Right, let's take things up a notch and get to the next chapter. Thanks for reviewing, Ali6132, Muffinmilk317, and the guest reviewer.
It was Courtney's shrill voice that woke me up the next morning. "What the heck?"
"Courtney, what's wrong?" I heard Zoey ask as I opened my eyes.
"What's wrong is that we're sharing a cabin with a superfan with a bad case of crazy!"
Sierra was fully dressed, typing away on her Smartphone. "Hey Courtney, I've updated the sleeping section of your picture gallery on my fan site. Wheee!"
I started giggling. "C'mon, Courtney, don't be mad. It's not like Sierra's doing anything mean. She's only taking pictures because she likes us all so much." I climbed down my bunk and sat down next to Sierra, seeing what she was typing. She'd been Tweeting: Back on the show! I miss my Codybear so much, but I like everyone here. Zoey is even-
"Hey, no peeking at what I'm writing!" Sierra hid her phone from my view and continued to write. Finally, she finished, hugging her phone and exclaiming "Oh, Internet, never leave me!"
Zoey, Courtney and I exchanged glances.
At that moment, Chef's voice broke through our thoughts. "Room service, suckers!" A bucket of porridge came in, splattering all over the room...and us.
"Thank you, Chef." Sierra answered.
"We have got to win the next challenge and get into that spa hotel!" exclaimed Courtney.
I agreed, but after trying to digest the disgusting food, I dressed and went to the confessional. "Okay, so I just hope Courtney gets eliminated soon. But at least I'm not stuck with Scott or Jo. Ugh! The villains won't be winning for long if Scott does what he did last season. But then, maybe they'll get wise to him, since they have Duncan, Heather and Alejandro. One of them would figure it out. But anyway, Zoey's really nice and I know she'll be an asset, Sierra's always been nice and without Cody she might focus more, I know that Mike's a great guy...when he's being Mike, that is...Cameron's really great too, and Sam...I don't know if he's that strong, but he's nice enough. But..." I sighed. "I'll miss having Alejandro on my team. I hope I'll get to talk to him between challenges, because we really do need to talk."
When Chris called everyone to the beach, I observed the villains' team. Alejandro had obviously had time to clean up after the time trapped in the robot suit. He'd come out in tattered charred clothes, with longer hair and a five o'clock shadow, but now his clothes were intact and he was clean shaven, although apparently he still couldn't walk normally, since he was moving everywhere by using his hands.
Everyone had to stand on a platform in the middle of the beach, one for our team, and one for the other. Lightning returned a few minutes after that.
"Any luck finding the invincibility statue?" Scott asked him.
"No need! I am an invincibility statue!"
I rolled my eyes. I knew Lightning made it to the final two last season, but seriously. Weedy little Cameron won, so I figured that Lightning was just arrogant without much to back it up. Sure, he was athletic, but he was seriously stupid. I mean, he didn't even realize that Jo was a girl until she was eliminated, even though she kept telling him.
The challenge was similar to the one we did in France that time. There were seven pieces of a statue buried in the sand. Our job was to dig them up and assemble them on our platform. The team that did it first would win.
The Villains got shovels, since they won the last challenge, while Chris told us Heroes we'd have to use our hands. I was instantly glad my fingernails were the type that needed cutting all the time. At least the sand wouldn't get up my nails. The only good thing about the shovels was seeing what happened when Lightning grabbed two. When Heather demanded one, he refused. "I need both. When this one gets tired, I'll use this one."
Two seconds later, the shape of a shovel was on Lightning's face, and Heather had one of them. Ha, Lightning should've known better than to mess with the queen bee of the show!
Oh yeah, and we'd have to jump the moat full of crabs under our platform (poor Sam fell right into ours). AND there were booby traps in the sand.
"We should divide our area into sections," Zoey suggested as we went into a huddle. "And each dig in one."
"No, let's separate the beach into quadrants and each pick a quadrant." Courtney argued.
"That's exactly what Zoey said." Cameron pointed out.
"Good, we'll use the plan Zoey and I came up with."
"Just Zoey." I muttered under my breath.
"Go team!" Zoey put her hand into the middle of our huddle.
"Go team!" all of us except Courtney echoed, putting our hands on top of Zoey's.
Courtney rolled her eyes and put her hand in too. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, can we start digging now?"
Cameron was the first to get hit by one of the booby traps. He got hit by a laundry bomb – Chef's laundry, but that was actually helpful.
There was a fedora in there, and it just so happened that one of Mike's personalities, Manitoba Smith, was activated whenever Mike wore a fedora. And Manitoba was the one personality that might be about to help us.
Sure enough, when Cameron put the fedora on Mike's head, the boy gave a gasp that I recognized from the fourth season. It always happened whenever one of Mike's personalities was coming into control, or when Mike himself was coming back.
Mike – no, Manitoba, sorry, smiled and immediately started digging like crazy. He came up holding our first piece. "G'day, beauty." he said in his Australian accent. He tossed the piece onto the platform, and then went over to Zoey. "Looks like the real treasure is right here beside me," he said with a smile, "Wink wink."
I knew that Zoey wouldn't respond to his flirts. She saw Mike as one person and each personality as another, so she would never flirt with Manitoba. Or any of the others – Chester (some old man), Vito (an arrogant guy who came out whenever Mike was shirtless), or Svetlana (a...Russian, I think, gymnast and the only female personality).
It took hours to find any more pieces. I was also unlucky enough to strike a booby trap. I lay there for a couple of minutes, a bit dazed and trying to come back to life.
When I was finally back to normal, Courtney was shaking me. "Come on, get up!"
