> A Slimy Nightmare Night
>  by Scyphi
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Little of the Slime
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the sun rose at the normal time over the School of Friendship, the occupants within slowly began waking. Some began it brightly by springing right out of bed, ready to start a new day. Others began it reluctantly, full of regret from staying up a tad too long the night previous.

Smolder was the latter, cursing the light of the sun as had become her tradition and stumbled out of her dorm room grumbling and looking closer to the undead than anything else. She didn’t have much interest in starting the day at all, nor was she keen for reminders that she was going to have to anyway.

Unfortunately, Silverstream was the former. “Good morning, Smolder!” the hippogriff cheerily greeted as she strolled out of their dorm room, about as close to literally bright-eyed and bushy tailed as one could ever get.

Just the sight of such exuberance hurt the dragoness’s tired eyes. “Sure doesn’t feel like it,” Smolder grumbled, rubbing at her eyes.

“Aw, did you stay up too late again last night?” Silverstream asked, leaning closer and still acting entirely too cheery.

If it was anyone other than Silverstream, Smolder would’ve tried to slap that cheeriness right out of her. “That’s a question that doesn’t need answering, Sil,” she glumly responded instead as they headed down the hall and out of the dorms.

“Were you up studying or something, then?”

“Heck, no! If I’m going to lose sleep, I’m certainly not losing it over something like studying.”

“Okay, but then you’d at least have a good excuse.”

“Uuuuugh, don’t remind me!”

They headed out into the school courtyard, using it as a shortcut for the main building. The early morning air was still quite nippy as was typical for the time of year. It always sent a jolt of discomfort through Smolder, missing the consistently warm weather of the Dragon Lands, but it also only scared away some of the sleep still riddling her body. So she made it a point to dunk her head into the cold water of the courtyard’s central fountain as they passed. If that wasn’t going to wake her up, nothing would.

Silverstream politely stood to one side and waited for Smolder to finish. While she did, she watched a few other students walking through the courtyard, giving them friendly greetings as they passed. “Hi Gallus!” she was heard greeting as Smolder’s head emerged from the fountain at last, shaking herself off.

Gallus just sleepily made a grumble that sounded like it might approximate something like a greeting.

Smolder appreciatively took notice. “Oh, thank the gemstones, I’m not the only one that can’t do mornings like this!” she declared, wiping residual water off her orange scales.

“It’s always nice to have things in common with good company,” Silverstream remarked with a grin. She waited for Smolder to finish drying herself a bit more before continuing. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, let’s go get some breakfast,” Smolder said, looking a little more awake while following the hippogriff.

They followed the slow trickle of other students into the school’s cafeteria, where a hot breakfast was being served by the kitchen staff. As the majority of the students were still ponies, most of the food prepared had their diets in mind, but the staff still kept their non-pony students in consideration, willing to step up and prepare dishes specific to them when needed, or even permit (with supervision) such students access to the kitchens so to prepare their own meals. But both Smolder and Silverstream decided to stick with what everyone else was having and helped themselves to a bowl of warm oatmeal apiece. The only unique additions was Smolder grabbing a handful of gems from a bowl set out explicitly for the use of the dragon students in the school (which currently consisted of just Smolder anyway), intending to use them to garnish her oatmeal later.

First, though, both of them took their bowls and turned to face the rest of the cafeteria, a sizeable room filled with tables set about in rough rows. However, unlike usual, they weren’t already mostly filled with breakfasting students, and indeed, there seemed to be far fewer than normal altogether. This left plenty of open spots for them to sit at, but Smolder nevertheless blankly surveyed the room, confused.

She blinked a few times to see if that would clear some of the sleepy cobwebs still in her brain and help clarify things. It didn’t. “Where the heck is everybody?” she finally just asked.

“Did you forget?” Silverstream replied. “Today’s Nightmare Night!”

Smolder stopped dead in her tracks, eyes growing wide as she realized that it was. “You’re right!” she declared, stunned that she had forgotten. She gazed around at the interior of the room, taking in the holiday decorations that had been adorning it all week—long enough for her to get used to it and think little of it. “It is Nightmare Night today! Which is on a Saturday this year! Which means we don’t have classes today!”

“Yup!” Silverstream happily confirmed, not appreciating Smolder’s dismay over it.

“Gaaaaah!” the dragon bellowed, throwing her head back to send the growl of frustration up at the cafeteria ceiling. “Then I don’t have to be up right now! I could’ve slept in!” If she didn’t have a bowl of oatmeal in her claws at the moment, she would’ve slapped them both over her face right about now.

“Oh, well, no harm in getting up early anyway,” Silverstream remarked, waving the matter aside like it was no big deal. “As my mom always says, it’s the early hippogriff who gets the best worm for breakfast!”

Smolder pulled a face. “That’s disgusting.”

“No it isn’t! Worms are delish!” Silverstream licked her beak with her tongue in a craving manner only another hippogriff could appreciate.

Smolder just glared at her for a long moment, no more comforted.

“So,” Silverstream finally remarked, changing the subject like nothing had happened, “sit at the usual table?”

Smolder sighed. “Yeah, sure.”

They started for a table on the far side of the room where a familiar griffon sat, munching on his own breakfast. “Hi again, Gallus!” Silverstream greeted their friend, Smolder trailing behind her. “You saving these seats for anybody?”

“Nah, just got here late like you two,” Gallus replied before motioning at the empty seats with one paw. “So go ahead and take a seat.”

They did, sitting across from him. “Are you having a good morning thus far?” Silverstream asked happily as she and Smolder settled in.

“Well, good enough, I guess,” Gallus replied with a shrug as he scooped up another bite of his oatmeal with his spoon. “I mean, it’s both Nightmare Night and the weekend, so we get no school, a night of fun activities, and all the other cool stuff we’ve got planned for today.” He made a pleased grin. “Can’t complain to that.”

“You can if you still got up too early today,” Smolder grumbled, glaring into her oatmeal as she glumly dug in.

Gallus gave Smolder a bemused look. “And good morning to you too, Smolder,” he quipped with a smirk. “Nice of you to pull yourself out of bed so to join the rest of us.”

Smolder grunted and waved off the remark while Silverstream giggled.

“Smolder wanted to sleep in but forgot today wasn’t a school day,” she explained.

Gallus grunted, sympathetic. “If it helps, I also got woken up early by Sandbar banging around in our dorm room,” he explained. “Which sucks, because otherwise I’d be doing the same thing too. But you know Sandbar, he’s a bit of an early riser.”

“Great, another morning creature,” Smolder grumbled as she took a gem and started grinding it up with her claws, stirring the resulting sparkly dust into her oatmeal.

“At least he’s got a good excuse today, being a little wound up about what we’ve all got planned for later.”

“Ooh, how could you not?” Silverstream agreed eagerly, showing her own excitement. “We get to join the rest of his family for a Nightmare Night barbeque, and then go and do all of the Nightmare Night games and activities after that!” She gave Smolder an unwelcome nudge. “So it’s just as well you got up early—gives you more time to prepare and get ready! You know, with the costumes, and…”

“That’s why Sandbar was up so early, so he could go help get everything ready,” Gallus added, cutting off Silverstream before she carried on too much further. “That, and he wanted to use the time to visit with his family a bit.” He turned and surveyed the mostly empty cafeteria. “Looks like a lot of other students had the same idea.”

“Is that where the others are?” Silverstream asked, looking for their other friends. “Gone to visit family? Because I thought their homes were a little far off to go and visit and come back in just one day.”

“Besides, Yona loves Nightmare Night,” Smolder added. “You couldn’t drag her away from missing this.”

“Nah, I think they just haven’t gotten in here yet,” Gallus said, glancing around for the missing three from their group too. “Don’t exactly need to today, do they? But if they aren’t in here by the time we finish, I guess we can go looking for them if you all want.”

“Good,” Smolder groused, “Because if I can’t sleep in, they can’t either.”

Gallus snorted, sipping from an open can of soda he was having with his breakfast. “Boy, you really did get up on the wrong side of the bed,” he noted. “It being Nightmare Night can’t even fix that, huh?”

Smolder sighed. “No, I’m still looking forward to all that too,” she promised, and she really was. She yawned. “Sorry, I’m just still waking up. You know I’m no morning dragon.” She dropped her spoon so to rub the sleep she still hadn’t shaken from her eyes. “Gaaaaah, I just need something to get me to wake up properly, is all. If this keeps up, I’ll never be able to enjoy today properly.” She then stopped and studied Gallus for a moment, noting how awake he now appeared to be. “Wait a minute, Sil and I passed you earlier in the courtyard and you were pretty much dead on your paws then…how come you’re not now?”

Gallus raised a smug eyebrow at her while sipping at his soda, before setting the can down between them and turning it so they could read the label.



Silverstream squinted her eyes so to make out the exotic text in the logo. “Tsar Bomba?” she read aloud, confused.

“It’s an energy drink,” Gallus explained, still smug. “I bought a whole case at Barnyard Bargains a little while back.”

“I’ve heard of these!” Smolder said, picking up the can to curiously examine. “You drink it and it somehow revitalizes you, right?”

“Kind of,” Gallus said, taking the drink back before Smolder thought to sample it. “Basically, the drink’s chock full of stuff like caffeine, sugar…all the stuff that stimulates your body, makes it want to get moving.”

“So…basically you’d be drinking liquid energy,” Silverstream summarized.

“Yup,” Gallus confirmed, taking another sip from the can. He smacked his beak afterwards. “Just a few sips of this and you feel like you can take on the world!” He excitedly raised a claw for an additional point. “And! Get this—absolutely no aftertaste!”

“Oooh!” Silverstream cooed, impressed.

Smolder seemed a bit skeptical still…until her body forced out another yawn against her will and she shook her head, trying to loosen the metaphorical cobwebs still wrapping around it. “Okay, I have got to try some of this stuff, or today’s just going to be miserable for me,” she concluded flatly.

Silverstream bit the bottom of her beak. “I don’t know, Smolder…wouldn’t just going back to bed and getting some more sleep be a better—?”

“Gallus, any chance I can get you to hook me up with some of that stuff?” Smolder all but begged, ignoring Silverstream’s attempt at reasonability.

