Buckle up. It's a pretty wild chapter.

Chapter 10: Tower Tension

Bowie cleared his throat. Despite the Panthers' complaints, it was certainly good news for their team!

"Well at least we're tied now!" he said in relief, turning to his team. "Anyways, back to what Emma said. Let's decide an order… So! I think we should let the handsome, 6'2", 250 pound hunk of a man go last since he's so astonishingly muscular!" Bowie gestured towards Caleb in a suck-up manner.

For a moment Caleb looked at Bowie's hand on his shoulder in surprise. He then gave a little glance at MK who hardened her eyes. Caleb sighed. Hating himself for what he was going to do, he glared at Bowie who smiled sheepishly.

Bowie confessional : *crosses arms* OK so maybe that didn't work. Ugh, talk about holding a grudge.

Caleb confessional : *sighs* MK wants me to act all "hostile" towards Bowie. I don't really see how that's going to get him eliminated since I'll just look like a giant douche… but… dare I trust her?

"I think we should let Bowie go first. Do a little test run. If it breaks, at least we'll know it's not safe. True, he'd get smushed to a pancake but I'm sure it'd be a lot less painful than my fist," Caleb said dangerously as he raised his large fist. MK gave him an encouraging wink from behind everyone's heads.

At this remark, Bowie spluttered in disbelief and backed away, taking deep dramatic breaths. Caleb had just threatened him!

Raj confessional: WHAT DID HE JUST SAY? *cracks knuckles*

Raj, who had heard what Caleb had said, interfered. He was not going to let Caleb get away with that! Raj shoved Caleb as hard as he could sending Caleb stumbling backwards with his arms flailing.

"Hey man, what's your problem? Don't threaten Bowie like that!" Raj said through clenched teeth. His blood was boiling and it must have shown in his ears for they were starting to turn red.

Caleb sighed and gave another glance at MK who nodded. Caleb shoved Raj back lightly. Or… at least he thought he did it lightly. Raj, however, went flying backwards. His arms flailed everywhere as he fell to his backside.

Caleb confessional: Whoops….

"He didn't even give me a chance to play last season so I won't give him a chance this season!" Caleb snarled, surprising himself. His acting was extremely good; it was scaring him.

Raj wiped his mouth as he brought himself back to his knees quickly, re-entering the ring. "That's not the same thing!" he roared angrily through gritted teeth.

Caleb's heart began to pound. He had already gone this far. He might as well continue and trust MK's plan. Scrambling to think of what to say, he decided on the truth.

"Easy for you to say! I was an absolute joke online. People were taunting me, mocking me, calling me 'charcoal Ezekiel' whatever that means, saying my muscles were all show and that I had no skills. Do you understand how infuriating that is? I was cyberbullied! You have no idea how horrible I felt and it's all your stupid boyfriend's fault!" Caleb spluttered.

"DON'T CALL HIM STUPID!" Raj shook his fist with rage, prepared to engage in a fist fight with the large Caleb. He had dealt with more intimidating people on the ice. He was not afraid.

"Raj, it's OK he's just –" Bowie protested.

Caleb brought himself to Raj's face until their noses were almost touching. They were eyeing each other with disgust and anger was etched into every part of their faces. Hard lines had formed on their cheeks and foreheads.

"I'll CALL HIM STUPID IF I WANT TO. WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT… Little Rajie?" Caleb curled his lip to really let this insult sting. Inside, Caleb was cringing. Why was he doing this? He felt so conflicted!

"LOOK JUST BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS LAST TIME DOESN'T MEAN YOU –" Raj began but he did not finish.

Caleb gave another glance to MK who signalled for him to… punch Raj? Caleb looked at MK incredulously.

"TRUST ME!" she mouthed. Caleb gave another sigh of defeat before –

WHAM!

Before he knew it, his fist had collided with Raj's soft cheek, sending Raj's spit flying in all directions. Raj stumbled backwards and choked.

Caleb confessional: *plays with hands nervously* This doesn't feel right…

"AHHH!" Emma, Priya and Damien yelled as Caleb and Raj engaged in a scuffle on the tower floor. Raj's body skidded along the wooden planks as Caleb got on top of him.

"Whoa, WHOA! CALM DOWN! We're wasting time. We're not gonna win like this!" Emma cried as she tried to get Caleb off of Raj, though admittedly she was not making much progress. He simply weighed too much for her to do anything impactful so she resorted to slapping his shoulder repeatedly.

"STOP! STOP THE VIOLENCE! DAMIEN HELP ME!" Priya said panicking as she tried to tug Raj away. She had as much success as Emma – not much.

