Survivor - Emperors vs Knights

Chapter 24 - Day 19

Well, it's official. It's finally time that we move into second phase of this game, "the merge." Those of you who don't know, the merge is when all the tribes come together (two or more), and depending on the amount of players in a season, the "jury" is set to start soon, which means that whoever is voted out in this phase in the game will be part of a "jury" where the players will be sitting on a bench across from the remaining players where the must attend subsequent Tribal Council to observe since that's how the people decide who to vote for to win a million dollars in the end in the finals (like last season and most of Survivor's recent season, there is going to be a final three on day 39, and since there are twenty players this season, whoever the first post merge boot is will be the first member of the jury like in most seasons that has 20 contestants these days (some seasons have 18 players for example where the first post-merge boot for some of the seasons is actual the final member of the "pre-jury" so they just missed out lol).

So we have thirteen people remaining in the game (Shulk, Foxy, Marth, Shadow, Zelda, Freddy, Greninja, Bonnie, Knuckles, Shovel Knight, Roy, Luigi, and Sheik) after Krystal, Pac-Man, Mega Man, Rouge, Ghirahim, Cloud, and Peach exited the game. At this point we have seven knights and six emperors with the former tribe barely having the majority. These thirteen contestants will battle it out as strategy kicks up where the contestants will compete in individual immunity challenges while making move to not only get each other out of the game, but also by managing the jury on why they are worthy of earning the title of Sole Survivor and the million dollars.

We'll see what happens from here on out, and then I'm officially going to make my announcement for my next season (FINALLY)!

Guest review reply time:

Historyfan15: I really like Wolf since I played Command (first StarFox game) and now look where I am lol. StarFox is generally underappreciated in the Smash franchise and based on my avi I'm clearly a Fox McCloud lol. But for Krystal in particular, yep, I've noticed that myself the moment she became eliminated, which is quite funny by the way lol.

(And for the record, as a reminder from the first chapter, for those who read Kodai Island, I highly recommend you avoid the review page due to possible spoilers (don't worry, for those who comment about Kodai Island there, I still encourage you to do so to compare!))

~KF

Nago

Night 18

Shulk, Knuckles, Shadow, Marth

-/-

BOOM!

In a bit of a hurry, Marth, Shulk, Shadow, and Knuckles all laid down their torches against the same tree, subsequently climbing into the shelter as the rain was pouring a lot harder than before at the time. No one even knew rain was scheduled for that night, since to the four competitors, the precipitation came out of nowhere, and they had to make their move back to camp fast.

However, rain was not exactly the first priority to be discussed with one another, since now they had to recover from their most recent Tribal Council.

"Okay, this was my absolute weirdest tribal ever so far." Shulk shook his head. "I... Me and Marth were dead set on voting for Knuckles, but... I don't know what happened... at all. I was gonna talk with the other two emperors separately, but it was raining. And at that point, I wanted answers as quick as I could have, so we all had a whole discussion about it as a group..."

"I mean, I am just as confused as ever..." Marth could not have believed it. "Why did Krystal put my name down?"

"Why did you two vote for Knuckles when Krystal was the plan?" Shadow on the other hand believed his question was superior. "Was she not the plan that we discussed?"

"But we thought that Krystal would have been most trustworthy." Marth chose to keep half the truth a secret. "So, me and Shulk voted together and we told Krystal to vote with us because we thought we had enough votes to take out Knuckles."

"If she was more trustworthy," Knuckles the Echinda himself spoke up. "then why she did put your name down tonight? She was clearly Chatan all the way because she thought she had an opportunity to make a move.

Shadow nodded in agreement. "I was approached by Krystal myself. Since she knew that you two were going to vote for Knuckles she thought she could swing me over and take Marth out for having an idol. I had to tell her that it was what I was planning to just to make her believe it, but I knew, that we all knew, we needed a knight out of here. She thought she had Knuckles, but if Knuckles himself didn't want to work with Krystal, why would you two?"

...

"Exactly... Krystal voting for one of us and Knuckles voting for her as a sacrifice says it all..."

