Episode 6

  The Legend of Vince’s Gold

  “Last time on Endurance Forest!” Vince Goldman says over clips of the previous episode. “The contestants were asked to make a three course meal to be judged by yours truly. Some dishes were lackluster while others knocked my socks off. On Team Water Sue, after scoring a date with her, tried to get a feel of where she and Lissa were in the hierarchy on their team. Clarence opened up to Lissa about less than cheery things about his parents and Regina acted as a bit of a control freak to Ed. Meanwhile on Team Fire, now that Lucas had betrayed them, Simon has started to scheme up a plan for him and his one remaining ally to stay in the game. Though if you ask me, from how he reacted, the universe seemed to give Lucas his comeuppance when it came to him having to grate an onion. In the end Team Fire won and Ed used this to talk to Clarence. Using Regina’s recent actions to convince him to talk to the others into voting her off, all while making Clarence think that he was the one who came up with this blindside. The plan worked and Regina was sent packing, but not without burning her bridges by assuming that Mina was the one who turned on her and insulting her mother, as well as exposing that she, Mina and Ed were working together. Ten are left, who will be voted off tonight? Find out right now on Endurance Forest!”

  ~~~

  The episode begins with Team Water shortly after the previous elimination. Ed taps Mina on the shoulder and motions for her to follow him. Which she does. Once the two are a bit ways away from the rest Ed began to speak, “Now I know you’re probably mad, but well… I mean I already explained my reasoning back at elimination and… to be fair voting her out was Clarence’s idea, I went along with it since… I felt like it was safe.”

  Mina sighed and said, “I’m not mad, especially not after what she said. I’m just… worried. If Regina was still here we’d have the numbers in any vote going forward.”

  “I mean… you’re friends with Clarence, right? If you can get him on our side… wait.” Ed then proceeded to use his fingers to count, ending with three fingers extended on his left hand and two on his right, “Okay right, if you get him on our side, we’d have the numbers.”

  “I guess so, but Clarence is friendly with everybody. That might be easier said than done.”

  ~~~

  Mina is shown in the confessional, “Even though he voted for our other ally, it looks like Ed is now my ride or die in this game… god I hope that doesn’t screw me over. Like he’s nice, but… he’s not exactly the sharpest knife on the Christmas tree if you know what I mean. Clarence truly is the swing vote now.”

  ~~~

  A few days later, over at Team Fire’s camp, Simon approaches Nicole as she sits down and begins to eat an apple for breakfast. “Hey Nicole, would you mind if we talk?”

  Nicole just shrugged and said, “Knock yourself out.” Before taking another bite of her apple.

  “Look, I ain’t gonna sugarcoat it. Yong-Gi and I are not in a good position if we lose. While I know that you’re friendly with Lucas and Jillian, I’m just asking you to consider something. Let’s just say that the three of you manage to make it to the final three. If either of the lovebirds end up winning that penultimate challenge, who do you think they’re going to bring to the finale? Well I can answer that for you for free. It ain’t going to be you.”

  Nicole swallowed her bite of apple, looked right at Simon and said, “And what? You expect me to think if it was you, me and Yong-Gi that either of you would pick me over the other? Also who was it that you and your little guys alliance voted for after that truth challenge? Oh yeah, it was me. If you already tried to get rid of me once, what reason would I have to trust you?”

  “I guess you don’t have one, but this is a reality show. Twists are always around every corner and plans need to change on the fly. Look at my whole guys alliance. We went from having the numbers on this team to me begging the person we tried to eliminate to have our backs. I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to ask yourself this question. Did you come all the way out here just to come in third place?”

  An unsure look overtakes Nicole’s face.

