DISCLAIMER: Oops, forgot to put one of these in the first chapter. Uh…Maki Murakami owns Gravitation. Natsuki Takaya owns Tohru Honda. Mark Burnett owns Survivor. Jeff Probst owns himself. I am none of the above.
Thanks to TaraYuki-Uesugi for correcting me on Yuji's name.
NA NO DA
Now, usually, when a tribe returns from voting somebody out, they're depressed. But not the members of Na No Da!
"That was great!" Noriko yelled, giving Mika a high five.
Mika nodded enthusiastically. (Uh-oh. Somebody usually gets hurt when Mika's feeling enthusiastic.) "Did you see the look on her face!"
Ryuichi looked confused. "How was it any different than how she always looks?"
They all sat around the fire with happy faces, with the exception of Yuji who got uncomfortable and went to bed early. (A/N: I finally got a decent look at Yuji's personality. He reminds me a lot of my friend Sylvia.)
And, since these people are starting to bore me, we'll move on to the morning at
LA LI HO
The people at La Li Ho were as happy as the people at Na No Da. Why? Because they hadn't lost the first challenge, which is always a nice thing. When the disturbed camera men made their way over to the weird camp with the weird people, they found Shuichi trying to peel a banana, bounce up and down and hum at the same time.
"Guess what!" he screeched in typical overly excited Shuichi fashion. How does he do that?
"What." Eiri called, grumpy because they didn't get any coffee with their Survivor supply kit. Well, darling Eiri, what did you expect?
"IT'S NOT LIKE I ASKED TO BE HERE!" he yelled, stomping his foot childishly. Oh, goodness. He turned to Shuichi, who was staring at Eiri like he was insane. (Ouch!) Clearing his throat self-consciously, Eiri again asked Shuichi to explain why he was so excited.
"Yesterday was Fuyu-chan's birthday!"
"QUIT USING SHUICHI FOR SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTING!" Eiri yelled at the sky. Everyone was up now from the first time he screamed, and they were all wondering if maybe they should have lost on purpose and voted him off before he got too frazzled and coughed up blood or something. Oh, wait.
"Eiri-san?" Tohru asked softly. "Would you like something to eat?"
Eiri turned around to glare at her, but it's impossible to be mad at Tohru unless you're Akito Sohma. So, he just stared idiotically. Oh, poor Eiri is having quite a morning.
REWARD CHALLENGE
The energized La Li Hos and Eiri stood on their blindingly orange mat, the majority of them looking enthusiastic and ready to kick some Na No Da ass! Jeff was looking as arrogant as ever and said hello in his typical pompous "you're starving and sleeping with poisonous snakes and I'm not" voice. He then informed the La Li Ho tribe that they would be getting a look at the new Na No Da tribe. He's an idiot if he actually believes any of them remember Ayaka.
The Na No Das came in and took their place on the pink mat. "The hot girl's gone!" Hiro whined. Oh, I guess I'm the idiot.
"Anyway," Jeff began, "today's reward challenge is to see how well you've been communicating with each other." Uh-oh. "We're going to play the old fashioned game of Telephone!"
Everyone just stared. "What the hell…?" Suguru muttered. What the hell indeed, Suguru.
Jeff decided to change the subject. "Want to see what you're playing for?" He took their lack of response as a yes and revealed…blankets and matches!
"Four blankets and plenty of matches to last you for the rest of the game," Jeff said proudly, as if it were a Christmas gift from him to the Survivors. "La Li Ho, since you have one extra member, you'll be sitting someone out. You cannot sit the same person out in back to back challenges. Who will it be?"
Suguru raised his hand. The uncomfortable cast was shown sitting in circles.
Let's start with Na No Da. See, they have an advantage. When Ryuichi was in grade school, he was known as the TELEPHONE CHAMP! Don't ask how or why, that's just how it is. He must have good ears. Or maybe he goes into his serious non-Kumagoro mode when he plays Telephone.
Jeff leaned down to whisper into Noriko's ear. "Eat at Yoshi's!" (1)
Noriko stared at him for a second, then whispered into Tohma's ear. "Eat at Yoshi's."
Tohma frowned, wondering if Noriko had messed it up already. What kind of a message was "Eat at Yoshi's?" Alas, he whispered it into Sakano's ear.
Sakano was jittery and therefore had trouble hearing. He hissed at Taki "Eat at Tushy's". Taki made a repulsed face and made a mental note to kill whoever had mangled the three letter sentence. He couldn't think of what it could possibly be so he just whispered what he had heard to Ryuichi who was looking very, very serious.
