INDUSTRIAL ZONE 6 - SERIES 3 EPISODE 2
Written by Iron-K

Nicola twisted her fingers in the strap of her sports bag as she felt the elevator slow to a halt, watching the indicator light up against the lowest floor - the one marked with the IZ logo. Tapping her feet on the green-carpeted floor, she looked up as the doors drew apart with an electronic noise to reveal a short corridor area with a single large door at the end.

Breathing out once, she took a couple of seconds to gather herself, and then stepped forwards, swinging her bushy squirrel tail behind her as she strode slowly towards the door opposite. All the time, her eyes were fixed on the large logo and red "WELCOME" stenciled across its painted metal surface.

She heard muffled voices from beyond the door as she approached, and was certain that she recognized the tone of voice of Alex, the show's presenter, as one of them. Grinning to herself and pausing just to take in the moment, she put her hand out on to the bar across the door, and then gradually put her weight on it to swing the door open.

The room behind the door looked like a changing room, tiled in white with a low table in the middle and two benches on either side of it. It was also emptier than she had imagined - the sound of voices had been coming from a television set on a wheeled trolley placed next to the table, and the room's only occupant was a bluish gray mouse girl, who leaned over as she saw her come in and fumbled for the pause button on a video player propped up next to the screen.

"Hi," she greeted her as the mouse stood up and nodded in return, hands clasped and wringing a little in front of her with a nervous smile on her face. She was already wearing the show's signature black swimwear with the gear-shaped logo across one side. Nicola noticed as she straightened that she was a couple of inches taller than her, though most people were, and had the large hips and bust that she normally saw on her species.

Seeing her uncertainty, Nicola quickly thought of something else to break the silence. "What's this?" she asked, nodding towards the screen, which was displaying a freeze frame of three barely identifiable figures wallowing in a vat of thick muddy-looking liquid.

The mouse looked over her shoulder at the screen. "It's... um. A video of the last episode, the one they recorded last week," she replied, stumbling on her words. "I got here about an hour ago - Alex was here for a while, but he gave me this to watch while they were all getting ready through there."

"So you've met Alex already! What's he like?" Nicola leaned her head to the side as she pulled her sports bag off her shoulder, hoping to use the line of conversation to break the ice with her future teammate.

The mouse girl smiled a little as they sat down side by side on the bench, Nicola dumping her bag on the ground. "He's nice. He seems exactly the same as he is on the show."

"Cocky, you mean?" Nicola laughed as she leaned forward to start the video up again, and the other girl smiled a little shyly in half-agreement. "I'm so looking forward to getting to take him on..."

She watched the team members in the on-screen gunge vat, eventually realizing they were searching for a set of cubes that a fourth team member was ferrying over to slide into slots on the wall. "Oh, I remember this one! They only used it a couple of times last season. How far through the show's this?"

"It's the start of the third round," her teammate replied.

"Seen anything good that's new so far?" Nicola asked her eagerly.

"Oh, yeah." The mouse girl nodded, giggling a little as she remembered, and Nicola was pleased to see that she seemed to be loosening up a little. "There's this one where Alex put that husky girl inside a cage and she had... she had two buttons for answering questions," she mimed in front of her, "and had to remember to press the wrong button instead of the right one to answer. It was so funny." She shook her head. Confused by her description, Nicola was about to ask her to explain more about it, but stopped as her face lit up as she remembered something else.

"And you need to see this!" She shuffled forwards again and jabbed at the backward skip button on the recorder, glancing from it to the screen and back, eventually letting it run again when it was showing two red-haired tigresses screaming and giggling as they were both covered from all angles in multi-colored slop by the tank surrounding them.

Nicola raised her eyebrows as the massive torrents played over the squirming girls. "Oh, I know this thing..." she recognized as the camera panned out a little. "Is this the bit where they get someone extra in for the middle of the show? I read they were going to start doing that, after they gunged that chubby dragon girl in it at the end of the second season..." She tailed off as her teammate nodded, swallowing as she glanced towards her and realized that she should have chosen her words more carefully.

The curvy mouse hadn't seemed to notice, though. "Yeah - Alex told me they had a special guest going into it this time."

"Really, who?" Nicola asked again. Her eyes moved from her face over to the screen and back as it showed Alex talking with the slippery tigresses, who were now dripping and chest-deep in gunge.

"Didn't say," she shrugged.

"Hmph." Nicola paused, and began to look around the room. "What are they doing through there, anyway?" she asked, nodding at the set of double doors opposite the entrance she had come in by.

"Don't know," came the distracted reply as the mouse skipped the video forward past the game they'd just seen. "I've only been in here and the changing room."

"I'm going to see!" Nicola sprang forwards, putting both feet on the ground at once and straightening up.

"I don't know if..." the mouse girl started, raising a hand as she stepped away.

"I'm just going to look," Nicola reassured her as she moved away from her, walked around the table and approached the double doors. She looked back at the gray mouse girl, who didn't get up from the bench but was watching intently as she put her hand on one of them. Opening it a crack, she poked her head through, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the gloom inside.

What she could see of the few meter wide area beyond the door was made up to look dingy and industrial, with a few vertical pipes stretching from floor to ceiling next to the battered brick-textured walls. Directly across the room, a heavy-looking hatch was placed below a large projection screen on the wall, and next to it was the chainlink-covered entrance to what looked like a cargo lift. Noticing a couple of stage crew members setting up a camera on the left, she ducked back into the lit room.

"See anything?" the gray mouse girl asked her as the door fell closed.

"Nothing much," she shrugged. "I don't think I've seen that room on the show. It must be the front area where we start off."

She moved away from the doors, suddenly realizing the heat in the room they were waiting in. Adjusting her collar as she walked back, she crouched down to get her bag and rummaged in it for her water bottle.

"Hot in here, isn't it?" she said, glancing at the mouse girl for a moment.

"Yeah, that's why I got changed." The mouse looked up at the ceiling lights for a moment. "I said that to Alex too when I came in, and he said that they keep it like that to keep the team warm, because most of the time you're covered in... you know." She hunched her shoulders and eeped, seeming a little hesitant to even mention the word.

"I like the sound of that!" Nicola put the bottle back and straightened up, grabbing her bag as she moved. "All right, I'm going to get changed too."

The mouse girl nodded, and she turned back to the screen as Nicola headed for the changing room door. She pushed it open with her free hand and walked through.

The changing room looked much like a locker room at a swimming pool, with a set of open clothes lockers to her left and a couple of changing cubicles on her right. In front of her, a gap in the tiled wall led through to a shower area. She headed for the clothes rack placed in the corner beside the lockers, taking off her watch and rings as she walked and depositing them in the bag she had over her shoulder.

She ran her finger along the rack of swimwear, T-shirts and shorts - most of them were colored black with yellow stamps of the IZ logo like she'd seen the mouse girl wearing. After finding a two-piece set labeled as her size, she unhooked it from the rack and slipped her bag off her shoulder. Looking back at the door, she sat down on the bench next to the lockers, tugging her T-shirt off over her head.

She got out of her clothing quickly, standing up to step out of her shoes and then tug her jeans off, dropping them in a pile on the bench beside her. After leaning on the lockers beside her to slide off her socks, she twisted round to shake out the bikini bottoms she'd chosen. Slipping them on up her legs, and shaking her head a bit to keep her loose brownish-blonde hair out the way, she couldn't help smiling to herself as she looked down at the logo on them.

After grabbing the top and doing that up as well, she grabbed the pile of her normal clothing and pushed it into a compartment beside the only other full one. Half-closing the doors over both of them, she remembered about her bag, and pulled a sports spray out of it to use on herself just before kicking the bag into one of the other lockers.

Walking forwards towards the door, her newly bare feet a little cold against the bumped tiles, she brushed her hands through her fur and hair a little, making sure her tail hadn't been caught in her bikini. She pushed open the door ready to rejoin her teammate watching the video again, but jumped as she saw her seat on the bench had been taken by a burly red-furred wolf that she recognized as Alex. Taken aback, she tried to say something, but he turned to grin at her and spoke first.

"Hi, Nicola!" he welcomed her, energetically springing up from the bench and coming forward to shake her hand. "Sorry I wasn't around when you came in - we've just been doing some last-minute setup for your episode through there," he added, letting go and gesturing towards the double doors.

Nicola paused for a moment, swallowing and trying not to show her surprise. "Hi," she said back, nodding as their handshake continued, then sought for something else to add. "Nice... to get to see you in real life," she managed.

"You too," the red wolf replied, then let go of her hand. "I think I took your seat!" he smiled, gesturing towards the part of the bench he'd been sitting on.

"Oh... thanks." Nicola breathed out and made to sit down next to the mouse again, but then turned around as she heard the door being pushed open slightly.

Quietly, a slender blonde-haired girl slipped around the gap between the door and its frame, waving a little with one hand. Nicola was silently relieved to see that she wouldn't be the shortest team member. She wasn't sure of her species at first, but as she turned to push the door closed behind her she could tell from her light double-striped tail that she was a chipmunk. Apart from those whitish fur markings and her hair that was worn loose down to the middle of her back, her fur was a golden brown color. She flashed a smile again, pushing her large round glasses a little up her nose, as Alex stepped past Nicola to greet her.

"Hi there, you must be Lesley," he started, moving to the side a little so that he didn't block the girls' view of each other and extending his hand as he had done to Nicola.

"Yes. Hello," she smiled back quietly as she accepted the handshake. Nicola was quite surprised to hear a slightly classy, articulate accent being very obvious even just as she said those two words.

"Welcome to IZ," he continued as he led her over. The mouse girl stood up and hopped forwards to turn the volume on the video down. "We've got two of your teammates so far, Nicola and Kim," he introduced them, extending a hand towards each in turn. Nicola glanced sideways at the mouse girl as she shook Lesley's hand, realizing that she hadn't asked her name when they had met before.

After Lesley had exchanged her shy greetings with both of them, Alex spoke up again. "So that's three of us - we've still got a while before we're due to start, so we might be waiting for Anneka. Do you want to get changed in the meantime, Lesley?"

"Okay." She nodded and looked over her shoulder for the changing room door before turning towards it and heading through. Alex smiled after her, then put his hands behind his back and took a couple of strolling steps back towards the benches. Nicola sat down as he approached.

"May I?" he asked, gesturing towards the bench, then squeezed himself on to it next to the two of them as Nicola shuffled over to make room.

Nicola turned back to the screen, frustrated that after her confidence earlier she couldn't think of anything to say to Alex. For a moment, she fixed her eyes on the on-screen catgirl who was sitting inside a plastic booth struggling for answers to his questions.

"Have you enjoyed what you've seen so far, Kim?" Alex spoke up over Nicola's head, and she turned to the mouse girl as she looked over at him to answer.

"Yeah..." she laughed nervously. "I think you've made it even muckier than I remember."

"We try!" he smiled. "Nicola, I don't know how much you've seen of this video..."

"Er, from the first game of the third round," she answered, remembering what Kim had told her earlier. "And the part where you gunged those tigress sisters. It looked like you enjoyed that..." she added, turning towards him and silently laughing at his slightly surprised expression.

He chuckled to himself. "Yeah, I can hardly deny that. But I think this time that part's going to be even better."

"Kim said," Nicola nodded. "Who've you got in there?"

Alex held a finger up, shaking his head. "Can't tell you! You'll get to see it happen, though, I promise - but you're going to have to go through eight games to get to the middle where it happens..."

"I'm looking forward to it!" Nicola grinned, then whipped her head round at the distinct sound of IZ's usual alarm noise, audible even though the volume on the set was down. She watched fascinatedly as a wide downpour of green gunge dropped from the top of the booth to envelop the pink catgirl, who squeaked and wriggled as the stuff poured over her, two thinner streams starting up and licking across her diagonally from the top sides.

"We might be doing that to one of you later on," the red wolf smiled as the downpour began to ease off. Nicola nodded, trying to imagine once again what being covered in gunge felt like. She watched, shivering a little, as the kitten girl bowed her head forward slightly to make the thick liquid pouring on to her head dribble off her fringe. It looked like it had the consistency of paint, she thought.

"What's that stuff made of?" Kim suddenly asked. Nicola pricked her ears up, interested and surprised that she hadn't thought to ask herself.

Alex leaned back, rubbing his chin. "A few things, actually," he replied as he thought about it. "They're all a bit different depending on what kind of texture we want..."

He turned his head as the changing room door opened again, and the chipmunk girl who had gone in a few minutes ago crept out again just as nervously as she had been when she first entered. She had removed her glasses and she was now wearing a black bikini like the other two, revealing her uniform brown fur - no light patches around her chest and tummy like Nicola had.

"Lesley! Welcome back, have a seat. Want to hear how gunge is made?"

The chipmunk girl smiled at the sound of the word as she tiptoed across the room to the opposite side of the table, though she still had her hand clasped nervously across her tummy. "Yes, go on," she answered as she sat down opposite them, feeling behind her for the surface of the bench while keeping her eyes on Alex. Kim got up and nudged the television set around to the head of the low table, so they could all see its screen.

"Well, I was about to say to the others that it's all based on an industrial food thickener," he started, leaning forward and looking round at all of them. "Have you ever made that stuff with cornstarch and water, where it firms up when you press on it?"

Nicola nodded as he finished the sentence. "I used to love that stuff!" she heard Kim say enthusiastically from behind her.

"It's the same kind of idea as that, except this stuff thickens it even more, and if you mix it up with water at the right temperature, it dissolves into it instead of forming lumps. I've no idea why, I never took chemistry..."

Lesley raised her arm, and he looked over at her. "It's..." she started, then swallowed. "It's because it makes it disperse better, so it doesn't get the chance to... stick to itself," she said carefully.

"There we go!" Alex laughed, holding a hand out towards her. "So if we ask you any questions about that during the show, you're going to be safe..."

The chipmunk girl smiled nervously, blinking and falling quiet again. Nicola looked at Alex, eager to find out more.

"When we made the pilot I remember we had to stir the stuff up by hand, but that was murder on your arms - I remember they ached for a week afterwards!" Alex said, rubbing his forearms unconsciously as he looked around at their amused expressions. "Now we've got a couple of big mixers for it upstairs," he continued, pointing vaguely to the ceiling, "and we use powder paint to color it, 'cause it doesn't stain like the food coloring that we tried at first."

Nicola burst out laughing, then looked up at the others who had turned to her. "Sorry," she said. "I just got a picture of some unlucky crew member having to walk around colored bright green for a week before you found that out..."

Alex smiled back, and was about to respond when there was a knock on the door leading outside. "Come on in!" he called. He was on his feet before the new arrival had even started opening the door, and as he approached, a tall, slim spotted feline that Nicola guessed was Anneka stepped around it, her hand still on the outside handle.

"Hi there," he said warmly, his hand outstretched in the same gesture he'd made to the others. The jaguar girl let go of the doorhandle, letting it fall closed.

"Hi," she replied, her other hand moving up to take off the bag she had on her shoulder. She glanced around the room. "Am I the last one here?"

"Afraid so." Alex guided her gently over to the door on the left. "I don't want to hurry you or anything, but if you want to get changed, I'll introduce you all to each other when you're back. How are you feeling?"

"Well... a little overdressed," she laughed as she nodded past him at the others' swimwear, one hand gesturing down at her buttoned shirt and trousers.

Alex chuckled back. "Well, the changing rooms are right through here," he said, pushing the door open for her, "and then I think we'll be ready to get you started!"

The jaguar girl nodded, then stepped through with a wave back at the others, already pulling a clasp out of her chin-length black hair. Nicola looked up at the red wolf as he came back to their bench.

"I thought we'd have to wait around while you set everything up," she said as he sat back down beside her. "Do we really just go in and...?" She tailed off, searching for the right words.

"Yeah, it's all done pretty much exactly as you see it on the show," Alex finished for her. "Usually we go through as if we're not even being filmed - if we do have to stop and retake something it'll usually be because of a mistake I've made!"

