"Alright campers," Chris announced to the gathered victims- err, that is, contestants. "Today's challenge is something of an outdoorsman classic."
Pausing briefly to pull out a pair of paintball guns, displaying them proudly, he cheered, "You're going hunting!"
"Well," he corrected with a manic giggle, "Half of you are. Bass Boys and Gopher Girls; please take a step back."
Confusedly, half of the assembled teens complied with Chris's odd request, leaving Gwen, Izzy, Eva and Bridgette of the Killer Bass and Cody, Trent and Owen of the Screaming Gophers.
Their host, noting their confusion with unrepressed glee, tossed each of them a paintball gun.
"Congratulations," he told them, pulling out a pile of caps from behind his back, each identical to the one he was currently sporting, "You are now the hunters for your teams. You get to carry the guns and wear these neat camo hats."
Raising a hand tentatively, Bridgette waited for Chris's attention to fall upon her before she nervously asked, "Um, what exactly will we be hunting?"
Chris grinned. "Everyone else."
"Bass Boys, Gopher Girls," he threw both groups a number of small bags, "Take a look at your accessories for this little hunt of ours."
Wally caught his small package casually, as did Duncan and DJ, Geoff fumbling with it due to the fact that he was a tad more focussed on Bridgette in her new camouflage cap.
Reaching in with caution- Wally had learned the hard way not to put it past Chris to set up some kind of booby trap- the speedster felt several objects, each soft and delicate to the touch, pulling one out to examine it.
In his hand was a modified belt. Modified so that a big and excessively fluffy cottontail was attached to the back.
"You have got to be kidding me!" He heard Heather exclaim.
Turning to see what her issue was, he found that the Queen Bee was holding a pair of fake antlers in her hand, whilst Lindsay and Katie were both holding the third part of their little ensemble.
Sighing heavily at the sight of the bright red noses, Wally, already having donned the remainder of his costume, turned to Chris and muttered in a perfect deadpan, "Someone told you that my middle name is Rudolph, didn't they?"
Chris stared at him with a shit eating grin, before stating robotically, "I do not know what you are talking about."
"Dude," Duncan seethed, holding the cottontail in one hand and the antlers in the other, "This seriously bites."
"Whatever," Chris dismissed, turning back to the rest of the players, "Rules are simple. Screaming Gophers are hunting the Bass Boys, whilst the Killer Bass are aiming for the Gopher Girls. Killer Bass hunters are represented by blue paint and the Gophers are orange. Whichever 'deers' come back in with the least paint on them will be declared the winners."
"Now," he stated with a clap of his hands, "The deer get a thirty minute head start... which started when I called you here about twenty five minutes ago. GO!"
"OWW!" Wally screamed, distracting his teammates from the starting signal as he hollered in pain, looking down at his arm to find the source of his discomfort.
"Hmm," Izzy muttered critically, holding the boy's left arm in both hands, a set of rather deep teethmarks plain to see, "Doesn't taste much like any deer I've ever eaten."
Confessional Can
"You know," Wally sighed, leaning heavily back on his seat as he eyed the camera, his body coated in a gooey mess of orange paint, "I really thought that I was gonna do pretty well in this challenge- I've got a lot of experience in avoiding people I'd rather not run into after all."
Slapping his head admonishingly, he muttered, "Knew I shouldn't have listened to Duncan."
The boys of the Bass team, once they'd torn Izzy away from her 'meal', had sprinted into the woods as one, desperate to make use of what little of their head start remained.
To throw off the Gopher hunters, both DJ and Wally independently came up with the idea to separate. Unfortunately, it seemed that Duncan had other plans.
"No!" He hissed, gripping Wally powerfully by the forearm as he tried to break off from the group, doing the same thing to DJ a second later, "I've got a place we can all hide out."
"Together?" Wally asked, still easily maintaining his speed as Duncan tried to drag himself and DJ along with him, Geoff following willingly.
"That'll make us real easy to track, dude," DJ reminded him.