"WHAT THE – ?" Damien yelped.

It was absolute chaos at the Orangutans' tower. Damien got between Raj and Caleb, doing his best to separate the two from each other. Priya and Bowie were tugging on Raj while Emma was trying to hold Caleb back.

Bowie confessional: *looks up angrily* UGH! This is a nightmare!

"R - RAJ!" Bowie blubbered. "It's okay. Let's just – "

WHAM!

"OW!" Bowie grunted, clutching his head in pain. He swerved around, spinning his head. MK whistled to herself as she discarded a brick to the side which had a dent shaped oddly like Bowie's head.

Next thing Bowie knew, he tripped and landed front-first right on the edge of his tower. Bowie groaned as his arms fell uselessly to his sides.

MK confessional: HAHAHAHAHA! If Caleb and I are gonna work together to bring Bowie down, might as well start now.

Damien confessional: *puts hands on head in disbelief* I prepared for as many challenges as I could but nothing could have prepared me for dysfunctional teammates!

Chris spat out his drink as he watched the cameras happily. Drama always made him elated! And drama this certainly was! On their second episode too. It was simply great.

"Wow! It looks like the Orangutans are spending more time trying to knock someone off a tower instead of just going down like normal! Interesting tactics. You can say they're really monkeying around," he raised his eyebrow flirtatiously at Chef and the two burst out in uncontrollable laughter.

"DAHAHAHAHAHA!" they guffawed as they rolled around, slapping their thighs.

At Chris' words, the Panthers stared at the other tower. Wayne rushed over to the end and stared helplessly at the Orangutans.

"RAJIE!" he bellowed. From his point of view, it looked like Raj was losing. He had to get in there and help. Without even thinking, Wayne proceeded to lift his leg over the ledge… almost as if he wanted to jump off of his tower. But that was nonsense! How would he get to Raj's tower? They were too far away.

Wayne felt a firm hand grasp his jersey. He spun around.

"Hey, he's on the other team! Don't worry about what's going on over there," Julia hissed. She had chosen Wayne for her team because she had expected him to put personal feelings aside and focus on winning. Unfortunately for her, he was not doing that at this very moment.

Wayne ripped her hand away from him rather viciously. He stared down at her.

"That's my best buddy Julia. Back off!" he said fiercely.

Julia blinked in shock for a second before recovering.

"What are you going to do? We're literally separated from each other. There's nothing you can do to help him from here!" Julia stared up and looked into Wayne's eyes as hard as she could so that he could understand just how stupid he was sounding.

Wayne looked at Julia's intense gaze for a few moments before faltering slightly.

"Fine…" he muttered, sobbing into his shoulder. She was right. As much as he wanted to help his best friend, he could not do anything but stand here, watch and hope Raj would be able to fight for himself.

"I know you want to help him but – " Julia whispered but Wayne had already started walking away, refusing to look at her. He made his way over to a wall and collapsed to the floor with his hands over his head.

Julia pretended to not be bothered by this. She took a deep breath before blowing up on her team.

"UH HELLO PEOPLE?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY ARE YOU JUST STANDING THERE? LET'S GO!" she gestured to their baskets. They had one basket with six bricks on the ground that needed to get moving.

"Oh… right…" Axel and Nichelle said together as they continued to stare blankly at the fight.

"Bowie and Raj against Caleb? Come on you vegetables! It's two on one and you're still losing?!" Ripper laughed savagely.

Julia's ears perked up at this remark and she made her way over to Ripper.

"Oooo Bowie's getting hurt? Where?" Julia put her hands to her face excitedly as she scanned the tower for Bowie. Ripper smirked at Julia and pointed to the left side of the Orangutans' tower.

"Look at his dumb face!" he guffawed.

Julia took a moment to stare at the knocked-out Bowie who was laying there lifelessly with his hands hanging over the ledge. She began to laugh with Ripper.

"Such a shame about the no-phones thing because this would've made for a really satisfying lock screen. But at least it's being recorded for national TV! I'm going to savor this moment forever and ever…" she clasped her hands together, satisfied.

Behind Bowie, the others were still struggling to rip Caleb and Raj off of each other. By this point, Raj's jersey had been ripped in half and Caleb had a swollen lip.

A few moments later, Bowie groaned. He put his hands to his forehead. There was so much pain. "I feel like a bowling ball just hit me on the head…" he mumbled. He slowly stirred but it was Julia's taunt which caught his attention and woke him up immediately.

"Hey Bowie!" she yelled from her tower so that he could clearly hear her. "I hope you're happy with your team. You guys got some great teamwork going on over there. But just admit it. You wish you were on my team right now because WE. ARE . AMAZING! AM I RIGHT GUYS?" she high-fived Chase who also felt like trash-talking.