Nicola nodded, already wondering if there was anything they'd experience that wouldn't make it into the final broadcast. She glanced at the TV again for a moment at the sound of another siren - it was showing a puppy girl squirming inside a booth as a flood of brightly colored foam crept up her legs. Lesley and Kim had been watching the scene intently, and both gave audible gasps as she was enveloped in a dome of gunge from above.

"The Mixer?" Nicola asked, recognizing it.

"Yep. New and improved," smiled Alex as he watched the messy canine wriggle and duck out of the way of the subsiding gooey drizzle. "We're going to have one of you in there by the end!"

She shivered a little herself as she looked at the results of losing the game, still finding it difficult to believe that they were about to face them themselves. On-screen, Alex strolled around the tank, talking to its victim inside and handing her a face towel.

"Do you ever get nervous about seeing yourself on TV?" Nicola leaned over to ask him.

The red wolf chuckled, watching himself on the screen. "Yeah, I admit it was weird at first. I've got sort of used to it, but I don't tend to watch IZ when it goes out on TV, I see it all being put together in the editing room. This is the first time I've seen this episode finished, actually..."

Their heads all turned once again at the now familiar sound of the changing room door, and Anneka re-emerged, clad in a black bikini like the others.

"Ah - perfect timing!" Alex suddenly moved forwards and stopped the playback that they were watching. "I wanted the final to be a surprise for you all when you get to it yourselves," he explained as he carefully took hold of the corners of the TV trolley and wheeled it into the corner of the room, kicking the power cord into place. "Have a seat, Anneka - I've got some introduction stuff to go over with you, and then we can get going!"

The jaguar girl walked over to the bench opposite Nicola, and Lesley shuffled aside to make space for her as she sat down. "Do I look OK?" she asked the room in general, feeling behind her for her tail and running it through her hands.

"Absolutely," Alex assured her, hooking his foot around a chair in the corner of the room and dragging it over to sit at one end of the table. "But you don't have to worry about staying clean and dry for long..."

His tease was met with nervous laughter from all four of them, and Nicola was surprised to find herself becoming just a little more anxious at the thought of what they were about to go into as the moment came closer. She kept on glancing at the double doors leading to the game area as Alex went around them all, getting them to introduce themselves to the others and say a little about themselves - Kim and Lesley needed some encouragement, but Anneka seemed much more enthusiastic about it, and Nicola hoped that she came across that way too.

Eventually, keeping his eyes on Lesley as she nervously finished speaking, the red wolf reached into his pocket and produced a large folded piece of paper, which he spread out on the table in front of them. Nicola shuffled forwards on the seat and then knelt down next to the table to get a closer look at it - it showed an overhead plan of the set, a collection of corridors and rooms more or less centered around a circular hub area.

"So this is what I'm about to lead you into - you've all seen the show before, yeah?" he asked, looking up from the plan and pointing at each of them in turn to check their responses. "The set's going to be a bit different from what you've seen before in the last two seasons, but you'll definitely recognize a lot of it. The goal's still the same - you're going to be put into sixteen games, four in each of these areas -", he waved a hand over the map, "- with the opportunity to earn up to a hundred points in each, and your score total at the end decides how long you get in the final obstacle course type game."

He continued talking about the show's storyline for a while, while Nicola distractedly nodded and looked around the map in front of her, recognizing several game names even though most of them were abbreviated on the plan.

"Like I was saying to the others, Anneka, you don't need to worry about the cameras," she heard him say, "we'll be being recorded all the time in there, but we try to keep them as hidden as possible. Just try not to look directly at any of the cameras you might spot on the walls, and ignore the camera crew that you might see following us from time to time. They should stay pretty invisible, though, if they're doing their job right - the hope is that you'll forget you're being filmed at all. And I think you will, because you'll have other things to worry about..."

Nicola looked up as he reached into his pocket again, and grinned as he produced a small bottle filled with opaque greenish yellow liquid. "This is what you've been waiting for, am I right?" he asked. She nodded, getting to her feet to get a closer look, then returning slowly to the bench. "I can give you a small taster of it if you want..."

He unscrewed the cap, and motioned for Lesley to cup her hands. She did so, and he tipped the bottle to pour some of the slime out. The chipmunk girl eeped a little as the stuff poured out, looking down into her hands at how the stuff moved as small streaks of it oozed down to the floor between her fingers. Alex squeezed past her towards Anneka, pouring some of it into her hands as well, and came around to Nicola as the jaguar girl peered fascinatedly down at it.

Nicola cupped her hands and stretched them up as he approached, watching closely as he tipped the bottle over. She squeaked a little as the cool slime glooped out of it, almost forming a pile in her hands before it began to flow like liquid. It felt a little like having a bottle of shampoo poured into her hands, and she stared down at the stuff, moving her cupped hands from side to side as Alex gave some to Kim and returned to his seat.

"So, the stuff you've got in your hands is what we call 'gunge'," Alex said. "Fantastic word, isn't it?" Nicola nodded, looking up at him as he continued. "It's water-based, made using an industrial food thickener and powder paint - it's made to feel a bit unpleasant, but it's perfectly safe stuff to be covered in - you can get it in your eyes without it stinging, it's even technically edible, not that you'd want to try."

"Eurgh," Kim giggled from beside Nicola, bringing her hands up to look at it more closely. "Reminds me of... school custard." She moved her hands down, then looked along the floor, wriggling forwards to get up and step towards the small drain set into one of the tiles.
 
"You can just dump it out on the floor. We've got a stage crew who have to clean up the set after we've been through it - believe me, a little more mess in here isn't a problem!" Alex chuckled.

Kim reluctantly stretched her arms down a little more and then opened her hands, letting the handful of off-yellow stuff slip through them and splatter stickily on the floor. As the others did the same, Nicola tipped her hands forward, watching the stuff flow heavily out of them. It left behind a sticky layer on her palms, which she rubbed together to try and remove.

"So you've seen what it looks like up close now, but in the games, you'll be risking being covered in about ten or twenty gallons of that stuff each time," Alex went on. The girls exchanged smiles with each other, Lesley bringing one hand up to run down her hair. "But if you're in one of the gunge tanks and you seriously feel uncomfortable with what's happening, just shout for me and we can stop everything instantly, even if I've said there's an unstoppable timer running or anything. We might... pick on you a little, but we want you to enjoy yourselves."

Nicola nodded along with the others. She knew she wasn't likely to want to escape, but welcomed the reassurance.

"And... the last thing is, we need to choose a team leader. They just choose the order we do the games in, and who's going into them - though often it'll be a blind choice, so it might not make much difference," he said. "And the other three will have to rescue whoever you pick in the final, too. Any volunteers?"

Nicola remembered the large tank the team leaders had been trapped in during the final of the last series, and found herself hesitating a little. "I'll do it," she eventually spoke up as she saw Lesley and Kim shaking their heads, then realized she'd spoken at the same time as Anneka across from her. She looked across at her, then nodded at her encouragingly.

"No, you go on..." Anneka said back.

"Ah, a classic stalemate when we've got a group of team mates who are too nice!" Alex said, making them both turn to him. "I'll tell you what we'll do..." Nicola craned her neck to see as he felt in one of his pockets again, eventually producing a bulky palmtop device. "You know I mentioned you'd have to rescue the team leader - I want you to use absolute prejudice to vote on who you'd most like to see inside the big gunge tank in the final," he said, turning the device on and sliding it across the table to Kim.

"Just touch the screen where... yes, that's it," he pointed as he leaned over. Kim scrolled her choice off the display and Nicola reached out to take it, grinning as she tapped in her own choice on the keypad.

Alex waited for the last two girls to enter their choices, then accepted the device back from Lesley. "All right," he said, holding it up in front of him and scrolling through with a thumbwheel on the side. "Kim went for Anneka. Nicola... well, she voted for me."

Nicola grinned at his deadpan reaction, and heard a couple of nervous laughs from the others as he continued. "And the other two votes were for Anneka as well, even though I notice she managed to put a 'B' in her own name - you might not want to put her in any word games!"

"It's difficult to..." Anneka mimed hitting the touchpad keyboard in front of her in protest at his joke, and he smiled and nodded.

"So that's our team leader decided. OK with you, Nicola?" Nicola nodded, remembering with excitement what was coming.

"Want to get in there?"

She got to her feet quickly, the others doing the same as the red wolf pointed over his shoulder to the doors, then turned and swung them both open in front of him. Nicola eagerly moved forward to take hold of the door behind him as they went through.

The room beyond the doors was now lit, but not much more than when she had seen it before. She followed Alex towards the elevator-like platform that she'd seen at the left hand side of the far wall as the others trailed behind them, looking around at their gloomy surroundings.

"This is the last bit before we really get started - I'm going to put you all in here while I do the introduction, which'll take just a couple of minutes - then the platform will come down and the cameras are on from then on." He motioned them through the opening, and each of them took a corner of the platform. Nicola looked up at the small space above them, then back to Alex.

"All ready?"

"Yeah," Nicola said out loud, bouncing on her heels. The others nodded in agreement.

"Start it up, Cliff!" the red wolf called to the side, and the four of them jumped as the platform began rising upwards. He held up a hand to them before turning around and dashing back to the center of the room.

Nicola looked upwards again into the space that they were being raised into, which was a small emclosed area with a screen mounted on one wall so that they could see what was going on outside. As they were lifted up towards it, she positioned herself in front of it, straining to see as Alex addressed the camera, going through an introduction similar to what she'd seen on the television before.

"Can't believe I'm in here, can't believe I'm in here..." Kim whispered to herself, clasping her hands in front of her and drumming her bare feet on the ground a little. Nicola was thinking the same thing, but tried to concentrate on listening to what was happening on the screen, not showing her nerves. A few shots and maps of the fictional complex the show was set in were being projected on the screen behind Alex, eventually dissolving into a display of a slightly distorted yellow wireframe face.

"That's meant to be their new computer?" she asked, looking up at the face that represented it as it exchanged a couple of snide comments with Alex. "I think I liked Silicon better..."

Lesley glanced back over her shoulder at her, and she stayed quiet as the introduction continued. Anneka gasped as he moved on to introducing the team members, with large projections of their faces and names.
 
"I'm going to do something stupid on camera, I know it..." the jaguar girl smiled, bouncing a little on her feet as her photos came up.

"Yeah, I think we all are." Nicola was trying her best not to show her excitement, but her heart was racing as the moment drew closer. She looked back at the screen as Alex said her name, and -

"It's starting!" Kim squeaked as the floor gave a jolt that startled them all. She held her hands nervously at her mouth, her thin tail swishing behind her. Nicola turned to watch as the lift smoothly moved towards the ground, the opening into the room gradually becoming visible again.

She grinned over her shoulder. "Good luck!" she called, then after a slight stumble as the lift jolted to a halt, she dashed through the entranceway and over towards where Alex was standing.

"Welcome to the Industrial Zone, all four of you..." Alex clapped his hands together as they jogged towards him, calling out their names as they approached. "Nicola, Lesley, Kim... and our team leader, Anneka. We've got four parts of the complex to get through... are you ready to open it up and get in there?"

Nicola nodded, still half-aware of the idea they were being filmed, then joined in the quiet acknowledgements from the others.

"Well, you can see how enthusiastic they are already, ROB," the red wolf laughed as he turned up to the projection screen again, the yellow face fading back into view. "Can you get it open for us and let them prove themselves?"

"Fine. I'll open up sixteen rooms. But I'm not confident," the electronic face smirked before fading away.

"Hey..." Nicola said out loud, then almost squeaked as a mechanical noise started up from somewhere on the right. She looked over to see a six-foot garage-like door slowly rising and folding on to rails on the ceiling, the light from the brighter area beyond it forming a spreading rectangle on the floor.

"Come on!" Alex called as he jumped towards the rising door, ducking under it before it had fully finished opening. Nicola was the first to move after him, and heard the others running to keep up as they moved into a tube light-lined corridor. She glanced from side to side at the large logos on each wall as they ran, then put her hand out against the wall at a sharp turn, walking a little breathlessly into the room at the end.

The room they had entered was circular, white and sterile-looking, with a few blank metal doors placed up short steps on the walls. A couple of corridors like the one they'd come in by led off to the left and right. In the center of the room, a dark spherical device stood supported by three spindly metallic legs a couple of meters above a slightly raised platform - she swallowed as she recognized it as what the show called 'the Pod', a machine that she'd seen used on virtually every episode she'd watched.

She took a couple of steps towards it, excited by seeing the thing in real life, as the other three team members walked into the room behind her. Bending down a little to look up at its underside, she couldn't help smiling as she saw a round nozzle pointed down at the chair underneath it - she had always wondered what the IZ machines looked like from the inside.

Lesley walked up beside her and looked too, and Nicola straightened up. Seeing Alex beckoning the four of them over, she stepped around the fascinated chipmunk girl, giving her a tap on the back to get her attention as they moved over to join him next to one of the corridor entrances.

"This is the hub of the research center, team - we still don't quite know everything that they did here, but most of it involved digging up things from the ocean floor like that thing," he pointed at the pod, and the four girls looked over as softly strobing lights blinked over its surface, "until they accidentally transformed the water for miles around. After that they started on a purifier to correct their mistake, but left it locked away where we can't get to it... until you earn some time in there by taking the challenges left for you." Nicola bounced on her heels eagerly, nodding impatiently as she waited for them to move again.

"So we can stay around this area while you get your feet wet, so to speak," - Nicola held back a grin at the expression - "or if you're feeling confident we can dive right in and go to the storage or processing wings, or even down to the undersea level. Anneka, what's it going to be?"

The jaguar girl jumped a little at the mention of her name, having been distracted looking around the circular white room. "Er," she started, then gathered herself. "Let's head to... storage." She looked between the other three, then nodded at Alex.

"Storage? All right! This way," he pointed as he sprang into a run again, jumping through the group of girls and heading towards the opening that had been to their right when they came in. Nicola was the first to react and jogged behind him as he led them down the new corridor, going a short distance before bursting through a set of swinging double doors with both hands.

Nicola squeezed through as the doors swung back, looking up to see him stepping a little more carefully through a tiled section of the corridor lined with nozzles at the sides. Tentatively, she came through behind him, drawing her arms in and half-expecting the sprayers to burst into life at any moment as she dashed through behind him.

After stepping off the other end still dry, she turned and waited for the others to file through, looking around at the corridor around them. This area was much less sterile-looking than the hub they'd been taken through, with floors and walls that were textured to look like bare gray stone. A few beams slanted across just below the curved ceiling, with flickering light bulbs dangling from wires looped around them. Occasional storage containers marked with meaningless warning symbols littered the passageway ahead, which went on for a few feet before forming a T-junction.

"Okay, team..." Alex spoke up as the other three girls stepped one by one out of the end of the tiled section. He fished in his pocket for the minicomputer that he'd taken out before. "This place is the storage wing, where they used to keep things that they'd dredged up from the sea bed, or more recently, samples of the contaminated water that they'd taken in and hadn't got around to cleaning up yet."

He took a couple of steps towards a nearby blue barrel. "We haven't quite explored all of it, either, but hopefully none of it's going to go off if you shake it or anything..." Suddenly he knocked hard on the barrel with his fist, producing a loud clank and making Lesley and Anneka jump. Nicola smiled to herself, trying not to let her nervous excitement show as she waited to see where they were going to be taken.

"And if you're all ready..." He paused a moment, looking down at the screen. "...our first game's one for all of you, and it's just around this corner." He put the palmtop away again and beckoned as he turned to dash towards the junction. Nicola eagerly ran to catch up with him and turned the corner as he slid to a halt.

She raised her eyebrows as she looked up at the section of corridor in front of them. On the left, a small step led up to a wide recess that had enough room for four clear plastic seats, placed in a row with about a yard of space between each one. A few feet above them, a metal rail stretched from one end of the alcove to the other, and mounted halfway along the rail was a large mechanical contraption consisting of knotted pipes and dangling tubes, ending in a tapered nozzle that pointed down towards the row of chairs.