“For you? Absolutely. We can stop and grab one after breakfast.” Gallus set down the can. “But this stuff’s potent, so we still need to go over some ground rules first…”





“…So dragons obviously do have a basic education system to teach reading, writing, counting, adding, subtracting—all that stuff you need to maintain a horde and communicate with others and all that stuff in which we dragons like to call “doing mentoring,” where you meet in groups with a mentor specializing in teaching a particular skill level, and then you move up to the next skill level, and on and on and on and on until you finish sometime after your second molt,” Smolder much later rambled on at a mile a minute and seemingly without any end while she led the others down the hallway.

“Uh-huh,” Gallus replied, nodding his head as he half-heartedly tried to follow along.

“…and typically you just go through all of these skill levels at a set speed, like, one every year or so without exception. I had never heard of anyone breaking that trend before in my life and neither has my brother, my mother, my father, or basically any other dragon I know except of course Spike, because, you know, raised by ponies. But then Dragon Lord Ember goes and becomes the dragon lord, and she goes through all of the dragons in each skill level to see how they are all doing, and then she comes upon me, and, to her, I seem to being doing better than every dragon else, and so she decides I’m, like, leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else.”

“Uh-huh.” Gallus threw in the added emphasis partly to sound like he was interested and partly out of sarcasm.

“So she moved me up a skill level, the first time any dragon has done that in, like, ever, all because she said I wasn’t fitting in, but then I’m even more not fitting in! And I was getting good marks too, you know? Like, all As and everything! But Ember said ‘you need stimulation,’ and I went, ‘No, I’m stimulated enough right now!’”

“That’s for sure!” Silverstream chirped, having been watching Smolder go on like this for the past few minutes with some amusement.

“So she goes, ‘nuh-uh, you don’t have a challenge!’ So then I’m challenged, all right, I’M CHALLENEGED to hold onto my lunch gems, because all of the big dragons wanted to pound me because I’m the shrimpy dork who thought I’m smarter than them! But I didn’t think I’m smarter, I just did the stupid homework! If everyone JUST DID THE STUPID HOMEWORK, they could’ve moved up a skill level and get pounded too!” Smolder then abruptly whirled around and faced Gallus hopefully. “Is there any more energy drink I can have after this?”

Gallus regarded her for a moment, and then gently took the can of energy drink she held in her claws from her. “Noooooo, I think you just might’ve had enough of this one.”

Smolder regarded the can dismissively. “Eh, it was empty anyway,” she said before flipping back around and marching onward determinedly. She was moving at a fast enough gait that Gallus and Silverstream had to up theirs just to keep up. “But I feel great! That stuff was just the trick to get me to wake up, and now I feel like, like, I’ve been supercharged! Blood’s pumping and everything, my heart’s just going boom, boom, boom, BOOM!”

Silverstream winced. “…doesn’t that sound worryingly like the start of a heart attack?” she whispered to Gallus.

“If it is, maybe it’ll finally slow her down,” Gallus groused back.

“Yeaaaaah, Smolder, are you sure you’re okay?” Silverstream asked the dragoness, who kept right on going at her intense pace.

“Never better!” Smolder declared confidently. “I feel like I could take a few laps around Yakyakistan! Let’s run to Yakyakistan!”

“Yeah, better hold off on that, champ,” Gallus interrupted, hurrying close so to grab her shoulder and stop her, just in case she actually tried it. “You know, when I gave you a can of this stuff, I told you to sip it. Just sip it…not chug it all down in one go!”

“But why not?” Smolder asked, enthusiastically whirling on him. “Why just give me a mere taste of the energy locked in that stuff when I can go the whole distance and have it all right now?”

“Well, after you chugged it down like that, you did make a pretty big belch of flames afterwards,” Silverstream reasoned with a wince. “I was worried for a second it was going to set something on fire.”

“And because, it’s potent!” Gallus added, repeating this not for the first time. “By sipping it, you can pace yourself, control the effects, keep it from getting…you know…too out of control!”

“Out of control? Are you kidding me? You make it all sound like a bad thing—how could any of this be a bad thing? I mean, you drink it, and you’re fine!”

“Well, for starters, if you’re anything to go by, sipping it’ll keep you from going out of sync with the rest of the universe like you are right now,” Gallus commented. “Seriously, you’re beyond rivalling Silverstream at this point! Heck, Pinkie Pie even, and she’s the most energetic creature I know!”

“Gosh, I wonder what Professor Pinkie Pie would be like if she drank some of this…” Silverstream murmured, eyes wide at the thought.

“The world would basically end, so don’t do it,” Gallus calmly informed her before turning back to Smolder. “Look, Smolder, the point is that this energy drink works by stimulating you.”

“I know! Isn’t it great?”

“I mean, to work like it does, it stimulates more than just the heart and mind! It stimulates basically everything else of you, too, including your other organs!”

Smolder gave him an incredulous look. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means…oh, forget it!” Gallus glanced at a clock hanging on the hallway wall. “It’s been long enough since you guzzled down that drink that you’re probably going to start feeling it any second now.”

“What do you mean I’m going to—” Smolder abruptly trailed off when, as if on cue, her stomach suddenly let out an ominous gurgle and she clamped a paw tightly to it, starting to prance in place. “Ooh! I—I gotta—I mean I think—I mean, uh—ooh!—I need to go use the little dragon’s room!” She then took to the air and shot off down the hall, flapping her wings urgently as she shouted for everybody to get out of the way…even though there was absolutely no one else in the hallway.

“Next time just SIP the dang drink!” Gallus shouted after her just as she vanished around the corner. He then sighed and turned back to Silverstream, rolling his eyes. “Boy, I’d hate to be the poor sap that’s going to have to clean that toilet.”

“Who is in charge of doing that sort of thing, anyway?” Silverstream asked, thinking about it and realizing she didn’t know, having never seen anyone engaged in the task.

“Beats me,” Gallus remarked as they both resumed their original course. He then chuckled. “But I guess whoever it is, they must be some kind of miracle worker, considering all the junk we, the student body, have put this school through since it opened.”

Silverstream laughed. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.” She glanced back in the direction Smolder had disappeared in. “Should we wait for Smolder?”

“Nah. Trust me, she’s going to be awhile.”

“…you sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

Gallus winced and regarded the empty can he took from Smolder. “Admittedly, they could probably use a few more warning labels on how not to consume this energy drink,” he said as he chucked the can into a nearby recycling bin. “Then none of us would ever have to learn from experience like this.”

“Ah.” Silverstream winced to herself. “I think I’ll pass on having any of that drink myself, if that’s okay.”

“That’s good, because I wouldn’t give you some even if you paid me. You do not need the extra energy, Sil.”

They kept walking until they arrived at the dorms—specifically, the one Yona and Ocellus shared, hoping to find out what had kept the others from joining them at breakfast. As they arrived though, they found Sandbar starting to arrive at the same door, coming from the other direction.

“Yo, Sandbar!” Gallus called as they arrived, drawing the earth pony’s attention. “Where you been all morning?”

“Oh, going around, getting supplies for tonight,” Sandbar replied, motioning to his saddlebags ladened with Nightmare Night supplies. “There’s lots that still needs to be done, especially for the barbeque later. My folks are still getting everything set up for that now.”

“Speaking of,” Gallus continued eagerly. “You still got that package I gave you for the barbeque, right?”

Sandbar sighed, rolling his eyes. “Yes, Gallus, we still have that package of…meat…you provided for us, and we’ve been keeping it in the freezer until tonight, like you instructed.” He then swallowed uncomfortably. “Well, I should say my dad’s been looking over it—everybody else in my family won’t even touch it.” He poked Gallus in the chest with his hoof. “You’re darn lucky my dad’s so interested in the challenge of cooking meat or you probably would’ve been out of luck on this.”

“And see, that’s why I like your dad so much,” Gallus replied back, unrepentant. “Besides, it’s a barbeque—what’s a barbeque without some grilled meat?”

Sandbar gave him a disturbed look. “You and I have very different ideas about barbeques, then.”

Gallus snorted and started grumbling an impolite comment about all the vegetarian ponies he was stuck with when Silverstream butted in with a question of her own. “So Sandy, if you really have so much you still need to do for tonight, what brings you back here?” she asked.

“Oh, well,” Sandbar said, “I came back here to get Yona. She promised to help set up for the barbeque, and then after that work on our Nightmare Night costumes.”

“Ooh!” Silverstream squealed at this, giving Sandbar a sly look. “Are you two going to do one of those matching costumes things that couples do?”

Sandbar blushed and didn’t answer.

“Well, we’re here looking for Ocellus and Yona too,” Gallus explained, taking much restraint to let the chance to tease the pony further pass him by. “They didn’t show up for breakfast this morning.”

“Really?” Sandbar said, surprised. “That’s weird…Yona told me yesterday that she had wanted to get an early start today…I didn’t think she’d sleep in…”

“Ocellus is usually an early riser too,” Silverstream added with a shrug. Her brow furrowed slightly. “You don’t think they’re sick, do you? Oh, that’d be horrible to have happen on today of all days!”

“Well, only one way to find out,” Sandbar reasoned, turning to the dorm room door and politely rapping on it with one hoof. “Yona, you in there?” he called politely. “Gallus and Silverstream are here with me, they say you didn’t turn up for breakfast!”

“Yona here!” Yona was heard calling back. “One moment, please!” There were some scuffling sounds and then the door opened, revealing the young yak, looking a little ruffled but otherwise the same as always. “Sandbar forgive yak, hectic morning today!”

“Well, it is Nightmare Night,” Sandbar reasoned as he and the others started to step into the room. “That’s exciting enough as it is, and with all of our plans for today, I can believe this morning being a…little…” he trailed off as they got a good look at the room for the first time.

“Uh, Yona?” Gallus remarked aloud after a moment of taking it in. “…what’s up in here?”

“Well…” Yona began, uncertain how to explain, before just sweeping a hoof inside the room, “…see for self.”

So they all peered at the other side of the room. Past Yona was the dorm room’s other occupant, Ocellus, deep in work to a degree they weren’t sure how to react to. Their eyes went wide at the sight though, starting to understand what had kept these two from breakfast. Their changeling friend was seated at her desk, completely engrossed in using what could only be described as a mad scientist set-up of vials and tubes through which mysterious fluids and magical energies were currently coursing and percolating.

