Had Denton High School been a little more inclusive, they might have seen fit to flag up with their young men one cardinal rule: never fuck with a dancer, because dancers are strong.

The muscles in Frank's arms are like gosh-damned wire. Brad can't shake him. There's a sparkly gloved forearm snaked around his neck and a hand with impeccable nail polish smashed bruisingly up under his chin. His throat is mashed uncomfortably and swallowing is tough.

All in all, it's more than a little alarming, a sensation he can see reflected back at him in Janet's eyes as she takes a tiny, tentative step forward, stepping over the outflung arm of Riff Raff's prone body. It's evidently not a welcome motion, as Frank snarls through that crimson mouth, an utterly inhuman sound that would be more at home in a cage of wild hyenas, and Janet freezes in place with a little yip of fright.

Really, assuming a guy's a sissy because he's wearing a garter belt? That's graduate-level dumb, right there. Even from a guy who's been forcibly stripped to his underwear and suddenly discovered he could be gay.

"F-frank," Janet manages, after a moment. She delivers his name with a stutter and it comes out in an emaciated sort of wail, but she says it, and Brad's very proud of her. She's such a trooper. "Frank. Let him go. Please. Please."

Frank's skin smells of patchouli oil, hash smoke and sweat. The alien whack of anger pheromones renders the whole mix exotic and almost sweet. The really scary part is that he seems to have utterly, finally lost it. Certainly, most people here would have agreed that the man's always been a few sequins short of a prom dress, but this time it feels different. His artful combination of smoky charm and irresistible glamour are gone, replaced by a messy bundle of muscle, rage and blood lust that's hard to find sexy (unless you happen to have a thing for rabid alligators).

Still, Brad's not entirely without sense, even in these circumstances: he decides to go with what's worked in the recent past. Frank's fingers are probably within his licking range, with a little effort. Distraction with sex - not just for Transylvanians. He starts to roll his neck in Frank's implacable grip.

"You're mad, I get that," says Janet, in her sweetest and most reasonable voice - the one she uses on toddlers, porch-sitting grannies and small, yappy dogs - "But why don't you just drop boring ol' Brad and come on back to bed, huh? With me?"

Seems Brad's not the only one who thinks giving an angry Frank a swift massage in the libido area is a valid escape plan. Everybody except Frank himself, apparently. The growl throbs in his throat and chest as if someone's revving a Harley in there. Brad can feel it vibrating against the back of his head. It's not a comforting sound. He redoubles his efforts to get at Frank's fingers. This would be the very first time good ol' Brad Majors has tried to use his personal animal magnetism to get what he wants. Somehow he'd thought it'd be under better circumstances.

There's abruptly a scuffle from the doorway, and it's Magenta coming in, looking more manic than usual, her kohled eyes wide as she takes in the little tableau and the sight of her lanky brother out cold on the floor. She and Janet swap glances, very briefly, then the alien woman gives the Frank-and-Brad objet d'art a long, hard stare. "Shit," she decides, bites her bottom lip in decision, and disappears back out of the room as fast as she arrived.

Janet steels herself and locks gazes with Frank. His eyes, absurdly well-made-up as always, are dark and feline: his cheekbones shaded so slickly they look as if they could cut glass. The lipstick's like blood over cherries, thick and red, as his lips curl back and reveal the white glare of his teeth. There's something absurdly prehistoric about it which makes a resulting hit on human nerves like a bucket of ice water.

"C'mon," she says. Trying to keep the waver out of her voice, although god knows fear is probably a turn-on for him too - let's face it, what isn't? "Let's go have some fun..."

She knows she sounds about as sultry as a rainy weekend in Alaska, but it's the only weapon she's got. She does her best, casting her eyes down, pushing out her hips (in their virginal white knickers) just-so in the way that Frank does. She can feel his attention on her, following her as she moves, and for a moment she thinks she has him.

The feline eyes narrow sharply, then Brad's efforts finally pay off and he manages to get his tongue to Frank's knuckles, skinned raw from punching Riff Raff out. The sheer sensation of someone licking across his abraded skin shoots straight through Frank like electricity: he jolts, exhaling sharply and excitedly through his teeth, distracted -

And Magenta darts up behind him, seemingly out of nowhere, and clocks him right across the back of the head with a wicked little rubber cosh. Frank's expression twists in shock, then his eyes roll back to the whites and he drops, dragging Brad with him.

"Get him - get him -" Magenta grumbles, gesturing urgently with the cosh, and Brad twists just in time to get a grip on Frank's corset lacings and lower him to the ground a little more gently. This done, with Frank slumped at his feet, he finds Magenta's hand slapping him a little less than gently on the shoulder.