"This is the Dispenser, team," the red wolf announced as they all looked up at it. He casually walked down the corridor a couple of steps away from them, giving them all enough room to walk fully around to see it. "When this place was still going it was used to fill rows of barrels quickly, but we've ripped the bottom half out and we're going to put you under there instead. Want to take a seat?"

Nicola felt her heart lurch as he raised his hand towards the row of seats, and stood still for just a moment as the others began moving forwards. Slowly, she walked behind them, staring up at the overhead machine as she stepped on to the raised section of floor and headed to sit down on the far right chair. She'd watched this game played many times on the show before, but she never thought she'd be seeing it from this angle.

As she wriggled back in the soft blowup seat, taking her weight off her dangling toes, she glanced over at the other girls then looked forwards. A large projection screen was set up on the wall of the corridor in front of them, and Alex was watching them as he paced down to position himself beside it. After watching them all take their seats, he cleared his throat, and Nicola tapped her feet a little nervously, knowing that she was about to be part of an IZ game for the first time.

"All right, everyone - we're starting off with a simple one!" Alex pointed over his shoulder to the large projection screen behind him. "You're going to be shown a series of ten everyday items on this screen, and after that, I'm going to be asking all of you to name an item from the list in turn - you're going to get ten points for each item you get right." Nicola nodded - the game worked in the same way as she'd seen it before. It had always seemed easy when just watching it.

"But, of course, we'll be adding an extra incentive to get things right as well..."

Alex pointed upwards, and Nicola looked up to the large funnel above them. Suddenly it began to move down the rail towards her with a mechanical hum, the dangling tubes underneath swinging slightly with the movement. Even though she knew this always happened, she couldn't help shivering tensely as it slid to hang above her. She stared up into its nozzle, seeing a dark metallic device just inside it.

She relaxed a little as it moved away again, heading back down the row of chairs. Smiling a little as she saw the other girls flinch as it went over them, she craned her neck up above them to watch. Eventually it stopped again above Kim, who looked up at it uneasily before returning her eyes to their host.

"Perhaps it's more of a distraction," he smiled. "If you can't name anything that hasn't been said after ten seconds, the dispenser's going to activate above you and... you'll be out." He paused for a moment as the image sank in, watching them all squirm a little before continuing. "You'll be starting, Kim, so make sure you concentrate!" The mouse girl nodded, kicking her feet gently against the front of the inflatable seat.

"All right - everyone ready?" Alex paused a moment and waited for them all to nod before stepping out of the way. "Here they come." Nicola leaned forwards, gripping the arm of the seat tighter as the lights went down. As the screen turned on, showing a table lamp, she repeated its name under her breath, and continued to do so as the screen changed, showing a new item every two seconds. She swallowed, trying to ignore the distraction of her nervousness as she counted out the objects they'd been shown by tapping her fingers on the chair's arms, and continued going over the ones she could remember in her head as the lights came back up.

"Got all of them?" Alex asked. Nicola tried to concentrate on the list she was playing in her head, already unsure of a couple of them, as he paced over so he was in front of the first chair. "Let's get started - Kim, name anything from that list!" The mouse girl sat up straighter, and gasped a little as a ticking noise began playing from the machine looming above her.

"A lamp," she said carefully. Nicola nodded to herself as she watched her glancing upwards at the nozzle again, and the mouse girl sagged relievedly as the sound of the timer stopped.

"That's right," Alex nodded encouragingly. "That seemed easy enough. Lesley, your turn..."

Nicola only half-listened, going over the items she could remember again as she kept her eye on the nozzle heading down towards her. After Anneka and Lesley answered correctly, she bounced in the seat a little, squirming uneasily as the large nozzle hummed into place above her.  She opened her mouth to speak, but Alex got in first.

"Nicola, you've got the most difficult position at the end there, but it looks like you're ready to save yourself... what's your first answer?"

She nodded as he finished, then jumped as the timer sound began clicking from above her. "A c... er, drinks can," she said, grimacing to herself as she tripped over the word. She was about to repeat it, but stayed quiet as she heard the timer stop.

"Excellent, you've got through one pass totally clean and there are only six items still to go. Kim, can you remember any of them?" Alex dashed back along the row of chairs as the nozzle moved away from Nicola, sliding faster to click into position above the mouse girl's head again.

Nicola drummed her feet distractedly on the ground as she watched her thinking, still concentrating on the few remaining objects she thought she could remember. Eventually the mouse girl named one of them correctly, and the spout above them moved over to Lesley.

"Lesley, it's getting more difficult - can you save yourself this time?"

"A desk lamp," she responded instantly.

"Sorry, Kim's already said that one," Alex responded, and she gasped, putting her hands to her mouth as the ticking sound from the ceiling continued, getting gradually more urgent. "Anything else?"

Nicola watched as the small chipmunk girl looked up at the gunge nozzle looming above her head, her hands placed over her ears but her face staying calm. "A jam-jar!" she suddenly shouted, slapping her hands down on the arms of the seat, then squeezed her eyes shut as she waited.

There was a clicking noise from above her, and Lesley flinched as the nozzle juddered. But with a mechanical whine, it began moving away from her again.

"That was a close one, Lesley!" Alex remarked as she opened her eyes, pulling herself up to sit upright and then raising her hands in the air. Nicola glanced sideways at Anneka, whose shoulders were shaking a little as she laughed under her breath, watching the gunge nozzle slide into place above her.

"All right, team leader, there are only four more things to go - can you name any of them?"

"That was what I was gonna say," she giggled, indicating to her right at the watching chipmunk girl and shaking her head defeatedly.

"Can't remember any of the others? Then I'm afraid you know what's going to happen..." As the ticking noise of the timer rose in pitch, the jaguar girl continued to shake her head, and Nicola quickly looked up to the funnel above her, putting both hands on one arm of the seat as she leaned eagerly over to watch.

A short, harsh klaxon began to sound repeatedly from the ceiling, and Anneka whimpered, closing her eyes and biting her lip as she rested her arms on the sides of her seat, bowing her head slightly down. Nicola flinched back a little as the klaxon was replaced by a lower alarm sound, something moved on the nozzle and a column of bright green stuff began spilling down out of it.

Nicola quickly looked back at the cringing feline just before the gunge splurged on to the top of her head, splashing outwards wildly with a wet squelching noise just before a loud yelp from underneath the messy dome covered the sound up. Through the falling droplets she saw Anneka raise her arms off the sides of the seat and place her hands over her eyes, squirming to the side a little so the sloppy liquid poured over her shoulder. As the ooze continued to fall and splatter on to her, she leaned forwards instead, taking her hands away from her face and revealing a sickly grin.

The gungy downpour began to ease off, the column of green stuff getting thinner until it was just a thick drizzle from above. Nicola shivered as she looked over at Anneka's green-colored hair, shoulders and back, the stuff forming slimy rivulets as it slithered down her fur. As she watched fascinatedly, the jaguar girl sat up again, blinking as the dribbly remains of the downpour splotted on to her head.

"Bad luck, Anneka, but the first gunging had to happen to somebody - how would you describe it to your team mates?" Alex asked.

"Eurgh," she replied with a giggle, bringing her hands carefully up to wipe across her forehead and get specks of the stuff off her muzzle. She stuck her tongue out, flicking her hands to the sides to spray gooey droplets away from them.

"That sounds about right," the red wolf smiled. With a jolt, the nozzle began to move again, spilling a few more drops down on to the jaguar girl as it slid away from her. Nicola watched it come over, blinking as the continuing drips from it pattered on to the side of her chair, twitching as a green splat of it landed on her arm. She looked back over at Anneka, smiling nervously as she watched the gunge drip slowly from her hair.

"Nicola, you might be getting a bit of gunge from that thing anyway," Alex chuckled as he watched it move into position. "To stop it going off again, though, you've still got four more objects to name - go ahead."

Nicola looked away from the gungy jaguar girl, faced Alex and realized that she'd forgotten everything else that she had seen. "I... I don't know," she stuttered, feeling panic rising inside her. "Uh..."

"Sorry, you've got to come up with something or the same thing happens to you!" Alex shook his head, saying it quickly as he gestured towards the nozzle.

"Um..." As she tapped her fingers on the edges of the seat, frustratedly trying her hardest to think, the fast, harsh blare of the klaxon began sounding from above her. Glancing up at the tip of the nozzle pointed down at her, then at the other three girls watching, she desperately wondered how to position herself for what was about to happen. Instinctively putting her hands to her face, she closed her eyes behind them just in time for the second alarm to ring.

A fraction of a second later, she felt a heavy wave smack on to her and push her head down under its weight, splattering thickly outwards to gloop over her shoulders. As she bowed her head forward the cool gunge slopped on to her neck, and she squeaked as it poured across her shoulders and slithered down her chest. Breathing in and out carefully, she smiled behind her hands as the shock gave way and she became aware of the glutinous liquid coating her back, dripping through her hair and fur, over her hands protecting her face and sliding down her arms. It felt like someone had turned on a heavy shower above her head, except it clung and slithered over her in ways that water didn't.

She took her hands away from her face, leaning out of the drizzly remains of the torrent from the nozzle above her, and laughed slightly, half from relief and half as she looked down at her smooth green gunge-coated fur. The plastic of the seat around her had also been painted green by the downpour, and she had to wriggle backwards to stop herself slipping on the slimy surface. The goo felt colder than she'd thought it would be, but being coated in it was quite welcome under the heat of the lights above them.

"Sorry, Nicola, but you're out! So, you two, now..." Alex stepped back to Kim as the still dripping nozzle started up again and hummed back down the row, making the jaguar girl dodge a little forward out of the way. As Nicola breathed out and looked up at him again, she dragged her hands down each slippery arm in turn, feeling the slime collect on the side of her hands. She had always wondered what it felt like, and even though it had the same custard-like texture she had thought of from watching it happen to other people, the feeling of actually being covered in the mess had been impossible to imagine.

Kim had already given a correct answer by the time she looked up to see the nozzle sliding towards Lesley again. It clicked into place, and Alex just held out a hand to prompt her. She opened her mouth a little but was quiet for a few seconds, and Nicola was sure she was about to be gunged. But suddenly a look of excited realization crossed her face, and she pointed as she struggled for the word, miming it wildly front of her. "A... water tap! Kitchen... you know..." she stuttered quickly, hesitating for a moment.

"Yes!" Alex laughed as he confirmed her answer. "There was a faucet there, and that means you've only got two more things to name now - can you remember either of them, Kim?"

Nicola leaned forwards to see past the messy jaguar's seat, picking a strand of heavy hair off her face and tucking it behind her ear as the curvy mouse girl looked up at the nozzle sliding into position above her head. Quickly, without a prompt from Alex, she faced forwards again, squeezing her eyes closed and mouthing as she thought. She gave a quiet squeak, holding her hands up to her face, then suddenly moved them away and spoke up.

"Was there a phone?" she said uncertainly.

Alex paused, looking back at her for a moment. "There was."

Kim breathed out heavily, collapsing back on to the seat as the large spout moved away from over her head again. Nicola swallowed and drummed her fingers on the side of her seat agitatedly even though she knew she was no longer in danger. The slender chipmunk girl wriggled nervously, bouncing in the seat as the nozzle moved back into position above her.

"So, Lesley, to save yourself for the last time - can you name the final object that you saw up there?" Nicola slipped her legs up on to the seat, propping herself up on her knees to better watch the chipmunk girl as the ticking of the timer began.

"Uh..." She gripped a bunch of her long blonde hair distractedly, rolling it in her hand. "A chair..."

"Already been said," Alex said quickly, then looked up as she continued to list objects, counting on her fingers and speeding up as the ticking sound got louder.

"...phone, lamp, guitar... salt shaker... bunch of flowers... plant... thing..."

"Yes!" Alex called above her, holding a hand out in front of him. She froze, looking over to him wide-eyed in what looked like real disbelief. "Amazing memory, Lesley, because a vase of flowers was the last one, and that means you've saved yourself - come out from under there!"

He beckoned them with both hands, and Nicola carefully slipped forwards to put her feet on the ground again. Pushing off the slippery seat, she dripped over towards him, feeling the goo on her shoulders drip down her back as the others got back into a group.

"You managed to name all ten items, so that's a full hundred points for the game - you can't start much better than that." The girls smiled at each other in celebration of their first success. "So, Anneka, bearing in mind we've got two team members who are still clean, who's going into the next game?"

The jaguar girl spun round, making green specks of slime flick off her hair. She looked between the chipmunk and mouse girl, who glanced nervously at each other, then she pointed as she turned back to Alex. "Lesley was the one who got me gunged," she announced.

The small chipmunk bowed her head down shyly, smiling as she stepped forwards towards Alex and dragged one toe on the ground.

"Oh, come on, she didn't!" Alex laughed a little, offering his hand to her. "She was just... better at it than you." Anneka's mouth dropped open in a shocked smile, but she didn't say anything else as Lesley took his hand and he ran down the corridor with her, a little more gently this time.

"Sorry about this, Lesley, but you know it's the team leader's decision," Alex kept them listening as he led them back down the corridor, passing the T-junction they had turned at before and heading towards another corner further down. Nicola glanced around at the heavy metallic doors with inset grimy windows leading off from the corridor as they passed them, wondering which one they were going to be led through.

After turning the corner, Alex slowed down, pointing to the right as they approached a large opening, about six feet high and wide, that was covered with hanging strips of heavy black plastic, forming a curtain over the doorway. As they walked over to it, Nicola noticed the end of a rail fixed to the floor poked out from underneath it.

"Lesley, you managed to save yourself from the gunge, but this time, it's going to be up to your team mates to save you instead," Alex announced, letting go of her and heading towards the opening. "And this is what you're going in to!"

He stepped forwards, reaching both hands into the curtain and pushing a handful of strips aside in each direction. Nicola caught a glimpse of what was inside, but dashed around to get a better look as the chipmunk girl nervously ducked forward under the red wolf's arm.

Holding one arm up to push the heavy black curtain aside, she followed Lesley in and looked at the large contraption ahead of them. An eight foot high gunge booth was set up at the opposite side of the room, and a metal frame, covered in tubes and piping, supported a collection of tip-tanks and slime-filled reservoirs around and above it. The biggest one, about three feet wide, was mounted right at the top center of the frame. A pipe from it jutted downwards slightly, pointed along with nozzles from each of the other containers down to a large funnel on top of the booth.

"What do you think, Lesley?" asked Alex, letting go of the curtain as the others came through and heading towards the machine, beckoning her to follow.

"...Wow," she giggled, scampering to keep up with him and keeping her eyes on the liquid-filled clear tanks positioned around the frame. Nicola glanced around at the rest of their surroundings as they approached it - to her right, a set of blue and red targets on various supports and brackets covered one wall of the room, and to her left, a cannon-like device was set up facing them, with something that looked like a blowup paddling pool behind it. Curious, she wandered over towards it.

"I'll be showing you that in a moment," Alex called over, noticing her looking around. He opened the door for the chipmunk girl and held a hand out to encourage her in. Her hands held clasped at her chest, Lesley stepped nervously inside, picking her feet up high to avoid the slight step, and turned around as she stared up into the end of the funnel above her. As she heard him closing the door, she faced forwards again, and parted her hands to clasp them behind her back instead, raising herself up on her heels then dropping back.

Nicola walked past the thing on the floor and peered down into the blowup pool, seeing it was filled with yellowish blobs floating in a translucent green liquid. Crouching down a little further and poking one, she realized that they were rubber water-balloons.

She stood up as Alex walked over, the other two girls joining them. "This game's more of a physical challenge than the last one," he started explaining as he moved past the cannon and crouched down next to the pool. He dipped a hand into the glutinous liquid to grab one of the balloons, and raised it up as a stream of sticky slime dripped down off it.