"Making Krystal vote for Marth was actually the Plan B, so I will admit that I was still sort of surprised that Marth and Shulk voted for Knuckles." Shadow admitted "That means that they probably told Krystal to vote for Knuckles, which means that if me and Knuckles never told Krystal to vote for Marth, Knuckles wouldn't be sitting here right now."

"Bottom line is that we're all still here, and we're all going to the final four."

Shulk sighed and Marth shook his head, still in disbelief as neither responded verbally initially.

But then Lowell had his final words for the night.

"Let us simply prepare for tomorrow. Let's just go to sleep..."

"I thought that me, Shulk, and Krystal had a plan. The plan was to vote out Knuckles since we figured that he would be more untrustworthy than Krystal in the merge, but then apparently Krystal written my name down, and I guess that was when things changed. I was honestly surprised coming from Krystal..." He was silent for a moment. "Perhaps both of them were untrustworthy, though it was Krystal that targeted one of us, so in reality, she was more untrustworthy than Knuckles, so me and Shulk had no choice than to vote her out."

BOOM!

No other words were spoken as the quartet of survivor laid there ignoring the storm.

"All I have to say is that it was a rather good thing that neither Shadow nor Knuckles voted with Krystal, since worst case scenario, I would have looked like a fool being sent home with an idol in my possession..."

Day 19

"Come on in, guys!"

The Motobu and Chatan tribes all came through the fields and onto the sand in front of Master Hand.

"Knuckles is still here..." Bonnie blinked.

"Motobu, Chatan, get your first look at the new Nago tribe... Krystal voted out at the last Tribal Council."

Nothing too much from the other two, yet somewhat it was still an eyebrow raising moment for the other ten castaways.

"Dang..." said Greninja.

Nago made it to their mat.

"Alright." Master Hand 'nodded.' "Let's get right on to it. Everybody... drop, your, buffs... We are merged."

An almost instant celebration occurred with the remaining Survivor competitors, most of them cheering with joy, the tribes already coming together to either greet new castaways that never met at that point, or sharing friendly hugs to say hello once again to the people that they had already known previously.

"Here you go." The host of the show passed Luigi a basket containing thirteen items wrapped up in pieces of cloth. "Take one and pass it around."

"Yeah!" He said, taking his as if it was the number one toy he wanted from the store, wasting no time in unwrapping it.

Shulk revealed his buff. "Black is the color this season..."

"Hmph..." Shadow stared at his then looked at his fur. "How convenient..."

"Hey, Knuckles," Sheik called out. "maybe you can wrap your buff around your dreadlocks."

"Nah." He immediately shook ignoring a few laughs putting it around his neck. "They'll be too closed and tight together and will make my head hurt."

"Hmm... Seven knights, six emperors..." Greninja thought out loud sitting by the water. "Seems like the merge is pretty sweet. I was just thinking about my swapped tribe of Chatan having just four people, but we all survived. But now, the top dogs entering the merge with numbers would have been expected, and I was preparing myself to deal with being on the bottom for a while, but surprisingly things worked out in our favor. I think I feel tight with each of them, so hopefully things will go smooth for my game so I can make it as far as possible."

"Now, typically at this point in Survivor, we have a merge feast." Master Hand explained. "And of course, that is going to be the case. But we're gonna do it Japan style. Just several yards away is a sushi feast right over there."

-/-

"What a great experience this has been for me so far." commented Roy. "Now I am at a merge having a feast with twelve other strangers. But living out here with barely any food at all day by day with these people, the fact that none of us know each other in real, regular life is completely irrelevant. What an excellent way of making new friends if I do say so myself. I can easily see in the future of me being friends with the people I am sharing this experience with, which makes it certainly more special. I might be stranded out here in Japan, though instead of being stranded alone, I suppose we're all stranded, while stood having a good time together. With that being said, I'm really starting to like it out here."

"Hey, maybe Freddy should have people serve all of us now that we're all sitting here eating."

The people of the merged tribe were salvaging as much food as possible. Sushi, tempura, spicy chicken, and other food items were being shoved down their throats, no one ashamed of the mess some was making on their faces.