  ~~~

  Nicole still has that unsure look in the confessional, “I hate to say it, but Simon might have a point. Though still… am I really willing to put my faith in a man who was the first to be eliminated in the truth challenge because he claimed that he never ripped somebody off? I feel like it’d be less foolish to trust a fox to guard a chicken coop.”

  ~~~

  The show cuts to Lucas and Jillian sitting under a tree in the woods. Rays of sunlight poking out through the branches. As they sit there Lucas explains, “So yeah, it’s a pretty interesting book with the whole post-apocalyptic fantasy thing going on. Granted I will admit that it is a bit of a slow read and the chapter could go a bit long, but it wasn’t bad for a random book I stumbled upon on Amazon. I mean I liked it and the characters enough to pick up its sequel, though I haven’t gotten around to reading it just yet.”

  “I see… what was this called again.”

  “A Wolf Among Sheep by: John Alspaugh and Ken Daniels.”

  “All-Spa?”

  “Yeah, or at least I think that’s how it’s pronounced.” Lucas said with a shrug. “What about you? Have you read anything good lately?”

  “About a month before coming here I finished a series I was reading. Have you heard of The War With No Name series by: Robert Repino?”

  “I can’t say that I have.”

  “To give as least spoilery of a plot summary as I can, giant ants burst from the ground and unleash an airborne virus that mutates the planet’s animals, causing them to gain intelligence equal to humans and make them walk on two legs. A war breaks out with the humans fighting the ants and mutated animals though the focus is more on the aftermath with the first book following a cat named Mort(e) and… I don’t know if I can say more without spoiling too much. Though I will give two criticisms. One I didn’t like the ending. It felt like a downer ending, but the book didn’t treat it as such. Like the tone treated what to me seemed like a fate worse than death like it was the best possible outcome for the character. My other problem was a certain character introduced in the second book. A dog named Falkirk. I hated him so much, yet he never gets punished or even called out on any of his bulls***. Like he had less redeeming qualities than each and every one of the villains and yet he’s meant to be one of the heroes.”

  “Do you think that was intentional?”

  “I don’t know. With both my criticisms combined, I think the author might have misjudged on who the reader was going to root for. Either that or I was rooting for the wrong people.”

  “Aren’t those statements the same thing in a way?”

  Jillian chuckled, “Maybe.” She then rested her head on his shoulder.

  Lucas’ face turned a bit red as he slowly put his arm around her. After a few moments of the two of them sitting together, he spoke up. “You know… I really enjoy our talks and well… I guess I enjoy being around you in general. Like… even though we’re just sitting under a tree and talking about books, this might be the happiest I’ve been in a while.”

  “Aww… that’s sweet. I feel the same way.”

  “R-Really?”

  Jillian chuckled again, “Of course, you dork. If I didn’t, do you think I’d be cuddling up to you right now?”

  “O-Oh… Well if that’s the case… when this show is over… I’d like to take you out somewhere… I’m not sure where we go exactly since we live, like what, three whole states apart, but I hope we could make it work.”

  “So you’re really serious about this… about us?” Jillian asked, some clear excitement in her voice.

  “Yeah… I am.”

  “Alright then.” Jillian said, pulling away from him which clearly made Lucas a bit worried for a second, but his worried expression vanished as she changed her position. The next thing Lucas knew she was sitting on his lap facing him with her chest right in his face. “If you are serious then show me how serious you are though…” she leaned in to whisper into his ear, “Don’t get too carried away. You’re going to have to at least take me out to dinner first before we do anything really fun.”

  If Lucas’ face wasn’t already red, it was now so red that it would make an entire tomato field envious. “A-Are you sure?”

  “You want to make this official right? Prove it.”

  With that command, Lucas took a deep breath to steal his nerves and he reached over, cupping Jillian’s check with his hand and pulled her into a kiss. Jillian’s eyes fluttered shut as the kiss got deeper and more passionate with each moment that passed. Eventually it was like the world around them didn’t matter and all they cared about was holding one another and embracing their mutual desire for the other.

  ~~~

  A cut to Lucas who is smiling ear to ear in the confessional booth is made, “Wow… I mean just… Wow… I didn’t know Jill was that forward. Not that I’m complaining. Though while part of me is… wondering if us officially being together will paint a target on our backs come merge… the rest of me doesn’t care.”

  ~~~

  It then cuts to Jillian in the confessional. “Normally I’m not that forward. If anything I was kinda trying to channel what I feel like Nicole would do if it were her in my position. Though even if I say that, I can’t deny it… being with Lucas makes me feel like a teenager again. The butterflies in my stomach, the passion, the fact that we certainly both want to go farther, but we don’t really have the privacy to do so. Though in this case it’s the constant cameras everywhere and not our parents or other authority figures.” She giggled a little and said, “Now I can’t help, but wonder what it would have been like if we were the same age and went to school together. Though that’s not really a hypothetical deal I see myself taking if it was somehow offered to me. Both in the sense of it erasing my life experiences and well… being a teenager is hard, no way in hell am I going to want to go through that again. So I’ll just stick to reality and accept the twelve year age difference.”

  ~~~

  As the two broke the kiss they breathed heavily, looking deeply into each other’s lust-filled eyes. Jillian began to lean forward, clearly ready to keep going, only for Vince’s voice to echo out throughout the forest. “Attention contestants! Your next challenge will begin in one hour! Put on your swimsuits and meet me at the challenge area!”

  “Huh? A water based challenge.” Lucas said.

