FRIGHT NIGHT - EPISODE 2 Written by Iron-K, 2021 "Welcome to another Fright Night!" The scruffy figure in the centre of the set strode down the shallow steps, his arms raised to acknowledge the audience's cheering. As thunder sound effects rolled in the background, harsh blue light illuminated the caracal's face, his mouth open wide in an evil cackle. "Yes, it's that time again..." He stopped in the middle of a long marble table at the front of the set, plucking a comb out of his stained off-white lab coat and dragging it across the grey fur on his head. "You can call me Doctor Payne, and I'm here to guide another set of brave souls through our rooms of doom and dungeons of gunge..." He paused, putting the comb away again and gestured to the left side of the table with a flourish. "Please give a warm welcome to our visitors tonight - Heather and Vicky on the green team!" A green candelabra flared into life at the end of the marble table, the lights going up on a pair of girls standing over it dressed in green swimsuits. The red-haired leopard girl whooped, waved and bounced on her feet enthusiastically at the audience's reaction, while the pink hedgehog smiled behind her and put her hand up to acknowledge them briefly. "They took part in the pilot for a game show in this same studio a couple of years ago and so we just had to reunite them for a trip into the castle - are you both ready to relive the experience?" "Oh, yeah," Vicky nodded eagerly, a wide grin on her face as she pushed a lock of her bright red hair behind her ear. "Well, you'll be facing another team hoping to get their hands on the castle's treasures tonight - Dakota and Hannah as the yellows!" He repeated the gesture towards the other end of the table, this time revealing a short sky blue-furred catgirl with blonde hair and a pink brunette platypus with her hair tied back in two pigtails. Both of them grinned awkwardly under the spotlight and the audience's cheering. "How about you two - how are you feeling about what the castle might have in store for you?" "Uh..." Hannah began before being interrupted by the blue cat in front of her. "We're ready for anything!" Dakota bubbled, drumming her hands on the table. "I'm delighted to hear it..." the caracal nodded. "And the master of the castle tells me we have a sister and a boyfriend in the audience tonight - Sierra and Ark, are you here?" He called out to the stands, and grinned lopsidedly as a light shone on another blonde catgirl sitting next to a red cardinal at the very front. "Aha!" he called in their direction. "Are we going to be getting any retaliation if anything terrible happens to these two tonight?" "No, gunge the hell out of 'em," grinned Ark. The audience cheered around him, but a little embarrassed grin flitted across his face at the expressions from Dakota and Hannah. "I don't think you'll be disappointed," the caracal grinned after the noise had died down. "So let's take our first steps - our two teams will be playing three games on the way to the centre of the castle, trying to amass these all-important eyeballs and be the ones to enter the Dragon Den." He reached into his stained labcoat and took out two spheres the size of a fist, one green with a goat-like horizontal pupil and one yellow with an oval slit. He pushed them across the table towards the teams of their colour. "But the castle changes shape every time the day ends, so I don't know what route we'll be taking - you two, want to step forward and find out?" He motioned to the felines from the teams on either side of him, and Dakota and Vicky got up from their seats. He pointed down at a lever set into the table in front of him, and the girls clasped their hands on top of it and tugged it down together. All their eyes went up to the giant curtain concealing the main part of the set behind them as the lights dimmed, leaving a projection of a bony slot machine-like display on its black surface. A series of pictures whirled around inside the first slot, eventually slowing and clicking to a halt as it displayed a picture of a saucepan overflowing with a slimy green substance, the handle of a ladle poking out the top. "Aha!" Payne grinned wryly as he whirled around to face the teams again. "Tonight we're coming in through the castle kitchen - and you're playing the game that we call Monster Meals..." He swept his hand to one side and the curtain drew back, revealing the setup for the first game area. The lights went up on a grimy, chaotic kitchen with pots, containers and buckets strewn around the surfaces and shelves, some with slimy stains running down their outsides. The kitchen area was on a stone-effect platform a few feet above the surface of the stage - in front of it, two cylindrical booths stood on the floor, about three feet wide. They stretched up from circular grates on the ground, with their tops level with the top floor - each of them was topped with a wide funnel poking down into them. Just above and behind them, two large metal soup tureens were mounted on a pivot arrangement with levers at their sides - one painted in yellow, the other green. "Hurry, if you please!" Payne called to the girls, pointing with his cane. "One of you inside the other team's tube and the other on the top level, please..." After glancing at each other, Dakota and Vicky shared a nervous giggle and were joined by their teammates as they drifted up to the stage, stepping around a pair of outsize open book props on tilted low stands that faced the tubes. On the left hand side, Vicky tugged open the front section of the tube with the yellow container poised above it and slipped inside. She stared upwards at the funnel poking down a foot above her with an eager smile on her face, her red hair blowing back as the tube clunked closed in front of her. Opposite them, the cat girl and platypus huddled next to the tube, bouncing their fists in a rock-paper-scissors game. Hannah smiled as she closed her two outstretched fingers around Dakota's flat hand, and retreated up the steps as the blue cat made her way into the cylinder. "Here's what you'll be doing!" Payne called up to Heather and Hannah as they reached the top level, the hedgehog girl drifting forwards and looking at the messy props and buckets of slime around her. "You'll be preparing some food for the monsters we keep in the dungeons down below, and your friends down here are going to call out the ingredients you need from the books in front of them." He paused as the dusty covers of the large books on the stands in front of Dakota and Vicky swung open by themselves, the leopardess's eyes widening at the effect. "I know, it's impressive, isn't it?" the ragged caracal laughed. "Hannah and Heather, your friends will be calling up the ingredients you need to put into your team's pot. Once a recipe is complete, you can pull the lever next to it to pour the stuff into the tube and send it down to the monsters... and gunge the opposing team's girl down here on the way!" Vicky and Dakota smiled embarrassedly as the audience whooped, the blue cat girl tucking a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. Payne danced to the side of the stage, taking hold of a long rope that led up into the rafters. "Let's hurry - midnight's