I KNOW! HIATUS! IT WAS A HIATUS!

And I wasn't feeling too well...I'm sick... (exaggerated cough) Heh well, I guess I've been a bit busy.

McHallyboo: Does that mean that I've been "busy" too?

Well, technically…yes x) But here's the next part, yo! Enjoy, readers!

Previously in Episode 6 of The Mole: Saboteur's Island:

After finishing a grueling game which tested the players' failure to cooperate as a team, the five players went for a pleasant dinner at Delfino Plaza's boathouse, only to be greeted by a sudden task. Presented with a map, one player had the opportunity to retrieve a bottle hidden somewhere on the island and bring it back to the building. Whoever was to retrieve it would be granted its contents. As Wario returned back to the boathouse victoriously with the bottle in hand, he opened it with little hesitation, revealing to everyone present the award he had received.

What was in the bottle?

Episode 6 (Part 4)

"Hey...a neutralizer! WHAT!" Wario's voice seemed to expel deadly heat waves. The others seemed stunned at the bottle's contents as well.

"True, but that's not all," McHallyboo said quickly, erasing all conclusions. "Why don't you try reading the full message on the paper."

"Oh," said the relieved player, scratching his head as he came across the remaining words on the bottom of the paper:

You must distribute:

+1

-1

Complete distribution will grant 10,000 coins to the team

"Plus one? Minus one?" Vivian said. "What does that mean?"

"I'm guessing they're additions and minuses on our scores for our quizzes," Goombella said, as McHallyboo nodded.

"These values will affect the total score of a player on their next quiz," McHallyboo explained, "Speaking which, if you get five questions on your quiz correct and receive a +1, you would have a total score of six correct questions. Wario, since you were the retriever of the bottle, you get to decide how to distribute these items. If you distribute these two items successfully to other players, 10,000 coins will be awarded to the pot as well. But you get the neutralizer regardless."

"How is that even 'lucky'?" Wario demanded, quoting the boatman's earlier line. The boatman gave him a timid look.

"It's individual luck," McHallyboo corrected, "and plus, you should consider yourself lucky that you are not up for chance to receive a -1." Wario let out a grumpy sound of half-agreement, then looked at the others.

"So I decide who gets a plus one, and who gets a minus one on the quiz?" Wario repeated.

"That is correct." Wario eyed each person at the table carefully, as they all looked back at him. Goombella shifted nervously in her seat.

Goombella: I was probably going to get it. I showed in this episode alone how much smarter I was than the others, and Wario probably saw that as a threat. I assumed he was going to do something dastardly.

Vivian: I was just hoping that I wouldn't get any of the items. A +1 is nice, but a -1 would definitely hurt me. I was hoping Wario wouldn't give me the -1.

"I choose to give the +1 to Yoshi and the -1 to Luvbi," said Wario. Yoshi's face lit with excitement, while Luvbi's mouth was agape.

"What? Thank you!" Yoshi said, eagerly grabbing a green-colored card that was tossed to him by McHallyboo. Luvbi's face returned to normal.

"This won't alter my triumph at all," Luvbi said, face remaining unchanged. McHallyboo handed her a light-red card, which she tucked away. Goombella hid her sigh of relief.

"These cards can be very game-altering," McHallyboo warned. "Speaking which, if both Yoshi and Luvbi tie on the next quiz, Yoshi would be boosted with his +1, while Luvbi would fall to elimination." The host turned to Wario.

"Any reason for your choices?" the host questioned him. Wario scratched his chin.

"Well, I hope no one took my decisions personally," Wario said, and he returned immediately back to his food.

Luvbi: Wario definitely made the wrong choice of giving that card to me. Now he was attempting to jeopardize my chance of existence. Hmph…as if I wasn't already enemies with him.

"'I respect your decision, Wario," Luvbi spoke up, sipping her drink of aqueous martini.

"So now that that's all settled," said McHallyboo, "Who here at this table wants an exemption?" All eyes turned to him simultaneously, their eyes unmoving once they fell upon the host.

"I'm fooling you all. That was all for this…mini-mission," said the host, getting up from the table. "I'll see you all...in the morning." He stood up, and within the passing of a minute, the host himself was gone from the room, leaving the remaining five players by themselves.

"Aww, that's it?" said Yoshi, slumping in his chair.

"What are you complaining about?" Wario said with disbelief. "I gave you a +1!"

"Why?" Luvbi said.

