She remains on the buoy for the rest of the morning. She is starting to feel sleepy at one point, and she can still see the boat in the middle of the storm.

She can see the part where rain begins. It's like there's a designated area for the storm, because the rain never meets her.

Her boat is getting rained on, however. As much as she hates it, she has to swim back to get her boat. When her allies question her, she knows she's not going to win a two versus one fight against them. Therefore, she needs to return with the boat to make it out alive.

She doesn't have food with her, and it's when she realizes why it's called the Hunger Games. She tries her best to swim to her intended direction anyway. Her aqua vest makes it easier for her to move on water by just floating, but she's not moving as fast without actually swimming.

She takes her time, trying to conserve what little energy she has. The closer she gets to the boat, the more rain she can feel splat on her. The waves are getting a bit more intense in this area. Luckily, she has the vest to control her buoyancy. There's no way she can drown despite the turbulence.

After hours of drifting through the sea, like a plastic bag on a polluted ocean, Rae finally reaches her destination – the boat.

She stays in it and closes her eyes to rest.


Rae wakes up and waits to see the faces in the sky that night, but all she sees is the sun rising. She must've slept through it, but the past two days were exhausting for her after all. She's been gone for two days, but perhaps she still has enough time to return to the trial in Lunatide Island.

For the rest of the day, she does her best making her way back to the glowing pink island, where her allies are probably still waiting for her. However, she catches a glimpse of a shiny white island beyond the storm clouds. She didn't realize that the storm was too thick, but perhaps there is a treasure on that shiny white hill.

In relief, Rae makes it back to Lunatide Island before the sun goes down.

"Rae!" Rubie greets her. "Good to see you back!"

"What's that?" Angela asks.

Rae doesn't respond immediately. Instead of rowing on shallow waters like she did previously, she gets off the boat and drags it with her. "Wait."

When she arrives on the pink beach, she lies down to rest. Her allies give her food, and when she's done eating, she tells her story. She talks about the Deep Blue and how she was challenging someone in a trial that involves mazes and puzzles. She tells them that she wins it, without telling them that she drowned the boy herself. She then talks about losing the boat then getting it back in a storm, which is why she took so long. Rubie then opens her bag.

"Guess what?" Rubie takes out an object from her bag. "I found the relic."

"Cool!" Rae says.

"All we have to do now is wait for tomorrow, when the full moon will rise," adds Angela.

That night, the face of the boy from the Capitol shows up in the night sky. The triad sleeps in shifts, and they have breakfast as they wait for the night of the full moon.

"I've been living on this island for almost a week waiting for this moment," Rubie says as she fidgets her relic. "I hope it's worth it."

"It's gotta be!" Angela responds.

Later that night, Rubie prepares herself for the trial.

"Stay here," says Rubie. "I'll be back."

"We know that," Rae responds. "Good luck!"

"Good luck!" Angela seconds.

"Thanks girls." Rubie makes her way to the top of a cliff.

When she reaches the pedestal on the top of the cliff overlooking the pink full moon, she carefully takes off her clothes, feeling shame, but knowing it is necessary for the success of the trial. She holds up her relic to the full moon, and it glows.

But then she feels a sharp pain on her back, and she falls from her standing position, while still holding her relic.

Another naked woman takes the knife out and stabs Rubie elsewhere, again and again. There's too much pain for her to move on her own, but luckily, she doesn't have to move on her own.

The trial challenger, a fellow tribute, pushes her off the cliff and into the sea.


BOOM!

"I wonder who that belongs to…" Angela says.

"Don't you think it could be Rubie?" Rae wonders.

"She said she'll be back."

"How sure are we that she didn't sacrifice herself to the moon?"

"Hmmm…" Angela gets up. "Let's go and find out."

Rae follows her ally up the cliff, and that's when she sees the trial mutt disappear, who was talking to a naked tribute. She gasps in shock, so she takes her clothes with her and uses the thing on her forearm to warp off the cliff.

"Hey!" Angela is about to run in, but the tribute disappears, and it's not Rubie.

"Dammit!" Rae expresses. "What happened!?"

That night on the cliff, Rubie's face is in the sky, along with Luna's, the girl from Zero whom they met on free day.

"We waited seven days only to lose Rubie…" Angela buries her face in frustration. "That's not what we expected."