coming!" He tugged the rope down, triggering a deep bell sound, and the unseen mechanism in the two books in front of Vicky and Dakota made them swing to the next page. At the sight, both the felines grabbed the ends of the flexible speaking tubes that poked into the tanks next to them, talking over each other and calling indistinct instructions into them. The girls in the kitchen area above nodded and spun around to start their search, the pink platypus crashing into a metal cart in her eagerness before rebounding off. Hannah was the first to come waddling back with her arms wrapped around a large square container. She propped herself on the short front wall of the upper area to step up to the large pot and overturned the plastic box to pour in the black gloop inside. "Dakota, what was the other thing?!" she called into the speaking tube as the last of the gungy lumps trickled down into the yellow tureen. "Uh - beetle beans and... minotaur snot..." tittered Dakota, visibly twitching as Heather sloshed a bucket of something into the pot above her. She twisted up to look as Hannah took off again, her eyes darting around the shelves. Vicky looked up at the funnel looming over her, bouncing on her heels with her ears perked. Above, the platypus girl pulled a large vase-like container off a shelf, and the noise from the audience rose as she stepped back over to the pot and poured the goo in. "Hannah's mixed her first recipe - throw that lever and send it down!" the caracal encouraged from the lower level. After shaking the last of the stuff out of the vase, Hannah stepped back and used both hands to pull the lever, tipping the huge pot over and sending the mixture crashing down into the funnel on top of the cylinder as an alarm rang. A little of the thick slime spilled over the front of the funnel as it swirled downwards, and Vicky's eyes widened as the wave of black and green stuff splutted to the ground in front of her just before the same mixture of gunge splurged over her head. "Wauugh!" The leopardess yelped and ducked forward with an open-mouthed grin as the weight of the slime pushed her head down, the mixture of green and lumpy black stuff splashing in a huge flower off the back of her neck and splattering on the back surface of the pipe. As the gunk dripped down her back, she closed her eyes and raised her head up into the downpour, disappearing behind the icky flood and raising her hands up to catch it as the green-stained lumps dripped through her outstretched fingers. As the cat girl next to her watched with an anxious smile, the downpour of slime eased off, revealing Vicky with her hair plastered to her head with the gungy mixture, the ooze slithering down her back and around her shoulders. "Dakota, what's the next one?" A call from Hannah made the blue feline take her eyes off the exhilirated slime-coated girl next to her, and looked at the recipe book in front of her. "Okay - swamp mud and vampire juice," she called, then gasped at the noise of the lever from above her. She looked up then cringed down, squeezing her eyes closed as the alarm rang and putting her hands up to her face as a column of thick white slime broke over her head. With her hands in her slimy hair to keep it out of her face, the gungy leopardess looked over to the other tank, a couple of black lumps still slithering down on to her head as the watched the opaque umbrella of smooth white gunge bulge over her opponent, shifting a little from side to side as Dakota wriggled beneath it. After a few seconds, the downpour thinned and spluttered to one side, revealing the coated feline again with her hands still clasped to her face. The thick gunge slumped off the front of her head and slithered down her forearms, dripping from her elbows with the remains of the ooze sliding forwards over her hands to coat her top. "What now?" Heather called down, and Vicky gave a small start as her attention went back to the book. "Three jugs of moat slime!" she exclaimed, then with a giggle, she looked back at the catgirl tenting her hands over her face, a little grin visible underneath them as the thick white slime dripped in slow strings from her hair and fur. Hannah squeaked from the top level as she dislodged a bucket of something from a shelf, making it tip over and spew a splatter of thick purple gunge all over her front. Spreading her arms to look down at her soaked top, she gave an embarrassed smile and then reached up to the identical container next to it. Carrying it with two hands, she watched as Heather squeezed past her with an outsize pitcher of green ooze. The girls on the top level poured their new ingredients into the pots together, with the slimed felines down below both twisting up in an attempt to see what was happening above them. Dakota's eyes followed Heather as she stretched up to a high shelf to take another gunge-filled pitcher down, then she screeched and nearly dropped it as she saw a skeletal hand wrapped around it. Heather snarled at the laugh from the audience, threw the plastic hand to the floor and dashed back over to the green pot, grabbing a third jug of slime along the way. With a grunt of effort she hauled them both up to pour them in together, then stepped down and yanked the lever backwards to pour the stuff down. Dakota's hands balled into fists next to her as she heard the gunge splash into the funnel, and she squeaked as the second downpour of gunge smacked on to her head, jumping up and down and shrieking excitedly under the slimy green flood. Vicky giggled at the sight of the slime splurging off the catgirl's head just before she gasped at a thick splashing sound from above her. She glanced up for just a moment before hunching down as a wave of brown and purple gunge smacked on to her head. The catgirl shook her head, her heavy gunge-stained hair hanging over her face as the remains of the green stuff splotted on to her. She brought her hands up as the thick green slime continued pouring in a steady stream from the front of her hair. Cringing as she swept her wet hair behind her head, she grinned and flicked her outstretched fingers, shaking the slime down through the grate she was standing on. Leaning to the side out of the drips from above, she smiled at the sight of the leopardess being gunged again next to her - arcs of purple and brown splashed on to the clear plastic walls of the tank as Vicky wriggled and shuddered underneath. Just as the gunge ran out above Vicky a gong sound reverberated through the room, and the caracal stepped forward, clapping his hands to join the cheering of the audience. The pink hedgehog girl leaned over the wall at the top and waved down to her gunge-soaked teammate, who shook in an exhilirated laugh and raised a hand in return, her other hand wiping at her eyes. Above her, Hannah stepped back from a third half-finished recipe. "What a start to the night...!" Payne smiled, motioning for Hannah and Heather to come back down to join him. As the platypus girl descended the steps, she giggled at the sight of the catgirl, her top half plastered in green with even more gunge still trickling down on to her head. "The green team and the yellow team finished two recipes each - let's get you out of there and move on..." --- The