Nicola turned as he walked away, his arm outstretched, looking over at Anneka and Kim who exchanged squeamish, giggling glances. "This thing's a spring-loaded launcher," he said, indicating the cannon-like thing on the ground with his free hand. "And your aim's going to be to hit as many of the red targets over on the opposite wall as you can." He dropped the balloon down a pipe that jutted out from the top of the cannon's barrel. "For each target hit, you'll get ten points - but make sure you only hit the red targets," he emphasized, "because if any of those balloons hit the blue ones, a tank's going to empty its contents on to your team mate over there. Feeling OK in there, Lesley?"

"Yeah." The chipmunk girl nodded, shifting her weight between her feet and resting one arm against the wall of the booth. She moved her gaze up to the pipe above her again, looking a little worried, but shuffling slowly backwards so that she was right underneath it.

The three other team members watched as Alex swiveled the launcher so that it was facing away from any of the targets, Anneka stepping backwards a little out of the way as the barrel was swung a couple of inches in her direction. Slowly, he pulled the plunger on the end back and suddenly let it go, making the liquid-filled balloon streak through the air dripping a trail of slime behind it, finally bursting on a blank part of the far wall and leaving a bright yellow splatter mark that drizzled slowly downwards.

"Got the idea? It's simple enough. You've got two minutes to hit as many as you can - at the end of the time, we'll set Lesley free again."

"Yeah," Nicola confirmed along with the others, her eyes on the targets on the far wall trying to see which ones would be the easiest to hit.

"All right..." Alex moved to the side, away from the launcher. "Oh, and I forgot to mention... they're not going to stay still." He held up the computer he kept in his pocket and jabbed a button on it, and Nicola watched as some of the target-carrying frames on the opposite wall ground into life, moving a few of the targets slowly back and forward or around in circles.

"I'm starting the time now - remember, hit the reds! Good luck!"

Before he finished speaking, Nicola had moved over to the pool, and she dipped both her hands in to grab a couple out of the cold slime. Kim knelt down behind the cannon as Alex had, and she pulled the plunger back a little as Nicola approached.

Carefully, Nicola dropped one of the balloons she was carrying down the pipe at the top of the barrel, and watched as Kim looked intently over at the far wall. Carefully, she pulled the trigger back and let it go, but was too gentle and the balloon didn't make it halfway across the room.

"Oh..." she groaned, agitatedly. "Quick, put the other one in..."

Nicola dropped the other balloon down. "Really... pull it," she said, miming tugging on it hard. She glanced behind her as she became aware of Anneka standing there, carrying two more balloons from the pool.

Kim put both hands on the handle, pulling it back, but wobbling the cannon as she did so. She let it go with a thump and the balloon sailed out of the end of the cannon, but well off to the right hand side and it skimmed the right hand wall before bursting on the corner.

"Can I try?" Nicola asked quickly. The gray mouse girl nodded, then quickly turned away, nearly falling over as she hurried to move as Nicola got down on her knees and shuffled to take up her position at the launcher.

She watched as Anneka squeamishly picked up another gunge balloon and slipped it down the funnel, then bracing her arm on its support, swung the cannon up a little to point at one of the stationary red targets. She took hold of the plunger and tried to keep the whole thing steady even though it was heavier than she had expected, then held her breath and let it go, flinching only slightly as the balloon thumped out of the end.

She stood up as it flew away across the room, arcing up and then downwards, splattering on the very edge of the target she'd been aiming for. Quickly, she turned to Alex, unsure whether it counted or not.

"I'll give you that! Just keep going," he encouraged them. Nicola pumped one fist in the air, then signaled to Anneka to drop another balloon in as she lined it up for another shot.

Over the next minute or so, Nicola got more confident as the team managed to get into a rhythm of loading and firing the balloon launcher, and she managed to hit five more of the red targets near the right hand side of the wall without touching any of the blue ones. After hitting the target that was being moved back and forward squarely in the center, prompting a cheer from the mouse girl and feline, she turned her attention to the other side of the wall that she'd been avoiding before - a set of four red targets on a windmill-like frame that was rotating over a large blue circle. Trying to think of how long each balloon had taken to get across the room, she pointed the cannon at a mostly guessed angle and then pulled back the trigger, glancing over at the chipmunk girl in the gunge tank who was standing watching her, hands clasped nervously at her chest.

She let go, but caught her hand on the plunger as she moved it away and the balloon rolled uselessly out of the end of the barrel to splat soggily on the ground.

"You've only got about ten seconds left, make the most of them!" Alex called. Nicola looked up at the targets then at the pile of balloons next to them, and bent down again behind the cannon, looking up at Kim and Anneka.

"Just put them all in!" she called to them, gesticulating with one hand as she held the cannon's plunger and waddled to the side as she pointed it roughly in the center of the remaining four targets. Hesitantly, the mouse girl took two of the wobbling balloons in each hand and dropped them down the end of the barrel, then stood aside as Anneka did the same and Nicola leaned back the way.

Nicola pulled the handle as far as she could, then let it go. There was a loud bursting noise, and she squeaked and turned her face away as a splatter of yellow stuff splurged out the end of the launcher, spurts of it flying up into the air to settle back down on the three girls. As the slimy mist settled, she got up and leaned over to look at the front, where a few shreds of water balloons were lying in a spreading puddle. Smiling and shrugging at the disappointing result, she heard a series of beeps and then a mechanical noise as the targets on the far wall ground to a halt.

"All right, time's up!" With a laugh, Alex stepped forward, waving his arms above his head to signal them to stop. Nicola let go of the launcher's handle and straightened up again, stepping back as she looked up at the yellow-splattered wall in front of them.

"It seemed like you had some trouble at the start, and that plan at the end didn't go too well, but in between those you found your feet and you managed to hit..." - he looked to the far wall and counted, pointing at each in turn - "six of the ten targets. And there was no gunge at all for Lesley - so she should be happy with your result..."

Nicola looked over at the booth with their team-mate inside. The chipmunk girl shrugged, smiling a little as she looked shyly at the floor. As Alex stepped forwards again, she shifted herself forwards, then waited for him to open the tank's door before pushing herself up to step out of it.

"Come on, let's keep moving!" Alex called to the others as Lesley padded alongside him back to the curtain where they'd come into the room. Nicola followed the others at a dash as he held the black strips aside for them, and ducked back into the corridor.

Alex clapped his hands together as he stepped through as well. "All right, who's going next?"

"Kim," Anneka said immediately, pointing a finger towards her for a moment. The gray mouse girl nodded, having expected it, and bowed her head down but looked up at him shyly as she extended her hand towards him.

Gently, Alex accepted her hand and walked her forwards, leaving the others to follow the two of them. "You've been pretty quiet so far, actually, Kim - how are you feeling?" 

Kim ran one hand through her bluish hair as they turned back around the corner. "I'm a little bit nervous," she admitted, giggling at the end of the sentence.

Alex nodded. "Well, I'd reassure you - but knowing where we're going next I'd say you have every reason to be!"

"Oh..." Kim whimpered, one hand still gripping her hair. Alex let her go and she continued tapping her toes on the floor as he moved over to unbolt the nearby door.

"Have a look in here," he said, moving through and holding out his hand towards her again. Breathing out, she stepped through the door, taking his hand, and Nicola quickly dashed through behind them.

The room was smaller than the last, extending several yards to the left of the door and slightly longer than it was wide. Its most obvious feature was a large vat in the center, several feet wide with its round wall coming up to about shoulder height and painted to look as if green slimy drops had spilled over to drip down its side. Sets of shallow stairs led upwards, curving around the outside of the vat to reach a higher level at the back of the room that was level with the lip of the vat. Nicola walked forwards, putting her hands on the sides of the round vat and standing on her tiptoes to better see down into it, grinning as she looked at the sloppy dark and light green mixture within. Stretching one arm over the edge, she dipped her hand down into the cool batter-like glop, stirring it around a little and feeling the slippery stuff surrounding her fingers.

Kim was still gripping Alex's hand as the two of them climbed the stairs, heading towards a platform that jutted out a couple of feet above the green stuff. Nicola pulled her hand out and shook the sticky slime off her fingers, wiping them on the edge as they reached the top. The mouse girl wriggled her hand out of Alex's as she turned towards the vat, her hands cupped over her mouth and hiding her expression as she looked down at its contents.

Alex gestured down to the blue platform, which was about a foot off the ground and supported by a small frame underneath it. Gingerly, accepting the support of his hands, she moved down to straddle the platform, then began wriggling forwards carefully to keep her balance as she eased herself out over the gunge tank.

Nicola watched their host stroll down the left hand side of the stairs, his eyes on Kim as she stopped at the end of the platform, and reached around to her tail to adjust her swimsuit bottoms. Looking down, she gripped the end of the platform in front of her and stretched her leg down to dip a bare toe into the gunge, eeping as she continued to submerge her foot halfway. After turning it a little, she raised it out again, watching the green slime drizzle thickly from her toes.

"How's the water? You might be going in a lot further soon," he smiled over at her, then turned back to the team as he reached the floor. "But to make sure that doesn't happen, you three, you're going to have to get to grips with this."

He pointed at the wall behind them, and Nicola spun around to see a confused arrangement of pipes, about six feet square, for the first time. Dangling from a pipe on the left was a card key attached to a loop of small chain through a hole punched in its corner. A longer pipe led out from the right hand side opposite it, ending in a section bent slightly away from the wall.

Alex stepped forward and grasped the card, sliding it along the pipe it was attached to with a scraping noise. "This is one of the keys to the purifier room that we have to get into at the end, and your task's going to be to get it free in just one minute," he explained, pointing up to a pair of long indication bars above the pipes. Two pointers sat at their right hand sides. Letting go of the card, he moved along the wall a little, reaching over a switch mounted at a junction in the pipes. "You can get past junctions by flicking these," he said, pressing it and making sure they saw the effect as a connecting pipe snicked from one side to the other, freeing space on either side alternately. "But every one you press is going to decrease the pressure gauge up there - and if that ever drops into the red zone, then the support under that seat over there's not going to be able to hold up, and Kim's going into the gunge bath."

Nicola looked over her shoulder at the precariously positioned mouse girl, who wriggled her hips slowly to reposition herself, raising her feet away and clutching the end of the platform. Trying to ignore the others' eyes on her, she looked down at the surface of the slimy mixture in front of her, then glanced upwards, looking back at Alex as she pointed at the ceiling a few feet above. Nicola looked up to where she was pointing and saw, hidden among the ceiling lights aimed down at the vat, a couple of dark cylindrical canisters ending in nozzles at the bottom. They were mounted above and just in front of where the mouse girl was seated.

"Those?" Alex asked, leaning down to look up at them as well. "Well, they're not part of the system over here," - he waved a hand behind him at it "- but there was some space left up there, so we thought we'd make use of it..."

Kim giggled silently, shifting again and swinging her legs back and forth. The movement caused the seat to bounce a little and she stopped quickly as it shook underneath her.

"I'd stay still if I were you, otherwise you might be going in anyway!" Alex chuckled, then turned back to the wall, stepping backwards away from the other girls. "All right, you three - I'll award points based on how far you get in a minute, or before Kim gets dunked. Get ready, because your time to save her starts now!"

Nicola, surprised at the sudden start, looked up and around at the perplexing arrangement in front of them as Anneka stepped forward to move the card along the rail. After guiding it up and to the right, she reached for a switch to open up a junction, but hesitated as Lesley held her hand up.

"I think we need to go to the left," she said quickly. "There are too many switches over this way."

Nicola looked up and counted the notches in the bar that indicated the number of switches they had pressed - there were nine or ten of them before the red zone started. As she watched, the other two pressed one to loop the card on to another pipe, and the needle on the indicator juddered worringly as it fell one notch.

She watched the jaguar and chipmunk girl work together, Lesley directing Anneka as she moved the card and guided the loop of chain along behind it, and glancing between them and the timer worriedly. As they paused and Anneka struggled to reach a route at the very top of the frame, she took a couple of steps forwards and crouched down to form a step for her with her hands.

"Thanks," the jaguar girl said distractedly as she grabbed on to a nearby pipe for support, tugging the chain awkwardly along the pipe at the very top level.

"Can you climb up?" Lesley asked from behind Nicola. Anneka tried to place her other foot on the pipes, but growled as she wobbled unsteadily and shifted her weight back on to Nicola's hands.

"You could go on her shoulders!" she said quickly, indicating to be let down. Nicola slackened her arms a little as Anneka moved away, then quickly turned to Lesley. She didn't look at all heavy. She nodded, and crouched down beside the pipes as the chipmunk girl carefully slipped her legs around her neck, then carefully moved upwards as Lesley steadied herself with her hands, eventually grabbing the dangling card.

"Yes!" Anneka laughed as the chipmunk girl, wobbling slightly on top of Nicola's shoulders, easily moved the chain along the top layer, pressing it past a couple more switches along the way. After a couple of turns she dropped it down a vertical stretch of pipe.

"Okay, put me down!" she called. Nicola quickly ducked again, trying to look up as she did so to see how far they were going. The timer was already worryingly low as Anneka stepped forward and hovered a little, thinking of where to go next.

"Over to your right," Lesley flailed an arm to indicate where she should go as Nicola set her down, and she ran around her to point her in the right direction, hitting a switch on the far right as she came up to it. Nicola straightened and looked up, seeing the timer with no more than about ten seconds left. She whipped around to look at Kim, who was sitting with her hands balled into fists in front of her, knocking them together nervously as she kept her eyes on the rapidly dropping bar above the grid on the wall.

"Come on!" Lesley squeaked excitedly, completely different from how quiet she'd been before, as Anneka frantically slid the loop of chain along the last bent stretch of piping. Nicola looked round and kept up behind her, flicking her hands over the chain as it got stuck on the corners. Finally, the jaguar girl dashed across to where the pipe finally finished, whipped the card off the end and turned around to Alex, holding it up victoriously in the air.

The red wolf nodded once, smiling and stepping forward to take it from her. "Well done, team - that's one of our three tickets into the final game, and thanks to that creative tactic you managed to get it off without dipping Kim into the gunge..." They all looked over at the mouse girl, who clapped her hands above her head, cheering while still trying not to move. "So that's another hundred points - your second perfect game already! If you carry on like this then the showers aren't going to get much use..."

The girls on the ground level exchanged grins with each other as the red wolf moved up the curve of the stairs to get next to Kim again. Watching him, she carefully wriggled her bottom backwards, bracing her hands on the platform to move herself back to the safe end.

"All right! I have to say I'm surprised, but that's another game that you've managed to escape clean," the red wolf remarked as he held Kim's hands tightly, making sure she kept her balance as she struggled to move her leg over the dunk seat and get back onto dry land again. After he let go she raised her hands in the air, then bounced back down the stairs and put her arms out to hug Anneka as she rejoined the others. Alex came after her, bounding down the steps and then walking past them to head for the door, putting one hand on it as they filed back out into the corridor.

"So we've just got one more game to go here now before we move to the next area. Anneka, who are you going to put in this time?"

Nicola shifted her weight from foot to foot a little as the jaguar girl looked around at the three of them, eventually ending with her. "I think..." she started, hesitating, "...actually I think Lesley should go in again."

"Lesley!" Alex repeated her name, drawing out the last syllable as he spun around slowly to face her. Smiling down at her feet, she shuffled forwards out of the group, nervously playing with the strap on the shoulder of her swimwear. Breathing out, she looked up at the red wolf and took his hand.

"Seems like Anneka still thinks you need to be gunged - so I've got a bit of a surprise for your second game," he added as he strode off down the corridor, making her laugh nervously as she skipped to keep up. Nicola followed them at a jog, glancing over her shoulder to see the other two come up behind.

After leading them back towards the corner, he started heading around it and then skidded to a halt abruptly, turning around on the spot and changing the hand that he held with Lesley. Nicola dodged back out of the way and looked in the direction he was pointing - on the corner of the corridor was another of the metal doors, but this one stood out as it was bordered by diagonal black and yellow stripes. A few vague triangular warning symbols had been mounted on the wall around it.

"Know what's in here?" he asked as he used one hand to pull away the bolts that held the door in place. The chipmunk girl shook her head, her blonde hair bobbing behind her. As Nicola moved up beside them, she saw that she looked more excited than nervous at the prospect of being put in the game.