"I felt like I had to," Wario said, eating the dessert before him. "Plus, I chose randomly to give away that exemption. So...consider yourself lucky, Yoshi." Yoshi smiled, chewing his food at the same time.

"Oh, that was just a sting in the posterior," Luvbi added, not bothering to eat her dessert. "Getting a -1."

"He's in a hurry," Goombella noticed, suspicious as always about the host. In this case, she had the right to be.

"Hey, he didn't even stay for my acorn de leches," the boatman said sorrowfully.

"It's really good though," Vivian commented with a smile, taking her second scoop.

The players woke up normally the next day. Getting out of his bed, Wario stood up with a start, which was rare even for a person like him. Getting a head start before the others, he felt a certain pleasure inside of him. He went to shut off his alarm clock, a half grin on his face.

Wario: It was weird when I realized that I was feeling happy in the morning, because NO ONE should be feeling happy in this game, especially with the fact that there was still a saboteur hiding under our noses.

Getting up from his own bed, Yoshi went to brush his teeth. In a good mood from last night's awarding of his plus one, he felt optimistic as he filled his cup with water and unscrewed his toothpaste bottle.

Yoshi: At this stage, a +1 is like an exemption. My chance to survive this episode is boosted almost double now. Maybe even triple. This was a life saver and I wasn't going to waste it.

Luvbi woke up, not on the same level of happiness as her male peers but otherwise fine. The first thing she did however was turn to the journal on the hotel desk besides her, opening it to her latest set of pages. She looked at her notes, and smiled a little bit.

Luvbi: A minus one can be insignificant if you look at it from the larger picture. It all depends on who you go for. Up from the start, we've been pointing fingers at different people. A point here and there is worthless. It's intuition that matters in the end.

Vivian tried to get dressed immediately once she woke up. A bit apprehensive and overall unsure about the day she was going to endure, she used her comb to comb her hair, then walked to open her window as she went to head out of her hotel room door.

Vivian: I'm happy and relieved to know that I've made it to the half-way point. It makes me know that I'm doing something right, and it all depends on who I can trust from now on.

Goombella woke with a yawn, knowing that sending oxygen to her brain would expedite her thinking. She woke up with just one thing on her mind, one question that had been keeping her nervous for most of her mornings since the beginning of their game, two and a half weeks ago:

Who is the Mole?

"Good morning players," McHallyboo greeted them, as they all made their way into the lobby.

"Good morning," they all replied back in unison. Relaxed and becoming comfortable in the chairs provided, they all listened to what their host had to say, be it a small summary of the events that had taken place so far or the initial rules of an upcoming game. But it was neither, and came as a shock to all the genuine players.

"You will all begin taking your quizzes this morning," he announced, as everyone's face dropped with stupefaction and disbelief.

Goombella: A quiz in the morning? This was definitely new.

"Wait, what?" Goombella said with bewilderment.

"You'll be taking the first half of your quiz this very morning," he explained even further, "containing material from the beginning up to this point. Your scores will be stored, and you will resume the remainder of your quiz at the episode's end."

Wario: McHallyboo was exhausting all of his twists and coming up with new ones; it was scaring all of us.

"What's the point of splitting up the quizzes?" Yoshi asked, his face filled with opposition.

"I was about to ask the same thing," Luvbi said, looking suspiciously at the host.

"Well, you could say that nothing would change, which could be very true for you," McHallyboo told them, "but opinions are very unpredictable. One extra suspicion can either lead you to the right path, or knock you off. There will be an entire day gap between these two quiz parts. How you choose to answer on them is up to you."

"Are we taking them right now?" Vivian asked. "This all seems weird and odd though."

"Of course," McHallyboo said. "You may go first if you'd like. Follow me."

Vivian followed McHallyboo as she went forth to take the upcoming quiz. Going into the room where they had first taken their quiz for the game's starting episode, Vivian looked back at the players before she disappeared.

"Are you ready?" said McHallyboo, as Vivian was seated before a laptop. Oddly enough, it was a different one from the ones they had been using previously to score their quizzes. Never the less, she nodded.

"Good luck." As McHallyboo left, Vivian went to take the first question.

1. The Mole is:

-Male

-Female

Vivian: I was confused on why we were answering a quiz anyway in the morning, but what made it even more unusual was that we were taking only half of it.

Wario went next to take his quiz, his mouth dropping as he went to select his answer for the next question.