Deep inside, Rae feels relieved to have left her allies to get her own trial reward. "Nope…" Rae shakes her head in defeat, but it's not that bad of a defeat. She can still stand on her own, and Angela is still here.

After consuming a few more hours of sleeping, Rae and Angela decide to leave the island and head north for another trial, hoping they don't lose it like they just did.

They arrive at the island a few hours later. It is a muddy island, and they can see a neighboring island just a bit beyond.

They look for food around the island, and while they did consume some weird-looking fruits, their stomachs start to ache a few hours later.

"I don't feel so good…" Rae shares.

"Me neither…" says Angela.

When they release the poisoned fruits from their system, they do their best to hydrate themselves, but spending too much time on Lunatide Island has caused them to be low on their water supply, including the one Rae won on the Deep Blue.

The face of the girl from Twelve appears in the sky that night. The following morning, while Angela is still asleep, Rae tries to meditate, finding inner peace when she's hungry and thirsty after losing an ally. These games have been gnarly, even though she has won her own reward. For a sensitive person like Rae, being out here has been very overwhelming to her.

When Angela wakes up, they continue their exploration for a trial, and lo and behold, at the center of the island is a board, but before either of them could read it, they are greeted by an arachnid.

"Greetings!"

Rae and Angela both scream at the sight of the large spider crawling out from behind.

"Wait, wait!" The spider holds up four of its legs. "Let me welcome you to the trial of the Broken Swamp – the Trial of Web!"

"Oh…" reacts Rae.

The spider mutt unhooks a lot of rope from the back of the signboard. "See, this island is divided into two, and we only have enough rope to mend the whole island together. Say… have you seen giant hoops stationed around the island?"

"Mmhm…" Angela and Rae respond in unison.

"Great! So all you need to do is start from this hoop." The spider mutt approaches a nearby ring, tying one end of the rope on it. "While tied to the other end of the rope, your goal is to go through every single hoop between these two islands and come back here. Sounds like a challenge, don't you think?"

"Let's do it," Rae says.

Angela follows with, "Yeah!" shortly after.

The spider then helps hook the rope onto both tributes. They start from the same hoop, and then go in different directions around the island to solve this puzzle. As the hoops are small, they would need to crawl into them, getting themselves dirty in the process.

By noontime, neither of them can see the starting hoop, but they have both run out of rope. They backtrack several times over the afternoon, and are nowhere near the end.

By the time it's too dark to complete the trial, Angela asks to quit, followed by Rae shortly after.

The spider mutt meets them back at the starting hoop where the trial board is.

"Well, it seems like my trial was too difficult to complete, but still, thank you for trying. Your consolation prizes are over there." The spider raises four legs to point at the nearby table where strips of cooked bacon are waiting.

"Not bad!" Angela says.

As they dig in, with a bottle of water each, Rae can't help but wonder…

"If this is the consolation prize, what the heck is the grand prize?"

Angela thinks for a few minutes. "Damn… it's gotta be something big, but we spent too much time on this island, and we can't get it done."

"Yeah…" Rae nods slowly.

That night, no faces appear in the sky. They spend the morning mulling over what happened in the trial yesterday, but eventually, Rae and Angela came to the conclusion that there is no way they're gonna complete it if they try again today.

"It was too complicated!" complained Rae.

"It was impossible!" Angela shakes her head. "Let's go check out that island out there." Angela points north.

"Good idea!" Rae follows Angela back to the boat, and Angela rows the boat for them.

The boat ride to Magnetic Island was silent, but Rae uses that time to think about how she's going to win this thing. She already has a kill on her belt, and it would be nice to be the queen with the crown on her head. She wants it so bad, and she believes she has proven herself to the audience not just by killing somebody, but by also winning a trial on her own.

They reach Magnetic Island when it is getting dark, but they try to look around the island for a board detailing a trial. As they traverse the island in the dark, there are a lot of hard objects around their path. It's too dark to see what they are, but they bump into these or walk over these rugged items at least once every minute.

Right as they see their goal at the end of the island, two cannons fire, and seeing that it's neither of them, they continue to the board, only to realize that the words are difficult to read in the dark.

"Let's set up camp here," suggests Rae.

"Yeah, let's call it a day," Angela agrees.