FRIGHT NIGHT - THE CURVY DRAGON GIRLS Written by Iron-K under quarantine, 2020 A hush came over the audience stands as a note from a church organ blared over the speakers, soon joined by a rapid harpsichord melody as white flashes of light sparked around the studio. Gradually, a dull blue glow grew from the lights to the sides of the stage, falling on the huge black curtains that obscured most of the set. As the music swelled, a dishevelled silhouette came into view, rising on a platform from beneath the set with a cane raised above his head - and as it reached floor level, a sharp blue strobe light suddenly sparked to life accompanied by a thunderclap sound, revealing a grey caracal with long dark upright ears poking up through his dishevelled hair. He wore a stained lab coat and a cracked round pair of glasses, and his mouth was wide open in an insane cackle. With a lopsided grin, he took a bow, then let his cane slip through his hand and caught its end as he limped down the shallow stairs in front of him. "Welcome to another Fright Night!" he called over the noise from the audience in a grandiose put-on accent, his stained lab coat billowing around him as he stepped forward. "Once again, I am your humble servant Doctor Payne, and I'll be guiding the latest group of adventurers who dare to step inside my master's castle..." He stopped at a long green marble table set up at the front of the stage, leaving his cane against it and resting his fingertips on its polished surface. "Please welcome Gwen and Isla on the yellow team, and Cindy and Ianthe as the greens!" He held his hands out to the figures already seated in the shadows on his left and right as he called their names, the candelabras next to them flaring into life and revealing them fully. On the right side of the stage, dressed in black and yellow swimsuits, a plump pink dragoness grinned excitedly next to a slightly taller but similarly voluptuous blue raptor girl. A moment later, the light on the other side revealed a sandy yellow lizardess with lighter skin around her mouth and cheeks, arm in arm with another dragoness - the only one in the group to have hair, with a short blue bob cut standing out against her pearl-white skin. She blinked behind her thick-rimmed black glasses as she waved shyly to the cheering audience. "Now, these ladies applied to take on the castle together, and they all share something fascinating in common... none of them are strangers to slime. Isla and Gwen, you were both on Industrial Zone a couple of years apart - do you think that's prepared you for what's to come?" "Yeah, hit us with it," the pink dragon grinned, and looked to Isla as the raptor patted her on the shoulder. "Over on this side, Ianthe - you must be the most well-known player we've ever had in the castle, and you found yourself paying for that fame in Friday Night Party's gunge tank a couple of years ago..." The lizardess blushed a little as she nodded along with him. "...And Cindy - the mom of the team..." "Heh, yeah..." the white dragoness laughed. "Your last gunging was nearly twenty years ago when you got pulled out of the audience on Massive at the age of nineteen! But don't worry - I'm sure you'll be reminded how it feels before the night is out." Cindy shared a nervous grin with her partner, then stood up as the host beckoned both teams closer. The reptilian girls huddled around as he hunched over, returning his hands to the table. "Ladies, a labyrinth of challenges lies between you and the centre of the castle. You'll be competing against each other to gather these things in each one..." Suddenly, he reached into his stained lab coat with both hands then uncrossed them again, with all the girls except Isla giving a yelp and jumping back as he held a fist-sized eyeball prop out towards each of them. Squeamishly, Ianthe put her hands on it as he pressed it against her tummy, quickly throwing it on to the table and looking at the translucent slime dripping from her palms. On the other side, Isla calmly plucked it from his hand and put it in one of the recesses on their side of the table. "Once we reach the centre, the team with the most eyeballs will get the chance to enter the Dragon Den, where our resident monsters are waiting for you... but so are some fantastic rewards." He looked to his left and right, acknowledging the girls' excited faces, then indicated a lever set into the table. "The castle changes shape every time the sun sets, so even I can't tell you the route we'll be taking tonight. Cindy and Gwen, step forward and let's find out the room we're entering by..." The two dragons smiled across at each other and both stepped forward, clasping their hands together on top of the lever before tugging it down with a mechanical clunk. As the stage floor darkened, all their eyes turned to a slot machine-like projection on the black curtain behind them, with three boxes in a row inside the mouths of grotesque skulls. As they watched, the first square whirled around, a rapid clicking noise gradually getting slower as it ground to a halt, then it lit up in a glow showing a coiled snake. "The snake pit!" the host announced. "Let's get you acquainted with some of my master's pets right away..." The black curtain behind them parted, with green smoke billowing from sprayers in the floor. The four girls looked up and behind them, exchanging excited grins as the game area gradually came into view behind the fog - it was made up to look like a swamp, with a tangle of fallen tree parts and creepers scattered around pools of thick muddy gunge on the uneven ground. Various brightly coloured prop snakes were wrapped around branches, coiled on rocks or dipped halfway into the pools. The two biggest ones stood side by side at the back of the stage - each were nearly a foot thick, coiled in a couple of rings wide enough to encircle a chair in their middles, with their heads reared up and their open mouths poised above the seats. Behind them, the tangle of vines continued, creeping up the green slime-stained walls at the back. "Come on up!" Payne beckoned, dashing up the shallow steps and hopping on to a flat rock much more nimbly than he had been walking at the start of the show. "If you would be so kind as to head to the back there, and pick one of you from each team to take a seat..." The four reptilians drifted up towards the back of the stage, some squeaks and giggles going up as they put their feet on to the soft, damp surface - unlike their host, they didn't have the advantage of shoes. After some whispered discussion, Gwen clambered over the giant coils of the yellow snake to take her seat under the gaping mouth, and Ianthe took Cindy's hand to help her slide over to sit in the middle of the green coils next to her. The two dragon girls shared a glance with each other, with Gwen bouncing as she flicked her eyes up to the opening above her head. "So as those two get comfortable, let's talk about what Ianthe and Isla will be doing!" The host pointed his cane around at the slimy debris littering the stage. "The giant snakes' eggs have been hidden around this swamp, and you're going to have two minutes to get as many eggs of your colour back to your partner