“Sooo…” Gallus uttered, staring blankly as the changeling worked, seemingly oblivious that they were at the door. “…what’s going on?”

“Been like that since last night,” Yona murmured conspiratorially into the griffon’s ear. “Yak not sure she’s slept.”

“Yikes,” Silverstream hissed and stepped closer. Sure enough, now that she could see Ocellus up close, she had bags under her eyes (which Silverstream hadn’t even known was possible for a chitinous changeling to have), and instead of her usual calm and quiet attitude, she seemed to have a worryingly frenzied look in her eye. “Uh…Ocellus? You okay?”

“Shh-shh-shh!” Ocellus eagerly hissed, waving a hoof blindly in their direction but didn’t look up from the concoction she was making…whatever that was. “I’m on the verge of a breakthrough that could change the lives of changelings everywhere!”

Silverstream was taken aback by her uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “Uhhh…” she murmured again, at a loss, and turned to the others for help.

But the others looked just as blank, and Yona could simply shrug. “Ocellus been working on personal project all week, but now keeps saying close to breakthrough without explaining what. Yona been trying to make her stop since morning. But changeling won’t.”

“Ohhhhhkay, I think an intervention might be in order here, then,” Gallus murmured in conclusion, rubbing his chin with one paw as he pondered how to best proceed.

“Yak been trying,” Yona repeated. “But Ocellus adamant about finishing first.”

“Should we even try?” Sandbar reasoned, watching the changeling. “I mean, is what she working on even really harming anything?”

“Just look at her, Sandbar!” Gallus added, throwing his talons out at Ocellus. If she was hearing what they were saying, she was ignoring them. “She’s got a whole mad scientist set up thing going on here!”

“And she’s doing it all on Nightmare Night!” Silverstream added pointedly.

“Exactly!” Gallus agreed. “When has that ever ended well for anybody?”

Sandbar still wasn’t convinced. “But do we even know what she’s working on?”

They all looked at Ocellus and her array of bubbling vials and tubes for a moment. “Well,” Silverstream reasoned, approaching the changeling, “Probably should try to ask…” She moved to stand beside where the changeling sat, intently watching the chemicals flow from beaker to beaker. “Um, Ocellus? Just what is it that you’re working on?”

“Change, Silverstream!” Ocellus replied cryptically, barely moving to acknowledge Silverstream’s, or for that matter anyone’s, presence in the room. Her eyes were alight with a wild intensity. “I am so close to a massive breakthrough that—”

“Yeah, yeah, change things for changelings everywhere, we got that,” Gallus finished, moving to stand at Ocellus’s other side, “but just how is all of this going to do that? Just what are you even trying to make?”

“Intelligent gel,” Ocellus finally clarified.

The others blinked at her. “Intelligent gel,” Sandbar repeated skeptically.

“Yeeesssssss,” Ocellus hissed pleasantly, eyeing a vial that all of the chemicals she was working with now seemed to be gradually flowing into.

They waited for her to elaborate, but as before, Ocellus didn’t explain further. “Okay, I’ll bite,” Gallus finally said, placing his talons on the desk so to lean closer, trying to get her full attention. “What’s intelligent gel, and what does it got to do with anything?”

“Gallus, be careful!” Ocellus suddenly hissed when Gallus nearly bumped the delicate arrangement of equipment. She held out her hooves to protectively shield it from the griffon, who quickly removed his talons and held them up placatingly. “This is all very delicate! One wrong move and you could ruin the whole experiment!”

“Okay, okay!” Gallus said, keeping his distance. “But you gotta fill us in then. What’s intelligent gel?”

“Is it this green slimy stuff flowing through these tubes?” Silverstream started to ask, moving to poke one of them with her talon.

She never got the chance to touch it though, as Ocellus suddenly hocked up a ball of sticky green changeling gel and spat it at Silverstream’s offending paw, adhering it instead to the surface of the desk. “It’s like that,” Ocellus replied crossly, pointing a hoof at the ball of slime that now covered the hippogriff’s paw, “but able to automatically adapt to its environment.”

The others all pulled faces of mild disgust as Silverstream attempted to pry her paw free again, stretching the offending slime unpleasantly.

“…what do you mean, automatically adapt?” Sandbar asked slowly, averting his gaze from Silverstream’s plight.

Ocellus sighed wearily. Clearly, she wasn’t in the mood for all the distractions they were providing, so focused as she was. “Back in the hive, changeling gel has numerous uses all through out. A good example all of you would be familiar with is the cocoons we would trap prey in, at least until our Enlightenment. But it requires constant monitoring and manual adjusting from the changeling using it.”

“I think I get it then,” Gallus said as Silverstream finally yanked her paw free with a disgustingly wet pop. “You want this intelligent slime or whatever to be able to do all of that on its own, so changelings won’t have to do it themselves.”

Ocellus nodded, her gaze going back to watching the green solution she was brewing drip into a final beaker. “I’ve been working on it off and on for a while now, but last night I think I finally figured out the solution. So if all of my calculations are correct, this special batch of gel should be able to do that, and if so…this could be changeling history in the making.”

Starting to understand why she was so worked up about it then, the others all leaned closer, watching the finished solution gradually collect in the beaker, waiting in eager silence for the final verdict.

Then Smolder barged into the room. “I’m back!” she brightly called.

The other five all jumped in surprise. “GAH!”

Smolder laughed at the sight. “Sheesh, you guys are all more tightly wound up than my brother trying to sneak out of the family cave back before his first molt, you know like you do,” she rambled on in a rush, clearly not over her caffeine high yet. “Aw, that takes me back, to the days when we both young and care free and would go and shove each other off of rock piles, tracking lava all throughout the cave and driving my mom up the walls, and whoa, Ocellus, you look like you haven’t slept in a week!” She hurried forward eagerly holding out a familiar can of soda to the changeling. “Here, you should try drinking some of this, it’ll do wonders for waking you back up, and—”

“Oh no, I think getting Ocellus on a caffeine high is the very last thing we want at the moment,” Gallus quickly intervened, pushing Smolder’s proffering paw away before the changeling could accept the energy drink. “She’s a little too obsessed with what she’s doing already, so she doesn’t need any more help with that.” Gallus then frowned, looking at the unopened can in the dragoness’s claws. “And where did you get that anyway? You already finished the last can I gave you.”

“Yeah, but I wanted more so to keep staying awake,” Smolder explained as she shrugged and popped open the can for herself. “So after I finished in the restroom, I stopped by your dorm and got another from your stash and—”

“Hey, no, that’s mine!” Gallus objected and snatched the can from her before she could take a drink. “Give me that!”

“Hey!” Smolder objected, trying to snatch it back. “You said you would hook me up with some of that stuff!”

“I was happy to give you a can this morning because you were dead on your feet!” Gallus relented, keeping the dragon at arm’s reach and holding the can as far away from her as he could. “But if you’re just going to keep guzzling down cans like there’s no tomorrow, you can go buy your own!”

Smolder harrumphed and turned away, indignantly sticking her tongue out at the griffon. Gallus merely rolled his eyes and ignored her.

“What’s up with Smolder?” Sandbar asked, noticing she seemed a little over-energized.

“Oh, I made the mistake of introducing her to energy drinks is all,” Gallus sighed wearily, taking a sup from the open can of soda so it wouldn’t go to waste. He then changed the subject, pointing at the beaker of solution they had been watching. “So…is the slime intelligent yet?”

Ocellus turned her attention back to the beaker just in time for the last few drops to dribble in. “Only one way to find out,” she said, lighting her horn and leaning close to examine the greenish slime she had collected.

“What’s this about slime?” Smolder asked as they all leaned in closer to watch. “Why are we all watching slime? I don’t understand what’s happening here.”

“That’s what you get for not being here for the explainy parts!” Silverstream replied brightly, but then added as a promise, “We’ll explain later.”

So they quietly watched as Ocellus hovered her horn over the beaker of gel. At first glance it appeared to be the same as the normal gel that had adhered Silverstream’s paw to the desk earlier, but in reality, it had a more blue-green color and a faint glow to it as well. This glow amplified as Ocellus brought her lit horn within inches of the beaker’s open top, a reaction which pleased her.

“Yes, that’s good,” she remarked hopefully.

The others leaned closer.

Ocellus switched to a different spell which created a small ball of heat at the tip, and waved her horn onto one side of the beaker. In response, the gel within shifted of its own volition, pressing itself up against the side of the beaker furthest away from the heat source.

Ocellus’s expression grew more excited. “Yes,” she murmured at these promising results.

The others leaned even closer to the point of almost tipping themselves over, pressing on top of each other so to watch over the changeling’s shoulder.

Ocellus then moved her horn to the other side of the beaker, only for the gel to again respond by trying to move away from that heat source. It did this no matter which way she waved it around the beaker.

Ocellus’s eyes grew wide. “Yes!” she declared, victorious. “I think I’ve done it! Intelligent slime, that adapts to its environment! Finally! After moons of constant research, experimenting, theorizing, and hard, hard, work, I’ve finally, finally, succeeded!”

And then Gallus leaned a little too far and accidentally caused some his energy drink to dribble out of its can and into the open beaker. The drink fizzled immediately on contact with the gel, which reacted by turning a teal color as it briefly swelled up, then with a hiss deflated in upon itself and moved no more, becoming inert.

“…Whoops.” It was all Gallus could think to say in that moment.

Ocellus, meanwhile, had stiffened, suddenly going very still and quiet as an ominous silence settled upon the dorm room.

Then Silverstream nervously clapped her talons together. “Well!” she declared with forced cheeriness. “This has been fun! But I just remembered I still need to finish preparing my Nightmare Night costume!” She then beat a hasty retreat out of the room.

“Speaking of!” Sandbar added in a similar tone of voice. “Me and Yona still need to work out our own Nightmare Night costumes!”

“Yes!” Yona agreed a little too quickly as she and Sandbar also made hurried exits. “Yak must go do that! Right now!”

“Annnnnd I need to go do…a thing…” Smolder also offered lamely, rushing for the door.

Gallus moved to follow her. “And I need to go help Smolder with the…thing.”

“Hold it.”