  “You think if we go by the lake we’ll be able to see whatever it is that they set up? Maybe try to figure out the challenge before Vince tells us?” Jillian suggested.

  “I would say that almost feels like cheating, but I wouldn’t be shocked if someone on Team Water thought of the same thing.”

  Jillian nodded and got off of Lucas before offering her hand to help him stand up. Which he gladly took. The couple made it to the lakeside where off in the distance they could see two boats docked by the shore.

  “Huh? I guess it’s going to be something that has to do with those boats.” Lucas said.

  “Maybe a fishing challenge or a race or something.” Jillian suggested. “If it’s the first one, maybe we’ll get fishing gear if we win or maybe the fish themselves.”

  “Maybe. A bit of a shame that there doesn’t seem to be enough information to go off of. Maybe if we had a detective on the team they’d be able to figure it out at a glance.”

  Jillian giggled at that, “I think even Sherlock Holmes would need more information than this to figure out the challenge. Though that being said, I’m glad there isn’t a detective in this game. They’d probably be able to see right through everyone.”

  ~~~

  The show cuts over to Ed, pulling his swimsuit out of his bag when suddenly he sneezes into his shoulder.

  “Bless you.” Clarence said while grabbing his own swimsuit.

  ~~~

  Team Fire is shown in front of the lake in their swimsuits, standing together in front of Vince. Vince motions to his side for the remaining members of Team Water to walk in, “Team Fire take a look at the new Team Water, Regina losing her case to stay in the game.”

  “Heh, serves her right.” Simon said with his arms crossed.

  Vince then points to the behind the contestants to a dock where two motorized boats, one with a blue roof and one with a red roof, are tied to. “Teams I assume that you noticed the boats behind you. Today your challenge is to look for treasure. You see we placed two treasure chests at the bottom of the lake. One blue and one red. Your job is to use the boats and a map to try to find them. Once you locate them, you need to send two members down in scuba equipment to find and bring your team’s chest back onto the boat. Once you have it you are to bring the chest back to dry land and only then are you allowed to attempt to unlock it.”

  “How exactly do we do that?” Lissa asked, raising her hand.

  “That’ll be up to you. Either finding a way to pick the lock or breaking it off or a much easier third option. Somewhere in the lake, between the location of the two chests is a skeleton key that will open either chest. Though it’ll be up to you if you think it’s worth the risk spending time to find it. The first team to open their chest will not only win immunity, but also each member will win five-thousand dollars that’ll be given to them at the end of the season.”

  “Only five-thousand?” Simon asked.

  “Hey, the grand prize is one-million. Plus, at this point in the game you have a ninety percent chance of losing and going home with nothing. Take what you can get.” Vince said sternly.

  “Alright… fair enough.” Simon said with a shrug.

  “Alright then, does everyone understand the rules?” Vince asked, allowing the contestants time to either nod in response or give a verbal response that they did, “Great. Your challenge begins now!” With that Vince blew his whistle and the teams ran off down the docks. Freeing and hopping into their respective boats.

  “Does anybody here know how to drive a boat?” Yong-Gi asked on Team Fire’s boat.

  The show then cuts to Lissa asking, “Anybody know how to pilot this thing?”

  Then there’s a split screen of Nicole and Mina simultaneously saying, “Well I do know how to operate heavy farming equipment. I’m sure I can figure this out.” With that the mother and daughter took the controls of their respective team’s boats and after a few moments, Mina taking a few seconds longer to figure it out, started them up.

  As Team Fire started drifting forward Jillian picked up the map and said, “It looks like ours is in the center of the lake, but slightly to the left.”

  “Gotcha.” Nicole said driving toward that location.

  “It looks like Jillian’s taken the role of navigation.” Lucas said to the other men on his team. “So who’s going to get the chest?”

  Yong-Gi stepped forward, “Me and Simon. No way am I trusting you to help us with this.”

  “What?” Lucas asked.

  “What do you mean “what”? How do I know you’re not planning on throwing this challenge just so you can get rid of either me or Simon?” Yong-Gi asked, getting a bit in Lucas’ face.

  “If I wanted to do that, don’t you think I would have done it during the last challenge?”

  “Maybe you really wanted that food?”

  “Over five-thousand dollars?” Lucas explained in confusion.

  “Boys, boys. Enough.” Simon said, stepping between them and using his arms to break them up. “I was going to suggest that the two of you go and get it.”

  “What? Why?” Yong-Gi asked.

  “Because look… as much as I hate to admit it… I’m old. I don’t trust my body to not give out from having to dive down to the bottom of a lake and pull up a potentially heavy chest. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not throw out my back or have a heart attack.”