Alex let go of her and shouldered the door open, then stepped aside to let them in first. Lesley tiptoed into the dark room, and Nicola heard a little gasp as she clasped her hands to her mouth. She craned her neck to see, hurrying into the room behind her.

In front of them, lit in green and standing out against the gloom of the rest of the room, there was a chamber separated from the room by a metallic half-height door. Inside, the top of a rounded chair was visible, with reflections of arrays of lights and switches from the cubicle's walls flickering across it. Nicola shivered as she recognized it as the Hotseat.

"I know we try to give you a gentle start and everything," the red wolf announced as he led the chipmunk girl towards the booth, "But we've got to make up for the team avoiding so much gunge so far..."

They reached a short ramp that led up to the machine, and Alex let her go to pull a switch high up on the right wall. With a loud clank, the metallic door began sliding into the ground. Nicola watched Lesley's back as she stood in place, flicking a hand through her hair as she looked at the inside of the tank.

"Want to take your seat?" Alex encouraged her as the door disappeared into the floor. Lesley stepped into the booth, turning around and putting her hands on the seat before shuffling backwards on to it, stopping when her pointed toes were just able to reach the ground.

"You've seen this thing before, haven't you?" their host asked her, leaning over from his position by the switch. 

"Yep." The brown chipmunk girl nodded quickly, and looked down, turning her hands in front of her face as she noticed her fur was tinged an odd shade of green by the overhead lighting.

"Well, you may be thinking that we wouldn't have the heart to do this to a... cute, pretty young chipmunk girl like yourself," Alex continued, a laugh creeping into his voice as Lesley giggled at his description of her. She tossed her long hair back as she looked from side to side for the gunge nozzles pointed at her. "But believe me - you'd be wrong!" He pulled the switch, starting the metal door rising again, and then hopped back down the shallow ramp.

Nicola laughed, but felt her heart pounding at the same time. This was one of the show's signature games, and a favorite of her own - she'd seen many people getting doused in goo by the Hotseat when watching the show, but now it was right in front of her, it seemed far more threatening. The door clanked back into place as she watched, the slender chipmunk girl wriggling back to lean on the back of the futuristic chair.

"This is the second time you've found yourself inside an Industrial Zone gunge tank, Lesley," Alex said as he stepped back down again, rejoining the others and turning to face her. "Except the consequences are all or nothing now. Think you'll get on as well as last time?"

Lesley bit her lower lip, looking like she was trying to hide a smile as she glanced around the tank again. "Don't know," she replied.

"Well, let's hope that's the last time you'll be saying that in there..." Lesley shrank back, laughing a little nervously and fiddling with the top of her swimsuit as he looked down at his computer pad.

"You've got two choices as to how the game works," he explained, glancing up at her. "You've got as much time as you like to answer three questions. And if you give three correct answers, then we'll let you out of there completely clean. But if you get even one wrong..."

The chipmunk girl nodded again, bouncing in the seat anxiously, obviously wanting him to get on with the game. Nicola shivered as she pictured the consequences happening right in front of her.

"You know what happens," Alex finished. So - do you want to try and escape yourself, or do you want your team to answer for you, after they've managed to save you and Kim so far?"

Nicola watched as Lesley looked down between the three of them, breathing out as she thought. "I'll answer them," she decided.

"Sure? All right!" Alex raised the computer, tapping it with the stylus, and the lights in the room dimmed to leave the Hotseat highlighted in green.

"Good luck, Lesley!" Nicola called out. The chipmunk girl shivered, then tried to settle and relax in the seat as she looked out at the red wolf.

"Here's your first question, Lesley," he announced, slowly and clearly. "What was the unusual sport that featured in last year's movie 'The Underdogs'?"

"Um..." The slim chipmunk girl squirmed, looking up as her lips moved in thought. "...What's its name... table tennis?" she said, miming it in front of her uncertainly, then whimpered, putting her hands to her mouth.

Alex just smiled back at her, in a way that Nicola couldn't decide was amused or reassuring. The title had sounded familiar, but she didn't have any idea whether she had been right or wrong. He looked back down at the computer for a moment before speaking again. "Question two: How many squares are there on a standard chess board?"

Lesley breathed in, looking like she was sure of the answer but making absolutely sure that she thought she was right before speaking. "Sixty-four," she answered. Nicola nodded in the darkness - that was the answer she would have given as well. She felt Anneka creeping closer to her nervously, though all their eyes stayed on the gunge tank.

"And your last one..." The red wolf paused as he read the screen, making the moment last just a little longer than was comfortable. Carefully, he read the question out. "Her name appeared on your TV screen every week for a full decade, until five years ago - what was the name of the actress who played the lead character in the children's soap 'Our Family'?"

Lesley looked upwards again, and Nicola could hear her tapping her toes on the bottom of the tank. Her expression indicated that she was really unsure of the answer.

"Did you ever watch that?" Alex asked.

"Sometimes..." she nodded, and groaned frustratedly as she closed her eyes, cupping her hands to her mouth and rocking back and forward a little as she thought.

Nicola watched tensely as she stayed there, thinking, and was surprised to feel Anneka shuffle closer still to touch her arm. She glanced sideways at her face, her worried eyes showing up in the darkness.

Eventually, the chipmunk girl reached an arm up to pinch her forehead, and finally faced Alex again. "I think... it was... Sh..., no, Sandrette." She put her hands on the sides of the chair, squeezing them in turn as she gave her final answer.

The red wolf nodded, and Anneka relaxed her grip on Nicola's arm as the room's gloomy tube lights flickered on again. Nicola looked over at Kim, who moved over to join them as they all waited for Alex to reveal what was going to happen. Lesley looked a little relieved before he spoke up again.

"Not an easy game for just having three questions, is it, Lesley?" The chipmunk girl shook her head as he moved closer. "How do you think you've done?"

Lesley followed him with her eyes as he positioned himself beside the lever on the wall, and took a deep breath before letting it out again. "I think... you're going to gunge me," she whimpered through a sheepish smile, her eyes on the large switch.

"We'll see! You might be in with a chance - remember, there has been one person in the history of the show who's escaped that seat..." The chipmunk girl glanced over at her team mates, cringing as she bit her lip again.

"The second question - you got that right." She nodded slowly in response. That had been the one she had seemed most sure about, and Nicola was sure she was worrying, as she was, why he had started on that one.

"The first... what was your answer again?"

The chipmunk girl paused for a moment. "Er, table tennis..." she said, even more hesitantly than before. Alex paused, smiling back at her, for a few seconds that seemed to take far longer.

"Absolutely right," he replied. Lesley breathed out, then bounced again to ease her nerves as he looked back at the computer. Nicola looked to her left and right, then took both of her team mates' hands, gripping them as they waited.

"And finally, the third question - you had a bit of trouble with that one, didn't you?"

"Yeah..." Lesley nodded, then visibly shrank back in the seat as her eyes moved to the sprayers at the sides of the tank again.

There was a silence for a moment, then Alex growled frustratedly, and Nicola wasn't sure if he was acting or not. "I can't drag this out any more - you got all three right, you've beaten the Hotseat - come out of there!"

Nicola felt a wave of relief wash over her as he announced the result, but couldn't help but feel disappointed as well. As the red wolf reached for the lever again, she joined in the cheer from Kim and Anneka as Lesley recovered from the shock of the announcement and happily put both hands up in the air, waving her arms from side to side in a victory dance. Alex pulled the switch upwards and the chipmunk girl slid forwards off the seat, waiting for the metal panel to slide fully into the floor again before stepping over it and bouncing down to rejoin the team.

"So that means you've earned yet another full hundred points for the game, bringing you up to three-sixty for the round! You only dropped forty points in four games - you need to keep that going." Nicola exchanged smiles with the others and began to turn to the door. "But..." he continued, a little louder, making the four of them turn towards him again. Nicola watched him glance back at the unusually clean gunge tank. "We've hardly seen any mess this round, and I have a feeling that it's not just me that would be disappointed if we didn't get to use the Hotseat on someone..."

Nicola swallowed, and glanced back between the others, who looked as surprised as she did. She looked past them up the ramp at the green-lit cubicle, suddenly finding herself thinking about what it looked like from the inside...

She was snapped out of her thoughts by Alex again. "Lesley... having saved yourself, is there anyone on the team that you'd particularly like to see in there?"

Lesley turned around to face the other three, a delighted and unusually malicious expression on her face. She looked up at them all, one hand on her chin as she read their expressions. Nicola tried to keep her face neutral as she tried to decide whether she would actually want to be gunged in there or not. She glanced over at Anneka, who was also wringing her hands behind her back nervously.

But the chipmunk girl had already decided after looking at the only other clean team member there. "I think Kim should get it," she said quickly, pointing at her but looking straight back at Alex.

The mouse girl cringed, a nervous grin forming on her face as she flopped her head down, swishing her thin tail. Reluctantly, she looked back up at the machine at the back of the room. Alex held out his hand towards it, and, shoulders shaking, she whimpered through her grinning teeth.

Lesley, bouncing on her heels with excitement, watched as Alex stepped up beside the tank in front of her again. Kim moved to step towards him, but Nicola laughed as she swung around and caught the chipmunk's arm, making her stumble and squeak as she dragged her forwards towards the tank with her.

After struggling for only a couple of steps she skipped forwards to walk beside the mouse girl, hanging back to let her step up the ramp first. Carefully, Kim turned as she stepped over the door, looking up at the unseen mechanism above her head as she held her tail out the way and hesitantly sat down on the rounded chair. She blinked as the flickering lights briefly passed over her, then held out her arms as Lesley stepped up beside her. As Kim shifted over a little to make room for her, she tried to squeeze into the seat by her side, then changed her mind and sat down on her lap instead, her dangling legs either side of Kim's. The mouse girl put her hands on Lesley's waist to hold her in place, shuffling her feet as she got comfortable.

As the two of them got ready, Alex reached up and flicked the switch back into place. Kim curled her toes, peeking out from behind the smaller chipmunk girl to watch the metal door rise out of the ground, and gripped her a little tighter as it clunked back into place.

"Sorry, you two, but we've got to make up for you staying clean for so long somehow..." the red wolf announced as he turned, taking a step back from the tank. The two girls tensed up as a ringing alarm started up from somewhere near the ceiling, and Lesley closed her eyes, a slight smile on her face as she whimpered through her tightly shut lips.

Nicola swallowed, her heart racing as they all waited. Suddenly, with a squirting noise, streams of translucent green slime spurted out of a pair of sprayers at the front sides of the tank, and the chipmunk girl gave a high-pitched gasp as they splattered against her arms. She wriggled and squeezed her hands between her thighs as the gooey jets got stronger, spraying across her tummy and making the mouse girl twitch her hands as they were coated as well.

With the spurting slime moving up to her face, the chipmunk girl closed her eyes, wrinkled her nose and turned away, leaning just far enough for Kim to peek over her shoulder. She quickly closed her eyes too as specks of the gooey stuff flew towards her, but held Lesley firmly in place, eventually relaxing as she leaned up again after the sprays had gone down a little. With her chest and tummy still being sprayed with translucent green stuff that drizzled in blobs off her fur, she seemed to relax a little, her mouth opening into a slight grin just as a harsh hooter blared above the alarm.

A downpour of smooth yellow gunge fell in a column from the tank's ceiling, impacting on Lesley's head and splattering outwards, hiding the two girls from view as they squeaked in unison. The chipmunk quickly leaned forward, making the dome of bright yellow slop pour instead down the back of her head and neck, and Nicola saw her shocked expression underneath a splat of yellow stuff dripping from the top of her head as the flying gunge licked her light blonde hair out to the sides. Strands of her gungy hair fell over her shoulders and splatted heavily against her chest, and she relaxed her shoulders, making fingers of brightly colored ooze creep down around her neck.

The yellow torrent shut off, and Lesley wiped a dripping green hand across her forehead. Opening her eyes again and grinning as she looked down at herself, she dragged her hands down her shoulders and put her hands over Kim's, then jumped again as the yellow gunk started up again, this time right on top of her.

Nicola gasped as the girls were covered in the gunge, the dome of smooth yellow stuff shining under the light from above as it poured outwards from the top of Lesley's head. The shape of it shifted a little as she moved about, splitting as it met the continuing green sprays from the sides and making a thick glooping noise as it hit the tank's walls, floor and the two girls inside it. Gradually, Nicola and Anneka watched the chaotic deluge subside, leaving Lesley dripping with a gooey green and yellow mixture, her hair heavy and hanging in front of her face, with Kim's gungy head just visible behind her as she slithered on top of her lap.

Parting her sloppy hair and shuddering as she tucked it back behind her shoulders, Lesley's grin became visible to the team again through the slime dripping across her face. As the lights in the tank suddenly switched to a pulsing red, she seemed to remember the tank's final stage and huddled down, her face in her hands in readiness.

With a mechanical clank and a long lower siren, a heavy column of black sludge poured in from the ceiling, and Lesley leaned down a little further before it splurged on top of her back with an unpleasant wet smack. She shrieked from behind her hands as the downpour moved backwards towards Kim, and the others saw lumps of the stuff flying outwards as the sludge hit her head. Lesley quivered as the column of gunge moved forwards and up her back again, eventually pouring on to the back of her head and running down her hair, then finally slumping down over her face, making her quickly lean back again as the last blobs of it splotted down into her lap.

Nicola stayed frozen for a moment, looking at the messy chipmunk as Kim raised her gunge-coated arms from behind her. Black and yellow dollops dripped from her arms as she pumped them in the air. Anneka clapped her hands above her head, and Nicola joined in the cheer for the two of them as Lesley wearily wiped her face again, sticking her tongue out in mock distaste as she cleaned the lumpy stuff off. Her pretty blonde hair was now coated in the black stuff and clung messily to the sides of her head.

"Sorry, you two!" Alex smiled as the gunge-coated girls looked down at themselves. "You..."

Suddenly the green gunge sprayers at the sides burst back into life, interrupting him and making Lesley squeal and giggle as she was hit by the gooey translucent jets again, washing some of the heavier black stuff away from the fur on her arms and tummy. Raising her sloppy arms away, she watched as they eased off for the last time, making a dreadful splatting noise as the gunge poured on to the messy tank's floor, and kept her arms held up as she looked down at herself, shoulders shaking.

Alex waited for a moment, leaning down to look up into the mechanism above their heads for a moment before carrying on. "Like I was saying, the Hotseat got you in the end, but you got Kim in there as well, and you still earned a hundred points for the team - let's get you out of there and get you cleaned up..."

Nicola, still excited from seeing the girls getting covered by the machine, breathed out as he reached up to the wall switch. Tugging it down, he moved towards the tank as the metal door slid once again into the floor.

"Careful, it'll be slippy." Alex commented as he took Lesley's hand, giving her support as she gingerly put her slippery toes, then the rest of her feet, on the ground. The sludge slid down her long hair and broke off in lumps with every movement as she began to step away and Alex turned his attention to the mouse girl.

"Kim, you've..." He broke into a laugh, and Nicola darted to the side to see past Lesley as she turned to look as well. The chipmunk's back was coated in a murky greenish mixture of yellow and black gunge, fingers of the black slop dripping down to cover her stripe pattern all the way to the base of her tail.

"Kim, are you OK?" the red wolf recovered enough to ask. The mouse girl had been trapped right under the flow of gunge, and her head and face were a complete mess of lumpy black stuff that was oozing down to splat on to her equally coated shoulders and chest, some remnants of the smooth bright yellow gunge still visible on her arms and tummy. Her shoulders shook as she looked down at herself, the whites of her eyes showing up against the dark slop dripping across them. Spitting a clump of gunge from her lips, she managed a brief sickly grin up at Alex as he stood in front of the chair to offer both hands to her.

"It's just as well we've got a water sprayer down the corridor," he remarked as he helped her up from the seat, and turned to watch as the gungy mouse girl dripped back towards the team. Nicola couldn't help shivering as she approached, but didn't resist as Kim moved a hand down one slippery arm and spludged a handful of gunk on to Nicola's head.