sitting up there. Each time you return an egg, you'll be awarded one eyeball - and in addition, the other snake will give the other team some incentive to hurry up..." He grinned and moved to the side of the stage, allowing Gwen and Cindy a moment to look up into the mouths above them again. From his vantage point, the caracal took hold of a thick rope hanging from the ceiling. "It'll be midnight before we know it - let's get started!" As he tugged on the rope the sound of a large bell pealed around the studio, and a burst of lightning signalled the start of the game. Ianthe hurried down from her position next to Cindy, who pointed at one of the large puddles of opaque grey-green gunge scattered around the stage. On the other side, Isla stepped forward more slowly, looking from left to right and hovering as she decided where to run. She glanced over and smirked at a yelp from Ianthe as she stumbled into the gunge pool up to her knees, then took off for a clump of overgrown grass at the side of the stage. Wading slowly forward in the gunge, Ianthe tentatively dipped her fingers into the soupy goo and felt around. After a moment, her eyes lit up and she dragged a bowling ball-sized egg up from the depths, wiping across it with one hand to check its colour before spinning around and struggling out of the gunge pit. She sloshed on to the wet bank on her knees, leaving a trail of goo behind from her feet before stumbling upright and stepping up the mound to hand the egg over the snake coil to Cindy. The white dragoness grinned as she dropped the egg down in front of her and looked to her giggling pink friend, whose feet were drumming on the ground in anticipation. As the egg thumped to the ground the eyes flared on the snake above her and a torrent of dark green gunge erupted from its mouth, doming out over Gwen's head in thick arcs and splattering the coils around her. Isla approached with a yellow egg under her arm as the spray shut off, grinning as the gunged dragoness was revealed again, her head and shoulders painted in a smooth layer of dark green with the ooze dripping in thick fingers down her top. Smiling back at her in exhiliration, Gwen blinked as she held her hands out to accept the egg, but it slipped between her slimy hands and fell to the floor as Isla passed it to her. This time, Cindy hunched over, balling her fists next to her face just before she was engulfed by a bright yellow downpour. A squeak came up from behind the gungy dome as it splattered out around her for a moment, then it folded inward, the ooze pouring down the curves of Cindy's head and drizzling in long strings from her hair into her lap. She raised one hand to her face to lift her hair up as the gunge eased off, yelling encouragement down to Ianthe as splats from above dripped on to her forehead. The lizardess and raptor kept hunting around the swamp as gunge continued to drizzle on to the splattered dragon girls from the tips of the snakes' fangs. Raking around in one of the gunge pools, Isla pulled another egg out but scraped away the gunge to find it was green and casually tossed it away to the side. Feeling another one at her feet, she yanked it out of the pool and lifted it above her head with dripping hands as she waded back towards Gwen. Still empty-handed, Ianthe glanced up at the back of the stage as Gwen took her second egg and Cindy was gunged by the snake again, a heavy downpour of goo fluttering over her shoulders as she ducked forward and shook with laughter. Looking away, the lizardess dove for the inside of a large fallen tree trunk, her wiggling hips visible as she struggled forward before she eventually disappeared inside. The two dragon girls at the back of the stage craned their necks to watch their partners as they continued to search, with Cindy leaning to the side and letting the remains of the gunge splat on to her shoulder. Isla clambered over the log heading for the front of the stage as Ianthe emerged from the other side, her front covered with dark purple goo but clutching a yellow egg to her chest as she fumbled her way to her feet. Beginning to run out of breath, she walked unsteadily up and tossed the egg up to Cindy, who dove forward and barely stopped it from falling back before dragging it over the ridge towards her. Gwen grinned in excitement again as she closed her eyes, and her head dipped under the weight of the gunge as a second load spewed from the snake's mouth, tilting her palms up to catch the stuff as curtains of the glop splurged crazily out from her head. Leaning back into the downpour, she let it cover her face just before it shut off, leaving the slime dripping in long strings across her laughing open mouth. A countdown from ten drifted up from the audience, and the raptor girl gasped and picked up a third egg as it increased in volume. Splashing awkwardly over the slimy uneven ground, she kept it held tight to her chest, and dodged past the big fallen trunk as the last few seconds counted down. As Gwen encouraged her with beckoning gungy hands, she threw the egg across to her, and Gwen hugged it to her chest and then let it drop just as the timer hit zero. Isla threw her hands in the air as the green snake spewed its third torrent of gunge over the once white dragoness, who closed her eyes and shook her head with a grin, making the dome of gloop fly out to the side for a moment before enveloping her again. The deep bell sound rang again to signal the end of the game as heavy sheets of the thick yellow slime splattered off her, coating both her and the snake prop she was sitting inside. Eventually, the downpour reduced to a drizzle, and the dripping yellow dragoness beneath it squirmed upright again and plucked her glasses off her face, turning them over in her hands. Beside her, Gwen laughed as she saw their completely painted lenses, then yipped as one more dribble of gunge splattered on to her from the yellow snake's mouth. "Well, we've started off in style here..." The four girls turned to the caracal as he stepped forward again, Gwen and Cindy wiping gunge away from their eyes as drips and dribbles of slime kept slithering down on to them. "You had to work for it, but the greens got two eggs and the yellows got three - let's get you out of there!" --- The girls were down at the table at the front of the stage again, having had a chance to spray and towel off after the game, though Gwen and Cindy still had a gungy sheen on their skin. Their host looked between the two teams as they huddled around the table in front of the closed curtain. "Well done on your messy but rewarding start, teams - Gwen and Isla, you collected three eyeballs bringing your total to four..." He indicated the eerie yellow lizard-eye orbs resting in the dimples on the table in front of them. "And Ianthe and Cindy are right behind you with three. But I'm going to give you all a chance to press your luck with a game of Eyeball Roulette!" He stretched forward to a large silver serving dome in the middle of the table, and lifted it up with a flourish to reveal a spinning marble-effect bowl set into the table, divided down the middle with half coloured yellow and half green. "If you choose to do so, you