Come on in, guys! Gettin' your first look at bloodsword, comin' back from Exile Island.

bloodsword, tired- and haggard-looking, like he'd lost forty pounds and went four days without taking a dump, limps onto the scene with a wooden cane. He's given himself a new moniker, Dragon Slayer, and has even fashioned himself a Dragon Cane. In his other hand is a dead lizard named Jerry, which he believes possesses the spirit of Jerry Seinfeld.

Not a fun place to be. How you holding up?

"You know," bloodsword says, "I'm... I'm... I'm here to slay the Dragon, Jeff. For I am the Dragon Slayer. A great man named Marcus Aurelius once said, 'Do not ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.' And as the Dragon Slayer it is my duty—to my country, to my brothers and to my sisters—to slay the Dragon and win this game."

Truer words have never been spoken.

bloodsword nudges AngusEcrivain and whispers, "Did you hear when I said 'Dragon Slayer'?"

Ready for your next challenge, guys? Ready to hold hands with your partner?

Afraid that's not gonna happen.

Drop your buffs, SmackDowners. We're changin' things up!

No longer will you all be grouped into pairs—now you're going into tribes. But this ain't a team sport anymore, ghouls and goblins: This is a bloodthirsty battle for the ages. Now we start whittling down the competition, player by player, until we've got the winner of LayethTheSmackDown's SmackDown: MadMike's Revenge, where one of you will earn the title of Sole SmackDowner, get all the perks that go with such an esteemed title, and receive a sweet reward*.

*reward may or may not be sweet; in fact, reward may not even exist.

Here are your new tribes:

AngusEcrivain, sigrist, jewel1307, elveloy, bloodsword—you are collectively known as Dudecore.

You are old-school SmackDowners. Some of you are probably balding. Some of you might even be in diapers at this very moment (or are at least contemplating picking up a box, because ain't nobody got time to run to the can). You have a history together. You have a personal vendetta against one another. Oh, sure, some of you probably claim to be good chums, but we all know that's a mask for you to hide behind while you sharpen your knife and contemplate murder. Some of you have won before, some of you have lost. Now it's time to settle the score. Once and for all. With blood on your hands and bits of old, freckly skin under your fingernails.

H-A-Spade, NimrodKirkpatrick, VintageVulpes, Reffster, AllanFisher—you are now called Hermaphrodeity.

You're the new kids on the block. You're young, fun, do a lot of drugs, love to par-tay (as you like to say), think the Sun is always gonna be your best friend (just you wait...), and have dreams of marrying a successful doctor only to divorce them once you've sucked them dry of some money. You've got hip hairdos and probably wear giant, stupid-looking glasses and like to make ironic comments to hide how self-conscious you are about your perfect, expensive smile and the way your ears have little blond hairs on them. You've got something to prove. Most importantly, you want to take the veterans out back and shoot them. Maybe you'll get the opportunity? Only one way to get there, though: win.

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Alright, so you've got your new tribes and you might be wondering how this will work for Round 2.

The two tribes will get completely different sub-genres, slightly different prompts, and you'll only be competing against those who are on the same tribe as you. At this point, you're basically playing two different games.

For now.

Dudecore, you will be doing Spy-Fi, because Sir Roger Moore died recently and I've got James Bond on my mind. As I'm sure you all know, Spy-Fi is spy fiction with a science-fiction twist. We've yet to do an issue of Tevun-Krus on this sub-genre, but you guys can manage. You're Dudecore, not Sissycore.

Hermaphrodeity, your sub-genre for this round is BonePunk, because you guys need something cool to write, too, and BonePunk sounds pretty cool. BonePunk is science fiction utilizing anachronistic bone-based technology. We haven't done an issue of Tevun-Krus on this sub-genre just yet, but MadMikeMarsbergen wrote a story for Tevun-Krus #9: Spunky Heroine which was partly BonePunk in nature. It's called The Breath of the Bone. Check the external link if you wish.

To maximize scrolling, prompts will be down at the bottom of this part.

Word counts for both tribes are the same: 2,000–2,500 words. Yeah, a little higher than Round 1. I want to go easy on you guys, get your tolerance up a little. No need to stroke out because you joined a SmackDown.

