Tanner raised an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised.”
“Indeed,” agreed Nigel. “Never judge a bitch by her tits.”
“Nigel!” yelled Tanner. “What did I say about using that phrase in polite company?”
Nigel shrugged.
I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so nervous about losing the Society Wars. We had a battle to plan!
We rounded up the rest of our inner circle and headed to my princess suite. Tanner cleared a table and rolled out a map of the camp.
“So as I was telling Raven,” began Tanner, “the key to winning this battle is to get inside the heads of our enemies. We’ve already established that Cole and Chastity are cheaters and probably have at least one spy in our camp, which is why we’re having this meeting in Raven’s princess suite. But what else do we know about them?”
“Cole is a big, dumb grade-A beefcake,” said Nigel. I thought he growled a little bit at the end, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Well he is big,” agreed Tanner. “And he is fairly strong. But I don’t think he’s dumb.”
“But you whooped his ass in chess,” said Diablo.
“I did. But it wasn’t because he was dumb. It was because he was overconfident.”
I nodded. “Yeah…he’s super cocky.”
“So the question is: how can we use that against him?”
Uhhh…I had no idea.
It looked like Isadora was about to speak up, but Tanner spoke again before she could. “Before we answer that, it might be important to discuss his past strategies. Have any of you faced him during his undefeated streak this summer?”
“I’ve been here for all of them,” said Diablo. “But he keeps changing his tactics. Sometimes he sits back and waits for us to attack, while other times he hits us hard within the first five minutes. A few times he’s even split his entire force into two-man strike teams to hunt down our princess.”
“Interesting…” said Tanner. “And what about the princess? Does he usually hide her in a specific spot?”
Diablo shrugged. “No idea. We’ve never found the blue princess, no matter who she is.”
“You’ve never even spotted her?”
“Nope,” said Diablo with a shake of his head.
“That’s great news.”
“It is?” I asked.
“It is,” said Tanner. “Because it means that Cole has one hell of a hiding spot for her. If I had to guess, I’d say he probably hid his princess in the exact same spot every time.”
Diablo gestured to the map. “But we’ve searched everywhere.”
“Even in the cabins?”
“No. No one is allowed to hide in the…” Diablo stopped mid-sentence as a horrible realization came to him. “Shit, Cole is a cheater.”
Tanner smiled. “Now you see why it’s so important to know your enemies. I propose we task a third of our team with searching the cabins. All in favor?”
Everyone agreed.
“So we know how we’re going to catch Chastity, but that’s only half the battle. We’ll still need to protect Raven from Cole.”
Isadora cleared her throat. “I have a few ideas.”
