta disappointing it isn't a body."

"I think you're the only one who thinks that," Dave said. "But, what are we going to do with this?"

"Didn't Chris say anything from the piles was alright to use?" Beardo asked from the back, an idea forming in his head. "And since this technically came from the piles…"

"We can give it to the bear!" Ella happily declared for him. "To hold on to! He'll look like a knight in… furry armor!"

"You realize you put his hands upside down, right?" Shawn asked, jabbing a thumb at their creation. Indeed, the hands Ella had made for it were held out in front of it with the palms facing downward. "He won't be able to hold anything."

"Well, ahh… Just use the paste, then." Ella picked up the bucket and a cloth and held it out. "If we hold it in place while it sticks, it should be fine, right?"

Shawn eyed the adhesive in exasperation. "Great, I get to keep watching the glue dry. Favorite way to spend the day, hands down."

"Using it will be better than not," Sky told him. "But you can help us with the hay if you'd rather do that." Shawn simply shrugged. "Alright then, Leonard can do the pasting-"

"Sure, can do," he said with a cheerful nod.

Sky smiled at that. "And Sugar can be the one to hold the sword in plaaa… Wait, where's the sword?"

All eyes present looked down to the hay, where the sword should have been. But it clearly wasn't anymore.

"Did we just get sword-napped?" Dave asked, looking wildly about.

"Was it the Salmons?" Ella asked. "I didn't think you could steal from the other team when we started building!"

"You can't, and it wasn't them," Shawn said, and pointed in the direction of the ocean.

Having walked away from the group with sword in tow, Sugar had begun swinging it around like a baseball bat. "Look'it me!" she cried out when she saw the eyes of the others on her. "I'm one 'a them ol' timey hero fellers!"

Amazingly, she was holding it like it was nothing, a further testament to her rather surprising level of strength. She started spinning around on the spot like a dangerous spin top toy, the loud, panicked warnings of the others falling on deaf ears. Then, as was obviously going to happen in a situation like this, the sword slipped from her grasp and flew straight into the air. And was headed directly towards the rest of the team.

"Scatter!" Sky shouted, and everyone dove off to one side or another in a scream.

Everyone except for the bear, of course, who was very nearly impaled by the sword as it landed blade-down in the sand right in front of it.

The rest of the team exhaled in relief, and then sent several annoyed glares at Sugar.

Realizing her error, Sugar chuckled awkwardly and shrugged. "Oopsie-daisy?"

-SUGAR-

"Don't go blamin' me for that!" Sugar insists in the confessional. "You see a long stick-thing, you just gotta start swingin' it! That's like, one 'a them unspoken rules or some such!"

-END-

By this point, the Salmons were only halfway to finishing the construction portion of their statue - it wasn't as big as they had previously envisioned, mostly because it was hard to try and reshape sheets of metal without any proper tools, so they were forced to use mainly the wood they scavenged. It was somewhat slow going seeing as how they were down two members currently, but Jasmine had insisted that rushing it would just cause problems for them anyway. 'Slow and steady and all that,' she had said at the time.

Each member of the team was currently working on one part or another: Rodney worked hard in breaking apart the wood into shapes that made sense for aquatic life, while Max used as little glue as possible to stick them together so as to have enough for the whole thing. Jasmine hammered whatever wouldn't stay stuck together with the glue, Sammy was beginning to paint the bottom portions of the fish, and Scarlett, having not much else to do, worked at opening the paint cans.

"This was likely someone's idea of a sick joke," Scarlett said as she opened another one with a leftover piece of wood. "All of these colors are atrocious." She held out the paint, showing that it looked to be an odd, pale, sickly green color.

"Perfect for a fish though," Sammy said, dipping one end of the large broom head into the small can of paint and pulling it out coated in barf-colored yellow. "That said, I do wish these were more normal looking colors…"

"Meh. Normalcy is overrated," Scarlett replied, eyes on the next unopened paint can in front of her. "It implies that there is a standard that everyone and everything must meet, regardless of if one is capable of doing so or not. How an individual acts or looks should have no bearing on another's perception of them. And for the media and the wealthy to attempt to manipulate the public's consciousness of what is acceptable and what isn't based on such qualities is abhorrent, and only adds fuel to the fire of people rebelling against such an obviously corrupt system."