  Yong-Gi sighed, “Fair enough.”

  “Besides, I can take care of opening the chest.”

  “Really?” Lucas asked.

  “I’m not going to name any specific instances that could get me in trouble, but let’s just say that I’ve had to pick a lock or two in my life.”

  ~~~

  The show cuts to Simon sitting in the confessional booth, “While what I told them is true, I do have another reason for staying by. I don’t want to leave Nicole alone with the lovebirds. I’m trying to get her to flip on our side and I feel like those two would have a much easier time schmoozing her and getting her to agree to stick with them then I did.”

  ~~~

  Over on Team Water’s boat, Lissa holds the map. “Looks like you should drift a bit more to the right.”

  “Gotcha.” Mina said taking a moment to figure out exactly how to do that.

  “Alright.” Sue said to the team. “When we get there I suggest that Clarence and I go down to find the chest. Though with that.” She turned to Clarence. “Do you think you can lift the chest by yourself?”

  “Maybe. It really depends on how heavy it is. Why?” Clarence responded.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “I was thinking that once down there we can split up. You go for the chest and I try to find that key.”

  “I see. Well how about this? We find it first and see if I can. If not, I'll wait for you to come back with the key.”

  “That may waste time.”

  “It would waste more time if we split up immediately and you suffice with the key without me and then have to go back down and find me.”

  “I see what you’re getting at.”

  “What do I do?” Ed asked, raising his hand.

  Sue shrugged, “I guess nothing. If I don’t find the key, could you pick a lock?”

  “I’ve seen it done in movies. How hard can it be?”

  Sue let out a hum, “Yeah… I think if I can’t our plan might be just to have the big guy here smash the lock with a big rock or something.”

  “So I’m doing nothing?” Ed asked with some fake disappointment in his voice.

  “Yeah… Sorry.”

  ~~~

  Ed is shown in the confessional, “Considering the number of times that I’ve done it for my job, I can totally pick the lock. Just give me a pin or maybe a very sturdy stick and I’d have the puppy open in no time. Though that might be a risk to my gameplan of playing the fool to not come across as a threat. Unless I can try to pass it off as me being a bit of a skill monkey of sorts.”

  ~~~

  The show cuts to Yong-Gi and Lucas putting on some oxygen tanks and diving helmets. Said helmets being bright yellow in color and having a small flashlight connected to the side.

  “Well this was a bit different from what I was expecting.” Lucas said with the helmet on.

  “Huh. Seems that I can hear you.” Yong-Gi said. “I guess there’s a radio in these things.”

  “So we can talk to each other? That’s helpful.”

  As Team Fire’s boat came to a stop, Yong-Gi asked, “So are we supposed to just jump in or…”

  “I think there’s a specific way. Like the need to go backwards.” Lucas said, “Kinda s**** that they gave us a scuba challenge without checking if anyone has any scuba diving experience.”

  Over on Team Water’s boat, Sue and Clarence sat on the side and once they came to a stop, like a pair of synchronized swimmers they leaned back and drove straight into the water.

  Seeing this, Lucas pointed and said, “Yeah, let’s just try to replicate that and hope for the best.”

  “Alright.” Yong-Gi said with a mixture of nervousness and suspicion in his voice.

  ~~~

  Yong-Gi is shown in the confessional, “Look, even though the chance to walk out of here with five grand in his pocket, regardless if he wins or not, is on the line. I’m still not too sure if I can trust Lucas after he threw the guys alliance under the bus and got rid of Ben. I know that if we lose either me or Simon is the next to go with the other following if we lose again after that. Also I have noticed that the wins so far have been in a pattern. Going water, fire, water, fire. Yeah… safe to say that since I’m on the chopping block, I’d really like to break that pattern.”

  ~~~

  Both members of each team are shown swimming deeper and deeper into the lake as it gets darker and darker. Thankfully for the divers the flashlights mounted to their helmets didn’t leave them totally in the dark.

  “Are you sure that you wanna go looking for that key?” Clarence asked, “With how dark it is, splitting up might not be a good idea.”

  “Oh please, this is a freshwater lake. I doubt anything dangerous is down here.” Sue said.

  “Yeah, I agree that they wouldn't want to put us in any danger, but still.”

  “I really think that if you can lift the chest by yourself we stick to that plan. Since we now know we can hear each other you can shout at me to give up the search if the other team is ahead of us.”

  “Fine.” Was all Clarence said in response.