teams were huddled around the marble table at the front of the set again, with the caracal standing between them. In front of Hannah and Dakota, three yellow eye orbs sat in recesses in the table, and the same number of green ones sat on Vicky and Heather's end. "Okay, girls - after a towelling off, we're almost back to normal, but I think our felines will have a slimy gleam to their fur for a while..." He paused and smiled over at the felines, who were both wearing stained towels around their necks. "But you're safe from the gunge for a moment, because we're playing Eyeball Roulette!" He grabbed the handle of a large serving dome in front of him and pulled it away with a flourish, revealing a slowly rotating bowl cut into the table, divided into quarters colored yellow and green. "After the first game you've got three eyeballs each, but this is your chance to get ahead if you choose to risk it - you can each gamble some or all of those eyeballs on our wheel. If your eyeball lands on your colour, you'll get it back along with two extra ones - but if it lands on the opposite colour, your opponents will get to steal it instead. What do you all think?" He let the girls whisper among themselves for a few moments, before Heather and Dakota stretched forward to reach their team's pile. "Wow, big spenders this evening..." Payne observed as two green and all three yellow eyeballs were rolled towards him. He guided them into the bowl with his hands then clapped the dome down on top of them, a thundery rumble emanating from the bowl as they were whirled around. When the noise stopped, he glanced to the four girls craning their necks to see beside him, then pulled the dome away again. The four girls gasped as they saw the result - almost all the eyeballs had landed on their matching colour, apart from one stray yellow in a green segment. "Well, you're all in luck tonight!" The caracal reached into the bowl and distributed the eyeballs to the teams then reached under the table and handed even more of them out to the girls on either side of him. "You each get an extra four eyeballs from the gamble, then one goes from the yellows to the greens - so the greens are now just ahead of the yellows with 8 to 6!" Heather grinned and turned to her partner at the announcement, holding her arm out at an angle, and Vicky pumped her other hand in the air as she clasped Heather's. "But things can change quickly here - let's head further into the castle!" Payne motioned for Heather and Hannah to come towards him, then pointed his cane at the lever set into the table. As they pulled it together, the lights dimmed again, the skull slot machine reappearing on the curtain with an arrow pointing into the second slot from the last game's icon. All eyes were on the revolving middle square as it clicked past a picture of a snake, then a coffin with a white splatter mark around it... and glowed as it stopped on a ghost sticking its tongue out. "The haunted halls!" Payne cackled as the curtain parted, the lights coming up on the game area. This time, a lopsided wood-panelled room was revealed, with a pattern of unusually distorted blue and white tiles across its uneven floor. A set of faintly glowing spherical balloon ghosts bobbed and weaved slowly around the room, each about a foot across. Up at the back of the set, a much larger pair of ghosts floated on either side of a red carpeted staircase, their tapering tails pointed down at inflatable chairs beneath them. "So Dakota and Vicky were under the gunge in our last game - Heather and Hannah, why don't you take the hotseats this time?" Payne smiled as he led the girls up on to the stage, weaving nimbly through the floating miniature ghosts. The hedgehog girl grinned back at Vicky as she made her way forward to the seat under the green ghost, while at the other side, Hannah lifted herself up into the pool seat beneath the yellow one, her legs waggling as she struggled to budge herself back in the oversized chair. With her feet dangling, she looked up into the nozzle placed above and slightly in front of her with a quiet smile. "Okay, while they get comfortable - partners over here, please!" Payne tapped his cane on the floor, and the felines scampered up to join him beneath a gargoyle head poking out of the wall. He cleared his throat as Vicky looked up at its overhanging mouth expectantly. "So the tables are turned now - you'll be doing the legwork and your friends are relying on you to keep them clean this time..." The caracal reached his cane up and tapped the side of the gargoyle face. "Your task in this game is to ferry the slime from this end of the room to your flask at the other side." Vicky and Dakota looked through the cloud of floating ghost balloons to the opposite wall of the set, where a couple of bowed goblin-like statues in the team colours both held a thin plastic cylinder on their backs. "The more slime in your flask at the end, the more eyeballs you'll earn. Just a couple of things in your way..." He drew his cane in again and hooked it to the handle of a battered bucket, hoisting it up to hand to Dakota. "I'm afraid these things have seen better days, so you'll have to be quick..." The catgirl giggled as she turned the grey bucket over in her hands, looking at the cluster of small rusty holes in it. "Oh, and if you touch any of the ghosts... their parents over there are going to spew their ectoplasm all over your partner." Vicky picked up her own bucket and looked over her shoulder at the pair of contestants under the gunge devices - Hannah with a nervous smile and her hands clasped at her beak, with Heather leaning back in the seat with her hands behind her head, looking up into the nozzle hovering over her. "I think this thing's about to turn on... so good luck, I'm getting out of here!" Payne jumped away from the gargoyle as the lights swung inward on the set, and a downpour of gunge began fountaining down from the gargoyle head into a drain on the floor. Vicky was first to react, sticking her bucket under the flow and tittering as the slime poured down into it, splashing out on to her hands. Dakota awkwardly hovered next to her, trying to decide whether to push her way in, but Vicky took off after only a couple of seconds leaving her behind. The leopard girl darted a couple of steps over to the array of ghost balloons, watching the faintly glowing orbs moving in slow patterns. She glanced down to the bucket and giggled at the slow trickles of slime dripping on to her feet, then moved forward, trying to keep low as she made her way over the awkwardly sloping floor. As she straightened up, she yelped as a balloon burst above her, then she looked to the back of the stage where the hedgehog girl was sitting cross-legged with her hands still clasped behind her head. A light glowed inside the huge green ghost, and Heather's eyes flicked up at the spout above her just before a wave of green gunge splurged into her face. Heather spluttered and jerked forwards, the wave splashing over her head then subsiding and drizzling across her lap as her relaxed act broke. With her face screwed up, she shook her head, then clasped her hands together and scraped them down her muzzle to send the slime dripping on to her chest before