Episode 4: The Continental Divide
That night Melkiy returned from tribal council knowing that for the first time this game, they were down a member. They went to bed early, and when they woke up at the crack of dawn, they witnessed a beautiful Asian sunrise. Brandon commented that the sunrise brought more hope to the dying Melkiys. It inspired the whole tribe to realize that they needed to bring their game up a notch, for if they lost another immunity, they were guaranteed to go into the alleged merge no better than even at Gluboko. Meanwhile, Gluboko slept in from raucous partying the night before. They completely missed the beautiful sunrise. By the time their last person, Kim woke up, snow flurries and high winds and extinguished their campfire. She and Sue spent the better part of the day rebuilding the fire, while Michael and Sean stockpiled water fearing that this new cold weather could cause the lake to freeze over soon. The Australians, Matt, Hayley and Lachlan, hung back in the woods, and no one was really sure what they were doing. Each of the three groups actually happened to be discussing the dynamics of the tribe, and what to do if they were faced with tribal council next. The fire-tenders, Kim and Sue, agreed that their alliance mates, Lachlan, Hayley and Matt, were probably playing them, for they were all from Australia and seemed to form a special bond. They agreed to stick together to try to oust them. Kim smirked as he said, "The manipulative Bitch I am!". While out collecfting water, Michael and Sean, decided their best bets to remain in the game as long as possible was to work on getting rid of one of the Aussies. To do this, they knew they would need the votes of Sue and Kim, and prepared to talk to them. Meanwhile, the Aussies congratulated themselves for making it this far, and prematurely promised themselves the final 3. Matt, although exubriant, was a little skeptical of Hayley, who had been bonding with the Americans. He remarked, "Hayley is still being manipulative and is trying to get on in the Americans alliance. Hayley, Lachlan and myself are in an alliance to the final 3... but Hayley has been swaying to the other side to try and be friends with everyone. I really hope Hayley sees that she'll get stuck in the middle of this and both tribes will target her sooner or later." Meanwhile at Melkiy, the tribe walked hand-in-hand to collect treemail. As they approached challenge beach, they met Melkiy and saw seemingly random and endless letters on the ground. Adam explained that the letters were only the letters that could spell out "SURVIVOR BALKHASH". Each tribe was to pick out letters and making English words out of them. However, they could only use letters that could be used to spell "SURVIVOR BALKHASH" (for example, ball could not be used because there are not two Ls). Each word had to be four letters and each tribe could take as long as they want, but as soon as they went five minutes without spelling a word they were eliminated. Since today was Thanksgiving in America, the winners would get a huge feast of turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. Both tribes wanted this reward badly. The remaining Melkiys were all Amercians, so they wanted to continue the tradition. On Gluboko, there was only one American, Kim, so the rest of the tribe wanted to learn about this American ritual. To start off the challenge, both tribes tried different strategies, Melkiy different combinations of letters to Corey who manipulated them to form words. At Gluboko, everyone decided to root around for letters. Lachlan led Gluboko to an early lead, which was extended through dire efforts of Matt, Hayley and Sue. Gluboko appeared to have a large advantage but suddenly were caught in a rut. Michael started working on a word, but five minutes had expired and Gluboko was done. However, Gluboko had built up a sizeable lead that would be hard to bring down. Melkiy, through the efforts Mike and Corey, kept hacking away. Even though it looked liked they had overwhelmed Gluboko, wanted to play it safe and kept getting more and more words until they had amassed a huge lead on Gluboko and when they were counted, easily won the reward. At the thanksgiving feast, not only were they treated to a scrumptous meal, they saw that their loved ones made videos from home. Missy cried at seeing her children, Ashleigh and Alex, tell her how much they loved her. Corey blushed his mom told embarassing secrets, his sister, Jenna, was rambling about her new part in a play, and her friend Michael was dancing around in a Thanksgiving turkey suit. As they were about to head back to camp, Will took a look at his napkin and saw something written on it. After reading it, the writing turned out to be information regarding an upcoming wrinkle in the game. The team was shocked but now could plan ahead. That night at Gluboko beach, tensions erupted as Michael decided the best way to stack votes against one of the Aussies was to cause a huge fight making the Australians look like enemies. He accused Matt, Hayley and Lachlan of not only having an alliance but by being best friends before the game and even having connections, to the Survivor: Tonga player, James. Matt vehemently denied this and after more arguing stomped off into a confessional saying, "I am very annoyed at Michael... I felt offended... and so did Lachlan... Hayley would too... What Michael has done is... 1. Make Hayley, Lachlan and myself in a bad position in the tribe... 