Scarlett opened the lid with a satisfying pop, and looked back up. She saw Sammy staring at her with wide eyes and mouth agape, the painting all but forgotten as she tried to comprehend what the brainiac had just said.

As if expecting such a reaction, Scarlett merely said in an uninterested tone, "The paint's dripping."

Sammy squeaked and hastily put the brush back to the fish.

Max, as well, was looking at Scarlett, though his staring was more in astonishment than surprise.

-MAX-

"Oh my stars," Max says quietly, hands clapped over his cheeks. "She has beef with the way the media and society at large ruin things too?! Forget just any old friend, I think I just found a new best friend!" He stops himself, and clears his throat. "Uh, that being said, I need to go about this in a civilized, subtle manner. Wouldn't want to scare her off by being too forward, know what I'm saying?"

-END-

Scarlett worked on opening another paint can - this one labelled 'skobeloff' - however it was proving to be a pain in the butt. "Blasted cap," she growled, trying her best to open it, but ending up snapping the branch she was using in the process. "Ugh! This lousy thing is stuck!"

"We're probably alright for paint," Sammy told her in a pacifying tone. "You don't have to open every one of them. Why don't you take a break?"

"You know what else is stuck?" Max asked then, seemingly ignoring Sammy's remark. "Scientific advancements on account of a stagnant society, as its populace refuses to march ahead with technology and has chosen to remain blissfully ignorant of what's possible when the world's leading minds come together to create something spectacular." Max's eyes were trained solely on Scarlett, and he leaned on the pieces of wood he had been gluing together in what was meant to be a smug pose. "Gets the brain juices pumping, doesn't it?"

Sammy stared at him in absolute confusion, clearly having no idea what was going on, while Scarlett had a look of complete exasperation and uninterest. With a drawn-out sigh, she dropped the broken branch and stood. "I might take you up on that break," she said to Sammy, and walked away from them.

"Ah- wait-" Max attempted, but the piece of fish statue he was leaning on crumpled under his weight and he faceplanted into the dirt.

"Umm," Sammy said, looking between Max and Scarlett, and chose to slowly resume painting. "I'm… gonna pretend none of that happened."

Scarlett strode past Jasmine and Rodney as they worked, earning her a questioning eye from the both of them. "Bathroom break," she said simply, not turning to look at either.

As she left the clearing, she walked by the newly arrived Topher and Amy, who appeared to be in deep conversation. "And then, it turns out," Amy was heatedly saying to a somewhat intrigued Topher, "she gets picked up by her boyfriend, but doesn't even offer us a ride! She just strands us there in the middle of the parking lot! And what's worse, the theatre was closed by that point, so we were out there in the rain until Mom had to come and get us! I mean, OMG, can you believe some people?!"

"Wow," Topher said, putting on a show of interest. "Sounds to me like you need to find new BFFs." The second Scarlett walked by the two of them, he shot her a pair of finger pistols. "Hey-hey, Scarlet Johansson!"

"Don't call me that," Scarlett replied without missing a beat.

"Yeesh," Topher said simply, "tough crowd." Amy merely nodded.

"There you two are!" Jasmine suddenly shouted from her spot at the wood pile. "Get your scrawny white butts over here and help us out! We're burning daylight!"

"Guess we'd better get at it then," Topher said, and started walking ahead. "Tell me the rest of the story later, yeah?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," Amy said with a wide, happy grin.

As Topher approached the team's unofficial leaders with shield in hand, Amy walked over to her sister and sat next to her with a content sigh. Sammy smiled and chuckled lightly. "Have a good stroll?"

"Yup," said the older sister, the grin still on her face. "Topher is like, so cool, you know? He looks all flashy and junk, but he's got this mysterious vibe to him. He actually like, listens to you when you talk to him, and he was so interested in what I was saying." She let out a high-pitched giggle. "I'm gonna talk to him again later when the challenge is done."

Sammy took a glance at Topher, who was being given orders from Rodney, but didn't seem to really be paying attention to him. Instead he met eyes with Sammy and casually winked her way.

"Riiight," she said, chuckling nervously. "Well, I hope it works out for you." She returned to painting, and under her breath said, "This time."

