Soon, the six students were all armed with as many bottles of cleaning spray as they could find (which wasn’t that much, mostly just two bottles apiece for each of them and a few extras left over), and were walking through the empty hallways of the school together as a group, searching for the wayward blob of gel they had come to stop. It wasn’t hard to pick up on its trail, as the blob left residue slime everywhere it went, so they proceeded to follow that, the trail eventually leading them back down into the lower levels of the school. They also found that the slime’s continued feeding on the school’s magically-powered lighting was clearly taxing as there was signs of several more fuses having been blown out throughout the campus. As this cut power to sections of the school, this reduced the amount of magic the gel could access for feeding…but also leaving whole sections of the school in the dark, and it already being well past sunset on Nightmare Night, this only added to the creepy atmosphere of their situation.
“Yona not sure if yak ready to fight slime,” Yona mumbled uneasily, on edge as they were starting to expect the slime ball to pop out from behind a corner at any time now.
“Don’t worry, Yona,” Sandbar assured her, patting her on the side. “I’ve got your back. We’ve all got each other’s backs.”
“This is taking forever, though,” Smolder grumbled as they cautiously turned another corner. “And the longer this takes, the bigger this thing’s getting.”
“Maybe we should split up,” Silverstream suggested, “Cover more ground.”
But Gallus shook his head. “No, bad idea,” he turned to face the others. “Think! What’s the number one problem in most monster hunts?”
Yona raised a hoof. “Yak is side-character and dies within first five minutes of movie?” She then blinked to herself, gasping in realization. “Is Yona side-character?” She looked at Sandbar standing beside her, suddenly concerned. “Do friends ever think about stuff like that?”
“No, no,” Gallus quickly interrupted before Yona could sink any further into her panic attack, “It’s splitting up! I mean, in every horror story you’ve ever heard, did the monster or whatever ever get the good guys when they stayed in a group?” His friends shook their heads. “Exactly. We spilt up, and that thing can start picking us off one by one. So it’ll be smarter to stay in a group.”
“Personally, I’m okay with staying in a group,” Ocellus agreed, subtly shaking with repressed fear. “This is unnerving enough as it is.”
“Besides, I think we’re getting close,” Sandbar said, pointing ahead of them at a cluster of changeling cocoons hanging from the ceiling. They had been passing such clusters with increasing frequency now.
And indeed, as they neared the school cafeteria, they started hearing the telltale wet rippling noise of the slime’s movements getting louder as they drew closer. Peeking through the open doors of the room, they saw the slime within, even bigger now, in the middle of slurping up cafeteria tables, sealing them in cocoons, and hanging them from the ceiling. It didn’t seem to notice they were there.
Gallus let out his breath in a smooth whoosh, trying to calm himself. “Okay,” he said. “How do we want to do this? Just run in there, sprayers squirting, or what?”
“It might be better if we can lure it somewhere smaller first,” Ocellus suggested. “Somewhere we can corner it. Otherwise, in a room as big as the school cafeteria, it’ll have plenty of room to dodge our attacks.”
“What about the kitchens?” Silverstream asked, pointed at the adjoining and much smaller room. “That should be pretty small, especially considering how much bigger it’s gotten.”
“There’s a back door into the kitchens back around the corner,” Sandbar said, pointing back the way they came. “We can get in from there.”
So they circled around and through the dimmed kitchens, taking positions throughout it with spray bottles held at the ready, while Silverstream—dubbed the most distracting of the group—went to where the serving area overlooked the rest of the cafeteria and try and lure the slime to them. It still hadn’t reacted to their presence.
“Hey!” Silverstream shouted at it, banging two pots together loudly as she did. “Hey! We’re over here! Come get us! Hey! HEY!” The slime didn’t react to her though and only kept doing what it was doing. In frustration, Silverstream hurled the two pots at it, making an unholy clanging noise as the pots crashed to the floor not far from the slime, but it still didn’t react. Confused, Silverstream turned back to the others and shrugged helplessly.