"Maybe I would have my team help take care of all of you right now." Freddy Fazbear answered Shulk. "But unfortunately, my crew is not here right now. Maybe you all can take a trip to where I live and I will show you around."

"Sounds good." Shulk nodded, taking a bit of his spicy tuna roll to which Greninja noticed.

"Hey, where did you get that from?"

"Near the center over there."

"Hand that plate over here." Shovel Knight raised his hand. "I need another one."

"Wow, Shovel." Sheik commented with a slight chuckle. "I never knew you were such a fan of spices."

"Well, they make some of these back at home, and I sure miss how they tasted." He replied, being handed over the plate from Greninja.

"I honestly can't believe that I'm still here right now." Luigi grinned. "I went from being pointed out as one of the two weakest from my tribe on day one, to nearly being voted out at my first Tribal Council, to winning all the immunity challenges in the swap, and now at this point in the game, I know people are gonna go after the threats, specifically the physical threats in the game, and I appear to be in the majority with my alliance."

"Can you believe how much soy sauce there is here?" He was asked a question by Roy. "I mean, seriously. They really made sure we had enough. Probably because some of us are using more than others."

"Yeah, I agree with that." Luigi took his cap off to scratch and placed it down on the bench. "There's even a lot of duck sauce packets at the center of the table. Even the staff realize how staring we all are."

"For me personally, since the threats are gonna be targeted first, I think I already know where I stand. So right now for my game, I am gonna try my best to not be on everyone's radar by stepping back and just do what everybody tells me to do so that I won't be seen as a threat. People are smart in Survivor, and they could look at my game being as this sort of underdog story, and that would be a huge problem. So as long as I just nod my head and agree and just listen to what everybody has to say, I think I'll survive at least the first few Tribal Councils post-merge. Though if I feel that if I'm in trouble, the hardest part would be what will I have to do to get the target off of myself without making me even more of a target by playing too aggressively even though I'm the exact opposite of an aggressive person. ...Yeah, this game is pretty challenging."

Merged Tribe

Day 19

Greninja, Marth, Shadow, Foxy, Shovel Knight, Freddy, Sheik, Bonnie, Roy, Zelda, Knuckles, Marth, Luigi

-/-

"So people really wanted to be on the Motobu beach." Bonnie informed. "There have been people that said that they are a fan of trees, people not being a fan of trees, one tribe has a lot of trees, the other doesn't have nearly as much, but apparently Motobu had a little bit of both. Though the only problem was that the five people that were on there of course only made a shelter for five people and none of us wanted to put in the work to make enough room for eight more. So we decided Shadow who didn't mind the trees and Luigi who didn't mind the extra space and had them to a classic game of rock-paper-scissors, and Shadow won. Nago beach it is. Good thing Nago won the extra tool supplies because swapped Chatan were so excited on possibly merging that we all actually forgot to bring that shelter making kit."

With a new black flag representing the tribe, all thirteen of the remaining players had their eyes staring down on it as it lied in the sand.

"Alright..." Shulk blinked. "Now we need to come up with a tribe name..."

"Any of you think we should just combine Nago and Chatan and make it 'Chago' or 'Natan' or something?" Bonnie raised an invisible eyebrow.

"Meh, I wouldn't say that I'm not down for it, but it has become a trend as of late and I honestly find that a bit repetitive. Maybe we can all think of something that fits Japan rather well, since this is the newest location of the show."

"Valid point." Bonnie saw where he was coming from. "I'm honestly shocked that we're all here right now, let alone realizing that this is the second time they're doing Survivor in Japan. I thought that there was such a small window to do it."

"Well then again, we're on an island and not on the mainland, so they all probably thought that it was much easier to do it this way." Roy assumed. "Though as long as we're on something that is part of Japan, that's all that matters."

"If some of you aren't the best with names, I'll be more than happy to step in." Marth volunteered. "What do you all think of Bikutā?"

"Bikutā?" Freddy rotated his head. "What does that mean?"