Ryuichi passed it to Mika who passed it to Yuji who said in a very uncertain voice…
"Eat at Tushy?"
Hiro snorted from the other side. Jeff smiled. "Close! The message was 'Eat at Yoshi's.'"
He then whispered in K's ear "The melody of logic always plays the notes of truth". (2) K took a minute to wonder what the hell that meant and stared at Jeff. Jeff just shrugged and pointed to his cue card. K whispered into Shuichi's ear in his weird Engrish "The merody of rogic always prays the notes of twuthu."
Shuichi looked very doubtful. He was sure that couldn't mean anything, but he tried to repeat the jibberish he had just heard to Hiro.
"The marrow of Roger always prays the notes of two".
Hiro stared at him. That made even less sense then what Na No Da had come up with. Shuichi just shrugged in return. Hiro sneered when he realized he was sitting next to Eiri and refused to get close enough to his ear for him to hear very well. He repeated what Shuichi had told him. Eiri hadn't heard it very well, but he wasn't about to admit that. Besides, he figured one of the baka before him had farked it up. For once he was right.
He whispered to Tohru, who should have been first since her listening skills are insane, "The me-rod of Robert always pies the newts of tool."
Tohru, being less than a genius, whispered the same thing to Maiko, who raised an eyebrow and whispered to Tatsuha.
Tatsuha had barely stopped daydreaming about Ryuichi naked before Maiko began hissing in his ear. He shrugged and said aloud
"The mirror of rowboat always pokes the knights of Tibet?"
Jeff blinked at him, then looked at the rest of the tribe who were staring at him innocently. There was an awkward silence before Jeff declared loudly, "Na No Da wins reward!"
The Na No Das cheered. Eiri realized that their message was a lot shorter than his tribe's, but whatever. Nothing he could do about it.
NA NO DA
"We won! We won!" Ryuichi bounced around, dancing with Kumagoro. Tohma beamed even more creepily than usual. Taki's eyes almost looked normal, even less droopy than David Hayward on All My Children. Sakano was bowing to Tohma for no apparent reason, Noriko and Mika were smirking in an all-powerful woman way, and Yuji was doing a victory dance behind a tree where nobody could see him. I guess all those rejections finally got to him, eh?
Ryuichi cuddled one of the blankets and fell asleep, looking painfully adorable. Tohma smiled at him in a more friendly than creepy kind of way. Sakano gazed at him fondly.
They all napped around the fire, clearly unaware of the drama that this caused for the male tribe in Vanuatu. (3)
LA LI HO
The members of La Li Ho were annoyed. Nobody would admit to messing up the challenge. Admittedly, they probably didn't know if they had or not, but if they were aware of that, where would the drama come from?
"Would one of you just admit it so we can forget about this!" Eiri snitched. Uh-oh. Somebody get him some Wudbeiser and a cigarette!
Shuichi gazed at the fire pit longingly. "Maybe it's not so bad. If we just-"
"It is bad! It's horrible!" Maiko cried dramatically. Everyone just stared at her. They'd been so used to forgetting that she was on their tribe that they hadn't expected much of a display from her.
"Now we won't have water! Or blankets! We'll get hypothermia! Or gonorrhea! And DIE!"
"Gonorrhea?" K repeated before deciding to act first and ask questions later. Maiko was abruptly shut up when the barrel of a gun was placed between her eyes.
Tohru paled. "Um, K-san-" She too shut up when K's other gun was pointed at her. BAD K! BAD!
"HEEEEY! Why does he get TWO luxury items!" Shuichi pouted. Good point, Shu-chan! K needs to be punished for pointing a weapon at Tohru, anyway. Before anyone could even think, a hot pink version of Tinkerbell swept down on them, picked up K's gun and flew away.
K stared. "How could she…" He then realized his precious gun had been taken away. "HEY!" He began to chase after Pinkerbell who was now long gone. On the way, he tripped over a tree stump.
"Ow…" he rubbed his knee. He then noticed that they had tree mail! "Big News!" He bellowed, and smirked in satisfaction as he heard the sound of running and Tatsuha appeared.
"Are we switching tribes! Do I get to be with Ryuichi!"
"Baka," Eiri said, coming up from behind him. "K just made himself useful and found our tree mail."
I'm not even going to try to write retarded Survivor poetry for this story. If you want, you can write your own after reading about the challenge. I don't know why you'd do that, but show me if you do. Anyway, naturally, the tree mail was about the next
IMMUNITY CHALLENGE
A refreshed Na No Da and a dejected looking La Li Ho met up with Jeff for their next ridiculous challenge.