-SAMMY-

Sammy pokes the tips of her index fingers together anxiously. "Sooo, Amy tends to get… a little boy crazy. Honestly I don't really see the appeal in it, but like, it's one of those things she just does. If you put a conventionally attractive guy in front of her and have him show the barest amount of interest in her, she'll want to spend every second with him and will talk about him nonstop until…" Sammy frowns and rubs her neck. "Well, until the guy gets annoyed and doesn't want to see her again. And if they're already dating, then hoo boy, that's even worse. After that, she'll be in tears for days and eat all the ice cream in the house and I'll have to try and console her and- and… You know I really shouldn't be saying this about her on TV."

-END-

"Since Amy'll help Sammy with the painting, you help Max with the gluing," Rodney was saying to Topher. Jasmine, while listening in, continued to hammer the planks into appropriate shapes.

Topher looked over to the others and hummed in thought. "Ah, right, great suggestion Rod, slight problem though: we've only got the one bottle of glue," he pointed out.

"Then help him by holding the glued pieces together until they stay together," Jasmine suggested. "And make it snappy, we're behind enough as it is!"

Slightly intimidated, Topher hastily saluted her. "You got it, chief."

He took off for the fish statue, leaving the two largest team members to themselves. Rodney frowned and raised an eyebrow at Jasmine before continuing with his work. "I appreciate the help," he said to her, "but you can just leave being Team Captain to me, okay?"

Jasmine, who was mid-swing of the hammer, stopped. She took a deep breath and turned to him. "And why's that?" she asked, her tone irate.

"I already know how to lead a group of people this size," said Rodney confidently. "I've been doing it for a year, at least. Heck, I've learned how to run a whole farm on my own, pretty much. Bein' in charge of a team like this will be a breeze, so you don't have to worry about it gettin' too tough for you."

"Right, that's great," Jasmine said flatly as she resumed working on hammering the planks of wood. "But I'm fairly certain I'm just as qualified, if not more so, to be Team Captain than you are."

"Oh, is that so?" Rodney countered. He too continued to work, snapping the wood in his hands in half.

"Yes, it is so. If you couldn't already tell, I'm from Australia, where some of the world's most deadliest critters are. What's more, I've spent more time in the outbacks there than I have in my own home. Out there, you need to know the ins and outs of anything and everything that you can come into contact with, and I can guarantee I'm able to put those skills to use here in this game."

"Mm, right, but that's not actually leading people, now is it?" Rodney asked her, giving her a fake smile.

Jasmine rolled her eyes. "At least I have the sense to ask my teammates what they want to do rather than just give them a chore and be done with it. That's a quality a real leader should have and make use of. You get me?"

Rodney then frowned. "So, what? You saying I'm a bad leader for not doing what you're doing?"

"If that's what you want to think, then be my guess," Jasmine said curtly. "I certainly didn't say it."

"Pretty sure it was, uh," he faltered when trying to think of a word, "im- impl- uh, hinted at."

"Right," was all Jasmine said. "Whatever you say."

Rodney glared angrily at Jasmine, though before he could say anything else someone loudly cleared their throat.

"Uh, excuse me," came the indignant voice of Max, having made his way over to them. "Why don't you two… blockheads quit your squabble and focus on breaking these pieces correctly? I can only do so much with this stuff!" He held up wood that was broken apart to a size much too small in one hand, and in the other hand a jumble of planks nailed together that looked more like abstract art than anything that could be functional.

Jasmine and Rodney glanced at each other, before sighing in unison. "Fine," they said as one.

"We'll finish this discussion later," Jasmine told Rodney.

"Works for me," Rodney replied.

-JASMINE-

"Ugh, the nerve of that guy!" Jasmine starts with her arms raised to the air, then crosses them. "Look, I get that he might have some experience, but experience has taught me that I should trust me! I'm sure he's a fine and dandy leader, but just because that might be true on the farm doesn't mean it'll work out here, and it certainly doesn't mean I want him to be Team Captain. Doesn't matter what sort of fuss he'll put up, I'm still gunning for that position!"

-RODNEY-

"Can't she just see that I'm the better captain for the team?" Rodney asks the camera, his arms crossed and his frame hunched over in agitation. "I actually have taken charge and given orders before. And you can't exactly do that when you're out in the outbacks, alone, now can you?" He smugly grins at the camera. "But, I'm sure as we go on, it'll be me who naturally takes over. Jasmine doesn't stand a chance."

