The last one to survive gets a million dollars.
What do you get?
Survivor
A lone boy was on the beach, crouching in the sand and digging up the dirt. Clothes torn to shreds and dirt smeared all over his face and body, one couldn't tell he was human but for the spindly limbs. A shock of long, drizzled brown hair ran from his head and down his back, filled with clogs of leaves, mud, and whatever else it happened to brush by.
Duo was looking for clams. Using his fingernails to scrape up the dirt, he dug until he hit something hard. Most of the time, they turned out to be rocks but if he was lucky, it would be another meal for his empty stomach.
Duo was lucky. There they were, two clams lying side by side, unaware of the fate that would befall them. Duo quickly snatched them up and placed them carefully in the palm leaf frond beside him. In it were others but the collection was pitifully small. Duo's stomach growled.
Duo reached up a grimy hand and scratched his head. There had been an itch in there all day. He wished that he had Quatre's shampoo with him. No, don't think that. He should be glad that Quatre wasn't here anymore but, still, life definitely had been easier with the Arabian.
He shook his head. Several pounds of dirt fell out of his hair and splatted onto the ground. Duo ignored them and continued digging. Maybe he could make a clam stew, or maybe even seasoned clam!
Or maybe he could just eat them raw.
When he thought he'd found enough clams for one meal, he stopped and looked around. Now, time to build a fire.
Gathering up sticks and leaves, he put them all together in one big pile.
He waited.
Why wasn't anything happening? He tried to remember how Quatre had done it. Did he rub two sticks together and poof!, instant fire? Yes, that must be it.
Placing two sticks together, he rubbed them against each other carefully.
Nothing happened.
He rubbed again. Coupled with the hot sun shining down, a little smoke came out this time, but it wasn't enough.
He threatened it.
This time, a tiny spark appeared on the end. Now what?
He threatened it some more.
The spark leapt to a small flame.
That's more like it, Duo thought, and carefully placed leaves in front of it and watched his fire grow. Soon, it enveloped his entire pile of twigs and so he went looking for more bigger ones.
He dumped them all into the fire and watched as it grew bigger and bigger. Now that was more like it.
He threatened it some more for good measure, then went to get his clams. Placing them close to the fire, he watched in satisfaction as they instantly popped open, innards sizzling. He rolled them carefully towards him and tried it. Hmmm, still needs a little something.
He got up and went to the water. Cupping his hands, he scooped some out and carefully dripped the salty sea water onto his clams.
Much better.
He scratched at his head again. He definitely had to do something about that itch.
After finishing the clams, he dusted off his hands and got up. Now, to do something about that hair.
Still scratching, he headed off to the oasis.
After rinsing out his hair, Duo looked up.
What was that smell? He didn't think it was Relena because it didn't smell like rotten eggs. More like...the time when he overheated his gundam's engine.
His nose sniffed out the direction. It was coming from the beach.
Duo squinted. Yes, there was indeed a trail of smoke coming from beyond the trees.
No, wait a sec. They were coming from the trees.
And the only other person of whom he knew was making fires was...himself!
Duo quickly ran to the beach, circling around the trees on the outside. Smoke was curling out from the spaces to his left and he coughed, sticking his hair across his face to keep from breathing the smoke in.
When he finally got to the beach, twenty metres down from his original campfire site, he stopped.
He stared.
The entire line of trees on his side of the beach were on fire. Oops. And it was quickly spreading inward and towards the other half.
Duo tried threatening it. It worked the last time and the fire listened to him.
"Hey, you, you...uh...fire! Come back down here! Stop! Stop burning! Aaarrrrghh...noooooo! Not that way!" Duo cried as the fire burned even more ferociously than before.
Duo stood dumbfounded as the entire island was swamped in flames. And the worst part was, his head was still itchy.
Duo reached up to scratch his scalp when a familiar figure burst from the trees. It was Wufei. He was holding an arm across his face and coughing into it repeatedly. His once nice silk duds now had little burn holes all over them, showing more skin than fabric. His hair was singed and now his slick ponytail burst out in all directions, looking just like the powder puff brush from Relena's makeup case.
Still coughing, he bumped blindly into Duo, sending them both sprawling onto the sand.
Duo was about to get up when Wufei grabbed up what was left of Duo's shirt and tackled him down, shaking him like a little rag doll.
"What...have...you...done...?" Wufei panted as he banged Duo's head repeatedly into the sand. Then, realizing that Duo wouldn't be able to answer that way, stopped, a hand still clutched around Duo's ripped collar to start again.
Duo sputtered and spit out several mouthfuls of sand before he spoke. "Wha..." he asked, still dazed.
Wufei grabbed Duo's face in answer and wrenched it so that Duo was looking directly at the fire.
"Oeerrr. Tvaaaa." Duo said. His lips were puckered up from Wufei's tight hold on his cheeks, making him resemble a fish.
Wufei let go in disgust and stood up. He tried to maintain as much dignity as he could from interacting with someone so weak but it was hard when his clothes had so many holes in them that they showed his red boxers underneath.
Duo slowly got to his feet and looked around raggedly. For some reason, Wufei was yelling at him again but he had no idea what the guy was saying. "What?" he yelled back.
Wufei continued yelling. This time, he was pointing to his ears and gesturing.
"Oh!" Duo yelled. He tipped his head to the side and started pounding on it, letting the sand drop out of his other ear. Much better.
"...and now look what you've done!" Wufei was continuing.
Duo nodded, even though he had no idea what Wufei had said before.