"Come on," Alex encouraged them as he moved brightly around the group and hauled the door open, going out into the corridor ahead of them. Anneka followed close behind him, and Nicola let the dripping mouse and chipmunk girls go ahead of her as she took a look back at the gunge-coated seat.

They began following the red wolf back the way they had come. Nicola watched Kim shiver as the black gunk on her back slithered down towards her tail in gooey lumps, and moved around the group to walk beside her as they rounded the corner.

"You all right?" she said with a laugh, leaning forwards to look at her face. She was holding her head slightly bowed and as still as possible as she walked, watching the gooey strands of the muck on her head drip down to the floor.

"Mm'hmm", she replied, unable to keep herself from giggling in response. As her head moved, more blobs of the stuff fell away from her face. Carefully, she opened her mouth. "It's... ick." She gave up on the sentence, moving her eyes to look forwards again, and watched as Alex dashed through the inactive sprayers in front of them, moving to a valve on the wall at the other end.

As he hauled on the wheel with both hands, Nicola watched the sprinklers in the tiled corridor section slowly trickle into life, eventually building to a constant hiss of water spraying into the center. "Go ahead," he shouted through, beckoning them with one hand. "Though I think I know who needs it first..."

Nicola patted Kim on the back to encourage her through, smearing her hand down and taking it off, then rubbing the black liquid through her fingers and grinning at the slippery, sticky feeling of it. She wondered what it felt like to be as covered in the stuff as Kim was, hoping that she wasn't going to escape finding out.

Kim squeaked as she stepped into the sprayers, holding her hands out to the sides and rolling her head around as darkened water sluiced off her. The clinging gunge broke away quickly under the water jets, revealing her blue-gray fur again - she ducked down to shake her head around in the sprays, getting as much as she could out of her hair before stepping out the other end.

Lesley held her breath and then went after her, holding her hair out behind her and wringing her hands through it. Nicola gave her a few seconds and then followed her through, closing her eyes as she stepped between two jets at head height. She shook her head, patting the back of it to feel the remnants of the green gunge from the first game slipping away.

Eventually she felt her face come out of the haze of water and stepped out of the other end of the sprayer section to join the others next to the double doors that led them back into the center of the show's set. Alex watched as Anneka made her way through, carefully keeping her hands over her ears, and he tugged down on the wheel to spin the valve closed again as she rejoined them.

"All right, team leader, where are we going next?" he asked as the water shut off. He turned around, stepped towards the double doors and flung them open with both hands, striding through but glancing back as Anneka skipped ahead to keep up with him. "We've still got four rooms open in the opposite processing wing, the lab in the center, or the basement underneath."

He pointed and started leading them back down the short span of corridor, Anneka walking at his side as she wrung her black hair out with one hand. Nicola distractedly looked up again at the imposing pod in the center of the white circular room ahead of them.

"Basement?" she suggested uncertainly, and looked back at the others. Nicola nodded at her. "Yeah, the basement," Anneka repeated as she turned back to Alex.

"All right! That means... we need to be going the other way." Alex suddenly turned on his heel, and Anneka stumbled as she changed direction, following him with the others to a hatch in the wall a few yards back the way they had come. The four of them stood back as he turned a valve handle in its middle and hauled it open, revealing a small metal stairway descending into darkness.

"You'll need these," Alex said as he stepped over the threshold, reaching in with both hands and producing two flashlights in each one. He handed them along the line of girls before turning back and taking another for himself, then beckoned to them as he headed slowly down the staircase.

Nicola waited for Anneka to step through the hatch, then with a glance back at the others, excitedly followed her into the darkness.

Round 2

With her flashlight aimed at the jaguar girl's feet in front of her, Nicola descended the stairs, feeling the bumped metal surface underneath her footpads as she took each step. After a short descent through the narrow stairway, the wall on the right opened out into a wider space, in which it was too dark to see anything even when she strained her eyes to see.

Looking back at the floor as the stairs ended, she kept her eyes on the circle of light Alex was shining back at them as he made his way across the darkened room. She heard the other girls whispering a little to each other as they got to the bottom of the steps, and carefully tiptoed her way across the floor after the two vague shapes in the darkness in front of her. This area felt warmer than the floor above, and she could hear a continuous series of indistinct mechanical grinding and hissing noises being played from somewhere behind the rusty walls.

Checking over his shoulder to see they were all there, Alex raised his flashlight up and illuminated a shelf on the wall to their left. "Ah," he said cheerfully, and grabbed something lying on it, holding the rectangular object up in his torchlight to show them. "That's the second of the keys - I hardly ever find them where I leave them!"

As the four of them gathered into a group, he waved his flashlight down the wall towards a heavy-looking door with a valve in the center, and moved towards it, one hand on the wall. Nicola walked along beside him, shining her light around but not seeing anything of interest in the gloom.

"I should really take some time to get the lights fixed down here," he remarked as he flipped a switch next to the door ineffectually, then took hold of the wheel in the middle of the door and tugged it around, the squeaking noise eventually stopping as the door clicked open.

"All right - we're nearly there now. It's just down the end here," he said as he manhandled the door aside. Nicola swung her torch into the gap left by it - beyond it was a rusty corridor lit by dim tube lights on the upper walls. A couple of dribbles of yellow stuff leaked from broken pipes running along the walls or seeped from cracks in the ceiling. Alex stepped through the door, dodging past a leak near the frame, and headed off down the corridor.

Nicola moved to follow him, turning towards the thin yellow trickle falling from the ceiling and putting her hand into it. She smiled, turning her hand over as the smooth slimy stuff poured on to it, letting it drip from her fingers for a while before wiping it on her side as she continued down the corridor after the red wolf. After just a few yards, the passage ended and opened out into a small irregularly-angled room.

Alex turned off his flashlight, though the lighting in the room was still dim, and stooped down to leave it face down on the ground. The others did the same as he hauled over a large piece of junk that looked like it may have once have been a cabinet of some sort, and sat down on it as they gathered round.

"So this is the undersea level," he started, holding his hands up. "As you can see it hasn't held up as well to time as the rest of the place did, but most of it still works. And if I can find out which rooms are open to us, we should have four games for you here..."

He pulled the palmtop out of his pocket and tapped it thoughtfully. "So who's going to risk being our first volunteer?" he asked. "Anneka or Nicola, I think it's your turn by now..."

Nicola saw the jaguar girl look at her for a moment, and seized the opportunity. "Yeah, I'll do it," she spoke up.

"Excellent - let me show you what you've just let yourself in for!" Alex picked himself up off his seat, and reached his hand out towards her. Feeling a sudden pang of nerves as she recognized the indication that she was about to be put into an IZ gunge machine, she fought it down, took his hand and skipped over with him towards one of the metallic doors half-hidden in the shadowy corners of the hub area.

"It's the first time the pump room's been opened in years, so I don't think you'll have seen this one before..." he said to her over his shoulder as he reached out for the valve handle in the center of the door, tugging it downwards sharply to loosen it and then spinning it the rest of the way round with a couple of fingers. After a couple of spins it clunked into place, and Nicola swallowed as he pushed the door open, waving her through.

As she carefully lifted her foot over the hatch's threshold, she took in the contents of the room. A few meters away in front of her, a large cylindrical tank with a narrow window in the front protruded down from the ceiling. Its base was slightly curved, and was tipped by a nozzle that pointed down towards an inflatable plastic chair like the one she'd been sitting in for the first game.

She took a couple of steps towards it as she heard the others come in behind her, moving her gaze round the rest of the room. A number of thick vertical pipes were half-set into the walls on the left and right between the entrance and the chair, curving as they reached the floor to run through grooves cut into it, crossing each other a couple of times before turning again to sink fully into the ground. At some point along each one, a plunger-like trigger protruded up the way.

"Any idea what's going to happen to you?" Alex's voice suddenly came from behind her, getting her attention again, and she began to turn round just as he passed by and put an arm on her shoulder to walk her towards the seat. "Don't worry, we won't keep you waiting for long..."

As they walked towards the chair, Nicola noticed a slight depression in the floor for the first time, round and a couple of yards across, right in front of the seat. She made sure that Alex took the first step on to its surface before she put her footpad down on it, but then skipped forwards as she felt the coldness of the metal and bounced quickly into the chair ahead of him.

"Okay, I'll let you get comfortable while I tell the others what they're going to be doing - you three!" He called across the room, beckoning the other three girls towards him as Nicola straightened herself in the seat, shaking her head to get her loose hair out of her eyes and finally looking up into the spout of the gunge reservoir. Drumming her feet on the metal pad as she imagined the thing splurging gallons of slime down on to her, she dropped her gaze back at the group.

"I hope you're not sick of pipes yet after that game that Kim was in, but there are even more of them down here," he started, pointing up at both sides of the room and turning as the others looked at the foot-wide tubes in the walls and floors. "Each one of these eventually leads to the tank positioned precariously above your friend's head, and if they're all left on, eventually it's going to fill to over its safety level and the valve on the bottom will open up."

Nicola nodded as they all looked over at her, and up at the window at the front of the tank that Alex was pointing at. She wriggled again, pushing her feet off the floor and trying her best to get comfortable - the chair was tilted slightly backwards so she faced a little up towards the tank if she leaned back.

"I think Nicola knows what that means for her! The good news is you can slow that process down - when a pipe turns on, you'll get a warning signal -" he swung his arm around to indicate a rotating red light that winked on and off on the ceiling next to one of the pipes, "and you can use these things to block the flow off temporarily." He traced the route of the pipe down as it crossed over the one next to it, then took hold of the trigger next to him and plunged it downwards, shutting off the light. "The bad news is that if you hit one that's on a pipe that hasn't been activated, it'll turn on instead and fill that tank up even faster."

He looked around at the three of them as they nodded back, making sure they understood. "So... I'm going to turn the system on for a hundred seconds, and your objective is to stop the level of gunge from reaching above the line that you can see on the tank up there. If it does, then Nicola's going to get covered in all of it!"

Aware that their eyes were on her again, Nicola looked back up into the mechanism above her to avoid their stare. When watching the show on TV she'd always tried to catch glimpses of the gunge nozzles that were built into the tops of the cubicles and usually just out of view of the cameras, and it felt slightly unreal to see one up close. It was a round slightly protruding hole, a few inches across, and it looked like it was plugged by some sort of cap that would swing open if it was turned on.

 "Oh, and..." Nicola looked back at the wolf as he acted just remembering about something, holding a finger up and dashing towards another wheel on the wall. "There's a little something extra for you to worry about if that happens, too," he said, and tugged down on its handle.

There was a shudder from underneath her feet. She jumped, jerking them off the floor as it jolted and a mechanical grinding noise came from the circular depression below her. As she watched, it split into two halves which slowly parted, with green light and special effect smoke rising from it that made her blink as she looked down into the newly revealed hole. She gaped as a murky dark green pool was revealed beneath the separating halves of the cover, and slowly lowered her feet again to dangle just above the slime as she leaned forwards over it, watching the gunk glisten under the lights set in the edges just above its surface.

Lesley scampered over to look down into the gunge vat as well as the two halves of the cover clicked into place, then raised her eyes to look across at Nicola. She met her excited stare, making sure to form her face into a smile again even though her heart was racing.

"So you're going to have just over a minute and a half to stop the tank on the ceiling from filling up, otherwise Nicola's going to get plunged into there - Kim, you've just avoided a similar fate yourself, so I hope that motivates you to save someone else from it..."

"Yeah," the mouse girl nodded, one hand rubbing the back of her head as she nervously looked up at the machine on the ceiling.

Alex moved across the room to the other side, where another switch was mounted on the wall. "All ready?" he asked, and stayed with one hand on it, waiting for them to answer.

Nicola sat up sharply as he pulled on the handle, hearing a pumping noise start up from somewhere beyond the walls. Looking over to the others, she saw two lights immediately start blinking on the ceiling. She shivered as a faint glooping sound started up from above her, imagining the stuff pouring into the tank overhead. Anneka was the first to react, dashing over to look carefully at the route the pipe took down the wall and then pushing on one of the plungers to turn the first light off. As the other girls stood uncertainly, Nicola leaned back and drummed her fingers on the arms of the blowup chair, but then jerked upright again as she saw another alarm light on the opposite side of the room.

"Behind you!" she shouted over the noise from above, waving her arm up to the right. As Lesley dealt with the one next to the pipe that Anneka had turned off, Kim looked over her shoulder, gasped and quickly moved to the switch down the wall from the blinking light. She pushed it down firmly, and a buzzer sounded, making her squeak and almost jump away as the pouring noise from above Nicola got even louder.

"Wrong one!" Alex called from the side of the room. Kim, hands clasped to her mouth, looked over at the tank above Nicola and then quickly back to the pipes, stepping over the switch she had pushed and much more tentatively trying another. Nicola breathed out as this one turned the blinking light off.

"How full is it?" she called, pointing up to the tank above her as the mouse girl glanced over at her.

Alex pushed himself away from his leaning position on the wall before she could answer, and took a couple of steps towards her. "Oh, it's about... just over halfway full and rising," he said nonchalantly. Nicola whimpered a little, knowing that they'd only been going for what seemed like a few seconds, and looked down at the tub of gloop inches beneath her feet, fairly sure that she was about to find out what a gunge bath felt like.

She looked back up at her team-mates as they watched the lights, hesitated and looked at each other as each one came on and eventually dashed from one trigger to another. Nicola was aware of the awful glooping noise that was slowly rising in pitch above her head every time another light turned on. Trying to look calm on the outside, she sank back into the chair, kicking against the front of the chair gently with her heels.

Another buzzer made her jerk up. "No!" Alex called over its noise as a guilty-looking Kim hesitantly turned around to look at Nicola again. The red wolf took a couple of steps away from the vat to look at the level of the tank. "And I think you might have just pushed it over the edge..."

Nicola tensed, raising her feet to instinctively curl up a little in the chair as the sound of the liquid above her got louder. After a couple of seconds she looked up as far as she could without moving her head, just seeing the cap of the gunge chute above her on the edge of her vision. As it stayed closed and the noise subsided, she slowly relaxed again, dangling her feet down and balling her hands next to her mouth.

"She's all right! But you're going to have to work quickly to keep her out of there..." Alex hadn't finished speaking before the next ceiling light turned on.

"Come on!" Nicola encouraged, squirming and adjusting her tail behind her as the three of them stood looking for where the pipe ran down the wall and across the floor. After a couple of seconds, Lesley dived forwards, but jumped at the blare of a loud alarm.

Nicola's mouth dropped open as a pair of red warning lights flashed on the base of the tank she was sitting under. She dared to glance up, only catching a glimpse of the cap snicking aside before she squeezed her eyes shut and bowed her head. Before she had time to think, her head was pushed down underneath a heavy wave of thick liquid that suddenly split and glooped outwards on to her shoulders, and behind her closed eyes she was aware of a wave of it splurging out forwards from her head and blocking the studio lights.

She hunched her shoulders and squeaked as she felt the glutinous downpour slithering down the back of her neck and oozing over the strap of her bikini top as it made its way down her back. As it sputtered a little from side to side over her, she raised a hand through the dome to her forehead to protect her eyes, listening to the continuous thick spattering noise that the stuff made as it slapped against the plastic seat.

Leaning back a little in the buckling, bouncing chair, she felt the wave of slime slump over her face, and turned her head to shake the stuff off her muzzle as she instinctively held the hand on her forehead up against the cold gungy torrent pouring relentlessly into her chest and lap, soaking into her fur and swimwear as it splatted outwards. She opened her eyes and flicked them to the side just for a moment to see the slimy green deluge pouring on to her, then closed them again and ducked her head back underneath the flow.

The chair lurched, and Nicola suddenly remembered about the tank in front of her. She pulled her head out from under the slowing gunge, her hands shooting back to grip the arms of the seat as the back of it rose and it began to tip forwards. "W..." she started, but it turned into a scream as she slipped easily off the slick plastic seat, throwing her hands out in front of her and turning her face away as she fell towards the murky green pool.