can gamble up to three of your eyeballs in the wheel. For each of your eyeballs that ends up back on your side, you'll get it back plus two bonus ones. But if your eyeball lands on the opposite team's side, then they'll add it to their pile instead. Any takers?" He held his hand out to the spinning bowl, and Ianthe glanced up to where the possible outcomes were projected on the curtain above them and smiled as she mimed counting on her fingers. After the two pairs of girls huddled together in hushed discussion, the green team pushed two eyeballs forward and the yellows offered just one. "Good!" The feline in the lab coat swept the orbs into the marble bowl with his arm, where they rattled and jostled around before he clapped the serving dome back over them. After a moment, the noise stopped, and the girls leaned forward as he revealed the bowl again. One of the green eyeballs had come to rest in the green half of the bowl, with the other two on the other side. "Looks like you've been unfortunate this time, green team..." As Ianthe and Cindy shrugged at each other, he reached forward to hand the orbs in the yellow half to the smiling Gwen and Isla, then ducked under the table to retrieve two more. "With that gamble, the yellows edge a little further ahead, with six eyeballs over your four." He scooped the last green eyeball up from the bowl and pushed it back towards the green team, followed by another two. "But the night is still young! Isla, Ianthe - let's have you reveal our next room this time..." He beckoned the two of them forward, and they performed the same pull of the lever that their teammates had before. The skull slot machine appeared above them again, with an arrow now pointing from the snake in the left square to the rotating middle one. This time, the grinding of the wheel stopped suddenly, lighting up as it showed a picture of a coffin with a white splatter mark around it. "Oh, you're going to love this one..." the host smirked as he turned back to the girls next to him, resting a hand on each of their shoulders. "We're heading to the torture chamber, and you girls are going in the pie-ron maidens!" Ianthe drew her breath in at the announcement, then she turned as the curtains began to part and gasped again with her hand going to her mouth. Isla silently raised her brow as well as the game was revealed - this time, the backdrop was of a stony dungeon wall with a few chains and barred windows dotted around. In front of it, a pair of open coffins stood upright near the back of the stage, with velvety-looking linings forming the rough outlines of figures standing at attention. Lying on the floor in front of each one were their lids, hinged at the bottom and with a neat white layer of stuff on them that was at least a foot thick. Ropes were tied to the top of each one, threaded through rings on top of the upright parts and then into a complex arrangement of gears on the wall behind them. "Take your positions, please!" the feline called, swiftly spinning around and putting his hands on Ianthe and Isla's backs as he walked them up to the game area. Showing Ianthe to her place on the right first, he turned her around gently, holding her hand as she lifted her foot over the huge pile of white stuff and backed nervously into the recess in the coffin prop. Wriggling to nestle inside, she looked around curiously at the three holes next to her head - one right above her and two on the diagonal edges. Next to her, Isla dragged her foot through the white layer as she backed herself into her space, smiling down at the goop left on her toes - it was foam with a smooth thick shaving cream-like texture. "This one, I think, is our most excellent game," Payne grinned to himself as he walked away from the coffins and addressed the audience. "Our raptor and lizard girls have found themselves caught in the castle's extensive torture chamber - not that we ever had any real prisoners, I think the master was just into things like that..." The girls smirked as he led Cindy and Gwen up to the game area as well. "Whatever the reason, they might be about to receive an extremely messy punishment at the hands of their opponents." He stopped with the dragonesses standing in slightly recessed areas of the floor, with the U-shaped end of a loop of rope dangling above each one. "The parts for two winching machines are piled at the sides of this room! Unfortunately, the master is starting to cut back a bit, so he got the kind that you have to assemble yourself." He swept his hand down at the piles of blocks, wheels and rods to the left and right. "Gwen and Cindy, there are diagrams of the finished article on the walls. You're going to race to be the first to construct your winch - once you've got it together, loop the rope on, start it up and splat the opposing team's girl!" He allowed a moment for the two of them to look at the piles of parts, as the girls at the other end of the stage looked down at the foam heaped in front of them. "Let's go!" At the sound of the bell, Gwen and Cindy dashed off to the sides of the stage, quickly dragging the large blocks back to their places in a couple of trips and assembling them like giant puzzle pieces into a trapezoid shape that fit into the recesses on the floor. Ianthe bounced on her heels as she stared at Cindy diagonally opposite, running back over to the junk pile and bringing back an armful of rods with a gear and pulley in her other hand. Trying each rod in the hole just under the loop of rope suspended from the ceiling, she eventually found one that fit and slotted the pulley on to it, stretching up to pull down on the rope and hooking it on. Gwen glanced over at the machine beginning to take shape in front of Cindy and then over her shoulder at her own parts heap. She ran over, looking between the parts in front of her and the ones Cindy had assembled so that she could pick the same ones. As she dashed back to her device, she watched as the white dragoness realized she needed to take the pulley off and put a gear underneath it on the same rod first. Isla and Ianthe looked between the two of them as they both worked their way along the sides of their devices, slotting various sized rods and gears in to connect them in a line - then they looked up to Payne as Cindy thumped one last wheel into place. "That's it, Cindy - now plug it in and pull the lever!" Cindy looked over her shoulder at the two big cables trailing from the bottom of the mechanism, and grabbed them as Gwen put her last gear in place. Holding them up, she glanced rapidly around before seeing a pair of matching sockets a little in front of her on the floor, and dashed forward and ducked down to stuff them both in. As they lit up in her hands, she jumped up, raced back to the machine and yanked the lever on its side. A whirring noise started up as the wheels began to spin, the lid on the ground in front of the raptor twitching as the rope pulled taut. Isla tensed as it suddenly rose up and headed for her face, turning her head to the side and closing her eyes just before the lid slammed shut. An audible "fwummph" sound reverberated around the stage as giant ribbons of foam spewed out of the three holes around the