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((Alaska Ferguson continued from Champions 202))

So everything was going fine. They were searching for cocaine and that was all good. It was a distraction sure, but it was also about as far as Alaska's care and effort could reasonably be asked to go. It was incredible how so few words had managed to totally and utterly fuck her entire day. It was a surgical strike and she didn't appreciate it. But she had remained quiet on the subject.

Eventually, her mind would break and she would ask Sylvain if he'd had any contact with their mentor...oh wait she couldn't because he'd left too. None of her team stuck around her and she hated it. It was exactly why she was going to stick with Laura. Laura wouldn't ditch her no matter what happened.

So, CocaineQuest 2021.

Alaska didn't hate it. But she wasn't fully invested, it was more Laura's thing. But she stuck with Laura, they were best friends after all, and having some cocaine seemed like a good time.

Alaska knew there would probably be some questions about her actions but the way she saw it there was a sound strategy at play. First off, they were in a group and groups were always safer, people were less likely to attempt to fuck with you if you had a group. Second, they weren't directly engaging anyone or looking for a fight, and being able to glide around the arena and not have to engage in any fights was good for their chances. No fights meant no chances to be hurt and no ways to get fucked up, and Alaska was a fan of not getting fucked up, physically, she was a fan of not getting fucked up physically.

She fully planned to get fucked up on cocaine if they found any.

There was also the shot of rum in her bag that she could whip out whenever things got dire, or if it became clear there would be no cocaine in their future.

Speaking of.

"Hey, Laura! Where exactly are we headed?"

((Laura Hakštok continued from Time Out))

Man, fuck the jetties.

Not literally of course, ya fucking weirdos; Laura didn’t even know how you’d go about doing that, but if her experience on the internet had taught her anything, there was a fetish for literally goddamn everybody. Odds were there was a Mr. Hands out there but for, like, jetties and boardwalks and shit like that.

Wow, this train of thought had very quickly left the station to who-fucking-knew where, Christ. The point, the initial point, was that the jetties sucked major ass and Laura kinda hated them. Like, what was the point of them? Don’t answer that, dipshit, it was rhetorical, like yes, obviously, it was to allow contestants to get from ship to ship while tethering them all together, but, like, lash ‘em together with chains? Just put a ladder on the side of each boat and force everybody to swim. Nobody wanted to see kids wandering around on metal sheets all day when the alternative options were a pirate ship or a fucking yacht.

And if you couldn’t swim? Tough fucking tits, better learn fast, bitch!

But if Laura was gonna be honest - which she was, cause why change the habits of a lifestyle, and also it was kinda funny - the other big reason she hated the jetties right now was because she was kinda fuckin’ lost on them? Well, maybe not lost, per say, but she hadn’t totally been paying attention to where she was going, and she didn’t even have a fucking concrete goal in mind to go to, so she’d kinda just been leading them from here to the horizon, totally goddamn aimless, hoping that they’d stumble upon a hint - and a hit - sooner rather than later.

Seemed like she’d been rumbled, though, cause Alaska was bitching about the lack of cocaine, which, classic ‘Laska. She was always the first one to get on tilt when a Champions game was going badly, and the one to start coughing up a lung whenever she took a particularly harsh drag. Her girl was emotional as sin. Laura guessed it was beneficial for her egirl shit; you couldn’t show up on stream with your fuckin’, whatever, big tiddy thicc mommy milkers getup or tsundere highschool cheerleader bullshit if you couldn’t get that energy across. Another benefit to Laura not giving a shit about literally anything in the universe; nobody wanted a boring bitch like her unless they were goth, so whenever she turned up on Alaska’s stream she was making her bestie stand out even more and letting her rake in the thirstbucks. She was really too goddamn nice, she knew.

Actually, no, she knew for a fact that there were dudes out there who were so thirsty they were absolutely begging for tsundere-lite, girls with no tits who couldn’t even muster up the energy to hate you and were just kinda bored of your presence in general. Yes, Laura had personal experience there. Yes, it was just as fucking funny as it sounded, both times.