"I know," Duncan dismissed, "S'not like those Gopher dorks are gonna find us though. I need to talk to you guys."
"About what?" Geoff tried to ask the determined punk, only to be shushed.
"When we get there," he ordered, leading the other three in a sharp turn and taking them closer to the island's cliffs, releasing his grips on Wally and DJ as he started to break ahead.
The remaining boys shared an uneasy glance, but ultimately followed before Duncan left their sights.
"So..." Wally stretched out the word, eyeing the cave Duncan had lead them to with boredom etched into his features, "Nice cave... what did you want to talk about again?"
Duncan smirked, as Geoff and DJ also turned to face him, "I've been thinking..."
"Never a good sign," Wally muttered, smirking when Duncan sent a glare his way.
"I've been thinking," he repeated, "About the situation over on the Screaming Gophers."
"What situation, bro?" Geoff asked.
"Heather and her little girl posse have made it so that they hold all the cards in their team," Duncan explained irritably, "And you know that it's just a matter of time before the girls on our side start thinking that way too."
"What?" Geoff was truly horrorstruck, "You think that the girls would...?"
"Vote us off, one by one," he nodded solemnly.
"..." Wally and DJ shared a tired look, before the dark-skinned teen asked, "You're kidding me, right?"
"You should really know me better by now," Duncan said easily.
"You're talking about the girls on our team, right?" Wally checked, receiving a nod of confirmation, "Then we've got nothing to worry about. Eva's the next one out."
DJ blinked, confused, before eyeing Wally cautiously. He'd known that the girls would never unify against them, for the most part they were too nice (well, that, and Izzy hated conformity) but that other little tidbit was news to him.
"How do you know?" He asked curiously.
"The girls hate her," Wally explained plainly, before pursing his lips as he tried to recall the reason, "Apparently she snores? Or was it something about anger issues? I don't know, Izzy mentioned how she and Gwen and Bridgette have been trying to get rid of her since the last elimination, but I guess our votes for Tyler overruled them."
Duncan gaped like a fish for about ten seconds before he regained himself, beginning to grin wickedly, "Dudes, this is perfect! Once Eva's gone, we can just pick the rest of the girls off and, next thing you know, the four of us'll be on a one way trip to the finals!"
Geoff shifted nervously at that, as did DJ.
"I don't know, man," the goliath told him, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head, "I don't think I can do something so... underhanded."
"And I can't vote off Bridgette!" Geoff exclaimed, "She's my girl! Or... she will be..."
"Hey," Duncan raised his hands placatingly, "I'm not saying that we've gotta agree to this now. Hell, maybe we'll get lucky and just keep winning until the Gophers are gonzo. But we've gotta have some kind of strategy in case things don't go our way."
"...much as I hate to admit it," Wally pinched the bridge of his nose irritably, "Mohawk may have a point. I've come too far to let that prize slip through my fingers, and us guys sticking together'll definitely give us the best chances of making it to the finals."
"I don't know," DJ was still heavily on the fence, "I don't think Momma would-"
"Hey," Duncan reminded him, "People are gonna get voted off either way. This just guarantees us guys a little protection."
DJ still looked unconvinced, but Duncan knew that he'd go with the majority.
"What about you, Geoff, my man?"
Wally eyed the party animal carefully, noting an uncharacteristically thoughtful expression on his face.
"I can't do it," he told them carefully, before adding, "I can't just vote off Bridgette, man."
Wally nodded his support, "Yeah. Truth be told, I'm not too keen on voting off the girls either. But, you know, sooner or later, someone is gonna have to go. That's just basic math. They'll understand."
"Alright, I tell you what," Duncan decided slowly, "Maybe we're doing this a little early. Let's just wait until after we've actually lost a challenge. And then, once Eva's gone, we'll decide what to do."
"Alright," DJ seemed a lot happier now that they had planned to procrastinate in forging their alliance, "So we're agreed. We wait until after we actually lose a challenge before we decide who's going home. Like we're supposed to."