"It's japanese for victor, and I believe that we all proved to be victorious in life in our own individual way." He elaborated. "Every last one of us has overcame something, whether it'd be a personal obstacle or simply something we never thought we would accomplished. Even if one feels like he or she hasn't accomplished anything major, we've all accomplished something by simply being called for the show so that we can all be a part of this amazing theme this season."

"...Alright!" Shulk clapped as well as some others of the new tribe of Bikutā. "Sounds great to me!"

"Let's do it!" Greninja was on board.

"I'll get the paint..." Zelda was now walking away.

"Hey, maybe we should all check out Nago's beach afterwards."

"We are tribe Bikutā for now on." Marth confirmed. "Some of us have been dominant in life, some of us had to deal with personal struggles, stress, find their footing, whatever everyone of us had to go through, we proved to be noticed or strong in such a way that we were able to step over and dominate anything that got in our path, and that can be broken down to simply applying for the show knowing what we were all getting ourselves into. That alone is enough for a sense of accomplishment knowing the great risks of being out here. At the end of the day, we should all feel very proud of what we achieved throughout life, big or small. Everyone deserves to feel welcomed here. I may not have met everyone yet as of now, but that only means that now is the perfect opportunity to make new friends even if I'm only going to be the first member of the jury with the only three days I might have out here."

The flag that had the season's logo was now signed by the remaining competitors in the game, as well as the new tribe name in big white letters.

-/-

Sheik, Bonnie, Shulk, Greninja, Roy, Knuckles, Luigi, and Foxy were all either sitting or standing in the water chatting about.

"So me and Shulk never been on Chatan." said Roy. "What was that beach like?"

"Well, like we said before it certainly had less trees as this one." Bonnie spoke. "Except for the forest everybody almost always knew where everybody was an everything..."

"Now I'm getting more curious." Shulk replied. "I've been on this beach since day one, and I'm kinda starting to get tired of it at this point..."

"Hey, speaking of everybody seeing everybody, I thought we were all going down here..." Greninja brought up. "Where's everybody else?"

"Yeah..." Knuckles also noticed the lack of all thirteen members of Bikutā being present. "It seems that except for you two, the rest of the emperors aren't here yet. I mean, here comes Shovel Knight over there."

He pointed at the knight coming from the shelter.

"Well, I heard that Zelda said that her canteen was nearly empty and she went to go get water with I think Marth." Roy told them. "I don't know about the others, though..."

"You think you and Shulk can go get them and bring them down here?" Sheik asked. "I want all thirteen of us to get to know each other even though we were on two starting tribes."

"I don't know if that's a guarantee." Shulk warned, standing tall and leaving the water with Roy. "But we'll do our best..."

"We all decided that we wanted to take a swim, and we all thought that every last one of us was more than down for it so we can all mesh well as a group even though not every single person was on the same beach in the beginning. However, as all of the original knights were in the water, with the exceptions of Shulk and Roy... No wait, including Shulk and Roy in this case situation, the emperors were all over the place. Most likely they've split themselves up and started talking in twos or threes in terms of strategy knowing that they don't have the numbers here. So pretty much, this explains the whole Emperors vs Knights thing in a nutshell." Greninja then laughed. "I guess the word 'together' is not their middle name. Understandable. But on the bright side, at least we get our own turn to strategize while we can as a group of seven of what needs to happen, and how do we handle this first post-merge vote perfectly by voting out just the right target. We're only one person up so we need to have a game plan."

"Well, since the entire team is here now, this is the perfect time to discuss something here. Since there is so many of us we need to talk as early as possible and I think we can do so while we're relaxing in the water."

"I agree with Greninja." Bonnie replied. "So what do you guys suggest we'd do?"

"Let's talk about idols." Sheik suggested. "We all know that one of the original emperors have it, and if anyone has it, it's Marth."

Foxy nodded in response.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he has it." Shovel Knight said. "He has been exiled quite a few times, and I even think that after the swap, he may have found another clue to it given the extra time he had. He was then sent back to Nago so I believe it is highly likely that Marth has the idol. Is he our first target?"