opening her eyes. As she looked out at the stage again, another balloon popped, and she tensed up, but smiled over at the other side of the stage as this time Hannah was gunged by the yellow ghost, disappearing under the spray of thick paint-like slime. The platypus girl had her hands clasped on her eyes, a little smile visible on her beak as the ooze subsided, slapping against her chest and then slowing to a drizzle. Just as she lifted her gungy hands away to peek down at herself the gunge went off again, making her shriek as the large ghost balloon wobbled above her, spewing the yellow gunge across the width of the chair. Giggling helplessly, Hannah opened one eye and watched as Dakota and Vicky weaved their way back across the stage, slipping and sliding on the gunge that had trickled out of the buckets. Vicky dropped to her knees and slithered under the last of the bobbing ghosts, thrusting the bucket back under the fountain and then starting to make her way back before Dakota took her place. Heather yelled encouragement down to Vicky as she made her way into the cloud of ghosts again, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she waited for an opening. As Dakota came up behind her she leapt up between two of them, trying to squeeze her shoulders inwards but yelping as they both burst on either side of her. Heather's call to Vicky became a shriek as the ghost glowed above her again, and she instinctively threw her hands out to defend herself, laughing madly as the torrent of green slime sprayed around and through them to drench her again. The large ghost balloon strained at its tethers at the force of the slime spewing out its nozzle, bobbing around and covering the hedgehog girl in a gooey green layer. As the stuff eventually subsided, she sat plastered to the plastic seat, strings of the ooze stretching and slipping down as she struggled to sit upright again. "Hurry up - I think you might have time for one more trip!" Payne called from the side as Dakota made it to the far side of the ghosts without incident, the yellow gunge-covered platypus pumping her arms in the air as she saw her tip more slime into their flask. Hannah kept her eyes on her partner as she slithered her way back to the fountain, holding the bucket underneath the flow for just a few moments before charging back into the ghosts as the audience began to count down from ten. Another balloon burst near the other side of the stage, starting up the gunge above Heather again before Vicky emerged in a low crouch, heading for the flask. Dakota moved to catch up with her but gasped and flinched to the side as another one popped right next to her. Hannah closed her eyes and cringed through a grin, hunching up just before she disappeared again under a yellow umbrella of slime - as the gunge splattered over her, Dakota slipped on a streak of the stuff on the floor and toppled on to her back, the bucket clattering away on the padded floor surface. "Okay, stop!" The caracal walked in from the side of the stage, waving his arms back and forth as the lights came back up and the dazed catgirl pulled herself up from the spreading puddle of gunge on the floor. Licks of slime continued to splatter over the two utterly painted girls in the seats, the two of them blinking down at themselves and wiping at their faces as the brightly coloured ooze slipped in thick drips and strings from all over them and the edges of their chairs. On the other side, Vicky looked over her shoulder with a grin as she finished pouring her last bucket into the flask. Payne broke into a laugh at the sight of the gunge-coated game area, shaking his head as he composed himself. "Maybe for our third room we should try to find a bath in here instead for the sake of Heather and Hannah..." The platypus girl nodded, dragging gunge off her face with her fingers and revealing small windows of pink fur around her eyes again. "Let's get you back down here!" --- "Time once again for our brief but welcome non-messy game..." The caracal shared a smile with the slime-stained girls to his left and right, all of them clustered around the table once more. "The greens managed to increase their lead a little among the chaos happening up there, and they've now got 12 with the yellows a bit behind on 8... what do you say we try to even things up?" He lifted the dome off the spinning bowl again, glancing at the two teams as the girls conferred with each other. "Any takers...?" Hannah glanced to Dakota for confirmation then reached forward to their eyeball pile and pushed three towards the bowl, and Payne looked expectantly at the green team opposite them only to be met with a pair of shaking heads. "All right! We'll see if the yellows' gamble pays off..." Hannah and Dakota leaned forwards as he repeated the motion with the dome, the eyeballs rumbling in the bowl before he peeked underneath, grinned at them and then revealed them again. "Two wins and one loss!" he announced, distributing the eyeballs back to the teams. "So that evens things up a little - the yellows get four bonus eyeballs and lose one to the greens, so Heather and Vicky are only ahead by a hair now, 13 to 11. Shall we play one more game and see if you can overtake them?" He gave an encouraging grin to the yellow team as he reached for the lever in front of him and tugged it down, pointing up as the lights dimmed once more. The slot machine display glowed on the curtain behind them again, clicking through pictures rapidly before the third square glowed with a picture of a rickety chair with a downward arrow across it. "Oh, this is a game we haven't played before, and I think you're going to love it - let's get you on to the ducking stools!" Once again, the four girls' eyes went to the game area as the black curtain swept aside, and gasps went up from both them and the audience as the third game's set was revealed. This time a moat of gunge stretched across the entire stage, its surface swampy and thick with tufts of grass dotted on its surface. Above the murky mixture of browns, greens and greys, four crude seats made from bent metal frames and wire mesh were fastened in a row. Their backs were attached to vertical slots set into the stony castle wall behind them, the niches stretching from head height down into the gunge. Heather and Vicky gasped and looked at each other, the leopardess taking the pink hedgehog's hand and walking them eagerly forwards amid the cheers from the audience. On the other side, Hannah dazedly wandered towards the arrangement, her eyes wide and a hand clasped across her beak, before Dakota dashed up beside her and caught her arm. They grinned and whispered to each other as they were helped up into the seats by a couple of stagehands in cowls - Heather and Vicky on the seats on the left hand side and Hannah and Dakota on the right. All four girls had a surprised look as the stagehands fastened five-point harnesses around them. "Okay, girls - special announcement, 'cause this one might get intense..." The girls looked up, surprised at the sound of the caracal's natural accent as the robed assistants stepped away. He clapped his hands a couple of times, making sure the contestants were all facing him. "Can you all put your hand on the red button