"So long as we agree that I'm not getting voted off, I'm cool," Duncan shrugged.
"What he said," Wally jerked a thumb at the punk, before starting to move over to the cave entrance, "Now can we get outta here? I'm pretty sure the four of us stumbling through the woods left a trail that even Lindsay could follow."
The speedster's blood ran cold when he stepped out into the sunlight, right into the crosshairs of three Screaming Gophers, each one armed with a brightly colored paintball gun.
Trent and Cody grinned cheekily, but it was Owen's maniacal laughter that really stopped Wally in his tracks, an impressive feat in and of itself.
"Say your prayers," the gargantuan boy whispered, as he and his teammates simultaneously cocked their guns.
"...crap."
With the use of his super-speed, Wally could have dodged. He could have taken a lazy jog around the whole island before the paintballs got anywhere near him... pity that that would expose his secret on national television.
At least his teammates managed to escape... by using him as shield against the Gophers' paintballs.
Wally walked back to the camp wearing a threadbare deer costume and a new coating of neon orange paint.
"Do me a favor, Dick," he bemoaned to the heavens... and to the numerous cameras watching his every movement. "Make sure that Artemis never gets a copy of this. Same with Uncle Barry, Aunt Iris, Grampa Jay, Uncle Hal, Roy... really, anyone that I know actually. Do that and, well, maybe I'll find it in my heart to forgive you."
Idly, he wondered if Chris would air that request. Similarly, he wondered if Dick would follow through on it. Robin was capable of it, to be sure, and he certainly owed Wally more than even the heir to a billionaire's fortune was worth. But, well, Wally doubted that he'd be able to resist keeping a copy if it were Dick in this situation.
When the game ended, hours later, the deer were presented to Chris.
Wally was still sporting a coat of orange paint but, aside from Duncan having the splatter of a single paintball on his back, the rest of the team was clean.
Of the Gophers, however... it turned out that giving Izzy a paintball gun and a free reign may not have been a brilliant idea. All four of the Gopher girls were splattered head to toe with the remains of the entirety of the Killer Bass paintballs, something which Izzy was disappointed with. She'd run out of ammo, even after she'd stolen Gwen, Eva and Bridgette's guns, before she'd manage to shoot them enough to truly sate her bloodlust.
Wally watched from the Bass cabin's porch as Leshawna made the walk down the Dock of Shame and boarded the Boat of Losers, leaning heavily against the railing as he contemplated his situation.
The Killer Bass had two more men than the Gophers, which, granted, didn't really mean much to individual challenges, but was still comforting. But the Gophers themselves were starting to trouble him, mostly due to Duncan's earlier talk of alliances.
With Katie and Lindsay happily at her side and Owen ready to sell his vote for a slice of cake, there was no doubt as to who was in control of the Gophers. Heather had played them all spectacularly and she was now practically invincible.
Of the Killer Bass, however... Wally hated to admit it, but Duncan had a point. He knew that after their next loss Eva would be gone. Even if the girls hadn't been planning on it before, Eva's strength made her a great asset to the team... but also made her the greatest threat.
Plus, well, she was far from well liked. Aggression was all well and good when aimed at her opponents... but it really rubbed her teammates the wrong way.
That would then push the power of majority into the guys' favor, something which Wally found hard to even consider ignoring.
With the men of the Killer Bass voting in unity, they could guarantee themselves invulnerability... at least until the girls were gone.
Logically and strategically it was sound. Wally found it hard to disagree with the plan, but, well, DJ had a point when he said it sounded underhanded. And the more he thought about it, the more Wally couldn't help but agree. It was underhanded. Too underhanded. For the most part, the girls were Wally's friends just as much as the guys were.
Shaking his head, Wally steeled. He'd deal with this when the time came.
When Chris directed their attention to the delivery truck, many of the teens couldn't help but question how it was that the vehicle had managed to arrive on an island supposedly separated from the coast by several miles of ocean.
"We have it delivered so that Chef doesn't have to carry everything from the docks to the kitchen," Chris shrugged when asked.