"Absolutely." Greninja replied. "Marth would be the primary target right now, but the problem is that since Marth knows he's on the bottom with an idol for obvious reasons, there's a huge possibility that he might play it. He might not, but then he might. I don't think it's working risking put all seven of our votes onto Marth. Otherwise, one of us is idol out and the numbers will be tied."

"And that would be rather... complicated to say the least..." Sheik added. "We need to plan as carefully as we could."

"So to switch the target up, we might as well go for some of the physical threats. I'd say we do Freddy first." The Pokemon recommended. "Not only we all pointed him out to be one of the strongest from the Emperors tribe, but he and Roy were on Motobu, and we all know that every time there's a new beach after a swap, there's an idol. Being a physical player with an idol is a dangerous combination."

"Me, Luigi, and Foxy were literally watching over him and Roy back on Motobu." Shovel Knight recalled. "That's how afraid we were of him getting it. I believe that if we vote Freddy out first, it would be a major help for all of us."

"Hope all works well." Luigi said. "I'm just worried of who they might target, that's all. For all we know, the emperors might target me for... pretty much only because I was pointed out the weakest on day one and that to them might lead to their perception of me as an underdog threat."

"Nah, don't think like that." Sheik disagreed. "I don't think that would be enough at the moment. They're probably gonna go for either Greninja or Bonnie. Whoever they think is the most phyiscal out of all of us would probably have their name written down."

"We just need to get past this first merge vote and I would breathe a big sigh of relief." Foxy stated. "Everything that could go wrong, could go wrong so we need to try our best to avoid it coming to that."

"Right away, people are already talking Freddy, which is obviously the last emperor that needs to go since I'm tight with Freddy and I want to work with him a bit more." Foxy clearly was not on board. "But since he's public enemy number one, not only he's in danger, but I'm in danger as well. I don't want him gone. So what I need to do is to figure out a way to get the target off of him, while pleasing the Knights Alliance at the same time. If I need to put my life on the line for Fazbear, than I would..."

-/-

As Roy stated, Zelda was out retrieving water for her canteen with Marth.

"So, why did Shadow flip?"

"I have still yet to figure it out to this day..." Marth apparently told the Hyrulian the events that occurred on the swapped Nago tribe. "But now, I am thinking about Knuckles and Krystal even more. Me and Shulk told Krystal that we needed to get rid of Knuckles since we found her to be more trustworthy as supposed to Shadow getting rid of her, but then at Tribal Council, Krystal wrote my name down in an attempt to blindside me with an idol in my possession..."

"..."

"No words?"

"...I am just confused..." She held her fist beneath her chin. "Though I have never had one interaction with Krystal, based on personality alone, I'd find her to be more trustworthy as well... What made her change her mind?"

"I... can not say..." He hung his head down a little. "Bottom line is that according to Shadow, he told me and Shulk that he desired to take us to final four... But naturally, me and Shulk can already say that it will never happen in a million years. ...However,... do you think Knuckles would be the type of person to actually believe it?"

"...Hmm..." Zelda thought out loud. "We are in a weird spot. He's clearly in the majority..."

"That I can understand." Marth nodded. "However, just this morning, Knuckles pulled me and Shulk aside and told us both that he was at the bottom of Chatan..."

That made Zelda widen her eyes. "...Really?"

"Those were his words..."

"If the emperors want any shot of getting the majority, perhaps Shadow voting out Krystal made him think that voting one of us off is not the best thing to do for the alliance as a whole." Zelda opinionated. "However, we have an even bigger problem we are facing here. Apparently, Krystal was originally going to be here instead of Knuckles, yet something occurred last minute that made Krystal think that she had enough votes to get rid of Marth so the Knights Alliance can have more numbers. I do not know what was going through her mind, yet the bigger topic we should discuss is Knuckles's motivations."

Just then, Roy and Shulk appeared.

"Guys, the knights are wondering where you two are."

"Oh, we just decided to have a quick conversation while we were getting water really quick." Zelda answered. "We were hoping that we had enough time, since we figured you two would distract the rest of the knights with Freddy."