2. If the Mole were on a ship, what would the captain's name be?

- Gioliamar Row

-Stella-Frank Mooberg

-Doni I. Shoy

-Vulimi Nibbs

-Nadia Svhensiv

Wario: This quiz was bologna! From the second question, I knew something was up.

3. What would the Mole's ship be named?

-S.S. Music

-S.S. Dollar

-S.S. Diamond

-S.S. Painter

-S.S. Cocktail

Yoshi: I just went with the coolest-sounding ship name.

4. Is the Mole taller than five feet?

-Yes

-No

-Varies

Goombella: I had no idea what I was doing, nor what to answer.

And finally:

5. Who is the Mole?

-Goombella

-Yoshi

-Vivian

-Wario

-Luvbi

Luvbi: What a mock quiz.

"Well, how were your quizzes?" McHallyboo asked them, trying to hide a smile as they all entered back into the lobby with disarrayed faces.

"Pleasant!" Goombella said, her voice full of sarcasm.

"Even I failed the quiz," Yoshi said, scratching his head. McHallyboo chuckled.

"I'm pretty sure you gave us a wrong copy of the upcoming quiz," Wario said with a chortle.

"Were those quizzes real at all?" Vivian asked.

"I'm sad to say that those weren't your official quizzes at all," said McHallyboo, as his sentence was followed by a huge wave of sighs. "But they were important. Those results will decide your upcoming mission. The person who got the most votes in total will be playing for more than just an exemption." All the players looked at McHallyboo with interest, but also apprehensively.

"If you looked at the second question carefully, you would have noticed that each fictional name was an anagram for a player here," McHallyboo pointed out to them. "And the third question all had ship names related to your occupations."

"I rushed through it so fast, I didn't pay attention to any anagrams," Goombella said honestly.

"Do you have the results?" Vivian asked.

"I'll deliver them later tonight," he said, as the players could only wait for the remainder of the day to play out.

The night was colder than usual. All the players had their light jackets on, and even McHallyboo wasn't wearing his usual dark-blue coat but instead a stylish sweater as they followed him to the plaza's west Beach, where the lighthouse was located. As they made their way to the next location of their mission, they found themselves heading to the location where last night's bottle was located. But instead, another larger object was seen floating right on the shore of the beach, and the players could only guess what actions their next mission required.

"A row boat," Luvbi said, not sounding pleased.

"This game will be called Cash It or Sink It," McHallyboo explained. "This next game will require strategy and self-containment. Look over there. On that island lies 20,000 coins." He pointed to the island just off of Delfino Plaza's shore; secluded, it held a single palm tree, four bags with distinct lumps in them, and a green structure, protruding mysteriously out of the island's sandy ground. Besides the pipe, the players saw something tiny and metallic, small but being powerful enough to emit a gleam towards their direction. The players turned back to the floating row boat.

"The only way to retrieve the money is via the row boat," McHallyboo told them. "The row boat has only a one-person capacitance, and each player can only row once. Bring one of the four bags of five-thousand coins to shore, and it will be added to the team pot."

"And the twist it..." Wario began.

"The island won't be empty, of course," McHallyboo said. "One player will be left alone on the island, but to their advantage. The quizzes you took this morning decided just who that player will be. And in this case, the player who got the most answers towards their names was..." The players stood still anxiously at McHallyboo's pause.

"Goombella!" The single player looked stunned at first, but then relaxed, though instead of a smile on her face, there was a look of even heavier confusion.

"You will be the one left alone on the island, and you have options," said the host. "If a player comes to retrieve a bag, you can cash it in instead by putting it into the green pipe besides you. That money would then become yours to keep." Goombella's eyes widened.

"To keep personally?" she said, her voice shocked.

"What!" Wario said. "That's better than anything else before in this game!"

Luvbi: The idea of stealing money from the team pot into your own personal pot was definitely a cynical and new one.

"However, every time you deposit money into your own hands, a cork on the bottom of this row boat," said McHallyboo putting his hand on the boat's edge, "will be unplugged. The boat will begin to sink." The four boat players peered into the boat with apprehension, seeing four white circles at its base.

"But there's a double whammy, because if that boat sinks, not only will the game be over, but Goombella, you will not win an exemption," he finished, looking at Goombella.

"So if the boat stays afloat, I win the exemption?" Goombella confirmed. McHallyboo nodded.

