Well, okay, we started the episode, let's get it done. Thanks for reviewing, AnonBrowser, lordgemini, IllusionSign and OmniIBIBUltraInstinctGodzilla.
At one thirty, Dakota and I were both standing in front of the cabins, her holding an air horn. "Grab these," I advised Dakota, handing her ear plugs. "That thing is loud."
So Dakota plugged her ears before pressing it as did I, and everyone immediately spilled out of their cabins, shrieking and blinking in confusion.
Finally, I looked around at the ten contestants, pulling out the earplugs. "Thanks to my new intern, it looks like everyone's up!" I smiled.
Sam was the first one to speak up. "Hi, Dakota!" Aww, looks like he really did want to listen to her.
"Huh? Speak up!" Dakota said loudly.
I nudged her and pointed to my ears, reminding her she still had the earplugs in. She gave a nod and extracted them.
"Sam, you might want to say hi to her again." I advised. "She had ear plugs in from the air horn." Of course, now he didn't need to as she knew he'd said hi. She smiled at him, and her cheeks went a bit pink. Pinker than her old outfit (as a matter of fact, she'd done her best to customize the intern uniform by tying it up at the hems, making it ride up a little). "Anyway, as you might know, every season has a night time challenge. We're getting this one out of the way now."
"What, now?" Brick's eyes flickered around. "When it's all, you know, dark?" It looked like our army cadet was afraid of the dark. Now that I hadn't seen coming.
"We always need one. It's not that big a deal, really. Anyway, you've got flashlights," I said brightly, "And your teammates. Oh, that reminds me. Try to stick together for the challenge, because each player you lose risks a penalty. What you're up to, though, is a scavenger hunt – you'll find clues in each place, and then the item. Dakota, the map, please?" Dakota handed me the projection screen with the map, and I pointed them out. "You need to start in the Haunted Forest. Then the creepy pet cemetery, and finally, the spooky cave." I had noted all of them there – both the clue and the object. "But be careful, there are a tonne of booby traps around the clues and the souvenirs. And most of them are really dangerous. Some you won't even see coming."
There was one last thing added to the map that I hadn't mentioned. Before I could say a word, Cameron raised his hand. "Um, what does the spider represent?" he asked in a shaky voice.
"Oh yeah, that." I couldn't help smirking. "There's a giant mutated spider on the loose. Like I told you, you need to stick together, because you don't want to be on your own if you run into that thing. I don't think the spider's dangerous, but with mutants, who knows?" I wasn't supposed to tell them that the spider was really just Izzy dressed up in a spider costume. The producers had sent me a list of competitors who had agreed to help with challenges, mainly demonstrations. I'd known Izzy would be perfect as last season's Ripper's spider cousin. She'd be kidnapping contestants every so often, which is why I'd warned the teams to stick together. Currently, there was five on each team, so if one team lost more members than the other, they'd automatically lose. That's if anyone made it out before they were kidnapped, that is – which is why there was a point to the hunt. If it came down to one person and neither of them finished, if would just be who got the furthest. I didn't trust Izzy fully, but she swore she wouldn't hurt anyone. "Chef doesn't count, right?" she'd said, her bright eyes sparkling like emeralds. "Gotta keep up our fights."
"As long as it's not serious." I'd bargained. "And as long as I get to warn him." (I'd done so – Chef wasn't pleased, but he agreed, on the basis that Izzy had to find him on her own if she wanted a fight).
"Anyway, we want this challenge done before sunrise and I'm sure you guys would like an extra rest day to catch up on whatever sleep you're missing right now. So let's go!" Instantly, the ten remaining contestants went off with the map guiding them.
I turned to Dakota. "I've got a list of traps you need to set up in the pet cemetery. Don't worry, the spider will leave you alone – I made it promise not to kidnap any interns. I'll keep an eye on the cameras."
Well, I had to, because I needed to use the intercom whenever anyone reached the areas for the clues and let them know that they'd found it. Then they needed to find the area their souvenir was in from the clue.
The Rats found the first clue (inside a bear trap), and Jo got the Maggots to listen in as they read it. Dawn read it out loud in her clear voice. "Inside a knot is a nest. Your souvenir lives with a pest. Find Polaris to travel northwest. Polaris is the north star!"
As it was, the Rats (minus Dawn, the first to be kidnapped), found the hollow tree first, and they took out the "pest" for the Maggots (although they lost B and his chisel). Anyway, that meant that when Jo tossed Cameron into the hollow to bring out their key, he was unhurt. But they lost Zoey. And I felt another tug of jealousy when Mike started charging around, eyes wide with worry and screaming Zoey's name as if she'd be able to reply. I mean, B and Sam had been concerned when Dawn first went missing, but not like this (and Lightning and Scott hadn't seemed to care – Scott's only remark on the loss was "What, did we lose the weirdo?").
"And we call off the search and forge ahead." Jo announced.
Brick immediately started to argue. "That's against the cadet code! Never leave a soldier behind!"
"We're not leaving her, she left us!" Jo argued back. "That means she's AWOL. Now move it, GI Joke." She'd been making up nicknames for everyone around camp, but Brick got more than anyone else, either mocking his army look or his bladder control (or lack thereof). I was starting to feel guilty for revealing that particular embarrassing moment for him. She hadn't made up a nickname for me yet, but I had a feeling that if I kept hanging out with her, a nickname was coming. In fact, I was sort of looking forward to seeing what she came up with for me.