Wufei seemed to like his answer because now he allowed Duo in his line of vision.
So, side by side, they waited the fire out.
And waited and waited and waited.
The fires were still raging when the stars came out, heralding night.
"Hey, at least we'll be warm," Duo said cheerily, then ducked when Wufei tried to slap him.
They slept that night huddled by the water.
They woke up the next morning hungry and shivering. Wufei managed to catch a crab but glared when Duo tried to eat some. Duo shrugged and started digging for his clams, cracking them open on rocks and eating them raw.
Wufei watched in disgust as Duo scratched his hair. Then his eyes rolled wide in surprise, when he found that his own head was itchy. With all the willpower he could manage, he kept his hand clutching the crab leg, squeezing so hard that it crushed in his grasp. His face was twisted in his struggle, and Duo looked up, noticing his sour expression.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
Finally, Wufei couldn't take it any longer and he scratched his scalp mightily. His crab lay beside him, forgotten, as he just scratched his head. He scratched and scratched.... There was no end to this itch!
Duo came over and crouched in front of him. His hand snaked to Wufei's crab but Wufei slapped his hand away. Duo shrugged, then said, "You know, it gets better if you don't scratch so much."
Wufei glared, then his eyes widened in revelation. He looked really scary when he did that. "You...," he sputtered, "...you are the one who has given me this itch! You and your...your...lice!" Wufei spat the last word, then continued scratching.
"Lice?" Duo scratched his head. He smiled. "So that's what it was!" Then he continued digging for more clams.
Arrrrggg, was there no end to this frustration? Wufei stalked over to the water. Duo watched him. One second, he was standing there, gazing out onto the horizon, and the next, he dunked his head underwater. He looked like one of those ostriches.
Duo counted the minutes. One minute...two.... When Duo got to three, he got really worried. He was almost to four when Wufei gasped and finally flung his head up. A look of relief crossed both their faces. Then Wufei's face twisted in consternation and he dunked his head under again.
This time Duo didn't even bother counting. Instead, he just leaned against a rock, hands behind his head and baked in the sun.
By now, the fire had burned itself out. All that was left was a thick jungle of blackened palm trees and miles of soot. The only thing laying untouched was the beach and the huge mountain of rock on the other end.
And to think this all came from one untended campfire.
Duo shrugged. Not his problem.
This routine continued on for several days. By the time the boat arrived on the horizon to take one of them away, empty crab husks lay up and down the beach and there were so many holes in the ground that one had to be careful about their next step.
It was this littered and pockmarked island that the men saw when they pulled up to shore. Behind, looming in the background, where before there was a luscious jungle paradise, now lay a forest of demented, blackened trunks. The men sighed and shook their heads.
Standing in front of the island waiting patiently was a person and...the closest word that the men could think of was an animal but even that was giving the thing too much credit. Their hearts skipped a beat when the thing suddenly lashed out an arm and started scratching its head. They shivered.
"Hey!" Duo cried. He stopped scratching and started waving to the men. He saw them shy back.
From between the men burst Quatre. He had been hidden behind their bodies and now he was running towards Duo, the same starry-eyed gaze on his face just like last week. Duo took a step back but the men quickly grabbed Quatre's shoulders and hauled him back a safe distance from the "animal".
"Is there a Duo here?" the man not holding the video camera asked, looking into the trees behind them.
Wufei sniffed and pointed a thumb at the "animal". The men did a double take. Duo smile and waved again. They shuddered.
"Well, uh, Duo," the first man said, still disbelieving that that was the same happy boy that first arrived on the island. "You're coming with us."
"What?" Duo said. He couldn't believe what he just heard. "I'm off? No more? Fini? Just like that?" Duo looked totally shocked, of what could be seen of his face through his mop of hair. "What about my fans?" Duo asked as a last ditch attempt.
The men pointed at Quatre. Quatre smiled.
"I requested that you be brought back to the mainland," he said, as if he thought he was doing Duo a favour.
"What? You can't just do that! Can he?" he quickly asked the men, desperation in his eyes. Or what could be seen of them.
The men wouldn't meet his gaze, but just shuffled their feet awkwardly. They had been bribed. Quatre's wealth could easily accommodate for that arrangement.
"But that's not fair!" Duo cried. "I want my million dollars!"
Quatre immediately came up to him and whipped out a checkbook. "A million dollars?" he asked, like it was only fifty cents. He wrote Duo a check right on the spot. He handed it to Duo and Duo looked down at it.
In Quatre's familiar loopy handwriting, it said "one million dollars", paid to the order of - Duo quickly scrawled in his name - from the Raberba Family Holdings.
Duo looked up, dumbfounded. Never in his life had he held so much money in his grubby hands. "Where do you want me to go?" he asked dazedly.
Quatre grinned and dragged Duo over to the boat. Duo sat down, still shocked and allowed Quatre to pick the stuff out of his hair while he stared at the check in his hands, just stared.
"What about me?" Wufei asked angrily. "Since the weakling Maxwell's off, I'm the only one left so I should be winning a million dollars now."
The men shook their heads. "Sorry," the speaker said. "You don't know that yet. There's still Trowa to consider."
"But Trowa is---"
Then men were already in their boat and rowing away. The Raberba boy was still fawning all over that Maxwell character and by now that weakling Maxwell realized what he was doing and started to fight him off. The boat rocked dangerously with their movements.
Wufei scowled and turned around, looking at the blackened remnants of the jungle.
Where was Trowa?
Who Wins?