“Dearest M,

I’m glad to see you’re still going strong. Send my salutations to the rest of the team. I wish I could offer you something else beyond my well-wishes but with your recent successes, the other players in this game have seen fit to tighten the leash on exactly how much I can say...As if matters any more…

In any case, I’ll leave the rest to you. Don’t die, my love. I don’t trust the ‘respawn’ function in this game not to come with transcription errors.

Love, Monty.”

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Margot read through the missive. Turning it backward and forward as if expecting some secret text to appear. She even used her interfaces optical scanning functions to check for visual artifacts on the paper, just in case Monty had intended her to literally read between the lines of his message

When no such secrets were forthcoming she sighed and shook her head. The size of the missives had been shrinking since that third day and now they’d finally reached the point of being simple letters from home.

Margot stood and stretched. Feeding the door-beast its daily meal of aether. She then went to the other bunks of the small cabin to rouse her exhausted and world-weary teammates.

Margot assessed her own mood and her plans for the coming evening and found that there were no changes. Monty was right, she had this. The game was already all but one. She just needed to last the next four nights without letting the Green Cabin get wiped out.

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Unsurprisingly, the green cabin lost the game of Marco-Polo. Margot didn’t mind. The “winners” in the red cabin ended up permanently losing all but one of their members. They’d ended up being ‘it’ too many times, and the deaths from burning out still counted as genuine deaths.

The surviving Red Wolf had gained a boost to his costume’s powers and the right to remain in his cabin for the next two days. Now it was the ninth day, the ninth phase of the competition, and the Red Wolf was out and about. His aura setting his surroundings ablaze as he lazily meandered through the camp.

The Red Wolf was no longer nearly as cuddly and adorable as he’d once been. The upgrade to his power had turned him into a macabre creature of bone, metal, and smoldering flames as the heat generated by his costume’s abilities cooked him from the inside out.

The red cabin wasn’t the only cabin missing campers. The orange cabin’s reggae-pigs, the yellow cabin’s basketball ducks had taken more than a few permanent losses as well. With the orange cabin down to two campers and the yellow cabin down to three.

While the other cabins still had all their campers, Margot’s teammates had been keeping track of the number of deaths experienced by those other cabins. According to the young scion, the members of those other teams were all down to their last lives.

The only exceptions to this were themselves, the googly-eyed cuttlefish of the green cabin, and the eerie, skirt-wearing, angler-fish in the violet cabin.

“Morning...Or I guess...Evening?” said Thomas. Joining Margot where she stood on the small dirt walkway in front of the cabin.

“Nh...Morning,” said Margot. Looking upwards at a moon that was as bright as a sun.

“It’s the ninth night already...the game’s almost over. How’re you feeling, boss lady?” said Ashley. Joining the other two in front of the cabin.

“I’m fine...Wait...B-, Boss lady?”

“Well, you’re the one who’s been guiding us through this shit show since day one,” said Thomas.

“Oh...Uh, thanks,” said Margot. Awkwardly fidgeting inside her plush costume.

“Morning, all...So what do think our kind counselor is going to throw at us next?” said Henrietta. Emerging from the cabin and joining the rest of the group.

“Dunno...It’ll probably be fucking terrible,” said Thomas. Spitting to the side, and then regretting it, because she still hadn’t been able to take off the costume. Meaning that spit had nowhere to go besides back in his own face.

“Is it me, or are the folks from the other cabins giving us the bad eye?” said Ashley.

The group fell silent as they saw that many of the people from the other cabins were standing in their walkways and a lot of them were turning their big cotton stuffed heads in the green cabin’s direction.

“How do you know they're giving us the bad eye? We can’t see anyone’s face. No one can see anyone’s face here.” said Thomas.

“It’s a feeling…” said Henrietta. Answering for Ashley because she could feel it too. That all too familiar sense that she was being measured like a calf brought forward for weighing and slaughter.

“Nh...You might be right...I was kind of hoping that creepy vibe I was getting was just because of the costumes but if it's something their doing...that’s definitely not a good thing.” said Thomas.

“Is this going to be a problem?” said Ashley.

“Yes...But I’m on top of it,” said Margot. Scanning the crowd that was gathering on the lawn. Her green, plush tentacled, form, crackling with electricity as a warning in case someone tried to start something.

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“Hello, campers...It’s the ninth flipping night! Who’s ready to party like its 1999!” said Fishel. Doing his best impression of a wacky, waving, inflatable tube man, as per usual.

The campers were all gathered in front of the main building, standing in the castle-like structure's foreboding shadow. Fishel stood on the porch surrounded by a pile of backpacks. With bedrolls on the top and conspicuous red bundles of cylinders on the bottom.

Naturally, there was no one present who could match the man-fish’s enthusiasm. All the campers were impatient to see what terrible thing would be inflicted upon them today. And the man-fish was pretty much a poster child for sugar (and/or amphetamine) abuse.

“Guess what you’re gonna be doing today, guys…”

There was no response from the crowd.

“Camping!” said Fishel. Still failing to draw a response from the crowd.

“I know, right?! Here we are in a camp and you guys have never gone into the big beautiful woods. Well, we’re going to fix that today!” said Fishel. Laughing his high-pitched laugh and revealing a mouth filled with far too many teeth and a tongue that surprisingly enough had its own mouthful of teeth... Gleaming white, perfectly straight, oddly human, teeth.