on the front of the right arm of your seat?" He watched carefully as they all leaned over to check, with Heather reaching over to help Vicky's searching fingers find hers. "Okay - just remember where that is. If you ever need to escape, just mash the hell out of that and the straps will come right off. All got it?" He looked between the four girls, making sure to get a nod from each of them, before going back into his stage persona. "Welcome to the third game of the night!" he announced, spreading his arms and facing the audience. "This time our teams are facing their slimiest challenge yet, with the girls' feet dangling above the castle moat..." Dakota grinned as she parted her legs and looked down at the slime underneath her, then jumped as a mechanical whine began and the four chairs were gradually winched upwards. Above them, the eyes on a row of four gargoyle faces flickered and flared. "Girls, this is going to be a contest to keep yourselves out of the gunge. One by one our gargoyles above you will light up, and when each light is on, the chair below it will be gradually descending into the moat." He tapped his cane on the near bank of the swampy channel between him and the players. "You can stop the chair and move the light to someone else by correctly answering the challenge that I give you. But as soon as a chair hits the red zone at the bottom, it's going to drop the rest of the way in and then out again. And that means that whoever's in that chair is going to get completely submerged in slime!" He paused for a moment to grin around at the various expressions from the girls - some nervous smiles, some eager bounces in the seat, and a couple that were in between. "Here's the other thing - you're not responsible for keeping yourself clean in this game. When the light is on your chair, it's your partner that's going to have to try to save you!" he cackled. The girls on the yellow and green teams looked at each other - Vicky and Heather stretching over to bump their fists, and Hannah and Dakota just sharing a glance and a smile. "Let's see where we're starting...!" The four of them looked up as the gargoyles' eyes flared rapidly in turn, with the light eventually settling on Dakota. She eeped under her breath, but hardly had time to react before Payne spoke again. "Dakota! So Hannah, I need you to name five words beginning with... H." The platypus girl sat up straight as there was a clunk from the chair next to her, and glanced at her friend as the cat girl slowly began lowering. "Uh..." she started, glancing around and trying to get her brain moving again. "House... horse... heart, hole, heave." At the fifth word, she started at the loud sound of machinery winding down, and Dakota breathed out as she stopped about a third of the way down towards the gunge. "Good! Who's next..." The caracal looked up as the light above Dakota went off, and the one above Vicky replaced it. "Vicky! Heather, save your friend by giving us five beginning with Y!" "Whuh?" The hedgehog girl glanced over at her partner, who giggled as her chair's mechanism whirred into life, waving as she began to disappear downwards. "Uh... yellow." Heather gripped one finger in her other hand as she moved her lips. "Yes. Yacht..." She shook her head, wriggling and furrowing her brow, and put a hand up to her forehead as she squeezed her eyes closed. "Y... ya... yelp. Yell!" She peeked out from behind her hand, and winced as she leaned over to see Vicky at least a full chair's height below her. The leopard girl stretched back to look up at her with an excited smile, then looked down at the gunge that was much closer to her dangling feet than before. "How is this so hard?!" the hedgehog girl protested, getting a laugh from the audience as she slumped back in her seat. The process repeated with the other two girls, with Hannah looking nervous as she was carried down a little further than Dakota was before the catgirl managed to name a fifth word. On the other side, Heather gripped her seat's arms and rubbed her feet together as her chair descended, but looked shocked as Vicky rattled through five words almost immediately. "Okay - looks like everyone's safe, let's go again!" Payne skipped sideways from the green team's side of the stage to the yellows as the first gargoyle lit up again. "Hannah again - this time your starting letter is B!" "B... boy. Balls." Hannah cringed at the laughter from the audience, a blush coming to her cheeks as she closed her eyes. "B... button. Butt..." Dakota shook in laughter, with Hannah cracking a smile as well despite her nerves. "Bowl!" she finished, and sagged as Dakota's chair stopped with her toes barely skimming the surface of the gunge. "It's interesting where your mind can go when it's under pressure, isn't it?" the caracal grinned, a smattering of laughter coming up from the audience as the embarrassed platypus girl nodded, giggling as her cheeks glowed. "Let's see if Heather does the same with the letter... V!" "Oh, gawd..." The hedgehog clutched at her head. "V..." After letting the letter hang in the air, she laughed embarrassedly too as she tried to chase the obvious answer out of her head. Glancing down to her side, she flapped her hands desperately as she glanced at Vicky getting lower, and the feline yipped as her toes dipped into the gunge. "Vor... vortex? V... volume..." She was interrupted by a harsh buzzer, making all of them jump - and all eyes turned to Vicky, who gripped the ends of the arms of her seat, her face frozen in a grin as the light above her suddenly turned deep red. "Sorry, Vicky - get ready to be dropped!" The leopardess dragged her toes up through the grey-green gunge and visibly took a breath, then a deep alarm buzzed three times and her chair slid rapidly down to dunk her under the slimy surface. The three others stared down as the murky slime heaved in a slow ripple from where Vicky had been plunged in, the mixed colours swirling lazily around each other. Only a couple of seconds later, the chair slowly began to emerge again, revealing a gungy lump with slime oozing and slithering down its surface. As it got higher, the sheets of gunge gradually fell away to reveal the shape of Vicky, utterly painted in the stuff with her drenched hair hanging over her face. Slowly, she raised her hands off the arms of the seat and reached under the curtain of hair, pushing it aside and trying to tuck it behind her ears as her grinning mouth became barely visible among the strands of gunge dripping across her. The chair clicked and stopped moving as her feet came out of the gunge pool, the stuff making a skin-crawling pouring noise as it dripped thickly from every strand of her fur. "Well, I think we've had a good demonstration of what happens when you're too slow!" Payne called, watching Vicky scrape her hands on the sides of her seat and then rub them on her face. Hesitantly, she opened one eye then the other, looking over at the transfixed yellow team on her left before looking up again at Heather. She giggled helplessly, pointing up at the hedgehog girl as she leaned over the arm of her seat high above with an awkward smile. "Okay - let's give you a little bit of height back, and then we'll go right back to it!" The three chairs