“Good Morning girls!” The voice of Howard Weiss echoed through all of the girl’s rooms at his usual time, “The shuttle that will be taking you to your second midweek challenge is waiting right outside the front lobby. It will be departing in approximately one hour. I don’t think I need to remind you of the punishment if you miss it, so I’ll just wish you the best of luck in your competition!”
~~~
One Uneventful Bus Ride Through The Desert Later
The bus stopped outside a large, white, modern looking building. A billboard featuring a rotund man in a garish pink leisure suit and one of the greasiest looking comb-overs any of the contestants had ever seen was displayed prominently in the parking lot, encouraging people to come in to one of ‘the most magical spa chains in the US. As featured on America’s Next Great Assistant’.
Standing outside the establishment, waiting anxiously to meet the contestants was the same portly man featured on the billboard, in the exact same pink jacket. With the heat of the Nevada area, the man had elected to stand in the middle of a kiddie pool filled with water, in order to not permanently damage the ten long, fleshy pink tentacles that took up the space that would normally have regular legs. “Welcome girls, to Guillermo’s Magic Spa!” He said, a cheshire grin on his face.
Elise, who had immediately recognized the man from the previous season, asked, “Guillermo Calamari!? I thought you ran the spa in California?”
“Technically, I run the whole operation, and we have locations in all fifty states. As the face of the company and the sponsor of today’s challenge, I thought it would only be appropriate to come on over and host the challenge!” He chuckled heartily.
“Yes,” Drake said, looking annoyed that Guillermo had stolen his thunder at giving a proper introduction. Nevertheless, he continued, “Welcome ladies, to Guillermo’s Magic Spa! As one of the leading Magic Spa franchises, Guillermo’s Magic Spa has locations in all fifty states and in over one hundred and fifty countries around the world! Today, this Las Vegas branch has the prestigious honor of being the battlegrounds for your second midweek challenge! Here to introduce the task, a man who’s already introduced himself, Guillermo Calamari!”
~~~
Challenge 2: Can You Stand The Heat?
The room that the girls were brought into looked like your standard sauna, wooden walls, some seats for people to sit down on, and some grills in the ceiling in order to pump in steam. However, everything was sized up for a person three times the size of a normal person. In the center of the room, a rather strange set up was placed underneath one of the steam vents, with five large glass jars with funnels in the lid set up below a large, metal catwalk.
Guillermo gestured towards the room as he explained, “This, girls, is our specialty, plus-sized sauna. We generally use it to help our customers too big for a normal sauna relax, but we thought it would make for filming the challenge slightly easier.
You see, it’s hot out here in Nevada especially when you got a stage light shining in your face, and if I know Howard, he’s gonna need an assistant he knows won’t melt under the heat,” He chuckled at his pun, “Now, it’s a rather simple challenge. You all are going to get up on that catwalk above one of the five bottles, and your goal is to simply make sure that at least some part of you stays above the bottle. The last contestant to not be completely melted down wins!”
Drake grinned, chiming in, “That’s right girls! It’s an endurance challenge. However to avoid a grueling filming session, we’ll be slowly increasing the temperature as the challenge goes on. So, get on up there and let’s get this show on the road!”
The girls climbed up onto the catwalk after having changed into bikinis in their favorite colors, noticing that the floor was designed with holes in it such that their liquid bodies would slip straight down into the bottle below. When they were finally in their spots, Drake gave the thumbs up, and a stagehand turned on the steam vent directly above the girls.
Almost instantly, Sinopia melted into a puddle, her various colors (including her bikini) blending together into a peach color hue as they collected into the bottle below her. Drake looked on in shock, asking “Uh… What happened?”
Sable spoke up, her cheeks turning pink (although it was impossible to tell if it was out of embarrassment or the heat) as she explained, “Don’t worry about her. She’s never had any experience with melting before, so she wouldn’t really know how to hold herself together.”
“Got ya,” Drake said, turning away from the other contestants as he muttered under his breath, “should have expected it honestly from last year.”
The other contestants were starting to feel the heat, their skin reddening up, although they managed to hold themselves mostly together, slight drops of perspiration managing to pick up small pieces of the very outer layer of skin and depositing the liquified skin into their respective bottle.
Slowly though, the contestants began losing form. Annette had a particularly nasty spill, losing most of her right arm, which had plopped to the ground after a lapse of attention. Annette decided to cut her loses and quit focusing on it so that she could maintain integrity on the new skin plane where the arm had previously been, the arm quickly dissolving into her bottle below. Sable had slowly began receding into the floor, the metal of the catwalk absorbing the vent’s heat and basically amplifying it against her feet, leaving her slowly melting midway through her calfs. After the other contestants had noticed this, they had began occasionally shifting feet to allow for their feet to cool down. Elise and Maya, however, seemed to mostly be whole, their bottles being drastically lower than the other two, although the heat still seemed to be as equally pressed against them.
