Episode 6: Legacy Lost
That night after returning from tribal council, Matt was pissed. Not only did he see his best friend his alliance mate go, he realized the legacy started during Survivor: Tonga was now close to being gone. He realized he had been backstabbed by two people, Sue and Will and decided to confront them about it. He yelled at them for betraying him, but Sue and Will didn't say much in response which forced Matt to step off into a confessional where he said, "Hayley is gone because of 2 people. The first person is Will because he said he'd vote Eve with us and that would've seen Eve gone... but he lied and voted Hayley. The second person is Sue because she voted against Hayley for no reason. I am very annoyed at these two people." Meanwhile, Melkiy was waking up to a chilly but peaceful morning. Corey was up at the brink of dawn cooking the daily mush while Kim and Missy went out to get some water from a distant pond. While they were gone, Kim and Missy started to bond and discuss the game. They talked about who they liked and didn't like in the game. When they returned back, Mike, Sean and Michael had arisen and were about to start to eat Corey's breakfast. Kim continued the conversation about the other castaways to the whole camp. The main parts of the conversation were focused on animosity towards Matt. Suddenly, Kim realized that she was going to have to start playing the game harder because she anticpated a merge. In a confessional she remarked, "I really hope the merge comes soon though, I want to pick off the others one by one, except for Matt if he survives this round!" After breakfast, Sean and Michael marched over to the treemail box where they found a treemail with an odd assortment of letters. After much deducing, Missy realized that it spelled out a message telling them that they would have to do something similar to this at the challenge. By the time both tribes reached the challenge, a light rain began to fall. Adam, the host then explained the rules to the contestants. Each of them would be separated from the others and then given a scrambled message on a chalkboard. As soon as they worked out what the message meant, they had to run back to their tribes mat and tie their chalkboard to a pole. Whichever tribe had four correct messages first would win the reward of a huge advantage in the next immunity challenge. The survivors split and the challenge began. After only a few minutes, Will of Gluboko discovered the message to be "Out of you eleven, one of you will step and become the winner of Survivor: Balkhash". He hustled onto the maroon mat, tied his board around a pole and yelled out a scream of joy. However, he didn't realize Michael was right behind him with message and when Will screamed, he threw his arms in the air, smacking Michael in the head. Michael fell down and after a few seconds, struggled to his feet and tied his message around the pole on the yellow mat. Adam yelled out to everyone that each tribe had one person done and they would only need three more. As soon as Adam finished saying this, Corey solved his message and quickly tied it around the pole, giving Melkiy an advantage. However, the other Melkiy members were visibly stuck trying to do the puzzle, while Eve had just finished hers for Gluboko and tied her chalkboard around the pole, making the game even again. A few minutes later, Sue became the third Gluboko to complete the challenge as she solved the puzzle. A few minutes later, Missy and Kim both solved the puzzle and were in a footrace with Gluboko's Brandon to get their poles. Ultimately, Brandon had faster legs than Missy or Kim did, and he beat out the girls by just seconds giving Gluboko the win in the challenge. They triumphantly headed back to camp, only to find more problems. Eve was the first to discover the rain and wind had picked up, causing their fire to go out. Now that the wood was wet too, they would have trouble re-starting their fire. Matt couldn't believe it and yelled out a string of several profanities. Rather then starting a new fire, Brandon suggested they build a warmer shelter for tonight, and work on the fire when the wood dried. Sue, Matt and Brandon went to work on the shelter, while Will and Eve tried to go fishing before the lake completely froze. While they were out fishing, Eve asked Will about Matt trying to influence his strategy. Will said Matt had talked to him about voting for her or Brandon instead of Hayley at the last tribal council, but said he switched his vote to Hayley. This infuriated Eve because she now doubted Will was 100% with her. As they came back to camp, Sue, Matt and Brandon witnessed Will and Eve engaged an argument. Eventualy, the argument broke up but Matt was quick to take advantage of it. He called Eve aside and reiterated that Will almost voted her out. Eve nodded her head to Matt, but wasn't wanting to talk much about strategy. Matt later remarked in a confessional, "At the moment I am trying to sway Eve's vote to vote for Will next saying that Will was about to vote her out and stuff." Meanwhile at Melkiy, Kim knew the next immunity would be important for her and the rest of the tribe, since she was expecting a very split tribal council that could go any of six ways. She suggested they go to bed early to save their strength for the challenge, which they were already disadvantaged because of the reward challenge loss. As they woke up the next morning, Melkiy found a little snow on the ground, but were astonished their fire remained lit. Mike threw some more logs into the fire and the love tribe spent the morning telling stories of back home, rather then strenuating themselves for the challenge. The challenge came midday as all the precipation had stopped. When they got to challenge beach, Sean reluctantly handed back the idol to Adam, as they saw seemingly endless wooden walls set up in front of them. Adam explained that in this challenge they would have to each take a position a mile apart in the long walls. Halfway through their mile run, they would find a table with a vat of mountain lion blood, an empty quill and a question written down about SCOGH games. They would have to run to the table write their answer to the question on the wall and then drink the rest of the blood. They would then run the other half-mile to find the next tribemate, ring a gong, and then that tribemate would continue on. Since Gluboko was down a member, they would have to choose somebody to go twice, and they chose their most athletic member, Matt. Matt would be given a ride from the tribe's first station to the last one. Adam was about to start the challenge, when Eve asked about their reward. Adam said, "I almost forgot. As a reward, Gluboko, you may start ten minutes ahead of Melkiy." Melkiy was mad, but knew they still had a chance. The challenge started, and with the ten minute advantage, Matt raced down as fast he could. In