-END-

Back with Team Maskwak, the members were just putting on the finishing touches of the hay-fur. Almost none of it was evenly spaced, and the bear looked as if it had a serious shedding problem. The rope was used to keep its limbs in check, and were all noticeable through the hay. What was more, the paste keeping it all together wasn't well-hidden at all, especially on the down-turned hands that awkwardly held the sword in place. The blade looked ready to fall at any given moment, despite the amount of glue slabbed onto it. It was… passable, to put it nicely.

"Still looks like crud," Dave noted as he eyed it up and down. "But at least it's no longer naked."

"Hey, I still believe we did a great job," Ella told the others happily. "Sure, it might kind of suck in some places, and there was a bit of arguing and sword throwing earlier-" several pairs of eyes flew to Sugar, who didn't bother to react, "-but I think overall, we did a pretty decent job!"

"Your optimism scares me," Shawn said to her, though he couldn't help but smile. "But… it is kind of awesome that we managed to even make something like this."

"See? Shawn gets it!" Ella cheered, which wiped the smile from Shawn's face.

"So are we done?" Leonard asked. "Is there anything we have left to put on it?"

"You bet your keister we do!" Sugar exclaimed, and lifted up the bucket of glitter from back in the dumpsite. It was once again filled, although the bucket itself was now slightly dinged and dented. "Time to make this bear the prettiest lookin' thing on the island! Second only to me, a'course."

Sky and Beardo eyed the bucket - filled with a combination of pink dust and brown dirt - with uneasiness. "Girl, that's nasty," Beardo told her as he cringed.

"When'd you even get the time to get that?" Sky asked her in confusion.

"Not too long ago," Sugar answered cheerfully. "I still wanted to use some'a the glitter, so I made a quick stop comin' back from the outhouse to pick it up. Thought we could use it on the bear!"

"'Pick it up' is right," Dave moaned in disgust. "Did you have to scoop up the dirt as well?"

Ignoring him, Sugar started forward towards the statue with the bucket at the ready, prompting surprised reactions from many of the others. "Uh, that's allowed, right?" Leonard whispered to Shawn.

"I… don't think so," Shawn answered. "If we could just go back and get more stuff, what was the point of the time limit?"

"Oh, crud." Springing into action, Sky dashed in front of Sugar to block her. "Sugar, wait!" she cried out.

The southerner put one hand on her hip. "Why? You don't want this bear to be the best lookin' thing ever?"

"Uh, not that," Sky quickly explained, "but Chris might penalize us for not following the rules!"

Sugar raised a brow. "I don't remember him saying that we can't go back and get stuff, just not to get it from outside the junkyard."

Shawn frowned. "Okay, she's got a point there, he didn't technically say it," he mumbled.

"I mean, I guess, but, um…" Sky scratched her head in desperation, but an idea formed quickly enough. "Wouldn't it be better to use it on our cabin rather than the statue? That way we can keep it like that for a while, and you don't have to use it on something that might get scrapped right after the challenge. You know?"

Sugar rubbed her chin in thought, seeming to consider it. "Hmm… I like the way you think, Shorty!" she said after a moment. With a grin, she began walking away from the bear. "I'll save this for later then!"

When Sugar was out of earshot, the rest of Team Maskwak collectively sighed in relief. "I think we dodged a bullet there," Ella said. "Nice thinking, Sky!"

"Seriously," Beardo agreed. "Now we might actually have a shot at winning this thing." Several of the others nodded in agreement.

"But that means now we have to live with dirt on our walls," Dave muttered bitterly.

"Dude, have you seen our room?" Shawn asked him. "There's dirt everywhere already."

Dave didn't have a good retort for that. "Yeah, you're right…"

Sky, contrary to the others however, simply continued to watch Sugar leave with a worried hum.

-SKY-

"I wasn't expecting Sugar to be so… unpredictable," Sky tells the camera. "That's not to say I thought she'd be an angel when we first met - she said right out of the gate that she'd been planning on playing dirty after all - but how she's been acting since we landed hasn't been… let's say, ideal. Going for the glitter - twice! - and not caring if it would help us or not… Not to mention swinging the sword around like it was a toy… I'm not really sure if she has the team's best interests in mind, you know?"