Unlike the others, he didn’t get as far as out the door before an aura of magic wrapped itself around his blue lion-like tail and yanked, immediately halting him before slowly dragging him back towards the none-too-happy changeling by said tail.

“You are not going anywhere, until you and I have both gone through every LAST ingredient of that drink of yours and figured out just went wrong,” Ocellus stated clearly, succinctly, but in a very dark tone that was quite rare for the changeling.

Which all just told Gallus what he already knew—he was in deep trouble.
> Some of the Slime
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ocellus had meant it too. Neither of them left the room for the next several hours except for once so Gallus could go use the restroom, and that had only been under the strict stipulation that he come right back. Clearly, she was quite unhappy with the griffon.

Not that Gallus hadn’t repeatedly tried to apologize and make amends. “Look, Ocellus, I’m sorry,” he groaned again for what felt like the umpteenth time that afternoon, realizing they had both been in here long enough for it to have become afternoon. “And I get it, you spent a lot of time on this just to have it all go poof, but it was an accident! I didn’t mean for the drink to spill out, let alone into your science experiment and ruin it!” He turned his head from where he had been wearily lounging on the lower of the two bunk beds at where the changeling had been working at her desk almost continuously since the incident. He groaned. “C’mon, ’Celly, we’re going to miss Nightmare Night if we don’t wrap this up soon!”

“Then hopefully we’ll figure this out shortly,” Ocellus replied curtly and, without looking up from the parchment she had been scrawling indecipherable magic and chemistry equations for most of this purgatory, jabbed a hoof back at him. “Now tell me all of the ingredients in the drink again.”

“Again?” Gallus bemoaned. “Why can’t you just read them off the back of the can yourself like a normal creature? It’s what I’ve been doing!”

“Because this is your punishment for ruining my gel.”

“I said I was sorry for that!” Gallus repeated again. “More times than I can count!” Seeing Ocellus was unswayed, he added, “Look, if you’re going to blame anyone, blame Smolder! She was the one that even brought the drink into the room in the first place!”

“Please, Gallus?”

Gallus sighed, then relented, holding up the can he had long emptied hours ago out of boredom. “All right, Tsar Bomba energy drink…fifty-five percent caffeine, thirty-three percent sugar, ten percent taurine…”

Ocellus shook her head. “That alone is already ninety-eight percent of the drink—is there even any room left for the water?” she asked sarcastically.

“Sure there is, they list it at the bottom here, see?” Gallus replied, choosing to ignore her sarcasm. “One percent carbonated water.”

“Just enough to keep this insane concoction fluid, I suppose,” Ocellus grumbled as she went back to her equations. “If it doesn’t give you cardiac arrest first, this stuff will rot your teeth.”

“I’ll start caring as soon as I have some teeth to rot,” Gallus retorted, tapping the side of his beak knowingly.

Ocellus didn’t reply and instead kept working on her equations for a moment. She then growled in frustration and slapped her hooves onto the desktop. “I don’t understand it!” she complained, rubbing fitfully at her temples. “None of these ingredients should’ve rendered the gel’s formula inert! Distorted its intended functions, yes…if anything, it should’ve excited it…not kill it entirely!” Groaning, she let her head fall onto the desk with a thump. “I just don’t know what went wrooooooo-ong-ong-ong,” she bemoaned sadly with a half-suppressed sob.

Seeing how pitiful she looked, Gallus felt his heart soften and with a sigh, rolled over and heaved himself up onto his feet, stepping over and placing a reassuring paw over her shoulder. “Look, I really am sorry for messing up your formula thing, Ocellus,” he apologized sincerely. “If I could just snap my claws and undo it all, I would, but I can’t. So I’m sorry all that work you put into this got so messed up and didn’t work out like you hoped.” He gave her a reassuring pat. “But getting all worked up about it isn’t really going to make it better, right? Maybe what you need is to take a break from all of this…let yourself unwind a little and clear your mind.”

Ocellus sighed, rubbing at her eyes. “Maybe you’re right,” she relented, turning away from the desk at last. She managed a small grin. “My brain does feel like it’s about ready to burn out.”

“Yeah, I can almost see the smoke coming out of your ears now,” Gallus joked, which managed to draw a small chuckle out of the changeling. He then glanced at the alarm clock in the room. “You still haven’t gotten much sleep either, have you? So tell you what—the barbeque down at Sandbar’s place is going to be starting soon. While that’s going, maybe his folks will let you crash on their couch for a bit.”

Ocellus shrugged, joining Gallus as they turned for the door. “They do have a pretty nice couch,” she conceded then let out a relieving breath. “And I suppose this all wasn’t a total loss…I’ll just have to keeping working and try and figure out a new solution so to keep this from happening again.” She shook her head as they arrived at the door. “It’s just…I really thought I had it there at last…so it’s disappointing to see I wasn’t actually as close as I thought I—”

They both stopped when they heard a beaker suddenly tip over on Ocellus’s desk behind them. Turning to look back at it, they saw it was same beaker that was still holding the failed intelligent gel. Confused, the two exchanged looks before moving back to the desk to get a better look, seeing the gel was now oozing out of the tipped-over beaker and onto the desk.

Gallus scratched at his crest, confused. “Huh,” he remarked. “Wonder what made it tip over like that.”

“I don’t know, but we better clean it up before it spills onto the floor,” Ocellus said, picking up a cleaning tool from elsewhere on her desk and moving it to start wiping up the spilled gel…

…Only to see the gel visibly flinch away from the offending object. Surprised, the two exchanged glances before Ocellus did it again and spurred the same reaction from the gel.

“I thought you said that stuff wasn’t working anymore?” Gallus asked.

“Rendered inert, yes, and it was,” Ocellus remarked, just as confused as him, tilting her head at the sudden revival of the gel. “I don’t know why it’s suddenly responding to outside stimuli again…but since it is…”

She picked up the fallen beaker with her magic and used it to quickly scoop up the spilt gel, only to have it promptly overflow over the edges. Gasping in surprise, Ocellus dropped the beaker where it again thudded onto the desk, spilling the gel. The gel then proceeded to slowly ooze the rest of the way out of the beaker, quite possibly under its own power.

Now Gallus was starting to get a little leery. “Wait a minute, there wasn’t nearly enough gel to totally fill that thing earlier, not even close!” he remarked.

Ocellus realized there was only one explanation then. “It grew,” she breathed, stunned. “Somehow it’s actually grown in size…but how? It’s not supposed to, and it’d need some kind of energy source in order to do so anyway, so—”

They were again cut off when the spilt gel finished oozing its way onto the base of Ocellus’s desk lamp, which almost immediately started to spark and flicker with magical energy, startling them both to the point of yelping in their panic.

“It must have caused a short!” Ocellus reasoned as Gallus quickly ducked under the desk and pulled the lamp’s cord out of the wall socket, cutting its magical power supply.

This stopped the sparking instantly. But he saw the damage was already done as he pulled his head back above the desk in time to see the gel visibly double in size while it slithered away from the dead lamp. “Okay, I think I know where it’s getting energy now,” Gallus remarked warily, starting to back away from the desk.

“It must be feeding off any magical energy it can access,” Ocellus reasoned in awe, her mind a flurry of internal equations as she worked this out. But she, too, started backing away from the gel on the desk. “Probably even the ambient magical energy in the air…that’s how it was growing while it was still inside the beaker!”

“So…what happens if it keeps doing that?” Gallus asked slowly, glancing at her.

“I guess it’ll keep growing,” Ocellus reasoned back, glancing back at him.

“And…how big are we talking here?”

“Um…I can’t be sure…it might only be limited by how much energy it can get access to.”

“Ocellus…last time I checked, there’s a lot of magical energy in the world.”

“I know.”

They shared an alarmed look at the gel inching across the desk, searching for a new energy supply to feed off of. Then, Ocellus abruptly lit her horn and fired a spell at it so to destroy it. This did absolutely nothing though, the gel simply absorbing the spell’s energy and starting to grow even more. So Gallus quickly grabbed a clear plastic container Yona had been using to hold rubber erasers, dumped out the contents, then slammed it over the growing gel and trapping it. He then backed away cautiously to see if it would hold, the two warily watching the gel within ooze around. They both jumped again when the gel managed to scoot the container slightly across the desk, but it didn’t get far before Ocellus thumped a stack of her school books on top of it, weighing it down.

Ocellus then watched to see if the slime could still move the container, ready to thump on more books if necessary, but the container remained still, the intelligent gel unable to budge it. “There, that should hold it,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief.

“For now,” Gallus said, not so reassured. “What if that stuff grows again?”

Ocellus winced, rubbing at her temples as she sought a solution. “I don’t know what else to do, though! I can’t destroy it with my magic, it’ll just keep feeding off it! And it’s a gel, with no true solid form, so you can’t exactly just squish it, either!”

“Then I think it’s time we got help from the experts,” Gallus concluded.



 

As the sun started to set on the horizon, heralding the official start of the Nightmare Night festivities that evening, the School of Friendship was left rather empty and quiet. Not too surprising to the still newly-appointed headmare Starlight Glimmer, who figured her students were all out either visiting family and friends or partaking of the festivities. As they should be—Nightmare Night was a day to have fun, after all. In fact, Starlight wondered that even if the holiday hadn’t ended up on a weekend she still wouldn’t have held classes today. She knew Twilight wouldn’t approve of that…but Twilight wasn’t the one in charge of the school anymore, now was she? Let the students have their fun today.

Starlight fully intended to join them, and was already dressed in her Nightmare Night costume too, but unfortunately, there was still one matter of school business she needed to attend to first. Arriving at the doors for the guidance counselor’s office, she knocked briefly. “Trixie, are you in there?” she called through the doors. Not getting an immediately response, she knocked again. “Trixie?” Still getting no response, she twisted the doorknob and started to pull it open so to let herself in.

Immediately, a flood of smoky, spooky, fog gushed out of the room and poured thickly onto the floor, followed by a swarm of magically-generated false bats. A flash of lightning flared out from within the dimly lit room, just long enough to see it had been decorated from top to bottom with every spooky Nightmare Night decoration known to ponykind, generating such a powerful spooky atmosphere that it didn’t seem physically possible for it to be any more spooky. This was quickly followed by a deep and bone-rattling voice which called out, “ENTER…IF YOU DARE!”

