Talk Like a Quitter, Lose Like a Quitter

**Talk Like a Quitter, Lose Like a Quitter** is the season premiere of *Survivor: Acahualla*.

## Story

### Marooning

Traveling aboard two trucks, one carrying the men and the other carrying the women, eighteen players are being marooned in the jungles of Acahualla for a shot of winning a million dollars.

The trucks arrive at the destination, an open field in the jungle where there are three colored mats on the ground. The eighteen players start making their way out of their trucks as the host greets and introduces the castaways to the season.

The castaways all clap and cheer before the host announces that they would soon be divided up into three tribes of six. The Higashi tribe, which will always wear purple, consists of Ayer, Kroos, May, Mr. N, Orchid, and Sesa. Next was the blue-colored Kazdel tribe, made up of Amiya, Courier, Elysium, Gitano, Mountain, and Saga. And finally, the remaining six players, Aak, Beagle, Hung, Jaye, Saria, and W, would form the Lungmen tribe, which will always wear orange.

 Aak, Beagle, Hung, Jaye, Saria, W

The players go to their tribe mats and are given a brief moment to meet each other. On the Lungmen mat, Saria and W are both particularly thrilled to be put together.

The attention shifts back to the host, who announces that they will be competing in a challenge for reward right away, much to the player's surprise.

### Reward Challenge

For the reward challenge, all six members (one at a time) must traverse through an obstacle course and then across a balance beam in order to reach a large sandpit. There, the player must dig up one sandbag and place it on their tribe table at the end of the course and then the next person will go. Each member may bring back one, and only one, sandbag back. Once the tribe has all six sandbags, one member from the tribe must then toss the six sandbags in order to land them onto six very narrow podiums, each podium at varying heights. The first tribe to land all six sandbags without falling off will win a **fire-making kit**, meanwhile, the other two tribes will receive nothing, not even a flint, giving the winning tribe a major lead in the game. The position for each tribe are as followed:

Each of the tribes get on their starting mat as the host begins counting down the challenge.

All three tribes start off almost equal to one another, as the first two members from each tribe are able to retrieve their sandbags around the same time, though Lungmen has a slight lead over the other two tribes. However on the third sandbag, both Kroos and Saria struggle on the course and take a lot of time, allowing Elysium to pass both of them and reach the sandpit. Although Elysium manages to find his sandbag with relative ease, he continues to dig for the other sandbags that are buried even deeper, this allowing both Kroos and Saria to catch up and even pass Elysium. May and W both also manage to get their sandbags and lap Elysium, who digs up the final sandbag for Kazdel shortly after; Elysium leaves the sandbags he dug up at the very top of the sandbag and leaves them for the rest of his tribe to come and pick up, to which the host even comments on.

Both Orchid and Hung struggle to find their sandbags, as they're buried much deeper and it's harder to determine where their previous tribe members have and have not searched. This allows for Kazdel to breeze past them as Mountain, Amiya, and Courier don't have to dig for theirs and they bring their remaining sandbags to the table and can start tossing them onto the podiums. This notably annoys Orchid the most.

Hung soon finds his sandbag and takes second place for Lungmen and Jaye soon goes after. After a few attempts of tossing, Amiya manages to land the first two in back to back tosses. She is unable to connect any sandbags the attempts after, as most of them go on and off the podium. Orchid finally finds her sandbag and has a bit of trouble pulling it out, due to exhaustion. Mr. Nothing finally starts the course but goes at a really slow pace, as if not even trying in the challenge.

Jaye finds the final sandbag for Lungmen and they can start tossing their sandbags now too, which Beagle starts tossing and miraculously lands the first one on her first try. Amiya starts to feel tired and asks to switch out, to which Mountain takes over. Beagle lands her second sandbag after a couple more tries, tying Lungmen up with Kazdel.

Mr. N *finally* gets across the beam and starts digging in the sandpit. Meanwhile, Beagle lands her third sandbag, to which Mountain does the same shortly after -- and then landing the fourth in the next toss, extending Kazdel's lead. At this point, Mr. N completely gives up digging and just sits back.

The entire Higashi tribe tries to encourage Mr. N to continue, to no avail as he says that there's no point. Upon saying that Mountain lands the final two sandbags for Kazdel, winning them the challenge!

The host congratulates Kazdel for winning the reward and tells them that their fire-making kit will be waiting back at camp for them, to which they give them the map to the Kazdel camp and tells them to head out. The host then looks to Lungmen, telling that they win nothing for this reward and hands them the map to Lungmen camp.

Higashi isn't immediately dismissed from the challenge site, as the host discuss their performance for a moment, specifically Mr. Nothing.

They hand Higashi the map and the tribe is dismissed from the challenge site.

### Kazdel

The Kazdel arrives to camp in high spirits and their win, most of the tribe appreciating Elysium for his tactic in the challenge.