"HEY MONKEYS. I SEE WHY YOU GUYS WERE NAMED THE MALEVOLENT ORANGUTANS. CUZ YOU'RE ACTING LIKE A BUNCH OF BAFFOONS. HAHAHAHA!" Chase twerked vigorously in front of the Orangutans' baffled faces.

"Nice one Chase!" Ripper said from behind as he rolled around on the floor in fits of laughter.

Julia laughed a little too hard as she put her head on Chase's chest and wrapped her arm around his shoulder affectionately.

"WHAT HE SAID! YOURE SO FUNNY CHASE! Don't mind us. Just getting along SO well because we are a team with positive vibes only! WE LOVE EACH OTHER! GO BALLISTIC PANTHERS!" she cheered.

Chase blinked in astonishment and smiled. So even Julia wanted him! This only reaffirmed his beliefs of him being a high-value, high-status, high-quality man.

Bowie rolled his eyes and scowled. Clearly Julia was overdoing her little act to make her team look better than his. She was even pretending to tolerate the awful Chase.

Bowie confessional: *rolls eyes* "Positive vibes only?" UGH! She is faker than dollar store eyeliner.

Julia confessional: 10 bucks says Chase thinks I'm actually into him. Whatever. I was just trying to get inside of Emma's head. Please. She's the weak link of their team. The emotional weak link. *smiles*

Chase confessional: I knew Julia would come around. Eventually. *flicks eyebrows*

Emma confessional: *balls hands into fists* WHAT does she think she's doing? Seriously, that's MY boyfriend. And why is Chase just allowing her to touch him like that? The least he can do is push her away and say "THANKS JULIA BUT I ALREADY HAVE A GIRLFRIEND!"

Emma stopped what she was doing and pointed a sharp finger to the Panthers.

"Oh yeah?" she yelled shrilly. "How much are you guys willing to bet that Chase's idiotic side will get the better of him and he's somehow going to get the baskets stuck and cost your team the win? Going once, going twice…"

Chase immediately fired back to continue his back and forth with Emma.

"Stuck? Stuck where? Your mind? Cuz you seem to be thinking about me all the time! Kiss my apple-bottom cargo pants! YEAHHHHH!" he began to twerk more aggressively as he exchanged a high-five with Ripper.

Emma breathed heavily.

"Don't make me throw bricks at you from over here!" she shrieked. It really was a shouting match from across two towers.

"Whoa, whoa calm down Emma! Remember?..." Bowie reminded her gently.

"Right. Sorry…" Emma looked at her shoes embarrassed. How could she already forget about the conversation she and Bowie had had earlier this morning? About staying focused and ignoring Chase? Luckily, she had Bowie to keep her on track.

Emma confessional: *breathes angrily* Wow, once again Chase is driving me nuts! He's SO ANNOYING!

Chase confessional: I bet I'm driving her nuts! But it's all part of my strategy. Distract her so that we win! Don't blame me, I'm just doing whatever I can to contribute! *moves from side to side sassily*

Emma was about to turn around and attempt to break up Caleb and Raj once more. She had enough of all this immature infighting amongst her team.

"Seriously you two. STOP fighting right now OR IM GONNA – "

BAM!

By accident, Caleb's shoulder had rammed into Emma's stomach hard. Emma stumbled backwards, clutching her stomach in pain.

She continued to wobble backwards until –

"WHOA! AHHHH!" Emma screamed as she fell over the ledge and face-planted into her basket which began descending rapidly towards the ground. It took a serious situation like this for Caleb and Raj to stop fighting for at this moment, the 10 pound rule had definitely been broken. By a lot. There was one basket with Emma's entire bodyweight and the other with no bricks to balance her. Everybody gasped as they watched her fall rapidly.

"AHHHHHHHHHH!" Emma shouted at the top of her lungs as she continued to fall.

"QUICK!" Raj yelled hoarsely as he scrambled to his feet. His mouth had gone very dry.

"GET SOME BRICKS NOW!" Bowie ordered, staring at the falling Emma in horror.

Out of sheer dumb luck, Emma's basket suddenly stopped as it crashed onto a pigeon's head. Emma blinked confused. It must've been the world's strongest pigeon for it was holding her up easily. Bowie sighed in relief. Now it was time to act.

"EMMA! HOW MUCH DO YOU WEIGH?" Damien yelled from above.

Emma's face filled with red. "DON'T YOU KNOW YOU NEVER ASK A WOMAN HER WEIGHT DAMIEN? HOW COULD YOU BE SO INSENSIT – " she shrieked.