“Y’know, that’s a real good question, ‘laska,” Laura said, coming to a stop and stretching her arms until there was a satisfying popping sound. She slipped her glasses off her face and started to clean them, using the bandana tied around her hair as a makeshift cloth, speaking into her collar as she looked down at the lenses.

“Yo, Jewel babes! You got any more updates on the coke I should know about? You probably see the whole-ass party I’ve got wandering around looking for this bitch.”

She put her glasses back on, immediately ruining all her hard work by smudging her thumb against the glass as she adjusted them.

“Also just throwing this out there, if you tell me it’s already all gone, I’m gonna fuckin’ pull my collar right here and now.”

(Sergio Gallo continued from Time Out)

Sergio hadn't thought about the fact it would take actual work to find the cocaine. It was kinda bullshit. They had given everyone shots of alcohol as part of their gear, would they not have gotten better ratings if everyone got an eight-ball of cocaine too? Just have the whole class going Scarface on one another.

Whatever. Maybe he'd need to leave the group at some point. He didn't like Sylvain. He wasn't sure why. He just knew that he wasn't Sergio's kind of guy.

But Laura was listening to her mentor, which he supposed was smart. But also her mentor was Jewel, and she wasn't suggesting murder, so that was weird.

"You know, Jewel isn't as hot as people say, but I'd still do her."

What? It came up naturally.

Laura’s eyebrow raised a fraction above the rim of her glasses, glancing just enough to the side that Sergio knew she was looking at him, and judging him real fucking hard. Like, wow, thanks for the contribution dude, way to make yourself look like the world’s biggest fucking incel on a TV show watched by billions. Jewel was hot as fuck, she probably had bitches lining up round the block to try and simp for her, but hey, maybe she’d bump you up in the pecking order after hearing you’d be willing to give her a pity fuck.

Luckily, the woman of the hour arrived before Sergio could shove his foot any further into his mouth (he looked like the kinda dude who’d be into that sorta thing, actually, fucking freako). Didn’t exactly sound like she was bearing fantastic news, though, and given she’d been questioned about one thing and one thing alone, well, didn’t take a genius to figure out they were up shit creek without a bag of coke. As the old saying went.

“Please excuse my cohort’s shit tier opinions, Jewel,” Laura said, angling her thumb towards Sergio. “Or don’t, he’s not on our team, you can call him a cunt if you want.”

She smirked, then sighed, and hooked her fingers under her collar, waiting for the inevitable. Oh, calm the fuck down, everyone knew the collars were too sturdy to explode just by pullin’ them, it had been like that for god knows how many seasons now. Christ, trust a girl to handle stable explosives safely already, jesus.

“Let’s get this over with, then, get the bad shit outta the way. My bad shit first, obviously.”

There was a long, long pause, as Laura sucked air in through her teeth. She rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes, face angled down towards the deck.

“Well. Cunts,” she said, after another long pause.

So this was utter shite, but also, not exactly unexpected. Turned out running all over the goddamn place with nothing to show for it hadn’t been the best goddamn idea in the universe, but in her defence, what the fuck else was she supposed to do? She got it, she got that the mentors couldn’t tell their team where anybody else was, ‘oooooh gotta keep up that competitive integrity and shit uwu!!!!!’ but it was still a major pain in the dick. The fact the coke was in some other loser’s hands was a bit more of a surprise; she’d figured the bad news would have been that it’d already all gone, or chucked into the water or something like that.

Which left one of two options; that her coke-toting teammate had just decided to hand the coke over to someone else at random cause they were a pussy-ass bitch who couldn’t handle even the tiniest high before fighting for their life, or they were a dead-ass bitch, who had already bitten it this early. And Laura couldn’t say she was a fucking fan of either option!

“Well, that sucks major horse dick, but whatever. It’s whatever. Guess we’re planning a heist now instead, whoo, fuckin’ cool. Least I have the explosives for it.”

She folded her arms and tilted her head. Her face maintained an expression of utter boredom, something people had a tendency to call ‘resting bitch face’ which no, fuck you, it had taken years of dedication to give this little a shit about anything, she wasn’t about to be reduced down to just another RBF slut.