"Hi, guys!" Jeff said enthusiastically. Na No Da beamed back at him. Taki's eyes drooped upwards. La Li Ho just stared.
"First things first, I'll need that back, Maiko," Jeff said, trying to take the immunity from her. He frowned when she held onto it. "Really, Maiko, I need it back." She pouted and handed it to him.
"Immunity, back up for grabs!" Jeff exclaimed. Na No Da cheered. La Li Ho looked even more deflated.
"Today's immunity challenge will test your ability to work with each other," Jeff began to explain. Sounds like Bad News! for the people working with K and Eiri. "You will select one person as your 'eyes'. The rest of you will be blindfolded. The person you have chosen will give you directions to bring puzzle pieces back to your mat. You will then put them together to form a picture." A picture was shown of the puzzle: a gangster Kumagoro with a gun.
Na No Da selected Tohma as their leader. Of course. La Li Ho selected K. What? What is this? Somebody give them some water! Tohru wisely chose to sit out.
"Survivors ready: GO!" The survivors, looking rather stupid with their buffs over their eyes, stood and waited for their leader to lead them to victory.
"GO! MOVE, YOU FOOLS!" K howled. He does have one advantage over Tohma - his insanely loud voice. "SHUICHI! STOP!" Shuichi stopped. "PICK THAT UP!"
Shuichi bent down to pick up whatever he had found and tripped over his own feet. K fired a shot at him. "Eeek!" Shuichi yelped, then felt around until he found the puzzle piece. He grabbed it and began to run - until he crashed straight into Eiri and flew in the wrong direction.
"Shit," he muttered, then got up - and crashed into Yuji, who was wandering around blindly. They fell onto each other.
"SHUICHI! WAIT UNTIL I CALL YOU!" K yelled. "OKAY! MOVE FORWARD! QUICKLY!"
Shuichi finally made it to his mat, where other, more competent people had been slowly dropping off the huge foam puzzle pieces.
Let's see how Tohma's doing!
"Ryuichi-san! Please listen to me!" Tohma called, sounding slightly stern. "Okay, never mind! Just sit down!" Ryuichi complied by tripping over a puzzle piece and landing at Noriko's feet.
"Noriko! Ryuichi just tripped over a puzzle piece! It's right behind him!" Noriko felt around with her foot until she located Ryuichi's head, then began to feel around him until she found the big pink puzzle piece.
"Is this it?" she called, feeling slightly degraded.
"Yeah! Now come forward!"
She walked forward with her hand out, narrowly missing a panicking Sakano who was even more high strung with his eyes covered. "Good! Now drop it!" Tohma called happily, feeling proud of his Na No Das (come on, we all know he's ruling them).
"Fuck!" Mika called as Sakano spun into her, causing her to fling her puzzle piece into Tohma's stomach.
"Oof! I think we have them all!" Tohma sang, watching in amusement as K tried to direct Tatsuha to a piece two feet in front of him. All Tatsuha really wanted to do was find Ryuichi and feel him up.
"Na No Da may remove their blindfolds!" Relieved, the bunny-dubbed freaks pulled their buffs off their faces and began to move their puzzle around. K panicked and began yelling.
"EIRI!"
"WHAT!" Eiri screamed, wondering why he had let K declare himself the leader. He then remembered K's luxury item and how bad it would smell if one of the people on the tribe died.
"GO LEFT! TATSUHA'S MAKING AN ASS OF HIMSELF!"
"What else is new," Eiri muttered, walking left. He found Tatsuha and pushed him, then found the last puzzle piece. He calmly carried it over to their mat. (He secretly wanted to go to Tribal Council.)
"La Li Ho may remove their blindfolds!" Jeff called, trying not to laugh. This chapter's losers sighed and removed their buffs from their eyes before making their way over to where K and Eiri had already begun working on the puzzle.
Meanwhile, Na No Da were making fairly quick work of their hot pink puzzle. There was one piece left. It appeared to be missing.
"Wha-" Tohma almost panicked before he saw Ryuichi standing and hugging the puzzle protectively.
"This piece has Kumagoro's face! Ryuichi wants to put it in!" Ryuichi squeaked cutely, then hopped to the puzzle mat thing in a manner that no 31 year old man should be able to achieve and put the final piece in.
"Pika pika!" he squeaked.
"Na No Da wins immunity!" Jeff yelled, stopping the poor La Li Hos in their puzzle making frenzy. Eiri silently prayed that he got voted off. Since he doubted he would, he decided to silently pray that their next challenge was less childish than Telephone and a giant foam puzzle.