top edges of the coffin. Cindy gaped in amazement, her hands going up to cup her mouth as she watched the gooey floods arc in the air and splatter back down to the floor. "Oh my god...!" the pink dragoness whispered. Cindy glanced over to her as she quivered in laughter as well, her eyes fixed on the closed box with Ianthe stretching forward out of her position to watch the foam dribble to a halt. Calmly, Payne walked up to the side of the coffin and took hold of a round winch handle on its side. "Congratulations, Cindy..." he started as he began turning it. "It was a close thing, but you won the game and here's your result..." The lid swivelled back down as he turned the handle, and the audience whooped as it revealed a white foamy mass with the vague shape of Isla spluttering in the middle of it. She staggered a step forward as the lid clunked back to the floor, gradually peeling free of the mess and leaving peaks of the stiff foam quivering around the edges of the recess. Behind her, dollops of the foam slowly dripped down from the holes where the stuff had been forced on impact. Breathing heavily out through her nose, she clasped her white-plastered hands together and dragged them up over her head together, wiping the stuff away from her eyes and blinking them open as small streaks of her deep blue skin became visible again. Swiping at the end of her snout, she grinned at the reaction from the audience and slowly turned around for them, holding her hands up as she showed off her completely foam-coated body. The caracal smiled as he stepped forward again. "Sorry, Isla - but Gwen got really close, and I even think her machine would have worked - Gwen, do you want to try it out?" The pink dragoness nodded and looked at Ianthe, whose grin rapidly turned to shock. "No, w... waaaugh!" Her attempt at a sentence became a shriek as Gwen pulled her lever, and she scrunched her face just as the lid swung closed on her as well. The dragon girls at the front cringed again at the mighty squelching noise, and Isla stood with a toothy grin as she saw the fountains of foam being forced up through the holes. Payne dashed over to the winch beside the closed coffin and wound it around as the foam-covered raptor clapped her hands, spraying white stuff from between them. "Good news, Ianthe..." he called into the gap under the lid as he slowly lowered it down again, revealing Ianthe's completely white-coated head before she blew out hard through her nose and swatted at her face. As the lid thumped back to the floor, she hesitantly opened her eyes and looked down at herself as the white glop dripped and trickled slowly in large blobs from all over her. "It looks like everything's in working order here, so let's move on..." --- "Okay, a quick towelling down and it's like nothing ever happened," Payne smiled as the teams sat back down at the long table, indicating the two previously foamed girls on either side of him. "Ianthe, you didn't enjoy that, did you?" "Definitely not!" she answered with a shake of her head, but a smile still on her lips as she rubbed the side of her face with the towel still hanging around her neck. Cindy budged a little closer to her, putting a friendly arm round her waist. "Well, you might like this - Cindy's quickness has earned you an additional five eyeballs. I've awarded three to the yellows as well for their very close race - so you're neck and neck, or eye to eye, with nine each." Ianthe returned the hug from Cindy as they glanced to the growing piles of orbs on the table. "So it's time to make a decision again - who's going to gamble?" Once again, he lifted the serving dome and revealed the spinning bowl underneath and looked from side to side at the two teams as they whispered to each other. Eventually, all four of the girls rolled one of their team's balls towards the centre. "Two each! Let's see if luck is smiling on you tonight..." The four girls looked on as he performed the same routine as before, and all of them leaned forward as he lifted the dome away to reveal the two green eyeballs safely in the green semicircle, plus one of the yellow ones. "Yes!" Ianthe pumped her hands in the air then quickly dropped them with an embarrassed look as Cindy patted her on the back. Smiling at her reaction, the caracal scooped the eyeballs out of the green half of the bowl and rolled them to the left side of the table along with four more, then returned the other one to the yellow team with two extra ones. "The fortunes have turned! So the yellows now have a pile of ten eyeballs, and the greens are ahead with a very lucky thirteen. But there's one more room to get through before we make it to the centre, and if tonight is like any other night, it's going to be our messiest one yet - want to see it?" He gave a wide grin as he whipped his gaze from left to right at the nodding lizard girls, then pulled the central lever down by himself. The whirling slot machine display faded into view again, with the square on the right hand side flickering rapidly then slowing to complete the sequence with a picture of four test-tubes arranged in a square within a circular rack. "The test tubes!" he cackled as he spread his arms. "Come on up to the lab and I'll show you..." The curtain parted again to reveal the game area, this time laid out as a chaotic laboratory with large unlikely arrangements of glass pipes and funnels, old-fashioned computers with large tape spools mounted on the front and a pair of large spheres on towers at the back with electricity arcing between them. In the centre, a circular machine rotated lazily like a carousel, a scaled up version of what they had just seen on the projection - it had four clear cylindrical chambers about five feet high, with a semicircular bolster forming a seat in each one. As the girls stared up at it, the spinning motion came to a halt, coming to rest with two of the large tubes side by side at the front. With a hiss, the floor of the machine lowered a few feet to the ground along with the seats mounted to it. "Please take your seats! Team members diagonally opposite each other, please..." He watched as the girls made their way up to the machine, with Gwen grinning to Cindy as she pointed at the two large tanks with caution tape around them, mounted above the front two chambers with a mass of tubes connecting them to the device's central column. She ducked under the bottom of the cylinder and took her seat underneath the right hand tank as Cindy sat next to her, with the others seating themselves behind them. Once they were all seated, the floor gave a jolt and Cindy grabbed the soft surface of the chair underneath her as they were lifted up to be trapped inside the chambers. "Okay, girls, it's quiz time!" the feline called out as the slow spinning began again, each of the reptilians glancing nervously or excitedly upwards as they passed under the circular nozzles at the bottom of the overhead tanks. "Two of you are going to stop under the gunge pods at a time and face a question, and you have to use the hand buzzer you'll find on your seat to answer. The winner of each round gets rotated around to the back so that they're safe. But the loser is going to get the