Halfway through the race to the pet cemetery, Lightning also went missing. He'd been charging ahead all that time, but with him gone, I noticed straight away that Scott slowed down a little bit. Sam didn't seem to mind, considering he'd been going much slower anyway, but even he seemed to notice something was off.
"It's not that I don't like this leisurely pace," he said, "But shouldn't we be running faster?"
"Relax, I know what I'm doing." Scott muttered, not bothering to look back as he spoke. Yeah, well, while slowing down was certainly detrimental to this game (it gave the spider more time to find them, for one thing), I did get the feeling that Scott really did have some kind of plan in mind. He'd been talking about letting his team lose earlier on, but he hadn't done anything much yet. Was this the start?
Either way, the Maggots got to the pet cemetery first, and found the clue. It was easy enough, just numbers with 6, 6, 18 and 6 highlighted.
"Aren't three sixes supposed to be evil?" Cameron asked anxiously.
They lost Brick after he fell into an open grave and went to dry off his shorts and the spider got him, but Jo, again, claimed not to care. Oh, and guess who else we got – Vito. Mike was looking to see if he could spot Zoey at the top of a tree and fell, with his shirt catching a branch and pulling it right off.
I decided to help out. "If anyone else on Team Maggot is watching this, I'm disqualifying Mike if he isn't fully dressed at the finish line, so one of you better get his shirt back on him."
It took all of ten seconds for Jo to get Mike's shirt from the tree, and all of one full minute to force it onto Vito, bringing Mike back. But it was lucky they did, because he caught the grave that said June 6, 1806 and guessed that was where the souvenirs (flashlights) were. Sam and Scott had arrived by that time. Sam had fallen into a grave full of kitchen grease (courtesy of Dakota, who'd felt like apologizing but had brushed it off and walked away – maybe I'd been imagining those hidden depths of hers). But he also saw the Maggots finding the grave, so he and Scott got their souvenir easily.
By the time the teams reached the cave, Cameron had also gone missing. So it was just Jo and Mike on one team, and Sam and Scott on the other. The souvenir was just a hook to get out, but there was no way Mike was going to leave without helping his team get down.
"What we need is an Olympian." Cameron called down. I was starting to realize he knew something about Mike's disorder without being told, because this instantly summoned Svetlana, and she was able to help out freeing a few people.
I had to rush to where the zipline for the hook ended, just to see if anyone made it to the end. As it was, they did. I missed Cameron beating up Izzy with a blast of adrenaline, but I didn't miss Mike (having made sure everyone was free and himself again), Jo and Brick (the first person to be freed) beating Sam and Scott to the end.
"Well, Mutant Maggots, you win!" I said cheerfully. "You can all go back to the cabins and catch up on your sleep. Toxic Rats, I'll see you tonight at the campfire ceremony."
I had to go back to the cave and get everyone up and back to the campground. Everyone seemed fine, although the spider costume was a bit torn where Cameron had jumped on it. I sent Izzy home a little early, but only after she'd insisted on playing a game of Native American captives with Chef.
I checked the confessionals before the campfire ceremony. Everyone had commented through it. Brick had a couple of moments, first about how much he hated the dark, and then talking about how Jo was always trying to get under his skin. Yeah, I'd noticed. I was starting to wonder if that was an immature flirting attempt. She seemed a little too interested in trying to impress and best him. But then, she had teased Lightning about losing to a girl twice, so that was similar, but that could just be because she had less of a chance to engage with the opposing team. And I finally heard Scott confirm that yes, he had been planning to get his team to lose and that's why he'd slowed down when Sam had questioned him. He'd been planning to get rid of B first, and then Sam or Lightning. That was weird – I was sure he'd had a confessional the day before about getting rid of Dawn – I think she disconcerted him. He'd also mentioned something about her staring at him when he was thinking about using B's ice disc to reflect off ice cube Sam and melt their fort, but couldn't in case she saw. Anyway, he made it clear that his problem was that there were too many choices. "I'm like a kid in a candy store full of suckers. And I'm gonna…um…like…like, break 'em and stuff!" I giggled as I watched him, but I made up my mind that I wasn't crazy about Scott. His whole plan was to betray as many teammates as possible until the merge. Hopefully they'd get wise and eliminate him first, but he'd already gotten rid of one teammate (two if B lost tonight). The other three needed to step up.
Cameron also had a few moments. First, he had a short confessional about how he was afraid of spiders. Very afraid. Then he talked about adrenaline. Apparently that's what had made him break free of the web and start attacking Izzy. Finally, he had a third one stating that the experience cured him of arachnophobia, but now he was terrified of Izzy instead.
Zoey also had some confessional that was just gushing about Mike. She said the "going into character" thing was weird, but that no one was perfect. Just listening to her talk about how much she liked Mike was really starting to get under my skin. I didn't want to be mean to the one girl on the island that I'd connected with (although Dakota had been a lot nicer than I'd thought she'd be), but I was starting to feel like I wanted to.
Anyway, Scott got his wish and B went home that night. I wasn't sure exactly why, but at least the redhead looked happy. Maybe he'd convinced everyone else that B was problematic for some reason.
"Any words of wisdom, B?" I asked as he sat in the catapult. "You don't have to say anything, but if you want to…"
B began to open his mouth, and his team gasped…then I suddenly slipped on a wet patch and accidentally pulled the lever. The last we heard of B was a baritone scream.
"Okay, you four, goodnight." I told the others. "Rest day tomorrow."
And that's episode 4! Not a good episode, to be totally honest. And I couldn't have Toni in it as much as I'd like because, well, it was mostly all contestants. I am putting a bit more focus on Dakota this time around, mainly because she's required to have more interaction with the host.