"Are you okay, Amee?" Cameron asked, who was working in the section next to mine.
"She's fine, aren't you?" Courtney said fiercely.
I pushed Courtney away, glaring at her. "Oh yeah, I got knocked over by a booby trap, Courtney, I'm just peachy. Go dig in your own section, okay?" However, I smiled at Cameron. "I'm okay, Cam. It hurts, but I think I'll survive. Thanks for caring." I glared over at Courtney. Cameron nodded and went back to his task.
After an hour of no luck, Chris yelled something. "WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG?!"
Everyone started saying something different, but the only one that I heard properly was Lightning calling out "I'm amazing!" What did that have to do with anything?
Our teams stepped up the finding a bit after that, although Scott tried to hide one of our pieces on their side – Manitoba caught him doing so. Well, I saw it, but before I could say anything, he stepped in. "What are you up to, kookaburra?"
"Whatever do you mean?" Scott asked innocently. Manitoba dug the piece back up.
"Nice try, you wily dingo." he said. At that moment, Scott freed another booby trap accidentally (bees), and then turned to run, hitting Manitoba in the head with his shovel in the process.
Most of us stopped what we were doing to see if he was okay. "Mike!" cried Zoey, running to him. "Oh, please be okay! Mike!"
The boy woke up. "Oh...my head..." he groaned. I recognized that Mike was back, recognizing how his voice had gone back to normal. But he insisted to Zoey that he was fine, even though for some reason, when he put the fedora back on, he couldn't turn back into Manitoba.
"Sierra, what are you doing?" Cameron asked as he pulled a large piece over, passing an unusually deep hole. "You're like twenty feet deep!"
I had just found my piece and ran over to look down. "Guess I got carried away!" Sierra called up. "I was pretending that I was digging for Cody!" She jumped out easily. "How many pieces do we have now?"
With the piece I'd found, Cameron's piece, the one Scott had tried to hide, the first one Manitoba found, one Zoey found earlier, and one Sam found, we only needed one more.
"You guys start working on the puzzle!" Zoey called. "We'll keep digging!"
We soon discovered that we were building the Statue of Liberty, and all we needed was the torch. "I remember having to climb up that thing." I murmured. "Helping Owen get up there was torture." I remembered easily. I hadn't needed that much help up, since I'd just copied Izzy, who was our best climber after Alejandro. But Owen nearly got stuck in Lady Liberty's nostril.
While we searched for the last piece, the villains were busy building their own statue – Big Ben. I could hear Lightning's voice boasting from all the way over there, grating on my ears. "Lightning finds the final piece! I'm a hero! It's probably a statue of me, being me!"
As it was, he'd miscounted, thinking six was seven. Which was the main reason why we won. All of us cheered.
"Spa hotel! Spa hotel!" Sierra, Cameron, Courtney and I chanted.
"Group hug!" I called out, pulling Sierra and Cameron into one. I remembered Sierra's fondness for group hugs back in World Tour (although one time she proclaimed one, but told her whole team to back off so the hug just included her and Cody...another time, she'd let Heather join in).
"I do require a volunteer for exile duty!" Chris reminded us.
Sam, who'd been feeling ill and hadn't really been doing much, spoke up. "This one's on me, guys, to make up for my lack of digging skills and-" he was interrupted by Chef pulling him onto the boat. I felt a bit sorry for the gamer. I couldn't imagine him surviving there.
Gwen tried to talk to Courtney, again, but it didn't work out. However, I had my own villain to follow.
"Hey, Alejandro, wait up!" I called as he began walking off...well, you know what I mean.
He turned back. "Hola, Amethyst." he said with one of those smiles I knew so well. I'd forgotten how charming he could be.
"Can we talk?" I asked. "I mean, alone?"
"Of course." We went to sit just at the edge of the forest, where there were cameras, but at least none of our teammates were around. Alejandro manovered himself to a sitting position cleverly.
"As agile as ever, I see." I laughed. "I still remember the day you tied your hair into a ponytail with your feet."
"Except I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do that again." he sighed. "Not after being trapped in a robot suit for so long."
"I missed you." I whispered. "Chris was supposed to let me know what happened to you, but he never messaged me. I wasn't even sure if you were alive."
"I missed you too, Amethyst." Alejandro answered. "When I saw you were one of the contestants on this island, my heart started racing."
I rolled my eyes. "You do remember that you told me how you felt about Heather, right?"
"I stand by what I said." he confirmed. "Together, you and Heather hold the key to my heart. But Heather being here doesn't change the way I feel about you. Besides," his eyes darkened. "You weren't the one that threw me off the edge of a volcano. Heather will pay for that."
"It'll be weird, not being on the same team." I remarked. "I liked our team last time we were on the show."
"What can I say?" Alejandro shrugged. "Sometimes, the best kind of girlfriend is the heroic type. That is...if you still want to be mine..."
I couldn't resist his gaze. "Yes." I whispered. "I haven't even dated since the third season, because I couldn't stop thinking about you. Does that mean...we're back together?"
"If you want to be." Alejandro was so close to me now, I could barely breathe. Finally, he cupped my face and kissed me gently. I had forgotten how many fireworks lit up my world every time we kissed.
"I do want to." I whispered after we broke the kiss. "But..." I sighed. "I guess I better get back to my team for now. They'll be wondering where I am."
"As you wish." Alejandro said serenely. "I'll talk to you later, Amethyst." He zoomed off, still walking on his hands. I watched him go, smiling slightly, before I walked off to rejoin my team.
Finally, they've talked! So this chapter isn't as short as I expected. That's okay. I can let my chapters be longer than I thought.