2. Hayley, Lachlan and myself have lost trust in Michael... 3. Has got my vote in the next Tribal Council." The next morning, Melkiy was so excited for the challenge they rose extra early and paced around the mailbox until treemail came. They really wanted to win this challenge and knew it was crucial to their survival. Despite the overall happiness of the Melkiy tribe. Brandon, Will and Eve began to sniff out a possible alliance between Mike, Missy and Corey. Eve was the most certain there was an alliance and said, "This is how I figure, I always thought that Missy, Mike and Corey had an alliance of some sort, but I (naively) thought I was in it. Well I am to a point. If we make it to the final 6 I'll either be 4th, 5th or 6th (I'm goin' 4th but I'm not sure). Well if I figure out more, I'll try and do something about it. Brandon and Will, I don't know about them, I guess we'll see..." However, Eve decided to wait to do any action until after the results of the challenge. Brandon, didn't necessarily think Corey, Mike and Missy were aligned, but was still worried saying, "No real
alliances, I think, are forming unless they don't include me." Despite some doubts, Melkiy was still convinced they needed to win immunity. Will soon discovered tree-mail, and they once again walked hand-in-hand to the challenge. Gluboko was already at challenge beach and were pretty much silent. When they got there, they found a 7x7 checkerboard. Their goal: Pick up a rock and while blindfolded step on to a space on the board. Then, they would all throw their rocks at the same time and if they were hit, they were eliminated from the challenge. Whichever tribe was hit the most times would be headed to tribal council the next night. However, they were then told they only had 15 seconds to get on a space. As soon as the whistle blew, Mike had the idea to form a line and they held hands to secure that they would line up together. Meanwhile, Gluboko only made a half-hearted effort getting on the board, so only five Glubokos made it. On the count of three, they all threw their rocks. A few screams of pain were heard, but when they took off their blindfolds, they found that people on both tribes had been hit. Adam counted the reamining players and discovered Melkiy had won their first immunity in a week! They were all dancing and Eve was singing as their love tribe was guaranteed another three days. Meanwhile, Gluboko's mood was not very morose at the prospect of voting someone out as everyone felt confident they would stay. However, the next day, everyone was focused on the impending tribal council. Ponering the three factions of the game, everybody soon felt like they were in danger. Around mid-morning, Matt pulled Sue aside and reminded her that she had aligned with the Australians and they could take out either Sean or Michael at this tribal council. Sue generally dodged Matt's questions, but ultimately told him she would think about it. Later on, Michael pulled Sue aside to rally her vote for the least productive Gluboko member, Lachlan. Before heading to tribal council, Sue had a lengthy conversation with Kim and they shook hands. On the way to tribal council, Gluboko witnessed a large and a small elk fighting. Despite being much stronger, the large elk couldn't seem to pull off a move and the small elk was able to win the fight. When they arrived at tribal council, Matt told everybody he was planning on voting for Sean, who he found less valuable to the tribe than Michael, and warned Sue and Kim the tribe would collapse if him, Lachlan or Hayley went. Sue rolled her eyes and winked at Kim. Next, the survivors proceeded to vote. Matt was first and in big letters he voted for SEAN saying, "I'm voting for SEAN because I've never talked to him and he's letting the team down. I'm also voting for him because Michael is the only one who has talked to him and there could be a possible alliance there which is dangerous." Next Hayley, Sue, Michael, Lachlan and Kim voted, leaving Sean for last who voted for LACHLAN and said, "Lachlan hasn't really socialized with the tribe also Michael told me he was voting for him so my vote is for Lachlan." Adam said, "I'll go tally the votes," and then proceeded to read them:
"That's two votes Lachlan, two votes Sean", Adam said to a tense Gluboko.
The second person voted out of the Gluboko tribe is:
As Lachlan got up, he gave a stunned Matt and Hayley a thumbs-up and smiled as he got his torch snuffed. Gluboko headed back to camp for a pivotal next three days.
Next week on SURVIVOR:
A shocking twist shakes up the game.
SEAN: "I know it's a little weird since just yesterday we were competing against each other."
BRANDON: "It stunk."
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