We Do A Little Bending Of The Truth

**We Do A Little Bending Of The Truth** is the ninth episode of MintORGs Season 2: Mushroom Kingdom.

## Story

This episode saw a *"De-Merge"* as the castaways are split into 2 teams of 5, each aiming for individual immunity within their team, with 2 players getting voted out in this episode. The cast were separated into East - Luma and West - Luma.

**East Luma**

Despite Corn corn saying he wanted to do damage control last round, he failed to do so (busy from irl stuff), resulting in a huge distrust on Sanin's side in which he started to target Corn Corn, resulting in Corn Corn receiving 2 votes this round. It surprised Corn Corn as Sanin was someone he wanted to work with, and they were in fact killing each other instead. In the end, Evan & Sbeve chose to protect him, leading to a Sanin boot.

Evan has been planning for the FTC in-sight and plans to reach FTC with Corn Corn and Chelsea, thinking that he could beat both of them in a Jury vote easily. He was approached by Sanin with a plan to boot Corn Corn. He was shocked that the Luigi's actually are turning on each other despite having a numbers advantage. He was conflicted between who to vote, Corn Corn or Sanin and ultimately chose to boot Sanin as he was the bigger threat.

Kelly squeaked out an immunity and is guaranteed F8. She pondered about the auctiin item and is curious about whatever Jax and Sbeve received in the treasure chests, also if Jiv got an extra vote or not. She followed the plan in which Sanin had but unfortunately had to see Sanin, her closest ally, leave the game after a 3-2 vote.

Sanin was detrimented at Sully's exit and felt betrayed by Corn Corn, and his suspicion and distrusts were heightened when Corn Corn tried to play both sides as Corn Corn approached him to vote Evan and approached Evan to vote Sanin, and the latter was leaked by Evan to him. However, despite all efforts to push the vote onto Corn Corn, Sanin was voted out in a 3-2 vote, ending his run here in MintOrgs: Mushroom Kingdom.

Coming into the De-Merge, Sbeve wanted to vote out Corn Corn or Kelly as the former is questionable in terms of long-term loyalty, whilst the latter is firmly not on his side. However, he saw an opportunity when Sanin approached Evan about a possible Corn Corn vote. He noticed Sanin's high threat level both strategically and in competition-wise. Hence, he used the conversation Sanin had with Evan as an "ammo"" against Sanin, convincing Corn Corn and thereby Evan as well, voting Sanin out ultimately. Moving forward, he hopes to solidify an ally in Corn Corn and build more trust in Evan.

**West Luma**

Before the split happened, Chelsea was approached by Kelly to "stick with Xander", to which she followed through as she viewed Kelly as one of her closest ally in the game. Her and Shaun were the MVP's this round as they put together a scheme and plan to "gaslight", "gatekeep" and ultimately blindside either Jax or Jiv. As much as they wanted Jiv out and have been exposing and trashing Jiv's gameplay, Jiv won immunity and they had to settle for Jax. In the end, their schemes went well as Jax was blindsided in a 3-1-1-1 vote, with an idol ended up unused in his pocket. Chelsea started the game at the bottom, but she has been able to make great use of her inter-tribal bonds to have survived several rounds and also climbed to a position where she could make moves and have some agency.

Jax seemingly got a great split as he was aligned with both Shaun and Jiv the last vote. For this vote, he also wants to work with the same people, but preferred voting Chelsea out and hopefully flushes Xander's idol. He stuck his neck out to save Xander, however, Xander, Chelsea and Shaun aligned together this vote, and blindsided him with an idol in his pocket.

Jiv was the power player last episode, making a huge move to blindside Sully. However, that also exposed his gameplay as several of the former Luigi's, as well as Chelsea, knew about what happened. He was the initial target of the newly formed trio, but escaped elimination by crushing the immunity challenge. In the end, he voted for Shaun, which was part of the trio's to split Jiv and Jax's votes. In the end, his ally Jax was voted out.

Shaun is playing a very multi-sided game, seemingly going wherever benefits him the most. This time, he wanted Chelsea to stay, and saw an opportunity to possibly take out a threat in Jiv or Jax, so he jumped at the opportunity and formed an alliance between himself, Chelsea and Xander. The trio came up with several plans, including faking a rivalry between Chelsea and Shaun, and more. In the end, they were able to pull off a major blindside on an idol holder in Jax, whom no one besides himself knew had an idol prior to his exit. He seemingly achieved his goal of forming an ally in Xander, as well as getting close to Chelsea, his ideal FTC compatriot.