Priya butted in. "WE NEED TO KNOW HOW MANY BRICKS NEED TO BE PUT IN THE OTHER BASKET SO YOU GO DOWN SMOOTHLY AND DON'T DIE!" Time was running out. If that pigeon moved…

"OH, RIGHT! UH… 126 POUNDS!" Emma quickly responded. She took deep breaths. She had fallen halfway to the ground! And this pigeon was still the only thing holding her up. Emma closed her eyes and prayed that the pigeon did not move until her teammates had dumped 12 bricks into the other basket.

"12 bricks!" Priya shouted to her team, urging them all to just dump it into the ascending basket.

"If we really have to save her, sure…" MK muttered.

"Don't look so happy," Priya said raising an eyebrow.

12 bricks were dumped and all of a sudden, the pigeon who seemed to have realized that everything was now alright, moved out of the way so that Emma could now descend smoothly to the ground. Cartoon logic.

Bowie confessional: *claps in admiration* Thank you to the world's smartest pigeon!

Emma began to take deep breaths of relief. She had survived! After this challenge, she was fully prepared to scold Caleb and Raj for almost killing her but at that moment she heard a familiar laugh which further enraged her.

Emma looked up and sure enough, there was Chase howling with laughter. He was keeled over, banging his fist on the ledge of his tower. This did not improve her mood.

"SERIOUSLY? I ALMOST DIED AND YOU'RE LAUGHING!" Emma roared.

Bowie rolled his eyes. "Oh dear… where have I seen this before?" he groaned.

Chase slapped his forehead. "WOW EMS! THAT WAS SICK! YOU JUST GAVE ME A NEW VIDEO IDEA. HOW DOES EXTREME JUMPS OFF OF A TOWER SOUND?"

"DON'T YOU CARE THAT I ALMOST FELL TO MY DEATH? HOW ARE YOU ENTERTAINED RIGHT NOW? ALL YOU CAN TALK ABOUT IS CONTENT!" Emma spat.

Chase blinked. Why was she being so oblivious to his excitement? Couldn't she see that this was amazing?

"I mean… you're fine now right? IT WAS FUNNY! Like, " – he put on a high-pitched voice mocking her – 'OH NOOO, I'M DYING! AHHHHH! QUICK, PUT SOME BRICKS. PUT SOME BRICKS NOW. hOw dArE YoU aSk A wOmAN hER wEIgHt?' HAHAHAHA!"

Emma's chest heaved up and down with rage. Her mind was racing. So he really thought this was funny?

Emma confessional: When I get mad, I get impulsive. And when I get impulsive, I say some things I never thought I would ever say.

Emma pointed at Chase angrily from her basket.

"THAT'S IT!" she shrieked. "WE ARE FINISHED! WE ARE SO DONE! I HATE YOUR GUTS CHASE MAXWELL PERALTA! NEVER CALL ME YOUR GIRLFRIEND AGAIN!"

Chase blinked. "What just happened? Why is she so mad?..." He looked over to his teammates for an explanation.

Julia rolled her eyes as she played with her hair casually. How many times had this exact scene played out last season? It was getting rather tiresome even for her. "She'll be back in two hours…as usual. Nothing new to see here," she drawled.

Emma however was not finished.

"You are the worst boyfriend ever! You're selfish and you obviously don't care about me at all if you laugh at the fact that I almost died! BUT WAIT! YOU'VE DONE THIS BEFORE! MANY TIMES! AND FOR SOME REASON I KEEP COMING BACK TO YOU THINKING YOU'VE CHANGED BUT YOU'RE STILL THE SAME NARCISSITIC PIECE OF SHI – "

"What? I can't hear you! Come back up!" Chase put a hand to his ear as he watched Emma get closer and closer to the ground.

Chase confessional: Hmm, wish I knew what she was saying. It sounds reeeeally important… I heard something along the lines of "I care about you so much that I will always come back to you. Don't change a thing about yourself." *nods happily*

AUTHOR'S NOTES

Since last chapter focused more on the Panthers, this chapter focused on the Orangutans as well as Orangutan-Panther interactions.

If you think we are going to get another season of the Chemma disaster, don't worry. This is the last moment between the two because Emma has officially broken up with Chase here. From now on, these two will be focusing on the game. Finally, we can see what these two are capable of on their own. But was this Emma's lowest point of the season? Hopefully it's uphill from here...

When Julia talks about the no-phones rule she is referring to the fact that they are not allowed to use their phones during the challenge (in their leisure hours, they are free to do so). She really wanted to take a picture of Bowie's knocked-out face.