Kass McQuillen stands in the jungle with Tasha Fox, holding a hatchet in one hand, and Spencer Bledsoe’s life in the other. They are debating what to do with his future. Tribal Council looms, and the two Luzon women must make a call: Cut Spencer, the challenge asset they don’t trust, or cut J’Tia Taylor, the challenge disaster they do trust. Tasha agonizes over the decision, unsure of which way to turn, so much so that she’ll still question the call later that night at Tribal. For Kass? It’s whatever. She does not care if the hatchet falls on Spencer. She does not care if the hatchet falls on J’Tia. She just wants to bury the hatchet and move on. “To me, just make a decision, and live with it,” the California-based attorney says, describing the situation. “But that’s my life. I have to make decisions for people and live with them all the time. Am I the hatchet man for J’Tia or Spencer? I can live with either decision. Either one is the same gamble for me, because I can’t predict what’s going to happen tomorrow.” This is how Kass views Survivor. Cut this person, cut that person, cut all of the persons, as long as you’re cutting forward. But she believes people view her as someone who cuts aimlessly. “The public perception is that I’m an idiot,” she tells me on the day before Survivor: Cambodia — Second Chance begins. “That’s great, because I personally know that I’m not. Every move I made was the only thing I could do to further my game.” I don’t know how many of the Second Chancers view Kass as an idiot, but I do know that several of them view her as dangerous, unpredictable, and at least a little bit terrifying. Exhibit A: Stephen Fishbach. “She scares me,” he tells me a couple of hours after my chat with Kass. “She seems so rational and funny and smart, but uniformly I have heard that she’s erratic and vindictive.” There are many pop culture touchstones one can use to describe Kass McQuillen, one of the single most iconic villains of the modern Survivor era. Lucy yanking the ball away from Charlie Brown is the one we hear the most. It’s a fairly innocuous comparison, but there are more merciless metaphors to explore. In fact, let’s dig into it with a game. Who said the following: Kass or The Joker? 1. “Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.”

2. “I want to destroy it.”

3. “We all know I’m chaotic sometimes.”

4. “I’m not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.” Spoiler: Kass owns two of the four. The first and final quotes come from The Dark Knight, the second comes from Survivor: Cagayan, and the third is from our conversation in Cambodia. This is the person who crowned herself Chaos Kass on the same night she burned an entire alliance to the ground, without remorse, without blinking an eye, with a single flip of the vote. This is the person who baffled the winner of her first season so thoroughly that he started speaking llama, the way a Gotham City gangster would lose his mind at the slightest whiff of Joker venom. (“My goal is to make everyone speak an animal language by the end of this season,” she tells me.) Anarchy for anarchy’s sake is not her sole purpose; you probably won’t see Kass burning a pyramid of cash anytime soon, at least not intentionally. But when it comes to the game, she derives visible, undeniable pleasure from her enemies’ pain. It’s no wonder that so many of her future competitors are freaking out. “Kass named herself Chaos Kass. Do I need to say more?” says Kelley Wentworth when I speak with her. “She’s [expletive] nuts, and I’m sure she’s coming in here saying we’re all [expletive] idiots.” Well, to be fair, Kelley, she isn’t saying that about all of you. When I first see Kass at Ponderosa, she’s heading toward my cabana, walking slow, cutting through the rain with her gaze aimed low. She’s the first and last person of the day to deny me when I offer her a spot in front of the fan. She’s done with creature comforts. She’s all about the heat of the land at this point. How about the rest of her cast mates? “They’re cracking already,” she grins with glee. “It’s great.” Kass is not wielding a weapon when we speak, but within the first five words of our conversation, I know that she packed the hatchet. ON THE NEXT PAGE: Chaos in Cambodia