Starlight, however, was unmoved. “Trixie. Seriously.”

There was a click and the lights came on, revealing Trixie seated innocently behind her desk, wearing an outfit that wasn’t unlike the cape and hat she normally favored, but colored black with dark purple trim and bearing Nightmare Night-themed decorations. She was also totally unrepentant. “C’mon, Starlight, it’s Nightmare Night! Get in the spirit a little!”

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m here to talk to you about,” Starlight said as she walked up to Trixie’s desk, smoky fog still swirling around her hooves as she walked. “You see…”

“Ah-ah! Hold that thought!” Trixie interrupted, holding up a hoof. She leaned eagerly forward. “Wouldn’t you like a piece of candy first?”

Starlight narrowed her eyes at her, but seeing Trixie wasn’t going to dissuaded from it that easily, she relented. “Fine.”

Trixie then eagerly turned to where she had a candy bowl set on her desk, a plastic pony skull poking up from the middle of it. Instead of picking out a piece of candy, Trixie instead pressed down on the plastic skull, which eye sockets lit up as it started to shake.

“I’d lend you a hoof, but I don’t seem to have any!” it announced cheesily before cackling briefly.

Trixie snickered, amused. “Ha-ha, this guy tells it like it is,” she said, before finally selecting a piece of candy corn and handing it over to Starlight.

Starlight accepted it and politely popped it into her mouth. “Now,” she began as she chewed, “before you try and bring up any other distractions, I need to tell you that I’ve been getting a few complaints from the students about all of your Nightmare Night decorations in here. A number of them even wanted to come to me to consult with their problems instead of you because of it.”

Trixie feigned a shocked gasp, pressing a hoof to her chest. “Really?” she proclaimed, distraught. “But why? Trixie’s just trying to get into the spirit of the holiday!”

“One of the students had wanted to talk to you about how much Nightmare Night decorations tended to creep him out this time of year,” Starlight stated flatly. “Guess who changed his mind the moment he saw your office, though?”

Trixie’s face fell. “Oh.” She looked around at her overly decorated office and winced. “Oops.”



“Look, Trixie,” Starlight then continued with a sigh. “I get that Nightmare Night is your favorite holiday and all. But all of these decorations don’t make for a very conducive environment for counseling with students in, clearly.”

“Oh, but I just love this holiday so much!” Trixie whined. “It’s a chance for Trixie to truly put to the test her skills as a showmare and illusionist!”

“Hay, I understand that,” Starlight assured, and motioned to her own Nightmare Night costume. “I’m pretty fond of the holiday myself, as you can see!”

Trixie wasn’t impressed, though. “Yeah, I see you decided to go with the Sky Trek uniform for a costume anyway,” she remarked wearily.

Starlight looked down at her outfit. “What’s wrong with it?” she protested.

“Nothing, it’s just…did you have to wear the red one? That’s just…tempting fate.”

“Look, I’ll have you know…”

But she was interrupted by Gallus and Ocellus suddenly storming into the room in a panic. “Trixie! Counselor Trixie!” they both called as they plowed through the fog spilling out of the office at a full gallop, which was right about when they noticed Starlight was here too. “Oh! And Headmare Starlight! That’s even better!”

“Hey!” Trixie protested at the implied blow to her ego.

But Starlight, sensing something was up, motioned for her to be quiet. “What’s going on, what’s wrong?” she asked the two panicked students.

Gallus stepped forward to explain, sheepishly raising a paw. “So…I accidentally spilt some energy drink…and now we’ve got this smart slimeball that we don’t know how to stop.”

Both Trixie and Starlight tilted their heads at them, confused. “Smart slimeball?” they repeated in unison.



 

They explained the situation in more detail as they were hurrying back to Ocellus’s dorm room.

“So wait,” Trixie recapped as they galloped, “This slimeball…you’re saying it’s alive?”

Ocellus made a hesitant wince. “Not so much alive as it is intelligent,” she reasoned. “Basically, it’s using a modified spell matrix to simulate semi-sentient behavior and to carry out a series of pre-set instructions as it encounters corresponding environments—mostly all of the normal tasks a changeling would seek to perform with ordinary changeling gel. Or at least that was my original intention.” She sighed. “The exposure to Gallus’s energy drink seems to have…corrupted it in some manner—at least it’s behaving in ways I never intended now. So I honestly can’t predict what it might do next or if it’ll even still follow those original instructions.”

“If this spell matrix is all that’s making it functional though, then that’s how we stop it before it becomes too much more of a problem,” Starlight reasoned, calming down a little now that she saw a straightforward plan of action to take. “We just need to break that matrix, and that should stop it dead in its tracks.”

“It’s not that simple, though,” Gallus said, not reassured. “This thing feeds off of magic and only gets bigger and more powerful every time it does, so you can’t use another spell to stop it, and if you can’t use magic to break this matrix thing, then how are you going to do this?”

“Well, the more important thing is that it’s contained for the moment, right?” Trixie reasoned. “So as long as it’s still contained, that keeps it under control and buys us time to figure it out, right?”

Only the intelligent gel wasn’t still contained by the time they got back to the dorm room. When they arrived, they found the container they had trapped it in tipped over and the stack of books pinning it down dumped in a heap onto the desk chair and the floor around it. The desktop was now covered with a thin but visible layer of teal slime. But there was no immediate sign of the ball of slime itself. This immediately put them all on guard as they warily started to scan the room for any sign of it.

“…where did it go?” Gallus asked aloud, his voice wary.

“It…couldn’t have gone far, right?” Trixie voiced, trying to be hopeful.

Ocellus could only shrug though, uncertain. But before they had to search for long, Ocellus’s desk suddenly rattled, followed by some flashes of light from sparking magic coming from underneath. Ocellus suddenly paled. “The wall socket…it found the wall socket and is pulling magical power right from the town’s main lines to feed upon!”

Gallus slapped his talons onto either side of his face, alarmed. “That thing doubled in size just when it got a few seconds of magic off of Ocellus’s desk lamp…if it’s gotten to a near constant supply now…” he trailed off, not needing to finish the ominous thought for them to understand.

However, they still couldn’t see the slime itself, so Starlight silently volunteered herself to scout ahead, cautiously starting towards the desk. She jumped when it again shook, more violently this time, as if something was trying to move the desk from underneath. One corner of the slime peeked out from underneath of the desk, only hinting at however big it might have gotten now, before slipping back underneath again and out of view. Starlight hesitated, glancing back at the others to reassure herself that they were still safe, then started forward again, starting to circle around in front of the desk so to better see it. She only got part way when there was more magical sparking and the desk again shook harder than before. Alarmed, Starlight reflexively threw up a magical shield in front of her for protection.

But Ocellus jumped forward, shaking her head. “No!” she declared, motioning for Starlight to stop. “A magical shield won’t stop it—it’ll just eat its way through it!”

Starlight nodded, inwardly kicking herself for forgetting that so quickly, and lowered her shield again as she sought to recover her courage to continue. At the same time, Trixie scanned the room for a replacement, before ripping the blanket off of the lower bunk bed and giving it to Gallus and Ocellus to hold in front of them as a shield. It wasn’t perfect, but hopefully it’d at least be enough for the two students to beat a hasty retreat if needed.

“Stay here and keep back, just in case,” she advised the students then joined Starlight, looking nervous. “Any ideas?” she asked her fellow unicorn.

Starlight hesitated then turned her head to reply when there was more sparking from under the desk, serious enough now that the lights throughout the whole room suddenly flickered before going out, followed by a soft “pop” of a fuse being blown. Then, with one final jolt from under the desk, knocking things off of it, the intelligent gel finally revealed itself in full.

The teal ball of slime had indeed grown in size, to the point that it was roughly the same height as an adult pony, depending on how the versatile goop arranged itself. In the dim lighting, it looked rather intimidating, especially with it moving around of its own accord. Trixie and Starlight both backed up slightly as it slithered in their direction, partly to stand between it and the two students behind them, and partly out of legitimate fear of what the blob might do.

“We need to contain this thing somehow,” Starlight finally responded, belatedly answering Trixie’s question, “somewhere where it can’t have such ready access to magic and keep it from growing even more.”

“Okay,” Trixie replied, nodding. “So how are we going to do that?”

Starlight bit her lip as the blob continued to ooze idly in their direction. It didn’t seem too concerned about them at the moment. “Uhhh…” she scanned the room for some kind of inspiration, or at least something to trap the intelligent gel in, but there was no longer anything big enough. She racked her brain for anything she knew was in the school that could, and eventually thought of the cafeteria freezer. “Okay, we need to see if we can lure this thing out of here.”

She lit her horn as brightly as she could and waved it at the blob, hoping the magic would attract its interest. Trixie, however, grabbed the desk chair with her magic and hurled it at the blob, which only embedded itself into the teal goo with a wet slap.

Starlight shot Trixie a glare. “I was trying to make it angry, so it’d chase us!” Trixie said, explaining her half-baked idea.

“From what Ocellus said, I don’t think it can get angry, so all you’ve—”

She was cut short when the intelligent gel unexpectedly spat out a series of smaller balls of slime at them like a cannon. Two missed, but only barely, while a third hit the blanket Gallus and Ocellus were holding up like a shield with a splat (to which they both yelped), while the fourth knocked Trixie’s hat clean from her head and glued it to the nearby wall. Startled by the sudden action, both Starlight and Trixie reacted instinctively and, being unicorns, did what came naturally to unicorns and used magic to defend themselves. Trixie fired off a magic firework at the intelligent slime while Starlight simply fired a laser of pure magic right at the center of the giant blob. Both released flashes of near-blinding light, but did little to the blob as it absorbed both magical attacks like they were spaghetti noodles before heading straight for their source, growing larger still as it did.

Starlight and Trixie stumbled to try and back away from the blob’s sudden approach, but it was faster, latching onto Starlight’s forehooves before she could get clear. Yelping, she tried to tug herself free to no avail, so Trixie doubled back to help, only to get trapped as well.

Frustrated, Trixie had time enough to shout to Starlight, “See, this is what I meant about you wearing the red shirt!” before both ponies were engulfed fully by the intelligent gel and vanished completely from view.