  The two of them reached the bottom and started looking around. Trying to see any blue pirate chests hidden among the mud and rocks. Clarence swam back in surprise a bit as a snapping turtle swam past his face with a fish in its mouth and started heading towards the surface. Though it was this that got his light shining at just the right angle to see the corner of something blue.

  “I think I found it.” He said with a smile.

  ~~~

  Back on Team Water’s boat, Ed laid down on his back, staring up at the sunny blue sky, looking bored out of his mind. Made especially clear as he started drumming a random tone on his stomach.

  “You okay Ed?” Lissa asked.

  “Yeah, just kinda bored since I’ve been told to stick out of this challenge. Though Regina made me stick out most of the last challenge as well. It’s starting to make me wonder if you guys see me as a hindrance to this team.”

  Lissa laughed at that. “Oh please. You were the last man standing in that staying awake challenge and one of the three remaining in the truth one. Plus you did technically help Regina make that perfect ten peach cobbler. Meanwhile… yeah, I’ll admit it, I know I’m the weakest link on this team. I lost the easiest in the tug-of-war, I fell asleep first in the staying awake challenge, I got out in the truth one and my salad got the lowest score out of all the food last time. Now all I’ve done this time around is read a map. The only reason I’m probably still here is because Phineas gave us all the willies and we were getting sick of Regina’s attitude.”

  “You know that you’re not making a good case for yourself if we go to elimination.” Ed said as he sat up.

  “I guess not.” Lissa said with a laugh.

  “You know… you do seem different from when you first arrived. You know when you were complaining about it not being like a vacation or that nobody was here to carry your many bags.”

  “I guess being out here for the past two weeks has given me time to think and reflect on myself. I realize that maybe I have been a bit too… what’s the word… I don’t know, I guess my lifestyle before coming on this show gave me a bit of an attitude issue and it got so bad that my father didn’t want to deal with it. Now that time has passed and I’ve blown off some steam, I realize that, yeah I was the problem.”

  “I see.”

  ~~~

  Ed is shown in the confessional, “I certainly didn’t expect such a level of self-awareness in Miss Underwood. She seems… contempt in the possibility of her being the next to go on our team. Though she may have just accidentally pleaded a case to me as to why we should keep her around. When merge comes, who will be the bigger threat? The athletic hunter or the pampered heiress who knows she’s practically useless? I certainly know who I’d rather face in the finale.”

  ~~~

  The show then shows Yong-Gi and Lucas looking around at the bottom of the lake.

  “Have you spotted it yet?” Yong-Gi asked.

  “No. If I do, I'll let you know the second I do.” Lucas said.

  “Sure you will.” Yong-Gi said sarcastically

  Lucas let out a quick sigh, spun around to face Yong-Gi and said, “Look, I’m sorry about Ben, but voting for him wasn’t my idea. It was Nicole’s. She felt that he’d be the easiest to beat in a tiebreaker. I know he was your friend, hell he was probably the nicest person on the team and that’s saying a lot, but this is a game. A game that each and every one of us is trying to win. I mean… if you were at the finals of a major fighting game tournament and you were up against your best friend, would you go easy on them?”

  “No, but I would also beat them honestly. I wouldn’t stab them in the back.”

  Lucas sighed again and said, “Well… I guess… wait.” He lost his train of thought as in the distance behind Yong-Gi he saw a flash of red. “I think I see it. Come on.” With that Lucas swam past Yong-Gi to something long and wooden that took him a few seconds to realize it was a sunken red canoe that had a large hole at the bottom.

  “Oh look. It was nothing.” Yong-Gi said sarcastically.

  Lucas let out an unsure hum as he grabbed the side of the canoe and lifted it up in order to flip it over. It fell to the lake floor kicking up some sand. A smirk came across Lucas’ face as lo and behold right there was a red treasure chest.

  “Oh…” Yong-Gi said with some embarrassment. “Though I gotta say hiding it like that is kinda evil.”

  “Eh, I’m sure it’s a case of them making us work for it. I’m sure the other team’s chest was just as hidden.”

  ~~~

  Over with Clarence and Sue they did in fact find their chest, though there’s was halfway buried in the mud. Clarence tried to pull it out by himself at first, but it was like trying to pull out excalibur from the stone. He let out an exhausted breath and motioned for Sue to help them. With their combined efforts they managed to rip the wooden box out of the mud’s greedy grasps. Now that the chest was free it seemed much lighter now.

  “Okay.” Clarence said, “I’ll get this back to the boat, you look for the key.”

  Sue nodded, swimming away from him in the direction of the other boat as fast as she could, recalling that Vince said that it would be somewhere in between the two.

