Author notes: Hopefully, this story is enjoyable even if you've never seen either show. I've fit in little explanations into the dialogue and narration to make it understandable for those who don't watch Naked and Afraid and for those who aren't familiar with the Highlander characters and Immortals. Also, because the show is primarily given in present tense, I have done the same for this story.

The narrator's voiceover is in italics.

...oOo...

On this special episode of Naked and Afraid, two exceptionally skilled survivalists will take on a harsh, unfamiliar environment with no clothes, no food and no water. One man and one woman must fend for themselves for twenty-one days.

This is Naked and Afraid: Immortal Edition.

"Well now, this looks like a jungle," Methos says sounding less than thrilled as the truck bounces along the rugged, muddy trails and he ducks under palm fronds.

"My name is Methos," he introduces himself giving the camera a sardonic smile. "Yes, I am the oldest living man you all heard about when the Watcher's Chronicles were hacked. I have lived in nearly every habitable environment this planet has to offer and a few that were quite inhospitable. Though this is the first time I've intentionally done so devoid of resources, I have managed without basic necessities in dire circumstances before."

METHOS

Age: over 5,000

From: Europe (maybe)

Skills:

Thriving in primitive environments

Outrunning Immortal opponents

Resourcefulness under pressure

As one of the few ancient Immortals still living, Methos has watched civilizations rise and fall. His experience gives him an advantage in survival skills. However, his wariness of other Immortals has made him something of a loner which could hinder his ability to work with his partner.

Methos starts with an initial PSR (Primitive Survival Rating) of 9.1

"This is by no means the worst location I've been in," says Methos bracingly as the truck comes to a halt. "Not worried about going starkers either." He strips off his clothes quickly and dumps them. "This could turn out to be rather a holiday," he adds and without hesitation he proceeds around sharp-tipped palm fronds and bamboo stalks. "Provided my partner isn't inclined to cut off my head."

Meanwhile, in a jeep approaching from another trail is his partner.

"Oh, wow! This is beautiful. I love it here!" exclaims Amanda with a huge grin. "My name is Amanda and I'm looking forward to no tan lines, if the sun will come out from behind those clouds already." She leaps from the moving vehicle before it can fully stop and tosses her clothes into the wind. "I just hope my partner is at least over six hundred years old. The younger Immortals are usually just too accustomed to modern conveniences and have never really gone without anything before."

AMANDA

Age: 1,199

From: England

Skills:

Climbing almost anything

Stealth when committing larceny

Evading police

Amanda's perseverance and charm will help her work as a team with her partner. But her history of overcoming starvation largely involved thievery, which could be of less use to her in a wilderness lacking any modern amenities.

Amanda begins with an initial PSR (Primitive Survival Rating) of 8.7

"I was warned explicitly not to steal anything from the crew," Amanda announces to the camera. She pushes through the plants at a steady pace using her ability to sense another Immortal nearby as her guide. "And Duncan MacLeod has promised to take me on a shopping spree if I keep my word."

"Did Mac actually agree to that or are you making it up in front of the camera to extort him, Amanda?"

She turns at the sound of his voice coming through the trees ahead. "Methos, darling! I would have never guessed it'd be you," she exclaims as they exchange a hug. "How'd they convince you to do this show?"

"Joe agreed to forgive my bar tab."

Amanda is speechless for a moment and Methos changes the subject asking, "Did the producers ask to keep the location a secret from you as well?"

"Sure did," answered Amanda. "I didn't know until just before I boarded the plane that we were bound for South America."

"Same here. Didn't want us to prepare for it, did they?"

In the interest of making their experience more of a challenge, both Immortals agreed not to be informed in advance of their destination: GUYANA

Located in South America, most of the country is covered in a thriving rainforest, features amazing biodiversity and boasts the famous Kaieteur Falls. Temperatures here vary little between 75 to 85 F day and night. Daily rainfall is common much of the year and the humidity remains high even during the somewhat drier spring and autumn.

"Any idea why they chose this continent?" Amanda asks.

"Probably because neither of us has spent as much time in this sort of environment as we have other places," he deduces. When she pauses to give him a questioning look he adds, "Watcher Chronicles."

They both sigh and grimace at the reminder that the secret records the Watchers kept for millennia documenting Immortals' lives was accessible. Despite efforts to remove them from the internet, the files spread. It catapulted all Immortals into world fame status whether they liked it or not.

"So, the show producers studied us and are afraid of making it too easy, huh?" she asks facetiously.

Hanging nearby from some branches are two canvas bags that are useful both for carrying items and to somewhat preserve their modesty if worn strategically.

In addition to a handheld diary camera and a map provided for them to use, the Immortal survivalists are allowed to bring one item of their choice. However, unlike recent episodes of Naked and Afraid featuring mortals, they will not be supplied with a third survival tool.