"Freddy and Shadow are on their way down there." Shulk pointed behind him with his thumb. "So I say that we have like two minutes to talk. What's happening?"

"Me and Zelda were just discussing what was happening on my tribe before we all came here." Marth told them.

"I doubt it would be a smart move for Knuckles to jump ship. Even though he says that he's on the bottom of the Knights Alliance, he would be the only one jumping ship, and then he would lose jury votes." Zelda theorized. "However, the question is... would Knuckles be the type of person that would do so anyway?"

"Here's what I suggest we'd do..." Shulk had an idea. "We interact with Knuckles, yet not to the point to where he feels overcrowded, yet at the same time make sure we know where he stands. And we clearly need to talk with Shadow."

"I agree." Roy bobbed up and down. "I think it all comes down to Shadow and Knuckles's votes. I don't know who we're gonna vote out yet, but as long as we stick together and vote six strong, hopefully Knuckles would swing over and get one of them out."

"I believe that our winning argument would be to convince him that it later on, eventually it is not going to be Emperors vs Knights anymore, especially since he assumes that he's on the bottom of the opposing alliance..." Marth recommended.

-/-

Later on in the day close to sunset, Foxy finally found the time to have a one on one conversation with Bonnie.

"Well, we're finally reunited..."

"I know, right?" Foxy replied to Bonnie walking along the sand. "We both made sure we both survived the swap and we were both in the majority. ...So you got rid of Pac-Man?"

"I had to." Bonnie nimbly hunched with a nod. "I was starting to regret not flipping on Greninja, but look what happened? We're with the numbers and if I flipped, Krystal would have went home and we all would have been on the bottom."

"Yeah, thank you for saving all of us, hahaha!" Foxy laughed about it. "But seriously. As much as we wanted one of them out, I was scared to death of what you were gonna do, so actually seeing Pac-Man gone took a big weight off my chest."

"So what are you thinking about?"

"Trying to figure out how the heck are we gonna save Freddy."

Roberts immediately faced him. "...W-What?"

Foxy sighed. "Look, I've made a connection with him on Motobu, okay? We speak a similar language and I know that I need to work with at least one of the emperors, here..."

"..." Bonnie was near speechless.

"...You okay?"

"I-I'm fine..." He touched his head. "It's just that knowing that he's pretty much the number one target... It's kind of a lot to take in..."

"I understand." Foxy nodded.

"So, um... I mean, I've never even met him."

"You can meet him through me." Foxy suggested. "We'll all find some time to talk later. Hopefully tomorrow or something where the group is more likely to be scattered since we're all trying to harmonize today."

"Okay, okay, that's fine..." Bonnie said, rubbing his face with his hand. "It's just that this kinda came out of nowhere..."

"...Yeah, you're right." Foxy stared at the ground for a moment. "Maybe a proper build up would have been fine..."

That was when he laughed. "It's fine, really. It's already out there, now... You plan on getting the target off of him?"

"We have to. But after all that was going through your head on your tribe before you had to go to tribal, I don't want it to be all for nothing, so we're not flipping yet. However, like with the Rouge vote, we can just get the target off of Freddy and get them to target someone else." He thought out loud. "I know it might be a lot harder this time than before with thirteen people here, but we have to do the best we can. We already have Knuckles, now."

"After all that talk I've had with Freddy on Motobu, I am not planning on giving him up so easily." Foxy shook his head with determination. "Like I was planning on doing there, I have to do so over here. I need to somehow make sure I'm good with all the members of my alliance, while at the same time building relationships with some of the emperors, and Freddy is the number one priority on my list. What's best for me is to somehow convince five other people that Freddy shouldn't be the target. Luckily with Knuckles, I have better chances..."

"Knux, get over here..." Michaels immediately spotted the red echidna minding his own business, subsequently approaching the other two anthropomorphic animals.

"You called?"

"Okay, here's the thing..." He began to explain. "So we're voting out one of the emperors here, and Freddy seems to be the one that would receive votes... However, I personally don't want to see him gone just yet because I've grown close with him on Motobu."

"...Yeah?" Though only one word was spoken, his face had a similar reaction to Bonnie's.