with clean contestants in them all rose by a few inches, then the light above Hannah flared into life. "Dakota - five words that begin with U!" Hannah gasped as the letter was read out, but Dakota opened her mouth as soon as the chair began to descend. "Ursine..." she started. "Umbrella... and umber." She paused for a moment, glancing down as Hannah approached level with her, then suddenly gasped. "Uncanny, un... unknown!" Hannah yelped as her toes dipped into the gunge, but the chair stopped right next to her partner's. They looked at each other, whispering something inaudible and then looking at their toes as they dragged them through the murky slime. "Okay, Vicky - I hope you're not too distracted, given how things are with you..." Payne smiled again as he addressed the gunge-coated leopardess. "But it's still up to you to save Heather, who's hardly moved yet - can you give us some words beginning with Z?" "Oh, come on!" the hedgehog girl interjected as her chair hummed into life again, and glanced down at the moat below. "Z..." Vicky tried to start a word then shook her head, and went quiet in thought as beads of gunge continued to slither over and off her. "Zebra. Uh... zoo." She glanced up at Heather's chair, still above but getting closer. "Zap?" "Yes, keep going!" Payne encouraged. "Zip... and zig-zag!" she said triumphantly. She clapped her hands but flinched as the action sprayed gunge everywhere, spitting it off her lips. The hedgehog pumped her arms in the air as her chair clicked to a stop again, then looked over at her gungy partner next to her. Vicky offered her palm in the air, with long strings of gunge dripping from all along her arm, and Heather smirked as she stretched back away from it. "Okay, it looks like you're all just about on the same footing again, so a few seconds could decide who stays clean and who gets ducked!" Payne moved back to the yellow team's side as he looked along the row of girls, their feet dangling inches from the gunge. "Hannah, I'm sorry but it's up to you - save Dakota by giving us five words starting with... Q!" "Aaaaa!" The platypus girl wailed then jumped at the clunk from her friend's chair. "Question! Quick! Qu... quote! Question... uh..." "You've already..." Payne started, but was interrupted by the buzzer, and Dakota's eyes widened, her shoulders quivering and a little grin forming on her face as she glanced downwards. "Oh, I'm sorry, Dakota - say goodbye!" Dakota closed her eyes and her hand shot up to hold her nose closed as the alarm hooted. A moment later, the chair shot downwards and the catgirl vanished into the gunge with a glorp, a flower of murky liquid ballooning up from the point where she had disappeared, splashing over the pink platypus girl's lower legs. Hannah watched with a guilty grin as the chair slowly rose up again, with Dakota tilting her face up to get it out the gunge first. As her head gradually re-emerged she carefully took her hand off her nose and wiped her hand around her face, half-opening one eye as the slimy mixture poured and trickled down her. She looked down at herself, her shoulders shaking again in helpless laughter as she fiddled with the front of her swimsuit top, squeezing gunge out from between her breasts and brushing it off into her lap. Hannah bit her lip to keep herself from smiling too hard as the slimed catgirl's chair halted next to hers again, her fur painted in a pattern of murky swirls with trickles of gunge drizzling from her pointed toes back into the moat. "Well, Hannah, it was a nice try but you didn't quite make it in the end..." Payne smiled as the catgirl shook her head, her gunge-soaked hair making a slapping noise as it splatted against the sides of her head. "We won't put Vicky under the spotlight again, so we'll move straight on to Hannah..." The platypus girl nervously flicked her eyes upwards, her hands going to her beak as the gargoyle above her flicked on. "And Dakota, your letter is D!" "Duck. Dunk." The slimy feline wriggled in her seat as Hannah descended slowly next to her. "Donut... uh..." She glanced down at the platypus girl again, who was bouncing anxiously as she went into the gunge up to her ankles. "D... uh... d..." She put her gungy fingers to her forehead as her mind froze up, and sagged as the buzzer rang. Hannah gasped, looked down then screwed up her face with her eyes closed and her hands clasped over her beak. "Ready, Hannah?" the caracal called as the alarm blared, and the platypus girl began shaking her head just as the chair dropped and she glooped beneath the gunge. The two other gunged girls stared down at the heaving surface of the moat from each side, then their gazes met as they shared a grin. Between them, the seat slowly rose again, carrying the utterly slime-coated platypus girl slumped down in it. She shook her head a little as her shoulders emerged again, scraping both her hands down her beak and then shaking them out to flick the mixed paint-like gunge on them to the floor. Balling them into fists, she wiped at her eyes, eventually giving up and just sitting back with her eyes still closed as she breathed in and out heavily. "Okay, Hannah - it's all over!" A hint of a smile flicked across the platypus girl's face, quickly hidden by the folds of slime creeping down her face from the top of her head. "That makes Heather our only clean contestant left, so the greens have won the game!" The pink hedgehog girl grinned down at the three other players, all of them absolutely dripping with murky-coloured gunge. She ducked back a little as Vicky slipped her hand over her tummy and then flung a handful of gunge up at her with a grin. "Let's maybe find a cleaner part of the moat for you to dip into before you come anywhere near me again..." --- "Okay, teams - we only have a short while before midnight strikes, and it's almost time for two of you to face the dragons..." Payne stood at the front of the game area where the marble table had been, the huge curtain behind him now decorated with a huge wooden door with a portcullis across it. "You've both amassed an impressive eyeball collection - Heather was three notches away from the gunge in the last game, so we're giving the greens three more eyeballs, making 16 for them and 11 for the yellows - and in the remaining minute, you're going to try to get the other team's number down by as much as possible!" The two teams of girls, most of them with slightly wet fur and a slick gungy sheen in their hair, were seated in a pair of low enclosures a few feet square that were decorated to look like stone castle battlements. Each of them had a large slingshot at the front, and a few feet above them, a basketball-style backboard was set up with eyeball-styled balloons dangling in front of a spiky surface. Payne came forward and reached into the green team's section, picking a gunge-soaked beanbag out of a trough inside it as Vicky squirmed aside a little. "Our girls are going to try to stay ahead as they burst the other team's eyeballs by firing these up and across at them. The team with the most intact eyeballs left when time runs out will be the ones making the all-important choice of who gets gunged in the Dragon Den! Get ready, teams..." He paused a moment, allowing the