Methos pauses his steps then speeds up as his eyes spot something half hidden in the foliage under their bags. "Is that what you brought?!" he asks.

Amanda selected a five gallon plastic bucket.

"You are brilliant, Amanda! I wish I'd thought of that now."

Amanda beams at the compliment and holds up the large, white bucket with a sealable lid by its metal handle. "The producers thought I was crazy when I insisted on plastic. Tried to fob me off on a dainty metal cooking pot, but I was having none of it. Especially after they told me no machete."

Our producers feel it wiser not to permit either Immortal to bring a bladed weapon of any sort.

"Indeed, that was quite unnecessary."

"Exactly, we're friends. Let's see what you have?"

Methos opted for a slingshot.

"Wow! We'll eat like kings. Provided you aren't out of practice?" she teases him.

He puts on a faux affronted air and quips, "Like riding a bicycle, you never truly forget." Methos twangs the stretchy rubber. "This is a substantial improvement over the old braided rope slings of my youth. A military grade handle, paracord wrist guard," he lists it's features. "I can use it like a crossbow."

Amanda smirks a little at his gushing. "It looks like my bag has the diary cam and the map."

She unfolds the paper she found in her bag. It is a topographical print out of their surroundings with extraneous images of dangerous local wildlife and plant features. Their current location and eventual extraction point are helpfully marked.

"Still haven't worn out their running joke that men never ask for directions, I see," she comments as she peers at the paper with him. "Big river, some streams, two little waterfalls, what might be a pond or a lake and loads of jungle."

"Seems quite clear."

"But first," says Amanda as he puts the map back the bag. "There is something we must make before going a step further."

Methos nods in agreement. They both look at the camera and in unison announce, "Shoes!"

DAY 1

10:57 am 79 degrees Fahrenheit

The Immortals forage for deadfall and dry plants for making cordage. Without knives, they are forced to manage with tree bark they can break and tear by hand into somewhat suitable pieces to support their feet. They twist and shape what dry fibers they find into thin rope, weaving it around the bark and tying straps to their ankles.

"They'll do until we can fashion some out of better materials," comments Amanda as they don their new sandals.

They delve deeper into the jungle, constantly picking up anything that looks useful. Small sticks, bits of twigs and dry grass for tinder, and they yank up a large quantity of brown and green nettle stalks they come across. The dry tinder goes into the bucket and it doesn't take them long to fill their bags as they move. Within an hour, they reach a spot where a swift moving stream empties into the river.

The Potaro River has waterfalls, rapids and streams feeding into it with hundreds of fish species. People pan the water for gold and diamonds, neither of which are likely to be of much use to the survivalists.

"Eh, nothing but gravel and quartzite," complains Amanda as she wades in and scoops up a handful of pebbles.

"It must do," Methos answers.

While selecting some river rocks about the size of their palms and larger, they also pick out some smaller stones as ammo for the slingshot. Suddenly, Amanda plunges her hand back into the water and retrieves a small, jagged brown stone Methos discarded. Looking pleased she hands it to Methos who after looking at it better asks, "This is adamas, isn't it?"

"I know my gems. Diamonds," she says proudly addressing the camera. "Once were called adamas and are actually plentiful. Only the flawless ones are rare."

Amanda adds the chocolate diamond to her bag of sticks. Then both Immortals begin smashing the milky gray quartzite against the rocky bank and together drop much larger rocks on top of them until they have an assortment of smaller, sharp pieces. They are heedless of the flying debris cutting them. The crew is forced to back up and use their camera zoom.

"It's difficult to work with, but in the absence of anything else…" he says with a shrug and begins to pummel the edge of a flake with a stick. Fragments and slivers slice his skin and though the cuts heal rapidly, they still leave trickles of blood behind.

"Is it dead yet?" Amanda quipps as she pauses in her work.

He laughs at her joke and strikes the rock even harder, only to groan when the rock splits in half. Amanda silently hands him another potentially suitable flake. She returns to shattering rocks while Methos works at knapping the unforgiving quartzite.

"What I wouldn't give for some obsidian," says Methos when he pauses to take a breather. "Or for a bottle to wash up on shore."

"It would probably be made of flimsy plastic if we do find one," she answers dismally and for the camera's benefit adds, "Can't make a knife from that."

After sorting through her efforts, she selects some pieces of rock that came away with a decent edge and a long end after being smashed. They are too thick to knap, but sharp enough that she begins using one to cut into a dead branch nearby.

"This stuff doesn't hold a good edge for long. We'll be swapping the axe head out before long, but there is no shortage of rock here," she explains as she begins to fashion a primitive stone hatchet. After one is ready, using it allows her to more easily make a second one. "Metal tools were an investment in my early years, the most valuable objects a person owned. I'm better at making tools out of bone and horn, but we did use wood and stone quite a lot when I was younger."