"Zo," she says, already fixing concerned eyes on the groaning and slowly rising figure of her brother, "vhat exactly vas it you did to zet him off, huh?"

"It's really not hard," Magenta says, shoving one of Frank's spangly platformed feet up onto the chaise roughly. "Ze master is crack Transylvanian infiltration agent." There is a suspicion of pride in the set of her shoulders for a brief moment, then she slumps. "A shame he is also crackpot insane-o-naut, but zhere you go, you can't have everyzhing."

Brad and Janet are exchanging guilty glances. "Ok. Vhat?"

There is a short, embarrassed chorus of "I slept with him."

"Ach, so vhat? So's everyone. He'd be more upset if you hadn't. Vhy d'you think ve let you in in the first place? Fresh meat." She presses manicured nails to Frank's neck and then into his armpit, grunting in satisfaction at the secure pulses she finds. "Like I said, infiltration agent. He's designed to shag anyzing zhat moves, it's vhat zhey train zem for."

Satisfied that the master is both healthy and secured for the time being, she trots over to her brother, poking his bruised jaw and stroking his long hair in a display of concern. Riff Raff regards Brad and Janet with hooded, accusatory eyes. "No, zhat's not it. C'mon, you must have done somezhing, he doesn't usually go into zuper-weapon mode without being triggered."

"And it's going to take an eternity to bring him down now," murmurs Riff Raff, setting long fingers to his aching jaw and checking it's back in place with a series of sickening cracks. "'Remember when those ghost hunters got into the woodshed? I was picking teeth out of the flowerbeds for weeks."

"You mean, you're not just his servants?"

Brad, rubbing his own abused neck, is leaning against the table. He can't help darting surreptitious glances at the recumbent Frank. Even flat out cold, the guy is oddly mesmerising, from his immaculately pale face down to his long, elegant shins.

"Servants, hah! Ve are his handlers. Like…lion-tamers. Sometimes you have to put ze lion in a cage. Or smack it - boof! - on the nose. Our infiltration agents are dangerous, unreliable creatures. We are here to keep him happy, keep him calm, make sure zhat he is using his skills…correctly."

"And to put him down," adds Riff Raff, quietly, "if he gets out of hand." He turns to Magenta. "What did you use on him this time?"

"Cosh."

"Ouch. I suppose it's for the best. The last time we gave him the morphine it tripled his sex drive for twelve days." He smirks at Janet's abruptly widened eyes and disbelieving expression. "And I had to replace all the sofa cushions."

"Now just a minute. If he's some sort of spy," says Brad, as Janet's face scrunches up in horrified (and secretly impressed) disgust, "then what on earth kind of mission can he be working on, dressed like - " He gestures. "I mean, looking like - acting like -"

"The master doesn't act like anything," corrects Riff Raff, amused. "That's just how he is." His expression abruptly turns cold. "And as to his mission, that is none of your concern."

"I - I slept with Rocky."

This from Janet, who is by now perched on the very end of the chaise, next to Frank's feet, and wringing the remains of her slip between her fingers. All eyes are abruptly drawn, not to her, but to the previously unnoticed bloodbath in the corner that represents whatever remains of the blond muscleman. A tanned foot hangs sadly from the tulle lampshade above the main heap of the body.

"Shit," says Magenta, again, but sounding more bored and weary than anything. "Not an accident."

"And the master wild with grief? You know better," says Riff Raff, who after almost twenty years on Frank-wrangling duty certainly does. "If there's one thing he hates more than being cock-blocked, it's making a scientific mistake."

"A mistake?" Brad can't stop his mind from dwelling on just how close he's come to being a dismembered corpse on a lampshade, torn limb from limb by a deranged alien transvestite. Somehow Janet's indiscretion seems unimportant in comparison. He also realises that there's blood splashed all up Frank's butchered fishnets and that some of the lipstick isn't lipstick. He gulps.

"Rocky was meant to be totally, unassailably loyal to Frank. The master spent years designing the algorithms to make absolutely certain of it." Riff Raff bends to a cupboard, starts pulling out black sacks and a seemingly endless supply of pink rubber gloves. "Years. Didn't you see the walls in the lab? After the first few years I had to put up wipe-clean tile. If we didn't put out enough paper - and we never did, no matter how many reams - he started drawing on the walls. In lipstick. And then he'd get angry because not only was he being hampered in making any progress, he'd also have to go out in Bronze Berry Number 15 instead."