There are few places to hide at Ponderosa. The Survivors sleep in tents, positioned in front of a row of cabanas. There are seats on an open-air deck nearby, but only a small handful of couches and comfortable chairs. Everyone’s up in everyone’s business, even though they cannot speak to each other. But Chaos Kass McQuillen does not need to speak to see what’s happening to the Second Chancers. All she needs to do is watch. “I’m having a great time,” she tells me, commenting on the extended pre-game period that’s driving some of the surrounding Survivors slowly insane. “I’m a great people watcher. I really enjoy watching people and their little idiosyncrasies — what’s bugging them, who doesn’t have a whole lot of patience, who’s out in the ocean…” I see who is out in the ocean during my stay at Ponderosa: Vytas Baskauskas from Blood vs Water, swimming around the water several feet away from the deck. Kass wants him to stay there. “I would like to see Vytas go very early,” she says. “I can’t put my finger on it. He has such a fake smile and an air about him that’s unnatural to me. Maybe he’s a sociopath or something.” Near the end of the day, Vytas tells me that he thinks Kass could be the first person voted out. “It’s too obvious, so probably not,” he guesses. Kass is certainly aware that people are gunning for her already, that the target on her back is massive: “Some people probably think I’m an emotional train wreck that can destroy their game.” And indeed, Monica Padilla confirms that hunch: “Kass is a wildcard. She thinks she has a rhyme or reason to how she’s playing the game, but really she’s mostly just messing up other people’s games.” For her part, Kass wants to dispel these notions. She wants to appear friendlier. She literally walks around Ponderosa holding onto a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People, in an effort to get people laughing. “I’m trying to make a spectacle,” she says. “Like, ‘I’m really working on it, guys!'” It’s working to the point that even Exhibit A says that Kass is making him laugh. “Kass is funny — really, really funny,” Fishbach tells me. “She has this deadpan sense of humor.” And yet, she still scares him to death. The first time I met Kass was at the Survivor: Cagayan finale, and even then, she acknowledged that her social game would need an overhaul ahead of any future Survivor appearances: “Socially, for me, Survivor was difficult. I don’t hang out with people in their twenties. I’m a married person. I haven’t hung out with a twenty something since I was a twenty something. I thought of everyone as an enemy out there. It’s a good thing to have, but not to the extent that I had it.” It’s an interesting counterpoint to where she is now, on the eve of Second Chance. Kass feels good about where she sits socially heading into the new season, without having had to change much at all. “There’s no notion that I have great social skills,” she says. “But I think this season, having returning players who probably did research on everyone here, I think it’s easier to break into that group as a socially awkward person. People have a familiarity with you. You’re not going to come off as so awkward — or, at least, they expect it.” What’s more, Kass points out that there aren’t a lot of “twenty-somethings” lurking about the new cast. In fact, there are only four. She feels she can bond with a group of people closer to her age. “It’s an older crowd, and as one of the older people here, I love that,” she says. “I think the under 20s are going to have a hard time.” Two days later, I see Kass relaxing on Bayon beach next to one of the twenty-somethings: Joe Anglim, the jewelry-designing heartthrob from Worlds Apart. I know what she thinks of Joe, based on what she told me: “He seems like a nice guy. He’s certainly a specimen. But I think he’s a huge target. Look at this cast — the men skew a little older. Joe being a physical looking person, right away, I’m thinking, ‘See ya, Joe!'” And now, Joe knows this, too, because Kass is telling him exactly what she thinks, and exactly what she sees, as they sit together in the sand. Whatever you want to say about Kass, however you want to slice into the subject, there’s no doubt that she’s not one to mince words. It’s evident in her conversation with Joe, and it’s especially clear by how she once handled the only other twenty-something male in the game — and she has similar plans for how to handle him now. ON THE NEXT PAGE: No More Brains