“What’s the other bad news, then?”

((Sylvain Kessler continued from I'm a bad dream/That I just had today))

So, fun fact: wearing cold, wet clothes for a long time is a great way to catch hypothermia! This was a fact that Sylvain had been aware of in the vaguest sense, something he'd occasionally seen people succumb to on SOTF but had never given much thought to, because it was a lame way to die. The thought hadn't crossed his mind, when he finally got up to trudge around in search of whatever trail his group might have left. He wasn't in a cold environment, so he'd dry off in a little while and the worst thing he had to deal with would be chafing jeans. Right?

Yeah. Yeeeah. By the time Sylvain had stumbled around enough to catch sight of a gathering of people who looked kind of sort of like the people he was looking for, his teeth were well on their way to starting an all-percussion band and the rest of his skeleton was providing accompaniment in the form of violent shivering. He had peeled off his vest and was carrying it loosely in one hand, gun in the other (and that was still wet too, and he was just going to choose to believe that it wasn't going to cause problems). His socks were still squishing around in his boots, rubbing his toes raw just like his jeans were doing to the inside of his legs. All his muscles were stiff and protesting as he dragged them along.

"Hey!" His voice cracked when he called out, and his lungs shuddered. He wasn't sure it carried to the group ahead, so he tried again. "Hey! Assholes!"

As he staggered closer, he was pretty sure that he recognized Sergio's boxy form first and then Laura's stupid getup, so like, at least they weren't going to spin around and shoot him for yelling. That would also be pretty lame, after the whole escape sequence deal he'd just gone through.

Boom. Roasted.

Sergio knew in this moment, that if he survived, this would be part of any locker room banter for the rest of his life. After all, how often did a guy get torn apart on TV for only being six feet tall?.

Even so, his face was a bit red. He hadn't really expected Jewel to respond and it wasn't really cool to comment on a woman's looks in public. His dad had told him that much. It was a good reminder that Sergio wasn't just chilling with his friends when he said that kind of thing these days.

Even so, it was funny. Like Jewel, come on, he hadn't said he wanted to date her, just that he'd do her, so why comment about herself wearing heels.

If Max were here she would have found this hilarious-aww. Shit. Now it was just sad.

He didn't respond to Jewel. The fun of it all was gone.

Eventually a familiar voice called out. Sylvain had come back eventually.

"What happened to you, dipshit," he called back.

So taking stock, not much had changed really. In good news, Sylvain had returned to the group. In bad news, he was fucking soaking wet for some reason?

Also, the coke was with someone else not on Laura's team, which didn't mean much in the grand scheme of things because they were all from different teams anyway. Oh, and Jewel had burned Sergio which had been kind of funny.

But hey, a heist sounded fun right?

It was basically a victimless crime.

But onto Sylvain and his general soaking wetness. Obviously, something had happened there and clearly, it had involved him falling into the ocean. It sounded like a fun story.

"Yeah, why are you soaking wet?" She asked, realizing as she did so that she already knew the answer.

"Also, do you need a towel?"

Snrk.

Okay, Cocaine Quest had very quickly been switched to Hard Mode - hey, nice r/showerthoughts post, asshole, the Reddit Gold and adoration of every sweaty neckbeard would be arriving in the mail shortly - but some benevolent god had decided to shine down a ray of hope onto her, and their herald had been none other than Jewel Evans herself.

First, the so-called ‘bad news’ was nothing more than her calling Sergio out for being the incel loser that he apparently was, pointing out exactly how unlikely the chances were that the multi-million dollar winner of Survival of the Fittest was gonna wanna bang yet another gym rat from Miami, which, hey, had been exactly the fucking point Laura had been thinking of. Maybe they were, like, twins separated at birth or something, or they had some kinda mindmeld bullshit going on.