"This game requires strategy, and it will be up to the players on each side to decide what to do. This game will have a twenty-minute time limit. Good luck to you all. Goombella, follow me to be transported to the island." Before the others could say an extra word to her, Goombella followed McHallyboo towards the beach's other end, entering a more modernistic boat as she was brought to the island over a hundred feet away. The four remaining players turned to face their disabled vehicle.

Vivian: There would be a lot of things at stake during this mission, so I was scared of how it was all going to turn out and what some of us would do.

"We can't let her have that exemption," Luvbi said with a loud voice. "It's the final five. We need to make the boat sink."

"For every bag she deposits into her own bank account, a plug will be unplugged," Yoshi said. "But...how are we going to convince her to take the money?"

"She's bound to be greedy," Luvbi said flatly.

"Yeah, but she's the smartest player here," Wario said, as he went to pick up the paddle in front of him. "She's not just going to get all four bags into her possession and sink the boat." He turned to look at the island that Goombella was heading towards at that exact second.

"That would be suicide."

"Time is about to start!" came the loud voice of McHallyboo from a motor boat that didn't cross their game's line of travel. Rather, it was located afar and off the path in the middle of the ocean, where the host could get a clear view of the game. "Twenty minutes is the time limit for this game!"

"That's approximately five minutes for each bag," Vivian said softly. She turned to the boat.

"Who rows first?" she wondered. McHallyboo looked at his clock.

"Time starts…now!" the host declared, his voice rippling to both shores.

"I'm going last," Wario declared. "The strongest need to stay last."

"Then who starts?" Yoshi said. "Time began!"

"Umm, umm," Vivian started. "I'll go third then."

"Let me go," said Luvbi. "I got words set for Goombella. I'm going to try to make her sink this boat." She went to pick up the paddle, but then faced Yoshi and handed it to him.

"No, here, you take it," Luvbi said, as Yoshi grabbed it curiously.

"Why me?" he asked her.

"Because you can try to persuade her, and after that, I'll really kick in and try to make her take the money," Luvbi reasoned. "Just…row fast." Yoshi nodded and got into the boat as hastily as he could and before seconds had passed, he was in the middle of water, paddling towards his destination.

Yoshi: I really had to persuade Goombella in taking the money. All I had to do was talk to her and tell her how awesome 20,000 coins would be to have.

"Wow, he's fast," noticed Luvbi, looking into the distance as Yoshi's boat slowly approached the island Goombella was on.

"How fast was that?" wondered Vivian. "If we all row just as fast, we can have a lot more time to persuade."

"It can take all the minutes in the world to persuade someone like Goombella," Wario said truthfully. "I'm not too sure this'll be something easy for us."

"Hey there!" said Yoshi, getting off his row boat and stepping upon the island's ground to greet Goombella. To Goombella's side were four large bags, containing a significant value of coins within them each. Whether the money would be going to the team pot or Goombella's personal account was to be decided by none other than Goombella herself.

Goombella: It was definitely tempting to not touch those bags of money. I had the option to cash in 20,000 coins for myself in like...two seconds. The decision was definitely killing me, but I told myself something else that was more important: losing an exemption would definitely kill me the most.

"Man, those bags must be heavy," Yoshi said, eyeing them and giving out a stretch. "I'd hate to carry one of those in my boat."

"Then I guess it'd just stay on the island and rot away," Goombella said with a smile. Yoshi face changed from nonchalant to serious.

"Or you can just cash it in for yourself," he suggested.

"You and I both know that it'll make a hole in the boat and cause it to sink," she stated, not budging from her spot. "And if the row boat sinks, I lose my exemption."

"Why not just cash it?" Yoshi said, sounding more insistent.

"Why not take a bag and head it back to Delfino Plaza to cash it in for the team pot?" Goombella reasoned. "I know you're trying to get me to cash my own money in so the boat would sink, but it's not going to work. I know what I'm doing, Yoshi." Yoshi looked at the money bags on the ground before him.

"All right," he said defeated, as he went over to grab a money bag from the pile. Looking at Goombella one last time, he headed towards the island's shore and back into his row boat, bag of money in hand.

Goombella: I didn't want to sound mean to Yoshi, but I had to hold my stance and make him believe that I couldn't be persuaded. My plan was to just deflect each player off and just let them take the cash, instead of me.

"Mission incomplete," Yoshi said glumly, approaching back to Delfino Plaza's shore and into the presence of the other three.