“I don’t get it,” Gallus remarked, also confused. “It sure didn’t ignore Starlight and Trixie when they tried throwing things at it.”
“It was also a lot smaller back then and already cornered in a much smaller room,” Ocellus reasoned. She sighed. “It doesn’t have a good enough of a motive to come over here.”
Smolder looked around the dark kitchen for ideas before her eyes fell on the stove sitting next to her. “Then we just need to give it one,” she reasoned. “This stove is magically powered, right?”
“I think so,” Sandbar answered.
“Then it can be our bait,” Smolder concluded, proceeding to switch on all of the burners to their maximum settings.
The slime reacted to the new magic source almost immediately, leaving off in the middle of slurping up another table and sliding quickly towards the kitchen, on as direct a course for the stove as it could, even if it meant going through and over other objects in the way. It drew uncomfortably close quite quickly as it squeezed its way into the kitchen, but it didn’t seem interested in the six students at all. So the moment it came into range, they all started squirting their sprays at it without restraint.
But while the cleaner sizzled faintly on contact and the slime clearly didn’t like it, twitching and squirming under the onslaught, it quickly became clear that it was too massive—they couldn’t spray enough cleaner fast enough. Even when Gallus unscrewed the top off of one of his bottles and flew up above it so to dump the contents directly onto the top of the slime, this only momentarily distracted it from continuing on for the stove. As it was their only bait, Smolder, Silverstream, and Sandbar all moved to try and block its path, spraying their bottles so much that a thick mist of cleaner hung in the air around them, but this only slowed, not stopped, the slime’s approach. And as it had to spread out to fit its massive girth into the smaller room, its mass was rapidly starting to fill the whole room, endangering of crowding them out.
Yona then got the idea of dumping out both of her bottles of cleaner too, this time right on the floor around the stove, so that the slime had no good way to reach it without going over spilt cleaner. This stopped it for a moment as it tried to work out how to get around it, but then it reacted simply by retaliating back, spitting out balls of goo all around the kitchen at the nuisances attacking them. Most of them managed to duck the sudden attacks, but Yona wasn’t so lucky and got one hoof stuck to the floor by one ball. She immediately tried to pull it free, but while the gel stretched, it held firm. This meant Yona couldn’t go anywhere like the others as the slime loomed towards her.
Trapped, Yona started to scream, but Sandbar quickly put himself between her and the slime, spraying cleaner bottles in both hooves as hard as he could, trying to drive it off. This did cause it to back up a little, but instead of giving up, it reassessed the scene then surged forward again, suddenly upon Sandbar enough to wrap its slime around his hind hooves and yank back, throwing Sandbar onto his back with a yelp. It then started to try and drag the pony off, but Yona as well as Smolder—already hurrying over to assist—grabbed onto his forehooves and tried to pull him free. The slime held tight though, resulting in a fruitless tug-of-war with Sandbar, white with fear, caught half-absorbed by the slime.
“Let…go…of…HIM!” Smolder bellowed in between grunts as she yanked as hard as she could trying to free her friend. Finally, out of a mixture of desperation and frustration, Smolder breathed a plume of flames at the slime’s base.
Its reaction was immediate, flinching away as if burned and giving a visible shudder. Indeed, the goo where Smolder’s flames had touched it sizzled and steamed like it had been burned away. Surprised, Smolder quickly did it again, and again, the slime reacting more and more turbulently until finally it released Sandbar and started backing away from Smolder’s offending flames. Smolder refused to let up however, and kept breathing flames on it with every breath, driving it back out of the kitchen while her friends, seeing what she was doing, started cheering her on. At last, with a squelching noise that sounded almost fearful, the slime retreated fully from the kitchen and beelined across the cafeteria, trying to put as much distance between it and Smolder’s flame as it could.