  As she was doing that Clarence was swimming up to the surface, his heart racing as he did not know if Team Fire had found theirs or not. Eventually, like a mighty humpback whale, Clarence burst out of the water with the chest in hand right next to his team’s boat. “Hey!” he called out. “Help me get this on here!”

  With that Ed and Lissa rushed over and leaned over the side of the boat, pulling the chest onto its deck. This was followed by Clarence pulling himself up onto the boat as well.

  “Great, let’s get going.” Mina said ready to start the engine back up.

  “Hold on, we need to wait for Sue.”

  “What? Where is she?” Mina asked in confusion.

  “Looking for the key like she said she would be.”

  Over on the other boat, Simon could see that Team Water had their chest and exclaimed, “S***! S***! S***! Yong-Gi and Lucas better hurry the hell up or we’re screwed!”

  ~~~

  “We’re screwed?” Jillian said in the confessional with a laugh, “I think you mean that you’re screwed. Unless the “we” was meant as in him and Yong-Gi. Then I guess he would be correct then.”

  ~~~

  It was a few seconds after Simon had said that where, as if his prayers had been answered, the duo that had been sent down surfaced with a nice red chest in hand.

  Clarence seeing this began to panic. “Sue, Team Fire has their chest!”

  ~~~

  Down at the bottom of the lake Sue spotted something gold sticking out from under some muck. She reached down and grabbed it, picking up an ornate golden key that had a bow shaped like a human skull. “Huh, taking the whole “skeleton key” thing literally.” she muttered when suddenly she heard Clarence shouting in her ear.

  “Sue, Team Fire has their chest!” he said.

  “Crap! Uhh… I got the key! I’ll be up there as quickly as I can!” She exclaimed as she swam upwards and towards the right to hopefully make up some of the distance between where she was and her team’s boat. Once she managed to surface she saw that she was about thirty feet away from Team Water’s boat and off in the distance behind her she could hear the motor of Team Fire’s boat running. Wasting no time, not caring about how tired she was, Sue swam at a speed that probably would catch the attention of any recruiters for The Olympics as she made it to Team Water’s boat, pulled herself onto it, flopped onto the deck and shouted, “Drive!” to Mina.

  Mina did not waste any time turning the boat’s engine back on, but it took her a few precious seconds to figure out how to turn the boat around to make its way to the starting area.

  Over on Team Fire’s boat as they were getting closer and closer to land Simon looked at his team and said, “Since I’m the one picking the lock, does anybody have anything on them that would be useful for that?”

  “My swiss army knife is back in my pants pockets.” Jillian said, “Nothing of value in this swimsuit.”

  “Well I wouldn’t say that.” Lucas said in a flirtatious way and a wink.

  Jillian just rolled her eyes and lightly smacked him on the arm. Lucas chuckled in response.

  That’s when an idea popped in Simon’s head as he looked around the boat to his teammates and noticed something that Yong-Gi and Lucas had in common with himself. It was a trait that even Ben had shared and he found it a bit humorous that he didn’t notice it earlier. All the men on this team had glasses. With that realization he said, “When we reach land I’m going to need one of you to give me your glasses.”

  “Why?” Lucas asked.

  “Gonna try to pick the lock with them.”

  “What? No, use your own glasses.” Lucas responded coldly.

  “I need to see the lock, don’t I?”

  Yong-Gi signed, handed his glasses to Simon and said, “Use mine.” before turning to Lucas and saying, “You big baby.”

  ~~~

  “What? Simon is clearly a snake. I wouldn’t trust him to guard my sandwich let alone handle my glasses. I could clearly see him “accidentally” breaking them and now I wouldn’t be able to see as well for the rest of the game.” Lucas explains in the confessional.

  ~~~

  Team Fire reached land with Team Water’s boat rapidly approaching the shore as well. Not wasting any time, Jillain and Lucas each grabbed an end of the chest and lifted it up, throwing it onto the lakeside sand. The chest rolled a bit, but landed with its bottom side down.

  Simon leaped out from the boat, rushed over to the chest, opened one of the temples of Yong-Gi’s glasses and jammed the temple tip into the lock, doing whatever he could to pick it as fast as he could.

  Over on Team Water’s boat Sue was impatient asking, “Come on, come on. Can’t this damn boat go any faster?”

  “Apparently not.” Mina responded, sounding just as annoyed as Sue.

  About ten seconds later they reached the shore and Clarence, without any hesitation, picked up the chest and launched it onto the sand.

  Simon was sweating as he heard the thud of the other team’s chest, knowing that he only had a few seconds at best to pull this off.

  Sue leaped from the boat and onto dry land, she rushed to where Clarence had thrown the chest and slid on her knees to it. Without any hesitation she jammed the skeleton key straight into the keyhole and right as she was about to turn it. The key on Team Fire’s lock clicked and Simon threw the sucker open like his life depended on it.

  Vince blew his whistle and exclaimed, “With what looks like about a second to spare, Team Fire wins!”

  The members of Team Fire cheered as Simon looked into the chest and to his delight, it was full of gold coins and jewels. He dung his hands into the pile, only for his delight to turn to disappointment as from the feel he could instantly tell that it was all plastic. Not that he was surprised, but the disappointment was still there.

  “As stated before the challenge, once the season is over, the five of you will each be given a check for five-thousand dollars, so look forward to that.” Vince then turned his attention over to the other Team. “Team Water, once again you were so close, but you just couldn’t do it. I’ll be seeing all of you at elimination for the second time in a row.”