gunge, thus filling up the tube around them - and you've each got three chances before you're out of the game. Got it?" He smiled around at the nods of varying enthusiasm and nervousness from the players, and stepped forward to a podium as he pulled a set of cards out of his pocket. Clicking the lever into its central position, he watched as the machine slowed to a halt with Ianthe glancing nervously up into the gunge nozzle on the left and Isla with a confident smirk beside her, rubbing her thumb over the button on the end of the buzzer device. "Ianthe and Isla! You're starting - what kind of person would be a member of the ASME?" Isla squeezed her thumb down as soon as he finished and blinked as a set of lights flared on her tube's floor, illuminating her from below. "An engineer," she called as the speechless Ianthe looked over at her in surprise. "She's right!" Isla grinned and looked up at the tank above Ianthe as warning lights flashed on its underside accompanied by a quick repeating alarm. "Sorry, Ianthe...!" The lizardess put her hands to her eyes, a little grin visible beneath them as a downpour of green slime burst over her. She ducked forward under the weight of the gunge, giggling as she hunched her shoulders up and put one slimy hand on the wall of the tube in front of her to support herself as it splattered in a slow wave out from the back of her neck. The others watched as the glop filled the tube up to Ianthe's calves before shutting off, leaving the lizardess dripping with long strings of the thick slime. "Okay, Isla wins safety for now - let's turn you around!" The host flicked the lever in front of him and the machine hummed as Ianthe was moved under the right hand tank, rotating Isla behind her and bringing Gwen into place under the left tank. The pink dragoness grinned at the sight of Ianthe dragging a hand over her green slime-coated head, then blinked as a couple of leftover drops of the stuff splotted on to her snout as well. "Ianthe or Gwen - what is pi to three decimal places?" This time, both girls pressed down their buzzers, but the light beneath Gwen turned on. Ianthe cringed as she looked towards her. "Three point... one four one," she said. "No - Gwen is wrong!" the feline called, and laughed at the dragoness's shocked expression followed by a glance up with a grin. "And it looks like she's guessed what that means..." The alarm hooted again before he had finished the sentence, and a column of white gunge dropped from the tank above Gwen, splurging out over her head and smacking on the walls of the tube around her. The gungy dome twitched aside for a moment as air bubbled out of the tank, momentarily revealing the dragoness squirming underneath the slimy shower. As it eased off, she faced the front again and pulled her legs out of the pool of gunge, watching the white slime trickle off her toes before dipping them back in. "You were just one tiny fraction off, Gwen - but you'll get another chance!" The machine rotated again, bringing Gwen out of the trickle of white slime and replacing her with Cindy, who budged in the seat a little as it trickled on to her chest. "The two dragons - I might not be a canine, but if I were in a contest against someone much better than me I would still be a... what?" The girls looked at each other through the walls of their tubes, then Cindy was first to press her buzzer. "An... underdog?" she hazarded with a nervous bite of her lip. "Yes!" Cindy sagged with relief then jumped as the alarm blared next to her and a downpour of deep blue gunge splattered over Gwen, making a thick glooping noise as it fell into the white goo from before. The dragoness shook with giggles as the dark gunge crawled down her face and in thick fingers around her shoulders, mingling into a pale blue mixture. She twitched as the level of gunge in the tube spilled into her lap, and shook her hands above the surface before wiping at her eyes. "Eurrgh..." the caracal observed with a smile at the patterns of gunge trickling down the grinning curvy dragon, barely recognizable under the mess. "Sorry, Gwen, but you're staying on again - try to get this one right!" He pulled the lever the other way, sending Cindy to the back once more and bringing the gungy Ianthe forward. "Ianthe, you're back under the gunge - can either of you tell me... what's the only colour to appear more than once on a snooker table?" Ianthe jerked her buzzer forward as she thumped on it. "Red!" she exclaimed as the dragoness next to her glanced over. "Yes, and it's three in a row for Gwen - turn on the gunge!" Ianthe smiled apologetically over at her friend, who closed her eyes as the hooter blared again, and a downpour of orange slime dropped from the tank above on to her snout. The girls in the other tubes stretched to look as the slop squelched on to the walls of the gunge tank, oozing down slowly to settle on the rising surface. The host stared up at the tube as the gooey orange flood finally trickled to a halt and the dome splurging over Gwen folded inwards, the completely painted dragoness gasping with laughter in the deep slime bath with her large breasts floating in the gunge. He leaned to the side to see through a clear patch of the tube and waved to the gunge-coated dragoness as she blinked her eyes open, making a futile attempt to brush the orange slop away from her face with her messy hands. "That wasn't red, but I think that Gwen's just about every colour except that..." he smiled. "Gwen, your tube is full so that takes you out of the game already - we'll see you soon!" He held the lever to rotate the girls to the right, with Ianthe going to the back followed by the drenched Gwen, who waved to the audience as she disappeared from view. "Isla and Cindy... wow, what a difference," he laughed as he looked between the two clean tubes. "Let's gunge one of you - in music, a slightly low note is flat, but a slightly..." He stopped at a buzzing sound and looked up to the left hand tube as Isla held her button up. "Sharp", she called. "Straight in and she's right, a slightly high note is sharp - Cindy, it's your turn!" The white dragoness cringed as the siren blared above her and clasped her hands to her face, glancing up at the nozzle then ducking down just in time before a flood of brown gunge glopped over her. Isla twitched away instinctively as it splatted out on to the tube wall between them before settling into a steady downpour, just Cindy's horns visible under the glistening dome of slime as she shook her head slowly. As the slime crawled to a halt she dragged her hands up her face and over her head, revealing the underside of her blue hair again for a moment before it splurched heavily back into her face. "She looks like she got caught in a chocolate factory accident, doesn't she?" the host laughed as long drizzles of the gunge continued to slither down on to Cindy from above, spattering on her forehead, snout and lap. She nodded as she splashed her feet in the collected ooze at the bottom of the tube. "Isla, you're still clean and you get to go to safety once again!" The tubes rotated back the other way, bringing Gwen in the slime-filled tube from the back row again. "Okay, let's do Cindy and