Gallus and Ocellus could only look on in horror. For a moment, they were too stunned by the suddenness of it all, but then Gallus, finding his voice, finally bellowed, “Oh my goldfinch, it just ate our teachers!”

Ocellus didn’t respond. After all the day’s stress and her overall lack of sleep, this was finally more than she could take. So with a groan, her eyes rolled up and she collapsed to the floor in a dead faint, tangling herself up in their blanket shield as she dropped. This just left Gallus facing the slime ball on his own, a fact he became consciously aware of as it pivoted around, as if turning to face him. The thought occurred to him that this meant it was his chance to step up and save the day, be the hero for not just Ocellus and his teachers but possibly numerous others as well. All he had to do was face off with this still-growing and seemingly indestructible ball of intelligent gel that ate magic.

Which was why Gallus instead wrapped up Ocellus’s limp body in the blanket and ran out of the room, screaming his head off and dragging the changeling behind him.
> More of the Slime
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Evening was settling upon Ponyville as the Nightmare Night barbeque at Sandbar family’s home started to get into full swing in their backyard. It was a little affair with two picnic tables set side-by-side near where Sandbar’s dad was grilling the food. Meanwhile, Sandbar’s mother was going around alternating between setting things up and setting out finished food. As part of a probable tongue-in-cheek on this, they had both dressed up for Nightmare Night as bottles of ketchup and mustard, respectively.

Sandbar, Yona, and Silverstream had also donned Nightmare Night costumes of their own, with Sandbar and Yona continuing the trend of themed costumes, though theirs was a little less obvious to the untrained eye—Sandbar was dressed in an entirely black suit with a matching black bandana wrapping entirely over the top half of his head, as well as matching boots for each of his hooves. Strapped to his belt was a fake, but still impressive-looking rapier. He looked like some sort of medieval masked vigilante. Yona, meanwhile, was simply dressed in a long and elegant-looking, but rather basic, red gown.

Silverstream, meanwhile, had dressed herself in a pink sweater purportedly of her own making, bearing a shooting star streaking across its front and leaving behind it a rainbow trail. She was in the process of making the final touches to this costume at one of the picnic tables while Smolder, the only one who wasn’t wearing a costume, sat and watched.

“Ta-da!” Silverstream finally announced as she held up the finished product. “Nacho earrings!” She then clipped them onto her ears, making a silly sound effect for each one as she did so. “Beep, boop!”

“So, what is this costume of again?” Smolder asked hesitantly as she opened up the case of energy drink she had bought at the store earlier in the day, seeing she couldn’t count on Gallus to provide her with a supply anymore.

“It’s a character from a series of graphic novels I’ve been reading!” Silverstream happily explained. “They’re about this brother and sister who go on adventures about all the weird things that happen in this little town they’re spending the summer in! It’s really good!”

“Yona and Sandbar costumes are also from book!” Yona piped in excitedly, drawing Sandbar into the conversation as well. “Guess which one!”

“Well…I figure since it’s a couple-themed thing, I’m guessing Sandbar’s supposed to be the hero and Yona the damsel in distress,” Smolder reasoned as she pulled out a can of energy drink.

“Hmm,” Silverstream hummed, rubbing a talon along her beak as she thought. “Is it the one with the guy with the sword? Mask of…something with a Z?”

“No, but a good guess,” Sandbar answered. He winked to Yona. “Maybe they need a hint.”

Yona nodded and drew herself up. “Farm boy,” she remarked to Sandbar in a proper-sounding tone, “Fetch Yona a glass of punch.”

Sandbar made a bow. “As you wish,” he replied with deliberate phrasing, before scurrying off to fulfill the request.

“Oh brother,” Smolder groaned at the sappiness of the whole exchange, while Silverstream let out an excited squee at it.

“I get it!” the hippogriff squealed at the idea. “Oh, that’s an adorable idea for a costume!”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Smolder snarked as she opened the new can of soda. Seeing Silverstream shoot her an annoyed look, she shrugged. “Look, it just seems a little cliché, y’know? So the idea of them choosing that book of all books just seems a little…inconceivable.”

Silverstream snorted, looking away. “Oh, I think you’re just being a little—” she then stopped and, with wide eyes and a big grin of realization, looked back at Smolder, who was hiding a smirk. “Oh! I see what you did there! Ha! Clever!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Smolder said, waving it off as she proceeded to chug down her can of energy drink. She then let out a mighty belch afterwards, inadvertently sending a massive blast of flames skyward in the process. “Whoo! That was a big one!”

“Goodness!” Sandbar’s mother remarked as she strolled past. “But what do we say after that?”

“Must be a barge coming through!” Smolder cheekily replied.

“No,” Sandbar’s mother answered patiently and prompted again. “What do we say?”

“That sure tasted better going down than coming back up!”

Sandbar’s mother placed her elbow on the table and cradled her head in her hoof, raising one eyebrow challengingly at the dragoness. “Three strikes and you’re history, kiddo.”

“Excuse me,” Smolder sheepishly relented.

“Hey Sandbar,” Sandbar’s dad called from the grill. “I’m just about ready to try my hoof at that meat your friend was asking for.”

“Better hold off on that, Dad,” Sandbar called back, returning with Yona’s drink which she happily gulped down. “Gallus still isn’t here yet.”

“Yeah, where is Gallus?” Silverstream asked, looking around as if their griffon friend was simply hiding nearby. “I would’ve thought he’d be here by now.”

“Maybe griffon still working on Nightmare Night costume?” Yona suggested.

“Gallus did indicate he hadn’t quite worked out one for himself yet,” Sandbar relented aloud. “I mean, he was considering dressing up as a royal guard at one point, but then decided he just couldn’t see himself be a royal guard ever, so…”

“Heh, wouldn’t it be funny if he ultimately ends up one someday anyway then?” Smolder chuckled as she finished off the last of her energy drink. She shook her head. “Anyway, I betcha he’s still just getting held up by Ocellus forcing him to make up for her science experiment.”

Silverstream frowned. “Well…it would explain why Ocellus isn’t here yet either…” she reasoned.

“Oh c’mon, I know Gallus, he isn’t going to let Ocellus make him miss this for that,” Sandbar said.

“It makes more sense than him not having a costume though,” Silverstream reasoned. “I mean, he didn’t even wear one last year, so…”

They were interrupted when Smolder suddenly belched another spout of flames, but this one was smaller, which neatly coalesced into a scroll and dropped onto the tabletop in front of her. Confused, Smolder picked it up to examine.

“I didn’t know you could get mail like how Spike does, too!” Silverstream remarked.

“Pfft, Spike doing it is nothing special, a lot of dragons can do it,” Smolder explained as she proceeded to unroll the scroll. “How do you think dragons communicate with each other over long distances?”

“I dunno—by shouting at each other?” Silverstream answered.

“That only works for up to about a mile. Now hush, I’m reading.” Smolder turned her attention to reading the text on the scroll for a moment. It didn’t take long, and by the end, her eyebrows had gone up in an expression that was a mix between surprise and concern.

“I don’t like that look, Smolder,” Sandbar said, scooting closer. “Has something bad happened?”

Smolder hesitated. “Depends on how you want to interpret this,” she responded before holding out the scroll so they could read too. “Here, see for yourself.”

They gathered around to read the scroll, which had been written in a hurried and haphazard scrawl and was very vague and to the point. It said:


Smolder,


 


Trouble at the school. Need help.


 


Get friends and meet me at headmare’s office ASAP.


 


STAY AWAY from the giant slime ball.


 


Will explain more once you’re all here.


 


-Gallus


The others glanced at each other, confused. “What griffon mean by giant slime ball?” Yona asked, confused by that.

Smolder shrugged. “You think he’s trying to pull some kind of prank on us? I mean, it is Nightmare Night after all, and he’d be the one most likely to try it.”

“But why at the school and not here, then?” Sandbar asked, not convinced. He looked genuinely concerned. “Besides, this is all phrased too seriously…I think Gallus means it and he’s really in trouble.”

Silverstream gasped. “What if he’s hurt? Ooh, we better go now!”

“Take it easy there, Shooting Star,” Smolder remarked to Silverstream, stopping her before she could run off. “Something still seems off about all of this to me.”

“Well, it still couldn’t hurt to go back to the school real quick, make sure everything’s all right, right?” Silverstream reasoned.

“Sil’s right,” Sandbar said, getting up to go and motioning for the others to follow. “We need to at least look into this, or we wouldn’t be very good friends.” He turned to call to his parents. “Mom! Dad! Something’s come up at the school! We’re going to run over there real quick! We’ll try to be back soon! Keep some food warm for us!”



 

The School of Friendship sat on its hilltop like a beacon, the light warmly shining from its interior lighting and shedding some cheery glow in the increasing gloom of Nightmare Night. It didn’t seem to appear any more or less different than it usually appeared any other day of the year, which gave the group of students a momentary pause as they all gathered in front of its entrance.

“Nothing seems wrong,” Yona remarked aloud, sounding confused.

“For some reason, that’s not reassuring me,” Sandbar remarked, starting to feel an odd tension in the air that he didn’t like.

Smolder waved it off, though. “Aw, you’re all just being a bunch of weaselly wimps!” she said as she strolled confidently for the doors. “Whatever this is, I’ll betcha Gallus is blowing it out of proportion, so c’mon already.”

They stepped into the school’s lobby and continued to find nothing immediately out of place, though the school did seem empty and quiet…almost eerily so.

“Hello?” Silverstream called out as they made their way deeper into the building. “Anybody here?” She stopped to listen to the sound of her voice echo back to her, but there was no response.

“All of the others students are probably out celebrating Nightmare Night or visiting family for the holiday,” Sandbar reasoned.

“Most of the professors probably aren’t even here either,” Smolder added with a shrug. “It’s after hours on a holiday weekend, so why would they be? I’m not even sure our new headmare is here.”

“But Gallus said to meet at headmare office,” Yona pointed out. “Suggests headmare is here too…right?”

Silverstream frowned, gaze turning distant as she walked. “I dunno, maybe Sandbar’s right to be uneasy…something doesn’t feel like it’s adding up about all—YIPE!” she suddenly slipped in something wet, her feet shooting out from under her and sending her crashing to the floor. As she started to pick herself up, she saw what she’d slipped on was a track of teal-colored slime. “Eww!” she squealed, disgusted as she wiped the slime off her talons. “Where did this come from?”