“Maya,” Sable asked, strands of pink lip fluid forming a small web, as her lips were partially melted together, “How come you’re not getting that melted?”
“Just one of the perks of being a nonhuman,” Maya said, “we’re slightly more resistant to magic, remember?”
“Well, that’s no fair!” Elise whined, fawning herself with her hand to not much effect.
“You know, I’m pretty sure having an advantage in a single midweek challenge is plenty fair,” Annette said, blowing at a strand of her blond hair, the offending pieces of her hair coming loose and melting as it dropped into the bottle below.
A few more minutes passed, and even the girls who had been doing well were starting to look in a poorer shape. All of the girls looked smaller, Elise and Maya in the sense that they looked like somebody had removed the outer layer of a jawbreaker, their skin a much darker shade and proportionally smaller all around. Annette and Sable looked as though somebody had cut various parts off of them, and then covered them in skin colored goo, leaving the formless lumps. Although, they were at different levels of melt, with it still semi clear that Sable was her upper torso, standing on her arms (as her lower half had melted moments earlier), with a head like mass still miraculously perched at the top of a neck. Annette, meanwhile, looked like she had given up, with no distinguishable shapes left, indicating that she might have given up and was accepting her melt face.
“How you doing Maya?” Elise teased, noticing the monoeye’s bottle seemed to slowly be filling up slightly faster than Elise’s.
“Pretty good,” Maya lied, her lips forming a similar webbing to Sables when they had started melting, “How have you been holding up so well though?”
“My mom and I used to do hot yoga,” Elise explained, grabbing her foot by her toes and easily lifting up her leg nearly up to her shoulder, the leg sagging slightly in the middle, “It’s a lot easier to do the poses when your bones have been slightly liquified.”
The girls were interrupted by the sound of a splash from a bottle below. Drake announced, “And it looks like Annette is now out of the competition! So, we’re going to speed up the temperature increasing!”
Elise laughed, saying, “Well, I guess it’s time to get serious now!” Elise grinned, grabbing her shortened brunette hair and pulling it offer her body, her head being bald and slightly misshaped from the skin that was still stuck to the inside of her wig-like hair. She dropped her hair to the ground, which began melting, and then grabbed her bikini bottom and tops, Maya looking on in horror as she pulled them off, bits of her sticking to them as she dropped them to the floor as well.
“Elise!” Maya shrieked.
“What? Those bits melted off ages ago and the fabrics just going to speed up the melting process." She reached up to her face, pulling off the small bits of hair that remained of her eyebrows.
A few more minutes passed, and after Sable fell into her bottle, Maya elected to follow in Elise’s footsteps, as it seemed like the more of herself Maya lost, the faster the melting process affected her. She had fully lost function of her mouth a while ago, so the best thing she could do, as her vision suddenly pointed upwards and then turned completely black, despite her eye being open, was mumble incoherently.
“Calm down Maya,” Elise said, her voice lacking a lot of the energy she seemed to have a few minutes ago, her mouth beginning to get the same tacky webbing as the girls prior, “It’s just your eyeball started melting.”
Elise spoke the truth, as with the larger surface area, it seemed that Maya’s eye had began to melt faster than the skin around it, resulting in her iris popping sort of like a sunny side up egg’s yolk, the colors dripping down past the lower eyelid, pulling along some of the white of the eye with it.
Her loss of vision and brief panic had caused her dearly, ruining her concentration in holding her form and losing a significantly large amount of her body, and leaving her practically half of Elise’s height.
Once the competition had reached this point, it was inevitable what the result was going to be. After a few more cranks of the temperature, Maya had completely melted into her bottle, and Elise wasn’t far behind her, becoming a formless lump similar to how Annette had appeared before she had given up.
In fact, as Drake blew his whistle, indicating to Guillermo to cut the power to the steam vents, the last bits of Elise dropped into the Jar, leaving her a bubbly potion of a person, just like the other contestants. “I’m sorry Maya! But you’ve been disqualified, meaning that the winner of our second midweek challenge is Elise! Guillermo! Tell her what she’s won!”
“Well Drake,” Guillermo said, pulling out a certificate, “She’s won a year-long membership to Guillermo’s Magic Spa! For the next year, she’ll be able to get one free monthly massage visit, as well as discounted rates for other treatments! You too can be a member, for the low low price of $19.99 a month, or $199.99 for a year!”
“Thanks Guillermo,” Drake said, clearly annoyed at the ad pitch, but remaining professional, as he said, “And don’t you worry about the girls, I’ll make sure they get back to the hotel in one piece,” he gestured to a stagehand, who wheeled out a dolly, slowly beginning to move the jars of each assistant towards the bus.
Drake looked towards the camera, “And as for all of you watching at home, make sure you go and vote how you want to see the losing contestants punished. Goodnight Everybody!
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