Smolder felt a flare of victory surge through her at this, seeing a distinct scar on the slime from where she had been burning it. It was vulnerable to fire. That was what they could use to destroy it. But even the parts she had managed to burn was pittance in comparison to the overall size of the slime, and it quickly smoothed over the burned area with a roll of fresh slime, hiding it from view as if the burns were never there. Further, doing just that much had winded Smolder, and she dropped onto all fours, panting heavily as she tried to regain her breath.
Her other friends, save Yona who was still trapped, quickly gathered around her. “Why did you stop?” Gallus asked. “You had it! The fire was working!”
“I can’t…breathe fire fast enough…” Smolder panted, gulping down big breaths of air. Fortunately, she was recovering quickly. “It’s too big. I can’t get out a flame big enough to…to damage all of it.”
“If only we could engulf it in flames all at once!” Ocellus reasoned anxiously.
“Yeah, like in just one big belch!” Silverstream added.
Smolder suddenly grabbed Gallus’s shoulder with her claws and hauled herself upright so to look him in the eye, struck with an idea. “Gallus, you still have that case of energy drink in your dorm, right?”
“What?” Gallus asked, not following. “Smolder, this is hardly the time for—”
“DO YOU?!” Smolder repeated again, pulling him closer with an anxious intensity that made it clear she was serious.
“Well…yeah, I do, I haven’t had a chance to touch it since—”
Smolder spun Gallus around and pushed him for the kitchen exit. “We need to go get some, now!” she said, motioning for the others to follow.
They were interrupted by new balls of slime getting fired into the kitchen as, making a clatter as it inadvertently knocked over a table, the monster slime suddenly came about and aggressively charged in a sudden change of tactics, spitting out projectiles of slime to again try and attack the six students.
“Uh-oh, I think we made it mad!” Sandbar declared, backing away while ducking the slime’s attacks.
Smolder quickly breathed a small ball of flames on the slime pinning Yona’s leg so to free her and waved her friends all towards the exit. “Let’s not stick around then!”
They all hurriedly squeezed through the kitchen exit and back into the dim hallways of the school, heading for the dorms. The slime merely slammed its way through the kitchen and aggressively and relentlessly pursued them. Clearly, Smolder’s flame attacks had made them all a serious threat in its eyes and it seemed eager to put an end to it. Fortunately, probably due to its large mass, it seemed the slime could only go so fast. But to keep outpacing it, this meant they all had to keep running at a full gallop, something that grew to be very taxing pretty quickly, especially as they had to take the long route through the school to get back to the dorms—they had all silently agreed that letting the slime outside by taking their customary shortcut through the courtyard was probably a bad idea.
Despite them all getting very winded during the chase, their fear of getting caught by the pursuing slime proved to be excellent motivation to not slow down, and they even managed to extend their lead on the slime by a dozen or so feet. When they finally arrived at Gallus and Sandbar’s dorm room, this gave them just enough time to rush inside then take defensive positions around the door using their remaining supply of cleaning spray. Or at least that was what the others did while Smolder dove under Gallus’s bunk bed and hauled out the case of Tsar Bomba energy drink, rooting through it.
“I still don’t get it, though!” Silverstream asked, looking back to watch the dragoness work. “What does the energy drink have to do with—AHH!” Her attention was brought back to the door as the monster slime came sliding to a stop in front of the dorm room door and attempted to enter. She and the others reacted by furiously spraying it with cleaner, keeping it just at bay, but the slime seemed determined to get into the room and at them.
“Just trust me!” Smolder promised as she pulled out two whole cans of the drink and tucked them under one arm, not thinking she had time enough to explain. She stood up and rushed back to the door they were guarding. “No matter what happens next though, keep it in the school and keep it at bay! And if this doesn’t work, torch the thing however you have to!”
She then grabbed Gallus’s remaining bottle of spray with her free paw and pushed past her friends and out the door towards the slime. Ignoring their cries telling her to wait, Smolder ripped off the top of the bottle with her teeth and hurled it at the slime. “Hey! You wanna piece of me, slime ball?”