two pairs of girls to fish a first beanbag out of their box and pull back the slingshot. "One minute to midnight - let's go!" The chime of a bell signalled the start of the game, and the lights went out leaving just the two teams lit. Both of them simultaneously let go of their slingshots - Dakota's flew horizontally to the back of the stage and the other squelched sadly on the floor directly in front of Vicky as it slipped out of the stretched slingshot. "Okay, that was a practice one - you'll get the hang of it..." Payne watched as the girls tried again, Heather and Vicky shuffling around to swap places while Hannah handed Dakota another beanbag. The next few times, the fired projectiles occasionally rose above head level but despite the cheering encouragement from the audience, neither team landed one anywhere near their target. "There's one!" the caracal yelled excitedly as a beanbag from the yellow team's side of the stage finally arced through the air, leaving a streak of gunge behind it, but watched as it sailed up and over the wall of the set. As he watched it go, a deep church bell rang out, accompanied by a blue strobe flash of lightning and a thunderclap. "It's midnight!" Payne called above the noise, smiling as Heather leaned back with a roll of her eyes, leaving the beanbag in her hand to splat on to the floor. "Maybe we should get the imps to take a look at these things..." He stepped forward to twang the slingshot in front of Hannah and Dakota. "Still, at the end of the last game there's been no change at all, so the final scores are what I said before - the yellows did well to keep eleven eyeballs but the green team have come out ahead with sixteen!" The leopard's face lit up in a smile and she turned to slap hands with her hedgehog friend as the audience cheered. Payne moved across the stage towards them, glancing back as the portcullis-patterned curtain at the back of the stage rose accompanied by a rattling sound and the hiss of a pair of smoke fountains - and the noise from the audience intensified again as it revealed a stony room with a large cauldron in the middle, a pair of rails underneath it leading backwards to a crumbled section of the wall that turned into the mouth of a cave. A network of sticky string formed a spider web over the entrance. "Heather and Vicky - the den is open, you're our winners, so the choice is yours! Are you going to brave the Dragon Den yourselves, or send the losing team in to be gunged instead?" There was a short whispered discussion between the two of them, and the cat and platypus looked on nervously with their hands held. Finally, the red-headed leopardess turned to the host. "We're gonna send them in, but can I go in too?" she asked. "Of course! I say the more girls to gunge, the better..." He smiled as Hannah and Dakota looked at each other with awkward giggles, then followed the host's beckoning hand up to the cauldron. "Hop in," he invited, offering a hand to help Dakota clambed over the lip as Hannah peeked nervously over it. As the catgirl seated herself, she smiled at her friend and put her hands forward to encourage the platypus to join her. As Dakota put her arm around Hannah, Vicky eagerly jumped up next to them with both hands on the lip of the cauldron, and swung her legs around to drop in next to them. Payne stepped away from the cauldron, making his way to the conspicuous lever next to it. "I think they're ready for the ride... Heather, want to come and complete the foursome?" "Nah, I'm all right out here," she shook her head with a smile. "Get Ark in here!" Dakota hissed to the caracal through a wide grin, and Payne turned around to see her jabbing her finger out to the audience. Hannah gasped and then nodded, joining in by calling over to the red bird at the front of the audience. "I think we can do that - Ark, can you come on up here?" The cardinal looked up in shock for a moment as a cheer went up around him, and turned to Sierra as she laughed and shook him by the shoulder. Still looking dazed, he got to his feet and took a couple of steps forward, his face gradually becoming a smile again as the caracal stepped down to meet him and took him by the hand. "Let's get you in here next to... I'm sorry, they didn't tell me, which one's your girlfriend?" "Um..." Ark's hesitation only lasted for a second, but his beak cracked into a grin as an avalanche of whoops and whistles from the stands drowned out anything he said afterwards. "Oh, okay - it's that kind of arrangement..." Payne smirked. He hopped up the steps to the stage with the cardinal in tow, then let go of Ark's hand as he clambered over the side of the cauldron. "Forgive me, I'm afraid we're a little old-fashioned here..." Ark sat down between the two girls wearing yellow as they giggled at the audience reaction, and he draped his arms around both of them with his back to the cave entrance. He glanced over his shoulder and turned back again, an awkward smile on his face as he squeezed them both. "I don't think there's any reason to delay - let's send you in there!" As Payne tugged the giant lever down, a clap of thunder boomed around the set, and the four occupants of the cauldron jumped as it began to move backwards through the giant archway. The audience cheered as it broke through the web at the front, with Hannah hunching with a giggle as the wet string fell across her. Ark picked it off her head and threw it aside, then all four of them looked up with a mixture of nerves and fascination as they were carried into position under the giant plastic dragon heads. "Five correct answers will get you out of there - here's the first question!" Payne called. "What metal is said to be especially potent when dealing with werewolves and vampires?" As he finished, two columns of green gunge splurged out of a dragon's nostrils and slapped down next to Dakota. The stuff splattered off the vinyl seat's surface on to her legs as she shrieked then laughed as she was carried around underneath them, the slime doming off her head. Ark hunched with a grimace as the stuff slapped on to the side of his face, dripping thickly from his feathers, then gasped as he went fully under as well. He hugged the girls a little more closely, with Hannah burying her face in his feathers as the slime painted her hair and back as well. Vicky gasped and stared up at the plastic dragon head eagerly as the rotation of the cauldron carried her around to it instead, but relaxed as the downpour slowed, becoming a series of wet dribbles and drips as she was stopped underneath it. "Uh..." She started, giggling over at her slimed companions as Payne repeated the question, then called vaguely upwards in response. "Mercury?" Another onslaught of gunge erupted from the nostrils above her in response, and she glanced up then hunched as she disappeared under a sloppy dome, shrieking and giggling behind it. "Nope!" Payne voice came up again as the umbrella of green slime fluttered over the grinning leopard girl. "Have you never heard of a silver bullet?" "Oh yeah..." Vicky nodded, a streak of slime dripping off her nose as she raised a hand up into the remains of the downpour. She yipped as the rotation of the cauldron started up again, carrying her back in the other