"But," he continued cheerily, "Back to the matter at hand. For today's challenge, each team will be represented by a single contestant. The winner of this morning's activities will be rewarded by getting first dibs at all of the groceries that we usually save for myself and the rest of the production crew."
That got everyone's attention. Real food? After so long of Chef's slop even Wally was tired of its bland taste and slimy texture.
Individually, both teams came to a mutual conclusion. They were going to win. It didn't matter what the other team was thinking, because they were going to win.
"We volunteer Trent to compete for the Gophers," Heather offered sharply, directing Chris's attention towards the musician who was, arguably, the best choice the Gopher's had for a physical challenge.
"And we're sending in Eva," Duncan demanded.
"Both fine choices," Chris smirked, "However, I've already chosen your contestants. Today's representatives will be... Wally and Owen! We all know that these two will do a lot for food, from selling votes for a slice of cake to threatening cute little bunnies with a penknife for a meal."
DJ's bunny, seemingly appearing out of thin air on his owner's shoulder after Chris's mention of his traumatic past, immediately shot Wally a vicious glare, baring teeth that were far too sharp for your garden variety bunny rabbit, reminding the flinching red head that DJ had decided to keep the thing as a pet.
Clapping his hands together enthusiastically, Chris got around to actually explaining the challenge.
"In pitting these bottomless pits against each other, we will see them fight it out in a no-holds barred battle royale!"
Wally and Owen shared a quick glance, before voicing their lack of violent impulses.
Chris smiled sweetly, "Need I remind you that the winner of the fight gets first dibs on the grocery truck?"
The boys shared another glance, this time promising pain upon the other, a pair of boxing gloves being tossed towards them as a familiar tune began to play in the background.
"...do you keep a stereo with the tune to 'the Good, the Bad and the Ugly' on you at all times?" Gwen asked curiously, fairly certain she already knew the answer.
"It adds drama," the host justified, somewhat petulantly, holding the aforementioned stereo above his head as Owen and Wally continued their glare, donning the gloves wordlessly. "Now let's get this show on the road! Chef, ring the bell!"
The colossal man who called himself a cook grinned sadistically, raising in one hand a tiny bell, with an even tinier hammer held in the other.
Ding ding.
Everyone who was not a part of the fight immediately fled for cover as the two contestants, driven by their insatiable appetites and the promise of virtually unlimited food, threw themselves towards the other.
Wally landed the first blow, a powerful punch to the gut that had been known to bring grown men to their knees, it's power barely softened by the padding of his glove.
Owen winced in preparation for pain, only to laugh, both in victory and surprise when he noted that he had barely felt a thing, his opponent having managed to sink his entire arm up to the shoulder into the enormous folds of fat that made up his belly.
"And they said I should exercise," he crowed triumphantly, quickly wrapping Wally, now struggling desperately to free his arm, into a powerful bear hug, lifting his feet easily from the ground. "Hah!"
"Ah!" Wally moaned in pain as he felt his arm, still lodged in Owen's fat, was jerked painfully as he was lifted into the other boy's grip, only for it to be further twisted as Owen started to tighten his grip.
"I don't wanna have to hurt you," Owen said, honestly yet sternly, as he tried to meet Wally's eyes with the smaller boy's face scrunched up in pain, "Give up, buddy."
"Argh!" Wally screamed, as he struggled to free himself from Owen's grip, the other boy barely reacting until his entrapped arm moved just so.
"Hey, cut it out!" Owen giggled unexpectedly, his body shaking spasmodically, "That tickles!
Wally, emboldened by his success, wiggled his arm wildly within the folds of Owen's belly, only furthering his giggling fit to the point where he reflexively let go of his smaller captive, letting him drop.
Wally, however, did not want to be dropped and bringing his left arm up to grab ahold of the back of Owen's neck, anchoring himself as his feet braced against his gargantuan belly, he kicked off powerfully.