The bottle and the freed cleaner inside splattered all over the front of the slime, and it reacted by turning its full attention onto Smolder. Smolder attempted to run away and lure it away from the others by going back the way they had come, but her feet slipped out from under her on the blob’s slime trail and she crashed flat onto her back. She quickly rolled over and tried to get back up, but the blob was already upon her. With a final yelp from the dragon, she vanished into its depths as she was slurped up by it and was gone.
The others all screamed in horror at this sight until, with Smolder caught, the slime turned its attention back on them and Gallus had the foresight to slam the dorm room door shut, trying to block its path. But as the door immediately began to buckle and bend as the slime slammed against it, trying to force it open, it was clear this wouldn’t work for long…
At first Smolder was simply and fully submerged in the teal goo that made up the slime, staying like that just long enough that, unable to breathe, she worried she might end up smothered before she could even enact her plan. But then with a wet splut, Smolder popped into some kind of central cavity deep within the slime, allowing her to surface into a much-needed pocket of air. Smolder prioritized gulping down a fresh breath of air before wiping slime from her eyes and getting a look around at her new surroundings.
If the slime could have something like a stomach, she figured this must be it, as it was a rounded chamber that flexed and bent in time with the slime’s movements outside. It was mostly filled with loose, liquidy, phlegm apparently shed off of the slime’s main body and ended up pooling here. Floating in it were mostly random objects the slime had picked up while wandering around the school and hadn’t deposited elsewhere yet. But towards the back of the chamber, where there was a source of glowing hornlight, was her missing headmare and school counselor.
“Starlight! Trixie!” Smolder declared, wading to them.
“Smolder?” Starlight declared, turning to look at her in surprise. “When did you get in here? How did you get in here?”
“Same way you did, apparently,” Smolder said, grinning in relief at the sight of the two. They were both drenched in slime, their respective Nightmare Night costumes clinging wetly to their bodies, but they were otherwise unhurt. “Oh, it’s good to see you’re both okay—we weren’t sure if you were even still alive!”
“Of course we are!” Trixie declared, as if offended by the suggestion. “Trixie is too great and powerful to die!”
Starlight rolled her eyes. “But unfortunately, still not great and powerful enough to escape,” she added, before looking back to Smolder. “We can’t teleport or use magic to escape from in here, because the intelligent gel just absorbs it and cancels out the spells, and we haven’t figured out any way to force our way out.”
“So we’ve been entertaining ourselves in the meantime,” Trixie butted in, “with an improvised game of Go-Fish using hot sauce packets Trixie had in her pocket.” She then turned to Starlight, who happened to be holding such a packet. “So! Starlight! Got any hot sauce packets?”
Starlight, with narrowed eyes, nodded and passed over the one pocket she held to Trixie. When Trixie then motioned for her to keep playing, she flatly added, “Trixie, do you have any hot sauce packets?”
“Why, yes, yes I do!” Trixie said, handing back the one packet. She then glanced at Smolder. “I’d deal you in…but we only have the one hot sauce packet.”
“So what’s even going on out there?” Starlight asked Smolder quickly, desperate to change the topic. “We can’t tell what the intelligent gel is doing from in here.”
“Well, hopefully, the others are keeping it bay in the school still with cleaning spray,” Smolder said as she pulled out one of her two energy drinks and popping it open. Before the clearly confused Starlight could respond, she continued. “But I’ve got a plan. Professor Starlight, can you still put a shield around you and Trixie, or will the slime just eat the magic?”
Starlight considered it for a moment. “I should be able to, as long as I keep its boundaries within this little chamber…”
“Then do it now!” Smolder instructed.
“But why?” Trixie asked, not following, watching Smolder pop open the second can too. “It’s not like there’s even anything in here we need shielding from.”