“There’s more!” Yona said, following the trail where it led around the corner and on down an adjoining hallway, like something large and slimy had been dragged through it. They all turned their gazes to follow its path.

“Weird,” Smolder mumbled. “What do you think this is about?”

“Well…Gallus did mention something about a giant slime ball,” Sandbar reminded hesitantly, like he didn’t really want to.

They all fell silent for an uneasy moment.

“Well…the slime trail goes in the same direction we need to, so…I guess we’ll find out?” Silverstream said, trying to sound positive as they started forward again.

Smolder was frowning. “I still say this is Gallus trying to pull a prank on us.”

But the further they went, the more they started to notice other things amiss, such as various objects like plants, benches, or tables being bumped out of place or totally missing from their customary spots altogether. Further, though none of them wanted to be the one to point it out, the further they went, the more the trail of slime roughly following their course seemed to widen in size. Soon, it was getting to the point that it was hard to avoid stepping in it. Then, as they rounded a corner into a new hallway, a distant electrical buzz could be heard followed by the lights suddenly starting to fluctuate, as if something was disrupting the magic powering them.

“…and now the lights are flickering,” Sandbar noted with nervous sarcasm, “Great, that’s totally helping to improve my mood right now.”

“Still think this is prank?” Yona asked Smolder, shooting her a look.

“More than ever,” Smolder persisted. “I mean, c’mon, creepy flickering lights and an ominous trail of weird slime found in the empty school building after Gallus sent us a worrying but vague note asking us to come here, all on Nightmare Night of all nights? It’s just too…spot on, y’know?”

“Well, I suppose, when you put it like that…” Silverstream said, not totally convinced.

“I guess I still gotta give him props and all for the effort?” Smolder went on uncertain as they started walking past one of the lecture halls, its door left open, “But the timing…it just makes it too obvious. Now, if he tried pulling something like this on, say, a normal school day, then that might be enough to make me go—WHAT THE HECK?!”

For a second Smolder’s exclamation and abrupt change in tone didn’t register given what she’d been saying, until, wide-eyed, she pointed through the open lecture hall door and the others turned and gasped at the sight within. The room had been put into complete disarray, with objects scattered everywhere and slime covering most of the floor and walls, some even dripping from the ceiling. But most ominous of all wasn’t the slime or the chaotic state of the room, it was the large, green, and bulbous objects that dangled, wet and slimy, from the ceiling.

Sandbar, unfortunately, recognized them. “Those are changeling cocoons,” he observed with dread. “Just like the ones that were left over after the last time the changelings tried to invade.”

“…Didn’t they use those to capture creatures to…you know…feed on?” Smolder said, starting to look uneasy finally.

“But…the changelings are all good now! We know one!” Silverstream objected. “And…why would they even be here anyway?”

“Wait,” Yona said, motioning for them to be silent. “Does that mean creatures are trapped in cocoons?”

Another uneasy silence passed between them.

“Well…one way to find out,” Smolder said with a sigh, and, spreading her wings, started to fly up to the closest of them.

“Be careful, Smolder!” Silverstream called, biting at her talons as the dragon drew near, trying to peer into them.

They watched her hover around the nearest cluster for a few moments. “Who’s in there?” Sandbar finally dared to ask.

“No one,” Smolder replied, scratching at her spines, confused. She motioned to the closest. “This one just contains a table.” She pointed at a few others. “That one holds a chair. And that one holds a houseplant. That one over there just contains a random selection of objects, but certainly nothing living.”

Silverstream gasped. “The changelings are planning to capture all of our household objects!” she declared.

“No, no,” Sandbar said, waving his hoof to dismiss that idea. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it can’t be that. Why would changelings want to steal…well, any of this stuff?”

“Are we sure it’s even changelings?” Smolder asked as she landed and rejoined the group. “I mean, just because it looks like their cocoons doesn’t mean they’re actually responsible for them.”

“Smolder has point,” Yona concurred. “What if something else make cocoons?”

“That still doesn’t explain why,” Sandbar stressed.

“I’m not sure I care at the moment,” Smolder said, motioning them all back out of the room and back on course. “Never mind the whys when it’s the whats that are going to be the troublemakers. Look, let’s just find Gallus already. He probably knows more than we do.”

They continued onward in silence. Eventually, the slime trail they had been walking around veered down a different hallway and vanished from view. This helped to relieve some of the building tension among them, but it didn’t eliminate it entirely, especially when, as they drew near the headmare’s office, the lights started flickering again.

“What is causing that?” Sandbar asked, annoyed. “It’s not helping me to stay calm any.”

“Listen!” Silverstream said, cupping her talons around one ear. “You can hear something like a short somewhere!”

“Did the school blow a magic fuse or something?” Smolder asked. She glanced at Sandbar, knowing he’d know better than she. “Is that even a thing?”

“…kind of?” Sandbar replied. “The lights in Ponyville get their power from a distribution network running magical energy into homes and stuff, and fuses usually help make it all work…but the only times I’ve ever seen fuses get blown out is when something considerable overloads them. I haven’t seen anything in here yet that could do that.”

And yet, as they neared another intersection in the hallways, the lights flickered again, and this time they could hear something sparking around the corner nearby. Thinking herself to be the one most resilient to any accidental shocks, Smolder took the lead and motioned for the others to follow at a safe distance before creeping towards the corner, peeking around it. Slowly and cautiously, the others did the same. Ahead about another ten feet was an open fuse box. At regular intervals of every few seconds, something in it would let out a quick arc of magical energy in loud snaps.

Sandbar let out the breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. “I guess that explains why the lights are flickering,” he reasoned. He pointed a hoof at the box. “There should be a switch inside that’ll shut it off, and then we can go tell somepony it needs fixing.”

“I’ll do it,” Smolder volunteered, and strolled straight for the open fuse box.

She found the switch Sandbar spoke of within seconds of arriving at it. She paused only long enough to time it between the snapping arcs of magical energy before quickly flipping it with one fluid stroke. This cut the power to the hallway lighting, plunging the hallway into darkness, though there was still a faint tealish glow that presented lighting enough to see by. Smolder let out a relived sigh and took a step back to make sure everything about the fuse box was sorted. She became confused though when she started to hear a wet rippling sound somewhere nearby that she couldn’t quite identify.

She turned to look back at her friends still leaning around the corner. “You guys hear—?” She trailed off abruptly when she saw they all looked pale as sheets, staring not at Smolder but at something above her.

“Smolder…” Silverstream hissed, frightened, as she slowly jabbed a talon upwards, motioning for her to look up.

It was then something wet fell and hit Smolder’s shoulder with a thick plap sound. Looking at it, Smolder saw it was more teal slime. A chill suddenly running through her, she slowly let her gaze wander upwards at the hallway ceiling, hoping she wasn’t about to regret doing so.



She regretted it.

Slithering under its own power across the ceiling, faintly glowing with some sort of internal energy, was an absolutely massive ball of slime more than twice her size—big enough that if it wasn’t for the high vaulted ceilings the school tended to sport, the blob would likely absolutely fill the hallway with its mass. Its movements made the rippling sound Smolder was hearing, getting louder as the slime started arrive almost directly above the dragon. By that point Smolder decided she didn’t want to see what it did next and dove back for the corner where her friends were hiding. It was a good thing she did because the slime monster abruptly detached itself from the ceiling, smashing to the floor exactly where Smolder had been standing just a second earlier with an almighty slap.

Convinced it was going to chase her next, Smolder hit the floor at the end of her dive, rolled smoothly back onto her feet, and kept running out the hallway, rounding the corner and back onto their original path as she raced for the next hallway intersection further ahead. Her friends followed in a panic of their own, Silverstream screaming her head off for most of the way. When they arrived at the next intersection, they ducked around the corner and then peered back the way they came to see if the monster slime was chasing them.

It seemed it was, coming into the hallway and turning to follow the path they had taken, but it didn’t seem in too much of a hurry to do so as it moved quite idly.

“Where in the name of gemstones did THAT thing come from?” Smolder finally demanded of her friends since they had a moment, claws over her beating heart and trying to calm herself.

“It slid into view almost the same time as when you shut off the fuse box!” Sandbar gasped, his breathing heavy.

“What is it?” Yona asked, bewildered and disgusted as the slime ball leisurely moved in their direction.

“Guess it’s the giant slime ball Gallus was talking about,” Silverstream reasoned with a weak, forced, chuckle.

“Yona knew that. But where slime ball come from?”

“More importantly, what are we going to do about it, because that thing’s getting awfully close to us again,” Smolder said, resisting the urge to back away as it drew ever closer to where they were hiding, watching it come.

“Maybe we can scare it off…?” Silverstream started to suggest weakly.

Sandbar then stepped out before any of them could stop him, going to stand in the middle of the hallway and blocking the abnormality’s path. He then pulled out the false rapier he wore as part of his costume and thrust it at the giant slime monster with a determined scowl. “My name is Sandbar the pony,” he told the slime ball, which paused as if intimidated. “You’ve threated my friends. Prepare to die.”

He then stabbed it deep into the slime’s gooey side. This only resulted in the sword ineffectively getting sucked out of his hooves, being pulled deeper into it.

Sandbar stared as the sword vanished within the monster, then blankly turned to his friends hiding around the corner and shrugged. “Well, I’m out of ideas.”

That was all Silverstream needed to hear. “RUN!” she bellowed, and they all bolted back down the—now dark—weave of hallways that made up their school. The rippling sound behind them said the slime was still following.

They had nearly forgotten in their panic why they had even come to the school when the doors to the headmare’s office ahead of them suddenly burst open and Gallus’s head poked out urgently. “Everybody in here, quickly!” the griffon ordered.

His friends, seeing potential shelter, quickly obeyed, ducking through the opened door. The moment they were all through, Gallus slammed it shut again, throwing his back against it in case the slime ball attempted to follow. It didn’t though, and could be heard slithering on down the hallway past the office. But it was only when the rippling sounds of its movements faded from detection that they relaxed with relieved sighs all around.

Then Gallus turned on his friends. “I thought I told you guys to stay away from the giant slime ball in the message I sent!” he shouted at them.

“Hey, it found us!” Smolder shouted back.