She felt her hands gloop under the cool surface just before she hit the gunge with a smack, the surface seeming to buckle just before it enveloped her. She squeaked involuntarily at the feeling of the cool slop suddenly soaking into her fur, flailing to keep her head above the surface as she felt the wave she had made falling in glop back from the sides and surround her.

Breathing out heavily and tilting her head as far up as she could, feeling her nose just above the surface of the slop, she kicked her legs in the thick liquid and got her footing on the bottom of the vat before carefully beginning to stand up. Slowly, she rose out of the pool, spitting the gunk away from her mouth and grimacing a little as she felt the cold gloop dripping from the ends of her heavy hair. She pulled her arms out from underneath the surface, and opened her eyes a little, catching a glimpse of the green surface in front of her as she shook blobs of gunge away from her hands. After she had got them as clean as she could, she reluctantly moved them to her face to wipe her eyes, dragging her hands down her soaked muzzle and then dropping them back into the gunge vat again.

Shuddering at the heavy, gooey feeling of the stuff soaking through and lying on her fur, she opened her eyes and saw her team mates gathered a couple of paces away from the pool, Lesley moving forwards and bending down, hands on her knees, to look at her more closely. She managed a weak smile up at her, then jerked her hand up from the pool to slop a wave of the green stuff towards her, taking a couple of paces back as she overbalanced from the movement and resting her head against the base of the gungy chair she had been sitting in.

"Well, girls..." Alex's voice made her head turn as he approached from the left. "Sorry to say it, but I think Nicola would agree with me that you didn't do too well there..."

Nicola nodded, stepping forwards again to reach the middle of the vat. As she moved she wriggled her hips a little, watching as she made the stuff wobble strangely from side to side, and gasping as it lapped up and down her tummy. She dipped her arms a little further down and then pulled them out in front of her, watching the heavy green gunge slither around them and drip in dollops back into the pool.

"You lasted nearly three quarters of a minute, so I can give you forty points for the effort," Alex's voice came from above her, and facing forwards, she watched Kim and Anneka's feet move aside to let him through. Tilting her head gradually up to try and look him in the eye, squinting a little and shielding her eyes from the overhead light, she could just make out his hand reaching down to her. "Want to get out of there?" he asked.

She smiled and nodded as she moved her hands to her shoulders, brushing the goop off them and sliding her fingers underneath the straps of her bikini to get the stuff out from underneath. After dragging her hands down her arms and trying to flick the collected goo back into the vat, she stretched upwards towards him. As their hands connected, she instantly slipped out of her grasp - she stretched upwards and stood on her toes, this time getting a grip on his wrists as he hung onto hers.

Gradually, Alex hauled her upwards, the gunk feeling like it was sucking at her as she was pulled out of it. She tried to keep her sodden tail up, silently hoping that her soaked bikini bottoms would stay on as her hips came free of the pool. As her legs became visible again she bent them upwards, eeping as the green stuff slid down them and dripped in gooey strings back down into the vat, then swung them out in front of her to walk a little up the vat's wall as he helped her over back on to the floor.

He let go of her wrists and she did the same, wobbling a little as she got her balance and making sure to slide her gungy hands down as much of the fur on his arms as she could before he stepped away. Slowly, she looked down at her green-plastered fur, holding her hands out to the sides and watching the muddy blobs of it roll down the gooey layer covering her entire body from the waist down.

"You ever been told you look good in green, Nicola?" she heard Alex say. She looked up to face him again, grinning slyly as she moved her hands back to shove her gungy hair behind her head, then wrung it out and flicked both hands forwards to throw two handfuls of the gunk in his direction. Chuckling a little to himself, he put an arm up to deflect the green spatter, then pointed towards the door and began heading towards it.

With gunge still dripping from her hair and trickling down over her, Nicola squelched towards the room's entrance after him. After hauling it open, he paused, then turned.

"Anneka," he called, clapping his hands together.

"Yeah?" she answered as she came forwards, and Nicola noticed her glancing at her gunge-coated fur.

"We've got a game for the whole team now, but you're going to be the one in the driving seat - are you ready for it?"

"I guess..." she laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of her neck under her hair. Alex swung the door the rest of the way aside and let her through, then followed her, holding the door open for the others. Nicola moved through it last, sliding her hands around each other and still feeling the green slime slither between them.

Alex led them out of the dark corner of the main room, following the wall around to a second corridor. As they rushed after him down the dimly-lit passage, Nicola's attention was caught by a six foot high booth on the right hand wall, a large lever sticking up from the floor next to it. She kept her eyes on it as they ran past, grinning as she imagined one of them in there.

She turned to face the front again as they rounded another corner to the right, and ducked through an archway of girders to reach a slightly larger space at a dead end, a few meters across from their left to their right. Alex was waiting for them, and reached out to take Anneka's hand as she came through the entrance, leading her off to one side of the room.

Nicola could see where they were going to be put immediately - on their left, a row of three large blowup chairs were arranged in a row inside a large rectangular recess in the wall, making the arrangement look a lot like the first game they had played on the show. To the right, another seat was positioned behind an odd-looking mechanical contraption topped by three upright levers, and the jaguar girl was being led towards it, her tail moving from side to side behind her as she fiddled nervously with her bikini top with her free hand. After seating her, Alex moved back towards the three remaining team members.

"Now, I know I said Anneka was going to be in control," he said as he took his palmtop out again, "but I'm afraid it's you three who are going to be in danger here..."

As he raised the device up, the chairs jolted, and Nicola watched as the entire slightly raised platform they were on, a few yards wide, slid smoothly out of the wall recess towards them. As they slowed, Alex indicated to them to sit down, and with a grin on her face she headed for the middle one as Kim moved around to take a seat on her left and Lesley slid nervously into the one on her right. They all looked ahead at their team leader, who moved her gaze between them and the levers in front of her.

"All right, let's put you into position while we explain the rules of the game," Alex announced, pointing to the back wall just before the platform started moving gradually backwards again. "Here's how it works - I've got five facts here that each apply to one of you three, based on what you told us when you applied to come on. Anneka, what you have to do is pick the correct team member to match up to the fact that I read out from here."

Nicola watched the jaguar girl nod as Alex moved around to stand beside her, then twisted round in her seat to see where they were going. She noticed the others following her actions. As they approached, a grin spread across her face as a set of three large pipes pointed down from the ceiling were lowered into view, each placed right above where each of them were heading. She turned to the sides to watch the others' slightly worried expressions, then looked back at Anneka, who was looking at the newly revealed grimy gunge pipes with her hands cupped over her mouth.

"So..." Alex started again, strolling round to her other side as she shook her head a little. "To say which of your friends you think is the right answer, you've got to pull one of these levers, for Lesley, Nicola or Kim," he explained, pointing to each handle in turn. "If you've picked the right one, then you'll get twenty points and nothing'll happen to them. But if you pull a wrong lever, you're going to activate the gunge above your chosen teammate."

Anneka nodded, more confident than before. Nicola squeezed the arms of her seat as the platform stopped again, looking up for a moment into the barrel of the gunge pipe. She rubbed her feet together, feeling the remains of the gooey stuff from the vat slip around her toes.

"As there's little chance you'll know the answers for these for sure, Anneka, you'll have to use your judgment to guess - how do you think you are at that?"

"Not good," she replied, her hands placed on the device in front of her.

Alex laughed a little. "Well, don't worry - if you get them all covered in gunge I'm sure they'll be very forgiving..."

Nicola shook her head emphatically, making the jaguar girl whimper a little as she straightened up, ready to listen to Alex's first question.

"Ready?" he asked. "First one - when they were in junior school, which one of these girls took ballet lessons for the longest time?" he read out from the screen.

Nicola had never had ballet lessons, and realized that meant that if she was picked then she would definitely be gunged. She tried not to cringe as Anneka looked between them all, one finger tapping over her mouth as she considered.

"Was it Lesley?" she asked. Nicola glanced over at the small chipmunk girl, who winced a little and looked tentatively upwards.

"Don't ask me, pull the lever and find out!" Alex encouraged.

Lesley wriggled up in the chair, arms by her sides with her eyes closed as Anneka grabbed the lever on her left and tugged it towards her. Nicola felt herself leaning and turning away a little as it clicked back into place, and as it moved back upright, an electronic bell sound came from the speakers somewhere above them.

"You were right! She was only in it for a couple of months, but the others never did it at all. That's twenty points, Anneka, and they're all still clean, but there are still four more to go. This one's along the same lines - who out of these three said they could play the most musical instruments?"

Again, all their eyes were on Anneka as she reached for the levers in front of her, her hand hovering between them. Nicola tried to remember if she'd even mentioned any of her keyboard or bass lessons on the application form she'd filled in months ago, and was still thinking about it when the jaguar girl reached over to tug the lever on her right.

Kim gasped, then glanced up quickly before hunching down a little, watching the lever slowly move upright again. As it clunked back into place another noise was played - this time a deep buzzer - and Anneka jumped in her seat as she realized her mistake.

Nicola watched as the mouse girl smiled through clenched teeth, then bowed her head forwards and stared at her lap. A column of purple stuff fell from the end of the pipe above her and she closed her eyes, her mouth opening in a silent squeak, as the gunge splashed outwards from the back of her neck, making a wet smacking noise as it lapped against her fur, the back of the seat and the floor of the recess they were sitting in. Tentatively, she moved her head up again to look back at Anneka, her whole head going under the slimy downpour for a moment before it shut off, leaving the gloop dripping slowly from her hair.

"Afraid not," Alex said simply as the mouse girl ran a hand down the back of her neck, gathering up some of the ooze and flicking it to the floor. "It was actually Nicola that mentioned two of them on her form."

Nicola nodded, then looked to her left again, watching the translucent purple slime drip and slither in strings from the back of Kim's seat. She hadn't been completely under the downpour, and her back and shoulders had taken the worst of it, but the gooey stuff was slowly creeping its way down her large chest from her shoulders as she watched their team leader pick again.

Suddenly, Nicola realized that the host had asked Anneka another question, and quickly faced the front just in time to see her reach a hand out and pull the lever for her gunge pipe. With no idea whether she had answered correctly or not, she tensed herself up and sat straight, knowing it was unlikely that she would be the correct answer twice in a row and hoping that her nerves didn't show to the others as she watched the switch intently.

She drew her breath in as it neared upright, and then felt almost disappointed as the 'correct' bell sounded. She swallowed, rocking back and forward a little as she tried to calm down.

"Another one right, Anneka!" Alex congratulated as the jaguar girl smiled to herself. "I know you got Kim a little messy, but you're doing well so far - can you keep it up? Who's the youngest out of these three?"

Nicola immediately glanced sideways at Lesley, who looked like she was trying her best to ignore the attention, sliding her feet a little back and forward on the surface of the platform in front of her. Looking away from the chipmunk girl to Anneka again, she saw the jaguar girl's hand already tugging on the lever, and even though she thought her choice was fairly safe, she found herself holding her breath as it rose back into position.

At the sound of the harsh buzzer, Nicola's mouth dropped open, and she quickly looked over at the equally surprised-looking chipmunk girl next to her who just had time to clasp her hands over her face before a click sounded from the ceiling and a column of orange gunge splurged down from the overhead pipe. She flinched a little down as it hit the top of her head, messily splattering outwards in an upturned bowl shape on to the floor around her and into her lap. Nicola watched her wriggle in the seat through the slimy translucent curtain, keeping her head underneath the gooey downpour until it subsided to a drizzle that played across her shoulders, beads of gunk slithering around her neck.

"Sorry," Alex said as the slimy chipmunk girl took her hands away from her face, wiping the dripping orange stuff away from her forehead and wriggling her fingers before putting them back on the arms of the seat. "Lesley was born in '89, she's nineteen, and it's actually Kim who's the youngest..."

Kim looked as surprised as Nicola - she would never have guessed that Lesley was older than either of them. But she quickly let the thought go as Alex read out the final question.

"This one's a good one - are you ready for it, you three?" Nicola nodded slowly.

"Anneka, which of these girls... I'm going to have to make sure the others don't hear until you've chosen..." Alex moved towards the nervous-looking feline, crouched down with his hand placed between his face and the others, and mumbled something to her.

Nicola sank back and wriggled a little in the blowup chair, tapping her dangling toes on the floor as the jaguar girl looked between the three of them. Eventually, she raised a hand, and Nicola swallowed as she closed it around the middle lever, the one for her gunge pipe.

"OK, pull it back and hold it there, and I'll tell the others..." Nicola looked up into the nozzle of the pipe above her as the feline did so, and looked tensely over at Alex, who looked like he was trying not to laugh as he read the question out. "The question was - 'when in school, which of these girls faked being in a plaster cast for two weeks to get out of football in the gym class?' Do you want to deny that now, Nicola?"

"I didn't!" she exclaimed, pulling herself upright on the seat after the brief shock of realizing that she was going to be gunged. She looked to her sides at the other girls, seeing if either of their faces would give them away.

"All right, either you're lying and Anneka's going to earn another twenty points or you're about to get gunged like Kim and Lesley," Alex said quickly, signaling to their team leader and then waiting as the lever slowly clicked back into place. "What's it going to be..." Nicola felt her heart speed up as it neared upright, and though she knew it was coming, jumped at the sound of the buzzer.

"No!" she heard Alex say as she glanced up to the pipe, then closed her eyes, grinning to herself as she heard a slurping noise from above. Half a second later, she yelped as the cool wave of thick slime smacked on to her head and shoulders.

She smiled to herself but made sure to keep her lips firmly closed as she felt the gunge splatter on to her arms and lap, imagining it doming out over her like she'd just seen happen to the others. Jerking her head forwards a little as the deluge slumped down over her face, she bowed down and shook her head as she felt the last of the slop dribble on to her neck and back.

Nicola lifted her feet off the surface of the platform a little as she felt it slide slowly forwards again, taking the three of them out from under the nozzles. Using her forefingers to wipe the thick liquid away from her eyes, she blinked them open and saw her front and lap covered in a layer of bright yellow gunge that was mingling into her green-coated fur, her dripping hair sticking messily to her chest and shoulders. She picked it off and tucked it behind her head again, and as the platform came to a stop, she slithered forwards on the seat and put her feet on the ground.

"No, don't get up yet! Don't get up!" Alex held out a hand towards them. Nicola hesitated, then leaned back again, sliding back in the slimy seat to get upright. "Because..." The red wolf drew the word out, walking over so he was beside the jaguar girl opposite them.

"There's still quite a lot of gunk up there, so we're going to give your team leader a choice," he said, placing an arm around the feline, who whimpered, turning her head away. "Anneka, you can either let your team go free now and take 40 points for the game, or if you want to make up for twenty of the points you lost in your wrong answers..." He pointed down at a button in the middle of the podium in front of her, which was blinking on and off. "You can send them all back under there and start it up again."

Nicola's mouth opened in surprise, and she turned in the seat to look back up at the large pipes a few feet behind them. As her messy team mates looked round to see as well, she faced the jaguar girl again, who was looking hesitantly at the domed button in front of her.

"What's it going to be?" Alex prompted her. Nicola watched Anneka's face, making eye contact with her as she drummed her fingers on the podium. After a few seconds, Nicola cringed a little but grinned inwardly to herself as she watched the jaguar girl cup her hand over the flashing control.

"Sorry, everyone..." she giggled, then thumped it down before she changed her mind. Her hands flew to her mouth to cover her smile as a loud hissing noise played and special effect smoke rose up at the back of the recess opposite her. Nicola looked from side to side at the other two girls, exchanging excited and nervous glances before she twisted around to watch as they were dragged slowly back towards the gunge-spattered machine.