  ~~~

  “One second?” Sue asked with her face in her hands, “Last time we lost by one point and know we lose by one f****** second? That’s just great… we really need to talk to Clarence since… if Lissa and I can’t convince him to join our side… one of us is leaving tonight.”

  ~~~

  The show cuts to sometime later where not too far from their camp, Mina, Ed and Clarence are talking to each other in the woods.

  “So the way I see it we have two choices tonight and out of them, I think it’d be best to get rid of Lissa.” Mina said.

  “Wuh? Why?” Ed asked, faking confusion.

  “I know she was nice to you today, but she is by far the weakest link on this team. She even admitted as such earlier. If we keep her over Sue there’s a good chance that we’re gonna lose again and… while that vote would be easy, I’d rather not potentially go into the merge being from “the weaker team”. That might be enough to get the remaining Team Fire members to group up on us.” Mina explained

  “Even your mom?” Clarence asked, “I don’t know, that sounds a little paranoid to me.”

  Mina sighed, “Maybe it is, but I just want to be as safe as possible. I will not deny that Sue is a bigger threat when the merge comes. I’ll even admit that if I was watching this show instead of participating in it, she might be a favorite to win the whole thing, but I think she’s a problem that can be dealt with later. Right now we need to keep the team strong.”

  “I guess I can agree to that.” Clarence said.

  “Yeah.” Ed added.

  “Alright then. I guess we just wait until Vince calls us to elimination.” Mina said before she started to walk away.

  ~~~

  Clarence makes his way back to camp, but his arm is grabbed by Lissa. He looks over to her and says, “Umm… can I help you, Lissa?”

  “We need to talk.” Lissa responded before guiding him across camp and into the woods that were surrounding the opposite side of the camp in which he came from. After passing several trees they stopped and Lissa let go of his arm once they came across Sue who was sitting on a large rock that was sticking out of the ground.

  “Okay, you found him, good.” Sue said standing up.

  “What’s going on?” Clarence asked.

  “Elimination is going on, Clarence.” Sue said in a deadpan. “We need your help. We know that Mina and Ed are going to vote for one of us and we need your help to get Mina out.”

  “What?”

  “Look, I know she’s your friend, but we need her gone.”

  “Why her though?”

  Sue sighed, “Because the only other choice is Ed and… look I’m just going to be blunt about it, Ed’s an idiot. He will not be a threat come merge and he’s someone who I feel would be very easy to convince over to our side once Mina’s gone.”

  Clarence only could respond with an unsure hum.

  ~~~

  Clarence is shown in the confessional, “I didn’t realize how torn our team was and… I’m caught in the middle of it all? Why me? I’m going to be honest, I’m tempted to throw my vote on myself just so I won’t need to pick a side. Though then it’ll just go to a tiebreaker and that’ll just get whatever side loses mad at me. Hell, it just might make everyone mad at me.” He then let out a sigh and said, “Maybe this is why I haven’t made it to a major league yet. Because I don’t have it in me to backstab someone in order to get myself farther.”

  ~~~

  Lissa is then shown in the confessional, “I don’t know if Sue convinced Clarence. If she did great, but if not… well I hope that either of us, whichever one it is, will be able to take the loss better than Regina did at least.” She gave a small laugh in order to poorly hide how nervous she was.

  ~~~

  Meanwhile, at Team Fire’s camp the guys give the women privacy to change out of their swimsuits. During this Simon sat down with a smile on his face and placed his arms behind his head, “That went great. Five grand in the pocket, we’re safe from elimination and I actually managed to help the team this time.”

  “Barely.” Lucas said.

  “Eh, a win is a win.” Yong-Gi said with a shrug. “Even if it’s on the magic pixel.”

  “Damn straight it is.” Simon added. “Even if I have no idea what you mean by “magic pixel”

  “Oh, it’s a fighting game thing. It means when it looks like your health is empty, but there's still a barely visible pixel of health left. As long as you still have that pixel, winning is still possible.”

  “Huh, I ain’t much of a video game person, like I was twenty when the original Nintendo dropped and that was marketed as a toy, so I had no need for it. That being said, I think I see what you mean.”