"Bronze tools were owned by the rich and leased to employees in my early centuries," Methos comments as he examines the two stone knives he's produced and decides, "Wrapping handles must wait until we have better materials."

Having managed to produce adequate enough cutting tools for the moment, they exchange their handy work so they each have a hatchet and a knife of their own. Then they take a dip in the stream to rinse off the blood splatters and take time to drink. Neither show any concern about the water being safe or clean enough.

Though it is not well understood, Immortals are known to possess a hardy digestive system that prevents bacterial infections and inhibits parasites from taking hold. This allows them to eat and drink things that would make a mortal ill.

They begin to follow the stream away from the river and it isn't long before Amanda points above their heads and announces, "Fruit."

"I'm not sure if they are ripe yet," says Methos as he thumps the hard skin and looks at the the white sap oozing out of the stem of the one he picked. "But let's take a few anyway, I guess."

Sapodilla was once more commonly known as a chewing gum tree. Its sap is rarely harvested for commercial production today. Synthetics have replaced it in modern chewing gum. The large, brown berries are very high in sugar and full of potassium and vitamins.

There isn't much room left in their bags and the berries are so large just two fill their hands. They find another that produces sap and a few that don't that they pick. Continuing upstream, they place stacks of stones by slower flowing pools they suspect have fish to remind themselves of where to come back to.

Methos pauses and asks, "Hear that?"

"Monkeys," answers Amanda quietly.

They veer inland following the sound until they encounter several small primates high above in the trees. A few shriek out danger warning calls, but most try to hide quietly.

The White-faced Saki monkeys almost never leave the treetops and survive on unripe fruit. They weigh on average about 5 lbs and farmers consider them agricultural pests.

Employing his slingshot, Methos fires at the monkeys high above. But he only succeeds in dislodging palm fruit as the monkeys dodge.

The Awara Palm can grow as high as fifty feet and its trunk is covered in long thorns. Each fruit is about the size of an egg and is higher in beta carotene than a carrot. It grows in massive bunches, but they are located at the top of the tree.

Amanda uses her stone hatchet to hack off a handful of the long thorns on the tree trunk and hands one to Methos. He understands at once and loads the thorn like a dart in his slingshot. Amanda hands him more thorns to reload after each shot allowing Methos to keep his aim as they pursue the monkeys from below. Finally, Methos pierces one in the eye and it falls to the ground dead.

The pair of them retrieve it, only slightly out of breath from the run through the forest.

"Good shot," Amanda praises.

"Couldn't have done it without your idea to use thorns," he compliments her in return. "I'd have pelted them with stones to no avail that high. Too much vegetation in the way."

He slings the dead monkey over his shoulder by its tail as they walk back to the Awara palms to collect more thorns for future hunts. Most of the fruit that fell in the skirmish is green and all of it bruised and battered, but they pick up a handful of orange colored ripe ones.

4:04 pm 81 degrees Fahrenheit

When they make back to the stream Methos points ahead at a rocky ledge alongside the bank where tree roots dangle exposed and there is something of a shelf. "There's a good spot for your bucket," he states and she agrees.

Amanda transfers the bundle of tinder to her bag and partly fills her bucket with water. She then climbs up to the place he indicated and talks to the camera. "This is a simple, reliable trap. The value of the plastic bucket is that you don't always need to put water in it and its nearly escape proof."

Methos chops bamboo into sizes Amanda needs and hands them to her. She first threads a tube of bamboo onto the center of a narrow round stick and suspends it across the top of the bucket opening. Then she props a longer stick he has notched onto the bucket rim so it can't fall down. From her bag, she pulls out the orange palm fruits.

Amanda has built a common water bucket rat trap.

"The idea is that the mouse or rat climbs up the stick on the outside to the top of the bucket, then it is tempted to walk across the little stick to the bait on the tube," she explains chopping the fruit with the edge of her stone ax, smearing the bamboo tube with it and balancing fruit chunks carefully on the tube. "It goes for the bait and the tube spins dropping them to their death."

"Should drown a few mice tonight, even if a bird pilfers the bait," Methos says with calm certainty as they leave the bucket behind. "I'm ready to choose a place to settle for the night if you are."

"I like the fourth one we spotted. It has a pretty little waterfall."

"It'll be more work to roof it than the second one."

"Second one is too near to the water and the stream moves faster there."

"But it is above the flash flood height."

"Let's flip for it," she suggests and plucks a bit of bark. "Call it."

"Underside."

She tosses the bark into the air and they watch it tumble down to land with the outer bark facing up.

"Fourth one it is."

They troop back downstream where the bank on one side is higher than the other and a small gouge looks to be chiseled out of the top of the bluff. When they reach it, they assess it critically.