Ianthe - you're on the same team, I won't count this one in the score, I just want to gunge one of you again..." This time, the feline at the controls budged the lever so that the machine rotated a little out of alignment, with the two girls he'd named on the left and right just behind Gwen in the front middle. "If I can just lean past this absolutely gunged girl to see you both..." Gwen tittered as she looked at her slightly less slimed friends. "Listen carefully to this one - what's the number represented by Roman numerals... CXXIV?" Gwen blinked and looked from side to side at the two girls as they thought for a moment, turning quickly back to Ianthe as she was the first one to press her button. She drew her breath in, pausing as her lights came on and the host looked up to her. "A hundred and... fourteen?" she hesitated. "No, there were two X-es there making a hundred and twenty four! And a wrong answer means..." The caracal thumped the lever to the side as the warning lights flashed on the right hand tank, and Ianthe giggled through a cringe as her tube stopped beneath it. She twitched as a column of purple goop smacked on to her shoulder, closing her eyes as it flicked sideways a little to splat directly on to her head. Gwen grinned, wiping the orange gunk away from the wall of her tube as she watched her friend being gunged, her grinning snout just poking out of the purple curtain of ooze splurging from her head. After a few seconds it shut off, the purple flood suddenly reducing to a trickle and then a series of heavy drips splatting on to the smooth coat of slime across the lizardess's head and shoulders. She shook her head, sending strings of slime spattering out from her, then looked down and grinned at the tummy-deep gloopy mixture of green and purple she was sitting in. "Okay, so we're going to keep you on, Ianthe, and..." The feline's voice was interrupted by a clap of thunder as Ianthe's tube moved to the left, with Isla rotating into place beside her. "Oh - no, we're out of time! So at the end of all that, the greens were gunged twice and the yellows were gunged three times... a little less evenly..." Dragging thick purple blobs of goop away from her forehead, Ianthe glanced over her shoulder at the gunge-wrecked dragoness behind her, who gave her a grin in return. "But it's a shame to let one girl out of this thing totally clean, isn't it?" he smirked, half-turning to the audience and laughing at their cheer, while Isla shook her head, staring defiantly out at them. "We'll do one last tie-breaker between Ianthe and Isla, and I'll let you both have a guess at this one..." He flicked through the cards in his hands for a moment. "All right - in feet, how tall is the Bloom Tower in Anglia from its entrance to its top level? Isla, clean ladies first..." "Hrrf..." Isla put her fingers to her temples as she closed her eyes. "One thousand... four hundred feet?" she finished, slapping her hands back down to her knees. "Okay! Ianthe?" "One thousand, four hundred and one," the lizardess grinned as she emphasized the last word. "You...!" Isla gasped, beginning to point at her but smacking her hand on the inside of the tube. "Oh, that's a dirty tactic, Ianthe... but it's kept you clean! The actual height is 1,444 feet and Isla was further away - start up the gunge!" Isla growled and folded her arms but couldn't help letting a little smile slip as the alarm hooted. As her eyes flicked up to the ceiling, a burst of yellow slime spewed down and made her duck as it instantly painted the top of her head and snout, her shocked mouth hanging open below it. The heavy gunge licked out in waves from her head and she relaxed her shoulders as thick streams of it poured around her neck and down the front of her swimsuit. As the other three girls looked on, the downpour of slime faded from yellow to green, colouring Isla in a new gungy layer as it oozed down her skin in slimy dripping patterns and swirled in the layer of yellow stuff creeping up the tube. She shook her head and leaned forward out of the flow for a moment, her hands going up to brush over her slime-coated head then holding them out to catch some of the green stuff as it glooped out in a dome from the back of her neck. With a sly smile over at Ianthe, she dipped her head back into the gunge shower just as it turned black, the oily ooze fountaining off her bald head in thick messy arcs and slapping against the tube walls. The alarm gave one long last blare and Ianthe clapped her slimy hands together as the column of dark gunge finally thinned to a trickle, leaving Isla sitting tummy-deep in a swirling mixture of slime with fingers of the black stuff pouring over the green and yellow layers she had been coated with at first. With a sigh, she hauled her hands out of the gunge and flicked them in front of her face before clasping them together and dragging them over her head, blinking her eyes open and wrinkling her face as she felt the rain of thick drips from above continuing to splat on to her. The caracal laughed as the audience behind him continue to clap and whistle wildly, the sultry raptor staring out at them with a sly grin. She wriggled a little to make the slime bath slosh around her, then brought her hands to her chest to squeeze out the mixture of slime that had crept into her swimsuit top. "Ianthe... you made Isla take a ton of gunge for that single point, but the game is yours!" Ianthe grinned widely as the gunged raptor girl next to her as Isla sloshed an armful of black stuff in her direction. "Four eyeballs to the greens, two to the yellows - if you can even call them that any more..." He smiled up at the slime-painted girls. "Now let me work out how to get you out of there..." --- "Okay, girls - we're at the doors of the dragon den... and they're not the nice cuddly kind like the ones we have down here just now!" The caracal stood in the front centre of the game area, with the main curtain open but a second curtain right behind him depicting a gigantic wooden door with a portcullis across it. "Inside the room behind me lies your muckiest challenge yet - and in these few moments before midnight we have to decide who's facing it!" He looked between the two teams facing each other in the area where the table had been for most of the show - this time, each of them had an air-gun made up as an old fashioned cannon in front of them, and a large basin full of soft spined balls. Behind and above their heads, a metal rack held a row of round balloons that resembled the eyeballs they had been collecting. "You've built up an impressive collection of eyeballs - seventeen for Ianthe and Cindy, and twelve for Isla and Gwen. But now it's up to you to keep them intact - you've each got to burst as many eyeballs on the opposing team as you can. The team with the most at the last stroke of midnight will be our winners - are you ready?" Isla nodded, kneeling down at the yellow team's cannon and bracing herself to fire. Cindy and Ianthe whispered to each other on the other side, then Cindy crouched down in the same place. "Midnight's almost here - go!" As he finished, a bell chimed and the spotlight on him turned off, leaving just the two teams of girls