Owen may only barely have felt it, but it accomplished what Wally had hoped, namely, giving him enough power to scramble over Owen's frame, slinging one arm around his neck and bracing his legs against Owen's back, putting the much larger boy in a powerful chokehold. To be perfectly honest, had a fate so serious as his lunch not been on the line, he probably would have added a noogie in there too.
Owen bucked like a bronco, doing his best to dislodge his unwanted passenger as he sputtered out a few objections.
"Give up, Dude," Wally insisted, furthering his point by digging his left foot a little deeper into Owen's back and pulling his arm against his throat with that much more strength, "This is gonna start really hurting in a minute or two!"
"Never!" Owen gasped, "I fight for my country! My team! I fight for my stomach!"
"I-" he struggled to continue, his strength weakening as he came to a dreaded realization, "Did I just run out of air?"
Owen stiffened as the final word left his mouth, his head flopping to his shoulder as he fell unconscious, his body falling to the ground a moment later, Wally only barely avoiding being crushed as he leapt from the boy's shoulders on the way down, landing to the cheers of his teammates and, to his surprise, the tears of his host.
"That was everything I'd hoped it would be," Chris murmured reverently, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, "And more."
Regaining his composure, he added, mildly irritated, "Though it could've been a lot bloodier."
Wally grinned victoriously, eyes turning to the truck full of groceries as he prepared to make a break for it.
"Duncan, DJ, stop him," Chris ordered, noting the look in the red head's eyes, pausing for a moment as the two boys both grabbed him by the shoulders.
"Sorry dude," Duncan told Wally casually, once the red head had stopped trying to free himself, "But we need some of the all-you-can-eat buffet to be left for us after all."
"Who said anything about an all-you-can-eat buffet?"
Wally's head twisted around at lightning speeds, his eyes pinning his host with death in his glare.
"You did," he reminded him, deadly calm.
"Oh really? As I recall..." Chris grinned maliciously, "I stated that the victor of this challenge would get first dibs on the grocery truck. I never said anything about you losers getting to eat whatever you picked."
"WHAT!?"
"Yeah," the host laughed, "But worry not Killer Bass, t'was not for naught. Due to Wally knocking the lovable oaf out on his ass, you get exactly what I promised. What I didn't tell you, however, was what you'd be using those groceries for."
"Both teams will take whatever items they require from the truck," Chris explained, "You will take them to Chef's kitchen, where each team will create a three course meal, to be consumed and judged by me. Whoever makes the meal I like best gets to eat whatever's left while the losers send someone home."
There was silence amongst the contestants as they realized how badly two of them had been played.
"You're telling me," Wally said lowly, "That I just choked a guy unconscious! For an advantage?"
Chris smiled. "Yup. And it was beautiful."
"Now, chop chop," he clapped his hands happily, "You guys'd better get cooking. Taste testing kicks off in a couple of hours and I'm getting hungry!"
The Killer Bass did, as promised, get first dibs on the truck. Unfortunately, Wally was a tad too grouchy to enjoy it, justifiably pouting at the side while Chef Geoff took charge, deciding on an Italian themed meal that had a decent simplicity to deliciousness ratio.
"Just letting you know," Wally volunteered as he and the others began to ferry their ingredients back to the kitchens, "I can't cook anything more complicated than bacon."
"Uh, same here," Bridgette revealed. "Though not so much on the bacon."
"No worries," Geoff dismissed easily, "Bridge, you can boil the pasta, nothing easier, and Wally, maybe you can try and reign in Izzy, y'know? Maybe keep her from adding anything, uh, 'unexpected' to the recipes."
"Keep Izzy away from poisonous and/or explosive components," Wally summarized, not sounding particularly happy, "Y'know, after getting us the advantage, I feel that I should be given an easier job."
"Pfft," Duncan snorted, "Sorry dude, but you're the only one who can even recognize it when Crazy Girl goes for the explosives."
"Yeah," Izzy chirped happily, "Izzy finds it most impressive that Wally's knowledge of explosives matches her own, and finds it most disappointing that the educational system seems to have deprived the rest of you of such fundamental information."
