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