“Oh, but if this works, that’s gonna change real quick,” Smolder promised before throwing back her head and chugging down the entire contents of the first can of energy drink in one go. She could already feel a large burp coming on just from that alone, but she forced herself to hold it in as she proceeded to chug down the contents of the second can too. Once she had finished with that, she took in a deep breath, glanced to see if Starlight had put up the requested shield (she had), then let out the mightiest belch she had ever made.
Quickly accompanied by the biggest plume of dragon fire she had ever made as well.
For something that was nothing but a very large ball of slime, it was proving to be very strong, as it was taking the combined pushing power of Gallus, Ocellus, Yona, and Sandbar to keep the dorm room door shut, and even that wasn’t proving to be enough as the slime banged repeatedly on the door, getting ever closer in succeeding to force it open, either by wearing out those holding it closed or by breaking the door down entirely—whichever came first.
“Gah!” Gallus groaned, who had more or less taken over coordinating their actions. “We need something more to block this door! Sil, any ideas?” Not getting a response, he started looking for their fifth member. “Sil? Silverstream?”
Suddenly noticing Silverstream wasn’t holding the door closed with them, Gallus turned around to look for her and saw her sitting in a corner, the sweater of her Nightmare Night costume pulled over her head and her forelegs pulled inside of it, holding her knees as she rocked back and forth in a fetal position.
“Silverstream’s not here,” the hippogriff was heard mumbling from within the sweater. “She’s in sweater town.”
Gallus bit back the urge to snap at her. “Well…can you come out of sweater town so you can come help us not get—GAH!”
It was too late. With an almighty crash, the slime was finally able to get the needed leverage to fling the door open like a pinball flipper, knocking the students back by force. Ocellus and Sandbar, the only two who still had bottles of cleaner with them, tried to spray the intruding slime into backing off, but this attempt quickly failed as their bottles both proved to be running on empty. As the slime stormed into the room now unopposed and free to charge after them, they all backed up against the rear wall with nowhere else to go. Wailing in fear, Yona gripped Sandbar in a bear hug. Silverstream, with a fearful squeal, retreated back into the interior of her sweater as if this would shield her from the slimy fate awaiting her. Ocellus fainted again and flopped to the ground. Gallus moved to put himself in front of his friends, throwing out his forelegs and wings in an attempt to shield them, but even he flinched and turned his head away from the slime, knowing it was a pointless effort.
But right as it was in front of them, the slime suddenly stopped. Gurgled. Sparked. The light deep within its core started to increase and turn a fiery orange. Its gooey body began to burble and steam as it heated up from within, then it started to swell and expand as if blown bubblegum, growing bigger and bigger, until…
KERBLAM!
The slime exploded, immediately coating every last inch of the dorm room, from ceiling to floor, with a layer of steaming, lukewarm, slime. It plastered the five students to the wall behind them, from which they then had to sordidly peel themselves off of again. There was nothing left of the monster slime’s body except for a rough blast area, and a rounded, slime-covered, sphere that almost looked like a slime bubble until it abruptly deflated as Starlight released her shield and the slime covering it was free to crash down upon her and Trixie.
Sandbar, wiping slime from his eyes, was the first to notice it was them. “Professors!” he declared, overjoyed to see they were all right. “You’re not—” the rest of his declaration got cut off as he started hacking due to some slime getting into his mouth. Yona attempted to assist by slapping him on the back, but this only resulted in knocking him face-first into the slime-soaked floor.
That was when Smolder peeled herself off of the slime-coated ground herself, coughing up slime and a little singed, but otherwise all right. Gallus helped her up, a little shellshocked. “Smolder,” he asked slowly, trying to take it all in, “What just happened?”