The Na No Das screamed in joy, then hugged the Capybara immunity idol. Hiro stared at it longingly, then began to fret when he realized that he hadn't even thought about who to vote off.
LA LI HO
"Uh, so…" Hiro said to Shuichi. He was sure that Shuichi would be around for a while, considering he's the author's favorite character. What, didn't you know that Hiro is omniscient? Anyway, since Hiro had figured this out, he decided allying with Shuichi would be a wise move.
"So…" Shuichi echoed.
"I won't vote you off if you don't vote me off," Hiro stated bluntly.
"Okay!" Shuichi agreed, relieved that someone as smart as Hiro was going to be his Survivor buddy.
"So…who do you think?"
"I dunno," Shuichi replied, scratching his head. "Not Eiri, 'cause he's hot."
"Okay…" Hiro said. Hiro didn't like Eiri, but since he's used to dealing with disagreeable people that he doesn't like, Eiri shouldn't be that much of a problem.
"Who's useless?" Shuichi offered, suddenly sounding smart. Or, he would've if 90 of the people on his tribe weren't fairly useless.
"Maiko…" Hiro started. "Tatsuha…Suguru…I was actually thinking K."
"K? Why?"
"Well…he's nuts."
"True." Shuichi made a face. "I don't like this. Let's ask Eiri."
"Okay," said Hiro, ever the agreeable one.
Suguru was conversing with Tohru.
"What do you think?" he asked, figuring that she was a decent judge of character.
"Well, I don't want to get rid of anyone," Tohru said, looking uncomfortable.
"We have to," Suguru reminded her.
She sighed. "Well, K pointed a gun at Maiko and me…"
"K it is, then," Suguru said in agreement. Tohru nodded, then went to tell Maiko. (Girls gotta stick together, y'know.)
"Maiko," Eiri said, chewing a stick.
"Could you stop that?" Hiro requested, getting irritated with watching someone grind their teeth on sticks.
"Why Maiko?" Shuichi asked.
"She's useless and she doesn't do anything."
"Okay!" Shuichi said, figuring being passive was the best way to get into Eiri's pants. Which is pretty true…
Hiro shrugged, not really caring who got voted out as long as it wasn't him or Shuichi.
Since nobody wanted to talk to K, he's voting for…I don't know yet. Whoever comes into my head. Plus, I want Tatsuha to be a swing vote. So, that's what he is: a swing vote. God help us all.
TRIBAL COUNCIL
"Come on in, guys," Jeff invited, smiling sadistically. None of them were in the mood for chatter, which was made quite clear when Jeff tried to talk to Eiri.
"What happened at the challenge today?" he asked. Eiri grunted in response. Nobody spoke up.
"Uh, okay…I guess we'll vote," Jeff suggested.
Eiri voted. Hiro voted for Maiko. "Uh, yeah. Sorry. It's nothing personal." Suguru voted. K voted.
Shuichi voted. Maiko voted for K. "You're really, really, really scary," she explained. Tatsuha voted. Tohru voted.
"I'll go tally the votes," Jeff said, then returned with the urn thing. "Once the votes are read, the decision is final; the person will be asked to leave the tribal council immediately." Hiro groaned inwardly; he'd secretly been hoping they'd be allowed to stay for cheese and crackers. Not that he was going to miss the person being voted out; he just wanted some cheese and crackers.
First vote: Maiko. Second vote: K. Third vote: Suguru. (WTF?) Fourth vote: Maiko. Fifth vote: K. Sixth vote: K. Seventh vote: Maiko. Eighth vote:
drum roll
Maiko.
Maiko stood up and blew a kiss to Suguru. Ooh, good thing she's gone. Wouldn't want another Rob and Amber, especially not involving Suguru. Jeff looked at her seriously. "The tribe has spoken." He put her flame out. SNUFF! She waved bye-bye and left.
Maiko's "loser" speech: "I don't really know what happened. I guess someone didn't like me? Oh well. I wasn't really cut out for this. Bye Tohru! Hope you win!"
1) This was what that costume of Shuichi's said in Vol. 7, in case anybody was wondering.
2) This is from Spiral. This is one of the main character's "lines". As much as I love Spiral and Ayumu Narumi, some things are just too corny. I think it's for younger kids, though.
3) They all slept around the fire at night and apparently some spots were better than others. One guy always got the "good spot" and this caused a huge, amusing argument. It was a tribe of all males. Go figure.