"We need to convince the others to why Freddy shouldn't be the one getting the votes and that it should be someone else instead..."

"Well, I was hoping that Shadow wouldn't be target when we were talking in the water." Knuckles informed. "But then when the target changed to Freddy, in my mind I was relieved that I didn't have to do anything..."

"Wait, you're close with Shadow?"

"He sacrificed Mega to save Krystal so I wouldn't go home on that other tribal I had to go to. Why do you ask?"

"...What if we can all make a secret alliance?"

Both Bonnie and Knuckles widened their eyes.

"A secret alliance?" Bonnie popped an invisible eyebrow.

"Of five?" said Knuckles.

"Yeah, like a Hidden Five Alliance." Foxy nodded to the both of them. "You keep Shadow, I'll keep Freddy, and then Bonnie can be the glue that keeps everybody together. We were all on the bottom of our original tribes, so now slowly, but surely, it'll be payback for everyone. How's that sound?"

Knuckles and Bonnie exchanged glances for a bit, but gradually, they both eyed Foxy with grins.

"...I think it'll be a good thing..." Knuckles was in.

"I'm down." Bonnie as well.

"Apparently, Shadow formed a strategic relationship with Knuckles, which explains why Mega Man left. Apparently Shadow felt that he was on the bottom of the emperors just how Knuckles felt he was at the bottom of the knights, who me and Bonnie wanted to continue working with him anyway. So that means that if those two are tight, and us three are tight, do the math, and we have five people here that are planning on flipping the script sometime soon. And so, we need to protect each other and make it as long as we can and pick off everyone who should go one by one. Although, Freddy is the guy who's on everyone's radar right now. If that's the case, we all need to do something about it because if Freddy goes, all of our games would be messed up because that means now we would have one less person we can count on. So it looks like we have to put a little work in for the next couple days... Hopefully I can talk with Shadow in a bit..."

"This sounds like a good plan." said Knuckles. "I'll talk to Shadow about this as soon as I can."

"We'll all talk later on." Foxy nodded as the three began to make their way back to the shelter.

I was gonna include just one more scene at night on the merge day, but I figured that it's best to end things off here for right now. Though at the same time, this is like in one episode lol.

So after that whole Knuckles/Krystal thing at Nago, the castaways have finally merged where they named themselves the Bikutā tribe thanks to Marth, and by that beach scene alone, that's the difference between the emperors and the knights in a nutshell, other than how they both voted out the first members of their tribes.

And it seems like Freddy is public enemy number one due to the Knights Alliance being scared that Marth knowing that he's on the bottom might play his idol, so Freddy's the Plan B which is basically Plan A at this point. However, due to previous connections post-swap, Foxy decides to forge an alliance with himself, Bonnie, Freddy, Knuckles, and Shadow to make themselves the "Hidden Five." It would be very interesting to see Shadow's thoughts behind it when he gets approached, as well as the alliance finding out a way to shift the target away from Freddy (who in fact does have an idol which he found at night on Motobu, so hopefully he doesn't go home with an idol in his pocket). But while all this is happening, the Emperors Alliance seem like they're gonna trust Knuckles with their lives on flipping with them to vote one of the knights out, so I can't wait to release the next chapter...

But now, it's time to make my announcement on the next Survivor season! This time, the Survivor castaways will take a trip south of the border of the US, which means that Survivor is officially going to Mexico!

And while it's going to be a brand new location, at the same time, I'm bringing out one of the best themes in the show's history,... Brain vs Brawn vs Beauty! First castaway will be revealed after this season officially has its first member of the jury!

Questions:

1. Do you think the Hidden Five would actually be able to save Freddy, or is the target on his back just to big?

2. Do you think an emperor is going home, or is it somehow going to be a knight that gets the boot?

3. What do you think about next season so far now that it's been announced?

4. For those of you who read Survivor - Kodai Island, how do you compare this to last season?

As usual, vote for your top five players for this season and I will see you all next week where you will see more character interactions, strategizing, and then the immunity challenge. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be one of the longest chapters in this story. See you all on Wednesday!