and the racks behind them lit. Gwen grabbed one of the balls and threw it down the end of the cannon as Isla pulled back on the handle, letting it go and grinning as the ball smashed into the rack opposite, pushing two balloons at once into the sharp edges hidden behind them and making them both explode in a shower of white goo. Ianthe and Cindy yelped as the stuff splashed over them, but recovered quickly and fired a shot back the other way which went wide. The onlookers cheered as the bell continued to ring in a slow rhythm, encouraging the teams as they both got into a rhythm of loading and firing their air cannons, the yellow team managing to make more forceful shots than the greens. Straining to pull the cannon's handle back again with gritted teeth, Isla fell back as she let it go and whooped as she scored another multiple hit. After a few more seconds, Gwen straightened up from her cannon-loading position and watched as the greens fired another ball towards their balloons, hitting it out of the way with a grin. The thump of the air cannons and the pop of bursting balloons kept sounding on the stage as a tense tone rose up behind the continuing bell sounds. Finally, the girls relaxed as a lower twelfth ring and a rapid strobe light on Payne signalled the end of the game. "It's midnight - and the den is opening!" The caracal raised his voice above a metallic rattling sound as smoke fountains hissed behind him and the curtain behind him raised. The girls looked on tensely as the rest of the stage was revealed - this time the background was of a room built of dark cut stone, with gothic arches over painted doorways and a few dragon head gargoyles staring down from near the ceiling. In the centre of the stage stood a large cauldron a couple of yards across, its hip-height lip lined with bubbly green foam props to make it look like dark and light green slime was spilling over its sides. Beneath it, a pair of rails in the floor led away from them into a rougher doorway at the back of the stage where the carved stone gave way to a crude rocky cave-like opening, a network of spray string forming a huge spider's web across it. "And after showing some very strong cannon skills from both teams, it looks like our lead has changed again with an absolute slaughtering with Isla on the cannon - the greens have just seven eyeballs left but the yellows have won the night with nine!" Ianthe and Cindy joined in the applause from the audience as Gwen bounced forward to wrap her arms around Isla in a hug then dropped back to her feet, a large grin on her face as she looked over to the cauldron and the cave behind it. "So here's the most important question of the night, yellow team..." he smiled as Gwen practically vibrated with her eyes on the back of the stage. "Do you want to take the trip into the dragon den... or do you want to send the losing team in there instead?" The pink dragoness closed her gaping mouth then glanced across to the green team. "Can we take them in with us?" Gwen asked, pointing across the stage. "No, they can do it by themselves!" Cindy called back quickly, with Ianthe shaking her head rapidly beside her. "Suit yourselves! So Gwen and Isla, you're going into the dragon den - come up here!" To the sound of cheering, the caracal skipped backwards towards the cauldron, holding his arms out to the two contestants on his right. The pink dragoness looked over her shoulder, sharing a grin with the blue raptor girl as they both stepped up to the device with him. "Come on, I'm sure they can't wait to meet you..." The host spread his arms down at the round cauldron in the center of the stage. Inside, a ring of plastic cushioning formed a round seat, and the host walked around to take the girls' arms, helping them over the edge to seat themselves opposite each other. "Okay, girls - you know the rules?" The presenter stepped back and looked between the two reptilians as he got a nod from each of them. "You're our winners this week, but we're going to give you a last bonus depending on how quickly you manage to get out of there. Once you're in the den, all you have to do is answer five questions correctly to get out - you'll be able to see how you're doing by the lanterns around you." The projected screen flicked into life again, showing a view of the area behind the back wall of the set, which was made up to look like a stony-walled cave with occasional slimy drips slithering down the walls and falling from the ceiling. The camera slowly panned around to show the five lanterns dangling from the walls. "But our dragons aren't going to be making it easy for you, because they're often not too keen on visitors..." As he said it, the camera tilted upwards, showing a cluster of large prop dragon heads mounted a few feet above, their open mouths or snouts aimed down towards the center of the cave. The host smiled as he watched Gwen and Isla both glancing along the floor rails towards the cave entrance with the web behind them. "How are you feeling about going in there - a little nervous?" He grinned, then chuckled as Gwen bit her lip, wriggling with her hands clasped between her thighs. "I'm sure you're going to love them - let's send you in!" He span round and grabbed the lever next to him, wrenching it backwards with both hands. To the sound of lightning from above the stage, the cart jolted as it started moving backwards, and both girls jumped as it began spinning slowly. Isla looked over her shoulder as the entrance got closer, twisting around in her seat to keep her eyes on it as they were carried towards the back of the stage. The pink dragoness opposite her squirmed again, and hunched her shoulders, closing her eyes and squeaking as she was carried around into the sticky web across the cave entrance. Gwen eeped and batted her hands above her head as the stringy web broke, reaching around to her back and dragging the white stuff off it, letting the string dangle from her fingers as the cart continued through the dark entrance. The view on the projection changed again to show a view from above as the girls came into the center of the den area, both of them looking up at the dragon heads above them. "Okay, girls, here's your first question..." The reptilian and dragoness looked at each other, being spun slowly around as the host's voice came over the speakers around them. "What's the more common name for a lycanthrope?" Gwen opened her mouth as there was a slurping noise from above them. "Wer- aah!" She squeaked as two columns of translucent green goo splurged down next to her, the heavy slime splattering over her head and shoulders as the turning of the seat carried her underneath the deluge. "Werewolf," she said again above the squelching sound of the falling slime, bringing her hands up as globs of the goo dripped down from them. She wiped her eyes, smiling up at the snout of the dragon prop with gunge still dribbling from its nostrils. "Absolutely right, that's your first!" A lantern flared into life opposite Gwen as Isla was turned underneath the drizzling remains of the gunge, closing her eyes and hunching as a couple more sputters splotted over her. Both girls twitched as a burst of yellow stuff sprayed