"What!" said Wario, having as much a disappointed face as the other two.

"She's hard to persuade," Yoshi said, holding up the bag of five-thousand coins. "She even knew that my goal was to get her to unplug the plugs on the bottom of the boat by taking in money of her own. In other words, she's tough. Smart, but tough."

Yoshi: Ever since the 5 Become 1 game, I've been scared of Goombella. She's obviously the smartest here, and will knock everyone else out without mercy.

Money Cashed:

Team Pot: 5,000 coins

Goombella's Pot: 0 coins

"Then who wants to go next?" Wario said, feeling discouraged. "Luvbi? Vivian?" He turned to Vivian, who had her eye on the island in the distance. But she wasn't looking at Goombella, nor at the bags of money on the ground or the green pipe that protruded out from below the sand. Without taking off her stare, she nodded her head.

"I'll go," she said, looking back at them. Yoshi handed the paddle to her carefully, and nodded with luck as she stepped into the row boat.

"Make sure you row with the paddle face perpendicular to the boat!" he shouted.

"Do anything you can to persuade her to take money," Luvbi said urgently. Getting a good start, Vivian began her steady row towards the island of money.

Vivian reached the island's shore within two minutes, and walked over to the array of bags besides Goombella.

"Hi," Vivian said carefully, looking at the exemption-holding player. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do."

"It's your choice," Goombella said, not budging from her spot. "If you take a bag back to the town, the team pot gets 5,000 more coins. I think it'll benefit us all if you did that."

"I'm not so sure about that," Vivian thought, stepping her way around the bags of coins, almost as if examining the pile. Goombella shifted to her right, an action that Vivian noticed right away with a gasp.

"What is it?" Goombella couldn't help saying, seeing the odd look on her face.

"I'm just...contemplating what to do," Vivian said quickly, ending her pace and standing where she originally was in front of the money pile.

"Time is wasting," Goombella pointed here. "It'll be better to take the money home than leave it here to waste."

"I guess you're right," Vivian said with an exaggerated sigh. With both hands, she picked one of the money bags off from the ground and carried it to the row boat. Within seconds, she was already rowing her way back to the land of the plaza.

"I...couldn't get her to take any money," Vivian said, slightly tired from her rowing journey as she stepped back onto the beach's sand with the money in her hand.

"What? No money again?" Wario exclaimed, motioning for her to give him the paddle. "We're obviously not doing the right thing. Words aren't working for her."

"Then what will?" Luvbi questioned. "What'll work for Goombella?"

"Physical force, I'm guessing" Wario replied. "What else can we do?"

"Physical force?" repeated Yoshi. "What! What are you going to do? Knock her to the ground and demand her to deposit money?"

"Yes, absurd," agreed Luvbi.

"The two of you used words and it didn't work," Wario reasoned. "We all saw that. Words aren't gonna work for her."

"Are you going to hurt her?" Yoshi asked.

"Hey, I'm not going to like, put a knife up to her neck and something and force her to throw money into the pipe..." He stopped at the shocked faces of the other three players. Without a word, he quickly moved his way to the row boat, paddling away as quickly as his strength allowed him to.

"Well...I hope he succeeds," Yoshi said, eyes still wide.

"But she's hiding something," Vivian blurted. The other two looked at her curiously, and as Vivian explained her theory to them, both Luvbi and Yoshi turned their eyes to the island, seeing Wario make his way slowly towards its shore.

"If that's so," Luvbi said slowly, "then maybe Wario's strategy of physical force isn't so absurd after all."

WUT?

So yesss. I've been a bit side-tracked with other stuff of the time recent (eww, real life stuff ): but no fret at all. This story is always and constantly on my mind, and everything seems so fresh, even after this near-five month hiatus! On the good side, all my college application stuff are zip and done! Gee, I'm surprised I didn't procrastinate on all dat scary stuff o.o

Because of the delay and such, do feel free to read this episode yet again and refresh yourself on this story! Hopefully all thoughts and suspects are intact, and if not, the Mole has evaded you. Hehe =D

But with all that, the game narrows down! Soon there will only be four, because an execution awaits the players in the next (and hopefully soon) installment! But who will survive? Who will it be?

Only five remain: Goombella, Wario, Luvbi, Yoshi, and Vivian. The following below is your 6th Final Destination clue:

H 0

T 0

M B 3

R W 4

Thanks to everyone, and stay tuned for the next elimination!