The Ranch

Tih: The Mascot, The Leader (4)

With the path already outlined in his head, Rohan dashes across the top of monkey bars parted by two feet each. He drops through the last pair of bars. He lands on a swinging log and holds on to the rope attached. He's carried by the log deeper into the course.

Born into a militaristic family with a strict father, Rohan was raised alongside two older brothers. Once they were old enough, they walked the same path as their father. They both died on assignments.

He jumps off the log and bounces onto a trampoline below. He springs into the air, creating an arc. He lands on the ground with a front roll and keeps running.

With two dead siblings, Rohan's parents divorced. When the first son died, they had conflicting opinions on whether the other should stay in the military. The father stuck to his militaristic ways and when the second son died, the mother blamed the father. She couldn't bear anymore than that. She left her final son with the father.

Rohan dashes across the minefield, setting a couple more hidden ones, but escapes in time. He collects the ring in the middle of the minefield.

The father became a workaholic to push down his mental instability over the loss of his sons and wife. He continued up the ladder, ignoring the reminder, his third son.

Rohan gets out of the minefield, climbs up a rope ladder and hops across stones above a pool. Whether that is normal water or something else, only the staff knows. But one thing's for sure, it's filled with electricity.

Left with two dead brothers and no parents, the teen is approached by a mysterious soldier in black. An unfamiliar uniform. The man offered to enter the son into a secret military unit to be trained from an early age. The father, who hadn't thought about his son in years by then, let the son decide.

Rohan jumps off the last stone to fall. He catches the zip line and rides it down to a small platform with an unstable pole holding it up. There's no other way to get on this platform other than by using the zip line. Jump on the thin platform would break it and the zip line's wire is sharp enough to cut through fingers.

The father had been so focused on suppressing his own misery, he didn't see the changes in his son. His son had become a shell without emotions and no purpose. All he had left was the military life instilled in him from childhood. So the son agreed to follow the man.

Rohan picks up his third ring. The ring shines red and moves to his team's side. It's currently three to two.

The son, a teenager now, came to the island and picked up everything quickly due to his previous training and life circumstances.

Rohan looks around for the child, running across a cylindrical beam all the while. An object moves out of his perspective as he runs, opening up the view of the child. He's crawling through a slinky tube, a couple feet away from his third star.

The first time the teenager killed happened about a year after he arrived on the island. He thought it would cause some emotional damage, as it did with others in his generation as they started killing. But no, there was no guilt, no trauma.

As Tih collects his sixth ring, Rohan is at his seventh. As Rohan nabs his twelfth, Tih is at his fourteenth. There's seven rings left on the field, but that doesn't mean that's all there is to gain, but Rohan wants to tie the number before he takes action.

The teen aged into a young man as his good mental state helped him rack up achievements on the island quicker than others his age. He eventually settled on a low-paying day job and became something of a hit man as a side gig as he grew in popularity.

The two become tied at sixteen and Rohan decides to make his move. He scales his way across the jungle, keeping his eye on Tih all the while. The last few rings are sparse and better hidden. There's only a minute left. It's the perfect time.

He earned good kquil and made a name for himself, but he wasn't interested in any of it. He couldn't feel invested. He had time on his hands, so he tried to fill that gap with something, anything.

This dodges darts shooting out a wall as he crosses square teeter-totters put together to create a floor. Tih slides down a square to land on a trampoline. He has been filmed using the trampolines the most, almost as if he especially likes them.

The young man tried one thing after another, getting decent at it before moving on to the next thing. He sees the fight between combat and science as stupid and dull and has worked in both. He's gained four green stars aside from his red ones, but he doesn't pin those as many don't like the idea of mixing occupations, especially if you're taking a combat seriously.

Tih's drop landed him in Rohan's y-axis. Rohan times the child. As he bounces back up, Rohan jumps forward, aiming a kick towards Tih. You can't change course mid-air and the child shouldn't be able to dodge this.

"Here it is!" Simon D says, genuinely excited. Watching the two run around separate has done wonders for the build up of the confrontation. Multiple cameras follow the two closely, from every angle.

Somewhere deep below, a man's hand leans on his face as he watches a screen. His black pupils follow the zoomed in face on the screen. The child's eyes don't reflect any light.