Wanna know what you're playin' for?

There will be one loser from each tribe—whoever scores the lowest on each tribe. That's right, when the Round 2 results come in, two people will be going to Redemption Island, and they'll have to fight to stay alive by facing parishsp in the very first duel.

In addition, the top-scoring person will send someone of their choosing to Exile, where they'll be unable to compete in any bonus rounds that might occur while they're gone.

Sound good?

As usual, submit your stories to [email protected] in .doc or .docx form.

The deadline for this round will be June 16th, 6:30 PM EST/10:30 PM UTC.

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Judges, the people you will be judging this round are the following:

HardeeBurger - AngusEcrivain, H-A-Spade, jewel1307, VintageVulpes

OutrageousOllo - sigrist, NimrodKirkpatrick

JettaFrame - elveloy, Reffster, bloodsword, AllanFisher

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Alright, now that that's all taken care of, let's get to the prompts, eh?

1. Both tribes will have to utilize Shania Twain's "That Don't Impress Me Much" in some way. I'll leave it to you to decide how you do it.

https://youtu.be/mqFLXayD6e8

2. Both tribes must, in some way, reference the TV show Survivor. This can be however you like, positive or negative.

Now, tribe-specific prompts:

Dudecore - AngusEcrivain, sigrist, jewel1307, elveloy, bloodsword

1. The first thing you must do is continue the following story:

Deep in the heart of EVIL, Inc., a secret agent contorted his body to get past the red laser tripwires. If he'd even so much as breathed on them he would have been immediately vaporized. He somersaulted beneath the crotch of an RDU—robot defence unit—that was in sleep mode. He cooed to the crying kittens, thus destroying the security's CARE Protocol.

He wasn't worried. As the best agent in GOOD Corp.'s intergalactic ranks, this mission was a cakewalk.

Beat EVIL's ancient—albeit extensive—security system, hack into the data vault, steal the cipher, assassinate the head of EVIL, get out, and be home in time to catch the new episode of Lunar Coronation Street.

That was when he found himself locked in the gas-spectrometer room. His stomach trembled.

Rule one, he thought to himself. Never eat Venusian tacos before a mission. Should've known better.

He plugged up and forced himself not to breathe as he maneuvered through the room and out the door. His years of training put to good use.

Unfortunately things went tits up right then and there. He turned to see fifteen RDUs aiming their .50-cal cannons at all his tender places. How the hell had this gone wrong?

And then it dawned on him.

No.

Moving slower than a space slug, he lowered his hand to his waist and tapped his comms unit. And seconds before the RDUs blew him to pieces, he screamed out the coded message to the boys and girls back home in High Command: "Fuck you, MadMikeMarsbergen!"

2. You must choose two of the following images to use however you see fit in your story:

Hermaphrodeity - H-A-Spade, NimrodKirkpatrick, VintageVulpes, Reffster, AllanFisher

1. The first thing you must do is continue the following story:

Night. Always a time to be alive. The stars twinkling. The crickets chirping. Every man, woman and child tucked away in bed, fast asleep.

The perfect time to work the boneyards.

She had a system. It was efficient. Perfect, really. Because no one expected a woman to go pilfering through piles of bones. A man, maybe—men were sick; it was expected of them. But women? No. And if they caught her, she could easily play all innocent. Bat her eyelashes and shoot them a smile. It always worked. She'd done it before. She'd do it again.

Her bag was full of femurs, skulls, shoulder blades. And all kinds of little ones, too: full toes and fingers, individual knuckles.

If someone were to take a peek inside they'd be horrified by what they saw. Because there was something else in there. Something nobody would want to see.

And she'd have to take care of them if they caught on. She'd done that before, too.

She was digging out a sweet-looking pelvis when a spotlight lit her up. She hissed through her teeth and turned to see someone headed her way—couldn't tell much, because the light had them backlit. They were just a shadow.

She realized what had happened here. She'd gotten too cocky. "Fuck you, Mad Mike Marsbergen," she muttered to herself and prepared for war.

2. You must choose two of the following images to use however you see fit in your story: