INDUSTRIAL ZONE - SERIES 3 EPISODE 1
Written by Iron-K

Jess stood in front of the door at the end of the short corridor, looking at the large inverted black and yellow triangle that formed the "Industrial Zone" logo and the large red unfriendly "Welcome" text underneath it. It had taken her a three-hour train ride to get to the television studio and she hadn't felt at all nervous during the journey, but now that she was standing right outside the entrance to the set for the show she was appearing on, it suddenly seemed imposing and frightening.

She looked over her shoulder at the noise of the lift she had come in by closing its doors. With a deep breath, she reached out in front of her to turn down the large handle at the side of the door, and leaned forward to push it open.

Timidly, she peered around the metallic-painted door as it swung open, far less heavy than it was made to look. Apart from the large logos displayed on the walls, the entrance room for IZ looked like a changing room at a gym, with a white tiled floor, two wooden benches on either side of the room and a low table between them. A similar door to the one she'd just come in by stood at the opposite side of the room.

She didn't get the chance to get more than a glance around the room, because there was already someone there. A well-built red wolf that she recognized as the show's presenter Alex, dressed in a pair of jeans and a black band T-shirt, was waiting with his feet on the table in the center of the room, arms behind his head. He looked up as the door was opened.

"Hi there! Jessica, isn't it?" he asked brightly, sitting up straight as she shuffled into the room and let the door swing shut behind her.

"Er... Jess," she replied with a nod. "That's what everyone calls me," she added. Her hand moved to the strap of the bag she was carrying over her shoulder, and she twisted her fingers in it distractedly.

"Good to have you here," he smiled welcomingly, and pointed to her side. She glanced down and saw a cylindrical water cooler plugged in next to the wall. "Want water or anything? You're the first one here, it might be a while before the others turn up."

"Yeah. Thanks." She swallowed, feeling too excited to be able to drink much, but tugged a cup out of the dispenser anyway and briefly held it under the nozzle. Turning back around as the cooler bubbled, she walked over to the bench opposite Alex and sat down.

"We don't tend to get many fox girls on, you know", Alex commented as she put the cup down on the table and reached to take her bag strap off her shoulder. "I think the last time might have been as far back as... Indy, in the middle of the second series. Did you see the one with her in it?"

"I... don't think I did," stuttered Jess. "I only get to watch the show every so often, because my roommates are always watching something else when it's on."

"Ah, I know that problem." The red wolf grinned, slapping his bare feet on the tiled floor idly. As she put her bag down and nudged it under the table, he hefted his tall, thickset form up, and she watched as he stretched his arms out to the sides, eyes closed and wriggling his back a little. Wrapping one foot around a wooden chair in the corner of the room, he drew it up to the head of the low table and sat down again so that he was closer to her.

"How are you feeling?" he asked her with a reassuring smile, and she paused, picking up the cup again, as she thought of how to answer.

"I'm... excited, but I'm a bit scared at the same time," she decided, taking hold of the edge of the bench to her side and tapping her fingers on it. The red wolf nodded back.

"I think that's how most people feel when they come in. We make the show a bit unpredictable, but you're safe here for now!"

She smiled and nodded. Alex had something of a dual personality on the show, always taunting the players a little and enjoying making them a little nervous, but seeming to be on their side at the same time.

"Actually I'm pretty excited myself, taking a team round the new set for the first time. Have you seen any pictures of it yet? I think we put a few of them up on the site a couple of weeks ago..."

"Yeah, and I've read about it in a couple of magazines and... stuff, too." Jess knew she wasn't sounding at her brightest, but she was still distracted by the way she was talking so normally to someone that a few million people knew on TV.

"Oh, I think you're going to love it... have a look, I've got a map of it somewhere in here..."

He twisted down to his other side as he fumbled in the pocket of his jeans, and pulled out a clump of untidily folded paper. As he put it on the table in front of him, Jess leaned over to see, and she was surprised to recognize the handwriting on the top sheet as he opened it out.

"Ah, no... these are the application forms the team sent in," Alex realized, looking at the photocopied sheet on top of the pile. "You'll know this one," he said, handing it to her.

Jess took it and looked down the page at her scrawled answers to the questions, hardly recognizing what she'd written when she'd sent it in during the second series more than a year ago. She smiled as she looked down at the last question - "Who would you most like to gunge?" - and remembered the situation that had inspired her to nominate one of her friends under that heading.

"That's the only answer we really look at," Alex winked, seeing her reading the bottom of the sheet. She laughed back, appreciating that he was trying to make her feel at ease but not relaxing.

"Want to see your teammates-to-be?" the red wolf asked, and shuffled the chair a little closer to her as she looked up. "That's Helen, Skye and Yasa," he said, pointing to the photos of a feline, canine and rabbit boy in turn as he read out their names. "Three females to one male again - it's always the girls who want to be gunged..."

Before Jess could say anything back, he suddenly looked straight at the door that led in from the corridor as its handle turned. Jess followed his gaze as the rabbit-boy she'd just seen put his head round the door. He was pinkish in color, with a head of thick maroon hair that came down to his shoulders. He looked between the two of them, a small anxious smile on his lips, then stepped fully into the room.

"Here's our man now - Yasa! How are you?" Alex asked, getting up and stepping around the other side of the table with his arm extended.

"I'm fine. A bit nervous," he said in short bursts as he accepted the handshake, looking him in the eye but occasionally glancing at other parts of the room.

"This is Jess, who's going to be in your team as well..." Alex raised his other hand towards her, and she nodded at the handsome rabbit boy as he held up a hand in greeting. "And we've still got two others to arrive - do you two want to get changed while we're waiting for them?" 

"Okay. Yeah." Yasa blinked a couple of times, nodding his head, as Jess got up and retrieved her bag from under the table. With his eyes still darting around the room, he looked first at the door on the right then the one on the left, heading for it as he saw the male changing room sign on its door.

"Take as long as you need to," Alex said after the rabbit. "There's plenty of time." Yasa smiled back over his shoulder before pushing open the door and disappearing behind it.

The red wolf smiled as he turned around. "Well, Jess, I think there's definitely someone more nervous than you," he smiled, then pointed at the other door. "Female changing rooms are in there - there are a few different kinds of IZ swimwear, T-shirts, shorts and so on, so you can get changed into whatever you feel like wearing on the show."

"All right," Jess answered. "Thanks," she added, one hand on the door, just before pushing it open and entering the changing room.

She took a couple of steps forward into the room as the door fell closed, her nerves returning a little at being on her own again. Like the front room, the changing room looked very normal and not studio-like - there was a set of open clothes lockers on the left wall with a table at the far side, a few changing cubicles on the right and an opening on the wall in front of her. After taking off her bag and pushing it into one of the compartments on the left, she walked over and leaned through to see it led to a shower area, with a couple of cubicles on the wall and a larger open area with sprayers on the walls and floor as well as from above. Smiling uneasily and shivering as she realized just how messy the designer of the shower room was expecting them to get, she moved back through to the main room.

She looked down at the table, fingering through the variety of light clothing and swimwear that was on offer. She had seen most girls on the show go for wearing bikinis, and while she secretly did think that part of the IZ experience was to get messy with as little protection as possible, she didn't feel quite comfortable wearing so little. Deciding on a black full swimsuit, she picked up one that was roughly the right size and headed for one of the changing cubicles.

Locking it behind her even though there was no one else there, she kicked off her sandals and tugged her T-shirt off over her head, putting it on the hook on the wall. She turned to look at herself in the thin full-length mirror on the side of the compartment, still hardly believing she was there herself. After wriggling out of her skinny black sports trousers, she looked down at herself and brushed her hands through her entirely white fur, wondering whether she should shower before going on the show. Deciding against it, she unclipped her blue bra and slipped her knickers off, adding them both to the pile of clothing, then glanced over at the mirror again, turning around to look at it over her shoulder and running her hands through her tail before picking up the black swimsuit.

After shaking it out, she stepped into it and pulled it on, hauling the straps over her shoulders and looking down to make sure that she looked all right in it, excited as she was reminded of what was about to happen by the logo that was now displayed on her chest.

Looking again at the mirror on the side of the cubicle, she realized she'd forgotten to bring a hair tie in with her. Trying to remember whether there was one in her bag, she unlocked the door, carefully took the ball of clothing down from the hook and walked over to the lockers.

After dumping her clothing in the compartment, she opened up her bag and searched through it. Soon finding a tie, she shook out her unruly long dark blue hair, then began walking back to the cubicle, reaching behind her head to tie it back in a pony tail.

She heard the door squeak open again and glanced to her left, hands still tied in her hair, as a gray-furred husky girl about her age strode in. Jess recognized her face from the photo she had seen earlier - she was slightly taller than Jess, and wore a black T-shirt and trousers, a leather jacket carried over her shoulder. Her gray fur gave way to a lighter color around her eyes and the bottom of her slyly smiling muzzle, and her shiny brown shoulder-length hair was worn loose.

"Hey," she said confidently, looking around the white changing room before finally making eye contact. "So, you're on today, too?"

"Yeah." Jess shrank back a little as she struggled with her hair, feeling slightly exposed in the swimming costume for the first time.

"Want me to help with that?" she asked, swinging her jacket off her shoulder and pushing it into one of the compartments on the wall. Jess turned around for her, holding her hair out, and she took it in her hands.

"I'm Skye, by the way," the husky introduced herself as she quickly separated Jess's long blue hair into three strands for braiding it.

"Jess," she answered, trying not to sound as awkward as she felt at the quick introduction, but Skye kept the conversation going.

"So what made you want to come on?"

Jess hesitated, having hoped that the question wouldn't come up. "Don't know, it seemed fun," she said quickly. "How about you?"

"Started off as a bet, some stupid drinking game with my college friends," Skye replied. "Forfeits in a hat on slips of paper, and someone had the idea of putting 'Apply to Industrial Zone' on one of them." She finished with Jess's hair and stepped back. Jess turned towards her.

"And you agreed?"

"'Course. I never thought that I'd get on, though. Besides, I've been wanting to be gunged for ages." She turned around to push her jacket further into the clothes locker, just in time to miss Jess's expression of surprise at the remark.

"Did you ever watch 'Massive' when it was on?" she continued. "With that bit where they pulled someone out of the audience, and they had to choose someone to phone in and play the game to stop the slime booth going off?"

Jess nodded - she remembered getting up early on Saturday mornings to watch that magazine show when she was still in school. It had been the last show that used gunge as an attraction before it had fallen out of fashion.

"I was on that once. As a phone-in contestant, I mean. Always wanted to be the one in the gunge tank, but I didn't like the idea of the whole country being able to see me."

Jess watched her swish her fluffy tail behind her as she moved over to the table with the folded IZ outfits, and she tapped the end of her muzzle as she looked along it, quickly moving to the swimwear.

"What do you think, full swimsuit or two-piece?" She picked up a couple of them, holding them up in front of her to look at their shape, then dropped the swimsuit and held the black bikini set against herself as she turned around to show Jess.

"Definitely," she nodded. Skye's face broke into a grin, and she skipped towards one of the two changing cubicles.

"I'll see you back outside!" she said, turning to face her out the crack in the door just before closing and locking it behind her.

Jess looked down at herself one more time before heading for the door, pulling the top of the swimsuit out a little to straighten the fur on top of her breasts. Feeling unexpectedly happy with how she looked, she pushed the swinging door open and walked back into the front area.

Yasa had already come back in and was sitting where he had been before, now wearing a white T-shirt and swimming shorts, the IZ warning sign logo in the top left corner of his chest like the girls' outfits. He looked up at her as she came in, jiggling one knee and tapping his fingers on top of the other.

"You OK?" she asked gently, stepping towards him. The rabbit boy looked up at her and nodded, curving his lips up in an unconvincing smile but not relaxing at all.

As Jess stepped across his lap to sit down beside him, the door at the opposite end of the room opened and Alex entered again. He had changed too, and was bare-chested, exposing the lighter, shorter fur on his front. Looking down, she smirked as she recognized the piece of clothing he always appeared in - a pair of loose yellow drawstring trousers.

"Hey, don't laugh at them!" Alex reacted as she broke into a giggle, and he flopped down into the seat again. "You know, some people think the contestants are mad for agreeing to get gunged on IZ, but I think I'm the worst of them for agreeing to wear these things all the time... you at least get to pick what you appear in during the show. I like your choice, by the way."

"Oh... thanks." She swallowed, feeling her cheeks heat up a little under her fur even though she knew he had just meant to make her feel more comfortable. Looking behind her as she sat down, she smiled as Yasa quickly took his eyes off her.

"You'll have just met Skye," Alex continued. "I had a few words with her just before she went through to get changed, and she's exactly how I imagined she'd be from looking at her application form!"

Jess laughed a little, and leaning back on the bench, she looked around again.

"A lot of people are a bit surprised that it's like this," Alex said, noticing her examining the room. "I think they're expecting something bigger and more... rough and studio-like, I suppose." He cleared his throat. "Did you know that IZ wasn't originally planned for TV?"

Jess shook her head, and glanced to the side to see Yasa leaning in, genuinely interested in what was being said for the first time.

"When it was first thought of, the maker didn't think there was an audience for messy TV any more, and he had drawn it up as an idea for a sort of team-building activity place, similar to a paintball field or something. It was only once WKNX got hold of it that they offered out of nowhere to turn it into one of their shows..."

"I had no idea about that," Yasa said, "and I've been watching it for ages."

Alex nodded and leaned towards him, keen to distract him from his nerves. "It's not something a lot of people know - that was why when it was turned into a show, we wanted it to be as genuine as possible for the people who appeared on it. A lot of game shows don't look at all like what you see in the edited-together versions on TV, so we went for the approach of just working out how to film our..."

He stopped as he saw a pink-furred hand come around the door, and it squeaked open a little. A young catgirl, pink all over with a yellow band in her short hair, slipped into the room, looked around briefly and tried not to make eye contact with anyone. She wore round glasses, a white shirt and plaid blue skirt, with a changing bag across her shoulders.

"Hi there!" Alex greeted her cheerfully, lifting himself up from the seat and stepping towards her.

"Hi," she answered, fiddling with the strap on her bag and looking down at her feet, a soft smile on her face.

Alex lowered his voice a little as he realized her nervousness. "Helen, isn't it?" he said, extending his right hand.

"Yeah. Hello." She accepted the handshake, swallowing and looking him in the eye.

"Good to have you here - this is Jess and Yasa..." he pointed at them in turn, and Jess nodded at her in greeting, "... and Skye's still in the changing room. If you get changed yourself, we'll be ready to get started!"

"Sure." She moved softly over to the door and was nearly hit in the face as it burst open, a bikini-clad Skye following behind it. She grinned confidently at the group sitting down and took a couple of steps forward, posing with her hands behind her head, before noticing that they were looking behind her.

"Oh!" she squeaked, turning around and smiling apologetically. "Skye," she said, pointing at herself with her thumb. The catgirl nodded.

"Helen," she replied, slowly forcing herself to make eye contact with her. Skye stepped around her to hold open the door as she padded through to get changed, then let it fall back as she flopped down on to the seat opposite Jess.

"So, what was I saying?" Alex continued, shuffling back in the seat to sit up straighter. "Yes - we're actually planning on still doing something like the original idea, setting up a few IZ centers nearby where you can arrange day trips and so on."

"That would be amazing!" Skye whooped. "I know a few people that I'd want to put in..."

"Well, it might not be on quite as large a scale as this at first," the red wolf smiled back. "We'll do our best, though..."

They talked for a while about the idea, Jess growing more fascinated by the minute and almost forgetting that they were about to take part themselves, even with Alex there. Every so often, he would glance over at the rabbit boy, who had once again lapsed into silence.

"Do you need water, Yasa? Anything?" he eventually asked, pointing at the cooler in the corner of the room.

"No... no, I'm fine, thanks." Yasa curled his toes, closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead.

"A bit nervous?" the red wolf smiled encouragingly, and the rabbit boy nodded. "You don't need to worry - I promise, as soon as it starts you'll feel fine."

"Yeah." He nodded again, and looked up at the door to the changing rooms as Helen emerged again. Jess was surprised to see that she had gone for one of the black two-piece swimsuits like Skye had on, and Yasa managed a smile towards her as she quietly sat down beside the husky girl. She had taken off her glasses and the band in her hair, making her hair hang down around chin-length.

"You're lucky to be on with such good-looking team mates, at least," Alex continued, which got a laugh out of him even though it sounded forced. "Come over and I'll show you what's going to be happening over the next couple of hours..."

Jess took hold of the bench underneath her and together with Yasa shuffled it closer, as the pair on the other side did the same to form a group around the table. She smiled as she thought how unusual it was hearing Alex outside his show persona - and also how similar he genuinely was to it.

"Okay... so you're the first group to take on the new set. I should start by saying that what's past that door isn't going to be quite the IZ that you'll have seen before. We've got a new storyline for the show, new rooms, games, pretty much everything." He pointed over his shoulder at the metallic double door. Jess looked towards it again, looking at the prominent black IZ gear logo in the inverted triangular warning sign. "But we've made every effort to make it bigger, better and maybe," he held up his thumb and forefinger, "just a little bit more intimidating. You'll probably recognize a lot of things, just done in slightly different ways from before."

"Of course, even though it's done up to look a little dangerous and frightening, and we're going to take the chance to maybe pick on you a bit, everything in there's a hundred percent safe. You all know the idea of the show, don't you?"

"Definitely." Skye grinned and nodded, obviously keen to take part herself.

"Great - remember, the most important thing is that you feel comfortable, so if you aren't at any point, then just shout for help and we'll stop everything right there. That even goes if I've said we can't turn something off, or that you're trapped somewhere - it'll just be part of my script. Are you all OK with that?"

He looked round, and Jess glanced over her shoulder to see Helen and Yasa nod in response. Yasa was still looking a little unwell, wringing one corner of his T-shirt nervously.

"So, this new storyline - the writers have gone over this a hundred times with me, so I've got to make sure I get it right..." Alex reached into the pocket of his awful yellow jogging bottoms and pulled out a piece of paper, along with a palmtop device that looked like an oversized calculator. As they all leaned closer to see, he unfolded the paper on the table, smoothing it out with his hands. It was a plan of the set, showing two areas on either side of a large central hub, with what looked like a second floor drawn in underneath.

"What you're seeing here is a plan of the fictional IZEP ocean complex. The idea is that the whole facility was originally set up to recover things from the bottom of the ocean and investigate them," Alex started, pointing to the circular middle section labeled "Research Center". "That was a normal enough thing to do, but somewhere along the line, they made a slight mistake - a cause of something they were doing or something they were dredging up, who knows - and they accidentally transformed the water in the ocean for miles around into..."

He fumbled in his pocket again. Jess leaned over to see, knowing what was coming.

"...this stuff." Alex held up a plastic bottle, filled about halfway with a thick yellow-green liquid, and set it down on the table. The four of them watched as the movement made its surface wobble unsteadily.

"That's what we call 'gunge'," he said, pointing at the bottle and prodding it with his finger to move the liquid again. "It's actually made out of industrial food thickener, which is a powder that's a bit like cornstarch. Basically, it's like thickened water with added coloring."

He picked the bottle up and stretched to his left to hand it to Skye, who took it and swished it about fascinatedly. After tipping it on its end and back, she moved her fingers to the screw top.

"Go ahead, pour some out," Alex encouraged as Skye glanced over at him. She finished unscrewing the cap, put it down on the table, and carefully tipped the bottle to pour some on to her left hand. Yipping as the liquid oozed out of the bottle and dripped over the edge of her hand, she jerked it upright. She leaned forward to put it down on the table and quickly moved her right hand up to form a cup, staring at the opaque pool of liquid she was holding.

Alex leaned forward to push the bottle over to Helen, who took it shyly and replaced the cap, passing it on to Yasa almost immediately. Jess watched the fascinated-looking husky girl as she wobbled her cupped hands from side to side, dipping her thumbs in to the stuff and stirring them around. "Looking forward to more of it?" Alex asked her, chuckling as she looked up. "You're risking being covered in ten or twenty gallons of it in each game..."

Jess glanced over as the rabbit passed the bottle on to her, twitching as she felt the cold wetness of the dribble left when Skye had poured some of it out. She brought it up to eye level to look at it closely and sloshed it from side to side, watching it leave a gooey residue that slowly slid back down to the surface again. She unscrewed the cap and put her finger inside, carefully tilting the bottle to get some on to it. Twitching as the gunge slowly flowed over her finger, she withdrew it and rubbed it in her hand - it was cold and slimy but not unpleasant, and felt not dissimilar to having stuck her finger in a tub of paint.

She passed the bottle and cap back to Alex as he reached out for it, and wiped her slimy finger off with her other hand, rubbing them together to try and get it off. The stuff didn't dry at all like water did, instead forming wet patches on both her palms.

"Now, our goal in the show," said Alex, putting the bottle down on the table again, "is to get into the main room of the Research Center, where there was an experimental water-purifier." He pointed to the very center of the map. "If you manage to turn that on, then a sample of the contaminated sea water will be turned back into real water again and you'll have won the game. Fantastic. But..."

He held up a finger. "To earn your time in there, you're going to have to prove that you're good enough by taking part in a series of other games. To do that, we ask for a bit of help from the complex's computer, ROB," - he pronounced the name as individual letters - "who can open up rooms to put you in as it likes. Each room has a certain challenge set up inside, which each give you the chance to earn up to a hundred points. The more points you gather, the more time you'll have available in the final game at the end." He looked down at the pocket computer for a moment and then tossed it on to the table. The four of them leaned in to see an angular yellow wireframe face, and Jess instantly recognized the similarity to the computer's face in the second series.

"So before we get in there, I have to take you around the rest of the complex..." After giving them a moment to look, he picked up the pocket device and pointed down at the map with the end of the bottle. "There are two wings on the sides of the hub - the Processing and Storage areas. Underneath it all, there's also the undersea level, which as you'd expect, has a bit of a darker mood to it."

Jess craned her neck to look over the floor plan, but it didn't give anything away as to the actual contents of the rooms.

"We'll be getting you to complete sixteen games in total, some individually and some as a whole team. Some of them are harder to do well than others, but in each game you'll have the opportunity to earn up to a hundred points. Once we get to the final, those points decide how much time you'll have to complete the last game and try and convert the massive tank of this stuff," - he set the bottle back on to the table - "back into water."

He leaned back in the seat. "I think that's everything I've got to go over with you... are there any questions?"

"Sorry, I've..." Yasa swallowed, hauled himself up from the chair and stumbled towards the changing room door, glancing back at them with an apologetic smile.

"You think he's all right?" Helen asked as the door swung back behind him.

"It'll just be nerves - stage fright, or something. It happens to a lot of people before we start." Alex shook his head, and reached down to shuffle his chair closer to the group. They leaned in to hear him as he lowered his voice, looking between them and the door. "But I'll tell you what cures it - we're going to get him into a game first."

The girls glanced at each other and nodded. Jess felt her excitement grow with the thought of one of them in one of the IZ games for real.

"So... we've already gone over everything you need to know before we start. We really try not to make it appear like a TV show to you at all - we'll be going round as if there aren't any cameras on us, and all you'll see of them is maybe a couple of camera people following us around. Just try to ignore them and act as if they aren't there." Jess nodded along with the others - from what she had heard of other TV shows, she had actually expected the whole thing to be very artificial and having to act according to how the program was meant to go.

"The only other bit of preparation we do at the beginning is have you all make an entrance on a large elevator-platform sort of thing." His air of enthusiasm returned, and he gestured with his hands to describe it. "When we go through that door I'll send you up into it, I'll do the intro, and you all appear - that's when I ask the team leader..."

He paused, and looked around at the three of them. "Which reminds me... we haven't even chosen one yet. You've all seen the programme before, haven't you - you know the team leader gets to decide what order we do the rounds in, and can pick who to go into the games?" He glanced round as they nodded. "And just like the last series, they get a risky spectator's seat in the final... now, that's something I can't wait to show you." Grinning, he looked between them. "Any takers?"

Jess watched Helen shrink back a little in the chair, and shook her own head as well. Skye looked from Helen to Jess and back, then spoke up. "All right, I'll do it," she said confidently.

"Great - I don't like putting anything too prearranged into the show, but when I ask you where we're going first, if you could choose the Research Center and nominate Yasa for the first game? It'd help him relax a lot."

"Sure." Skye gave a single nod, and leaned back in the seat.

At that moment, the door of the changing room swung outwards again, and Yasa emerged.

"Ready to go, Yasa?" Alex asked, jumping to his feet.

"Yeah." He nodded, swallowing.

Alex moved along as quickly as possible to keep him occupied. "Let's get you to the start!" He turned around, grabbed the handle of the door to the set and pushed it open, waving a hand to show them through. Jess got up with renewed excitement, and glanced over her shoulder at Yasa as the four of them walked through to the entrance room.

As she walked through the doorway behind Helen, she blinked to try and adjust her eyes to the darkness beyond the brightly lit changing area. The room that they had stepped into was plain and gloomy, about ten metres across, with a couple of brick-textured pillars stretching up to the ceiling - the only giveaway that it was a TV set being the couple of lights and cameras mounted on a rack just under the roof. At the far end, a large circular sealed door took up most of the back wall, with a small screen beside it and a large alcove in the wall on the opposite side.

"This bit's a little staged, but it's the last one, I promise," Alex smiled as he led them over to the alcove in the corner of the room. As they approached, Jess saw that it was a doorless lift, with a platform suspended on chains at floor level. "This is meant to be the lift that you arrive on - we're going to put you up into that space there, and you can watch my introduction before you arrive." He pointed up into the area above the lift platform. "From then on, there's no acting required - just play along and everything should be fine!"

The four of them stepped up on to the lift platform and turned to face him.

"Have fun, everyone." Alex grinned, then signaled to someone that the team members couldn't see, and Jess watched the room disappear as the platform rose the few feet into the covered section above them.

As the floor stopped moving, she turned around and saw a screen set into the wall, showing the view of the room that they had just left from the same viewpoint that they'd seen it at when they had first entered. Alex was walking back to the front of the room to talk into the camera. After a moment's pause and a few words off the side of the screen, he launched into his show personality.

The three girls watched intently as Alex did the opening and went over the storyline, various illustrative scenes being shown on the projection screen behind him, including the map that the team had been shown. Yasa paced back and forward behind them, looking at the floor with his hands clasped behind his back. Occasionally he'd pause to rock on his heels, breathing out heavily.

"You rabbits are always so nervous," Skye said over her shoulder. Helen, a little shocked at the sudden accusation, turned to look at her.

"We're not!" protested Yasa. "It's just the waiting that does it." Jess was about to say something in support of him until she realized she'd just done it to distract him with conversation.

"My sister's going out with a rabbit-boy just now," Skye continued, turning to him and smiling impishly. "They live together at college - she keeps telling me that he faints before every exam he ever takes!"

"Hmph. Well, I've never done that," Yasa said, slightly huffily.

"What are you taking?" she asked, moving towards him. Jess looked from her to the screen and back.

"I'm a theatre major," the rabbit boy replied.

Skye nodded. "Unusual," she said, then paused. "So why so nervous about being on TV?"

"It's not that!" he burst out. "It's... it's..."

"Hey! He's introducing us!" Helen, suddenly speaking up as Skye's line of questioning led him back to his stage fright, pointed at the screen. The large projection behind Alex was now showing the two photos that Jess remembered sending off to them when she'd applied to go on the show. Suddenly, they changed to those of Helen, who turned away, cringing.

"Those are terrible..." she giggled, glancing back at them as Alex read out a few things that she had submitted on her application form, apparently from the pocket computer he carried with him.

"...and she says she'd most like to gunge Hawke from the series 'Millennius'." Well, Helen, I don't think you're alone there!"

The three girls laughed, Yasa managing a weak smile as he walked up behind the group.

"Next, we have Yasa..." Alex started, and turned to watch over his shoulder as a screen dissolve made the pictures change again.

"Your ones aren't bad!" said Skye, turning round to him as he chuckled. "I think you've got the best ones so far." She paused, looking at his top in the photo. "Although the black vest is a bit... you know."

Yasa opened his mouth to respond to the unfinished sentence, but she quickly turned back to the screen as Alex introduced her as team leader.

"D'you normally wear the collar?" Helen piped up, indicating the pendant and black strap that she was wearing around her neck in the two photographs.

Skye looked between the two photos and smiled. Jess was surprised to see a hint of embarrassment on her face.

"Yeah, I came in with it today. It's... something between me and my boyfriend," she answered eventually.

Jess reached up to scratch the back of her neck - even though she didn't want to admit it, she was feeling pretty nervous about what was to come as well. She glanced up as Alex finished his opening, and he turned to the back corner of the room where he'd sent them before. Suddenly the floor gave a jolt, and the other team members fell silent as they descended the short distance into the room again. Alex was turning towards them as they came into view.

"...and here's our first team! Come over here..." Alex beckoned to them, and the four of them dashed over to where he was standing. Jess caught a glimpse of a cameraman in dark clothing sneaking away from them as they approached.

"All four of you, welcome to the Industrial Zone - the room that we want to get to is just beyond that door." He pointed over them and they looked over their shoulders at the imposing round sealed door at the back of the room. "But before we go there, you'll have to earn time inside by completing a set of challenges around the rest of the complex. Team leader!"

"Yes." Skye angled her shoulders past Helen and Jess, and stepped to the front of the group.

"The entrance is just ahead of us," the host said, pointing down a tubelight-lined corridor. "There are four different areas that we can visit - there are the storage and processing wings, the undersea level, or the main research center. Which do you want to head for first?"

Skye paused for a moment, remembering what they'd decided before. "The... research center," she acted deciding.

"All right! Computer, can you hear me?" Alex turned to the screen as it flickered back into life, displaying the animated angular face that the team had seen earlier.

"Yeah?" it asked metallically, sounding annoyed at the interruption.

"Can you open up the doors for us?" Alex asked. "I've got four team members here ready to go..."

"Oh, all right," it conceded grumpily. An electronic series of tones sounded, the wide door at the side of the room began to raise, and the screen flicked off again.

"He's a bit... tetchy, but you get used to it," Alex commented as the hum of the door stopped. "Come on!" 

He turned around and took off at a run in the same movement, leaving the others to try and catch up with him as they headed down the brightly lit corridor that had been revealed, decorated with the worn IZEP company logo in its tiled walls. Jess felt her heart racing, and not just from the running - soon she'd be seeing her first IZ game close up.

Eventually the corridor made a sharp turn, and Jess looked around the room in front of them as Alex turned on his heel and walked the last couple of paces backwards, facing them and spreading his arms out in a welcome gesture. The circular room they had entered was mostly white and sterile-looking, with a few banks of computer terminal props lining the light walls and one larger screen placed on the wall above them. Various blank metallic doors were set in the walls, and a couple of corridors stretched off into darkness.

Looking to her left, she gave a start as she suddenly saw the room's centerpiece. On a raised platform about two feet up from the floor stood the only black thing in the room - a round, futuristic-looking sphere covered in softly strobing lights, a few tubes and wires connecting various points on its surface. It was mounted on three spindly metallic legs, giving it an alien insect-like appearance. This was something that had been very famous on the old series of IZ - they had called it the Pod, and it had appeared in every show that Jess remembered watching. She shivered as she caught a glimpse of the wide nozzle on its base pointed down at the chair below it - it felt strange seeing it in real life rather than just as something that existed on TV.

"This is the hub of the research center," Alex started, and she turned back to face him as he began to pace around the room. "It was set up as part of the complex's original purpose, to investigate artifacts that they'd dragged up from the sea. So, naturally, they were equipped with rather a lot of these..."

He was now on the far side of the room, and beckoned the team over. Jess followed behind the others, watching as they all gave their nervous glances towards the device in the center of the room.

Alex was looking in to a small chamber cut into the wall - about three feet square and six feet high, with a clear plastic door extending about four feet up to cover its bottom half. As they approached, Jess eagerly leant down slightly to see into the top of it, and grinned at the sight of a dark round opening in its ceiling.

"This was a chamber for... showering things, if you like, to get the salt water and gunk off them after they were dredged up." Alex opened the door, putting one foot inside and looking up into the pipe. Jess glanced sideways at the others, expecting him to announce the first game.

"But we all know that that isn't really an option any more," he finished, stepping out and throwing the door shut behind him with a clunk. "We've got to start somewhere, and I think, just as an introduction for you all, we're going to put someone under that." To Jess's surprise, he pointed not at the gunge tank but behind him at the menacing, slowly blinking spherical pod in the center of the room. He let the others watch it for a moment before continuing. "Skye, who's going under?"

Skye shook her head, still distracted by the imposing sight of the thing, but recovered quickly. "Yasa!" she said, enthusiastically thrusting her arm out to point at him. Jess looked around to face him, and after the initial expression of surprise, he bit his lip to form a nervous smile.

"The team leader's spoken, Yasa - ready to be our first victim?"

"Yeah." Yasa stood up straight, trying to look confident as Alex moved up the shallow staircase to the raised section, beckoning him to follow.

Jess felt her heart speed up as Alex showed Yasa into the chair underneath the Pod. Slowly, he eased himself into it, flattening his ears down on to his head as he looked up into the tube above him. He looked around at the legs and the floor next to him, still looking a little jumpy. His attention was suddenly caught again by Alex taking hold of a keyboard attached to the front of the sphere and pulling it down to place it in front of him.

The host gave him a nod before jumping down from the platform to the girls again. "All right, team - you'll have some idea of what's about to happen, don't you?" He pointed at the large screen, which faded into life, displaying a shot of the keyboard from just above and behind Yasa's head. It wasn't the size or layout of a normal keyboard, instead being covered in a couple of hundred different symbols composed of similar arrangements of lines, strokes and dots. The rabbit boy looked up from the keyboard, surprised to see his enlarged head on the screen, and wriggled down to get out of the way.

"That pod's going to open up and spill its contents exactly one minute after we begin, Yasa," the host explained, moving towards the screen as the rabbit boy raised his eyes to the round covered chute above his head. "And to shut it off, you've got to find five certain keys on the control panel in front of you." Jess watched the image of the keyboard, nodding as she recognized the game. This was one of the few challenges that hadn't changed at all since the very beginning of the show.

"Nearly all of the buttons on that keyboard have a pair somewhere else, but the ones you're looking for don't have a match - help him find all five of them within the time limit and your team mate escapes clean!" The girls gathered around the large screen and Alex turned back to the rabbit, walking around the edge of the room away from the screen. "Ready, Yasa?"

He swallowed and nodded, his fingers hovering over the keys. Jess turned away from him and looked back at the keyboard's image, already trying to find a correct key.

"Then let's start it up!" Alex reached into his pocket and pulled out the computer, pointed it at the pod and pressed something on it. A combined mechanical clunk and electronic tone made them all jump, and a large timer appeared at the top of the screen. The lights in the room went down, only leaving a set of spotlights on Yasa and the pod.

As the girls looked frantically around the image in front of them, Yasa's finger came up into the view, and he leaned forward to jab at one button. As it lit up in red, a loud buzz rang out and to their shock, five seconds blipped off the timer.

"Be careful not to do that too much!" Alex warned with a hint of a stifled laugh. Jess looked back at the timer, which was already at only fifty seconds.

Skye was the first to speak up. "The one right below the one you just pressed," she said, pointing at the screen and standing on her tiptoes to reach up to it.

Jess turned to Yasa, who carefully reached out to the button, and hunching down and flattening his ears to his head, stabbed it with his finger. This time, a lighter bell noise played and the button lit up in white.

"That's one!" the host called from behind them. "45 seconds to find the other four." Yasa leaned over the keyboard, a finger ready to press something, but he leaned back as he decided against it.

The three of them looked over the keyboard, glancing constantly up at the rapidly decreasing timer. Jess tapped her toes on the floor agitatedly, trying to find at least one symbol that looked right. Concentrating on one near the middle of the board, she looked around it to try and find a match.

"Yasa, the one that looks like a seven with a line through it," Helen said over her shoulder. She pointed up at the board, but it was too high for her to point out. Jess looked again and realized that it was the same one that she had been looking at, and called out directions to guide Yasa's finger to it as he leaned over the keyboard. Finally he pressed it and leaned back as it lit up, the timer ticking past thirty seconds.

"There's one five along from the one you first pressed," Skye said quickly. She turned as the rabbit counted out with his finger, and leaned up to look at her.

"This one?" he asked.

The husky girl glanced over her shoulder to see where his finger was. "No - other way!" she called, looking up at the timer frantically. Yasa quickly moved his finger over and hit the button she was talking about, then looked at the timer himself as the third white light came on. With a glance at the nozzle an arm's length above his head, he hunched over the keyboard again, concentrating even harder.

The three girls stood in silence as he moved his finger slowly towards the bottom left of the keyboard, encouraging him as they realized he was heading for another correct one. Speeding up, he risked hitting it, and the sound of the bell confirmed that it was right. With under ten seconds to go, he brought his other hand up to hit a final button.

"No!" Jess heard herself call as Yasa jabbed his finger down, seeing a pair for the button he was about to press in the opposite corner. The warning came too late, and the rabbit boy jumped back as he lost five more seconds.

The girls looked at each other as the timer fell to 2, then turned around to face him. As an alarm blared to signal the last couple of seconds passing, he gave a sickly grin and hunched forward with his face in the crook of his elbows, his arms up over his head and his ears flattened down over them. With a louder klaxon joining the clamor, the timer hit zero, and as the lights on the pod blinked rapidly, he vanished under a wave of murky green gunge dropped from the tank above his head.

Jess looked on awestruck, her hand flying to her mouth to muffle a laugh. As the three girls looked on, the falling slime formed a twitching dome as Yasa wriggled underneath it, and it slapped on to the floor in thick waves, dripping down the sides of the once clean white platform. Occasionally, the dome would slop away to reveal his slime-streaked face, and they saw him slowly relax, moving his hands forward to shield his forehead, revealing his heavy hair.

Another wave burst into life, slightly forward of the last one, and Yasa yelped as the smooth gunk poured on to the front of his face, hiding him from view again. A messy hand poked out of the slimy dome as he leaned to the side, and it came up to try and deflect some of the falling gunge.

As he put his hand up above him the dome moved outwards, some drops spattering out and landing at the feet of the three girls. Helen ducked as a lick of gunge came towards her, but most of the stuff was still splurting through Yasa's fingers and on to the side of his face. Jess was relieved to see he was laughing at the feeling of it as it glooped on to him, clinging to his fur and oozing downwards on to his clothing. After a few moments both streams shut off, completely revealing the messy rabbit boy again, his hair and top half of his clothing darkened by the wet slime. Another short drizzle fell from the pod, and he shook his head as it poured off his messy hair into his lap.

Yasa carefully lowered his hand from the pipe and shook it, spraying slime to the floor, then wiped at his eyes. Blinking them slowly open, he looked towards the rest of the team and smiled at the response of the three cheering girls, looking a little out of breath as he brushed his gungy hair to the sides.

The lights in the rest of the room came back up, and Alex clapped his hands together as he approached him, taking care on the slippery steps. "How does it feel to be the first victim, Yasa?" he asked with a grin, the movement of his feet slopping the stuff across the platform.

"This stuff's heavy!" Holding his hands out in front of him, Yasa let the gunge on his fingers drip to the floor. Alex took his hand and hauled him up from the seat, and he shivered as the stuff slipped down him with the movement.

Yasa stepped down from the platform to rejoin the girls again, and Helen stepped back involuntarily as the gungy rabbit approached. His hair was stuck heavily down to his head, and his previously white T-shirt was stained dark green in the shape of fingers of dripping slime. He looked a lot more at ease now, even reaching towards Jess and Skye and laughing as they ducked out of the way of his slippery fingers.

"Well, team, as you can tell you didn't quite make it, but Yasa did earn eighty points for the team there and that's still a good start. Team leader, who's going next?"

"Let's have..." Skye drew out the last word, looking between Jess and the catgirl, who shrank back a little, her hands behind her back. "Helen!" she said, clapping a confident hand on her shoulder. Jess stopped holding her breath, knowing that her turn was getting closer, and imagining how Yasa felt under all that stuff.

"All right, I'll see what rooms we can get into..." Alex pulled the miniature computer out of his pocket, tapping it with the stylus in a couple of places. "The computer only opens up a couple of rooms, you see, and that limits what challenges we can give you... but our next two are just off this room!" He stuffed it back into his pocket again and took hold of Helen's hand as she offered it to him. "Come with me," he said, and took off at a dash around the edge of the room.

About a quarter of the way around, he stopped at one of the many metallic doors, and moved towards it to tap in a sequence on a code panel beside it. Helen looked back at Jess, a nervous grin on her face, and she whipped around to see as the door hummed open. Alex went up the two steps to the room first, with the catgirl following close behind.

Jess followed them up, trying to peek past them as they moved into the space past the door. It was small and almost wedge-shaped, about ten or twelve feet from the door to the far end - not quite as clean-looking as the main room, with a couple of exposed pipes on the walls and ceiling. At the room's wide end opposite them, a large circular board was fixed to the wall, with the circle divided into labeled sections that she couldn't read from a distance. The other feature of the room was a dark rectangular recess in the right wall, covered by a waist-height plastic door and lit from above in red. Five large bowl-shaped red electric lights were placed on the wall around it - one at the top and two on each side. Jess watched as Helen was led towards it.

"This is a testing chamber - it's a bit like one of the showering chambers I showed you earlier," Alex explained as he opened the door, and Helen looked at the floor as she clambered into the high plastic chair, placing her hands on its arms and hooking her feet under the circular metal footrest. "It's got a couple of the hoses for water, or what would have been water a few months earlier...", he said, indicating a few rounded openings on the ceiling as the catgirl looked upwards. "And," he added, catching her eye and pointing to her sides, "in case anything went wrong, it also had the ability to pump itself full of foam." Helen looked shocked for a moment, then nodded shyly, her eyes closed and curling her toes over the metal ring.

"In total there are five pipes pointed into the tank, and the task for the three of you is to turn them all off before the timer reaches zero," Alex said, stepping back and pointing at the timer above the cubicle. Helen put her hands on the door and leaned out to look at it as it turned on, showing a time limit of two minutes. "If you haven't deactivated them all in that time, then whatever pipes are left will pump their contents into the tank... and all over Helen." He pointed at her as she settled back into the seat, squirming uncomfortably with a nervous grin on her face.

"So Helen, you're relying on your team-mates to save you - after seeing what happened to Yasa, are you confident?"

The catgirl giggled a little, flicking her hair behind her head, and didn't answer. Alex moved away towards the other three. "And your fate is going to be decided by the spin of the wheel!" he announced, pointing towards the board and dashing up to position himself next to it. "This is where my job as your guide gives in to my gameshow-host side..." He spread his arms towards the sectioned circle.

"We're going to get each of you to take a spin on this thing by pressing the button in the centre," he said, thumping it. A rapid beeping noise started up as a light at the back of the board rotated quickly around, making each section highlight in turn and then coming to a halt, blinking on a section marked "Question" after a few seconds.

"For most of the sections, you'll have to answer a question from the computer, and if you get it right, you'll be allowed to turn off one of the tanks around your friend by hitting one of the buttons on the wall," he continued, pointing over to where the catgirl was sitting. Jess watched the five lights around her flash in sequence.

"There are a couple of other sections as well," Alex said, drawing their attention back to the board. "If you're lucky you'll get one of the 'Instant off' sections and you'll be able to turn off one without getting a question right first... but there are a couple of sections that are less good news for Helen, as they'll instantly turn on some tanks again."

He pointed around the circle as he explained the sections, and then dropped his arm to his side, stepping back and fishing the palmtop out of his pocket again. "All right - are you ready, Helen?" He stretched to the side to look at her, then turned back to the team. "Team leader, I think you'd better start us off. The timer will start as soon as you hit the button for the first time."

Skye confidently stepped forwards and put her hand on the central button, putting her weight behind it as she pushed. With a step back, her head moved slightly as she watched the light spin around and suddenly stop.

"Instant off! That's a great start - go over there and turn off a nozzle!" Alex pointed over to the tank on the wall, and Jess watched as the husky girl dashed over to Helen's cubicle. Standing on her tiptoes, she hopped a little to press the button at the very top of the tank, which darkened as it sounded a beep.

"Jess or Yasa?" Alex quickly spoke to get their attention back, and Jess stumbled forward to take a spin. After pushing the domed button she bounced on her heels as she waited, and eventually read the word "Question" on the lit section it stopped at.

"All right, Jess, we're in the research center, so - what would you use an anemometer for?" asked Alex, reading from the device in his hand.

"Um..." Jess thought, pursing her lips and having to just guess. "Measuring... atoms?"

She sagged as Alex shook his head. "Sorry... don't worry, Helen, there's still time left! Yasa, come up here!" Jess took a couple of steps back as Yasa moved in to replace her, running one hand through his thick gunge-coated hair again. He also landed on a "Question" section, but got his right and jogged away from the wheel to turn off one of the lights at the side of the tank.

Jess watched Helen lean out of the tank to see as the wheel was spun by Skye again. Looking worried as it landed on "Miss a turn", she glanced down at the rapidly decreasing timer on the front of the booth at the other side of the room before leaning back in the seat.

Remembering it was her turn, she stepped forward to take another spin, realizing she was mouthing to herself to encourage it to stop on a good space. As it blipped to a halt on "Instant off", she let out an excited squeak and clapped her hands together, then, feeling a little embarrassed at her reaction, moved over to the cubicle on the wall.

Looking around at the three remaining lights, she stretched up to turn off the one at the top right. Looking into the gunge booth as she did so, she caught Helen's eye, and she wriggled anxiously in the seat while managing a weak grin. Sitting silently, her eyes moved up to the top of the booth, and Jess followed them, seeing a round cover next to the red tube light like in the tank that Alex had showed them before, with two nozzles pointed down diagonally from the sides as well.

A buzzer made her jump, and the light at the side of the tank that had previously been off flickered into life again. She glanced down at the timer to see it drop below one minute.

"Sorry, Yasa - that's a tank turned back on! Come over here, Jess, we'll need you in a moment!"

With what she hoped was an encouraging smile back at Helen, Jess left the tank and dashed back over to the wheel as Skye got her question wrong. Breathlessly pressing the button as the husky stepped away, she turned towards the host as she landed on another question space, then happily jogged back over towards the tank as he announced that she'd got it right.

She jumped up to hit the last of the buttons near the top of the tank, leaving only the two at the sides still lit. Helen nodded at her, seeming more at ease now, and she glanced back to see her eyes on her as she went back to the wheel.

Yasa hand his slimy hand on the spin button and was waiting for the wheel to stop. He jumped as it landed on one of the few grey sections again.

"Miss a turn... sorry, Yasa," Alex called after him as he sighed and moved away, out of Skye's way as she stepped forward.

"Come on..." she muttered as she watched the light spin around the electronic wheel, but she growled in annoyance as it landed on a "Miss a turn" section for the second time in a row.

"Again! I'm sure someone's rigged this." Alex beckoned to Jess and she dashed forward to hit the button, hopping from foot to foot as it seemed to take ages to stop spinning. It landed on a "Question" section again.

"Quickly, Jess - what was..." Alex's voice was drowned out by a loud alarm, and he whipped his head around to the side. Jess followed his gaze to see the timer on the front of the booth at zero, and Helen giggling uneasily inside, looking from left to right and shuddering.

"You're out of time! Sorry, Helen..." A high-pitched mechanical whine started up, and the catgirl gripped the seat, tapping her fingers on its arms nervously as she kept looking around her, waiting for something to happen. Suddenly, a loud hiss started from the nozzles at her sides, and she gave a prolonged squeak as she was instantly hidden by two wide jets of foam - green from one side, white from the other.

She put her hands out to the sides to defend herself, and some of her pink fur became visible through the thick cloud of flying foam as it spattered off her palms and flew up into the air, drifting down to land on top of her. Wriggling to the side and turning her head as some of the stuff splashed on to her left cheek, she gradually drew her hands in and covered her eyes instead, hunching forward as the gooey spray coated her from all angles.

Slowly, the two jets eased off, dripping back to reveal the messy catgirl, only a few patches of fur at her front visible underneath the creamy layer. She dragged her hands away from her eyes, smearing the green and white foam down her face as she attempted to clear it off. Her bare feet slipped off the now slimy footrest, and she wriggled her toes to shake away the blobs of foam that had fallen on them.

Opening her eyes, which were just visible through the thick foam, she saw the team watching her and her shoulders shook in a giggle. A klaxon began to hoot, and she glanced upwards instinctively as there was a noise from the top of the tank.

Jess looked up too as a wide curtain of orange slime slopped down towards Helen, who squeezed her eyes shut and faced the front again just in time for it to slap on her head and shoulders. The downpour only lasted half a second but was thick enough to cling to her hair and fur, the ooze dripping down to mingle with the foam against her.

As the noise of the machine faded away, Alex stepped forward through the group and grinned at her. "You're looking colorful, Helen," he commented, putting a hand on the slime-streaked door of the tank to haul it open. "It looks like you got a bit of the gunge anyway..."

The messy catgirl shrugged her shoulders, grimacing as the movement dislodged more of the slime on them and made it slither through her fur. Taking Alex's hand as he offered it to her, she used her other hand to steady herself on the seat as she carefully extended her foot and set it down shakily on the floor. Taking care not to slip, she gradually took her weight off the chair and stepped out of the tank to rejoin the other three.

"Well, Helen did get a little messy in the end, but shutting off three of the streams means that you get sixty points for the game," Alex announced as he swung the door closed, flicking the small amount of foam on his hand to the floor. Jess looked from him to the dripping catgirl, who was trying to wipe the thick foam off her fingers without much success. As she turned around, she saw the orange splatter mark across her back and shivered as she watched it ooze down her fur.

"Want to move on? Our next game's right across the room." He pointed at the door as he moved towards it, and the four of them were following close behind as he hauled it open and jumped down the short stairway.

As they stepped into the main room again, Jess looked over at the pod, which was still slowly dripping green slime on to the chair below it. The gungy puddle underneath had mostly spread to the edge of the circular platform and was slithering down into a gutter at its base. She looked nervously back at the team leader as she realized she might be underneath one of those things next.

"So, Skye..." Alex began.

"Yeah." The gray husky bounced on her heels, looking keen and glancing with a smile over at Jess. She swallowed, imagining what was going to happen to her very soon.

"Don't you think it's about time you had a go?"

Jess looked over and grinned at Skye's surprise at being asked the question, and joined in the laughing encouragement from the others as the husky girl glanced around at them. Yasa, behind her, clapped a slimy hand on her clean shoulder, and she shivered, brushing him off. Jess was surprised at her reaction compared to how confident she'd been before - she looked as if she was having second thoughts now she was under pressure.

"Well... okay," she said, looking back at the two gunged team members again.

"Good!" Alex, as enthusiastic as ever despite her reluctance, took her hand and dashed around the edge of the room to another of the metallic doors. The others followed as she looked worriedly over at the machine in the center.

Alex tapped out a long code with his free hand, speaking to her as he concentrated on the keypad. "Now, as you're the team leader, Skye, I think it's only fair you get to try out one of our new games..." The husky girl turned to the door, nodding confidently again. Jess watched her face as the plain metal door hummed aside. She blinked at the light from inside the room, then her eyebrows went up in surprise as she saw its contents. Gently, Alex encouraged her inside by leading her by the hand.

Jess leaned around the frame of the door as the others followed them in, and slipped inside as the door closed behind them. The room was similar in shape but slightly smaller than the last, not much more than ten feet long and just wide enough for them all to stand side by side. At the other end of the room, a large mass of pipes and angled vents jutted down from the ceiling above the middle of the wall. They ended in one single nozzle pointed downwards. Underneath the machine, a few sheets of wire mesh stretched around a frame formed a six foot tall cage.

Skye looked from the cage to the tubes above it and back a few times as Alex led her over to the side. He let go of her hand and struggled with a bolt near the back of the frame, then swung the cage's side outwards with a rusty squeak. Smiling a little nastily, he held his hand out to show her inside. The husky gave him a silent look, then padded into the cage.

On the inside of the frame was a short stand, and Skye moved to take the seat behind it. As the cage was closed behind her, she looked down at the two buttons placed side by side on top of the block, labeled "1" and "2".

"I don't think she's too happy about this... feeling all right in there, Skye?" Alex asked, spinning round after taking a couple of paces away from the cage. The husky girl, still looking uncomfortable, looked up into the pipe above her, biting her lip.

Jess took a couple of steps forward to get a closer look, and watched as the red wolf produced the device from his pocket again. Holding it in front of him, he looked down and scrolled through idly with his thumb.

"Now, you'll have noticed that you have a choice of two buttons on the panel in front of you," he began, looking up from the screen. Skye nodded, placing her hands on each of the large curved triggers, then lifted them up again to look at the numbers on them.

"I'm going to be asking you a series of questions, but to keep things simple for you, all the questions in this game can be answered with either 'one' or 'two'. Simple enough, isn't it?"

She nodded again, and leaned forward a little, listening intently as he continued.

"So if you think the answer's 'one', press button 2. If..."

"Oh, you bastard." Skye slumped forward, placing her forehead on the podium and resting her hands on its sides, her brown hair spilling forward over her shoulders as she rolled her head slightly from side to side. Jess looked at Alex as he turned towards her, an exaggerated expression of amused shock on his face.

"Did you hear that?!" he asked, pointing towards the cage. Skye looked up again, peeking over the top of the podium as her shoulders shook with laughter.

"A word of advice, Skye..." Alex coughed and composed himself, looking down at the minicomputer again. "When you're under that thing, be careful what you say to someone who can turn it on!"

Skye glanced upwards again, straightening up and shaking her hair back into position.

Alex recovered and explained the rest of the rules quickly. "Okay. Press button 2 if you think the answer's 'one', and button 1 if you think it's 'two'. You'll only have three seconds to answer each time. A right answer will get you ten points, a wrong one... well, you'll see. Got it?"

The husky girl nodded again distractedly, looking back and forward between the two buttons and hovering her hands over them.

"All right, the first one - what are two ones?"

Skye lifted both her hands and shook them as she thought through the answer she was meant to give, her eyes widening as a shrill beep marked each second passing. Suddenly, she slapped her left hand down on the first button. An electronic bell sounded in response.

"Good, and... 257 minus 255?"

She breathed in, pursing her lips as she thought frantically, and jabbed at the left button again.

"Yes! How many eyes do you have?"

Skye calmly pressed the right-hand button, and jerked upright in the seat with a yelp as a harsh buzzer sounded. A moment later, a high siren shrilled and a column of mixed blue and green slime spewed out of the nozzle above her, slapping against her head and hiding her under a gooey dome as her hands flew to her face.

Yasa moved a pace forward to get a closer look at the cage as the wave of gunge splattered out from Skye's head, pouring through the wires and dripping to the floor. The downpour shut off as quickly as it had started, leaving her to run her hands up over her messy hair, laughing and twitching as the turquoise slime on her back slithered around her neck to drip down her chest in two streams.

"Keep going! One times one!" Alex, looking on amusedly, didn't give her any time to recover.

Looking up from shaking the gunge on her right hand to the floor, the blue-stained husky thumped the right-hand button again to the sound of the 'correct' bell. Breathing out, she slid her hand off the trigger, leaving a blue-green handprint behind.

"The number of moons around the planet!"

She jabbed forward again, then shrieked as the sound made her realize she'd pressed the wrong one. Clutching her hands to her ears, she ducked down as a wave of transparent green gunge slopped out of the tank above her. As the sudden downpour sploshed on to her hair and slithered off on to her back and shoulders, she shook her head, bowing down so that the stuff drizzled off the front of her hair.

Jess watched as she wiped her gooey hands on her lap, the turquoise and green stuff dripping down her and mingling to form a slimy mess.

"Difficult, isn't it?" Alex asked with a smile. She shot a look back at him, raising a finger, and then hunched down over the buttons, concentrating intensely.

Jess mouthed the correct responses to herself as Alex went through four more questions, Skye visibly tensing up and reversing the answer in her head before quickly slapping a hand down on top of one of the gungy triggers. After getting all four right in a row, she made eye contact with Alex, a self-confident smile on her lips.

"And finally... guess."

Skye's mouth fell open, she looked from him to the buttons and back, and after a moment's hesitation, she slapped her palms down on both of them at the same time. She sagged as the harsh buzzer blared once again, and squeezed her eyes closed just before another wave of blue gunge slapped on to her head.

This time it stayed on for longer, and Skye leaned to the side to escape the torrent, her hair matted with slime and hanging over her shocked face. Gradually, her expression turned into a grin as the stuff slapped on to her left shoulder, slithering down her side and making her turn her face further away as it splashed on to her neck. She opened her eyes for a moment to look sideways out at the others, moving her hand up to defend her face from the blue stuff.

The siren wound down, leaving only the noise of the gunge slapping against Skye's fur and dripping stickily to the floor as the downpour subsided, becoming a drizzle from above. She straightened up in the seat again, her eyes closed and her hands near her face as the last few drips of the thick liquid splatted on the top of her head, a couple of drizzles from the edge of the pipe slithering down and landing in her lap.

Jess stepped forward as Yasa moved through the slimy puddle on the floor to the front of the cage, watching the gloop drip from the cage's wires as Skye did her best to clean herself off a little. After brushing the gunge off both her shoulders, smearing it down her arms in the process, she grinned and flung a handful at him. Laughing, he deflected it with his hand.

"You did pretty well there, Skye - only three wrong answers means you've earned seventy points for the team!" Alex moved to open the cage, and the husky girl whooped, pumping her arms in the air happily. As she heard the bolt slide aside she got up, holding her dripping fringe out the way with one hand, and picked her way carefully over to freedom. Gathering up a bunch of her soaked hair, she wrung the slime out of it and smushed her hands on his chest before turning away and walking back towards the group.

Alex followed her across the spreading puddle. Jess swallowed as he pointed at her, knowing what was coming.

"Now, I think we all know who needs to be put into a game now," he started as Skye moved off to the side, shaking her gungy feet between steps and trying to wipe them off on the floor. Jess nodded uncertainly, nervous at being the center of attention and suddenly imagining all the muckier games that used to appear on the show, particularly at the ends of the rounds.

"Let's see where we're going..." He raised the computer again and tapped a couple of buttons. Jess waited, biting her lip as he looked up again, a wide grin on his face.

"Actually, it looks like we've got something lined up for all four of you now... so Jess's safe for the moment!" he continued. Jess breathed out, relieved but a little disappointed at the same time. "But we'll make sure she gets her chance afterwards..."

He clapped a hand on her shoulder as he moved past, and she spun round to follow him as the door opened automatically. He led the team out into the main room again, then turned sharply to run a short distance down one of the corridors before sliding to a halt outside another of the identical-looking doors.

Jess stood at the front of the group as he put in the code to open the door, and leaned round to watch as it slid open.

At the back of the room, four clear cubicles stood in a row, each marked with a number on the front. Above them, a rail stretched across the width of the room, and attached to it was a clear empty cylindrical tank complete with a round funnel-like nozzle underneath it. It was in the center of the rail as they walked in, but looked like it could slide from side to side to position itself above any of the four booths. Jess looked behind her at the rest of the team, watching their mixed expressions as they took in the sight.

"Want to choose a position each?" Alex asked from the back, the door sliding shut behind him. "They're all as good as each other if you ask me..."

Yasa was the first to move, going for the tank numbered "4" on the right. Jess followed him and took hold of the plastic door handle, hauling it open against the light rubber seal on the door. She tentatively stepped inside, looking up to see a round opening cut out of the ceiling of the booth. Turning around, she allowed the door to fall closed behind her. She looked round the plain tank with its metallic back, thinking how much like a phone booth it looked, and realized that it probably had been one before being reworked as part of the set.

Helen stepped into the tank next to her and Skye took the first one on the far side, and they turned to Alex, waiting for him to introduce the game. Casually, he walked over to a projection screen opposite the row of booths.

"This doesn't need much in the way of explanation from me... You're all going to be given a question. If you get it right, you escape clean - or as clean as you are now - and if you get it wrong, then I think you can guess what happens..." He pointed up at the cylindrical tank, and gave the team time to watch as a stream of yellow slime rapidly gushed into it with a loud gloop. "Ready, ROB?" he asked, raising his voice to call at the screen.

"Ready," the metallic voice repeated back. The team members jumped as a mechanical whine was heard from above them, and the tank on the rail slid over away from Jess to the far tank, the one that Skye was inside. With a whirring noise, the funnel extended down towards the tank, and clunked into place above her.

Jess tried to lean around Helen to see her, then looked over at the screen as words started appearing, read out simultaneously by the voice of the computer. A timer faded in at the bottom right, counting backwards from fifteen seconds as Skye frantically read over the question again.

"To the nearest thousand, how many feet were there in three miles?" she repeated to herself worriedly, shifting from foot to foot as she looked at the question. "Fif... sixteen thousand?"

There was a moment's silent pause, with Skye frozen in place. Suddenly, she flinched down as there was a loud click from the machinery, but straightened up again, breathing out heavily as the nozzle rose away from her. Pawing at her messy hair again and trying to straighten it out, she watched as the tank moved to the side, down the row of booths.

Helen also followed the nozzle's movement as it hummed towards her. The layer of foam still clinging to her, she brought one hand up to her face to wipe the stuff away from her eyes as the machine descended to nestle in the gap above her head.

"What was the name of the inventor of the temperature scale?"

Jess watched Helen's reaction as the question was read out. She stood in the same nervous pose that she always seemed to, wringing her hands behind her back and curling and uncurling her feet, and looked up to re-read her challenge only after the voice had finished. Her eyes darted over the question, occasionally opening her mouth then closing it as she thought it through.

She shook her head as the time dropped below five seconds, the ticking noise from the screen becoming increasingly urgent. Without saying a word, she shook her head faster as an alarm sounded, and bowing down, put her hands up to clutch the sides of her head. Jess looked up from watching her just in time to see the slimy surface bubble as the valve at the bottom of the tank burst open.

Helen ducked down a little more just before the yellow column reached her, and squeaked as the cold thick wave slapped against her hair, blobs of gooey foam from the last game she'd been in rolling off her and splatting to the floor along with the waves of yellow gunge doming out from her head. Jess found herself stepping back even with the two sheets of plastic between them as the yellow paint-like gunge slopped against the side of the tank beside hers. Giggling, Helen leaned to the side and put her slimy hand against the side of the booth to steady herself as the gunge poured on to her hair and right shoulder, slithering down to soak her pink fur.

Jess glanced up at the tank above the catgirl, and at the same moment a loud click sounded as the last of it emptied out. Another slurping noise emerged from it, and it began to fill again, this time with a green and orange mixture as the last few drops of the last load dripped on to the yellow-coated catgirl's head. She stood up straight again and coughed, her fingers going to the straps of her swimsuit to straighten them out, tentatively picking at them on her gungy shoulders.

"You OK, Helen?" Alex asked as the nozzle whirred again, hoisting itself back up before the tank moved over. Jess didn't look at her response, instead watching apprehensively as the machine slid over to position itself above her head, and she felt her heart speed up as the funnel clunked into place on her gunge tank. Glancing to the left and right and realizing that Helen and Yasa were watching her, she squeaked as she felt a couple of thick drops of gunge land on her hair. She moved a hand up to wipe them away, trying not to think about being the center of attention as another question came up on the screen.

"What is the next number in this sequence?" the electronic voice asked. "Sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, a hundred and twenty eight, two hundred and fifty six..."

Taken aback by the sudden barrage of numbers, Jess craned her neck to see the screen as the sequence came up, and looking at them made it a little clearer. She bounced on her heels, trying to concentrate on the numbers on the screen, and she knew after just a moment that the number doubled each time, but she couldn't keep her mind from wandering - to the large nozzle placed above her head, how that stuff felt when she'd dipped her finger into it before they'd started the game, but mostly being distracted by the rapidly decreasing timer in the corner of the screen.

"F... Five hundred and twelve," she said suddenly, tripping over the words as she tried to get her guess out before her time reached zero. There was a mechanical click from above her, and her hands instinctively shot to her face.

After a moment, she peeked out from behind her hands, and breathed out, trying to calm herself down as the nozzle above her slowly rose away. Taking her hands away from her face, she watched Yasa's expression as the overhead tank was hauled over towards him, still dripping yellow stuff as it went. Eagerly, he looked up as it stopped, and lowered his eyes to the screen as it descended towards him.

"Did the second millennium start in January 2000 or January 2001?" the metallic voice asked. Jess looked to the screen and back to the rabbit boy, who was thinking hard with his mouth open.

"2001," he answered. Without warning, the alarm blared, and Jess jumped back as he vanished underneath a deluge of mixed green and orange slime. As it bounced off his head and slopped against the cubicle walls, it mingled into a murky brown color.

Yasa leaned forwards a little to get his face out of the dome, flicking his hands and making the custard-like slime on them fly off. As he moved his neck under the downpour it began to subside, stopped doming out and instead ran down and around his neck. He glanced over at Jess with a sickly grin, shaking his head to try and get it off his hair and long ears a little, his hands held out at his sides.

Eventually the stream shut off, and Yasa straightened up to let the last few dollops splat on to his head. Slowly, the blobs of gunge ran down to his fringe as he bowed slightly forwards. Jess watched the stuff ooze and trickle from all over his fur as he stood still, his clothing soaked through and clinging to him heavily. After a few moments, he looked up, blinking, as the electric whine from overhead signaled the nozzle moving up and away again.

Alex stepped forward again, clearing his throat. "Well, out of a possible four, we've only got two gunged team members, which means fifty points for the game - and that brings you up to 260 for the round!"

Jess smiled as Skye and Helen cheered, the husky girl clapping her hands above her head. Yasa grinned from underneath his messy hair, holding his dripping fringe away from his forehead.

"If you're interested, you two - the inventor of the temperature scale was Weiss, Helen, which is where we get the name of the kind of thermometer from..."

The gungy catgirl nodded, eyes closed and dragging the yellow stuff out of her soaked hair.

"And... well, Yasa, the answer to your question was actually neither of them, because it's the third millennium that started then. That was a nasty one, ROB..."

The face of the computer didn't answer, instead disappearing as the screen flickered off as soon as Alex looked at it. He shrugged and turned back to the team.

"Anyway," he continued, "Despite him, that's not a bad start at all - as long as you've got over half the possible points, you're doing pretty well. Come on out here..."

The four of them pushed on the doors of the booths to escape. Jess looked to the sides as the two neighboring team members set their slimy feet carefully down on to the floor, and they all made their way over to gather around the host at the door.

"OK, team leader..." Alex looked over at Skye, who dodged past the dripping Helen and Yasa to get to the front of the group. "We've got to move on now, so would you prefer," - he pointed with his hands - "to head to the storage wing, the processing wing, or go down underwater?"

"Storage," she replied, having made up her mind before he'd stopped speaking.

"Great, because it's just along the end of this corridor," Alex said as he turned away. Pulling on a wall-mounted switch to reopen the door, he showed the four of them through and then followed them out. "This way!" he called, beckoning them to follow as he took off down the passageway. With a brief look at each other, the four of them ran after him.

Round 2

Alex burst through a set of double doors, and the team struggled to catch up with their energetic host as they swung closed, hiding him from view. Jess, arriving there first, pushed them back open and looked up as she heard the hiss of spraying water. There was a tiled section of the corridor ahead of them, a few yards long, with several showerheads fixed to the walls spraying a mist of water into the corridor. Alex was waiting for them on the other side.

"It's just a washer - I think the others will need it more than you do, Jess..."

Jess nodded, then bowed her head down, shielding her hair with her hands, and stepped onto the white rubber-gripped tiles. She dashed through the cool but not unpleasant shower, and stepped off the other side to join the red wolf, who was dabbing his top half dry with a grubby towel from the wall.

She took it as he offered it to her, and distractedly wiped at her shoulders, very aware that she was the only one still clean as she looked back at the slightly stained fur of the others. Helen stepped into the shower section first with her eyes closed, but turned to face the water and smiled at the feeling of some of the foam and slime on her coming off.

As they all stepped out of the shower section, she passed the towel on to the catgirl, looking at Yasa gathering up his long hair and wringing it out. Alex pointed towards the end of the short corridor, where it split into a T-junction with another door on the opposite wall. This door had a more industrial look to it than the futuristic area they'd been in before, with a cross-hatched metal surface and a small barred window.

"From here on is the storage area - and our first stop is just over there." He glanced back at them, giving them a moment to dry off, before leading them towards it.

As Jess followed him, she looked around at their new surroundings. The scenery here was far gloomier than the previous area, with bare stone-textured walls and floor, though she could feel that it was actually painted plastic under her feet. The roof of the tunnel was slightly curved, with round lights that hung down from a cable along the middle, looped over support beams that stretched across the corridor just below the arch. A couple of boxes and containers lay propped up against the walls.

The group gathered around as Alex stopped, all of them still dripping a little from the wet corridor. Skye stood up on her tiptoes, peering through the barred window near the top of the door.

"This is just a stop-off before we go further in - one of the card keys that we need to get into the purifier room at the end should be here," Alex said as he stepped in front of Skye, putting his hand on the door's heavy bolt. Realizing she was bouncing on her heels, showing her nerves, Jess stepped forward and tried to stay calm. She watched, swallowing again and knowing that this situation was an obvious setup to get them into another game, as Alex hauled the bolt aside and shoved the door open. It made a rusty squeak as he forced it aside, and he beckoned them all to follow as he stepped into the room.

Jess padded in, surprised at the room's size compared to the other game rooms that they'd been in before. As the name of the area implied, it looked like a medium-sized storage room, with several crates and barrels in varying states of repair strewn about, a few wheeled metal shelf trolleys, and other miscellaneous items of junk placed haphazardly around the room. After looking at the scraps for a moment, her eyes were drawn up to the back of the room, where just past a shallow set of rising stairs, there was a row of four plain white rounded booths with several pipes and tubes leading into them from the back wall and low ceiling. Their fronts each had a narrow window from top to bottom - three of them were dark inside, but the one second from the left had a flickering light on. Its door was hinged from the bottom, and it was hanging open slightly.

Alex was searching through a discarded box on the floor next to the entrance. "I'm not seeing any of them where they're usually kept..." he said over his shoulder, then straightened up and kicked the box aside. As if noticing them for the first time, he looked up at the row of chambers at the far end of the room.

"We could always try in there..." he started, picking his way over the bits and pieces scattered on the floor and making his way up, checking to make sure the team were following him. "Often the key cards were used for more than one place, and if one's been left in one of those, we'll probably be able to use that too." Jess tried to concentrate on where she was putting her feet, her heart pounding harder all the time.

The four of them gathered around the machine, and he looked through the clear window. "Yes!" he exclaimed, pointing inside, and reached up to pull the door down. "There's a little panel in the back of each of these..." he explained as he struggled with it, "... so that they could be tested and turned on and off with a card, or a combination. Some things taken up by the research center needed to be preserved under oil or water, and these were the tanks used to store them. About two hundred gallons in each of them, I think..."

As he hauled the door down the way, Jess shuffled her feet, thinking about what was obviously about to happen to her. Pushing the door open the rest of the way with his foot, he stepped inside and looked up at the panel, reaching out for the card. Suddenly, he seemed to have second thoughts and turned around. "Actually, Jess - do you want to try this instead, just in case anything happens?" He stepped down from the booth and over the door, putting his hand out to indicate she should go inside. "You've managed to stay clean for quite a while, but I think it's time that you got a chance to gamble on that... what do you think?"

Shivering at the sight of the imposing machine, Jess tried not to sound frightened as she responded. "All right," she said, breathed out, and put her foot on the ramp formed by the door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alex indicating to the others to take a few steps back.

As she stepped inside, she looked around at the inside of the chamber - the walls were as white as the outside, with two rows of small nozzles placed on either side near the ceiling. On the very top there was a much wider pipe, like the one she'd seen in the tank at the very beginning. Shaking her head and putting those out of her mind for the moment, she turned her attention to the panel at the top of the back wall.

The metal panel consisted of a set of ten numbered plastic-coated buttons arranged in a grid, a couple of lights, an LED display and a card poking out of the slot on the right. With a deep breath, she tugged it out.

Her hands jumped to her ears as a siren screamed, even though she knew it had been coming, and she spun around to see the door automatically close, trapping her inside. As it clunked shut, she heard a series of mechanical and electronic noises of locks clicking into place. The flickering fluorescent tube above her went out for a moment and was then replaced with a brighter, white light. As an insistent regular beeping noise started up from the back wall, she slowly turned back to it and saw the display had turned on, showing a yellow timer counting backwards from just over two and a half minutes.

Reassuring herself that this was all meant to happen, she bounded to the front of the tank as she heard Alex speaking. His voice was played to her over a speaker at the top of the booth.

"You three!" he said, and the three team members on the outside of the tank jumped to attention. "Jess is locked inside the tank and there are only about... a hundred and fifty seconds before it fills up. There are four different locks on the side..." - he pointed to a section of the door beside the window - "and a combination that should be somewhere in the room, too. Get down there, find those keys! Go!" He repeated the last word, gesticulating wildly, as the three of them scrambled down into the main part of the room again. Jess pressed her muzzle to the tank's window as she watched them hover around, unsure where to start looking.

Yasa was the first to move, heading right for a stack of crates in the middle of the room and tipping them over one by one, searching each side as he went and throwing the light props behind him afterwards. The girls followed his example, taking one side of the room each.

Alex stepped across Jess's vision, looking down at the panel of locks but shifting his eyes over to look at her. "You okay?" he mouthed, and she nodded in response. He gave her a reassuring smile before turning back to call to the team, shouting over the noise of the junk being hunted through.

"You're looking for four plastic card keys to get her out! They should look something like this!" He stepped aside and raised his hand to Jess. Realizing, she looked down at the card in her hand before holding it up to the window.

Her hand pressed against the card, she looked at the back of the tank a couple of feet away, and the unforgiving timer that had already reached two minutes. Only dimly hearing the sound of metal barrels being tipped over and things being dragged down off the shelves, her gaze shifted up to the row of nozzles in the walls and the large hole in the ceiling, and she shivered as she imagined what was going to happen if she wasn't let out in time.

"Helen's got one!" Alex's call made her whip her head round, and she leaned to the side to see Helen triumphantly holding up a red card key amid a cluster of barrels, some of them leaking dark ooze onto the floor around her feet. "Come back here and open the lock..."

"Come on!" Jess joined in involuntarily as Helen picked her way carefully over the debris, and bounced on her heels as she approached. With her hands pressed on the clear window again, she craned her neck to see as Helen slid the card into one of the locks and a confirmation beep played.

"That's one! It's taken you nearly a minute to get that far, keep going!" Alex called after her as she went back to her side of the room, making Yasa start hunting through the polystyrene bead-filled boxes in front of him even more frantically, digging through them with both hands. Almost as soon as Helen had left, a shout came from Skye's side of the room, and Jess clapped her hands together as the husky girl approached with another card.

"Don't forget that you've got to find the combination to open it from the inside as well!" Alex said, glancing over his shoulder to watch Skye slide her card into the slot. Flashing a grin through the glass at Jess, she bounded off back to the side of the room, changing her mind halfway and heading for the boxes that Yasa had now abandoned. "It'll be four digits, and they'll have written it in a few places around the room, these people could never remember their passwords to anything..."

He turned around again to peer past Jess, and she stepped out of the way as she realized he was reading the timer. Hardly daring to look, she slowly turned her head towards it too.

"And you've got one minute to find it and the two remaining keys! One minute!" The host stepped off to the side again, and Jess swallowed, trying to keep calm as she watched the three of them searching madly.

Yasa had reached the shelves at the front of the room. She watched as he reached up to tip a wide cylindrical container towards him, and giggled as the black ooze that had been inside it sloshed over him. Wiping at his face, he looked up into it again and felt around inside, finding nothing and moving on to the other things on the shelves quickly. As the others looked around at the clusters of crates and oil drums at the edges of the room, he pulled each miscellaneous container and tatty cardboard box off the shelf and briefly dipped his hand in to feel around inside. Jumping up to grab the last one at the top, he appeared to notice something on its base and spun it around in his hands.

"Yes!" he suddenly shouted, dropping the box and hopping over the scattered debris as he hurried back up to Jess's booth. She moved forward to listen to him as he breathlessly leaned on the outside.

"6891," he said, pointing up to the keypad at the back of the tank. Jess stepped over and tapped out the numbers, nervously looking over at the timer beside them as it ticked down past thirty seconds. As she pressed the last number, a harsh buzzer sounded. Frowning at it, she glanced over her shoulder at the anxious-looking rabbit boy and tried the combination again, to the same effect.

"Sure?" she asked, stepping forward again.

"...I'll go and check!" With that, he bounded off again, heading for the place that he had found the numbers.

She watched as he dashed back to the shelves, glancing left and right and hoping that either of the girls were close to finding the other two keys. As Yasa reached the front of the room again, he skidded to a halt. Glancing around to see where he'd discarded the box, he picked it up and read it again. His brow furrowed as his lips moved, reciting it back to himself, then an expression of shocked realization crossed his face and he turned the box the other way up.

"One six eight nine!" he called up to her, repeating it as he ran towards the tank. Quickly, Jess moved to the panel again and pressed the buttons in sequence firmly, this time to the sound of another lock sliding aside. She smiled for a moment, but then looked over at the timer and gasped as a louder noise signaled the last five seconds going by. Transfixed by the rapidly decreasing counter, she held her breath as it hit zero, turning to red, and instinctively covered her ears as a low siren sounded from outside the tank.

She turned around slowly as the foghorn-like alarm sounded again, flicking her eyes around the chamber and balling and unballing her fists as she waited anxiously for something to happen. She glanced at Yasa briefly, who had his hands on the door and his face pressed against the glass to see inside. A wet glooping noise sounded from near the top of the tank and she looked up, gasping as two curtains of opaque green goo began to emerge from the grilles at her head height and dribble stickily down the walls.

She froze as the streams gradually got stronger, pouring more into the center of the tank and splashing against her ankles. Stifling a squeak as she felt the cold slippery liquid slap against the fur on her legs, she did her best not to make a sound as the gunge licked up her. As the streams reached her hips, she jerked her hands out of the way, holding them up at chest height and feeling the slimy green stuff dribble from her fingers. She drummed her feet on the floor and squealed as she felt the puddle of gunge ooze between her toes. Squirming at the ticklish feeling and crossing her arms across her chest, she breathed out as the gunge flow from the sides stopped rising at her tummy.

As soon as she had relaxed, another blast came from the alarm, she heard a mechanical noise from above her and she only just had time to squeeze her eyes closed before flinching as a cool, heavy wave of thick slime poured on to her from the pipe on the ceiling.

She shrieked through her clenched teeth as the sticky, slippery liquid poured off her head and slipped down her hair, but all she could hear was the continuous slurping noise that the gunge made as it worked its way around her ears, down the sides of her face, slapping on to her shoulders and slithering down her back and chest, coating her in a wet, heavy layer. She shook her head from side to side a little, gasping as the movement made the ooze splatter all across the tank, some splashes of it landing on her muzzle and creeping down to cover it.

Stumbling forward out of the flow, she turned to the side and raised her heavy arm up, putting a hand on the chamber's door to steady herself. Wriggling away a little further from the torrent that was sloshing down on to her shoulder, she squeaked as she became aware of the tank filling up. The level was already at her knees, and her heart was pounding as she blinked her eyes open, pushing her soaked fringe up with her free hand, and looked down at the rapidly rising surface. She tried to angle the rest of her arm to defend her face from the gunge jets from the sides which were still splashing against her waist and hips.

Rubbing her eyes with the palm of her free hand and backing against the door, she breathlessly watched the smooth thick green stuff pour into the center of the tank, forming a glutinous small well in the surface as it broke through it. She shivered as the gunk crept up her thighs, shifting from foot to foot and feeling it working its way into her fur even more with every movement.

As her hips disappeared underneath the cool gooey surface, she saw the torrent in front of her begin to ease off, the column of slime becoming gradually thinner. With a deep breath, she smiled to herself and determinedly stepped forward underneath it.

She giggled as she felt the stuff slither over her muzzle briefly and envelop her head again, and tentatively turned her head a little from side to side to get totally covered, beginning to enjoy the experience more after the initial shock. She wriggled as the goo rose over her tummy, and raised her hands up to the sides to defend herself against the thin green sprays that were gradually creeping higher with the slime level. Leaning forward just a little to protect her face, she felt the downpour from above slowly subside to a drizzle, then a series of thick drops that splatted heavily against her soaking hair. She sighed, relaxing now that it was over, and dropped her hands back to her sides. They made a rich thick splatting noise as they glooped below the surface.

"Jess, I'm afraid your first gunging had to come sooner or later - and what a way for it to happen!" Alex's voice came over the speaker at the top of the booth as she caught her breath, the chest-height gunge bath glooping thickly around her in a way that felt totally different from water. "Are you all right in there?"

Jess pulled her hands back out of the gunk, shivering as she felt the thick slime drip off them in heavy dollops, and shook them in an attempt to get it off. Scraping the slime off her right hand with her left, she got it nearly clean and wiped at her eyes with the palm of her hand as she nodded her head, managing a smile. Opening her eyes and blinking a couple of times, she looked around at the gunge-filled booth, with what was left visible of the previously white walls stained various shades of green. Beads of slime still dribbled out of the nozzles at the sides.

She shrieked involuntarily and squeezed her eyes closed as another burst of gunge from the ceiling nozzle glooped on to her head, making a ghastly slurping noise all around her as it smacked onto the thick surface. Turning around as she stepped out of its way, she bobbed up and down a little in the glop as she gathered up her soaking hair, throwing it back behind her head and grimacing as it slapped heavily on to her neck.

Propping herself up breathlessly against the slimy wall next to the door, she sagged down, then squeaked and stood upright again as she felt the gunk spill into the top of her swimsuit. She turned her head to look out and saw her team mates crowding to look through the narrow window. Relaxing with a sigh, she couldn't help laughing as she watched the three of them whooping and cheering at the sight of her, and she looked down at the surface again, her slimy shoulders just poking out of the opaque liquid. She tried to imagine what her gunge-drenched head looked like to them, shaking herself to try and clear the drips of the green stuff creeping down over her eyes.

"I think there's a drain lever around here somewhere..." the red wolf said, disappearing off to the side of the tank. With a loud clunk, she heard something shift under her feet, and as the surface bubbled, the level quickly began to go down, leaving a glistening coating of slime on her fur and the walls of the tank as it went. "Got the key?" he asked, coming to the front again and leaning to the side to see past the other three team members.

Jess realized she wasn't holding it any more and turned around, shivering as she moved through the waist-high gloop. She quickly spotted the card floating on top of the green stuff and bent down a little to scoop it up in her messy hands, then held it up to the door to show them. The gunge level was below her knees again, and she looked down at herself, grinning at the sight of her thickly dripping fur.

As the last of it drained away through the floor, making a loud and unpleasant gurgling noise, Alex hauled the door back open away from her, using his foot to push it right down on to the floor. Offering both his hands towards her, he smiled as she stepped heavily out, catching her hands and just stopping her slimy feet from slipping out from under her on the ramp.

"Dangerous thing, that..." he remarked, taking the key from Jess and guiding her gently to the stone-textured floor. Putting the card key in his pocket, he bent down to pull the door back up. Touching its edges reluctantly at first with his fingers, he moved his hands underneath and began to haul it upwards back into place.

Jess reached over her shoulder and grabbed a handful of slime from her back, eeping as the viscous liquid oozed between her fingers. As Alex pushed the door all the way shut with his shoulder, she laughingly threw the handful she'd gathered up at him, and he flinched back as it splattered across the side of his face.

"Hey..." he said, a red hand coming up to drag the green stuff off his cheek. "We did try and save you, you know." Flicking his hand to the floor a couple of times, he stepped away from the chamber and pointed towards the door.

"All right! Thanks to Jess, we've got one of the keys that'll let us in to the purifier room at the end, and you earned sixty points for getting two locks open and finding the password, but we've still got three more games to play here. Skye - Yasa and Helen haven't been picked for a while, who do you want to go in the next one?"

"It's going to be..." The husky girl looked between the rabbit and catgirl, both a little messy from the search. Yasa looked down at himself, picking some stray polystyrene packing beads off his fur.

"Helen." Skye nodded as she chose, and the quiet catgirl smiled up at the host as he stepped towards her.

"Helen, we've got something you might recognize around the corner," he said, taking her hand and hopping over the even more cluttered floor towards the exit. The other three followed them out back into the corridor and down one of the legs of the T-junction.

Jess followed behind them, still on a high from the excitement of the game she'd been in. The slippery green stuff slid down her heavy fur with every movement, feeling cool against the warmth of the large lights above them. Trying to clean off her forearms by scraping her hands down them as they got to a turn in the passageway, she looked up to see another door surrounded by warning stripes on the corner. Looking back at it as they ran past, she almost crashed into the others as Alex stopped them in the middle of a dark area of the corridor.

"Seen this before, Helen?" she heard him say, and she walked to the side to see what they were gathered around. At the side of the corridor was an angular metallic chair, slightly like a dentist's chair with a headrest and footrest. A strap hung loosely across it. There was double door-sized opening on the wall behind it, covered by heavy black plastic strips that formed a curtain so that they couldn't see what was inside.

The pink catgirl looked down at the chair, swinging her tail behind her nervously, but stepped forward and accepted Alex's hand as he brushed the strap out the way and helped her up into it.

"Now, this game does involve not letting you escape..." he said, holding the two halves of the seat belt up in both hands. They formed two V shapes from the sides of the chair. "Are you OK with that?"

Hesitantly, she nodded, and wriggled up to see as the red wolf clipped the straps together over her tummy. She leaned down to look at the buckle in the centre as he stepped back, and looked up again, wide-eyed, as she saw that it had a large keyhole in place of a release button.

"Comfortable, Helen?" the host asked her. She pushed off the footrest and wriggled a little, sitting upright.

"Yeah, I guess," she replied.

"Good... now, the rules of this game. You might have noticed that the chair you're sitting in now is mounted on a rail - I don't think you can see now," he added as she leaned to the side to try and look downwards. Jess crouched down to see the single metal rod supporting the chair stretched down to a groove in the floor, that ran straight back underneath the black curtaining.

Alex continued, pacing around the chair. "Your friends are going to try and get the key to let you out, as your chair slowly takes you inch by inch towards... there," he said, pointing behind her. She twisted in the seat to look at the blank strips covering the entrance. "Want to see what's inside, team?"

He stepped up to the curtaining, and brushed some of the strips aside with his arm, waving them through. Jess looked at Helen, whose mouth dropped open as she saw what was inside, and she nervously giggled as the three free team members stepped through into the room with Alex.

As she ducked into the room, she looked up at the thing that she had caught a glimpse of through the curtain. At the back of the room was a large arrangement of metal beams that formed a crude frame - three Y-shaped supports at the back and sides connected by a few cross bars. Around the frame, between the arms of each Y shape, three rectangular tanks were positioned, pivoted so that they could tip down into the center. The groove in the floor ran all the way into the middle of the arrangement, and right above its ending point was the biggest tank of them all, about three feet wide with a slightly curved base that ended in a wide nozzle. Several other tubes and cables were wrapped around the frame, connecting separate pieces of it or running down into the floor.

"You three are going to be responsible for rescuing Helen before she reaches that thing," Alex said as he turned around, giving them a moment to look up at it. "And you're going to do it by using this..."

He beckoned them over to the left side of the room, where a cannon-like device was bolted to the floor. Jess glanced over her shoulder to see that ten targets were fixed to the wall opposite it, arranged in a circular pattern from floor to ceiling with a perspex-covered box containing a large key in the center of the wall.

Alex walked to the back wall and fished a green waterbomb out of a tarpaulin pool that was set up there. Jess watched it wobble oddly as he held it up, shaking it as a clear liquid dripped from it. She could guess what it was filled with.

"Your task in the game is to hit all ten of those targets using this cannon," he explained as he dropped the waterbomb down a hole at the top edge of the barrel. "It's spring-loaded, so it's not dangerous, but make sure you don't have your hands or any part of your body in front of it when it goes off. Helen won't have the luxury of being able to get out the way, so you'll have to make sure you don't hit her by mistake..."

Slowly, he pulled the plunger on the base of the barrel back, aiming away from the targets. He let it go, the rubber balloon thumped out of the end of the barrel and the team watched it travel in a slow arc through the air, dripping as it went, eventually bursting in the top corner of the opposite wall and leaving a wide yellow splatter mark.

"And you'll have until Helen reaches the center of that gunge machine before the time's up - should be about two and a half minutes. Ready?"

Skye nodded, and was the first to move to crouch behind the cannon. Yasa stepped forward too, stepping forward and picking two balloons out of the pool.

"Good luck." Alex stepped back, pressed something on his controller, and a mechanical whine started up as the strips of the black plastic curtain on the right wall were pushed aside to reveal Helen being dragged backwards.

Yasa quickly dropped one of the waterbombs into the cannon as Skye hefted the barrel around to aim. As Helen looked from them to the targets and back, she fired the cannon, and the four of them followed its path as it flew upwards, then back down to splat on the floor just in front of the wall.

"Damn... let's have another, quick!" Skye determinedly pulled the plunger back further as the rabbit boy loaded the barrel again, and Jess jumped at the much louder noise of the balloon being shot out. This time, she smiled as the target at the top of the circle was hit, accompanied by a confirmation bell sound. Helen clapped her hands together appreciatively, then leaned over her shoulder a little worriedly to see how far away she was.

"Come on, I need more of them!" The gray husky's shout got Jess's attention again, and she turned around to dash towards the tarpaulin pool on the wall. Kneeling down beside it, she dipped both hands into the gel-like liquid to fish out two more of the green rubber bombs, and gently tossed them towards Yasa's feet. He grabbed one of them as it rolled, and loaded the cannon again.

Jess watched over her shoulder as she continued pulling the balloons out of the pool, throwing them behind her each time. Skye's aim was getting better as the game went on - with only a few misses, she had soon hit the top left quarter of the circle and changed her aim to clear the right hand side. As another balloon thumped into the bottom rightmost target, Jess straightened up to watch as Helen's chair continued to move backwards, blocking the line to the three remaining ones.

"We should have done those first..." Jess said under her breath as she looked from the clean targets to Skye and back, the husky girl trying to line up a shot that wouldn't hit the girl being dragged across the middle, her arm shaking from the effort of holding the plunger back. The catgirl wriggled down, her hands across her face.

As soon as Helen was clear of the rightmost target, Skye let go of the plunger again, and a balloon thumped out of the nozzle. The four of them followed its curved path with their eyes, and Helen flinched up as it flew across her lap. She opened her eyes again and turned to her left just in time to see it burst against the far right of the row of three remaining targets.

"Yes!" Skye punched the air. "Quick, give me another one!" The rabbit boy scooped a balloon from the pile next to his feet and leaned in to drop it down the nozzle. Jess looked over at Helen - she was very close to reaching the end of the track now, with only a few feet between her and the frame.

"You've got just under thirty seconds left... you're going to have to be quick!" Jess glanced back at Alex as he spoke for the first time in a while, then jumped as another balloon was launched out of the cannon, lower and harder this time. She only just had time to spin round and see where it was before it splattered into the center of the second-last target.

"Come on, one more!" she encouraged, joining in Helen's shouts of support as she bounced up and down as far as the strap across her tummy would let her.

Skye concentrated, looking along the barrel as she lined up the last shot. She drew the plunger back as Helen was moved to reveal the target again, and shaking, let it go. Jess watched as the heavy slime-filled balloon sailed through the air, passing above Helen, and burst leaving a wide yellow splat mark on the floor in front of the wall.

Jess, realizing she was wringing her hands worriedly in front of her, turned disappointedly to the frame to see Helen leaning back to watch as the chair moved back towards it. Suddenly, Skye moved again, grabbed another of the balloons from the floor, dropped it into the barrel and shot it again. This time, the bell sounded again as the fired balloon slammed into the target's surface. With a hum, the plastic cover on the small box in the far wall slid open to expose the key.

"You've done it!" Alex pushed himself off his leaning position on the wall, looking genuinely excited even though he had acted calm all through the game. "Get the key and rescue Helen, someone!"

The three of them looked at each other, frozen for a moment, and Yasa was the first to take off. Wide-eyed, Jess watched as he sprinted over to the far wall, grabbed the key out of the box and ran back to the excited catgirl's chair. He slid to a halt in front of it and bent down to put the key in the lock across her tummy.

"Come on!" The catgirl burst out hysterically, jiggling in the seat as Yasa struggled with the lock. Waddling forward awkwardly along with the seat as he tried to turn the key, he flinched as a loud siren sounded. Two rotating red lights at the sides of the frame turned on as Helen's chair reached the end of the track, juddering to a halt. Struggling against the straps and holding the lock up for him, she drummed her feet rapidly on the footrest, looking from the rabbit boy leaning over her to the tanks right above her and back.

Shouting encouragement along with Skye, Jess worriedly stepped forward towards the frame, gasping as the two tanks at the sides slowly began tilting inwards. Suddenly, she heard a click, and Yasa straightened up, pushing the straps aside with his hands. With a loud whoop, the catgirl leapt out of the seat and hit him in mid-air in a hug, wrapping her legs and arms around him and making him stumble backwards in surprise.

At the same moment, the alarm hooted again and two waves of lime green gunge slapped down into the middle of the chair that Helen had been sitting in, hiding it from view underneath a brightly-colored cascade as it splattered out from the hard surface. Yasa, gently putting his arms underneath Helen's bottom to support her, took a few steps backwards as the stuff splashed onto his toes. He turned to the side, watching the glutinous green downpours ease off and dribble across the floor underneath the frame. Helen looked back at the stuff that was sprayed all over the floor and bottom of the pipes, gaping at it as her shoulders shook in an excited laugh, then she put her head over the rabbit boy's shoulder and squeezed her arms tighter around him.

"I think that's what they call 'just in time'... that was nearly you, Helen!" The catgirl turned to Alex as he spoke, sliding her hands to Yasa's shoulders and wriggling to be let down. As she put her feet on the floor again she clasped one hand to her chest, panting to catch her breath. She looked back at the chair and shivered, watching the thick slime slither down it and ooze from its edges, then her eyes went up to the other tanks around the frame that would have gone off if she had still been sitting there. She swallowed, then a smile crossed her face and she sighed relievedly, putting her other arm around Yasa.

"Even though it did start to go off, you escaped clean, so I can give you a full score for the game," Alex continued, looking to the side as the gunge-covered chair started forwards, rattling a little out of the frame. Helen grinned, cuddling Yasa a bit closer to her again, as Jess and Skye stepped forward to join them.

"Yasa was the one who nearly got you gunged, so how would you like to put him in a game next?"

"Yeah!" The catgirl turned her head to look Yasa in the eye, and he returned the look with a defeated smile, shrugging her hands off his shoulders and stepping forwards away from the group as she patted him on the back.

As Alex led him back towards the curtain over the door of the room, Jess realized that Skye hadn't been given the chance to be in a game for a while, and remembered that the programme usually had an especially messy challenge for the team leader at the end of one of the rounds. As they followed the two of them, she glanced sideways at the husky girl, but either she hadn't realized she was being led into it or she was keeping quiet.

After pushing back through the black curtain, Alex looked up and down the corridor as if thinking about where to go next, and then pulled his computer out of his pocket. "Hang on a moment," he said, looking down at it in concentration.

Jess took a couple of steps up and down the gloomy corridor, looking around at the occasional pipes running along the walls and into the floor, and the identical metallic doors, wondering where they would be taken next. She looked back at the door that was marked with black and yellow stripes, straining to read the warning symbols on the walls to either side, then was distracted again by a beep from Alex's computer.

"Here we go... it's just down here." The red wolf took Yasa's hand and he eagerly followed him as they dashed another few yards down the passage, towards a door that was partially hidden by the shadow of a pipe placed across it.

Alex leaned down past the pipe to put his hand on the bolt of the door, and pushed it open with his foot. "Mind your heads," he said as he indicated to the team to go inside. Jess ducked down first, pushing the door open the rest of the way as she stepped into the room.

She straightened up and took in the surroundings as Helen walked in behind her with a shocked squeak. The pipe outside the door came through the wall on either side and joined a large maze of pipes of varying sizes that ran all over the walls and ceiling of the room, twisting and turning in and out of each other with wheeled valves fixed at various joints. At the end of the room to the left, three pipes from the surrounding walls jutted out and led towards a small rectangular tank on the floor, a couple of feet high and long enough to sit down in. One of the pipes ended directly above it, bending down to form a nozzle, and the other two were pointed down diagonally from the sides. The box had a sort of crude backrest on it made of plastic matting that extended up from the plastic back wall about a foot.

Above the plastic box, suspended from the ceiling, there was a large round metallic tank with a variety of warning stripes, dials and blinking lights on its surface. Stretching from top to bottom, there was a narrow window that showed that it was full of a yellow-green liquid. Like the arrangement below it, three pipes came out of its base and headed off into the tangle of the walls. A large red digital readout was mounted on the front of the tank, displaying a time of sixty seconds.

The four team members turned at the sound of the door closing, and watched Alex as he turned around from it and looked up at the machine, stroking his chin.

"You know where we're putting you, don't you, Yasa?" he asked, looking over at him with a smile.

"Yeah." He gave a nod, and started towards the machine, eyes up at the large tank near the ceiling all the time. Alex followed him and reached the box as he turned around to sit down inside it, wriggling backwards to rest his back against the plastic backrest and looking up into the nozzle above him.

"All right, he's ready, so..." Alex turned to the girls, walking the few feet back towards them as he explained the rules. "This game's very simple, actually - all you three have to do is find the six valves on the pipes that lead out of that tank..." he pointed up at the threatening machine mounted on the roof, "and turn them off. You're only allowed to spin six of them, though, so make sure you know which ones are right before you touch them... know what you're doing?"

Jess nodded, already looking up at the pipe jutting out from the right hand side of the tank and trying to follow its path with her eyes.

"Good luck!" Alex aimed the controller over his shoulder and pressed it, causing an exaggerated mechanical noise to signal the timer starting.

As the red wolf retreated to the side of the room, Skye leaned over to the others, pointing to herself and them in turn.

"Left, middle, right," she said simply. "OK?"

They nodded in agreement, and Jess moved away from them to find where the pipe she was following emerged from behind a tangle of others. She traced its path with her finger, trying not to glance over at the rapidly decreasing timer as she concentrated on finding the first valve along its path.

Eventually she followed it down to one of the red wheels right in front of her, and grabbed the circular handle. After twisting it in both directions it came loose, and she spun it around once, glancing over at Alex.

"Keep going!" he encouraged. "You'll know when it's off."

Determinedly, she turned back to the wheel and tried to get into a rhythm spinning it. After what seemed like ages, a red light came on behind it and she stepped away, her hand on the pipe to follow it again.

She looked over her shoulder as she moved, watching Helen move towards a valve on the opposite wall and stretch up on her tiptoes to reach it. Batting at it with her right hand, she eventually caught it and began spinning it awkwardly as Skye stepped around her, following a pipe of her own. Jess jumped as her arm hit a pipe that crossed over the one she had her hand on, and as she stepped around it, she glanced backwards at the timer to see it drop below twenty seconds.

Shocked at how much time had already gone past, she looked back at what she hoped was the right pipe and quickly followed it up and down the room with her eyes. Skye ran to the same side of the room, equally frantically, took hold of a wheel and started spinning it. Knowing that she didn't have any time left to search, Jess grabbed the valve in front of her and quickly spun it around with both hands.

Breathlessly, she finally felt it lock into place, and followed the gray husky as she wandered into the center of the room. Yasa looked back at them, then cheered Helen on as she finished turning her second valve too. As she scampered into the middle of the room to join the other two girls, she glanced tensely back at the red wolf.

"Don't look at me - you're about to find out if you're right!" Alex stepped forward, pointing up to the tank on the ceiling.

Jess looked tensely up at the liquid through the tall window as the last few seconds ticked off the timer above it. As it hit zero, the blare of an alarm filled the room, and an unpleasant gurgling noise played as the liquid bubbled and began to drain out, leaving a slimy sheen behind on the window.

She looked down at Yasa again, who had his eyes squeezed closed and a nervous hint of a grin on his face. Opening one eye for a second, he glanced upwards and suddenly flinched to one side as a wave of gooey translucent yellow stuff spewed out of the pipe to his left, instantly covering one side of his face and chest. He held his hand up instinctively, squeaking as he turned his face away from the slippery torrent, then was hidden entirely as the other two pipes turned on, splattering green and yellow goo off his shoulders, head and splashing to the floor around the tank.

As Helen jumped up and down excitedly, he slowly moved his hands from his sides, shaking them as gooey strings dripped down from them, and raised them through the slippery curtain pouring off his head to his darkened soaking hair. Pushing them under his fringe, he flicked his hair back to reveal his face for just a second before the gunge flow slopped down over it. With the tank beginning to fill up around him, he tilted his face up briefly as if showering in the stuff, then shook his head, sending a wide spray of gunk out to the sides, and bowed forwards underneath the three torrents again.

At that moment, the pipes shut off, leaving only the continuous dripping sound of the gunk falling from Yasa's fur into the small pool around him. Sloshing his legs from side to side a little in the tummy-deep slime, he grinned back at the girls, blinking and shaking his head again as another brief burst glooped out of the pipe to splash on to him. His heavy hair fell forwards across his eyes, and he tossed his head to one side to escape the downpour and look at them again.

Alex stepped carefully over the gungy yellow-green puddle on the floor and offered his hand to the doused rabbit boy, his fur dripping all over with the stringy mixture. He hauled one arm out of the stuff to grab on, and shivered as drips of it slithered stickily down his raised arm. Struggling upright, he reached around to his back to hold on to his soaked and tightly clinging swimming shorts embarrassedly.

He kept holding Alex's wrist as he carefully stepped out of the filled tank, back to the relative safety of the floor with its gripped surface. With strings of the gel-like gunge dripping from all over him, he left a shiny trail behind him as he walked back to join the rest of the team. Helen looked him up and down, her hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles as he held his arms out to the sides, looking down at himself and the gooey curtains of slime dripping from all over his fur.

"It was a good try, team, but you only found three of the right valves..." Alex said, walking over to the pipes on the side of the room that Helen had been searching. "Sadly this one that Helen found was the wrong one..." He slapped his hand onto the one just above the one that had been turned, then pointed over to another two on the far wall.

"Sorry, Yasa..." Helen giggled, covering her mouth as the messy rabbit boy looked at her. "I didn't have my glasses..."

"I don't think he minds too much!" Alex said, heading for the door. "You still got fifty points for the game, and it's time to get going."

He swung the door towards him and waved for them to follow as he stepped through it, ducking under the low pipe above the top on the outside. "Watch the pipe again," he called back as he waited for the team to make their way out.

"Now - team leader!" he said as Skye ducked out last. She looked up at him as he closed the door behind them, waiting for him to continue. Jess held her breath, realizing that this was what she had been expecting.

"It's been a while since you were in a game, hasn't it?" he asked, spinning around from the door.

"Well, yeah..." she answered, rubbing a hand up and down the back of her head and neck uneasily, then sagged. "All right, what's going to happen?" she agreed, recovering and looking him in the eye as she took his hand.

"You're going to just love this," Alex laughed as he marched her back down the corridor, Skye skipping a little to keep up at first.

"I don't like the sound of that..." she said, half to herself as she looked between the various doors leading off the passageway. Striding past them all and back to the corridor corner, Alex stopped her next to the door bordered with black and yellow stripes. He took hold of the handle, put his thumb on the bolt to slide it aside, and with a smile over his shoulder as the other three team members caught up with them, pushed the heavy door open.

Jess craned her neck to see as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. They were stepping into another small side room, this one looking like an older area that wasn't used much. A couple of wide rusty pipes stretched from floor to ceiling in indents in the walls, and the lights hanging from the girders on the ceiling flickered weakly. At the end of the room, a small ramp led up to a rectangular chamber set into the wall, covered until half-way up by a metal door. The chamber was lit from above in dull green, and various blinking lights, small tubes and displays made up the back and side walls surrounding a curved metallic chair.

"You know what this is, Skye?" Alex asked, stepping forwards and turning to face her.

The husky girl squirmed, biting her lip. "It's the Hotseat, isn't it?" she asked, looking nervously over his shoulder at the machine.

"That's right, and you're going inside!" the red wolf answered, heading towards it, her hand still held in his. "Just three more correct answers and you can escape it clean..."

Jess watched as they approached it, and he pulled a switch on the wall beside the tank, making the metal door slide into the ground. The Hotseat was one of the show's most well-known games, and its specialty was covering its victim from all angles in all kinds of gunge and grime. It was also infamously difficult to escape - she couldn't remember anyone ever coming out of it clean. Skye, though, seemed pretty eager despite her nerves as she sat down and watched the door of the tank slide up to waist height to trap her inside.

"You know the game, don't you?" Alex asked her as she glanced around the inside of the tank, making her look back at him. "I've got three questions here - if they're all answered correctly then I promise you won't be gunged, but if you get just one wrong... the Hotseat starts up."

Skye nodded throughout his explanation of the game, and glanced again to her left and right, looking for the gunge nozzles in the walls.

"Actually, there is one more question before we start... you can either try and save yourself, or rely on your team mates to get you out of there. Which is it going to be?"

Skye thought for a moment, leaning forward and putting her hand on the side of her muzzle, stroking it up and down. "I think... I've got a better chance if they do it," she decided.

"All right!" Alex hopped down from the raised section of the floor and returned to the others, pointing to a projection screen above the door. Jess stepped to the other side of the room to let the others line up in front of it and looked at Alex as he reached the door and turned around.

"Now, you've been in this situation before - the computer's going to ask three questions," he said, pointing to the screen. "Each of you has to answer one of them, but you're not allowed to speak apart from to give answers - so you can't discuss among each other!" The three of them glanced at each other as he continued. "If all three questions are answered correctly, then the tank will open and Skye can get out - but if not, then she gets covered in all the muck and other nasty stuff that's built up around it."

Jess looked over her shoulder along with the others, watching Skye bounce nervously in the seat, looking up into the hidden mechanism at the top of the tank.

"Ready?" Alex asked, making them face the front again. With a nod from them, he stepped back and the lights dimmed, leaving only the green light from the top of the gunge tank behind them. A dim shadow moved around the room as Skye shifted in the seat.

"True or false?" the mechanical voice read out. "You have more bones when you're born than you do as an adult."

Jess looked down from the board and glanced at the two others. Yasa pointed to himself, raising his eyebrows to indicate he knew the answer, and turned back to the screen as the girls nodded.

"True," he declared loudly, making Helen jump. Jess looked over to Alex, who was now leaning relaxedly against the wall next to the door, but he just looked up at the screen as the question faded out and was replaced by another one.

About to answer it, Jess opened her mouth, but stopped as the catgirl took a breath too, and she sagged relievedly as she shouted out the answer that she had been about to give. But her relief at being sure that they had got that answer right was quickly replaced by new tension as she realized that everything was now up to her.

"Before we converted to the international language, what word would you have used to mean 'a bird'?" the monotone voice read out.

Jess gulped, only slightly relieved to see three choices appear on the screen - 'Kiki', 'Kimi' and 'Kibi'. Even though it had been phased out years before she had been born, the older language was still taught as a separate subject in schools and she tried to think back to her lessons on it. She stared at the three words, mouthing them to herself, and slowly shook her head.

"'Kimi' looks the most familiar of them..." she said aloud, then stopped as she realized she wasn't supposed to talk to the others. "Kimi", she repeated quickly, and looked over at Alex again. His expression still not giving anything away, he pushed himself off the wall and walked back over to them as the lights came back up.

"Any idea how they've done, Skye?" he asked as the three of them turned to look at her. She took a deep breath and let it out, looking tensely up into the chute above her head as he strolled over to his left to put his hand on Yasa's shoulder.

"A bit unlikely, the idea of losing bones, isn't it, Yasa?" he asked.

The rabbit boy shook his head, smiling self-assuredly for the first time on the show. Alex shrugged.

"Well, I try to make people worried about their answers here, but nothing gets past you... bones fuse together as you grow up, so you don't have as many as you did when you were born. Good!" He moved along the row so that he was standing next to Helen.

"Helen... very confident as well," he said. She turned around to look up at him, eyes wide open and with a smile on her face. "And she got hers right! You've got two out of three, at least..."

Jess grimaced uncomfortably as Alex strolled towards her, shuffling her feet on the ground and knowing that everyone was looking at her.

"And Jess... she had a hard question, and she looks pretty nervous about it..." She looked up as Alex put his hands on her shoulders, gently turning her around to face the tank and crouching down so that their faces were level. The husky girl drummed her fingers on the edges of the seat, practically bouncing as she waited to hear her fate, and Jess shivered as she was reminded that she alone was responsible for the result of the game and Skye's immediate future.

Alex interrupted her thoughts as he spoke again. "And as it happened... she got it wrong." With that, he stood up and took a step back.

Jess covered her mouth in surprise, and watched the husky girl's shocked expression turn into a sickly grimace as she realized what that meant. Her eyes widened as a loud click sounded, and with a slurping noise, two translucent green jets of gunge shot towards her from the walls of the tank.

Skye yipped as the green stuff slapped on to her shoulders, drawing her arms in tighter and squeezing her hands between her thighs as she hunched her shoulders up to protect her neck. She closed her eyes, a grin spreading on her face, as the streams angled up slowly to go up to her shoulders and eventually her cheeks, sticky globs of the stuff rolling down her chest and sides and dripping to the floor.

As the green sprays tilted down the way, she wriggled from side to side making them spray on to her back and tummy, giggling at the ticklish feeling of it on her waist. Suddenly a hooter blared and she disappeared under a wide flood of yellow gunge from the ceiling with a loud squeak.

Jess laughed as the smooth custard-like liquid domed out over Skye's head, the upturned bowl shape spilling outwards and breaking as it hit the continuing side sprays. Her hands poked through the twitching dome briefly as she brought them up to protect her face, leaning out to the side to get her head away from the slimy downpour. Sliding her slippery arm around to the side of her head, she moved it up to cover her ear, shaking her coated head to try and get the gunge off as she struggled underneath the flow.

As quickly as it had begun, the flood from the ceiling shut off, leaving the husky girl to straighten up again, batting at the continuing green jets of goo slapping at her waist. Her eyes were firmly squeezed shut but she still had a grin on her face as she wriggled up in the seat, the yellow layer of gunge sliding down her body and dripping from her soaked hair and muzzle. At that moment the klaxon whooped and the yellow stuff splurged down from the ceiling again, a little further forward this time and splattering heavily into Skye's lap.

The husky girl leaned backwards and to the other side this time, her hands out in front of her and shaking her head to try and keep her face away from the gungy wave. A couple of streaks of slime licked over the door and dribbled slowly down the way as the flood subsided.

The klaxon continued as Skye gradually became visible again, a mess of yellow and translucent green gunge. As the sprayers at her sides slowly eased back, making a dribbling sound as the green stuff slopped into the puddle at the bottom of the tank, she brought her hands up to her eyes and used two fingers on each one to wipe the slimy stuff away from them, dragging her hands down her muzzle to clear it off. She froze as the klaxon abruptly dropped to a continuous lower blare, and just had time to bring her hands back to her eyes before a thick column of heavy black grime poured in from the ceiling.

Jess glanced to the side to see the others' expressions as Skye was covered in the lumpy slop - Yasa was gaping fascinatedly into the tank and Helen was giggling a little to herself, looking embarrassed at watching what was happening. She turned back to watch as the goo slithered all over the husky girl after pouring onto her head, not doming out but creeping down and sticking to her messy fur, mingling with the bright yellow to form a murky dark green and making a hideous glooping noise as thick streams of it dripped off her. Skye rocked back and forward, her hands just visible balled up next to her head as the gunk slid over them.

After tilting from side to side a little and slapping on to her shoulders, the black stuff eventually eased off, the last few dollops smacking heavily on to the husky girl's head as she slowly sat upright. She dragged her hands over her messy face, clearing it off a little, and hesitantly blinked her eyes open, their color showing up brightly against the rest of her mucky fur.

Slapping her gungy hands on to her knees with a wet smacking noise, she managed another smile out at the others. The gunk oozing and dripping from all over her made a continuous slapping sound as it hit the bottom of the tank. She gasped, twitching as the gooey streams from the sides spurted into life again, slurping against her waist and cleaning a little of the black stuff on her sides and shoulders away as they played up and down.

Jess realized that she was holding her hands over her mouth, and slowly dropped them to her sides, giggling as the gunged husky girl sighed to herself, sagging down as the streams finally shut off. Her once gray fur was almost completely hidden under a murky layer of mixed dark and light glop, which was still running down and mingling into itself with every slight movement she made. As the lights in the rest of the room flickered back into life, Alex energetically stepped up beside the dripping gunge machine.

"Well, Skye," he started, smiling cheerfully in at her as she raised her head under the weight of the gloop to look him in the eye, "I'm afraid you didn't quite escape in the end, but two questions right means that that gunging earned you fifty points for the team." With a quiet laugh, she rolled her eyes and nodded.

"How did it feel to be gunged by Jess?" he asked nonchalantly. Jess's mouth fell open and tried to stutter something by way of apology, but the husky girl's shoulders shook in a laugh as she brought her hands up to wipe at her shoulders.

"I'll get my own back on her later," she said simply. She wiped at her eyes again, trying to clean the rest of her face off with her other hand.

"Well, the good news is that we're at the end of the second round and it's time to get you into the showers. I hope that there's some water in the reserve tanks somewhere... Anyway, fifty points for the game brings you up to..." - he brought up his pocket computer again and idly tapped at the screen - "well, the same as you had in the last round, actually. Another two hundred and sixty brings you up to a half-time score of 520!"

The husky girl nodded relievedly, bringing her hands up and letting the black ooze trickle from the ends of her fingers. She shuffled back in the seat as Alex pulled the switch next to the tank, making the metallic door slide back into the floor, then carefully put a foot down on the slippery floor. Alex took her hand to help her up and she unsteadily got out of the tank, revealing the yellow and green stained chair and back wall just before the door slid closed again.

"Come on, let's go and get you cleaned up..." he reassured her as he led her towards the door. "Skye, I have to say to you - that was pretty spectacular..."

Jess walked behind them as they left the room and headed back down the corridor they'd just come from, Skye dragging the murky gunge off her face and flicking it to the floor or towards Alex. She shuddered as she became aware of the remnants of the slippery green slime she'd been covered with still clinging to her - she was looking forward to being clean again at least for a little while.

Midgame

Alex opened a hatch at the end of the corridor and showed them through. Looking around for a moment, Jess realized they were in the wide entrance passageway again. After a brief run down the corridor, they arrived breathlessly at the room that they had started in.

"We've actually got a bit of a treat for you just before you get cleaned up," Alex said as he approached the door that led back to the changing rooms. "Did you see the last show on series two, where we asked that dragon girl Gwen to come back so we could gunge her again?" he asked.

Jess looked around - Skye and Yasa nodded enthusiastically, but Helen looked like she hadn't seen it either.

"Well, we're going to start using that tank as the new middle section of the show, and if you want to wait for a while in the front area, you can watch what happens." With a grin, he held the door open for them. "Enjoying yourselves so far?"

Jess laughed and joined in Skye's cheer - even Yasa nodded enthusiastically, his nerves completely gone.

"All right - get yourselves washed up, and enjoy it while it lasts, because I don't think you'll be able to stay clean long!"

He waved the four of them through, and Jess turned back to watch as he gave a final nod and let go of the door, dashing off to the side as it swung closed. She turned around to see that a small TV screen had been set up on the central table. Helen sat down on the bench to watch, but the others stayed standing as she approached to get a look at the screen.

It was showing a view of another room, similar in size to the game room they had just left, judging by what they could see of it. This one had a wide tank set into the wall, about four feet across, with a plastic front that was curved slightly outwards. Inside the booth were two young red-haired tigresses wearing black IZ bikinis similar to the team's clothing, sitting side by side on an inflatable sofa-like chair and whispering nervously to each other. As they watched, the two girls turned their heads as the door opened, and Alex walked in to the room.

"Hi, girls!" he said cheerily, strolling towards them with his hands behind his back as the door clicked shut. The girl on the right jiggled one knee up and down nervously as he approached.

"Hiya," the other feline answered, but giving away her nerves by fiddling with her hair with one hand as she spoke. Suddenly she seemed to realize what she was doing and flicked it back behind her shoulders, bouncing slightly in the inflatable seat. She had slightly longer hair than the other girl beside her, but otherwise they looked very similar, each with a wide stripe pattern on their fur that gave way to white on their breasts, tummies and the inside of their thighs.

"How are you feeling?" he continued, stopping at the opposite side of the tank and resting his elbows on its curved door as he leaned down to talk to them.

"Just a little nervous," the girl who had spoken before said, putting her arm around the other one, who nodded in agreement.

"Let me check before we start - which one's which?" With a grin, Alex leaned in further and the three of them said a few words that the team watching on the monitor couldn't hear.

"All right!" Alex stepped to the side of the tank, spinning around. "These two lovely felines are Ginger... and her sister Anise," he started, extending a hand to each of them in turn. "They're identical twins, they're both twenty-one and earlier this year we received applications from both of them to be on this series of IZ." He dropped his arm to his side, fished around in his pocket for the computer and turned to talk to them. "Can you tell me why you wanted to come on?" he asked.

"She made me put my name down," Anise pouted, poking her finger into her sister's side. "So we had twice the chance of one of us getting on."

"So you're the one that's the IZ fan?" he asked, turning to Ginger.

"Yep," she answered with a nod. "I'm the one who said we should go on, but Anise watches it too."

"Well, being twins, if only one of you were picked you could always have sent the other one on to the show and we'd never have known," Alex smiled. Ginger looked down at her feet and bit her lip, trying not to laugh.

"That's what you were planning on?" the red wolf leaned down to ask her, and she burst into a giggle. Shaking his head, he straightened up again.

"I should gunge you both just for that," he said, then stepped back and cleared his throat. "OK, as it turned out you weren't lucky enough to be randomly picked for one of the teams, but we set this up as the next best thing for you. You're going to be given a certain little challenge from this computer," he said, waving the device in front of them. The two of them watched it, Ginger bringing an arm up to tuck her hair behind her head again.

"Once I read out the challenge, you'll have thirty seconds to answer. If the timer hits zero before you give the right answer, then the tank will start up, and you know what that means..."

The two of them looked back together at the long grate that ran all the way around the tank behind them at head height, then at the nozzles set into the ceiling above them.

"Sure you want to go through with this?" he asked.

"Yeah." Ginger answered, and the girls both nodded in response.

"Not that I would let you back out now anyway! Ginger and Anise, to avoid getting gunged..." He raised the palmtop up and laughed a little to himself at what was on the screen. The twins put their arms around each other as they waited to be told. "...Recite the alphabet backwards! Good luck!"

He tapped a trigger on the wall and stepped back, starting a light but insistent beeping noise that signalled each second going past. The girls looked at each other, wide-eyed, and Anise brought her hand round to count on her fingers as she started.

"Z, Y, X..." she began, then paused. Her sister opened her mouth to say something, but they both burst into giggles.

"They ask this one all the time," Skye said, tapping her foot on the floor as she watched the twins struggle to think of the next letter. "I spent all yesterday going through it in my head just in case it came up!"

Yasa glanced back at her, then took a step towards the screen to get a closer listen.

"W!" Ginger exclaimed. "Then V..."

"U, T," her sister joined in, nodding her head in time to her saying the letters.

The two of them looked at each other again, whispering between themselves as Alex nonchalantly took a couple of paces away.

"S, Q, R..." Ginger began again. A buzzer sounded, and the two of them jumped, squealing in shock.

"Not quite right, try that bit again!" Alex called to them, turning round and beginning to walk back to the side of the booth.

"S," repeated Ginger.

"R, then Q..." Anise added, tensely twisting her thumb in the hip of her bikini bottoms.

As the quiet beeping sound got gradually more insistent, Anise shuffled towards her sister, shaking her head as she looked around the tank. With a nervous squeak, she leaned to cuddle into her, putting her forehead on her shoulder to protect her face.

Laughing, Ginger put her arm round her as she tried to concentrate, but sagged as a louder ticking noise started up.

"Uh..." she began, a sickly grin forming on her face. She cuddled Anise a little more against her, bouncing her as she cowered on her shoulder. "P... O..."

The "O" turned into a shocked screech as the familiar gunge tank siren blared over her. She squeezed her eyes shut, hunching her shoulders up in preparation, and a moment later, two fans of light green gunge spewed sideways on to the twins from the grates at the side of the booth.

Anise gave a loud squeak as the goo splattered on her back, splashing lightly out and running down her fur. She hunched her neck as the flow got a little stronger, putting one arm behind her head. Ginger stayed still, an uncomfortable grin on her face as it soaked into her red hair, plastering it against the side of her face before dripping down on to her shoulder and sliding down to cover her right hand side. She shook her head, one eye closed against the deluge.

A couple of seconds later, the green streams eased off gradually, leaving a coating of ooze on the sisters as they splashed down them and eventually became weak enough to pour straight down the walls. Ginger brushed her messy hair out of her face, pushing it back behind her head, and Anise leaned up to look around. Nervously, she turned to face out of the tank again, her front still clean apart from two gooey green streams dripping down past her shoulders. She glanced to her left at the gungy downpour, putting her arm further around Ginger and gripping her side, then her eyes widened as a wave of orange gunge splurged on to them both from the long grate at the back of the tank.

The twins leaned forward together under its weight, the orange stuff slithering around their shoulders and dripping stickily through their fur. Looking at each other, they managed a grin together, Ginger's shoulders shaking with giggles as the goo ran down her back. Occasionally an orange wave would lick over their heads, and Anise brought her free hand up to grip the back of her soaked hair, ducking down as she quickly brought her face to the front again. Seeing the tank filling up around their ankles with a gungy orange-green mixture, she opened her mouth and gave a scream that turned into a laugh as she pulled her feet out of the rising slime, the murky gunge dripping stickily from her bare toes.

Grinning at the sight of her sister's gungy feet, Ginger swished her toes in the slime, hunching her neck and closing her eyes as another splash landed on her head, slithering down her fringe to cover her face. With one hand up to brush the gunge off her ears, she froze as the klaxon began sounding again. Sidling closer to her sister on the now slippery seat, she looked up just as the nozzle above her head started pouring in a thick dark blue column of gunge.

Ginger quickly faced forwards again, her shocked expression visible for a split-second before the heavy gunge began doming out from her head, hiding her from view. Anise turned away from the gooey upturned bowl shape as it splurged towards her, letting go of her sister and putting both hands up beside her face to defend herself. Suddenly, the nozzle above her started up, instantly covering her in a green dome that twitched as she jumped in the seat underneath it.

As her downpour eased off, dribbling on to her muzzle and then moving backwards to the back of her neck, Ginger leaned out to the side and shook her hair out, her mouth open in a shocked smile. She stretched one hand out and put it on the tank's side, leaving a bright streak on the wall as she looked down to watch the gunge level rise over her tummy. She ran a hand through her completely coated hair and flicked it to the floor as the blue downpour splattered off the side of her back and oozed down to join the gunge pool. Anise's hands came up to her forehead and she poked her green-stained face out of the gooey curtain, glancing between her sister and the slime's surface. Sighing as she felt the downpour subside, she slithered her gunge-coated hands down the sides of her face and flicked her heavy hair backwards.

At that moment, a louder alarm sounded. The girls looked at each other just before the grilles at the sides of the tank burst into life again, and a thick column of a blue and green mixture crashed down into the tank between them.

With the twins completely hidden by the flood of gunge, the tank filled up completely and slime began to spill stickily over its shoulder-height door, drops of it breaking away and splattering heavily on to the floor in front. Quickly, the three streams eased off, leaving two unrecognizable gungy shapes cuddled into each other in the middle of the pool.

Slowly, the two of them separated and looked up, with Ginger tentatively bringing her hands up to wring out her hair. Thick drops from the nozzles surrounding them dripped into the tank, landing on their heads or the thick, gooey surface of the deep pool they were sitting in. Anise blinked, her eyes just visible underneath the dripping, oozing green layer, and brought her hands up to her top, holding one hand over her slippery chest as she hiked the straps of her bikini securely back onto her shoulders.

As the siren faded away, the only noise left was the continuous gooey dripping noise of the pipes around them and the curtain of slime slithering over the tank's door. Turning towards her sister, Anise managed a brief squeamish grin, her white teeth showing up against the murky blue and green gunge she was coated with.

"Well, girls..." Alex said with a smile, scratching the back of his neck with his hand. "I don't think I need to tell you this, but you did run out of time." He picked his way over the slippery gunge puddle on the floor and leaned down to talk to them. "Are you both all right in there?"

The pair of them nodded. Anise pulled her arms out of the gunge bath, the movement sending another wave of gooey liquid over the door of the tank. Alex stepped back as it dripped stickily to the floor, and watched her gather up her heavy hair, tucking it behind her head. Her sister looked on, laughing as she wiped the gunge away from her eyes, then raised an arm up out of the pool. After watching the slippery stuff drip in a curtain from her arm, she put it around her sister, wiping off her hair with her free hand. Anise twitched at the feeling, then brought her own hand up to smush a handful of gunge on to Ginger's head. Shaking her head to get her sticky hair out of her face, she suddenly changed her mind and reached towards Alex, who quickly leaned up and out of the way.

"Now, you only got just under halfway, so we're going to have to leave you in there... but you've got the other half of the team's games to look forward to, and we might even get someone around eventually to clean you up if we feel like it..."

Smiling at the giggle from the pair of them, he stepped back. A hissing noise started up, and the girls squeaked together as two jets of white pie foam started up from the ceiling, crossing over before they sprayed down on to their heads. The blobs of foam stuck to their hair and coated the gungy surface around them in a layer of white.

"I'd better go before it starts up again," Alex said as they straightened up, the spray subsiding to a few drops from the ceiling. "Thanks for coming on!"

The girls waved at him as he stepped out of the view of the camera, then turned back to each other. Anise, sighing with relief that it was over and giggling helplessly, shook her head and cuddled into her sister again as the team watched a stagehand step forward to begin the process of letting them out.

"That was amazing!" whooped Skye, turning towards Jess and clapping her hands together, spraying a few drops of heavy gunk out from between them. "Do you think they've got anything like that lined up for us?"

Jess grinned and looked over at Helen, who was still watching with her hand over her mouth, wide-eyed. She turned around to look at Yasa, still frozen in place where he'd walked to during the game.

"Time to get cleaned up, Yasa!" she called over. He jumped, startled, as his name was mentioned, but kept his eyes on the screen.

"...Yeah." After a moment, the rabbit boy swallowed and turned away from them, heading towards the "Male" door. Jess smiled after him as she noticed he was walking just a little hunched over, and followed Skye and Helen into the showers.

Round 3

Jess reluctantly turned off the warm water spray, twisting the dial on the wall to start up the fur drier in its place. She shuffled to turn herself around in the small cubicle as the jets of hot air gently ruffled her fur, thinking about the weird feeling of being submerged in the slime booth, and as welcome as being clean felt, finding herself hoping that it would happen again before the show was over. Like Alex had said before they'd started, she'd completely forgotten about them being filmed, and suddenly thought about what she had looked like from the cameras' point of view.

She shuddered, half from thinking about it and half because the warm drier turned off automatically at that moment. She moved to press the start button again, but stopped, deciding she had better not keep the others waiting. Stepping out of the cubicle and reaching for her towel on the front of the door, she realized she could still hear the spray of another shower. She turned to see Skye standing in the open shower area, facing the back wall, holding both pieces of her bikini in one of her outstretched hands as she turned slowly from side to side underneath the steamy water spray. The large shower had got all the gunge from the Hotseat off her quickly, but she was enjoying the shower as much as Jess had.

Leaving her alone, Jess grabbed her towel and crept back through to the changing area, where the clothing table was still set up. After dumping her slightly stained swimwear in the basket underneath it, she reached for one of the one-piece swimsuits again, but then decided that she was more confident than before and moved her hand over to grab a bikini like the other two girls were wearing.

Dabbing the remaining water out of her fur with a corner of the towel that she had tightly wrapped around her, she padded over to the changing cubicle that she'd been in before the start of the show and locked it behind her. Turning to the thin mirror again, she smiled to herself as she tugged the towel off, and put her arms behind her head to wipe at her hair.

Eventually she decided that she wouldn't be able to get her hair much drier, and dropped the towel, turning to sit down as she picked up the bikini bottoms from the bench. She pulled them on, wriggling her hips to get into them comfortably, then reached around her back to hook up the top.

Standing up to take a last look in the mirror before leaving, she remembered that her hair was still loose. She unlocked the door and headed for the compartments on the other side of the room to look in her bag, but turned to the changing room door instead, deciding to leave it as it was.

Ready to go again, she pushed the door open and stepped back into the front area of the changing rooms. Helen and Skye were already waiting, sitting next to each other on the far bench, and Alex was in the middle of saying something to them. He stopped and turned his head as he heard the door.

"Welcome back! What did you think of Ginger and Anise's game?" he asked.

"It was... pretty amazing," she responded, once again shivering a little at the thought of being utterly covered by the machine she'd seen the two tigresses inside.

"Yeah, the designer was pretty proud of that one. I know we try and keep the crew invisible for the show, but I'll make sure you meet the mind that came up with that thing after we finish. You'll meet the two of them, too - they're going to play a small part in making things a little more difficult for you in the last game."

Jess grinned but stayed quiet, heading for the bench opposite the other two. She'd been nervous in the first half of the show, but she was looking forward to going back to it again and determined not to look as scared as she knew she had appeared so far.

"They're both getting cleaned up just now... We have a wetroom with water sprayers on all sides right off the room you were watching them in, cause when you've been in that gunge tank you really need one nearby. I know that Yasa was lucky enough to have the big shower in there to himself, too..." Alex smiled as he pointed towards the male changing rooms. Helen raised her head and looked like she was about to say something, but stopped and smiled quietly instead. "How was that?"

"Yeah, it's fantastic," Yasa grinned. "I hardly wanted to come out."

"So if Skye's in the one in there, I think she's going to be a while..." Alex stepped across the room and sat down beside Jess.

"What's this new final game like, then?" Yasa eagerly leaned across the bench.

Alex grinned at his enthusiasm, nonchalantly putting his bare feet up on the table and crossing his legs. "Do you really want to know, or do you want it to be a surprise?"

"Just the... basic idea," the rabbit boy continued. Jess nodded as the red wolf stretched, giving himself time to think about how to explain it.

"Hmm..." He rubbed his chin with one hand. "You know how the final room from the last two seasons was laid out?" The three of them nodded. "It's a lot like that to start off with - the three of you are going to have a key each to find in a set of obstacles. After that, you've got to jump down into a vat like before, except this one's not full of water..."

Jess looked across to the other bench as Yasa clapped his hands together once, grinning as he leaned back.

"I knew you'd like that bit," he flashed a smile back. "The main new part happens after that - you have however much time you have left after finding the keys to climb up an inflatable ramp towards where Skye will be sitting," he continued, gesturing with his hands to illustrate. "She'll have avoided all the mess so far, but if you don't get to the top and use the card keys to let her out in time, then we easily make up for that..."

"What happens?" the rabbit boy asked as Alex tailed off.

"I don't want to give it away. You'll see!"

"I can hardly wait," he answered, nodding.

"Well, we've got plenty of things to keep you going before then. Two more rounds, with some of the old favorites as well as a couple of things that we've never tried on anyone before!"

"Don't they get you to test them out before you use them on people?" the rabbit asked enthusiastically.

"Who, me personally?" the red wolf asked back, pointing at himself. Yasa nodded. Jess watched Helen perk up, suddenly interested.

Alex scratched the back of his neck. "Well, most of the time it's the game designers that have to try them first, and I don't have much to do with the design work. But yeah, when I've been around while they're testing they've got me to go into a few of them too."

"Which ones have you been in?" Jess smiled at the relentlessness of Yasa's questioning and Alex's unusual discomfort under it - he was asking things that she quite wanted to know, too.

"Well," - he breathed out, thinking - "You must have seen me in the final tank at the end of the last series..." The rabbit boy nodded. "They tried out most of the new games on me this season, too. Oh... and you'll love this - I have been in the Sludgecube."

Yasa leaned back and triumphantly pumped his hands in the air. Jess's smile broke into a grin as she looked across at Helen - it was pleasant to think of Alex getting a taste of what she'd seen him do to so many other people.

Alex knew they were enjoying the thought. "Someone on the engineering team heard that my birthday was coming up, so they got the new one finished ahead of time secretly so they could put me in it. I made sure that I dragged a couple of them into it with me, though... it's fun, but you really feel like you need a shower afterwards."

"I can imagine," Helen commented, a little grimace on her face at the thought of that room. Jess shared her feelings about it - as its name suggested, it had been one of the muckiest games on the show, and she had been quietly glad that they hadn't experienced it yet themselves.

"How about the Hotseat?" Helen continued after a pause.

"Nah, I've never been gunged on the Hotseat. Sorry!" The red wolf leaned back, putting his hands behind his head. "I know there are a lot of people who want to see that, though - my partner, who's one of the video editors, designed that one, and we made sure we used it on her when we invited her to take part in the show herself."

"Yeah, I saw when you did that." Yasa nodded.

"It's a good one, isn't it?" Alex chuckled, shuffling to sit more upright again. "I know Skye enjoyed it, even though I think she's a bit more nervous than she's letting on."

"Yeah..." Jess nodded, still feeling a little guilty about being the one responsible for Skye's gunging.

They continued talking about the games that they'd been in so far, Alex telling them about how each game had been thought up or how other teams had done on them in past shows. Over time, Jess noticed Yasa become more quiet again, staring off into space and not paying attention to what the others were saying.

"What did you think of being under the Pod, Yasa?" Alex called to get the rabbit boy's attention. He jolted upright at the mention of his name, making Jess and Helen laugh a little.

"Sorry," he grinned sheepishly between them. "I was..." - he glanced at Helen again for a moment - "thinking about Ginger and Anise's gunging again."

Alex smiled and nodded knowingly. "You'll be seeing a lot more of that thing, too - over the series we're going to have a few people going in who applied but didn't make it onto the teams, and a few star guests as well. Even I was pretty surprised at some of the people they've convinced to go in there..."

"Who have you got so far?" Yasa asked.

"I've been giving too much away already - you don't want all the surprises spoiled, do you?"

"Just one?" the rabbit boy persisted, leaning keenly forwards.

"Oh, all right. This should keep you quiet..." Alex leaned back a little before swinging himself upright, and walked around the table to where he was sitting. Jess shuffled forward to try and listen as he bent down to lift one of Yasa's ears, Helen leaning out of the way. He whispered a couple of words to him and let go of his ear again.

Yasa's mouth had dropped open as soon as Alex had spoken to him. "What?! You're kidding,"  he said after a moment, putting one hand up to flick his ear back into place. Alex ignored him, turning away and sauntering back to the other bench with his hands behind his back. Jess looked up at his face, about to ask what he had said to him, but turned her head as the changing room door opened.

"Skye!" Alex clapped his hands as the gray husky emerged, clean and dry again. "We've just been talking about the new final - basically, you're going to be relying on these three to save you from getting covered."

"Great," she answered. It was meant to sound sarcastic, but she didn't sound entirely uninterested.

Alex smirked, and turned towards the door. "Want to get back in there?" he asked as the others got up. Yasa leapt to his feet and stepped brightly towards the door after him. "I know you do..."

Jess followed close behind as the muscular red wolf led them back through the door and down the corridor towards the main game area. Halfway down the tiled corridor he looked back over his shoulder, grinned at them and sped up to a jog, beckoning behind them as they ran to keep up. Jess felt a thrill as the mood of being in the games returned.

The corridor opened out and they were back in the circular hub room again, the Pod having been cleaned up while they were away from the set. Alex turned around and had them gather round in front of him.

"Okay, we're back, you're clean for now, but it probably won't last long as we head into the other two sections. Skye, where do you want to go first - the undersea level or the processing wing?"

"Undersea," the husky girl answered. Jess saw she was trying to appear calm, one hand on her hip and the other hanging by her side, but was slowly shifting her weight from foot to foot.

"All right! The nearest way down is through here..." Alex walked through the group, who turned and watched as he approached a hatch on the wall, slightly smaller than the doors surrounding them. Twisting its handle to open it, he reached over to a nearby shelf set into the wall and pulled down a large flashlight.

Jess followed the rest of the group over to see as he swung the hatch aside, revealing a dark area beyond with the top of a metal staircase visible going down to the right.

"You'll need these," he said, reaching up to the shelf again and handing out lights to the four of them. Jess squeezed the button to turn hers on and shone the light at the top of the stairs, peering into the darkness to get a better look.

Alex stepped into the way as he ducked through the door. Beckoning with his free hand, he slowly descended the stairs into the darkness, Skye right behind him and Helen following closely as she aimed her flashlight down at the steps.

Jess carefully followed after them, her hand firmly on the guide rail as she felt each step of the metal staircase underneath her feet. Swinging her own flashlight to the right as the stairs opened out into the darkness of the lower floor, she tried to make out what was in the room below but could only see a wide circular shape on the floor by its dim light. As she reached the bottom of the stairs she moved away to let Yasa come down as well, then followed again as Alex led them across the dark room.

The air here felt warmer, coming from a vent that she could just see running along the wall to their left. As she moved, she could hear the sounds of dripping liquid, indistinct mechanical thumps and the occasional hiss of steam coming from all around them. Shivering despite the warmth, she padded after Alex as the team arrived at a large rusty-looking hatch, a circular valve in its center.

"This is the entrance to the undersea level, team... as you can tell, it's one of the older areas, and it pretty much fell into disrepair even before the whole place was abandoned." He put down his flashlight on a nearby shelf and put both hands on the valve, acting straining to turn it. After a moment, it gave, and he spun it round a few times before pulling on the door.

Jess stepped back as she waited for it to open, but it didn't move. After tugging at it another couple of times, Alex looked down at it, rubbing his hands together, then leaned down to grab his flashlight again. He swung it towards the side of the door, where a heavy metal bar jutted out from a mechanical device on the wall, preventing it from opening. His light moved along a couple of wires to a panel on the wall, where ten square recesses, about nine inches across each, were arranged in a grid.

"Ah... we'll need to put that back together to get in. Hold on, I'll find the lights..." Alex stepped along the wall the other way, feeling it as he went, and suddenly there was a buzzing noise as the tube lights on the ceiling flickered into life.

Blinking in the sudden light, Jess looked at their surroundings. The walls and floor were made up to look metallic and rusty, brown on the floor and base of the walls giving way to a dull blue-gray color further up. She turned around to see what the circle she'd seen on the ground was. The rickety stairs they had come in by were now on the wall opposite them, and when they had gone around the edge of the room they had walked past a large circular vat that took up most of the floor, at least fifteen feet across. It looked like it was filled with thick white pie foam, like the stuff that Helen had been covered in during the first round. Looking up, she gasped as she saw a cluster of pipes of various sizes jutting down from the ceiling pointed down at the vat, ending about six feet above them.

"Well, there's only one place they could be... Put your flashlights down, you'll be needing them later!" The red wolf stepped through the group from behind, placing his light down on a rusted table as he went, and Jess grinned to herself as they all did the same and moved towards the round sunken tank.

The four of them gathered at the edge, Yasa stepping forward to crouch down and poke his hand into the airy foam that bubbled up about half a foot above the top of the vat. Watching him, Alex began to pace around the side.

"You'll be... less than pleased to know that this is basically the drain for the whole complex above us," he began. Yasa glanced back at the others, then turned towards him as he continued walking around with his back to them. "The fresh water-sprayers on the surface level drained down to here, and the water would be kept in vats like this one for a few days, so that the mud and other grime in it sank to the bottom and they could re-use it."

Yasa straightened up and hopped back to rejoin the girls as the red wolf turned to face them, standing next to the wall at the opposite side of the vat. He touched the foam tentatively with his toe, brushing some of it aside. "Come around here," he beckoned. "I think this might be the shallow end..."

The team filed around the edge, Helen brushing her hand on the wall to steady herself as she reached the narrow foot-wide section where the circular vat almost touched the flat wall. Jess followed close behind her, realizing she was nervously running her tail through her hands as she looked up to the large grimy pipes above them.

As they approached, Alex stepped forward and clapped his hand on the husky girl's shoulder. "Skye, you're the team leader..." he said, smilingly leaning in to talk to her. "Want to test the waters for us?"

"I think I'm going to pass that job on to Jess," Skye replied. Jess started at the mention of her name, and leaned over the foamy vat slightly. She shivered - she had seen a lot of the previous series, and when a vat was covered in foam there was usually something nastier underneath...

"Want to lead the way in, then, Jess?" Alex's voice brought her attention back to him, and she stuttered a little. Sensing her nervousness, the red wolf leaned down to Skye again.

"Come on, an IZ team leader sometimes has to make sacrifices... most often involving their cleanliness," he smirked as he straightened up, patting her on the back to give her a gentle nudge in the direction of the tank.

"Oh, all right." Skye gave in, and stepped forwards, curling her bare toes around the edge of the vat.

The other three watched her take a deep breath, shaking her hands slightly, and after a moment, she bent her knees and hopped a little forward to jump in. As her feet vanished under the white foam, she shrieked, flailing her hands up as a mucky wave splashed out around her, revealing that the tank was filled with thick muddy slime underneath the foamy surface, and staining the surrounding foam a mixture of deep red and green.

With an unpleasant slurping noise, Skye sank up to her tummy in the gunk, stumbling a little as her feet found the bottom of the tank. Breathing heavily from the shock, the husky girl looked down squeamishly, her hands still held tensely at chest height. Slowly, she reached down to brush some of the foam out of the way. More of the murky, lumpy-looking gunge underneath the white layer was revealed as she walked unsteadily forwards, leaving a trail of pushed-aside foam behind as the surface rippled unsteadily around her. She looked up at Alex, a sickly grimace on her face.

Jess looked anxiously down at the swamp-like surface that had been revealed, wobbling and rippling slowly and heavily. She shuddered as she imagined being in the stuff, and looked up as Alex spoke again.

"Somewhere in that gunge vat are ten electronic cubes. There's no time limit on this game, but you'll be scored on how quickly you get all ten of them out of there and into the panel on the wall to unlock the door," he continued, strolling around to the far side of the vat as Skye bobbed up and down, a ring of mixed lumpy gunge visible on her light gray-furred tummy. Getting to the opposite side, he turned and spun a valve on the wall. "Oh, and watch out for those..." he added, pointing upwards. The four of them looked up to see the pipes looming down from the ceiling. Skye stepped to the side to get out from directly underneath one.

"All ready?" Alex asked, getting their attention again. Helen and Yasa stepped forward to the rim of the vat, and Jess watched the rabbit boy look down thoughtfully at the frothy surface at the edge. The catgirl glanced over as well and smiled as he pulled his T-shirt off over his head, discarding it on the floor behind him.

"Probably a good choice, Yasa... all right, start looking!" Alex pointed his controller over at the wall and pressed it, starting a timer above the panel counting upwards. Immediately, Skye dropped down further, looking like she was feeling around with her hands underneath the surface as she bobbed around.

Yasa dipped a foot through the foam into the gunge vat, gritting his teeth a little as he knelt down awkwardly to turn around and ease himself into it. Helen, looking similarly reluctant, copied his way of getting in, crawling in backwards as she squeaked at the feeling of lowering herself into the ooze.

Jess stepped forward and was about to get in too, when Skye hauled herself upwards again and heavily raised her gunge-coated arms, holding a cube up in the air as she half-walked, half-bounced towards the edge. She grimaced, turning her face away as lumps of the sludgy mixture slithered down her raised arms and down to her sides to settle on the rippling surface. Jess put her arms out as she approached, taking the slime-coated object from her and moving around the vat towards the panel on the wall.

She stretched up to one of the slots at the top of the panel and slid the cube into it, pushing on its outside face as much as she could to slide it into place. A light came on behind it, showing dimly through the muck, and she ran back to the edge of the vat to watch the three of them bobbing around. The red and green gunge was being churned into a sickly brown color as they moved around the tank.

A crude alarm blared from the top of the room, and the three of the team in the gunge vat immediately looked up. Skye gasped and tried to quickly straighten up to dodge to the side, closing her eyes, and yelped as she was caught on the side of the head by a heavy column of red gunge. It splattered outwards from her head and shoulder as she turned away, the gunk slapping through the foam and onto the thick surface with a loud glooping noise.

Wading backwards away from where the slime had come down and brushing at the side of her hair, Skye swiveled around and stooped again, up to her chest in gunge as she felt around for the next cube.

Jess waited at the side of the vat as the three of them wallowed around in the stuff, the bubbly foam gradually disappearing and revealing more of the mucky surface. Occasionally, a wave of gunge caused by the movement would slop lazily over the side, forming a slippery puddle around the circle's edge. Carefully stepping along the side, Jess stooped down as Helen breathlessly raised a gunge-coated cube onto the floor. She grinned up at her, her pink fur caked in a thick muddy coat up to her neck, before turning and putting her arm out to push the gunk aside as she headed back towards the middle.

Jess dashed over to put this second cube in, and turned around just as the siren sounded another time. The three of them looked up again in unison, and this time Helen was the one to stumble out of the way, flopping forwards and half-swimming to escape as a thick dark green downpour splurged down around her. She took a moment to stay still and wipe at her gunk-plastered chest as the other two both came up at the same time, clutching a cube each.

Gathering up Skye's one first, Jess carried them both over to the door with one eye on the timer. Over a minute had already gone past.

"How many have we got?" Yasa called over his shoulder as she slid the fourth cube into place.

"Six more..." Jess stopped as the hooter drowned out her words, and Yasa whipped his head round to watch as another gooey torrent spewed out of a pipe, landing next to Skye and slowly buckling the surface. "Six more to go!" she repeated as he waded awkwardly forward, feeling with both his hands and feet.

"Here's one!" he said as she approached, bobbing down a little as he struggled to get a grip on it. Eventually, he rose up again with difficulty, holding the cube proudly above his head as he waded towards Jess in a strange hip-wiggling walk against the thick liquid.

Jess reached out as far as she dared across the vat, taking the gunge-covered cube as he held it out towards her. As she gripped its sides, flinching again at the slimy liquid dripping down and covering her hands underneath it, another hooter blared and Yasa just had time to look up before a torrent of chunky green stuff splattered down into his face.

Jumping back, she held the cube to her chest as she watched him struggle underneath the gunge, his head bobbing just above the surface as it shut off again. Slowly and heavily, he straightened up, curtains and dollops of mixed brown gunk slopping off him from all over his bare fur and his hair plastered thickly to his head with the green stuff. He looked down at himself, blinking his eyes, and grinned squeamishly as one hand came up to push his matted hair up behind his head again.

Turning around and wading back towards the middle, he playfully dipped a hand into the vat to slop a wave towards Helen as she approached the side. She dodged out of the way as quickly as the viscous liquid allowed, and wallowed to the edge to set the cube in her hands down on dry land.

Distracted by the sight of her three increasingly coated team mates in the gunge vat and still a little unsure whether she wanted to go in herself or not, Jess remembered about the panel on the wall and turned to dash towards it. Behind her, she heard another heavy slurping noise accompanied by squeaks and giggles as another torrent spewed down into the vat.

Sliding the slippery plastic cube into its place, she turned around to run back and take the sixth cube from the gungy puddle forming around it on the floor. As she approached, Yasa bobbed forwards again and stretched to tip another cube out of his hands and on to the side.

Jess took both of them, feeling the gunge on each one soak into her swimwear and tummy fur as she ran back over to the board on the wall. Dumping the slippery objects on the floor as she approached, she lifted them one by one into the panel on the wall, looking over at the increasing timer. When she turned around to go back to the vat, Skye was hauling herself out, levering herself with her elbows on the side and clutching another cube in her hands.

Jess walked back to the rim of the vat and looked down into it. Almost all the foam had gone now, with little stained patches still floating on top of the mucky surface. Yasa and Helen were still stooped over and feeling around, both unrecognizable under the coating of mixed brown gunge clinging to them.

Swallowing, she sat down on the edge of the vat and slowly slid her legs down into the stuff. Gasping and wriggling as the cool ooze glooped to swallow her feet, she relaxed and shuddered as she let the rest of her white-furred legs drop in. Determinedly, she pushed herself off the side of the vat, but couldn't help letting out a screech as she sank up to her waist in the lukewarm sludge.

The cat and rabbit boy looked over at her amusedly as she settled into the muck, reluctantly dipping her hands in and then crouching down, feeling the stuff ooze over her chest and pour horribly into the top of her swimsuit. Looking up to take care that her head was above the surface, she shuffled forwards on her knees, sweeping her hands in front of her and feeling the weird sensation of the lumps of gunge moving around her.

Helen ducked down a little more, then jumped up triumphantly with the ninth cube held above her head. Jess kept her gaze on the pipes on the ceiling, and her eyes grew wider as the alarm blared at the moment she moved right underneath one of them.

Hesitating, she faced forward and screwed her face up in readiness, and suddenly felt mucky drops spatter into her face as a column of gunge crashed down into the side of the tank opposite her. Relieved, she began to open her eyes again, just as the ripple made by the disturbed gunge washed towards her.

As it hit her muzzle with a gentle smack, she turned her face to the side, spitting as she launched back to her feet again, eyes closed and breathing out heavily to clear the thick liquid out of her nose. Coughing and spluttering, she wiped her end of her muzzle with the back of her mucky hand, not getting it any cleaner, then tried to shake the clinging stuff off her palms.

Panting, she opened her eyes again and looked around for the others. To her relief, Yasa was clinging to the last of the cubes that they had to find, and she applauded for him, turning away as the motion sent gunk spraying out from between her hands, as he handed it up to Skye on the surface.

The husky girl stooped over as Yasa held the cube up, almost letting it slip out of her slimy hands before getting a grip on it. Breathlessly, Jess watched her jog towards the panel on the wall, dripping chunks of slime all the way, and she slotted the final cube into the wall. A confirmation beep sounded, the cubes flashed in sequence, and the lock on the door snicked aside.

Jess smiled to herself, still wiping at her face as she looked over at the completely coated bunny and catgirl. They turned to each other, Yasa with his arms raised up, and clapped both hands together in the air.

"You okay, Jess?" she heard Alex ask, and turned up to face him. "You look like you caught that wave badly!"

She cleared her nose again before answering. "Yeah, I'm fine," she panted, walking stickily through the muck to the side where he was standing, still eeping a little at the sludge glooping around her legs and tummy. Yasa and Helen waded up behind her, and she yelped as Yasa clapped a mucky hand onto her shoulder.

Alex looked down amusedly at the three of them bobbing in the gunge vat, the messy husky girl joining him at his side and trying to brush the clinging stuff off her fur. "I think you did pretty well there, actually - you got them all out in just under two and a half minutes, so how does fifty points for the game sound?"

"For getting this mucky?" Helen asked back. She looked down at her gunge-caked fur, hands outstretched to let the clumps of it splat back onto the surface as she stuck her tongue out in a mock disgusted expression. The others laughed a little as she tossed the drenched strands of hair out of her face.

"Well, I'll throw in a cleanup as well," the red wolf replied. "Come on out, I'll show you..."

He offered his hand down to the catgirl, and she reached up to grab his wrists, walking up the side as he began to haul her out, lumps of muddy slime splattering back down into the vat. As he tugged her legs clear of the surface, she shrieked as her heavy bikini bottoms were yanked down her legs a little, and wriggled desperately as he put her safely on the edge, whipping a hand around to pull them up as soon as he let her go.

Yasa looked up at her with an enormous grin on his face as she turned around, looking at him embarrassedly and wringing her sodden tail through her hands. As he was lifted out, she scraped some of the brown gunk off her tail, and he squeaked and turned his face away as she threw handfuls of it at him, unable to defend himself.

Alex put the rabbit boy down, and Jess watched him and Helen whisper and giggle to each other as their host put his hands out to rescue her from the vat. She held his wrists like Helen had, and braced herself as he began to pull her upwards, kicking her legs back and forward in the gunge as it seemed to suck at her. After a moment, her legs glooped out of the heavy liquid and she shuddered as she felt the clinging lumps slither down through the fur on her legs.

As he put her gently back on the ground, he walked off to the side of the room, scraping the muck off his hands as he went. Skye walked over to her. She was even more of a gungy mess than Jess was, her face and hair coated with the mucky dripping red and green mixture, and from the shoulders down looking like she'd just come out of a mudbath. The lines of her bikini were almost indistinguishable from her matted fur, and Jess glanced down at herself hoping that she didn't look as exposed. Brushing the stuff off her swimsuit, she saw Skye look towards Helen and Yasa for a moment.

"Looks like he's found his distraction..." she muttered, nodding subtly towards them as she picked drops of slime out of her ears.

"Who wants to clean up a bit before we move on?" Alex called. The four of them looked over at him - he had opened a hatch next to the door and had pulled what looked like one end of a fire hose out of it.

They all moved towards him as he indicated towards the opposite corner of the room, and the dripping husky girl was first to arrive, standing a few feet in front of him and raising her arms in the air.

Alex pressed the trigger on the side of the hose and Skye flinched as the water squirted towards her, smacking her in the chest and instantly dissolving away the worst of the muck. She spun around, running her hands through her hair as her fur color gradually became visible again.

Yasa moved his head into the path of the water as Skye walked off, scrubbing at his hair as he stepped fully in front of it. Grabbing Helen's hand as she stepped too close, he grinned and tugged her into the spray as well. Squeaking at the cold of the water at first, she gradually relaxed as Alex played the stream over both of them.

"You too, Jess - even though I think you got off lightly!" Alex beckoned her over to stand in the corner, and she yelped as he twitched the water over to splash against her fur just before the rabbit and catgirl had stepped away. The water was cold but welcome in the hot air, and she was surprised at how quickly the thick, lumpy-feeling muck slid away from her. Moving her hands around to her back and turning around, she made sure she had got it all off her white-furred tail.

Turning the hose off, Alex threw it untidily back into the hatch, prodding the tubing in with his foot, and pushed it closed. Walking over to the door, he slapped one hand onto the valve, looked back at the damp team members, and tugged it easily open with one hand.

Helen gave a small cheer as he swung the rust-colored door fully aside, revealing the darkness of the opening behind it as the hum of machinery got louder. A stream of yellow stuff dribbled from the ceiling just beyond the door.

"Oh - before I forget..." Alex leaned to one side, swinging from the open door valve, back towards the panel. He tapped a button on the side, ejecting a red card, which he took from the slot.

"That's our second key for the purifier room. And now we're in - come on!" Alex leaned over to grab the flashlight that he'd put down earlier, and stepped through the opening, swiveling to avoid the gunge pouring slowly from the ceiling. The others retrieved their own lights from the table, and stepped through to follow him in.

Jess dodged aside as she went past the dribble from the ceiling, and shone her light around the similarly rusted corridor beyond the door as she followed the dim light from Alex's direction. Similar leaks were all over the place, some coming from pipes in the ceiling and others drizzling down walls from unseen sources. They passed a couple of doors, similar to the one they had just come through, and after a few more steps the corridor opened out into a small room.

Alex had stopped, and was shining his flashlight up into his face, beckoning to them as they gathered round.

"We're in the center of the undersea level now," he started, lowering his voice and looking around as the noise of distant drips and machinery got louder for a moment. Jess shone her light around the room, looking at its irregularly angled walls, burst pipes on the ceiling and junk strewn around the edges of the floor. Patches of the floor were missing, revealing the pipes underneath as well. The corridor they had come in by was the only apparent exit, the rest of the openings from the room leading to dead ends or more of the rounded doors.

Alex bent down to put his flashlight face up on the floor, and indicated to the others to do the same. Still crouching around the cluster of  lights, he looked around at the four of them as they knelt down to face him. "Now, we've got time to put you into three games here... Skye, I think I know who you're going to volunteer."

Jess gulped and made eye contact with the husky girl, who grinned back at her. "Jess," she confirmed with a nod. They all stood up, and she looked over at Alex as he stepped around the group towards her with a smile.

"All right! Now, Jess, I think you've done a pretty good job of avoiding the gunge so far, so I'm going to give your team a chance to correct that..." Jess offered her hand, breathed out to dispel her nerves and concentrate on the excitement of being in a game again, and skipped over to one of the heavy doors with him.

She clasped her hands tensely in front of her, wondering whether it was a good idea to have worn her hair loose as he wrenched the valve to the side and opened the door. Nervously, she stepped through first.

In the center of the room, under a spotlight from the ceiling, stood a transparent inflatable chair, like the kind that Jess had at home for floating in swimming pools. The rest of the room was dimly lit, with a couple of small lights on the walls giving spots of colored light. After her eyes adjusted to the gloom she could make out two shapes jutting out from the walls on either side of the chair, about fifteen feet apart, as well as a collection of angled pipes strewn around the floor.

Alex came up behind her, putting a hand on her back to nudge her gently forwards. "Want to take a seat?" he asked.

Jess tiptoed towards the chair, her eyes on the ceiling as she turned around to sit down. Blinking as she looked into the spotlight, she flopped down into the comfortable air-filled seat, squeaking as it gave way lower than she had expected. She crossed her legs then uncrossed them again, looking down at her feet out in front of her as she put her arms on the armrests to her sides.

"This game's very simple, team - I'm going to give you one minute to gunge Jess." Alex stepped forwards, towards one of the large shapes that Jess had seen on the walls. From this angle, she could see a large red lit button on the front, next to a digital timer. Below those, right next to the floor, was a circular opening, and he pointed down towards it.

"This thing's a pump that you can use to do it, but you can see it's not connected to anything at the moment - that's your job. You've got to find a way of using these bits of tubing to connect this..." - he tapped his fingers on the top of the pump - "...to this," he finished as he pointed across the room. Jess and the others looked over to the matching machine on the other wall, with an identical opening on the front.

"Once you've connected the two together, hit this button," he continued, slapping it with his palm and sounding a buzzer that made Jess flinch, "and it'll pump a few gallons of gunge along the pipe, up through the tube on the wall, and finishing at the spout above Jess's head." Jess squirmed uneasily, squinted up into the spotlight again and glimpsed a bulky object mounted right next to it.

"Ready?" Alex asked, and she looked towards him again to see him leaning down to put his finger on another button next to the counter. Her three team mates cheered in unison, and rushed forwards as Alex started the timer.

Yasa enthusiastically flung himself down next to the pump to her left, scrabbling for a piece of tubing and then jamming one end into the opening. Feeling behind him for another, he looked over his shoulder and saw Skye approaching with two angled pieces. He grabbed them with a silent appreciative nod, and spun around to concentrate intensely on fitting them together, shuffling back away from the machine on his knees.

Leaning around the seat to see what was going on behind her, Jess saw Helen approaching as well, an already completed series of pipe pieces under her arm. Kneeling beside the rabbit boy, they struggled together to connect them, Yasa eventually standing up and reluctantly leaving her to fit the pieces in place. He stepped around the chair, flashing a grin at Jess as he did so, and she balled and unballed her fists as the catgirl slotted in the pieces handed to her by Skye one by one.

Bouncing in the seat excitedly and nervously saying some encouraging words as she watched her team mates running around her, Jess watched the pipe grow piece by piece, heading off towards the opposite wall. She glanced anxiously over at the timer as the pipe around her chair was completed, Helen crawling along as Yasa searched the floor, throwing the straight pipes in her direction.

As the length of the completed pipe got close to the machine on the far wall, Yasa picked up a whole armful of pipes and dashed over to where Helen was holding the end. She looked up at him as he dumped the pieces at his feet and knelt down beside her, hurriedly pushing each piece in and eventually wrestling with the pipe to jam it into the opening. As he got it in, the rest of the connected pipe fell off from the last piece, and diving to the ground, he quickly pushed them back together.

"Turn it on!" the rabbit boy called. Jess whipped her head round to the button on the opposite wall as Skye ran towards it, her hand outstretched to thump her palm on it as she arrived with a couple of seconds to spare.

"Yes!" Jess raised her hands up in the air to join in the cheer from the two at the other end of the pipe, then dropped them back to the chair's arms as she realized what that meant for her. Hearing a click from above her, she looked up just in time to see a heavy wet curtain fall across the spotlight on the ceiling. Tensing up, she bowed her head down and squeezed her eyes shut as the gungy downpour smacked on to the top of her head.

Dimly, she heard the familiar gunge tank siren sound from the ceiling as the stuff poured all over her, slithering down to coat her loose hair and heavy drops spattering on to her shoulders. Carefully, she leaned a little back in the seat and it began doming off her head and splashing into her lap. Jerking forwards, she hunched over, grimacing as the cool slime splurged onto her lower back and oozed down the way, forming a small puddle in the seat as the chair buckled under the weight of the falling slime.

Shaking her head and wriggling in the wobbling seat as fingers of the stuff ran around her neck to her chest, she gasped as she felt it creeping down into and over her swimwear. She raised her arms out to the sides and shook them, feeling the thick slimy liquid slide around them and drip to the floor. As she felt the downpour subside a little, she blinked her eyes open, her head forward, and looked down at herself to see she'd been covered in a thick mixture of dark and light green.

Her three team mates were watching in front of her, Yasa cheering as the remnants of the downpour slopped sideways across her shoulders. As it became a few drips landing on her head, she returned her hands to the now very slippery green-covered arms of the seat, watching the gunk slide off her fur and ooze stickily down to cover more of the chair's transparent surface.

She grinned back at them, raising her hands to part her drenched slippery hair and tuck it back behind her ears. Gasping as another brief downpour splattered down on to her head, she leaned to the side and wiped at her shoulders, spreading the gungy mixture down her arms as she tried to clear it off.

"That was very quick, team! That's a full hundred points for the game and a long overdue gunging for Jess..." Alex offered both his hands to her, and, after looking down at herself once more and giggling at the sight of the wide splatter mark on the floor around her chair, she accepted them so he could help pull her up. She hauled herself upwards, squeaking as the gunge on her bottom slithered coldly down the back of her thighs.

With the red wolf walking beside her, she picked her way over the spilled gunge, the stuff feeling sticky against her footpads. She looked down at her dripping fur again, moving a hand up to brush the gooey liquid off her wet shoulders, and glanced behind her at the gungy drops still spluttering on to the chair from the ceiling with a heavy pattering noise.

Alex pointed towards the door as they passed the other team members, and they turned to head towards it, ducking out one by one back into the gloomy main room. The lights from the floor only just reached the walls, dimly illuminating the surfaces of the doors surrounding them.

He moved to their left and tugged on a nearby door's valve, grunting but not having any success. "There must be another one open somewhere..." he said, half to himself as he walked further away from them.

Skye wandered into the middle of the room and peered off into the dark corners that the light didn't reach as he paced around the room, one hand on the wall and trying each central valve as he came to it. Finally, he clapped his hands together as one gave way, and the four of them hurried over to join him as it squeaked inwards.

Jess followed the husky girl as she stepped eagerly inside, looking up at the dusty tube lights on the ceiling. Looking to the left around the door, she frowned confusedly, looked up, and it took a moment for her to realize what she was seeing.

The room was slightly taller than most of the other game rooms, and in the middle of the ceiling, two metal supports jutted downwards a few feet. Between them, a large bucket-like container was mounted on a pivot from below, so that it would tip over if unsupported. At the moment it looked like it was prevented from moving by two rods coming out of the metal frame that supported it, one on each side. Underneath the bucket was a large funnel, which was connected to a sloped channel that led down towards an alcove in the wall, finishing in front of it at head-height.

"Who are you going to get to risk this one, Skye?" Alex asked as he came in with the other two, hauling the door closed behind him. Yasa looked up at the large contraption and grinned to himself, while Helen worriedly shuffled her feet.

"I think this is one for Yasa," the husky decided. Jumping to attention excitedly, the rabbit boy strode towards the booth, the presenter walking behind him, and waited to be let in. Jess smiled at the contrast between his keenness and earlier nerves.

Alex tugged open the booth's metallic low door and motioned for Yasa to go in. He stepped inside and sat down, peering up the U-shaped channel that was now facing him as the red wolf returned to the three girls.

"This one's a simple physical game - your task, as you might have guessed, is to stop that gunge reservoir from tipping over, flowing down into the funnel and right on to Yasa. And it's not as stable as it looks - you're going to have two minutes before the supports retract, and it's heavier on one side than the other."

He pointed up at the container, then moved his finger along a set of five ropes that were attached to one side. They ran through pulleys across the ceiling and down the opposite wall, where they ended in a row of hooks, a screen behind them showing zero. Underneath them, a large number of hexagonal weights of various sizes were piled in an untidy heap. Jess followed as he stepped over towards them.

"To stabilize the container up there, you're going to have to weigh the near side down with these weights." He nudged one of the blocks with his toe - they ranged in size from a couple of inches to a couple of feet across. "Of course, that's not your only problem - to work out the right total weight you need to balance it, you'll need to look at this..."

Alex turned around again, his hand behind him beckoning them as he stepped back to the base of the large funnel arrangement in front of Yasa. For the first time, Jess noticed there was a small monitor set in a stand next to the channel that led out of it. Helen was the first to get there, putting her hands on either side of the terminal as she looked down at the blinking cursor on the screen.

"Ready?" Alex asked. "You're going to have to work out the weight you need from this, then attach the right total to the hooks on the wall to save Yasa."

The catgirl nodded, glancing over at Yasa, who grinned back at her, shifting a little in his seat and moving his eyes to the channel pointed at him. Jess shuffled around to watch the screen as Alex moved to point at a switch next to it. She stood on her tiptoes to get a better view of the monitor as Helen tapped her finger on it, then read the words on the screen out loud.

"Year Industrial Zone first aired... minus... three power five... plus the number of teams that have won so far times two hundred. Okay..."

"All right." Sounding more sure of herself than Helen did, Skye turned away and dashed over to the pile of weights in the corner. Jess glanced back at the screen, which was also displaying a timer counting back from a hundred seconds, and then followed her, repeating the list of items in her head to herself.

Skye was examining two of the blocks as Jess crouched down to look at them. They were only made to look heavy, and she could lift them easily.

"210... 670..." she read the numbers on the tops of them out loud. "They've not made this easy for us..."

"We need to work out what we're going for first," Helen said quickly. "What was the first year IZ was on?"

"2102," Yasa called from the tank behind them. The three of them looked over their shoulders as he leaned out over the door of the alcove. He nodded confidently, then sat down again, still stretching his head forward to watch them as they huddled around in discussion.

"All right, what were the others?"

"Three power five," Helen said immediately. "That's three, nine... twenty-seven..."

"Eighty-one..." Jess joined in. There was a pause.

"243? Is it? Yeah," Skye nodded. "What's the next one?"

"Um..." Helen turned, dashed back to the screen and repeated the last two items out loud. Jess was already adding together the two numbers they had so far in her head.

"So how many teams have won?"

"I've only ever seen two teams win..." Skye thought out loud, scratching the back of her neck.

"Yep." Yasa's voice came from the tank again. "One in each season."

"Two three four five..." Jess whispered to herself, trying not to be confused by the numbers the others were saying.

"So... two by 75, that's a hundred and fifty..."

"2495!" Jess said, relieved. 

Skye repeated the number thoughtfully. "Okay," she nodded. "How do we get that from all this?"

The girls all dived for the pile of weights, each taking a corner of the large heap and sorting through them.

"There's a 95 here - can we make twenty-four hundred?" Skye picked a small block off the top of the heap, stepping over to hang it on the rightmost hook. The screen on the wall shanged to show the new total.

Jess rooted through the pile of hexagonal blocks around her, reading the tops and trying to keep up with the constantly changing total that the others had. No combination that Helen or Skye were going for seemed to come to a round number.

She tugged at a large '750' block and stepped over to where Helen and Skye were searching, looking at the biggest weights.

"You've got about a minute left..." She looked up as Alex called, then glanced to the wall in a panic.

"Let's just get something up there," she exclaimed. "So we get close, at least."

The other two looked up, and Helen hauled the largest of her weights up to the wall. Together, they fitted it onto the hook at the left hand side as Skye put one on the far end.

"1590..." Jess read out as the counter behind the hooks rose to display the weight on them. She suddenly remembered about the block she had just been carrying, and whipped around to see where she'd put it. Hurrying over to where Helen had been, she dragged it over to the wall, and as the other two came in to help her, lifted it inelegantly onto the hook. The three of them watched as the counter rose again, stopping a little short of their target.

"We need... 155 more!" Jess worked out quickly. The other two split up again to search, with Jess looking at the weights they had already connected and calling different numbers to look for over her shoulders.

Suddenly she squeaked as the counter on the wall began blinking red, and whipped her head round to look at Alex.

"Ten seconds! Just get as near as you can and hope it's close enough..."

Helen and Skye dashed back over to her, and they quickly fumbled with the hooks to replace the weights. As they watched the counter rise again, it suddenly turned off, two rotating red lights turning on next to it along with the out-of-time buzzer.

"Time's up - get out of there!" Alex shouted above the noise of the klaxon. Jess looked at him, then hurriedly took a couple of steps back, blinking as the red light passed over her and turning around. Worriedly, she looked up at the large bucket, which shuddered as the rods supporting it shot back into the wall. Helen stepped up beside her, bouncing on her heels as it wobbled slightly from side to side, finally staying still just for a moment before beginning to tilt forwards.

The catgirl squeaked as a mixture of green and yellow slop began pouring into the funnel below the spilling container, getting wider as it tipped further and splashing thick drops over the side to the floor. Jess looked down at the funnel and followed the channel down to look at Yasa's shocked expression as a wave of gunge surged towards him, and he just had time to screw his face up and grip the arms of the chair before it splurged into his face.

Gaping as the thick slime splattered out wildly after hitting the rabbit boy's face and chest, Jess shuddered as the alarm rang again. Barely visible behind the wave of lime green slop, Yasa put his arms up in front of him to defend himself and turned his face to the side, spitting a glob of the stuff away from his lips as he flattened his ears down onto his head. The end of the channel swung from side to side, splattering across the squeaking rabbit boy's chest and the wall of the tank behind him. He turned his face quickly from side to side away from it as it played over him.

As the flow weakened, falling back and pouring onto the tank's door, Yasa relaxed again, putting his dripping hands down and slowly opening his eyes. Helen giggled at the sight of him - his face and chest were entirely covered in a thick bright lime green mixture, with heavy droplets dripping from his chin and slithering down onto his tummy and into his lap. He cracked a smile as he saw her watching, and raised a hand in an exhausted wave. Bringing his hands up to drag the gunk off his face, he looked over at the end of the channel, and the runny blobs of slime falling to the floor from its tip. He sighed, scrubbing his hands through his splattered hair and shivering at the feeling of the cold slime clinging to him.

"I'm sorry, you three..." Alex said as Yasa spread his arms, looking down at his soaked front, blobs of the stuff dripping from his face. "I know where you went wrong and you're not going to like it..."

He pointed over at the panel again, walking towards it, keeping his finger out in its direction. "You forgot that this one was a minus sign and not a plus," he explained apologetically, tapping on it. Jess sagged, realizing she had gone the wrong way at the start. "That put you miles out... it seems really unfair. I'd love to give you more than twenty points..." He stepped back and read the sign again, scratching his head idly. Then he suddenly brightened. "Oh, well. Yasa, how are you?"

The girls all looked over at the drenched rabbit boy, who was still dragging the runny, clinging slime down off his face, wrinkling his nose as he looked down at his soaked and stained chest. The gooey liquid was still dripping from the pipe, the edges of the tank and his seat, making a continuous backdrop of wet dripping noises as it smacked and pooled on the floor.

"Let's get you out of there..." The red wolf strode over and opened the door with one thumb and forefinger, slimy strands falling from it as it was moved aside. Yasa slithered forwards off the seat, getting back on his feet unsteadily. After standing shivering for a moment, he looked up and, hands outstretched for a hug, he shambled straight towards the shrieking, giggling catgirl.

Alex looked on, a hint of amused smile on his face, before speaking up. "Don't get her too messy, I think it's her turn for a game next... unless Skye wants to do it?"

They all looked at the husky girl, but she was quick to shake her head and gesture towards Helen instead.

"All right! Helen, are you ready for another game?"

The pink catgirl dropped her hands from defending herself against Yasa, who relented and stepped back a couple of paces. "Yeah," she nodded and stepped brightly towards Alex.

"Like I said, only twenty points for that game, but I'm sure you can turn it around in the next one..."

Jess brushed some more smooth slime off her shoulders as the team were led out of the room, rubbing some of it between her thumb and forefinger as it slipped between her fingers. She shuddered as she looked over at the gooey bunny boy, glad that she hadn't been put in that game - she couldn't help but think of raw egg when she looked at the thick strands dripping off his stained maroon-pink fur.

She looked up, turning her attention back to where they were going, and saw Alex feeling his way along the wall in the dark corridor in front of him. Suddenly, there was the noise of a switch, and a set of elderly tube lights hummed into life on the walls and ceiling. The corridor still went on a little before branching off in both directions, but in the middle of the lit area, a six-foot-high white-framed gunge cubicle stood against the wall.

"I think just from looking at this you can tell where it's going, Helen," the red wolf said as he moved towards it, the catgirl stepping forwards with an encouraging pat on the back from Yasa. She clasped her hands in front of her, bouncing a little anxiously as she waited for him to open it. Her tail moved lazily from side to side as he pulled the door away, then she scampered towards him and carefully ducked backwards into the cubicle to take her seat.

Jess stepped back and looked up at the plastic tank as Alex swung the door closed again. A cubical reservoir of mixed dark and light green gunge was plainly visible on its roof, a couple of tubes stretching from the sides to the ceiling of the tank. A few more tubes and pipes stretched up from the ceiling and back of the tank to the wall above and around it.

"This is a new one, Helen, and we call it 'risk and reward'," Alex began. "In most of the games you've been in so far, you've been relying on your team mates to save you - which they've done... reasonably well." He held a hand out in front of him, and she nodded in agreement, a slight smile on her lips. "But this time you're on your own! You've got to save yourself - and you're even going to get the chance to decide how much danger you want to put yourself in, as well."

He straightened up and moved around to the side of the tank. For the first time, Jess noticed an arc-shaped dial on the rusty wall, divided into three bands of green, yellow and red, with a lever on the ground in front indicating the position that was selected. An LED display was mounted above it.

"While you're in that gunge booth, you're going to be asked a set of questions - they're a bit different from anything that you've been asked so far, they're more like little logic puzzles or trick questions." She cringed, laughing to herself as he continued. "You've only got one chance to answer each of them - if you get one right, you get twenty points, but if you're wrong or you have to pass, twenty points are knocked off again. The difficulty you select decides your maximum possible score for the game - and something you should also know is that it changes what happens if you fail to reach it as well..."

The catgirl giggled, nodding as he pointed upwards, and looked at the ceiling of the tank. Jess crouched down to look as well, seeing three openings in a row above her head matching up to the tubes and bottom of the slime reservoir.

"If you go for the easiest setting, then... well, as you can see, there's a tank of gunge placed invitingly above your head, which will open if you don't reach sixty points in two minutes. The middle difficulty will give you a foam bath as well, and you'll need eighty points to avoid it." The pink catgirl's eyes widened and she twisted round to look as he gestured at three wide pipe openings in a row on the wall behind her. "Or finally, if you're feeling confident and think you can get five right in a row, giving you a full hundred points... there's a bit of a surprise if you fail."

He paced around the front of the cubicle again, giving the worried-looking catgirl a moment to decide. "So, what's it going to be?"

Helen sucked air in through her teeth, a slight grin on her face as she tapped her hands on her lap thoughtfully. She looked once again at the clear plastic walls of the cubicle, and at the openings on the ceiling. "Can I... do the easy one?" she asked.

Yasa gave a disappointed groan. "Come on, Helen!" Skye called out above it. Jess stayed silent, watching the catgirl's uncomfortable expression as she was encouraged to risk going higher.

"No, no... when you're in a new machine in this place, I think it pays to be cautious." Alex held up one hand and pushed the lever away from him, into the green area. Helen's eyes followed him as he stepped away from the tank, pulling the minicomputer out of his pocket, and she wriggled as she took hold of the edges of the seat.

"Now, I'm sorry about this, but you three can't help her in this game - all answers have got to come from Helen herself." Jess nodded and stepped back as the lights dimmed a little, leaving her spotlit inside the tank. Alex tapped a couple of places on his screen with the stylus as she looked on nervously, then raised his eyes to meet hers. "Ready?"

She took a deep breath and nodded, leaning forwards to listen as the timer on the wall started.

"OK - a car leaves the IZ studio traveling at sixty miles an hour, heading for the other edge of the city, which is six miles away. At the same time, another car starts from the edge of the city, doing thirty towards us. How long is it before they meet?"

Jess's eyes flicked between the timer on the wall and Helen, who was mouthing numbers to herself, her eyes opening and closing. She looked up. "Could you say that again?"

Alex repeated the question as Jess felt her heart pounding. She rocked back and forward on the balls of her feet to try and calm down, looking sideways at Yasa, who was shaking, looking like he was about to burst out with the answer and only just stopping himself.

Helen whimpered, shaking her head as she realized she was wasting more and more time thinking. She squeezed her eyes closed a little more tightly, one finger hovering over her other hand. "Ninety miles an hour for six miles is..." She tailed off, clasping her fingers more tightly and paused again.

"Is it..." Jess held her breath as she started, but Helen stopped herself and looked down again, clasping her cheeks in her hands and drumming her feet on the floor. "Ugh..." she groaned frustratedly. "Four minutes!" she finally said, looking straight at Alex. Yasa balled his fists tensely.

"Right!" Alex grinned back at her. The rabbit boy cheered, jumping up with his hands in the air, and Jess let her breath out. She quickly tensed up again, though, when she saw the timer already falling below one minute.

"Two more right and you'll be out of there, Helen - this one's a word problem. The bookkeeper's puzzle - what's the only word in our language to have three sets of double letters in a row?"

Jess heard an intake of breath from Yasa again, watching him bounce up and down out of the corner of her eye as Helen clutched her head in thought. She stayed there for a while, mouthing to herself, then looked up.

"I don't know," she whimpered, glancing over at the points counter.

"Oh, Helen, I'm sorry..." Alex sounded genuinely apologetic as the twenty points that Helen had earned disappeared from the counter, putting it back to zero. "And I feel really bad now, because it was something of a trick question - the word is in fact 'bookkeeper'." Groaning, Helen started glumly at him as she waited for another question.

"Don't worry, there's still time to get it back... if you added together all the numbers between one and twenty, what would you get?"

"Don't know. Pass," Helen said immediately, waving her arm urgently. She leaned over and twisted round to watch the timer falling past thirty seconds.

"Are you sure? All right... if you can use fifties, twenties and tens, how many different ways are there to get up to exactly one hundred?"

Helen gritted her teeth, rubbing her bare feet together as she thought and rocking back and forwards a little. She shook her head as a high-pitched ticking noise began signaling the last ten seconds coming off the timer, sagging down in the seat dejectedly. Jess clasped her hands to her chest as she watched her just waiting for the tank to go off.

"Five?" she suddenly guessed, looking up just before the last second went past. The buzzer sounded another time, and an instant later, a wailing siren played over the top of it. She sagged again and shrugged, just as the tank above her head opened and released a column of green gunge that sploshed heavily onto the top of her hair, doming out to hide her from view.

Helen gasped and her ears twitched as the slime splattered past them, her pretty hair being instantly coated in a dark and light green mixture. She leaned forward a little and eeped, her teeth gritted, as the green gunge slapped down on to the back of her hair and neck, slithering down her back and making her shudder. A thick coating had been left on the top of her hair, and was dripping heavily from her fringe over her face, the two colors slithering against each other.

After a moment, two thinner streams started up from the other pipes at the top of the tank, more of the green stuff falling diagonally on to Helen's shoulders. She squeaked, shoulders shaking as they slowly played back and forward across her, crossing over each other and back, coating her neck, ears, and the top of her back and head again. The mixture splashed out a little in heavy waves as it smacked onto her hair and fur, creeping downwards over her in thick streaks. Shaking her head, she leaned back into the main gunge flow, squeaking as her head went under again and jerking her hands up from her lap to her breasts as the side streams slopped onto her chest.

The siren wound down and the three streams began to subside, the diagonal streams slithering back across the gungy catgirl's shoulders and splatting on the floor beside her as the level of green stuff in the ceiling tank ran out. She had her head hunched down, hands still clasped across her chest as she held her bikini top to make sure it stayed in place despite the slippery covering. As the blobby dregs of the gunge splotted onto her head from the main pipe at the top, she ducked down a little further, sliding her hands up to her shoulder straps and then holding her cheeks with her slimy fingers as she opened her eyes and looked up at the others outside the tank.

"I'm really sorry, Helen..." Alex consoled her laughingly as Helen moved her head up again, the green slime oozing and dripping off her hair and fringe as she moved. She smiled weakly and nodded, bringing her hands up from her cheeks to squeamishly run them over her head, sending a wave of mixed green slop down her soaking back. Jess stepped around as Yasa put his hands on the booth's door, leaning in to talk to her, and watched as they whispered to each other.

"As if a headful of gunge wasn't enough, I'm afraid your score for the game was... nothing," he continued, signaling to Yasa to step back as he opened the plastic door. "But if it's any consolation, you would have got the same score on any difficulty, so you got off fairly well, considering..."

Helen, with a coating of smooth green slime on her head and shoulders, stepped carefully forwards out of the tank and stood in front of it as it was closed. She stuck her lower lip out and batted her eyelids a little, waving her tail from side to side as she looked up at Yasa. Snickering just a little, he stepped forwards to hug her. With a giggle, she wrapped her slimy arms tightly around him, smearing some of the green stuff across his back. Skye turned away from them, shaking her head.

"So you haven't had as successful a round as before," continued Alex, "but gunging Jess really helped, because you still got a hundred and seventy points in total... I think it's time to get out of here."

The cat and rabbit broke off their hug, staying hand in hand as they all turned to follow Alex back down the corridor. As they reached the center of the main room again, he waited for them all to pick up their still-glowing flashlights from the floor before leading them back towards the steps to the surface.

Round 4

After a walk back down the corridor to the vat room, where they had all been given another brief cleanup spray with the water hose, Jess was the last to emerge from the hatchway to the stairs again. She stepped out of the way as Alex moved forward to push it closed behind her, and shuffled forwards as he beckoned for them all to gather round.

"Now, so far you've been through three of our four game areas, and you've managed to get six hundred and ninety points out of a possible twelve hundred. For every ten points you've got, you earn a second in the final, which is just four games away - so you've got sixty-nine seconds so far. The good news is that we double all the points you earn in the last round, so you've got the opportunity to get another eighty seconds as we head into our last destination."

He straightened up, pointing at the gap underneath the sphere of the Pod, towards the corridor beyond it. Jess ducked down to see that a large door blocked the way a little down the corridor. "Past that door is the processing wing, the last place we've got to visit. All ready?"

He smiled as the girls and Yasa responded in unison, and led them around the machine in the center of the circular room towards the door. Jess looked back at the Pod one more time as he bent down to take hold of the handles at ground level, then watched as he hauled them upwards, the slatted door making a piercing squeaking noise as it slowly slid open.

Yasa ducked through first, looking back over his shoulder to watch Helen as she followed close behind. Jess watched Alex lock the open door into place, then walked with him and Skye into the large room beyond.

The rabbit and catgirl were leaning on a railing in front of them, looking down at their new surroundings. As Jess approached them, she saw they were standing on a metallic walkway halfway up a large room, with the floor about seven feet under them and a girder-supported roof above. The room had been made up to look like a hangar, with a futuristic flight-sim-pod-like aircraft in the middle of the lower floor, tracks running backwards from it to a closed garage door on the wall to their left. Steep metal stairs led down from the four corners of the walkway to the lower floor, with a few doors similar to the ones they had come in by leading off the room from both levels.

"That used to be the cargo transport in and out of here - or one of them, anyway," Alex said as he came up behind the four of them, pointing down at the white vehicle in the center of the room. He led them around to one of the sets of stairs, taking hold of the railing and stepping down as he continued. "It hasn't moved in a while, either... the rest of the rooms here were used to prepare things for coming in and going out." They had reached the ground, and Jess looked up at the IZ logo on the vehicle's side as they walked around it.

"It's the Shuttle, isn't it?" she whispered to Skye, as she recognized it from a game in the earlier shows she had watched. The husky girl looked up at it again, then a grin broke out on her face, but she stayed silent.

Alex was leading them towards a set of double doors in the middle of the opposite wall from where they had come in. They had the same heavy metallic look as most of the environment, and were closed by a latch that held the two halves together.

"Now, we've got someone in here that one of you already knows," he said, putting one hand on the latch and turning around to look at their faces. Jess glanced sideways at them all, too - one game for each team always involved a surprise victim that was a friend or family member of the contestants, or whoever else they had nominated. She remembered putting her friend Leann's name down on her application form when she'd applied, and looked up at the door. She was half hoping she hadn't been picked - they had made up for what inspired her to nominate her ages ago - but a part of her still wanted to see her in whatever game was beyond it.

"You all had fantastic selections, so I was just sorry that only one of your first choices agreed to do it," he continued, spinning the latch off the door and giving it a push. Jess relaxed again - Leann didn't strike her as someone who would agree to come on. But she looked up at the host's face as he turned to her.

"Want to lead us in, Jess?" he asked. Jess's heart jumped as she realized that that invitation meant that she was going to recognize whoever they had inside after all. As the door swung heavily inwards, she looked around it, caught just a glimpse of the room, jumped wildly, and scampered backwards, spinning round to face the grinning red wolf.

"I never thought you'd actually..." she exclaimed, faltering, then gave up. Looking back over her shoulder again, she swallowed and stepped fully through the door.

Right ahead of her inside the room was Leann - a light brown-furred canine girl. She was inside a six foot high clear booth like the others that they'd seen before, which was set in a slight recess on the right wall. Three large curved metal pipes stretched from the wall to the tank - one above her head and two on either side of her feet. She was sitting in a plastic armchair-like seat that was attached to the wall, raised off the ground so that her legs were dangling and her bare toes were just touching the floor.

Jess giggled nervously as Leann raised a hand off the arm of the seat in greeting, and looked up at the gunge pipe looming over her. The other three came into the room, followed by Alex, who pushed the door closed behind him.

"I know you recognize our guest, Jess - can you introduce us?" he prompted as he strolled over to the gunge tank. Its occupant watched him approach, wriggling uncomfortably in the seat.

Jess took a deep breath to get over her excitement, then swallowed. "Yeah. This is Leann, and I've known her since our first day of school together." The puppy girl nodded in agreement, her short darker brown hair bobbing around her head.

"So this is obviously a friendship that's lasted a long time - Leann, do you know why Jess wanted to put you in the gunge machine?" Alex asked, leaning on the side of the tank and talking down to her through the clear wall.

The puppy girl looked down at the pipes beside her feet, and after a moment's hesitation, slowly nodded. "Yeah, I think I have some idea..."

"Do you want to tell everyone, or will I do it?" he asked, smiling as she squirmed in the high seat.

"Go on," she said, shaking her head. The red wolf flashed a grin at her and then turned around, pacing back towards the team as he raised the palm computer up to read from it.

"The story we're about to tell happened during a summer holiday a couple of years ago. Jess, you'll know about this - want to tell us what happened?"

Jess grinned over at Leann, who wasn't looking any more comfortable now that she was the one telling everyone about it. She sat smiling tensely, drumming a couple of fingers on her bare thigh as she waited for the explanation to come. "Yeah, it was the weekend right after we'd got out of high school," she started. "Leann's parents own a cabin up in the mountains a couple of hundred miles away from us, so a group of our friends got together there to stay overnight a couple of days."

The canine cringed at the mention of the place, nodding her head.

"And that went all right, didn't it?" Alex encouraged, walking back towards Leann. The puppy girl watched him anxiously.

"Yes." Jess nodded. "The trouble was that when we left..."

"The trouble was that you left her there!" interrupted Alex, slapping his hands on the door of the gunge tank and leaning in to face Leann.

The pretty canine leaned backwards on the wall slightly, away from his smiling but still intimidating face. Uncomfortably, she stuttered a little, then nodded glumly.

"We took two cars, and both of us thought she was in the other one!" she protested. "We soon turned around to pick her up."

"That's not what it says here..." Alex answered, and she looked at him for a moment, then hid her face behind her hands embarrassedly as he turned his back on her, walking towards the others. "You got about a hundred miles before stopping off and realizing she was in neither car", he read out, getting a laugh from the other three team members at the side of the room, "and you had to rush back to wake her up after she thought she was going to be there all night!" Leann giggled awkwardly, not looking at him but instead up to the gunge chute positioned above her.

"So, for abandoning your friend, we've brought you here and put you in what we call the Mixer... have you ever seen this thing before, by the way?" Alex asked, patting the side of the tank.

"Oh, yes." Leann nodded slowly, a feeling of nervous apprehension in her voice.

"Good, so you'll know what happens to people who lose the challenge..."

She nodded her head again, shivering as she remembered seeing exactly that. Jess smiled too - the Mixer was one of the games that had been introduced in the second season, and it was still recognizable even though they'd reworked the set. She'd seen it being used on most of the episodes she'd seen on TV, and it felt strange and exciting to see someone she knew inside it.

"So we're going to get you to play a game against your friend, and if you win before the time runs out, then we'll let you out of there - otherwise you get the all-over body wash treatment complete with dynamic foaming action," he said, pointing to the pipes over Leann's head and at her feet in turn. The pretty brown canine looked where he was pointing, cringing at the thought of what might happen. "You've been watching the games that they've been in so far - are you looking forward to that happening to you?"

She tapped her fingers on the arm of the seat, curling and uncurling her dangling bare toes. "Can't say I am, no," she giggled.

"Well, here's your chance to save yourself..." Alex moved towards Jess, pointing behind her at a slanted table with a screen on the wall behind it, set up at the end of the room opposite the cubicle. He motioned to her to step behind it and she did so, looking down to see that it was divided into nine panels arranged in a grid.

"This is a memory game," Alex began. "You've got to set the challenge for Leann by hitting a sequence into these panels," - he demonstrated by pressing down on them with his fingers, each of them lighting up in red as they were touched - "and once all nine of them are on, Leann's got to copy that sequence as fast as she can on her own panel."

He strolled over towards the gunge tank again, taking his pocket computer out and concentrating on it briefly. As he reached the tank he handed it to the canine, who took it in both hands, put it on her lap and looked down at its display. He pointed over at the screen on the wall behind Jess, which was showing a similar grid layout.

"Leann, you've got thirty seconds in total - we start the timer when Jess has finished her sequence, and stop it again when you've copied it correctly. You've got to do that three times to save yourself - if the timer hits zero before you make it, then... you're going to be gunged." He raised a hand up to indicate the pipe, and Leann shivered at the sound of the word, looking up to where he was pointing. "But if you make it, then I'm sure we can find something to do to Jess instead..."

Jess raised her eyebrows as she looked up from the panel, then tried not to look too surprised. This part of the show always had the threat of turning the tables on whoever had nominated the guest, but they always found some excuse to get the guest messy whatever happened.

"She's looking worried!" Jess looked down again, concentrating hard on the panel as she tried not to let her face give away any reaction to the comment. "Go ahead, Jess - whenever you're ready," she heard him finish.

Jess breathed out and looked down at the panel. She reached forward and pressed firmly on the middle one first, then tapped out what she hoped was a sequence that was difficult to remember. When the last one was pressed, a different noise sounded, followed by the ticking of a timer.

"Hurry up, Leann, repeat what Jess just did!" Alex encouraged her as she nervously looked out at him, then to the screen behind Jess.

Jess turned around and looked up at it, too, watching as it showed Leann's hesitant button presses in a different color. She was slow but didn't make any mistakes, and quickly pressed the last couple of panels in the sequence, stopping the timer before fifteen seconds had passed.

Jess turned back to watch her friend relax again, leaning back in the seat and breathing out relievedly. She glanced upwards once again, playing with her hair as she did so. Alex stepped forward again.

"That was good, Leann, but don't look too relaxed yet - you've got to do two more of these in half the time you've already used! Jess, give her another one."

Jess pressed out another sequence on her panels and whipped her head round to watch as Leann's timer started up again. Faster this time, she tried to tap out the same combination, and Jess smiled as she made a mistake and had to start over. Her heart jumped, though, as the puppy girl effortlessly got the sequence right on her second try, stopping the timer just a few seconds after it had started. She looked round again to see Leann grinning back at her much more confidently.

"All right, this is the last one that you have to do, Leann! Jess, she's got just under ten seconds left, which is more than enough time, so do your best to confuse her or you know what'll happen to you..."

Jess was the one to squirm uncomfortably this time, knowing that Leann was still looking at her, and imagined being covered in foam and gunge in her place as she looked down at her panel again. She slapped her palms across the board, trying to make the sequence as awkward as possible, and paused to decide what to press next when she only had three left.

After a moment, she realized she could turn the pause to her advantage, and waited for a few more seconds. She looked up at Leann, who was looking back at her exasperatedly.

"Oh, come on..." she pleaded, trying to concentrate on the panel in front of her and counting out the sequence so far with her pointing finger, already looking unsure.

Jess stayed still for another moment before beginning to feel slightly guilty about making her wait, and pressed the last few buttons almost together. The high beep signaled that it was Leann's turn, and she started jabbing at her panel as soon as the timer started decreasing.

Getting the first one wrong immediately, she started again and paused, clicking her tongue in frustration as she hovered around, trying to remember what Jess had pressed before she'd waited. Jess curled and uncurled her toes as she watched her progress, hoping that she would make a wrong press each time as each second seemed to take ages to go past. Eventually, Leann tried hitting another space, only for it to buzz and get her to start over. Looking up to see she only had a few seconds left, she pressed frantically at the panel, concentrating hard as she tapped out a sequence only to get it wrong again twice in the same place. A moment later, she jumped as a low alarm began to blare, signaling that the timer had reached zero.

"Sorry, Leann, but you're out of time, and you know what that means - Jess, quick, come over here!" Jess, breathing out relievedly as Alex leaned in to take the pocket device back from Leann, slipped out from behind the console. She watched Leann raising her hands to cup her mouth, eyes wide, as she dashed towards the gunge tank, suddenly excited about what was about to happen.

"The Mixer's going to turn on in a moment, and you can get your own back in your own time," he finished, handing the minicomputer to her and pointing at a single flashing button on the side. Jess stepped forward and took hold of it, smiling apologetically over at Leann. Taking her hands away from her mouth, the puppy girl gripped the arms of her seat, swinging her dangling legs in front of her as she looked anxiously at the gunge chute above her head, waiting for the inevitable.

A nervous grin crossed her face as the whine of the alarm rose in pitch, then she yelped and nearly jumped out of the seat as two streams of thick yellow pie foam began spewing out of the ends of her chair's arms, falling into piles beside her feet. She drew her legs in closer, tentatively putting her hands back on the arms of the chair, and held on tighter as she watched the pipes at the sides of her feet gurgle into life as well, pushing green foam into the tank with a hissing noise and slowly beginning to fill it up. As the bubbling mixture rose around her ankles she wriggled from side to side, keeping her eyes on the stuff and shivering as it gradually oozed up her legs.

Jess saw she was distracted from the nozzle at the top, and at the same moment, jabbed her thumb down on the flashing button. The sudden hoot of the gunge tank klaxon made Leann look towards her, just before a mixture of bright green and yellow gunge splurged down from the pipe above her and hid her from view as it splashed outwards off her head.

Jess put her hand to her mouth, laughing as the heavy opaque slime flopped down on to the rising knee-deep foam, sending specks of it flying up into the air. The shape of the top of Leann's head was just about visible through the gungy downpour as it twitched and splattered all over her. Suddenly her hands broke through the dome covering her, palms upturned to catch the slime as it fell, the gunk splatting heavily off them and slipping thickly through her fingers. As the foam quickly rose above waist level, they disappeared again behind it.

The heavy flood of gunge subsided a little into a steady downpour, bringing the dome shape inwards so that the stuff slithered down Leann's head and body instead of splattering outwards after hitting her, leaving the walls of the tank painted in yellow and green. Jess watched her wriggle underneath the flow, her hands now over her eyes as the gunge oozed over her head. Slippery streaks crept around her neck and dripped from her chin to cover her chest and tummy as the green and yellow colors mingled with each other, hiding her smooth brown fur underneath a thick glistening layer. Leaning forward out of the gradually slowing downpour, she slowly took her hands away from her messy face, trying to push the foam down away from her by batting it down with her hands, and grimaced as the ooze from above slithered down her neck.

Straightening up again as the foam reached her chest, she blinked a couple of times and squinted out through the gunge covering her face, looking straight at Jess with a shocked expression as the yellow and green stuff drizzled off her muzzle and chin. The downpour had slowed to a trickle, and the runny blobs of gunge from the bottom of the reservoir splatted on her head and slithered downwards through her hair or over her face, disappearing under the neck-height bubbling green foam as she opened her mouth in a half-laugh, half-shriek. Her shoulders shook in giggles at the ticklish feeling before they were hidden by the rising foam as well.

Leann shook her head, the only part of her still visible, craning her neck up and squeaking again as the level of foam rose over the door and began to spill outwards. Jess took a step back as blobs of it broke off and landed heavily to pile up on the floor in front of the tank.

The runny stream of slime became just a few drips from the edges of the pipe above Leann, and the klaxon sounded again to signal the end of the gunging. Giggling with relief, she sagged a little in the seat and pulled her slimy arms out of the foam bath, raising them above her head and wiping them down each other to clear them off. Putting them on her head and leaning to the side to escape the continuing drips from the top of the tank, she tried to clean off her head and face but only succeeded in smearing more green foam across herself.

With a laugh, Alex stepped forward from Jess's cheering team mates and walked to the other side of the Mixer. Leann turned her face to watch as he came closer, still trying to wipe away the foam and gunge from her head. After watching her for a moment, he smiled and leaned around the back of the tank to retrieve a small face towel, which he offered to her.

"Here, I'll let you use this so I can actually talk to you... come around here, Jess!" Leann took the cloth, nodded and raised it to her face, pinching her muzzle with it then dragging it down her face. As Jess walked to the front of the tank she watched her screw it into a ball and wipe it across her forehead, getting some of the golden brown fur on her face visible again. She looked around her, saw Jess coming and dipped it into the foam bath, then gently hurled it towards her.

Jess caught the gungy towel against her chest and picked up one corner of it, letting the slime and foam on it drip to the floor before handing it back to Alex. She and Leann grinned at each other, and she allowed herself to laugh a little at the sight of her completely gunged friend sitting in the messy tank.

"Do you think you deserved that, Leann?" the host asked as she raised her fingers to her hair, flinching as she tucked the gungy stray strands back behind her ears.

Leann coughed as she opened her mouth to speak, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "No!" she said emphatically, looking down at the foam surrounding her and using both arms to try and push it away.

"You did!" The others laughed as he turned away, the doused puppy girl whimpering a little in laughing protest. She squeaked as another brief gunge stream dripped into the tank, slopping across her head and shoulders and pushing some of the green bubbles down.

Alex looked around. "Jess, how about you - do you think that justice has been served?"

"Definitely," she answered. She made eye contact with Leann again after she had wiped her eyes, and the messy canine shook her head defeatedly.

"Well, we'll let the two of you catch up later - for now I can give you seventy points for the game, because Leann nearly made it..." Leann nodded, laughing again as she looked down at her soaked and slimy fur.

"Come on - we've still got time for three more games here!" With a last wave back at the Mixer, Alex headed out the door back to the hangar area. The others followed him as Jess looked back at Leann.

"You OK?" she mouthed. She laughed as Leann nodded back at her, waving with a gungy hand, then turned to catch up with the others.

Alex closed the door behind Jess as she came through to rejoin the other three. "How'd it feel to get your own back?" he asked as she looked back over her shoulder at him.

"Brilliant," she replied, taken by surprise by the question as she was still distracted thinking about the sight of it. She hadn't really wanted to gunge her for what had happened, but seeing her reaction had been worth it.

"Well, she might be getting you a little messy in the final game, so don't celebrate too much yet... Skye!"

The husky girl looked up sharply as her name was mentioned, and Alex walked forward to take her arm.

"You haven't been in a game yourself in ages - how do you feel about testing one of our new ones?" he asked.

"All right," she grinned. Jess saw that she'd finally got over her nerves too, and was acting much more like she'd seen her before they'd started. She jogged behind them as Alex dashed towards the nearest stairs with her, slipping his hand down her arm to take her hand as they climbed the metal steps again.

"I think this is the best place to show you it..." He moved over to the door in the center of the nearby wall, which was at right angles to the one they'd come in by and the door to the Mixer room. Quickly undoing the latch with one hand and hauling it open, he stepped through and beckoned the others to follow.

Jess was the first in behind Skye. The walkway they were on continued beyond the door into the room for a couple of meters. Just beyond the railing where the walkway ended, three large red cylindrical tanks decorated with warning stripes and symbols loomed ahead of them. They were suspended from the ceiling by wide pipes, and each one of them had a large valve wheel accessible from the walkway with a digital readout beside each of them.

She turned away from the imposing tanks as Alex led Skye down a nearby ramp that stretched to the opposite corner of the room and then turned to reach the floor below. Hearing a hesitant laugh from the husky girl, she scampered down after them to look at the lower floor.

The three tanks were connected by pipes leading from their bases, converging in a half-sphere shape which was attached to the ceiling of an open metallic cubicle in the center of the floor. As Alex led Skye towards the gunge tank, she looked around the rest of the room, but didn't see an obvious game they were going to have to take part in - banks of computer terminals, keypads of various sizes, and various other controls and switches were spread around the four walls of the lower floor.

As Helen and Yasa padded down the ramp to join them, Jess watched Alex give Skye a friendly nudge into the cubicle. It was metallic gray on all sides except the one with the door, which was clear like the others they'd seen, and it had no floor, instead a few bars forming a grille over a hole in the ground. Skye turned around and sat down as Alex reached over to close the door. There was a keypad on one side of the clear plastic surface that beeped as it clunked closed, and Skye jumped as a metal rod snicked out from it to lock the tank.

"We call this one 'Time Lock'," Alex said as he turned away from the cubicle and addressed the three remaining team members. "And it's as simple as the name suggests - you're going to have to stop those things from opening and find the combination to let your team leader out."

Jess stepped back as they all looked up at the large cylinders poised above the husky girl's head. They were all about as tall as she was, and Skye was already looking a little more nervous.

"Come up, I'll show you how." Alex dashed up the ramp again, and Jess looked back at the tank before she followed. Their host was already casually leaning on one of the cylinders by the time the three of them reached the top.

"These things are timed to go off together at about three minute intervals," he said as they gathered round, and knocked sharply on the metallic surface of the one nearest him. "There is a way to stop them, but before you can turn them off, you need to get the keys for them from down there."

Jess and the others looked over the railing at the floor below, and she turned to look up as Alex approached behind them.

"To find the keys and the combination to let your team leader out, you'll each have to follow a series of clues, starting from the screen in the center," he explained as he pointed down at it. "The timers will start when I turn it on. Ready?"

"Yeah!" Yasa reached down to grab Helen's hand, and together they moved towards the ramp. Jess followed them, then looked back at Alex. She heard a beeping noise as he pressed a button on his controller, and turned to hurry down the way as the timers on the front of each tank began counting down.

The others were already in front of the large monitor in the center of the wall as she jogged towards them, and she leaned in to read them too.

"Which one do you want?" Helen asked, looking around at the two of them.

"Don't know. I'll take the first," Yasa replied, tapping beside it on the screen, then moved away, looking for something that could match the description it had given him.

"I'll take 'Look for seven buttons' if you do the last one, OK?" Jess said quickly, knowing that they couldn't waste time deciding at this stage. The catgirl nodded, read the last clue one more time and spun round.

Jess turned away too and walked along the banks of various dials, readouts and switches, occasionally leaning in to see if something could possibly be the seven buttons that the clue had mentioned. Eventually she saw them - a set of translucent red keys arranged in a hexagonal shape, next to one of the small monitors. Unsure of what to do, she hesitantly pressed one of them, and saw the one in the middle light up for a second.

She moved her finger to it and pressed down. This time, the center button and one of the outer ones flashed in sequence. She immediately realized that she was meant to copy the combination that was lit up each time, and hurriedly tapped in the sequence, waiting for the next one.

Concentrating hard on the panel in front of her, she found herself wondering how much time they'd used already as the sequence grew to six, then seven buttons. As she carefully completed the eighth one, she was relieved to see a different effect - this time, the monitor beeped and slowly drew a grid showing the letters of the alphabet in order.

Jess assumed that that was what she had to look for next, but she couldn't remember seeing anything like that while walking around at the start. She straightened up and looked round to see where the others were, seeing Yasa hurrying over to a large grid of lights on the wall. Helen still looked like she was struggling with her first task. Skye watched them intently from inside the gunge cubicle, leaning to the side in an attempt to see what Helen was doing. Suddenly Jess spotted something that looked like the diagram on the screen on a computer bank on the back wall, and glanced at the trapped husky girl for a moment as she ran past her.

The console she had seen consisted of a screen, an unusual sort of keyboard that only had letters in the left-to-right, top-to-bottom sequence she had seen on the monitor, and at the front, a hook-shaped piece of metal that had a key on a chain wrapped around it. She grabbed the key, making the chain rattle as it slipped through the lock, and realized that the task would probably free it.

She turned her attention to the monitor, which like the one she'd just come from was an ancient-looking green screen. The word "BUT" was displayed in capitals in the center, and an empty bar stretched across the bottom half.

Jess tapped the B key and saw the screen react by highlighting the first letter, then she glanced down to search for the other two keys in their unfamiliar locations. When she hit the two of them, the unit gave a confirmation noise, the bar at the bottom of the screen filled about a tenth of the way, and the word was replaced with "TRIO".

She continued tapping in words in the same way, with them increasing in length by one letter every time. Quickly finding it frustrating to have to hunt and peck for keys because of the strange layout of the keyboard, she began thinking again about how much time they'd already spent in the game. Without a visible timer, she had no idea whether they were doing well or not. Distracted, she hit a wrong key and the word she had almost completed was replaced with another.

After what seemed like ages, she finally hit the last few keys of a twelve-letter word, the computer beeped in a different way, and a mechanical clank sounded as the hook snapped out of the mechanism at the front of the unit, jingling the chain as it moved. Jess leaned down quickly to grab it.

"I've..." she started. "I've got a key!" The others looked round as she called it out, Helen quickly turning back to her puzzle and Yasa waving in acknowledgement. Gripping the chain with the key tightly, she hurried towards the ramp and padded back up to the top floor.

"Well done, you've got one!" Alex congratulated as she approached again, and pointed towards the tanks. "Turn the lock in the center of the valve and turn it to deactivate one of them!"

Jess hurriedly moved to the tank on the left hand side, her heart racing as she saw the three timers counting down past a minute and ten seconds. Standing on the jutting-out platform next to the nearest valve, she slipped the key in and twisted it around once, then tugged on the red valve handle and felt it come loose. Using both hands, she began spinning it around, then became aware of footsteps behind her.

She twisted round, still spinning the handle, and saw Yasa jogging up the last bit of the ramp holding a key up triumphantly.

"Yasa, get the -" she started, and squeaked as she felt the handle come loose. Thinking for a moment that she'd just broken off part of the set, she whipped her head around to see that a disc-shaped section of the tank's wall, complete with the still-ticking timer, had come off with the valve handle she was holding.

"That's good, you've taken out the timer mechanism!" Alex called over to her. Yasa had already hurried past and was spinning the second handle. Jess looked down at the piece she was holding, then up to the gap it had left, seeing a large button set into the back of it with the numbers "02" stamped on it. She set the device down on the floor and stepped around to Yasa, who pulled his free as she approached.

"All right, you've got one more to go, and fifty seconds to get it - go down and help Helen!" Jess glanced over at Yasa, and they both took off back down the ramp.

As they scampered down to the first floor, they saw Helen finally move over to her second task, another of the small consoles like Jess had had to use to get her key. She placed her hands on its sides as she leaned over, reading what was on the screen.

"How much time?" she asked as Jess came towards her, Yasa running up beside her.

"About... forty seconds?" Jess estimated. The catgirl whimpered, her tail swishing behind her as she tapped something out in answer to the puzzle on the screen. The computer answered with a harsh buzz.

Jess leaned in to see what she was doing, and at the same moment, Yasa stepped forward. He took hold of the chain at the front of the console and tugged the key, making Helen step out of the way. The lock held securely.

"How heavy is it?" he asked aloud suddenly.

"What?" Helen replied, startled at the question.

"How heavy do you think it is? We could take the whole thing up." He crouched down and wrapped his arms around the unit - it wasn't much more than a foot wide in each direction and four feet tall, and he wobbled only a little as he began to straighten up again with it in his arms.

"Yasa..." Helen started, putting a hand on top of the machine to push it back down again.

"It's fine!" He swung round away from her, shifting the weight of the unit forward and offering one end to Jess. She took it, glancing sideways at Skye, who was watching them confusedly from inside the tank.

"Go on!" He nodded towards the ramp leading up behind Jess. First glancing down at the wall to make sure the thing wasn't plugged into anything else, she looked over her shoulder and began waddling backwards along with him. Speeding up as he encouraged her, she cringed as she glanced up and saw Alex looking down confusedly from above.

They made their way up the ramp with the console, Yasa skipping his feet to avoid the key dragging along the floor on the end of the chain. Jess looked over at Alex again as they hurried to move it towards the last of the three timers, which had just passed fifteen seconds - he looked like he was unsure what to think, but didn't do anything to stop them.

"I'll lift it if you get the key," Yasa said quickly as Helen ran up the ramp to join them. "Ready?"

Jess nodded and clawed at the chain to get the key into her hands. As the rabbit boy lifted the unit up himself, she leaned over, slid the key into the slot, and turned it once to unlock the valve.

"Come on!" Helen jumped up and down a little as Jess threw the key on the floor and tugged on the last of the three handles, an alarm sounding as the timer approached zero. As Yasa put the unit down again she span the wheel as fast as she could, and tugged the disc-shaped section out as she relievedly felt it come loose.

She jumped and nearly dropped the thing as it jolted in her hands, the other two jerking slightly on the floor as well. Looking down and turning it over, she saw that a set of rods had snicked out the back of it, and realized that they would have pressed the button to activate the tank if it had still been attached. Smiling, she turned to face Alex.

"Er," he said, still acting casual and collected but obviously a little taken aback. "That's something we hadn't expected." He stepped forward and picked up the console from where Yasa had left it, hoisting it onto his shoulder. "We'll have to attach it to something next time!" he remarked as he moved down the ramp, beckoning the others to follow. Jess padded down the ramp after him, a little embarrassed at taking part in Yasa's solution even though Alex hadn't commented badly on it.

"They saved you, Skye!" he said brightly as the husky girl looked up at him, hands pressed to the front panel of the tank. She grinned and raised a fist in the air, shuffling forward to get out the way of the pipe. As Alex set the console down, she stood up on the grille below her.

"We just need to get you out of there now... if nobody's changed it since the last time, this should do it." As he strode towards the cubicle he fished a strip of paper out of his pocket, and keyed in a combination that he read off it. With a confirmation beep, the heavy lock retracted again, and he jumped out of the way as Skye pushed the door open.

"Okay, you look pleased to have stayed clean!" he continued, putting his hand on her shoulder again as she rejoined the others. "Your team didn't quite find the combination to release you in time, but they... sort of found the solutions to turn off all three tanks, so I'm giving you fifty points..."

"Hey, is that all?" Helen spoke up. Alex stopped in his tracks, then waved a finger at the discarded console at the bottom of the ramp. "Come on, that was cheating!" he said. He held his hands up at the protests from Helen and Yasa, as Jess shuffled her feet uncomfortably.

"No, I can't give you any more than that, but we can get one of you to help us make up the points," he said over them, changing the subject quickly. "We've got two games left, they've both got pretty heavy forfeits attached to them - Skye, who's going first?"

Helen and Yasa glanced sideways at each other, then before Skye could say anything, Helen was the first to point at the rabbit.

"We should gunge him for that plan of his!" she said brightly. Yasa grinned a little sheepishly, turning away.

"You know, I'd agree with you there, Helen..." Alex replied, "but if you really want to get him, I'd save him up for the last game. Want to do one yourself first?"

"Oh, all right." After just a little hesitation, she stepped forward and followed Alex as he turned around to the lower door of the room. Skye and Jess moved to join them as he unlocked it and pushed it open, leading them back into the main hangar room again.

"Let's go..." Alex drew out the word, looking in all directions as he pretended to decide where to take them. "Up here! Come on!"

He dashed around the shuttle again, Helen in tow behind him, then turned around to lift her up as he approached the stairs. She squeaked as her feet left the ground, and wriggled to watch where they were going as he stepped upwards.

Alex set her down again at the top of the staircase, and walked her over to a double sliding door directly above the large entrance for the shuttle, on the opposite wall from where they'd just come.

"You've already been in one of our new machines this series, Helen - how do you feel about trying out another?" he asked, his hand on the door lock. Yasa moved around her to the front, eager to see what was inside the room.

The catgirl nodded quietly, hands clasped at her chest as she tapped the fingers of one hand on top of the other. Jess stood on tiptoe to look as Alex undid the catch on the door and slid both halves aside, striding into the room with the others following behind.

Jess padded carefully through the doorway and looked around at the long room. The first thing she saw was at the other end about twenty or thirty yards away, where there was a section of the wall that curved outwards, forming a wide pipe-like bulge in the wall from floor to ceiling. It was divided into two parts, forming two four-foot high sections. Stretching from it towards where they were standing, a tangle of curved tracks lined the floor, branching off to join up with each other and leaving some dead ends.

Alex moved towards the other end of the room, picking his way over the rails, and Jess looked down at the floor to avoid them too as she followed. She looked back over her shoulder to see five box-like carts placed next to the door where they'd come in, arranged in a row with each attached to a different rail. She bumped her toe on one of the raised rails, and flicked her head around to the front again, lifting her feet and looking where she was going. At this end of the room, five of the rails ended with poles jutting out of the ground a couple of feet, a socket-like depression on top of each one.

As Alex reached the wall, he flicked two small switches on a panel next to the curved metal surface. Helen, close behind him, watched nervously as both the top and bottom sections split open, rotating back around away from them. The others moved around to see what was inside.

Jess peered into the gloomy interior, stepping forwards to get a better look as the panel moved back. The back of the inside was curved too, forming a complete pipe-shaped alcove in the wall that was about four feet across. The back wall was covered in small tubes and pipelines connecting vague jutting-out panels, and had a number of openings and nozzles all pointed down at a swivel chair placed in the center of its floor. Jess was reminded more than a little of the Hotseat as she looked the daunting contraption up and down.

Helen looked worriedly from the chair to the pipes and back as the metallic sections ground to a halt. Alex walked with her over the curved rail on the floor that guided the tank's door, and held her hand as she stepped up onto the seat, putting her feet on a rest at the front. After making sure she was settled, he moved away to the side and touched the panel again, making the bottom of the two sections begin to close again.

"This looks kind of familiar," Helen said as the door hummed closed in front of her, indicating the various nozzles and pipes placed around the tank.

"From when you were in the foam tank?" Alex asked, dashing over beside her. She nodded. "Don't worry. This one's far worse."

He turned around immediately as she shuddered, glancing up briefly at the machine she was inside and then concentrating on her feet, a hint of a smile on her lips.

Alex stepped back over one of the tracks in the floor, placing himself among the other three team-mates, and turned to face her again.

"Okay, Helen, you're now trapped in something that we call the Gunkpipe." Jess felt herself twitch at the sound of the word, and the catgirl cringed, raising one hand to her forehead and pinching it. "As you've seen, a lot of pipes and channels from various parts of the processing wing converged here on their way out, but we've ripped out the main pipe and put you in there in its place."

Yasa was grinning from ear to ear as Helen bit her lip, drawing her arms and legs in slightly as she nodded, still understandably distracted by her situation.

"The good news is that just like the tanks you saw in the last game, that pipe operated on a timer, so you're going to be totally safe until the next rinse starts up. We don't know exactly when that is, but we know that it's between two and three minutes."

He pointed upwards, and for the first time, Jess noticed an LED display mounted near the ceiling in front of the tank. She stepped back to read it, glancing back to make sure she didn't tread on the rails, but it was flickering through random numbers.

"It's going to be up to your team mates to save you by diverting the flow. To do that, they've got to bring each of the five storage tanks down the rails from the other end of the room to one of the end points and connect them up through these." He slapped the top of one of the rods in the ground, and the pink catgirl stretched her neck to see it over the lip of the tank. "Every time they get one of them connected, the timer will stop and you'll have the choice of whether or not you want them to start it up again and try for another one. Make sense so far?"

Helen nodded. Jess looked behind her at the carts attached to the rails again, already looking down to try and work out routes for all of them to make it to the end of the room where they were standing.

"The only trouble is..." Alex continued, "you're going to be stuck in that thing and won't be able to see the timer, so you won't know whether you've got heaps of time... or it's about to splurge," he said, gesturing at the pipes around her. The catgirl shuddered at the word, looking down and drumming her feet on the floor of the cylinder. The red wolf paced around her back to the switches on the wall.

"And so that your team mates can't tell you either, I'm afraid we've got to shut you in there now..." He flicked the other switch back and Helen looked up again. With a jolt, her chair slowly began rotating to face the back wall. She raised her hands nervously to clasp them in front of her mouth as the top section began closing too, casting a shadow over her as she disappeared from view.

Jess shivered again at the sight of the smooth outer surface of the pipe, and watched Alex as he walked around it to a monitor set in the side opposite the switches. A microphone on the end of a coiled cable was resting on a hook beside it, and he picked it up as he approached.

"Can you hear me OK in there, Helen?" he called into it. The catgirl's image was displayed in a grainy green-tinged night vision, from a high angle inside the pipe.

"Yeah," came the response. The others saw her sit up a little more in the chair, looking around in front of her at nothing in particular. After her initial nervousness, she didn't seem uncomfortable.

"Your team mates are going to start bringing the first tank over here now," he continued. "You're not going to be able to hear the noise of the timer in there, but when they've got it plugged in, you'll get this..." He paused, and a high beeping sound chirped over the speakers. "Each one's worth twenty points. After they've finished with one, you can either decide to escape, or let them continue - but if they run out of time, you'll lose twenty points, and the gunk's going to go all over you instead."

"Yep." They saw the catgirl nod slowly to herself. She twisted round to look up again, but quickly returned to facing in front of her, unable to see anything in the darkness. She drummed her fingers on one arm of the chair.

"All right, she seems confident - are you three ready?" Alex asked them. Yasa turned and scampered down the room back towards the five carts, and Jess carefully followed him. "All you have to do is find a way to get each of those things in turn down to this end of the room. Moving any of them will start the timer, and you can stop it again by connecting the pipe on the front of them to any of these sockets."

Yasa had reached the leftmost of the five carts and leaned down to grasp a handle place on its back. He looked up as Jess and Skye joined him, and glanced over to Alex for confirmation.

The red wolf leaned over to speak into the microphone again. "It looks like they're ready to begin, Helen," he said, then straightened. "Start whenever you like."

Jess looked on as Yasa gingerly gave the box a push, and jumped as an electronic ticking noise started up. As he moved it along the rail, she spun round to look at the timer on the ceiling, and saw that it had started at about two minutes and ten seconds.

The rabbit boy reached a split in the track, and leaned back, scuffing his feet along the ground to slow down. Uncertainly, he looked in both directions, trying to see which way would give him the quickest route.

"Over this way," Skye called, beckoning him. She had walked ahead of Yasa and Jess, and was looking along the lines at the right hand side of the room.

Jess watched Helen's vague image on the monitor as Yasa guided the tank a little closer to their goal, then woke up as she realized he was trying to get it to turn in the other direction on a double bend section of track. She dashed over to him and pushed from the other side to help him get going again, walking with him to pull it back when he reached the next turning point. Twisting around to look forwards, she saw he had a clear line towards one of the targets, and let go, stepping aside as he sped up to a jog.

Jess ran after him and moved around to the other side after he pushed it against the barrier at the end, then moved to pick up the length of rubber tubing that extended out of its top as he took his hands away. As she uncertainly ran it through her fingers to bring up the loose end, Skye stepped forward to grab it, and she let go of it and stepped back as the husky girl concentrated on pushing the end into the socket in front of the box. Jess leaned down to help her, but at that moment she pushed it into place. Both of them jumped as a spurting, hissing noise started up, and Jess looked down to see a very thin window in the otherwise covered tank fill up with a thick beige liquid.

Alex smiled, then picked up the microphone from its hook. "Coming in loud and clear, Helen?" he asked as Jess and the others gathered round.

"I've got a light!" Helen's image on the monitor pointed forwards at something unseen.

"That's right - they've got one tank full, and twenty points for the team. Want to carry on?" He took his thumb off the microphone's send button, and put it to his ear.

"Sure," came the response.

"All right - let's do another one!" He put the microphone back, and Yasa once again led the way towards the carts.

Jess kept an eye on the timer as they repeated the process, with she and Yasa doing most of the guidance of the tank and Skye walking ahead to signal where to go. After they had connected the second one up, Helen chose to continue once again, and another tank was pulled along the rails.

Alex watched them from the corner as they drew the third cart up to the end of the rail, and Jess hurriedly shoved the connecting hose into the socket. As the gunk sprayed through the pipe, she wiped her forehead and looked up at the timer again - they had had to take a longer route with the third one, and now only had just over forty seconds remaining. 

"So you should have three lights on, Helen - have you any idea how much time's gone past, by the way?"

"I don't know. About a minute?" she suggested. Jess's stomach lurched at the low number, knowing that she was more likely to try and get them to carry on.

Alex didn't acknowledge the guess. "Does that mean you'll be wanting them to try another one?" he asked back.

"Yep." The catgirl clapped her hands together then leaned back in the chair again, gripping and releasing the arms.

"You heard her - choose the fourth one you're going to bring over!" Alex called after the three of them as they began moving back towards the far end of the room. Jess looked over her shoulder at the timer again to check once again how much time they had left.

"Ready?" Yasa asked as he bent down, bracing himself against the floor ready to take off at a run. Skye held up her hand and paced forward, looking around her.

"We'll have to take it all the way over to the other side," she said, pointing down at two sets of connections. They hadn't planned ahead well when placing the previous three tanks, and Jess saw that they would have to pull it backwards across the room about halfway to get it to a free space.

"Jess, if you stand here..." Skye pointed down at where she was standing, the doubling-back bend that would lead them back across the room. "We'll do it in three stages," she continued, pointing at the route Yasa should take to get to her, then Jess's route to a matching connector at the other end of the room. In front of that, an awkward series of twists and turns led to one of the free spaces at the far end.

Jess nodded, and jogged over to her position. Skye walked back across the room, ready to catch it once Jess had reached her.

"OK." Yasa looked at the two of them so they could acknowledge they were ready, then suddenly burst forwards, trying to run as fast as possible behind its weight and only slowing down a little to get it past the splits in the track.

Jess put her hands up as he rapidly approached her, but still stepped back a little and jumped as it slammed into the end of the track. As he stepped out of the way she leaned forwards, using her shoulder to put all her weight behind it as she got it moving down her section.

She moved only a little slower than Yasa had, but it seemed to take ages, and she tried not to think about the rapidly decreasing timer as she pushed it along the gently curving track. Skye was ready as she reached the end, and hauled it towards her a little to help her with the last few inches.

Yasa ran over to help Skye as she got the tank moving on the last section, and Jess stepped back, panting. As they both struggled through the corners, she softly moved forwards towards their target, worriedly watching the timer drop below twenty seconds. She leaned forward on the top of the post, gripping it tightly as she looked from the other two team members to the large counter and back.

"You're nearly there!" Alex called from behind her as the two of them slowly approached.

"Come on!" Jess joined in. She realized she was actually jumping with the tension, and tried to calm down, drumming her feet on the ground instead. As the rabbit and husky finally manhandled it into place, she stepped forward to grab the hose, fumbling to push it into the socket on top of the pole. After a couple of seconds, it finally slid into place, and she stepped back relievedly as the familiar spraying noise started up and the window on the side of the tank filled up.

"You know, I think that they've got the hang of it now, Helen," Alex remarked as Jess turned around, exhaustedly glancing up at the ceiling timer once more. Only five seconds were left. "Now, not to encourage you or anything, but there's one last one to go if you want the full possible score for the game... do you want them to go for it?"

"Don't say 'yes', don't say 'yes'..." Jess whispered to herself, wringing her hands together in front of her. She knew they'd have had nowhere near enough time even if the timer hadn't started so low, and her heart was pounding as there was a silence from Helen. She watched her grainy image on the monitor, looking around at all the nozzles and pipes around her.

"Hmm..." They heard the catgirl sigh to herself as she thought. "I think you've probably still got enough time, so... no, wait..." She hesitated for a moment, but then Jess cringed as she confidently raised her head. "Yeah," she concluded with a nod. "Go on!"

"All right, that's the last decision you need to make, so I'm going to open this up to let you see if they make it..." Alex, not reacting to the disastrous decision at all, dashed around to the other side of the pipe. He flicked one of the switches then stepped back as the sliding section moved away, and they watched Helen's chair rotate back round to face them. Smiling at first, she glanced between the three other team members, reading each of their faces.

"What?" she asked apprehensively, turning towards the presenter.

He sucked air in through his teeth, and paced around towards the front as she squirmed. "Helen..." he began as he leaned on the top of the front section. "You've only got five seconds left!"

"Oh..." The catgirl sank down in the chair, looking around once again at the grimy pipes pointed in her direction.

"Want us to give you a countdown?" Alex suddenly stood up enthusiastically, holding up the trigger and jabbing it with his thumb. A series of warning beeps began as the timer started. "Five..."

Helen shrieked, looking around frantically at the inside of the gunge machine as Skye and Yasa joined in the countdown. Jess looked worriedly back at the pink catgirl as she glanced around in a panic. Just before the timer reached zero, she hunched down a little on the seat, her hands clasped together on top of her head and her arms protecting her ears. With an exaggerated clank, a set of green lights turned on inside the tank and she squealed, dropping her arms down again to grab the sides of her chair as she felt it slowly begin to rotate.

Jess watched, wide-eyed, as the pipe at the back left of the tank dribbled slightly, then began spewing a stream of smooth dark brown gunk that hit the catgirl in the middle of her chest as she came round, splashing outwards into her face and down her lap as her hands shot out in front of her to defend herself. She tilted her head to the side as she was turned around past it, another translucent stream above it turning on and splattering off her hair, quickly soaking it and matting it to her head.

A gurgling sound from behind them made the team look round, and they watched as a fountain of beige gunge began spurting out of the last rod in front of the tank. The murky slime splashed on the floor as another thin spurt directed at them from the top of the main tank made Skye duck out of the way.

Just after the chair reached the halfway point, a cream-colored downpour started from a pipe high up on the wall on the right, the strength of the flow varying to make the gunge slop back and forward across Helen's head and right hand side. Squeaking as the smooth slime played up and down her, the chair turning so that it poured across her chest, tummy and into her lap, she returned one hand to her hair and felt around in front of her with the other one, trying her best to keep her face clean and spitting out slime as she shook her head.

Yasa, looking as awestruck as Jess felt, excitedly crept closer to the gunge-spewing machine as the catgirl struggled, leaning away from the gooey flow as she felt herself being turned past it. Another stream started up from a pipe high up on the left, and the rabbit boy squeaked and ducked as some of it flew out towards him and dribbled over his head and shoulder.

As Helen was rotated to face the front again, hunching her neck as the streams she had been facing slithered up and down her neck and back, the team got a glimpse of her face. The brown and cream colors of gunk were mingling together into a sickly orangeish mixture as they slid down from the top of her head, across her firmly closed eyes and mouth, and dripped stickily off her chin. She shook her slippery hands, sending globs of light and dark gunge to the floor as the chair continued to turn.

Whooping and screaming as she wiped at her eyes, she felt herself being turned to face the first gunge stream again and placed her hands firmly over her face, shaking her head defeatedly as the brown slime slopped over her. Another few dark and light streams sputtered and slapped over her from the ceiling, not lasting for more than a couple of seconds, and Jess looked up into the darkness wondering if a few bucketfuls were actually being thrown into the tank from above.

Helen was turned through the cream-colored stream again, and she flicked her head to get her face out of the way. She faced the team with her eyes squeezed shut, a grin breaking through the grimace on her face as the ooze splashed onto the side of her head and dribbled down her front. As the chair turned back to its starting point it slowed down, then stopped with a jolt. The thick streams of cream and brown from behind the catgirl continued, lapping up and down her shoulders and making her wriggle and squirm around as they dripped down her back, around her neck and mingled with the gunge coating her slimy chest.

Leaning forward and twisting to the side as the slippery streams glooped on to her shoulders, Helen raised her hands up to her eyes and tried to wipe at them a little. She only succeeded in mixing the thick coating of gunge on her hands across the rest of her face. Sighing as she felt the two streams behind her sputter and drizzle to a halt, she sagged down a little in the chair and shivered as the globs of dark and light gunk slithered through her fur and soaked swimwear.

A low siren noise started up, rising slowly in pitch as the dripping catgirl's shoulders shook in defeated laughter. Suddenly a loud klaxon joined it, and Jess and the others jumped back a little as a huge downpour of heavy brown and green slime slopped down from the middle of the tank's ceiling. Helen disappeared under it with a muffled squeak, slow waves of gunk slapping outwards from her head and shoulders as the team watched her outline wriggling through the massive deluge.

As suddenly as it began, the downpour stopped, revealing Helen sitting slouched halfway down the seat, covered in a thick mixture of murky gunge like most of the inside of the tank. Slowly, she put her hands on the arms of the chair, using them as leverage to haul herself back upright and shaking her head as a stream of heavy drops splatted onto her hair from above.

Opening her eyes and blinking a couple of times as the gunk dripped across them, she looked down at herself, arms out at her sides with her fingers outstretched, and her shoulders shook as she gave a high-pitched helpless shrieking laugh. Her pretty hair had been plastered to her head, and she was a murky dark brown and green all over. Small streaks of cream gunge highlighted the thick slimy mess, dripping from her hair and fur in gooey strings with beads of slime at the ends. Suddenly she looked up at the team again, making some of the clinging drops break off and splatter to the floor.

"Would it help if I said 'sorry', Helen?" Alex asked, returning to the front of the tank. The catgirl, looking completely unrecognizable under the glistening messy layer with none of her soft pink fur visible, folded her arms and looked at him in pretend annoyance, shaking her head and stroking one hand up and down her gunge-caked arm.

"Come on out..." The red wolf tapped the panel on the wall again and the curved bottom section at the front of the tank slowly hummed away, revealing Helen's equally messy legs. Wriggling her slippery dangling toes to try and get the gunk off them before she stepped down, she pushed herself off the seat and caught Alex's hand, hauling herself upright and stepping heavily out to rejoin the team.

Jess shivered at the slop-coated floor and back wall of the gunge machine as Helen stood dripping gunk beside her. Yasa moved forward to ruffle her hair, but she ducked out of the way and smeared her slimy hand across his chest instead.

"Well, we've managed to make an incredible mess of this place..." Alex said, looking round at the splatter of mixed colors of gunge on the floor that had been sprayed outwards from the tank and the rod that hadn't been connected to anything. "Helen definitely got the worst of it, though, so you lost twenty points - but that's still sixty for the other three tanks you got connected up."

He turned to Yasa, who looked him in the eye confidently. "Now..." he began as the rabbit boy bit his lip, knowing he was the center of attention. "We've got one team member who hasn't taken a risk yet this round, and one last game left... remember I said we were going to get you?"

Helen pumped her hands in the air and whooped as Yasa stepped forward to take Alex's outstretched hand. He looked a little uneasy about what they had prepared for him, but it didn't stop him grinning at Helen's reaction.

"Come on, I'll show you how it's going to happen." Alex took off at a jog across the room with Yasa, skipping over the rails on the floor as the others ran after them both. Jess slowed down a little to run alongside Helen as the soaked and heavy catgirl struggled to keep up with them.

Their host passed the open doors of the room and darted to the side, the rabbit boy yelping and sliding to keep up as he tugged on his arm. When they reached the top of the steep metal stairs Alex let go of him, put his hands on the slanted handrails, and Jess shook her head as she watched him lift himself off the ground and slide downwards on his hands.

She leaned over the rail to watch as he landed with a slight stumble and turned round, arms outstretched happily. "Takes practice to do that," he said as he waited for the rest of them to walk down the slower way. "Come on, you're going to love this..."

When they were all on the ground level again, Alex pointed past the stairs they'd just come down, moving around them into a gloomy corner of the hangar area. Jess paced with the group over towards it, and as she came closer she could make out a thin raised strip on the floor - the end of a sectioned conveyor belt that led through an opening on the wall, covered by plastic curtaining. Next to it there was the faint outline of a door, its rough cross-hatched metal surface covered in cobwebs.

"Now, let's see if this thing still works..." The red wolf let go of Yasa and stepped over the conveyor to reach the wall. He pulled upwards on a large wall-mounted switch and a klaxon sounded, making Skye jump back from the edge of the belt.

With a clattering, grinding noise, the conveyor started up, and Jess watched for a moment as its hard sections disappeared one by one into the floor. Suddenly she jumped as the curtaining bulged, and it flapped aside as a dusty chair came through, bolted to one of the sections. Alex returned the lever to its center position again, and the belt ground to a halt.

"I think you can see where this is going, Yasa - or rather, where you're going," Alex said as he stepped forward, using his hands to brush the gray strands of dust and grime off the chair's tough padded surface. "Want to take a seat?"

"Okay!" Yasa stepped forward, spun around, reached behind him to put his hands on the ends of the chair's arms, and eagerly hoisted himself up into the seat. It was a couple of inches too high for his feet to touch the floor, and he swung his bare toes back and forward a little as he twisted to look at the opening that was now behind him.

"Now, when I did this a couple of years ago you might remember that I offered people some protection round about now," the red wolf started. Jess watched him pace back and forward in front of the chair as Yasa nodded. "But seeing as nobody ever took any I didn't bother to bring anything this time around - are you OK with that?"

The rabbit boy chuckled a little as he nodded. "I'm fine." He shook his head, bouncing excitedly in the seat as he waited for it to be started up. Alex leaned over him, taking a seatbelt-like strap from one side of the chair, placing it across his lap and clipping it in place.

"All right, just be aware that when your friends pull the switch for you, you're going to get the ride of your life!" He turned towards the rest of the team. "You three - get ready to gunge Yasa for a hundred point bonus..."

Helen was the first to react, scampering forwards eagerly to reach up and put her hand on the end of the red lever. Jess smiled, moving to the switch too and placing her hand over the catgirl's, turning over her shoulder to Skye as she clasped her hand on top.

"Any last requests, Yasa?" the red wolf smiled. The rabbit boy looked Helen in the eye and pointed at her, making her giggle a little as she tensed her hand to tug the switch down.

"What about Helen coming along with me?" he asked with a mischievous grin.

Jess turned her head to the catgirl, whose expression went from an evil grin to one more of surprise. She brought up one finger and tucked a strand of messy hair behind her ear as she looked over at Alex.

"Don't you think she's messy enough already?" Alex asked back.  The rabbit and catgirl looked at each other again, and Helen's shoulders sagged as she giggled.

"Go on, send him off!" encouraged Alex.

"No, I'll do it," she said.

"Team leader, what's your decision?" the host asked again as Helen wriggled her hand free of the others, moving around the two of them towards Yasa.

"Yeah, get up there," Skye pointed up to the chair. Alex nodded, and undid Yasa's strap. The pink catgirl put one foot on top of Yasa's as she climbed up into the chair, and turned around to wriggle down onto his lap. The rabbit boy happily hugged his arms around her waist and slippery tummy as Alex adjusted the belt and strapped them both in again.

"All right, let's get this over with - Jess and Skye... gunge the pair of them." Alex held his hands out towards them, and Jess turned back to the lever. She tugged along with Skye as she felt her begin to pull down, and quickly let go of the lever as the conveyor started up again in the other direction. Helen squeaked, looking nervously at the black curtain as they moved slowly forwards towards it.

"Come through here!" Alex beckoned Skye and Jess, and they both hurried round the end of the conveyor as Alex walked over to the door. Undoing its catch, he thumped it with his shoulder a couple of times to get it to squeak open, and held it open for them as they came through.

Jess squeezed around Alex and took a couple of steps into the dimly-lit room. It looked almost like a security station of some sort, with monitors of varying sizes set into banks on the walls or suspended on metal brackets from the ceiling. A large control console stood opposite them on the wall a few feet away. On her right, the conveyor continued from outside in a straight line briefly, a row of three box-like protrusions pointing down at it from the ceiling, before turning to head through a set of flaps in the wall. A clear perspex window made up one patch of the wall slightly further on. Jess followed the route she imagined the conveyor taking anticlockwise around the room, seeing another patch of exposed belt at the back left, and suddenly gasped as she glanced down beside her.

A section out of the floor next to the left wall was taken up by a sunken gunge vat, its murky green and dull yellow surface bordered with bright warning stripes. As she shuffled away from it, she saw a stretch of conveyor emerging from underneath a third set of black plastic curtaining, which ended right above it. A little further forward, a wide pipe was set into the ceiling.

"Here they come," Alex said, tapping her on the shoulder. She turned around again to see the rabbit and catgirl being carried into the room, looking around as they entered for the first time. Before they had had time to take it in, there was a clicking noise from the ceiling, the circular catch at the bottom of one of the boxes fell open, and a wave of watery green slime spewed onto them.

They both yelped as it hit them, the translucent liquid splashing out and hitting the nearby wall and floor. Helen held her hands out to her sides as the slime loosened the stuff she was already covered in, shaking herself off. Yasa stayed still, eyes closed but smiling, as the second box burst open and covered them again.

Helen squealed a second time, hunching up as the drizzly remains of the brief deluge slopped over her back. The rabbit boy leaned his head out of the way as he felt himself being carried underneath it. The catgirl put her slippery hands over her eyes, ready for the third green wave. As they moved under the last box, it opened slightly later to hit Yasa on the head, the gooey green stuff splattering out wildly and making Jess jump back a little.

As he moved forwards out of the falling gunge, Yasa shook his head, his hair already slick with slime and dripping heavily behind him. As Helen straightened up, the chair reached the corner, turned, and pushed the flaps out of the way as it went into the darkness. Shortly afterwards, Skye laughed as they heard a high-pitched squeak from Helen at something unseen.

Jess tilted her head around, trying to catch a glimpse on them on the monitors or follow the mechanical noise and work out where they were, but at that moment the flaps at the back of the clear section of the wall opened, and the chair with the two of them moved into view. As it came forward and slowed down, Yasa returned his hands to Helen's sides. He was just visible behind her, shaking his head to stop the green slime dripping into his eyes.

The seat clicked into place, and a hooter blared from somewhere on the ceiling. As it sounded again, Helen slowly looked upwards, taking her hands away from her cheeks. Suddenly they flew back to her face as she hunched down, and as lights flashed inside the tank, a wide column of bright yellow gunge poured in from the ceiling.

Helen vanished under the sloppy dome, the top of her head visible as the stuff splashed outwards in the weird slow thick waves that Jess had seen so many times over the last couple of hours. A couple of licks of slime hit the perspex wall at the front, forming dome-shaped splatter marks as it slid downwards.

The catgirl leaned to the side to escape the continuing downpour, and Yasa was visible for a moment before the slime sploshed out from her shoulder and into his face. Spluttering, he took his hand off her side and raised it to his eyes, turning away and holding his palm up to protect himself.

The brightly colored downpour was tilted back and forward a little, the shape of the dome twitching as it was moved to hit both their heads in turn, the yellow custard-like liquid slithering and dripping from their fur. Slowly it began to run out, the two struggling victims slipping against each other as they tried to stay upright.

The chair began moving backwards again, and Helen sat up, her hair and most of her top half now coated in the bright yellow gunge. Behind her, Yasa wiped off his face, flicked his hand to throw a handful of slime to the floor, and returned his hands to clasp them in front of her. The flaps at the back of the tank closed again, hiding them from view as the last of the gunge from the top of the box drizzled down onto its slippery floor.

Alex looked back at Jess and Skye with a smile, then pointed over to the bank of monitors on the wall. Jess padded over to it, Skye following close behind, and looked up at the top right one as she saw movement. The screen was showing a view from above of the chair slowly moving through a passage, with its two slimy occupants cautiously looking around them to see where the next onslaught would come from. Helen has placed her hands on top of Yasa's and was gripping between his fingers.

Suddenly a huge spray of white covered almost the entire screen, and Jess heard herself yelp at the same time as Helen and Yasa. She watched the monitor open-mouthed as the jets of white pie foam continued from the sprayers in the walls, then they shut off as quickly as they had started.  The two of them were visible only as a vague white blob that dripped clumps and dollops of gooey foam as Helen wriggled on top of the rabbit boy. She screamed in laughter again, the noise audible through the wall as well as over the speakers.

Yasa's arm came up to his face to drag off the pie foam, and he blinked his eyes open again just as they were carried through a set of slowly tilting jets of watery gunge sprayed from the walls and ceiling. The two clean team members watched as the slime stained the clinging foam in multiple colors as the chair moved through the sprays.

Jess looked down to another monitor as they appeared on it - they were heading away from the camera, nearing an archway that led out of the enclosed space. The colorful sprays shown on the other monitors died down, and nothing happened for a few moments. But as the chair approached the archway, Jess noticed a movement above it in front of them, and smiled as a large tank that had been hidden from view tipped towards them.

Helen gave another squeak and shrank down again, Yasa leaning into her back and putting his hands over her eyes as the contents of the tank slopped towards them - a mixture of yellow foam and thick gunge that flopped heavily down onto Helen's front and lap, continuing as Yasa's head went under the downpour and splashing out to coat them both. As they dripped through the archway, Jess looked to her left to see them emerge onto the exposed conveyor. The red wolf moved towards the wall next to it and flicked a large switch, gradually slowing the belt down.

Alex clasped his hands behind his back and strolled towards them as they stopped, the mechanical noise grinding to a halt. Helen's shoulders were shaking as she spread her arms and looked down at herself, Yasa laughingly wiping his hands on her outstretched arms from behind her. Letting go, he moved his hands up to his head and dragged the yellow mixture down off his ears, flicking his hands to the floor.

The three others watched them for a moment, and Alex eventually stepped forwards. "What did you think of that?" he asked with a smile as the messy pair wiped their eyes to look at him.

As they whooped in response, he leaned down to the button to release their seat belt, clearing the gungy muck away with one finger before tentatively pressing it. With a click, the end of the strap came out, and Alex moved his arms up to take the end up and around the chair.

"You've just experienced the new version of the Ride..." he explained as he clipped the belt back into place, this time behind the chair so they weren't strapped in. Helen sighed and slithered forwards, ready to get up, but Alex stopped her with a hand on her tummy. "...where are you going? We're not finished yet!"

Shocked, Helen looked up at him as he darted to the side to pull the lever again. The catgirl wriggled backwards to a comfortable sitting position, watching them all as the belt started up again, and a little faster this time, they disappeared into another tunnel ahead of them.

Jess grinned to herself, realizing exactly where they were going to end up, and skipped around to the edge of the gunge vat. As the others joined her, the chair came through the black curtaining over at the other side. Helen wiped at her eyes as they came through, and only Yasa's hands were visible clasping her gungy hips as she looked down and gaped at what they were heading into. He squirmed to the side so that he could see forwards, blinking and shaking the remains of the foamy slime off his head, and whooped as they rattled rapidly towards the end.

Helen joined in the cheer, raising one hand in the air but with the other flying to her nose to hold it closed. As the chair reached the end of the rail it clicked and tipped forwards, making Helen scream as the two of them slid together feet first into the gunge vat.

Jess couldn't help laughing out loud as they disappeared underneath the surface with a thick, rich glooping noise, the yellow and green mixture rippling wildly outwards from where they'd fallen in. After a moment, two heads broke through the surface a couple of feet apart, hair heavy with brightly colored gunge and their faces barely visible through the glop. Helen, visibly trying to tread water in the glutinous liquid, hooted with helpless laughter again as the overhead pipe splurged a wide deluge of yellow stuff down between them. The gooey column crashed noisily into the center of the vat, catching Yasa on the shoulder but spraying them both as the giggling catgirl turned her head away.

Yasa slowly turned his drenched head up from its bowed position and blinked his eyes open, bobbing a little in the tank as the stuff rippled around him. He pulled his hands out of the gloop, shaking them in the air to get some of the gunge off, then brought them to his ears and wiped firmly down them, shaking his head again to clear them a little.

Alex approached the edge of the vat, looking down at them and laughing a little as Jess and Skye walked up behind him. The completely covered catgirl was holding her hands in front of her to defend herself as the rabbit boy splashed some of the gloop in her direction, advancing towards him in a slow bouncing motion against the weight of the gunge. Suddenly she lunged forwards in a rough hug, putting her arms around him and scrubbing the slime on her hands into his head and down his ears. With a yelp, he stumbled, lost his footing and fell backwards, submerging the pair of them completely again.

The red wolf looked on, his shoulders now shaking as the cat and rabbit bobbed to the surface separately. "You know, I don't really think they want to be let out of there..." he chuckled, crouching down as he watched the messy pair move together again, wrestling in the gunge vat. "Tell you what, Jess and Skye can try the final themselves!" He straightened up and stepped away, making the others laugh, then walked back to the edge of the tank as they let go of each other and both waded to the side.

"Ladies first," he said as he stretched his arms down towards Helen. "Come on - we'll get you out of there, get you cleaned up, and let you have a go at the final game - and hopefully, the exact same thing won't happen to you at the end," he grinned. Jess felt her heart jump as she watched Alex carefully set the gooey catgirl down on dry land again - she remembered what Alex had told them about the new final.

"So that's an automatic hundred points for doing that to Yasa and Helen..." their host said as he grabbed both Yasa's hands and helped him out too. "And as soon as I get my hands free again, I can tell you what that means for your total score..."

Jess smiled as he let go of the rabbit boy, who ran his hand over his head, through his hair and down his ears, grimacing at the splatting noise that the dislodged wave of slime made as it hit the floor. Alex reached for his pocket again.

"That brings you up to 280 for the last round, making it your best round yet," he said, hitting the screen with the stylus, "and we double that to give you 560 - so that puts you at one thousand, two hundred and fifty for the whole game!"

Skye raised her fists in the air, turning around, and Helen and Yasa cheered a little too, clearly tired from their messy ride. Jess smiled a little, still thinking about what they might have ready for them in the final game - but as she walked behind the gooey rabbit and catgirl as they followed Alex out of the room, she realized that even though she was nervous she was definitely looking forward to it.

Final

For the third time, Jess pushed open the door to the changing room, this time holding it open to let Skye through behind her. They had showered quickly to get off the muck that the quick spray with the water hose hadn't cleaned away, and were wearing fresh swimwear once again.

"It's such a weird feeling when it hits you," Skye continued as she walked past her. While getting changed, they had been exchanging thoughts on the games they'd been in, and Jess had nervously asked her what being gunged on the Hotseat had been like. "Cause... you know it's going to turn on again, but you're already sitting there under a load of slime and you can't see anything... then the black lumpy stuff comes down and it just sits on top of what you're already covered in, and you don't even feel it until it's dribbling down over your shoulders. Ugh..." She brought her hands up to cling at her shoulders instinctively as she remembered.

"It should keep your roommates happy, at least," Jess smiled. "For that... bet you had, I mean," she added as a momentary look of confusion crossed Skye's face.

"Oh, yeah." The husky girl stretched up, standing on her tiptoes, then dropped her arms back to her sides as she paced towards the water cooler next to the door. "Yeah, I think I've done my end of the bet..."

"What did your roommates have to do?" asked Jess.

Skye paused as she raised a paper cup to her lips, holding a finger up as she took a sip. "I can't even remember. Nothing as good as this!" she grinned. "And I didn't even take the chance to put one of them down as who I wanted to get revenge on... I never thought when watching this on TV that it would ever happen to me."

Jess smiled at her back as she headed to the bench at the side of the room, slumping down and tapping her feet in turn impatiently. She knew that Skye had been more nervous than she wanted to admit, but now she was brimming with confidence again. As she sat down opposite her, the husky girl leaned in towards her, lowering her voice.