“It was the energy drink,” Smolder babbled while wobbling to her feet, talking rapidly partly due to being dazed from the blast and partly from the effects of the double-dose of energy drink she had just consumed. “Every time I down it, it makes me burp, and I’m a dragon, so whenever I burp, I breathe a big ball of fire, and these energy drink burps make me breathe big huge balls of fire, and since fire was the thing we needed to finally put this thing out of commission, I knew that was what I needed to do in order to do it, but since I couldn’t breathe enough fire to get all of the slime from the outside, I needed to get where I could get all of the slime at once and I figured no better way to do it than from the inside, because how could the slime dodge the fire if the fire is already inside of it, right?”
“So—wait—you wanted that thing to eat you?” Gallus realized, incredulous. He flung out his forelegs in frustration, flinging slime everywhere in the process. “Why didn’t you tell US that?”
“I figured you’d try to stop me, and we didn’t have time for that!” Smolder reasoned before her caffeine-rush caused her to jump topics. “Oh, and I found our missing professors, so you’re welcome.” She jabbed a claw back at Starlight and Trixie, who were miserably picking up their slime-covered bodies and taking in the ruined room.
“Whoa,” Trixie said with an amused snort (inadvertently blowing slime off of her snout and into Starlight’s face). “Sure did a number on this room, didn’t we? Ha, I’d hate to be the schmucks who have to sleep here tonight! Whose room is this anyway?”
Both giving her a look with narrowed eyes, Gallus and Sandbar silently raised their paw and hoof respectively.
Trixie winced, realizing her error. “Ooooh.”
“Bad Trixie,” Starlight said, swatting the unicorn on the shoulder. “Bad, insensitive, Trixie.” She then turned to the others, watching as they all picked themselves up. “Are all of you all right? No injuries?”
“Nope!” Silverstream said maybe a little too brightly while numbly letting the slime covering her body slowly drip off of her. One eye twitched. “Nothing but some mental scarring due to being traumatized for life from the whole experience! But, you know, who’s counting, right?” She then made a decidedly off-kilter giggle. Ocellus, who had come to again, came to her side, looking decidedly concerned.
“…right.” Starlight mumbled, adding this to her ever-growing mental list of how much it was going to take to clean-up this whole mess. “Okay. We’ll…we’ll come back to that, how about?”
“That is it, right?” Sandbar asked suddenly, looking at all of them. “We beat it? That thing’s gone and is never going to come back? Never ever?”
“I…I think so,” Ocellus said unsteadily, surveying the slime that covered the room. “There doesn’t seem to be any sign of any intact bits, at least. I suppose it’s sort of a shame, though…no matter how you slice it, that intelligent gel was still a massive scientific breakthrough, even if it didn’t work entirely as planned, and by destroying it, we’ve probably set back the research for it a fair bit. Plus, when you really think about it, the intelligent gel was only doing what it thought it had been told to do, and so I don’t think it actually meant to cause har—AUGH!” In terror, she jabbed her hoof at the floor, where she had noticed a small ball of slime trying to wiggle away from the group and for the door. “KILL IT! KILLITKILLITKILLIT!”
As one, they all proceeded to try and stomp the surviving bit of intelligent gel into oblivion until Smolder pushed her way through and ended it with one quick blast of her firebreath, turning the ball of slime into a black scorch mark on the floor. Panting, they all surveyed the slime-covered room again a little leerily.
“Maybe we should take a flamethrower to this whole room…just to be safe,” Trixie suggested seriously.
“Great, you do that,” Smolder decided, patting Trixie on the shoulder before turning and striding purposely for the door.
“Hey, where are you going?” Gallus demanded.
“Gallus, I’ve just been swallowed by a sentient slime ball, I have goo all over me and in places I didn’t even know I have, and I just downed two whole cans of your oh-so-stimulating energy drink in under a minute, so where do you think I’m going?” Smolder didn’t even slow as she stomped out the door, calling back loudly, “THE RESTROOM! THAT’S where!”
The others just stood there, watching her leave and tracking slime down the hall.
“Well,” Yona abruptly spoke, trying to find an upside to the whole evening, “At least it still Nightmare Night to remember?”