just a few minutes, Matt found his table and knowing who the SCOGH hosts were, wrote his answer on the wall and gulped the blood. A few minutes later he found Sue rang the gong, and went on. As Sue was approaching her question, Corey from Melkiy began the challenge and was running quickly to his spot. Sue, however, was struggling to think of who were the most popular castaways from Danger Zone. She handed off to Sean, while Eve was still looking for her answer. Sean, not knowing Gluboko was stuck, ran very hard and luckily knew his answer about what SCOGH was formerly called and what both names stood for. Sean soon emerged from the challenge, expecting to see Gluboko had completed but was astonished when he didn't see anyone. He rang the gong, and Adam checked their answers and they were all correct sealing Melkiy another immunity victory. A very despondent Gluboko headed back to camp, knowing one of them would soon be gone. When they got back to camp that night, Matt, knowing he had no trust in his tribemates thought it was his last night playing the game, and wanted to do anything to stay. However, at first his emotions were all anger about losing the challenge. He punched and made a big hole in the newly-built shelter and blew up at the tribe. He yelled at Eve for missing her question and went on rants about how they should have tried harder. Sue stuck up for herself, saying that they weren't all as strong as he was, but Matt didn't care, he was still pissed off. Later on, Sue in a confessional, jokingly remarked, "I tell ya he would have murdered someone last night; if he was my age he would have died of heart attack for sure." However, Matt was still so mad, Eve, Brandon and Will decided to sleep out in the open. Eventually, Matt went off to bed, but it left Sue worried. She thought Brandon, Will and Eve would come back soon, but she didn't see them come back. Being paranoid, Sue immeadiately thought they were having discussion about tribal council, and worried they were talking about voting her off. She remarked, "I can't talk with Will, Brandon or Eve..cause LIKE WHERE ARE THEY!!!" However, the mood at Melkiy was mollified. They were all very happy to survive, especially the Gluboko members, who knew Sean had previous votes. Kim remarked, "I am SOOOO happy we won immunity, cuz otherwise the decision would be split, and hopefully they wouldn't figure out that Sean has previous votes". The tribe spent the day stockpiling some food and water. However, the mood also calmed down at Gluboko. Eve, Will and Brandon had returned to camp, and Matt was profusely apologizing to everyone for his recent rants. The apologies worked best with Brandon, who was still loyal to his former Melkiy tribe but was starting to feel very close to both Matt and Sue. He remarked, "This IC loss led to my 1st hard TC vote I don't want to vote Matt or Sue, but I have to pick one cause that's were the rest of my tribe was heading, I can see that the rest of this game is gonna be of tribal lines until there is the old Melkiy 6 then it's a free for all or so it may seem?" However, Matt didn't feel the same way about Brandon. Desparate to survive this tribal council, he called his old tribe member, Sue, over and began to discuss the vote with her. He forgave her for backstabbing Hayley and tried to convice her to vote out Brandon. Sue told Matt she didn't want she was going to do. Despite not getting a clear answer, Matt felt somewhat confident, thinking he had Eve's vote for Will and Sue's for Brandon saying, "I'm also trying to get Sue to get to vote with me along with Brandon. This will be a very interesting Tribal Council coming up!" Sue toyed with the idea of voting for Brandon all day, but right before going to tribal council she talked to each tribe member. Matt commented that he thought Eve, who had failed them in the challenge, would be a better bet to go than Brandon. Eve was relatively quiet when Sue talked to her. Sue had an interesting conversation with Brandon and Will. She felt that she could be in danger of receiving the votes from the former Melkiys, who abandoned her the night before (Brandon, Will and Eve) and told them "Keep me because I can do the backstabbing since I am already labelled that and they can look rosy." Eventually, Brandon left to make sure the fire kept going and Sue once again consulted Will about tribal council and they disembarked with a handshake. At tribal council, every single person was feeling vulnerable. Brandon was nervous, because he knew Matt was working against him. Eve felt uneasy because of her poor performance in the challenge. Matt was worried that the former Mekliys and maybe even Sue would gang up on him. Sue, who was always nervous, felt that she was being lied to and the other night while they were alone the Melkiys had all agreed to vote for her. Lastly, Will was feeling vulnerable because his confrontation with Eve two days ago might have backfired on him. After the normal questioning, Brandon was the first to vote. Without hesitating, he wrote a name on his card and said, "This is a really hard vote, I like both of these people but I decided to stick with my original tribe and what will do better for me later." Sue came up next and thought about her vote for awhile, but finally stuffed it in the urn. Matt was up next. He wrote "EVE" down on his card and said, "My vote goes to Eve for many small reasons. She let us down in the challenge that we couldve won if she had [done her answer]. She also isn't fitting in well with tribe including Gluboko and Melkiy members." Eve voted next, leaving Will for last. He looked at his card for a minute before he realized he had to vote for Matt. He emphatically wrote "MATT" down on his card and said, "My vote is for Matt. I'm voting for you because I don't appreciate your pushy attitude, I don't appreciate your jumping to conlcusions, I don't appreciate your questioning of my integrity, I don't appreciate your trying to turn my tribemates against me behing my back, and I don't appreciate your implicit threatening of my position in the game. And for future reference 'I have to think about it' DOES NOT translate into 'I'm jumping on the band wagon! Count me in!'" Adam tallied the votes and began to reveal them:
"One vote for Matt, one vote for Eve."
"The sixth person voted out of Survivor: Balkhash is:"
Even though he anticipated the vote was still mad. He got up and silently, without looking back, got his torch snuffed. On his way out he extended his middle finger high towards Sue. The rest of the tribe headed back without their most controversial member.
Next week on SURVIVOR:
Both tribes begin to anticpate a merge and if they should implement new strategies.
MIKE: "We are going to be a tribe divided...well we would not be if that tribe was not such a bunch of losers."
KIM: "I just dont want to be backstabbed"
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