Deep in the heart of Cagayan, surrounded by ancient voices and fire, Kass McQuillen sits beside a spectacular array of facial expressions, basking in the aftermath of her wrath. Half of her tribe explodes with applause. The other half implodes, awash in horror, reeling from the cocktail of chaos Kass just splashed in their faces. It’s hard to grade the person who looks the most bamboozled. Is it Sarah Lacina? It should be; she just got voted out. But it might be Spencer Bledsoe, mouth agape, his head spinning so fast to the point of nearly falling off, his Luzon brain racing to figure out exactly what just happened and why things just went so catastrophically wrong. The answer, of course, comes in the form of two words that are now etched in Survivor legend: Chaos Kass. Feeling like she was on the bottom of her alliance, Kass cut her losses with former tribe mates Tasha and Spencer, and cut forth a new path with eventual winner Tony Vlachos. “Kass,” an exasperated Spencer sighs. “Zero chance of winning the game.” With the smile of satisfaction still halfway on her face, and the stench of napalm still in the air, Kass quietly shoots back: “We still have a long way to go.” Indeed, Spencer and Kass had to endure each other’s company for almost 20 more days that season — and there’s still a ways to go, if they’re lucky, now that three of the legendary Luzons are back on the hunt for the Sole Survivor title. Don’t expect a happy Brains family reunion, according to Kass. “Everyone knows there’s no love lost between me and any of my cast members,” she says. “We were never forces joined. It’s this myth with Luzon. If you look at our voting history, we only voted all three together twice, out of necessity.” Kass says she never had a true alliance with Tasha, and does not expect that to change heading into the new season. “I think when you beat people, and you’re the reason they blame for their demise, especially competitive people… Tasha, she’s super competitive. She still harbors animosity toward me.” Both women are smart enough to keep their fists and wits to themselves when I see them feasting on fruit at Bayon beach, but the bad blood is so thick in the air that you can almost taste it. A storm of some sort feels inevitable. While Kass will have to navigate Tasha immediately when Second Chance begins, she won’t have to deal with Spencer right away. They will start the game on opposite tribes, and that’s great news for the young lad. “Spencer and I are not exactly on each other’s Christmas card list,” says Kass. But just because she does not expect to align with Spencer, does not mean Kass isn’t thrilled to see him again. “Spencer hasn’t changed. That’s the beauty,” she says. “He has the same tells. He’s still forgetting to do things. Leaving his shirt behind, just like he would always lose his buff or his shoes… he’s still a kid.” Kass says it’s hard for her to think about Spencer as a kid, “and he would probably hate to be considered a kid,” but she looks at her fellow former Brain and sees him tripping over his own youth. “It’s an older crowd,” she explains, “and he’s 22 or 23 years old. I think this is going to be a bad season for him because he hasn’t had the time to gain some wisdom. I can only imagine the journey he went on, being an awkward chess club guy who becomes a popular guy and very revered by the fans. Personally, I don’t think he did crap on our season, other than make wrong moves and bumble along. But does he have a false sense of his gameplay because of that, and will it work in my favor? I think so.” For his part, Spencer tells me he’s only out to get Kass “if she’s out to get me.” Bad news, Spencer; she is. “I think Spencer is going on an early vacation,” she tells me, “and I would love to put him there.” While Kass does not trust her former Brains, she has a higher opinion of the fourth Cagayan contestant on the Second Chance cast: Yung “Woo” Hwang, the 31-year-old martial artist and surfing instructor who worked alongside Kass for important stretches of Cagayan, right up until he voted her out on Day 38 — a decision that cost him roughly $900,000, before taxes. But first, she makes fun of him, pointing out how Woo is constantly sitting in front of the fan at Ponderosa. “Woo, that fan’s going away soon!” “I like Woo,” she continues. “I don’t harbor any resentment that he didn’t take me. I think he made a very bad decision and he’s had to live with that. I did counsel him to take me and he would probably win. I told him he’s dumb if he takes Tony. I told him he would lose and I would not vote for him, even though we’re friends, because it tells me that he’s not playing the game. He promised me, too. He did have a final two deal with me. The integrity thing was out the window for me, and that was his whole argument.” All that history aside, Kass feels she can play the game with Woo. “I know Woo’s tells, too. I know all three of their tells.” And that’s why Kass is so happy to see Spencer, Tasha and Woo again: “They’re known quantities. I don’t think any of them have evolved in a manner that would effect anything. It hasn’t been that long since our season.” But Kass says it’s been exactly long enough for her to recharge her batteries, and, hopefully, long enough for people to realize the true meaning of Chaos. ON THE FINAL PAGE: Chaos Kass Theory