"Floor needs a lot of leveling and the walls won't be high enough," he says as he looks at the dirt and rocks surrounding them on three sides that is level with his shoulders. "Unless we build an elevated roof."

"Which rather defeats the purpose. Well, do we really need to stand up fully inside?"

"No, I suppose not. I think this spot used to hold a tree that fell into the stream, but there's nothing left to show it was here now except dead roots."

They climb higher until they are looking down into their future shelter. It tapers towards the back, giving the space an almost triangular shape.

"The ground slopes upwards to this edge, we won't have any rainwater flowing in on its way to the stream or backlogging on the roof."

They put their stone hatchets to work, cutting wood to become rafters. For the roofing they split bamboo in half longways and cut out the natural dividers.

"We're placing the first layer of half rounds in rows with the interior of the cane facing up. When a piece is too short, we overlap the next one. This way they direct rainwater in a gentle slope down to the lower ground behind us," he says. To demonstrate, he pours some water at the top of one of the long rows and watches it trickle down and away from their shelter. "The second layer of bamboo halves are laid with the exterior bark facing up and cover these gaps between the first layer making it watertight."

This bamboo half round roofing is commonly known as Filipino style, but it can be found used throughout Asia.

"There isn't time before sunset tonight to do the entire roof, so we're stopping here and hoping it doesn't rain much."

They climb down to the shelter's dirt floor which is riddled with stones and roots. They do their best to clear it, but the sun is sinking.

They prepare wood and tinder to become their campfire and ring it with stones. All the rest they store in the deepest corner of their shelter. They stack it into a small platform shape to elevate it from the ground. Then they pile the tinder in the center and stack the remaining firewood in layers and form a small lean-to out of the last wood to give it all the protection they can.

"Now, I'm going to show you why neither of us brought a fire starter nor have built a bow drill and aren't even rubbing two sticks together."

Methos slices his palm with his stone knife and cups his hand to prevent the blood from dripping onto the tinder. Tiny arcs of electricity from his Quickening spark and jump. Before it can finish healing him, Methos lights a grassy taper and transfers it to the tinder where it spreads to the wood.

"You'd be shocked at how many Immortals have no idea they can start a fire with their own Quickening," says Amanda. "Taking another Immortal's head nearly always sets something ablaze and that ought to give them a clue."

7:12 pm 77 degrees Fahrenheit

One of the producers with their back to the camera, enters the camp and the screen gets subtitles because the audio doesn't pick up well.

"There's been some concern about how the viewers will feel about watching monkeys being killed and eaten."

"Does that mean you are going to edit out the parts when we dressed the meat, cooked and ate it?"

"Partly. We generally don't show much actual butchering. However, it's more than that. We'd like you to not kill any more monkeys."

"What?" Amanda exclaims. "Are you serious?"

"Can't you simply not air it?" asks Methos, trying to sound reasonable.

There is more muffled conversation before the camera scene changes.

DIARY CAM

9:17 pm 76 degrees Fahrenheit

It's now dark outside and the camera crew has retreated to their own campsite for the night. The infrared diary camera casts the screen into shades of green and black.

Amanda's face appears and she says, "I have feeling, let's call it a hunch, that there are places where small primates or birds or other critters thrive in large numbers and let's say maybe they eat the wheat crop or raid the chicken coop. Well," she draws the word out for emphasis, "such animals are often killed and usually eaten. And by the way, the producers admitted there isn't a law against that here.

"I think they made it up that viewers will be offended if we eat monkeys. Starving is part of this show's dynamic after all, isn't it? The people always lose about twenty pounds or more after twenty-one days."

Methos' voice is audible off screen, "Some participants deliberately gain weight before doing the show to give their bodies a buffer. But yes, it's a helluva weight loss program," he says sounding resigned. "But there is no point in ranting to the camera, Amanda. I expect all footage involved will land on the cutting room floor anyway."

"It makes me feel better and cameras don't use film anymore."

"You know what I mean," he groans. "I'm almost done setting the ashes. There wasn't as much as I would have liked, but hopefully it's enough to deter crawling insects. Especially ants."

The scene changes to a new view from a night vision camera mounted to a nearby tree the crew left behind. Methos finishes making a circle of ashes around the perimeter of their sleeping area. Amanda puts out the fire and they bed down for the night on the dirt.

After a few minutes, Amanda says, "Wow. I'd forgotten what dark truly is. We are as good as blind. It's been cloudy all day, so I knew we probably wouldn't see many stars, but there are just none."

"I suspect hunting during the next full moon is right out," Methos answers. "This canopy may block the moonlight, too."

Even on the warmest of nights, most survivalists chose to take turns feeding a fire, trading sleep for the comfort of light and to ward off some insects. It is curious that the Immortals are deliberately going without a fire.

...oOo...

end chapter 1

What crazy survival situations do you think they should encounter in the jungle next? Comment and tell me please!