For the most part, preparing the meal went as expected. Wally only had to stop Izzy from blowing anything up once, which he took as a minor victory, and she, in turn, provided a much needed distraction from the surrounding scent of cooking food.
"Nice work controlling your teammates," Heather commented smugly, noting Wally and Izzy's mutually beneficial restraint attempts, "When you've got a bulimic keeping the pyro in check to stop either of them going nutso, you really know that something's off with your leadership."
"Bulimic?" Wally repeated, affronted, as Duncan smirked, not stopping in his task of preparing meatballs as he noted that there was only one member missing from the Screaming Gophers.
"This coming from the girl who left Owen alone with your food?"
Four pairs of eyes simultaneously widened in realization, their owners immediately darting back to their workstation before Owen demolished their meal, their final teammate reaching the same conclusion and following after a minute or so.
"Heh, idiots," Duncan snorted.
As it turned out, reminding the Gophers that they'd left their meal alone with a human garbage compactor was something of a mistake. They'd managed to get back in time to rescue enough food to make a meal and, you see, their meal was... good. Better than the Bass's at least, which cost them the challenge that they'd worked so hard to complete.
The team had dispersed after Chris's announcement, each seeking a brief period of solitude with which to mourn their lost meal, before convening at the campfire to complete the final portion of the day's challenge.
At the very least, Wally mused, it was easy to vote Eva off. Her strength and rage made her a potent threat to anyone and everyone she chose, and her unsociable personality ensured that nobody really got to know her well enough to like her. Add that to the fact that the girls were desperate to be rid of her and the guys were only too happy to oblige them and, well, she never had a chance.
And then, once Chef had been brought in to drag Eva kicking and screaming off the island, the remaining Bass slowly made their way to the main lodge, where they would be stuck with Chef's usual fair.
It was on their way when Wally, separated from the rest of his team by his dragging feet and weighted thoughts, literally bumped into someone he'd've much rather avoided.
"Ooh, sorry there buddy," Owen apologized profusely, seeing that Wally had bounced off and fallen to his rear, "I didn't see you there. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he grumbled, pushing himself back to his feet, "My fault. Wasn't paying attention to where I was going."
"Yeah," Owen laughed, "I get that way too sometimes, mostly when I'm thinking about cheese..."
Humming his agreement, Wally looked carefully up into the larger boy's face, searching for any trace of animosity in his expression, but finding nothing more than casual cheer. Confused, Wally merely shrugged it off and chose to speak.
"Anyway," he said, "I wanted to apologize about earlier."
"What? You mean the challenge?" Owen snorted giddily, waving off Wally's concerned dismissively, "No worries."
"Dude," Wally insisted, "I choked you until you passed out."
"Well, yeah," he shrugged, "But, you know, in the pursuit of food! I was trying to do the same to you."
"Well... if you're sure," Wally accepted cautiously.
"Trust me," Owen assured him, "I've got two brothers back home. What you did earlier was nothing compared to some of the stuff we've gotten up to. I mean, there was this one time..."
Owen cut himself off suddenly, remembering perhaps for the first time that everything he was saying was being recorded for a national audience when he looked directly into a nearby camera and thinking that, perhaps it would be better if his mother didn't here that particular tale of brotherly bonding.
"Uh, anyway, come on," he continued, waving in the direction of the main lodge, "Chef's almost done with dinner."
"...didn't you guys already eat, you know, actual food?" Wally asked, hesitantly following as Owen began to lead the way.
"Well, yeah," Owen agreed obliviously, "But I'm still hungry you know."
Confessional Can
"Alright," Wally confessed to the camera, "So, I'm really starting to scare myself here. I mean, I choked the life out of a guy just because I thought it would get me a meal... and I don't even mind Chef's food that much! Okay, sure, it's a little bland, and maybe it could use some actual consistency, but there's always plenty of it and it's not like I hate it!"
Sighing heavily as he pinched the bridge of his nose, Wally continued lowly, "This game is really starting to get to me."