"Did he ever say what happens to me in the final?" she asked, indicating towards the door leading into the set.

Jess looked towards where she was pointing for a moment, and thought back to the conversation before the third round. "I don't think so..." she said to fill the gap. "Just that we had to let you out of something in time."

Skye nodded, and for a moment Jess thought she saw her shiver. "Sounds like I'm not safe from gunge yet!" she smiled to cover it up. "Actually I'm kind of hoping it'll be one of those tanks that fill up around you - I saw your face in that one near the start! It looked incredible."

"Yeah..." This time, Jess shuddered a little, remembering how being covered in green slop had felt the first time.

"Scary, though, am I right?" Skye interrupted her thoughts, grinning across her water cup before downing the rest of it.

Jess began to reply, then looked at the door again as a red-furred hand pushed it open. "Guess who I've got here?" Alex asked happily as he stepped around it, holding it open. Jess giggled nervously as she recognized her friend Leann step in behind him, now clean again and also wearing a fresh swimsuit. She pointed accusingly at Jess, but burst into a laugh as she did so, skipping forward and sitting down next to her.

"Sorry," Jess smiled back at her as she remembered seeing Leann being covered in gunge and foam inside the booth, accepting her hug as the canine leaned over towards her.

"Hey, don't be sorry - I think it was fair enough." Alex chuckled as she shot him a look, holding his hands up. "At least you got the private shower afterwards - though you two got cleaned up pretty quickly too, didn't you?"

"Yep." Skye answered immediately.

"Yeah, you were lucky in that last round. That other pair looked like they needed much more of a cleanup than you." He sat down on the bench next to Skye, idly fiddling with something in his pocket as he put his feet up on the table. "Just tell me they're doing it in separate shower rooms..."

Jess gave a shocked laugh at the sudden remark, and Skye just grinned over at him, nodding. When they had left the changing room Helen had still been underneath the large water sprayers, trying to clean all the gunk out of her pink fur.

"So... am I going to stay clean for long in the final?" the husky girl asked Alex directly. Jess could see just how eager she was to find out even though she had tried to act calm.

Alex read her immediately. "You remember in the last series, how we had that tank that filled up around the team if they lost?" he asked back.

"Uh-huh..." Skye confirmed, a grin spreading across her face.

"You'll basically be in a smaller one of those."

"Oh, yes!" Skye punched the air, making Leann and Jess laugh at her reaction. "That's what I wanted to hear!"

Alex smiled as he straightened up again. "And the others'll be trying to save you from that - if you even want to be saved! Leann, you'll love this, too - you're going to get to watch Jess and the others having to wallow around finding three keys in a gunge vat to let her out..."

"Great," Leann grinned, looking over at Jess, who smiled a little worriedly.

"But I'll tell you how it works once we're in there. The explanation of the rules for the viewers is actually recorded separately, so you can interrupt me any time you like."

At that moment, they all looked at the door to the male changing room as Yasa came back out, running his hands through his long hair to neaten it. He was shirtless this time, wearing just a pair of black swimming shorts. As soon as the door had closed behind him, the women's door squeaked open a little and Helen sidled in as well, her hair still a little wet.

"Well, you couldn't have timed that better, you two - it looks like we're ready to finish this off!" Alex sprang up from the bench, and the others rose to their feet.

"Leann, mind staying behind for a moment?" he asked as the puppy girl began to get up as well. "The cameras are on for this next section, but we'll get you through there after we're inside."

The canine nodded, and paced back towards the other end of the room as Jess moved with the others to the door.

"All right - last time we're going through here. Ready?" their host asked, looking back over his shoulder as he put both hands on the double doors. At the cheer from the team, he flung them open and strode out into the entrance room.

"Here we are, team!" he called back to them as they moved to keep up, going right into his show persona again. "You've picked up 1250 points along the way, but this is the real challenge - you've now got to use your time to try and turn on the experimental purifier that was kept in here."

Jess glanced to the left for a moment and seeing the 'lift' that they had come in by at the very start. As they reached the wide metal door opposite the entrance to the changing room, Alex indicated for them to gather round.

"Guess what I forgot to get while we were in the processing wing?" he asked, twisting to reach into his back pocket. Jess laughed along with the others as he drew his hand out again, holding up a card key, and realized that he hadn't picked one up in the last round like he had in two of the others.

"So I had to ask ROB if I could go back to find it - that might have got me on his bad side already, so I hope he'll still let us in," the red wolf continued as he turned to the door, taking out the other two cards and sliding them all into a set of slots beside it. Jess jumped as he pounded a couple of times on the door with the side of his fist, and watched as he skipped back to look up at the projection screen that dominated the upper wall. "Open the door, will you, ROB?" he asked.

The screen crackled into life, the polygonal yellow face gradually becoming visible again.

"Got the keys this time, have you?" it sneered.

"Yep," Alex nodded, not losing his energy at all. "And they've managed to get a score of 1250, so you've got to turn the purifier controls on for..."

"...For two minutes and five, I know," the face nodded back at him witheringly. Jess heard Yasa laugh at its wearied tone from behind her. "All right. But no more than that..." With a loud click, the metallic door in front of the team swung heavily open, and Alex moved through the group again to be the first one through.

Jess took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway after him. She felt a slight letdown as she wasn't able to see much from the door's position - they were in the shadow of an overhead walkway that blocked most of the view above eye level. Something that looked like the solid back of a six-foot-high booth stood right ahead of them, placed so that its top was next to the front edge of the walkway above. To the sides, about ten feet away each, were the starts of two corridor-like sections separated from the main room by clear plastic paneling. Alex was already moving to the side out from under the walkway, beckoning her towards a rising metal stairway.

"Ready to get the first view of the new final game?" he asked as she stepped out of the dark area, blinking under the glare of the studio ceiling lights. She headed for the stairs, and looked down wide-eyed as she padded up them, eventually getting to the top and leaning on the walkway handrail as she looked around the large room.

"Oh, wow," she heard Yasa whisper as he came up the stairs behind her. Jess was thinking much the same thing - a large portion of the floor of the room was taken up by a giant vat of gunge, bordered by inflatable material on all sides, about forty feet from end to end and with only a couple of feet of floor on each side between it and the clear plastic walls. At the end of the vat opposite them, a large ramp made out of yellow inflatable material stretched at an angle up towards the end wall, where it met the curve of a cylindrical booth. A few pipes, half-set into the wall, led down to the booth from above and diagonally from the sides. Down below at the sides of the ramp, two doors led out from the enclosed side sections and into pits of white foam, with a couple of pipes on the wall curving down to open out next to them as well.

She paced down towards the other end of the walkway as Skye and Helen reached the top of the stairs, looking back for a moment at the husky girl's grinning face. The walkway ran on top of one of the line of panels she'd seen from the ground, and to her left she could look down into the corridor-like section behind them. The passageway was lined with padded obstacles that she recognized from the final game of the shows she'd seen before - each of them with at least a couple of brightly colored pressure pads that the contestants were supposed to avoid as they went through.

She looked up and along the walkway again. It formed a rectangle all the way around the main floor, with another path in the middle stretching at right-angles above the low end of the inflatable ramp. In the center of the square above the gunge vat, another large and grimy metallic tank was suspended from the ceiling, with unrecognizable lettering stenciled on it in bright red. Narrow windows set at intervals around the sides showed that it was full of the same murky liquid as the vat that took up most of the floor, and various funnel-shaped nozzles pointed down from its base.

"Now," Alex started, watching the four of them take in their surroundings. "The first thing to decide is where you're all going to be starting - there are four positions that need to be filled, but one of them's specially reserved for the team leader. I think you know where you're going, Skye..."

He pointed down the room past Jess at the cylindrical tank on the wall, making the others look up and towards it. The husky girl grinned as Alex led her down the walkway, the other three following them to the opposite corner and watching as he slid a panel aside to let her in.

The husky girl swished her tail from side to side as she was shut inside the meter-wide circular booth. She glanced around at the wide pipes pointed in her direction, then stepped forward to look along the long ramp leading down into the vat of gunge, hands on the chest-height plastic panel in front of her. The window formed by that half-height panel was the tank's only opening.

"OK in there, Skye?" Alex called back as he passed the others again, waiting for her to nod before he turned away. "Now, you three... I don't know about you, but I don't think that Jess got gunged nearly enough in the main games..."

Jess looked at her bare feet, a little embarrassed at being the focus of attention and also waiting nervously to find out what he was planning to do to correct that.

"I think we'll put you down here," Alex said, offering a hand to her and pointing down at the end of the room where they'd come in with the other. She turned around to see where they were going, and realized he meant the cubicle that she had first seen when they came in.

She looked over at it as they headed down the stairs again, stretching up to see that the top was a basin-like hollow. Instead of a chair inside the tank, the whole base was raised a couple of feet off the ground with a padded flat seat on top. The tank had no front to it, instead opening right out above the lip of the gunge vat.

Jess watched nervously as Alex undid a catch on the side of the tank and swung the perspex panel aside, motioning to her to sit down. Carefully, she slid herself sideways on to the seat, wriggling to get into the center and gripping his hand to keep steady.

"Comfortable?" he asked. Jess bounced a little on the soft seat, and eeped as she felt the cool, wet feeling of her dangling toes dipping slightly into the vat.

"Yeah... thanks," she nodded, wriggling back to bring her feet up, and looked upwards as the panel was shut behind her. As she had expected, a wide nozzle on the ceiling opened out right above her head - and looking to her sides, she realized there was no escape apart from down into the slime below.

"As for you two..." Alex turned back towards the rabbit and catgirl, who had followed them down the stairs. Yasa put his hand on Helen's shoulder as he approached, but she caught it and brought it down to hold it at her side instead. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to separate you, because you'll be helping Jess out of there."

He pointed behind them at the corridor area behind the perspex windows, walking around the two of them to slide a thin section next to the wall aside. Jess twisted around to watch as the two of them looked at each other and Yasa came forward to step inside, waving at Helen as Alex shut the door behind him.

Jess watched as Helen walked ahead of Alex across the room to the identical corridor on the other side, and looked up eagerly as she waited to be let in. After he shut the door behind her, the red wolf dashed over to the nearby stairs and jumped up them to get up to the walkway again.

"Can you all hear me?" he asked, raising his voice as he turned to lean on the handrail.

"Yeah," Jess called back as the others also gave their acknowledgement. She put her hands on the flat seat beside her, tapping her fingers a little, and peered up the ramp towards the cylindrical tank with Skye inside.

"All right, here's what's going to happen." Jess turned her head to the right to look at him, then looked back as he pointed towards Skye's tank. A projected counter appeared with a flicker, showing the time they had available as Alex announced it. "You've earned two minutes and five seconds of time before the purifier controls shut off again, which isn't a bad time - but you're going to have to be fast. As you'll no doubt have noticed, the main part of the purifier is suspended above us, and it's loaded up with a large batch of gunge that you should be able to transform if you can activate it in time."

He looked up at the tank slightly above and in front of him and paused, making the others look towards it as well. For the first time, Jess noticed a few flat objects dangling from it by straps.

"You see those?" their host asked, gesturing towards the things she had just seen. "They're the emergency keys to activate it - but as the whole thing was left half-finished, it's a bit of a task to get to them..."

He turned around. "Yasa and Helen! You've got the first task - in front of you, you should see a set of four numbers. Some combination of those four numbers is the code to the keypad in front of you - once you find the correct code, you'll open up the way forward." Jess twisted in her seat to see, but faced forward again as she couldn't see what he meant from her position. "You've got to get all the way down to the end of your corridors - but watch out for the orange pressure pads!" He pointed again, and Jess looked to see one on the wall of the corridor directly to her right. "If you hit any of them, Jess is the one who's going to feel it, because pressing them is going to open the tank above her..."

Jess shuddered, looking up again at the black covered opening and pushing her hands under her knees nervously. She turned her attention back to the red wolf, who was dashing down the walkway away from them.

"Pulling the switches will give emergency power to most of the room," he explained. "When power gets to the purifier up there, it'll drop three of its keys - the one nearest Jess, and the ones above the foam pits that you saw from the walkway. It'll also open the doors of the corridors so that you can get into the foam pits to retrieve them." He paused. "Oh, and Jess... unfortunately it's also going to have the side effect of turning on that seat and dunking you into the gunge."

Jess nodded, trying to laugh convincingly as she looked at the muddy-looking surface in front of her, imagining sliding off the seat and dipping into it. She shivered at the thought again, watching Alex walk towards the middle of the walkway, fiddling with the computer as he took it from his pocket.

"When the cards are released, they should make something like this noise so you can find them more easily," he announced, holding the pocket device up for a few seconds while it sounded a rapid pattern of three beeps. "And once you've got those... you've got to head up the ramp!"

He turned towards Skye, pointing with both hands. "At the base of the tank that Skye's trapped in at the moment, there are three card slots - one for each of you. You've all got to get your keys up to the top of the ramp to release Skye from that machine, then she'll have the final task of sliding down the ramp, getting the last key which'll have then been released, then going forwards and using it to finally turn on the purifier at the panel right below where Jess is sitting just now!"

Jess leaned forwards and looked down between her dangling feet, seeing a slot and inset large green button for the first time. She looked from it to the timer, wondering what their chances were.

"Of course... if you run out of time..." he trailed off, looking towards Skye again. The trapped husky girl stared back at him, tapping her foot and putting one hand on her hip. "Well, I think she knows." He turned back towards the other three. "You all know what you have to do?"  Jess nodded again, running through her part in her head. She twisted in the seat again to look as Yasa hunched forward, ready to begin.

"Good. Actually, Yasa and Helen... there is one part I didn't tell you about..."

Jess looked up at him as he turned to the back wall. Looking to her right, her view was blocked by the back of the tank, but after a moment, she gasped as she recognized the two red-haired tigresses they'd seen earlier come into view on the walkway. Helen moved against the back wall and stretched up, just able to see them from her position. Alex moved towards them, hands outstretched.

"Welcome back, Ginger and Anise!" he greeted them. "You know what you're both doing?"

"Yeah," the longer-haired of the twins nodded. Jess faced forwards again, bouncing nervously in the seat, as she heard her footsteps above her move to Yasa's side of the room.

"We got them ready to make things a little bit more difficult for you while you were getting cleaned up," Alex explained. "Normally the sprayers on the ceiling of the corridors are on automatic, but as you got to see them being gunged in the middle of the show, I thought they might like to get you back..." Yasa looked up as Ginger moved into position above him, picking up a heavy-looking bucket from the side of the walkway. Anise did the same above Helen, struggling a little with its weight as she balanced it against the handrail.

"And Jess..." Jess looked up again, but Alex had moved out of view on to the walkway behind her. "We've also got someone up here who we're giving the honor of filling your gunge tank..."

"Hi, Jess!" she heard Leann's voice giggle from the walkway. A dreadful sloshing noise sounded from above and she flinched, putting her hands to her head, but nothing came down. She looked up at the valve that was protecting her, imagining the stuff pouring thickly into the basin just above her head.

"All right, everyone ready?" Alex called again as the noise slowed and quietened. "You've got two minutes and five seconds for Helen and Yasa to get to the other end of the room, to release those three keys, to let Skye out and use the final key to activate the purifier... it sounds a lot simpler now I say it that way. Ready to start?"

Jess began to nod again, then joined in the rising cheer from the others. Her heart raced as Alex counted down from three, and a klaxon blared as the ceiling lights brightened. She looked up to see the timer begin its countdown.

She looked from side to side as Yasa and Helen both leaned forwards to stab at their keypads, a tigress sister leaning over each one of them. Ginger laughed as she tipped the bucketful of gunge she was holding down on to the rabbit boy, who shook his head as it splattered off him and flattened his ears on to his head, trying to concentrate on the keypad in front of him. On the other side, Anise still had her bucket braced against the handrail, gently drizzling its contents on to the catgirl below. With one hand placed on the top of her head to defend herself, she jabbed at the panel with her free hand.

Jess faced the front again, watching Leann walk ahead on the walkway to get to the section that went across the middle of the room. Suddenly, there was a confirmation beep from the right, and she looked round to see Helen crawling through a section in the wall in front of her that had slid aside.

"Helen's out!" Alex called, strolling along the walkway to join Leann. The catgirl disappeared into a cluster of hanging punch bags, and Jess held her breath as she remembered the danger she was in while they were going through their obstacles. Tensing as a similar noise sounded from the opposite end of the room, she saw the slimy rabbit boy freeing himself and diving forwards into the corridor, pursued by the laughing tiger girl above him.

"Now you've both got to head for the switches... you've got plenty of time..." Jess listened to Alex's commentary as she twisted to see either of her team mates, but she gasped as his last few words were drowned out by a harsh buzzer noise. As she flattened her ears and tensed, she felt the ooze smack on to her head and spill stickily outwards, slopping on to her shoulders and slithering down her head and top. The valve clicked shut and the torrent stopped as quickly as it had begun, leaving her with her eyes firmly closed and feeling the thick slop dripping from her messy hair.

She brought her hands up to clear her fringe out of her face, but moved them to clasp against her eyes as the alarm rang again. Another wave of gunge splattered heavily down on to her head and hands before she leaned forwards, squealing as it poured on to her neck and slid down her back, two streams working their way around to slip down her chest.

After staying in place for a moment, she parted her hands, feeling the stuff slither off them as she moved, and opened her eyes to see a mixture of bright yellow and green gunk dripping from her fringe and sliding slowly down her fur. She moved her hands up to wipe over her head, eeping as the ooze on her hair moved down to her neck. Looking ahead and to her sides, she caught a glimpse of Yasa and Helen as they neared the opposite end of the room, and tensed again as she saw Helen reach a field of the orange pads. Straining to watch her careful movements, she jumped as the alarm went off again from the opposite side of the room and cringed as she closed her eyes again, putting her hand up on the wall of the booth as she leaned to one side.

The cool gloop poured down on to her shoulder, lapping on the side of her face and slipping down her arm, chest and back. Relaxing as she realized she couldn't avoid getting completely covered, she giggled a little at the ticklish feeling of the gooey slime pouring over her, and straightened up as the downpour stopped again, brushing the stuff off her shoulder. Cringing but laughing as she heard the alarm yet again, she shuffled backwards on the seat, and leaned backwards and away, gasping as the stuff splurged down on to her lap and tummy.

As she felt the downpour in front of her easing off, she thought she heard a new noise, a loud click from the other end of the room. She dipped her head forward and leaned through the drizzle of slime, looking up and forwards to see that Helen had reached the opposite end of the room and was running back to the opening that she had revealed. Glancing to the other side of the room, she was just in time to see Yasa sprint towards the switch and slam it into the down position.

A louder siren blared, and she ducked again, squinting as flashing lights went off around the room. She squealed and leaned forwards as the catch above her head snicked open and spilled another torrent of gunge on to the back of her neck. Just after the smooth slimy liquid slopped down her already soaked back, she felt the seat lurch underneath her, and she instinctively threw her hands out in front of her as she was tipped forwards into the gunge vat.

She just had time to see her hands gloop below the surface before she closed her eyes, screwing up her face and turning it away as she smacked into the glutinous liquid, which she felt buckle strangely underneath her before she went completely under. For a moment, the cool glop surrounded her, heavy and thick. Quickly, she flailed her legs to find the bottom and pushed herself back out, spitting gunk off her lips and wiping at her face as she felt the goo slither thickly down through her fur and swimwear.

Carefully, she opened her eyes, using her forefingers to wipe away the murky yellow stuff dripping across her vision from her eyebrows. She shook her head, her hair heavy and soaked behind her, as she looked up - the card had already been released from where she'd seen it on the base of the large tank. At that moment, she recognized the sound of the three high-pitched beeps she'd heard from Alex's explanation of the game, and quickly looked back at the still rippling surface. Sticking one hand into the gloop at the place she thought she had heard the signal, she scooped around, squeaking as she slowly knelt down in the cold clinging slime. Suddenly her hand hit something solid, and she grabbed it, pulling upwards to raise the sloppy card key out of the vat by the strap.

She turned towards the ramp again and began to slog forwards through the waist-deep slime, gripping the card key in her hand and wrapping the attached strap around her wrist so that she didn't lose it. The stuff oozed slowly around her legs as she fought through it, glooping closed again behind her. Her eyes were on the timer above Skye, which had dropped below one minute while she had been regaining her bearings.

Moving towards the large ramp leading up to the husky girl's tank, she watched Yasa and Helen reach the now open doors of their tunnels almost at the same time. Yasa jumped right into the foam pit in front of him, sending specks of the airy white bubbles into the air around him, while Helen tried to step in more carefully, squeaking as she lost her footing and flopped down into it.

Jess tried to move faster as she watched blobs of the foam piles break off and slither down the inflatable barriers between the pits and the main pool, even more of the stuff being pumped in from the wide pipes at the back as the rabbit and catgirl fumbled around, vaguely visible under the mess. Yasa was the first to hold up a card triumphantly, and flopped quickly forwards on to the barrier, pushing himself with his feet face-first over the edge. Clawing at the other side with his free hand, he pulled, squeaked as he lost his balance and slid headfirst into the gunge, his feet following behind him in a half forward roll that splashed heavy dollops of the stuff all around him.

Stumbling forwards as she finally reached the ramp, Jess grabbed at one of the plastic ropes dangling off the end and got ready to haul herself up on to the sloped surface. Trying to push herself off the bottom of the vat with her feet, she braced her slippery elbows on the ramp and pulled, kicking her gunge-soaked legs against the wall as she strained to get on to the ramp. Breathlessly, she gave up, sinking back and glooping up to her waist into the vat again.

She became aware of cheers from above, and glanced upwards to see Leann and the two tigress sisters shouting encouragement from the walkway above them to the left. She smiled through the slime dripping across her face, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and moved to jump up again as Helen bobbed towards her from her left.

Determinedly, she tried to haul herself up again, straining against the rope as she wriggled upwards. She turned as Helen knelt down and caught one of her feet, pushing it up to help her on, and smiled breathlessly back at her as she struggled to move hand over hand a little up the rope. Beside her, Yasa scrabbled for the rope on the right, writhing as he slithered up the first part of the ramp.

Knowing she would have to be faster as the timer above the trapped husky girl ticked relentlessly downwards past half a minute, Jess faced ahead again and tried to push herself up onto her knees to better climb the ramp. She had nearly got upright when they slipped out from under her, and she crashed awkwardly on to the bouncy surface again, gripping the rope tighter as she fell. Shaking her head, she looked towards Skye, who was clapping her hands over her head encouragingly as Yasa passed Jess on her right, making his way slowly but steadily upwards.

Her view of Skye was suddenly hidden by a bright splash of color, and she shrank back a little as a gungy downpour from the ceiling pattered heavily on to the ramp in front of her. Shivering as the slime slithered down towards her, coating the ramp as it went, she tried to wriggle upwards again, hindered by the slime from the vat still clinging to her fur as well as the increasingly slippery surface underneath her.

As she struggled to stay in the same place, she watched the rabbit boy sliding himself upwards ahead of her, getting almost within reach of their target. Looking up, she saw another cylinder on the ceiling snick open, and breathlessly tried and failed to shout a warning to him as its contents spilled down just ahead of him. In the middle of a change of hands on the rope, the spray of thick green stuff hit him right on the head, sputtering outwards and flattening his ears quickly down on to his head. He squeaked, slipped, and flailed one arm towards the rope as he slithered helplessly downwards.

Jess whipped her head around as the rabbit boy slid down on the slimy surface, and saw Helen low down on the ramp, climbing up the same rope behind him. Keeping hold of it, she quickly rolled to the side as he passed her headfirst to fall off the end of the inflatable ramp and disappear back into the gunge vat.

Already exhausted, Jess turned back around and half-heartedly tried to pull herself up a little further, but she was distracted again by a repeating alarm noise. She hauled her head up, and her heart sank as she saw the timer was blinking red to indicate the last ten seconds coming off. Knowing now that they had no chance of making it in time, she tried to decide whether to make the effort to haul herself the last two meters to be in reach of the card slot, and with a groan, let go with one hand to move up again.

Suddenly a shadow fell across her, and she just had time to squeeze her eyes closed and huddle downwards before a thick wet downpour splurged on to her. She held tight to the rope, shrieking as the cold gooey drops spattered all over her back and legs. Shuddering as the spray slowed to a drizzle, pouring heavily on to her back just above her tail, she panted as she shook the slime off her hair and looked defeatedly at the tank ahead. As the warning sound intensified, she watched the last couple of seconds go past, and tried to look apologetic as the digits all hit zero.

The husky girl jumped, covering her ears as a loud gunge tank siren signaled their time being up. Her shocked expression slowly became a tense grin as she took her hands away, then she closed her eyes, spreading her arms up in the air and throwing her head back. A second later, Jess gasped as the three pipes leading to the tank spewed out a murky mixture of yellow and green gunge, enveloping Skye instantly.

Jess gaped as the initial spew of slime turned into a steady flow, going down past Skye's outstretched gungy arms and slapping onto her sides. She relaxed, lowering her dripping hands into them again. The shape of her head was just visible under the sloppy dome as she shook it from side to side, splattering the stuff around the enclosure. Jess's eyes dropped to the base of the tank, where the collected gunge was forming a rising pool.

The husky girl leaned forward a little, poking her muzzle out of the flood and making the gunge flow from above splash wildly out from the back of her neck as she brought her hands in to laughingly wipe at her eyes. She dragged them down her slimy muzzle, flicking them a couple of times to the floor, and hooted excitedly as the wide downpour of ooze slopped down her back, quickly filling the cylinder past her knees. Blinking her eyes open, she shook her head again and made eye contact with Jess just before the flow from above slumped down over her face. She bowed her head as the slime flowed over it, the green and yellow colors mingling as they dripped floorwards.

The siren noise that had been filling the room stopped, and Jess twitched as the only sound in the room became the continuous slurping noise as the gunge was poured into Skye's tank. As the downpour finally began to ease off, she wriggled to the side, shaking the gunge off her face and into the tummy-deep pool as she pinched and righted her soaked ears.

The side pipes spluttered, the flow getting stronger for a second and splatting on the gungy husky girl's shoulders again. She yelped as they hit her, then hunched down a little as a hissing noise began and the pipes began spraying airy white foam into the tank. Skye raised her arms out of the gunge and turned slowly around as the stuff splotted on to her, rolling off in blobs and landing thickly to spread on the top of the slowly rippling surface. Drops of the mixture in the tank began to spill over the door, forming thick fingers of murky liquid as they slithered downwards and onto the inflatable ramp.

As the pipes finally shut off, Skye looked down at what little of her was still visible above the near chest-deep gunge bath, and slipped her thumbs into her slimy bikini top to wriggle it a little upwards. She spread her arms out to her sides and watched the curtains of mixed green-yellow slop fall away in curtains from her fur. Blowing a blob of foam away from the end of her muzzle, she looked out at Jess with a defeated grin. Slowly, she wallowed forward to put one hand on top of the tank's door, wriggling her fingers as the stuff oozed over them, then leaned out to wave at the cheering, clapping girls on the walkway. Jess twitched as the slimy liquid flowed down the ramp and over her hands, twisting to look up to them as well.

Alex applauded along with the girls, then cleared his throat as they began to quieten down. "Well, that was an impressive effort, team, but as you all know... most of all your team leader..." he chuckled as he looked over at the wall-mounted tank again, the unrecognizably messy husky girl bringing one hand up to wipe at her eyes once more, "...you didn't get there in time."

He walked a little along the walkway towards them as he continued, a blank score board coming into view projected on the wall behind him. "But you were the very first team to take on the new Industrial Zone, and I don't think you've set a bad record to beat..." He pointed behind him at the screen, paused and looked over his shoulder. As he turned, their team's entry faded in - a list of their names and their final score. "1250!" Alex finished, clapping his hands together again.

Jess took a deep breath and joined the growing cheer, her hands beginning to hurt from clinging to the rope. As it died down, she looked back down the ramp and brought one hand up to pick strands of gungy wet hair out of her face. Helen was still holding on to the rope on the right near the bottom of the slide, her top half relatively clean compared to the others. Behind her, Yasa was watching from down in the gunge vat, his long hair and ears sodden and hanging messily around his head, slowly dripping the gooey liquid down his already covered top.

They all turned as Alex spoke again. "But even though you've got an easy first place on our leader board for now, I'm afraid there's one more thing we have to go through for you losing the game..." He pointed up to the giant tank suspended from the ceiling, and Jess smiled weakly to herself, having already guessed the consequences.

"Want to get back down there?" their host asked. Yasa looked up at it, then grinned back at the others for a moment before bouncing through the waist-deep gunge to get underneath the tank.

Helen lowered herself hand over hand down the few feet of slide again, eeping as her bare feet sank into the gunge and slowly easing herself into the pool again. Jess, tired but still eager at the thought of what was about to happen, began sliding down, too. Halfway, she lost her grip on the rope, and kicked her legs as she slid uncontrollably down the rest of the way. She splashed into the vat feet first, and nearly lost her balance as she sank into the thick liquid. Waving her arms and trying to get her breath back, she moved towards the catgirl as she reached Yasa, dipping a hand into the pool to splash him a little.

"We can let you out of there if you want to experience this as well, Skye..." Alex called over to her. She shook her head, running a hand down the back of her sloppy hair, and turned back to watch the others. Helen and Yasa took a hand of Jess's each as she approached, encouraging her to stand right under the widest pipe looming above them.

"All right - in that case I think we're all ready..." Jess looked up at the walkway as Alex beckoned to the others to follow him, taking them along to where an exaggeratedly large grimy switch was placed on the wall. "I think you should be the ones to finish us off..." He indicated towards it as they gathered around.

"Can I go in, too?" Ginger spoke up, swishing her tail and grinning eagerly up at the red wolf as her sister and Leann reached for the switch.

Alex glanced down at the vat and its occupants below. "Sure, if you want!" he answered. "Anise, Leann, how about you?" The other two girls looked at each other, then shook their heads, Leann nervously biting her lip.

"Okay, Ginger - if you go down to the seat at the end of the vat, we'll get ready to start things up..." The red-haired tiger girl nodded, and turned to dash along the walkway towards the stairs.

Jess watched her tread down the steps as Alex went through the show's ending, and glanced occasionally upwards into the cluster of wide pipes jutting down from the large tank above them. She had got used to her lower half being submerged in the cool gunge, and shifted her hips a little to get the weird sensation of it glooping around her again.

The tigress reached the floor, then waved down at the three of them as she padded over to the chair Jess had been in at the start of the game. Holding the side panel open and swinging one leg awkwardly over, she carefully wriggled down onto the still slimy seat, using her arms to prop herself up into a sitting position. Her legs dangled down over the gunge vat, and she squeaked as her swinging toes skimmed the surface.

They all looked up again to where Alex was still speaking across to an unseen camera - but at that moment, Jess flinched as he clapped his hands together. The two girls on the walkway looked at him as he turned around to speak to them.

"Now, Anise and Leann - to get your sister and your friend back for putting you on IZ," he said, pointing to each of them in turn, "...pull that switch and gunge them all one last time!"

Jess's heart raced as she looked into the pipe she was standing under again. Leann and Anise looked at each other, then simultaneously reached up with a hand each and tugged the large switch down. Spark effects flew from the wall around it as alarms rang around the entire room.

A noise from Jess's left made her whip her head round, and she looked over at the chair just in time to see Ginger jerk her feet up as she was enveloped by a flood of murky slime from the tank suspended above. She squealed as she slipped her hands off the arms of the seat, flicking them once to the floor and then bringing them up to push her heavy hair behind her head. The flow of gunge slopped down over her face, and she looked up into it for just a moment before snapping her head down again, shaking the dripping goo off her muzzle. The stuff continued to pour down the sides of her head, dripping stickily on to her bare shoulders and flowing down her chest.

Another click sounded, and the slippery tigress gave another squeak as the team watched the back of the seat rise up behind her. She straightened her legs as she began to slip off the slimy surface, coming out of the slowing deluge from above and making her face visible for just a moment before she splashed down to be completely submerged in the muddy pool below. Drops of gunk splotted back on to the slowly buckling surface behind her.

Jess heard a loud mechanical noise from above, and her hands flew to cover her ears and head as she ducked down instinctively. She was aware of the deluge from above blocking out the light just before it hit her with a heavy smack, pushing her further down under its weight and making her gasp at the cold runny feeling again. She felt the stuff pour off the strands of fur on her back and into the pool she was standing in, making a thick glooping noise as it hit the surface. Her hair quickly became heavy and spilled stickily down over her shoulders - she raised her hands just a little and clung more tightly to stop her mucky fringe going into her eyes.

Caught off balance as the gunge flow twitched to pour on to her head, she unsteadily took a step to the side and coughed as her face came out from under the flow. Her eyes still closed, she could feel the thick liquid oozing its way down through her fur and dripping off her muzzle and chin. Smiling a little as she breathed out, she tugged herself out of the continuing torrent and left just one arm underneath it, feeling the goo slop over and around it as it crashed into the vat. She felt the surface gloop up and down from her hips to her tummy as it rippled around her.

Hearing excited screams and squeaks from the others, she flicked her free hand a couple of times and then brought it up to her eyes, tentatively wiping them before slowly opening them again. Many thick streams of the gooey liquid were spurting down from the tank above them, some being slowly tilted back and forward. To her right she could just make out Yasa and Helen standing side by side underneath a cluster of them, a sloppy curtain of gunge splattering off their heads and shoulders. Wiping at her forehead, she looked around at where Ginger had gone in, and saw the green gunge-plastered tiger girl standing in the slop a few feet from the dunk chair. Her disheveled long hair was hanging stickily over her face, just her wide smiling muzzle visible poking through it, and her hands were held stretched out in front of her, the stuff dripping off her fingers into the vat. She walked slowly and unsteadily forward, squeaking as each sloppy downpour splattered on to her.

Jess stepped forwards nearer the center of the tank too, wriggling around a dark green column of slime as they began to shut off. She stepped sideways and allowed herself to giggle a little as the gunge slopped across her shoulders and head. It turned into a laugh as she looked down at herself, completely coated in a mixture of dark and light greens and yellows, and watched the last thick drops of the gunge slither down away from her and settle on the surface.

The stunned tiger girl's shoulders shook as she tried to compose herself again, raising her hands back to her gunge-coated hair and wriggling her shoulders in turn as she tried to gather it up and place it behind them. Her messy face became visible again and she spat gunge from her lips, wiping her eyes with both hands and then flicking the collected slime to the floor. She looked up, blinking as thick drops of gunk continued to fall from above them, and whooped, raising a thickly coated hand as she spotted her sister watching them from the walkway.

Jess joined in along with Yasa and Helen, wading slowly forwards to make eye contact with Leann again. The puppy girl shook her head, a slightly embarrassed grin on her face as she looked at the mess below.

She turned back to look at the others for a moment. Ginger was wringing her soaked hair out, her stripe pattern and color completely hidden under the clinging gungy layer. On the opposite side, Yasa and Helen were busily splashing each other with the gooey stuff, and beyond them, up the ramp, Skye watched them all from the tank above, her hands gripping the chest-height door of the tank as the gunk continued to drip and drizzle down her soaked fur.

There was a noise from the other end of the room as the door opened again, and Jess turned to see a few black-clothed stagehands emerging from the entrance. Looking up again, she watched Alex talking with Anise and Leann as he led them towards the walkway stairs.

As the bright ceiling lights came up to normal room lighting again and she felt the atmosphere of the show fade, Jess breathed out happily. Feeling a strange sort of relief at the same time as disappointment that it was over, she imagined the end titles of the show rolling over the scene of them all being covered for the last time.

Slowly, she began to follow Ginger over to the cluster of IZ crew to be helped out of the vat. She had enjoyed herself, but she was definitely also going to enjoy her fourth shower of the day.