down between them. "'Witch's hat' is the name of a species of... what?" The girls leaned forward to whisper to each other, both twitching a little as a curtain of gunge fell from the ceiling across one side of the cart. Isla ducked her head through it, raising one arm through the curtain of slippery slime and blinking it away from her eyes as her skin glistened underneath it. She nodded at the whisper from Gwen. "Mushroom!" they called together, and shared a grin as another lantern turned on. Isla ducked as a heavy translucent stream of gunge licked across her, turning off and then on again as Gwen came underneath it. Both girls shook their heads to clear them of the slime as the next question was read out. "Question three - in the novel Dra..." Isla tilted her head up towards the sound from the speakers, then shrieked as a wave of beige oatmealy slime spewed across her face, the muck splattering across her chest, tummy and lap before it subsided to drip across the head of the dragoness opposite her. Pursing her lips and spitting the lumpy gunk off them, she twitched and brushed the chunks of it off her lap as she was carried underneath the dripping remains of it on the other side. "In 'Dracula', where was Count Dracula's castle?", the host repeated the end of the question. "Uck..." the gunky lizardess started, the chunks of slime slithering around her neck to drip down her chest. "Transylvania", she called, shaking her head. "Yes! Just two more to go," the host responded. Isla raised her hands above her head, watching the dragoness opposite her squeak as she pushed the few drips that had landed on her off the back of her head, rubbing the lumpy-textured slime between her fingers. She put one hand out beside her as they began to turn more slowly, then screamed as a large plastic spider dropped on to her arm, clasping her hand to her chest and panting with a shocked smile on her face as it plopped into the gunge at the bottom of the cart. "According to legend, who could sail in eggshells?" As the host asked the question, the cart stopped moving, then shifted backwards a fraction of a turn before staying still. The girls sat opposite each other in silence for a moment. "Leprechauns?" the dragoness suddenly called up towards the ceiling. "No, it's wrong!" Gwen grimaced at the call, then squeaked as she was splurged from above by another thick lumpy mixture, the chunky downpour bulging a little as it domed out over her head and shoulders. She tilted her head slightly, making the mixture spew out from one side, the lumps clinging and slithering down her skin as she squirmed underneath it. Opposite her, Isla ducked down as two dark and light downpours of ooze glopped across her, the stuff stretching stickily as it slithered from her head down to her shoulders. She raised her hands to the sides of her head, stretching the sticky substance out and clawing it off her face, then twitched as the rotation started up again in the opposite direction from before, opening her eyes and then closing them again as she was carried under the remains of the sloppy downpour Gwen had been under. "Snakes feel slimy - true or false?" "False," Isla answered quickly, raising her legs and looking at her dripping feet as another payload of sticky gunge splattered down into her lap. She squeaked as a cascade of thick orange foam was pumped down from beside her, and bowed her head as she was carried underneath it, then watched as Gwen went under after her, kicking her feet in the slime between them. "Yes! One more - which has more legs, a millipede or a centipede?" "It's... aah!" The dragoness squeaked and wriggled aside instinctively as another spray of the lumpy gunge came down right beside her, splurging heavily on to the seat with a wet smacking noise and splatting on to her legs. As the torrent continued, Isla was carried around into it, and she raised her hands in front of her, some of the stuff splattering off her palms but most of it spraying across her lap. "Millipede!" the gungy dragoness opposite her called, her hands up forming a tent over her eyes as she moved under the dripping remains of all the slime around the cave that had hit them. "Correct!" the host answered as the dragoness was carried under the chunky slop again, the ooze subsiding over her lap and pouring with a horrible slapping noise into the pool between the two reptilians. "And that's the last lantern - you're coming out of there!" Shaking her head and grinning as the last light around them flared into life, Isla slithered around the seat to put her arm around the dragoness as the cart shuddered again. It stopped turning and moved forwards out of the cave, with the girls blinking as the drizzles of slime from the ceiling fell across them one more time. As they came back up to the front of the set, they breathlessly raised their free hands to acknowledge the applause from the studio audience, Isla pumping her fist in the air with flecks of the lumpy slop dripping off it. The host grinned back at the two gungy reptilians as they wiped at their eyes, giggling as they looked at each other tummy-deep in the mixture of slime. "You did it! You knew that snakes don't feel slimy, but you look like you do, after that..." Isla wriggled and looked down at herself, her skin glistening and the remains of the chunky slop across her shoulders trickling down across the curve of her chest. Scooping up a handful of the stuff, she flung it out at the host, who dodged aside. "Hey, the boss says I've got to keep this clean!" he laughed, pulling at the lapel of his lab coat and watching the slippery dragoness giggle at his attempt to escape. "You got a bit gungy, but you won the game, you answered five questions correctly in just under a minute - let's see what you've won..." As a pre-recorded announcement took over, the feline beckoned the two clean girls from the other team up, and with a glance at each other, they cautiously approached their gunged friends in the cauldron. Payne turned them around to face the audience and they stood slightly awkwardly as he addressed his sign-off to them. "That's the end of another Fright Night - we'll..." He was interrupted by a squeak coming up from beside him as Isla reached out to smear her mucky hand over Ianthe's face, and he laughed as the slippery raptor girl tried to pull her towards the cauldron leaving slimy trails on her arms. Behind her, Gwen beckoned Cindy forward with both hands, eventually wrapping her arms around the white dragoness's waist in a hug. With a resigned smile, Cindy put her hands on the sides of the cauldron and leaned forwards, allowing Gwen to pull her over the side and make her splooge head first into the gunge, her legs going up as she tumbled over before she poked her slime-covered head up from the collected glop in the centre of the cauldron. "We'll have to kick them out the castle some time, but they look like they're having too much fun just now..." he smiled as the three of them encouraged Ianthe forward as well. She smiled through a sigh, then walked towards them with her arms spread and didn't resist as they hauled her into the gunge cauldron together. "As you all of you, I hope you join us again soon..."