But then, the delicious frosting on top of this cake made entirely of schadenfreude turned up; Sylvain and his dumbass face, abso-fucking-lutely sopping wet from head to toe, looking goddamn uncannily like a drowned rat. She didn’t have a clue what had happened to him since he’d slipped away from the group - she had noticed him slinking off a while back, but she just kinda hadn’t felt like telling the others - and honestly, she didn’t really care. Because the whys and hows didn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that Sylvain Kessler looked like a total moron right now, and that sparked joy in Laura’s shriveled little blackened heart.

She stifled a snort laugh, then remembered that she didn’t actually need to care about holding back, and burst into peals of raucous laughter, doubling over with her hands on her knees, hoping to God that the cameras were focused on her right now.

“Jesus fuckin’ christ, dude, you both look like total fuckin’ dumbasses right now, ohh my God.”

She managed to get the words out, even as her laughter threatened to shake them into fucking dust, before she looked up, wiping a tear from her eye with her index finger.

“Like, oh fuck, I didn’t think either of you could look even more stupid-”

She pronounced the word with a very hard and pronounced ‘oo’ sound, making it come out as ridiculous as the boys both had to feel right now, boom, fuckin’ gottem again.

“- than you usually do, but wow, holy shit, wow am I glad you could fucking prove me wrong.”

Laura dissolved into another fit of harsh laughter, vaguely flapping her hand in the direction of her so-true-bestie.

“Alaska, ‘laska, bitch, gimme your shoulder or something babes, I think imma ‘bout to puke in a sec.”

There once was a girl named Laura. In terms of problems, she had a plethora. Sylvain could have said something about how begging for a friend to lean on while she puked was probably just a regular weekend for Laura but honestly she might take that as some kind of compliment? His brain was too frozen to make it work.

He closed the distance to the group with a gait that was more of a stumble than a stalk, and he sat down heavily on the nearest piece of debris laying around that didn't look like it would give him ass tetanus. "F-fuck off," he muttered, gesturing vaguely in Laura's direction with the gun like he had the day before, though this time she wasn't even looking at it. He dropped his vest on the jetty next to him, dropped the gun on top of it, and wasted no further time in doubling over and yanking his sodden boots and socks off his feet. His numb, shaking fingers made it harder than it needed to be, and he winced as the fabric chafed against his raw skin, but the relief of his feet being free from their cold, wet confinement was immediate.

Sylvain sat hunched over for a minute, just breathing. His t-shirt was sticking to him, clinging to every bump of his ribs and his spine, like the water soaked in it was determined to find a way in through his skin as well and freeze him solid. "Fuckin' nice," he mumbled, almost more to himself than to the rest of them.

"Ugh. Y-yeah, I c-could use a towel. Yeah." He looked up at Sergio. "Gimme some dry clothes." Like hell Sylvain was going with whatever other dumb getup Laura or Alaska had in their bags.

No answer. That was fucking boring. Still, Sergio hadn't kept wearing his wet clothes either so fair enough.

"Say please," he muttered as he started rummaging through his bag.

It didn't really matter. He just wasn't that glad to have Sylvain back. The guy was a pain and Sergio didn't trust him.

He tossed Sylvain the pink track pants and t-shirt.

Man, Sergio had really pulled the shitty team color on this.

Good thing they had given him the matador outfit or he'd be looking almost as silly as Sylvain was about to.

Alaska's pack was opened and she fished around for her towel, she had used it to make her amazing bed, nest, den thing so she knew it was in the bag somewhere. After a couple of seconds of directionless grasping, she located the item and pulled it free.

"Here you go!" She said, tossing it over to Sylvain before being then pulled into the radius of general Lauraness as she laughed at the combined misfortune of both of their companions. Which, granted, was funny. Jewel had dunked all over Sergio and Sylvain had somehow managed to fall into the ocean. That meant they all existed in a reality where she and Laura were the most competent members of the group, which, fucking oof dudes.

She moved over next to her bestie to give her some support, lest she fell over from laughing too much, which was a possibility. As she did so she raised a hand to cover up her own smile at the misfortune of their compatriots. Laura's laughter was infectious and threatening to make her burst out in her own laughing fit.

"But, yeah, what happened to you dude?"