The tribe takes a moment to greet one another before splitting off into groups to get the shelter built.

Immediately, Courier admits that he's not the most physical person, but wishes to help by going out to look for the water well, to which Gitano says that she'll go with. The other four members go off to gather bamboo and palm fronds for the shelter.

While going off on their own, the two quickly form a connection with each other.

Gitano tells him that she will not write his name down if they ever went to Tribal Council, to which he returns the the gesture. Courier then asks if she could cover for him, as he wants to search for the Hidden Immunity Idol, which baffles her, but she goes along with it.

She tells him not to take too long or else the tribe will be suspicious of the two, but he says he'll be quick about it.

Back at the main camp, Mountain proves to be a valuable asset to the tribe, as he does most of the heavy lifting for building the foundation of the shelter. This obviously gets the notice of his other tribemates.

Saga gets started on prepping a fire using the flint and kit.

### Immunity Challenge

At the Immunity Challenge, three members from each tribe will have a pole across their shoulders. Each round, the non-lifting members would choose two different members of one of the opposing tribes to add 20 lbs. of weight to their pole. When the weight becomes too much to bear, the tribe member will drop the pole and be out of the challenge. The last two tribes standing wins immunity.

Before the challenge begins, the host announces one more twist for this season, the Tiacauh Twist, explaining that the first placing tribe will choose one of its members to go back to camp with the losing tribe. There, that member will be able to talk and strategize with that tribe and will even attend Tribal Council, where they will also vote as well.

For Higashi, Kroos, May, and Sesa will be holding weights, while Amiya, Elysium, and Mountain will be carrying for Kazdel. Lastly, Beagle, Hung, and Saria will be carrying for Lungmen. Out of the gate, the distributors for Higashi and Lungmen immediately target Mountain for being their biggest obstacle to overcome in the challenge, as he has 80 lbs. stacked on by the third round. Higashi continues to prioritize stacking weights on Kazdel, while the other two are throwing weights between both of the other tribes.

At Round 9, 40lbs. of weight is added to Beagle at once, totaling her weight to 120lbs., which is too much for her to bare and she drops her pole. The next round, 40lbs. is added to both Elysium and Mountain by both Higashi and Lungmen, while 20lbs. are added to Hung and Saria by Kazdel. May (despite not having any addition weight added) and Elysium both drop in quick succession of one another.

After that, Higashi adds 20lbs. to both Hung and Saria (both of them now totaling to 200lbs. each). Lungmen adds weight to Kroos and Sesa, hoping that they would drop before Lungmen does, and Kazdel does the same. In the time between Round 12 and 13, Hung drops his pole, leaving only Saria left. As the players are about to add weight for Round 13, Saria drops her pole too, eliminating Lungmen and giving both Higashi and Kazdel immunity!

As first place is needed to be declared, the two tribes continue going. The host also notes that Lungmen can still add weight to either one of the tribes. The distributors for Lungmen, Aak, Jaye, and W, talk it over privately and decide that they would prefer one of the Kazdel members to join them for tribal, as they feel they could work better with most of those members later down the line over Higashi, and thus adding weight to Kroos and Sesa. Kroos immediately drops out before 40lbs of weight could be added to hers and Amiya follows suit right after at 160 lbs., leaving on Mountain and Sesa left. With both Kazdel and Lungmen adding weight to Sesa, he is unable to hold on any longer and drops out, giving Kazdel first place!

The host hands Kazdel and Higashi the Tribal Immunity Idol and dismisses only Higashi first. The host then tells Lungmen that they have nothing for them except a date at Tribal Council tonight and that one of Kazdel will join them. The host then asks Kazdel which one of them will join Lungmen. The tribe chooses Mountain for winning the challenge for them. With that, the host dismisses Lungmen along with Mountain.

## Challenges

* Reward
* Immunity

**Challenge:** *Victory in the Bag*
One at a time, all six members must traverse through an obstacle course and then across a balance beam in order to reach a large sandpit. There, the player must dig up one sandbag (each one deeper than the last) and place it on their tribe table at the end of the course and then the next person will go. Each member may bring back one, and only one sandbag back. Once the tribe has all six sandbags, one member from the tribe must then toss the six sandbags in order to land them onto six very narrow podiums, each podium at varying heights. The first tribe to land all six sandbag wins.
**Reward:** Fire-making Kit
**Winner:** Kazdel

**Challenge:** *Shoulder the Load*
Three members from each tribe will have a pole across their shoulders. Each round, the non-lifting members would choose two members of one of the opposing tribes to add 20 lbs. of weight to their pole. When the weight becomes too much to bear, the tribe member will drop the pole and be out of the challenge. The last two tribes standing wins immunity.
**Winners:** Kazdel and Higashi

## Tribal Council

 Beagle (6 votes)
 Jaye (1 vote)
 VOTED OUT:Beagle