  ~~~

  The five members of Team Water sit in front of the bonfire with Vince standing at his podium. Vince smiles at them and said, “Welcome back Team Water, you all know how this works. Get to voting.”

  A montage is shown of the Team Water members writing down names. While the women all look confident in who they’re voting for, Ed is shown as a bit annoyed while Clarence stands there for a bit, still clearly torn on who exactly to put his vote on. He takes a deep breath and writes a name down.

  The show then cuts back to Vince with the pot, “Alright. The votes have all been cast. Let’s see who’s going home tonight.” He reaches into the pot and pulls out the first slip of paper, “The first vote goes to… Mina.”

  Mina lets out a sigh as she felt like this would be the case.

  “Second vote goes to… Lissa. That’s one vote for Lissa and one vote for Mina.” Vince says before pulling out the next piece of paper, “The third vote goes to… Mina. That’s two votes for Mina and one for Lissa. The fourth vote goes to… Lissa. That two votes Lissa and two votes Mina, one vote remains.”

  Dramatic music plays as the show cuts to the worried reactions of both Mina and Lissa.

  Vince slowly takes out the last vote and reads it silently before announcing, “The fifth person voted out of Endurance Forest is…” he flips over the piece of paper, “Lissa.”

  Lissa lets out a disappointed, but unsurprised sigh. She stands up and turns to her team. She waits for a few seconds before speaking and, a bit unexpectedly, a smile appears on her face. “You know what? Even though I wanted that million dollars… I’m not sad that I lost. I’m surprised to say it, but… I had fun.”

  “So you’re not mad?” Clarence asked.

  “No. I mean sure I wanted to win, but come on. With how I acted when I first got here… well I’m sure tenth place if a lot higher than the people here and the viewers watching probably expected of me. I guess that’s overall what I learned while being out here. That I’m not hot s***.” She laughed and said, “So yeah. No hard feelings. That being said…” She looked over at Sue, “Kick their asses Sue. I’ll be rooting for you from that hotel and when this is over, we can go on that date.”

  “Y-Yeah. Of course. Though just don’t get mad if I order a steak or burger or something.” Sue said with a light blush.

  “I won’t, though, if we become serious… I may try to talk you into giving up smoking. That’s the real big issue with you. No offence.”

  “Yeah… I really should quit.” Sue said, rubbing the back of her head.

  With that Lissa made her leave.

  ~~~

  The show cuts to three interns putting all of Lissa’s bags into the car. Lissa looked pretty impressed and said to one of the male ones, an asian man with black hair and a pair of red framed glasses. “Wow, you really figured out how to get them all in there.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty good at Tetris so doing this was a bit of a puzzle like that.” The intern said.

  “I see. Maybe you could be a bellboy at one of my father’s hotels.”

  The intern laughed and said, “I appreciate the offer, but I have bigger ambitions.”

  With their job done, the interns walked away as Lissa got into the car that would take her to the motel. Lissa looked at the camera in the car and said, “Well I guess there’s at least two good things to come out of this. I get to sleep in a real bed tonight and I’ll hopefully get my phone back so I can talk to my dad. I really need to talk to him.”

  ~~~

  A worried looking Sue is shown in the confessional, “We need to win the next challenge. Clarence showed what side he is on and if we lose again, there is no ifs, ands or butts about it, I am gone and we can’t have that. I can’t let Lissa down right away.”

  ~~~

  Ed is shown in the confessional, “I wanted the bigger threat of the two gone, but it is what it is. If we lose again, we won’t even have to discuss the vote and if we win… well I’m sure the merge would be about the halfway point and then I could just try to slip by by having everyone else seem like a bigger threat than me.”

  ~~~

  Vince is shown by himself in front of the bonfire. “Well with another ceremony down I feel like things are going to be quieter and less preachy around here. Well at least Team Water’s going to have more room in their tent now that a quarter of it isn’t being taken by Lissa’s bags. Though we still have quite a ways to go until we have our winner. Who will be the next person to have their journey in this game come to an end? Find out next time on Endurance Forest!”