direction. "Never mind, here's another!" The girls and Ark jumped a little as multiple cascades of white foam and dark slime began trickling down from the ceiling, pouring into the centre of the cauldron between them. "Witches were said to perform some rituals skyclad - what did that mean?" "It means they were naked!" Hannah spoke up as Dakota raised her feet up in front of her, watching the gunge pour and slither around them. "Yes!" A lantern on the wall flared into life. "And do you know why we think they did that?" "'Cause all the stories about them were written by horny guys," Dakota called. "Also correct," Payne said with amusement. "I'll give you another one for that..." Hannah looked over her shoulder at the second lantern lighting, then put her hand out on the seat, nearly slipping on the spilled slime as she realized the cauldron was slowing down again. She looked up, gasping as she realized this time she was the one stopping beneath one of the dragon heads, and cringing with a giggle as she glanced up into its open maw. "Question three - can any of you tell me what makes a wyvern different from a dragon?" The platypus girl breathed in as if to speak up, but hesitated silently for a second, her eyes flicking from side to side. Suddenly there was a deep retching noise from above her and she screamed, hunching over just as a stream of lumpy beige gunge shot out from the dragon head next to the one she was under. On the other side of the cauldron, Ark screeched as he looked up at it then turned his head away, his beak firmly closed with his hands instinctively flying out to protect himself as the stuff spluttered into his lap. Dakota and Vicky grinned squeamishly, shuffling a little away from Ark as the gunge spewed over him, the stream moving up to slap against his chest before easing off. He looked down at himself with his arms spread, the lumps of slime crawling stickily down his painted feathers. Hannah unfolded herself, giggling in relief, and remembered about the question. "They only have two legs!" she yelled. "Yes!" Hannah grinned as she clapped her hands and straightened up then vanished behind another downpour of beige sludge from the mouth above her, a scream audible from underneath the chaotic splatter as she jumped in the seat and hunched over again. As she poked her head out of the shower, her shocked face turned into an embarrassed grin, and Dakota shuddered as she watched the chunks of the slime mixture creeping around her platypus friend's neck. The downpour eventually slowed, leaving Hannah shaking the gunk off herself as the cauldron started its slow spin again. Multiple quick splats of gunge fell from the dragon snouts as the four friends were carried around under them. "Question four!" came Payne's voice again above the yelps and squeaks. Dakota blinked through the gunge on her face and glanced to the ceiling, squeezing her hands between her thighs with a nervous grin as she realized she was being stopped directly beneath a dragon head this time. "What would you find stored in an ossu-" "Waaughh!" The catgirl squeaked as a drizzle of warm syrupy slime flowed out of the dragon mouth, the clear-white goo clinging heavily to her as it crawled down her hair and fur. She wriggled underneath it but kept her head straight, closing her eyes and cupping her hands over her mouth as it dripped from her head over her face. "What did you say?!" Vicky yelled, wiping away a splat of dark green slime that had caught her right on the head. "What's stored in an ossuary?" Payne repeated, and Vicky glanced down from the ceiling at the gunge continuing to pile up on the giggling catgirl. "Bones," Hannah offered from the other side of the cauldron. "Absolutely right!" Another lantern flared on as Dakota was spun away from the downpour of saliva, and the others ducked a little as they were carried underneath the thinning downpour in turn. "One more question, are you ready for it?" "Yeah!" Ark called up to the ceiling, then beckoned to Dakota and Hannah with a smile. "Come on, let's do this one together..." The slimed girls next to him shuffled unsteadily over to nuzzle under his arms with Vicky joining in the hug on Hannah's side, and they all took nervous glances at the snouts above them as the cauldron stopped its rotation again. "Spiders are not insects, but what are they?" "Uh..." Ark hesitated. As he prepared to answer, a spurt of green slime erupted from a dragon nostril near the ground across the cauldron, arcing through the air and just leaving him enough time to close his eyes before it splurged into his face. The girls in his arms ducked aside with shrieking giggles and Vicky whooped, pumping her slimy arms in the air as she watched the gunge cascade down the bird's face and form a heavy wet stripe as it slithered down his chest and tummy. The three of them giggled again as a column of yellow gunge dropped from above the slime-slathered bird, adding to the onslaught as it twitched and spluttered over Ark's head. "Arachnids!" Dakota called through her laugh as the thick slime from above squelched and splattered over the bird, who shook his head, sending strings of it flying out as the flow settled to pour down his head. The others cheered as the last lantern turned on, then a chorus of shrieks went up as a box on the ceiling burst open, releasing dozens of toy spiders. Vicky batted at her head as they plopped into the pool of slime that had collected in the cauldron and stuck to Ark and the girls' gungy fur. As the slime above Ark finally dripped to a halt, there was another mechanical whine and the cauldron began sliding out of the chamber. Heather stood next to Payne, almost doubled over laughing at the sight of her gunged friends as they emerged from the cave area. As a final touch, spurts of slimy string spewed from nozzles around the mouth of the cave, sticking to them all in multicoloured ribbons. Thick fingers of slime slithered down around the cauldron's lip as it finally came to a halt, the four drenched victims exhaustedly acknowledging the cheers of the audience. The caracal turned to the short pink hedgehog beside him. "Are you disappointed you missed out on the fun, Heather?" "No way!" the hedgehog replied, grinning widely as she watched Ark pick away the strings tangled around his beak. She laughed again as Vicky stood up unsteadily in the pool of mixed slime, pulling her swimsuit top away from her fur to empty out the collected gunge inside it. "Well, I'm sure the four of them didn't mind getting messy on your behalf..." Payne looked up at the cauldron with a smile as the slime-drenched leopardess waded forwards, scrambling chaotically over the lip and landing unsteadily on her feet. As she straightened up, her face turned into a snarling grin, and she spread her arms towards Heather for a hug. "She's..." Payne glanced back at where Heather had been then dodged aside as Vicky cackled, chasing the hedgehog girl off the set towards the backstage area. He laughed as he watched her go, a trail of slimy blobs falling behind her, then turned up to the three remaining dripping players huddled together in the gunge cauldron. "Well, let's see what you've won for those two - I'm sure the zombie hounds outside will bring them back soon..."