“That and Smolder didn’t take your message seriously,” Silverstream added.

“That’s right, I­—wait.” Smolder trailed off, realizing this wasn’t helping her case.

“Look, we’re safe now, right?” Sandbar intervened in an attempt to prevent the imminent argument.

“Should be,” Gallus said with a relenting sigh, strolling back across the solely candlelit and spacious office they were all inside of. “At least, I hope so. That thing hasn’t managed to get in here yet, at any rate. I think there’s some sort of magic protection in place on the doors, though I don’t know if that’s really going to help in the long run.”

“Why’s that?” Silverstream asked.

“The thing eats magic, apparently,” Gallus said with a wince and sigh. “Magic attacks have no effect on it, so I can only assume magic protections and shields aren’t going to be any better.”

The others exchanged uneasy glances with one another as Gallus went to the headmare’s desk where a small pile of food was stacked. It looked like the same sort of food that was served in the school cafeteria, and Gallus collected up some of it and passed it around to his friends. They thankfully accepted the little pick-me-ups after their brief chase with the slime monster.

“What is that thing anyway, and how did it get here?” Sandbar finally asked as they ate.

“Remember that intelligent gel Ocellus was working on earlier today?” Gallus asked.

Smolder’s eyes grew as she jabbed a finger back at the doors. “Don’t tell me that giant slime ball is that same gel?” she asked, awed.

“Unfortunately, it is,” Gallus replied with a sigh as he started walking to one side of the room. “See, apparently that energy drink I accidentally spilled on it affected it somehow, and now when it feeds on magic, it grows bigger. Ocellus said there might be no limit to it.”

“Speaking of Ocellus,” Silverstream began as they watched the griffon cross the room, “Where is—Oh!” She trailed off as they saw Ocellus was in the room too, lying stretched out in an armchair and mostly hidden by a blanket Gallus had courteously tucked over her at some point. She seemed deeply asleep as they gathered closer, though she occasionally stirred. “Is she all right?” Silverstream asked, concerned.

“I’m pretty sure she is,” Gallus replied hesitantly as he checked her over. “She wasn’t hurt physically, she just passed out after the intelligent gel ate Starlight and Trixie and hasn’t come to again yet.” He looked up in time to see his other friends all staring at him with wide eyes and winced. “Oh right, Starlight and Trixie…yeah, that…that was a thing that actually happened. We went to them for help dealing with that slime ball, and I think they spooked it or something and it…just slurped them up like noodles.”

“So…they’re actually inside of that thing?” Smolder asked, shocked. “Like, right now?”

Gallus shrugged helplessly. Despite his relative calmness, the subject clearly still bothered him. “Last I saw. There wasn’t anything either of us could do to stop it.”

A heavy silence fell for a moment as the others attempted to process this. “Did they…” Sandbar began uncertainly. “I mean, they aren’t…are they…?”

“I don’t know,” Gallus admitted, his tone heavy. “I certainly hope they aren’t, but…there’s no way for me to be sure.” He gazed sadly at Ocellus. “Like I said, that was Ocellus’s breaking point, so I figured we were in over our heads and it was better to run and hide and get help. So I got myself and Ocellus in here so to keep away from that thing…managed to sneak down to the cafeteria to sneak some supplies…” he motioned to the food he had stacked on the desk then at all the non-magical candles lighting the room, “…shut off everything magical that I could find so to keep the gel from taking an interest in getting in here, and sent that message to you guys, hoping you could all come help.” He averted his gaze. “Sorry, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but it’s looking more like I’ve just put you all in the same boat as me and Ocellus…and on Nightmare Night, of all nights…”

“No, Gallus did right thing,” Yona quickly reassured him and motioned to Ocellus. “Kept changeling friend safe, right?”

“Maybe…but I wish she’d wake up,” Gallus bemoaned, sitting down with a sigh. “She’s the one that’ll have the best chance of understanding this stuff and working out a plan, seeing she made the gel and all.”

Sandbar examined Ocellus over a bit himself. “You know, I think she’s fine, she’s just sleeping,” he observed.

“That makes sense,” Yona said. “Ocellus not sleep much last night.”

“She was getting a little stressed and scatterbrained right before this all went down,” Gallus added. “She’s probably needed the chance to rest up.”

“But Gallus has a point too,” Smolder added, who had taken to surveying the room while the others talked. “We probably could really use her help right about now.”

Sandbar went quiet as he mulled upon the problem for a moment. He then suddenly jabbed a hoof in a random direction and shouted, “Look! A bunch of love-happy hippies gathered together for a peaceful ‘make love, not war’ demonstration!”

Ocellus was awake and sitting up in an instant. “Where?!” she exclaimed, eyes excited and hungry. She then turned sheepish as she instead saw all of her friends staring at her instead. “Oh…there’s not actually any…oh…” she grimaced, rubbing at her eyes with her hooves. “Sorry, I’m just feeling a little hungry. I missed breakfast…and lunch…” she noticed how dark it was outside the office’s windows, “…and I guess dinner as well…oh dear. That…that would probably explain it, then.”

“Gotcha covered anyway,” Gallus said, grabbing a flask of bottled emotion from their supplies that he had also snagged from the cafeteria and handed it over to her.

Ocellus happily accepted it and chugged down the entire contents. She sighed, relaxing back in the chair. “Sorry again if I worried any of you,” she said to her friends, looking at each of them in turn thankfully. “I guess it’s been a bit of an off-day for me.” She rubbed at her eyes again and chuckled a little. “I was having this bizarre dream, though…it was Nightmare Night, and I had cracked intelligent gel for the hive, but then Gallus spilled a soda drink on it, and it started growing really big, and then it ate Headmare Starlight and Counselor Trixie, and…” She saw their expressions and her face fell. “…that wasn’t a dream, was it?”

“’Fraid not,” Silverstream said sadly, giving the changeling’s shoulder a rub.

Ocellus glanced around at their surroundings, taking it in for the first time. “I’m assuming that’s also why we’re all in the headmare’s office and half of you are in Nightmare Night costumes.” She pointed a hoof at Silverstream. “Nice sweater, by the way.”

“Thank you!” Silversteam said, looking down at the garment she wore. “I made it myself!”

“But yeah, I brought you here to hide,” Gallus explained, getting back on subject.

“And then he dragged the rest of us into it too,” Smolder added.

“Sorry again about that,” Gallus said.

Smolder shrugged. “Eh, what are friends for?”

Ocellus took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “Okay then…tell me honestly, how bad are things?”

“Well, your science project is now the size of a carriage and loose in the school,” Gallus summed up. “Luckily, we seem to be the only ones still in the school right now, but I’m sure it’s making a real mess of things out there still.”

“So that’s only a small comfort at the moment,” Silverstream said.

“And it’s feeding off the school’s magical supply for the lights,” Sandbar added before looking at the others. “That’s probably why the lights were flickering when we arrived. It was from it feeding.”

“Maybe it’s what’s putting random stuff in the cocoons we saw earlier too?” Smolder hazarded to guess. “I mean, that was what this gel stuff was originally for, right?”

“In part,” Ocellus confirmed. “The gel was programmed with a set of basic instructions for things for it to do. Aiding in the creation of cocoons is one of them.” She tapped her chin, thinking. “I suppose, in lieu of any other instructions or outside guidance of a proper user, it’s trying to carry out those basic instructions however it can in the way it best understands.” She hummed thoughtfully. “I’d be intrigued, honestly…if I wasn’t also so terrified of what trouble it might cause next. And with it loose in the school now…” She rubbed at her temples, dismayed. “Oh, this is all my fault…I shouldn’t have made this gel in the first place…”

“Oh, don’t go beating yourself up over it,” Gallus said. “I still get the blame for pouring Tsar Bomba all over it. It had been working fine up until then.”

“I guess I ought to take some blame for even getting the energy drink in the room too,” Smolder added sheepishly. “Maybe none of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t gone raiding Gallus’s supply like that.”

“Yona not so worried about blame,” Yona interrupted. “Yona more worried about how we fix it.”

“Yona’s right,” Sandbar agreed. “We can worry about blame later. Right now, we need to work out a plan.”

“Yeah…anybody got one of those yet?” Gallus asked.

“Can’t we just blast it?” Silverstream asked. When this drew a couple of surprised glances her way as she wasn’t normally the one to make suggestions like this, she added, “What? I mean, it’s just smart goo, right?”

“I wish it were that simple, Silverstream,” Ocellus said. “But as the intelligent gel will just feed off of it, we can’t use any sort of magical attack on it. And with it so big and…starting to swallow ponies whole…that greatly limits our number of options.” She surveyed her collection of friends. “So unless someone has something non-magical that might be able to destroy it…”

They paused, considering this for a moment. “Hey, pony in black, I don’t suppose you’ve got some iocane powder on you, do you?” Smolder jokingly snarked to Sandbar, eyeing his costume.

Sandbar shot her a sour look.

“Well…how do changelings get rid of normal changeling gel?” Silverstream asked after another moment.

“Usually, once applied, you have to scrape it off with force,” Ocellus said. “By design, the gel is supposed to be resilient enough that you can’t just…you know…wipe it off. But seeing the intelligent gel is both mobile and reactive to outside threats, that won’t work so well here.”

“Now wait,” Sandbar said, realizing something. “Ocellus, I realize this isn’t the best of memories for you, but after the changelings attempted to invade Canterlot, a lot of changeling gel was left over from the attack, and we had no changelings around to get to clean it off. And yet, it was all mostly cleaned up enough for the city to mostly return to normal affairs by that same evening. That suggests there was some way to clean it all up faster than having to scrape it off by force.”

“Maybe ponies used cleaning spray?” Yona suggested innocently.

Ocellus’s head suddenly jerked upright, eyes alight with realization. “That’s it!” she declared, excited. “King Thorax discovered once back when he was still staying at the Crystal Empire that the crystal ponies had a certain bleach-laced cleaner that proved very effective at dissolving changeling gel, dry or wet!”

“We’ve got loads of that sort of stuff for cleaning here at the school already, don’t we?” Smolder asked. “We can just raid that supply to use on our slime monster!”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Gallus asked, pointing a talon to the office doors. “To the nearest janitor’s closet!”
> All of the Slime
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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?”