-END-

Kineosewak, meanwhile, also finished up their statue. "Well, it looks…" Jasmine started, as the team examined their handiwork.

The majority of the salmon was made out of wood, but near the head it appeared that the team had run out of the wood, and ended up having to resort to the metal. As awkward as it looked, they had somehow managed to do it by bending the metal and hammering it together, and then gluing the head to the rest of the body. They also took the tail at the bottom and glued it onto the base, with extra bits of metal to act as support. Its colors were weird, and did not complement each other in the slightest, but with the materials they managed to attain it was the best that they could do.

"…like it could be better," Jasmine finished in a groan.

"Hey, I did the best I could!" Max complained irately. "It isn't my fault we had terrible supplies to work with!"

"I wasn't placing blame!" Jasmine defended, but then sighed. "But you're right, we did have terrible materials. That's what we get for having to find everything in a dump."

"I mean," Sammy started, tilting her head a bit with her eyes squinted. "If you look at it from a different angle, it looks… kind of okay?"

"Yeah," Amy said with contempt in her voice, "that, and if you don't know what a fish is supposed to look like."

"Easy, easy," Topher said, walking up to the twins and placing a hand on their shoulders. Amy smiled at him, while Sammy raised a brow at the physical contact. "The main thing is, it looks sort of like a fish, and we finished it before the timer. I'd say, for our first challenge, it didn't end all that badly!"

Sammy, with a nervous chuckle, slid Topher's hand off her shoulder. "I guess you've got a point."

"Of course I do!" Topher exclaimed.

"So can we say with confidence that we're properly finished?" Scarlett asked. "Because if so, it would be best to let the host know so that we're not wasting time."

"No need to, Scarlett!" came a voice from above, and all seven teammates looked upward to see a speaker attached to one of the trees in their clearing. "As you all clearly declared that you're finished, there's no need to do anything else," said Chris through the speaker. Not only were the Salmons listening in, but so were the Bears, where a speaker was set up on an outcropping of rocks.

"Both teams, follow the path you guys came in from to a clearing in the forest so we can decide who won and who lost! The interns will show you the way there." A group of interns then entered both team's work zones, and gingerly got to work at lifting the statues. "They will also be carrying your hard work to the area, so hopefully they won't drop them! And if they do… well, they know what'll happen!"

"Wow," Leonard said with a frown as Chris laughed cheerily. "He's every bit a bad boss as the show suggested."

"Yeah, it's a shame," Ella said mournfully as she watched the interns struggle with the bear. "I kind of want to help them."

"We probably shouldn't," Dave told her. "We might invoke his wrath on us."

Ella huffed in annoyance, and began walking with everyone else. "I know."

Kineosewak were also leaving their base, with Topher talking to Amy as Sammy walked behind them, and Max chatting it up with Scarlett who actively did not listen. Jasmine, however, stayed rooted to her spot and was frowning upward.

"Hold up a moment," she said to Rodney as he began to walk by, putting a hand on his chest to stop him.

He looked at her hand as his cheeks started to burn at the contact, though he pushed through it all the same. "W-What? Gonna pick another fight?"

"No, not now," Jasmine said. She pointed upwards, to where the speaker was. "Do you remember that intercom being there before?"

Rodney raised a brow at it and scratched his head. "Uh… I'm gonna be real honest, I didn't exactly look up when we got here. So, uh, I don't know. Sorry."

Jasmine hummed and rubbed her chin, though she sighed and shook her head. "Must've been my imagination, then."

The two headed for their base's exit, but before they did they literally paused. The camera then zoomed out, to where Chris was sitting in a director's chair next to a large flatscreen TV, showing Jasmine and Rodney leaving the screen.

"It's time for judging!" Chris declared, turning to the camera and addressing it. "And once that's over with, it'll be time for voting! Who'll get a delicious marshmallow-y treat? Who'll take the spot of the first loser? Some of these guys probably have it coming more than others…"

That was when, with a groan, Chef Hatchet entered the shot with a hand to his head. He had very visible welts on his face and a black eye, and he looked dazed and confused. "Wha… What I miss?" he asked in a stupor.

Chris chuckled, and jabbed his thumb at Chef. "'Bout time he came to. Find out what happens, when we return, on Total… Drama… Paaahkitew Island!"