5

You call upon the powers of dark death. The darkest. The deathiest. From the astral plane, a vicious hellspawn, a red-eyed flaming-tongued demon goat, emerges in front of the chupacabra.

The demon goat looks like it wants revenge for all goats that have ever been sucked on by chupacabra-kind.

The chupacabra looks bored with you. Well, looks like there'll be no sweat to be had with this attempt.

Despite your efforts, whether they were your best, worst, or a middling milquetoast, you just couldn't get that chupacabra sweat. And everyone knows it's not a chupacake-cabra without this key ingredient. The living gods, these judges are going to give you zero points while the live audience laughs at you and your miserable excuse of a cupcake.

Zero points?! You could've literally bought nothing from the store, not mixed that nothing, kept the oven a frozen cold, and still been in a better position. At least not doing all that stuff would've made you look edgy. Now you're just looking tragic. Any decision you make here isn't going to earn you any extra points…At this stage you've got to do whatever it takes to keep your point potential from cratering. You combine the ingredients of a standard frosting: milk, butter, and sugar. It is looking plain white, creamy, and decidedly not magically delicious. How are you going to salvage this supremely basic thing?

You reach into your breast pocket and pull out your small satchel of food colorings.

"Who carries food coloring around with them everywhere they go?" the queen asks incredulously.

"Who doesn't?!" you ask back just as incredulous.

At any rate, you pull out the green.

You pour the green into your frosting slowly as you stir. Soon it takes on an emerald-like appearance. It doesn't have that sparkly jewel-like quality you've seen in chupacake-cabras, but nevertheless it looks the part. No matter how it looks, it's going to taste like basic frosting, though. But at least they won't hit you with a row of zeroes come judging.

Now that you have your frosting, it's time to dress these little cakes and make them ready for the dance. And you have 54 minutes to do this and the plating before they call time. Frosting them yourself will undoubtedly yield beautiful cakes—you're a master baker, after all. But you have an assistant, one who could probably do an all right job. More importantly, her work would free up your time.

You don't charge premium prices in an nonpremium neighborhood for nothing. You grab your piping bag and load it up with your frosting. Your expert hands guide the bag, piping a dollop here, a twist there. When you're done the cupcakes look like an invitation to a garden, with eruptions of green foliage and tiny bushes covering the tops of the cakes. You garnish each cupcake with a half-moon slice of kiwi, which looks like a tiny sunrise bursting out over the green gardens. Epic!

Your chupacake-cabras are all frosted. Now it's time to present them in a way that'll get the judges' mouths watering. Time for the honored practice of plating!

Only thing is, there's no way a plate's going to make these travesties look less travailed. These are chupabominations. Chupacake-misses. It feels like there were at least a dozen things you could've done better getting here, but no, you had to hit every jagged branch of the failure tree on your descent to the ground.

Honestly, it's just putting a little cake on a little plate. You can do something meaningful while the queen undying plates…namely bribe, er, uh sweet-talk the judges. An extra nudge can't hurt. Unless, of course, your talk just isn't sweet enough.

You pass the torch, uh, the plate, to the queen undying and head straight for the judges' booth. Gorgon Ramsayer is keeping the other two judges' attention rapt with a tale from one of his Kitchen Horror adventures.

"Not only did I have to tell the idiot, 'Those aren't chocolate chips…You think chocolates grow legs and scurry across the floor when the lights come on, yeah?' but the moron had the banner notion to have a draugr manning the storefront!"

Gulp

Gulp. You were kind of expecting to be last for some reason, probably because you wanted to see how well your competitors' cakes came out. The judges lead the way to your all-black skull kitchen, with you and the queen undying in tow.

All the judges' eyes sparkle in the shiny emerald light of your cupcake frosting. It's almost as if there's a hint of moisture to the sheen, like morning dew or an eager lover's kiss. Even you, the proud baker of these cakes, have to fight the urge to devour them as they serenely shine with such decadent invitation.

"Perfection," Gorgon Ramsayer whispers, almost to himself.

Looks aside, it all comes down to taste.

The judges each grab themselves a chupacake-cabra. You look between each one of them, your eyes darting back and forth as you try to glean any indication of how they like it based on their reaction. Bouma raises an eyebrow. Gorgon Ramsayer scowls, but to be fair, his smile also looks like a scowl, and it's only when he talks that the receiver can finally tell the difference. Tira has a wry grin on her lips as she chews…For all you know that could be either her enjoying a delicious chupacake-cabra or her war face for wrestling down dry cake.

Then they turn towards one another and huddle. You feel as if your eardrum has pushed its way out of your ear canal as you strain to pick up a hint of their conversation. Finally, Tira Misu turns and faces the contestants.

"I'm afraid," she says, "we have to disqualify you, Aurel Dawnfowl. There's no chupacabra sweat in this at all."

Oh no! The judges are onto you.

But maybe you can still salvage this. Maybe there's still a chance to pull this round out of the ground.