As they got near the edge of the alcove again, a light hissing noise started up, and Nicola turned fully in the seat, getting up on her knees and leaning on its back as she saw three sprays of yellow foam begin pouring in from high on the walls and ceiling, the top one being swivelled lazily back and forwards across the width of the recess as the stuff fell in fluffy piles on the wet floor. Hearing a click from above them, Nicola looked up and gasped as a wide trough that she hadn't seen above the front of the recess slowly tilted down towards them, releasing a wide curtain of green slime that fell to hit the back of her chair with a heavy spattering noise.

She quickly turned around to sit again, getting a glimpse of Anneka's awestruck expression before she yelped as she was carried backwards underneath the shower of cold gunge, feeling it slither over her head then watching it fall across her vision as it splattered into her lap. Hearing the squeaks of the other two girls next to her as the same thing happened to them, she stuck her legs out in front of her to catch the remnants of the slimy downpour on her bare feet, wriggling her toes and feeling the stuff slip between them as they went through.

A wet ticklish feeling started at the back of her neck as the foam spray from the ceiling licked against her, and as she reached around to feel it the spray came back again and lingered on her a little, pouring a mass of yellow stuff on to her head and shoulders that stuck to her already gungy fur. With one hand up on her forehead to protect her eyes, she leaned forwards and looked to the side at the chipmunk girl, who had both hands up to her right hand side to try and block some of the foam flooding down on to her from the wall, shoulders and head shaking as she squirmed underneath the stuff. Suddenly a low alarm blared and a shadow fell across her just before a downpour of heavy blue gunge splurged on to her from the pipe above her head.

Nicola just had time to jump in surprise as the chipmunk girl shrieked, her hands flailing for a moment before she put them to her face, and then the alarm sounded another time. She closed her eyes, felt the foam from above her pass over her again, and tensed up, smiling a little before feeling the wet, heavy smack of another flood of gunge hitting her head.

As the heavy paintlike stuff oozed down her hair, making her bow forwards a little under its weight as it slithered around her shoulders and coated her fur, she was half aware of a third siren and a squeak from her left indicating that Kim's gunge pipe had turned on as well. She tilted her head from side to side a little, raising her arms in the air and whooping as she felt the gunk slither off the sides of her muzzle, moving her head to shake the clinging droplets off. Hearing another alarm, she moved her head to try and guess where it was coming from, then squealed again as she felt another cool gooey torrent slap against the back of her neck, slopping up and around her shoulders a little.

Stretching forwards a little more and picking her hair out of her face as the torrent from above subsided to a drizzle, she wiped at her eyes and then opened them to see she'd been coated in a flood of deep red gunge that was mingling with the green and yellow on her fur to form a murky brown mixture. She twisted a little round, closing one eye as she squirmed against the continuing spray of yellow stuff that was coming from the back of the tank.

With her shoulders hunched as the yellow goo slithered down her back, she glanced towards Kim as the dome of green gunge splurging out from the mouse girl's head gradually came inwards. As she watched she drummed her feet in front of her and moved her hands up from her face to run them over her hair, blinking and looking back at her through the slop on her face. She leaned over the arm of the chair as the last thick dribble of gunge from the ceiling splotted on to her shoulder, joining the gradually subsiding yellow torrent. She laughed through an open-mouthed expression of shock, looking down at the gooey lime green mixture she had been coated with.

Nicola felt the platform start moving again, taking them out from underneath the dripping gunge machine, and she slithered around in the seat to look at Lesley. The chipmunk girl was leaning forwards, her sloppy hair over her face, the two colors of slime she had been coated in mixing together as they dripped down her fur to form a sickly green. As the three of them were carried back out, Nicola got up off the seat and walked forwards, cascades of gunge sluicing off her fur behind her and pointing straight at Anneka with one slimy finger.

"You!" she snarled playfully, hardly able to keep in her laughter as Anneka's shoulders shook even as she was trying to look apologetic. Mouth open in a smile, she glanced back at the other two, who had waited for the seats to stop moving before beginning to push themselves slimily off them. The once clean alcove behind them was now completely coated in gunge and foam, the pipes on the ceiling still dripping the remains of their contents slowly on to the floor.

"You certainly showed them, Anneka!" Alex laughed as they struggled to their feet. "If you're interested, by the way, our plaster-cast faker was... Kim." He pointed at the gungy mouse girl, who cringed a little, not looking up but concentrating on wiping her hands down her messy fur. "But I think that finale gave her her just reward for that anyway..." The mouse girl nodded slowly. As she moved her head, drizzles of gunk poured from all over her face, the fur on her chin and her ears.

Alex spun on his heel to turn to the feline again, strolling casually towards her seat. "Now, speaking of you, Anneka..." he said as he offered her his hand to help her stand up, "I think your team mates are going to want to get you back for that, because I can't help noticing that you got a bit of a splash five games ago and then haven't been in danger since..."

"Yeah..." The jaguar girl looked a little worried, but nodded in agreement as she looked at the ground, dragging one toe around in a circle.

"So... especially given what's just happened to you three, don't you think it's time we made up for that?"

"Yeah!" Nicola led the shout in response, one hand in the air. The feline's face cracked into a nervous grin, her eyes still on the floor for a moment before she looked up at him as he continued.

"And you've actually already seen where it's going to happen - did you see that gunge tank we passed on the way in here?"

"Oh, no..." she giggled, shivering as he reached down and took her hand.

"Yes, you're going in there - come on!"

Anneka squeaked as he took off, stumbling for a step before her legs caught up and she allowed herself to be led back out of the room through the girder archway. Looking forward to seeing her in a game at last, Nicola did her best to keep right behind them, plodding a little with the weight of the gunk coating her fur.

They headed back around the corner and reached the gunge tank again. As Alex swung its clear plastic half-height door open and showed the jaguar girl inside, Nicola stepped around to look at it.

Unlike the elaborate machines they'd seen so far, it looked much more like the ones she'd seen on the game shows she'd watched when she was younger - it was a perspex box, about six feet high, with a smaller tank on the top that was full of a mixture of red and green slime. Peering up at the gunge chute on the main booth's ceiling, she noticed a couple of extra nozzles on either side, as well as a few wide pipes jutting into the tank from the wall just behind it. Curious, she crouched down a little further to peer into them, then stepped back to join the other two. Letting go of Alex's hand, Anneka sat down on the chair underneath the main gunge pipe, swishing her tail and whimpering a little as the door was closed on her.

"All right, Anneka - now that you're comfortable..." he grinned at her giggling reaction as he moved towards the lever to the side. "The last game tested how good you were at judging your team mates, but this time you're going to have to use your mind to save yourself. I'm going to be putting some logic puzzles and riddles to you..." - the jaguar girl visibly cringed again - "and answering them correctly will keep you clean. But before we start, the first question is... how well do you think you can do?"

He put his hand on the top of the lever, and Nicola saw that an arc on the wall behind it, just below an LED display board, was colored in three sections of green, yellow and red. Anneka turned towards him as he spoke again. "This lever selects what that tank does, as well as how difficult the game's going to be. You're going to get twenty points for each right answer, but you'll lose twenty for getting anything wrong. On the easy setting, you've got to get sixty points or that tank of gunge above your head will open. In the middle, you'll need eighty points to avoid getting a foam bath as well from the pipes behind you... and up here on the hardest setting... there's a bit of a surprise if you fail to get one hundred points."

The team watched the feline wriggle back a little in the seat, looking up at the gunge pipe looming over her and then twisting to glance at the pipes above and behind her head.

"What's it going to be?" Alex prompted.

"Put it on the highest!" Nicola called out delightedly, laughing at the end of the word as Anneka jumped. The other two joined in with her encouragement, and the feline ran her hand nervously through her conspicuously clean hair as she looked over at the red wolf poised beside the lever.

"It's going to have to be Hard," she said, a little twinge of nerves in her voice.

"You sure?" he asked, placing his hand on top of the switch.

"I think they're deciding for me," she answered, pointing at the three cheering girls in front of her.

"Well, normally I'd say here that it's up to you and not them, but on this occasion... I'd agree with them." Anneka gasped, laughing at the remark as Alex tugged the lever towards himself into the red zone. Nicola led the cheer as he paced away from the tank, taking his palmtop out of his pocket.

"Okay - you know how it's going to work. You're going to have two minutes in there, and each correct answer's going to earn you twenty points but every wrong answer or pass will knock points off again. You've got to get up to a hundred to be let out of there keeping your fur clean." He looked up from the screen. "So I think, realistically, you're not going to be able to afford any wrong answers."

The jaguar girl bit her lip nervously, nodding and curling her toes, dragging her feet back across the floor of the tank.

"And just in case you don't make it," he continued, holding out his hand towards her, "I mentioned there was a bit of a surprise, and I think it's only fair for you to know what you're up against..."

He jabbed the device in the air and pressed something on it, and Nicola looked up in surprise as a section of the wall above and behind the tank began sliding away. Anneka turned in the seat, pushing herself around with her feet, and leaned over to look up as the moving panel revealed the rectangular side of an enormous gunge reservoir, about as large as the area of the tank she was sitting in up to the height of the door.

The feline slowly turned back to the rest of the team, and Nicola giggled a little at her horrified expression and exchanged looks with Kim and Lesley. The red wolf moved towards the newly revealed tank, reaching up to it and pulling down a bunch of wide hose-like things that extended off its front.

"I know you might think we're going over the top here, but we just can't let you get away with staying as clean as you've been for this long," he said, connecting one of the thin, wide ends to a slot on the top of the tank, just behind the now much smaller-looking box on its ceiling. Anneka watched him, cringing with her hands held to her mouth and shoulders shaking, as he leaned down to slide one on to the side and then walked around with the last one, flicking it over the tank as he went to connect it on the other side. "It's nothing personal, but if you do lose the game, we don't want to waste the opportunity..." He slid the last flexible pipe on to the side, and straightened. "There. Ready?" he asked, pacing backwards to where he was standing before, holding the computer up in front of him.

"No," Anneka answered simply, but then let out a giggling whimper.

"I'm sure you'll be fine! Let's start." Alex shifted his finger on the pad and the display behind the lever began counting down. The jaguar girl gasped and looked at the timer for a second as he continued, "Remember I was asking Lesley about chessboards earlier? If you put a grain of rice on the first square of one, two on the next, and kept on going like that doubling each time, how many grains would be on the one on the end of the first row?"

Anneka pulled herself together rapidly, and tapped her foot as she thought. "There are eight in a row, aren't there?"

"I'm meant to be asking the questions!" smirked the red wolf in response. "But... yes."

Nicola scoffed a little under her breath, hoping he wouldn't be that soft on her throughout the game. Anneka was holding the fingers of one hand in the other as she mentally counted, nodding her head.

"A hundred and twenty... eight," she risked.

"Absolutely right. That's one!" The feline's hair flew behind her head as she glanced another time at the display on the wall behind her, smiling as the number 20 was displayed next to the timer. "Next question, you might know this one - if you have a drawer full of red, blue and green socks, and you reach into it in the morning when it's pitch dark, how many do you have to pull out before you're certain to have a pair?

The jaguar girl rocked back and forth a little, her eyes fixed on the ceiling of the tank as she moved her fingers along with her thoughts again.

"Er, four?" she said carefully.

"Two correct! You might just be on a winning streak," Alex congratulated as he quickly raised the palmtop back to eye level. "Ah, this is an interesting one - can you name any word in our language that contains all of the five vowels?"

Anneka pursed her lips, then leaned back, closing her eyes as she swished her tail behind her. The others watched as her lips moved in the vowel shapes, running through them in her head while trying to stay calm. After a few moments, she looked back at him again glumly. "No idea. Pass," she sighed.

"Sorry... I'll tell you some of the words I would have accepted later on!" Alex looked down at the screen again as the score display returned to twenty.

Nicola nervously rocked on the balls of her feet as Alex read out another puzzle, their team leader squirming and wriggling in the gunge tank as she thought about her answers. Despite her nerves, she managed to get two more right in a row and the display read 60 as the timer reached forty seconds.

Wandering over behind him, Nicola stood on her tiptoes to try and see over his shoulder as he read from the screen. "You just need two more right in a row now! Here's the first - if you have the digits 4 and 7, what math symbol can you put between them to get a result that's bigger than 4 but smaller than 7?"

"Urgh," the jaguar groaned frustratedly. She seemed to have heard this one before, but couldn't remember the answer to it, and spent a few seconds rubbing her forehead in thought, then thumping her palm lightly against it.

"If it helps..." Alex spoke up again, making the panicked-looking jaguar look straight at him as she waited for him to continue. Nicola shook her head at the idea of him giving another clue, knowing that they were meant to be on the same side but really wanting to see her get gunged. "If it helps," he repeated, "think of... the massive amount of gunge and foam that's above your head ready to splurge all over you if you don't get this right within the next twenty seconds..."

Nicola opened her mouth in a laugh along with the others at the unexpected turn, and Anneka winced, screwing up her face, then looked up at the collection of nozzles above her. "I don't know," she gave up, putting one hand over her eyes and waving the other one in front of her.

Alex drew air in through his teeth. "A decimal point! Which would give you four point seven..."

The jaguar girl sagged, growling frustratedly as the score counter on the right blipped back to forty.

"That's another twenty points off, and I think victory and staying clean are sort of slipping away from you here, but you might be able to get a few points back..."

"Oh..." Anneka put her hands on the front of the seat underneath her and gripped the edge, her knees jiggling as she drummed her feet on the floor. She whimpered as she dared to glance over at the timer, knowing now what was about to happen to her, but she tried to concentrate on the last question as it was read out to her. She listened intently, nodding at each word, then sank back, closed her eyes and thought, her fingers tapping on the underside of the seat. Eventually she opened her eyes, bit her lip and shrugged.

"No idea?" he asked. She shook her head, smiling a little, but shuddered again at the thought of what was about to come. The timer hit ten seconds and an urgent beep began sounding as it steadily ticked closer to zero.

"Well, you did quite well," Alex announced, putting the palmtop away and speaking quickly and loudly over the electronic noise. "You've earned forty points for the team, and I think that's an admirable effort under the circumstances. Wasn't it?" he turned to prompt the rest of the team, who nodded and joined in as he clapped his hands together.

The jaguar shifted nervously, looking embarrassed at the attention. "You've got three seconds left now, so... well, have fun." He stepped back. Anneka bowed her head forwards, bringing her hands up to cover her face as her black hair spilled over her shoulders. A harsh hooter blared over the noise of the timer, and the pretty jaguar girl flinched before being instantly engulfed by a huge wave of foam and gunge spewed from the walls and top of the tank.

Nicola jumped, punching the air as the slimy waves played over Anneka, making the shape of her squirming body just visible through the curtains of green and white stuff as they splattered messily off her. The pipes at the sides of the tank were pouring green slime over the sides of her tummy and into her lap, with a third wide downpour and two gently rotating streams of thick white foam falling on to her head and shoulders from the top of the booth. After a few seconds she jerked her head forwards out of the deluge, her hair painted in a smooth layer of shining thick green stuff and hanging over her eyes above her wide, shocked mouth. The tank was beginning to fill up, and as her hands went out to the sides to balance herself she raised her feet out of the sloppy mixture, the stuff drizzling off her toes before she dipped them back in to the rising pool.

The jaguar girl shook her head a little, raising her arms slowly through the gunge sprays from the sides and bringing them to her head. She tentatively pushed her hair out the way, wiping down her face, but as she took her hands away the downpour from the ceiling twitched forwards and slumped over her face again, slopping down the sides of her muzzle and sliding thickly down her coated hair.

A giggling whimper was just audible above the continuing sound of the klaxon, and the jaguar girl put her hands down again, leaning her head further forwards and letting the green glop rain down on her neck and shoulders and slide down her bare back. She sloshed her feet lazily around in circles, watching as her knees disappeared under the light green foamy gunge mixture and shrieked with laughter as it crept up around her.

Slowly, the green stuff spewing from the sides eased off, sputtering a little as the streams died back. Anneka wiped down her sides with the backs of her hands, looking out at the others from under her slimy hair as she straightened up again. She leaned back as the downpour from above subsided as well, leaving only the sprays of white foam brushing her shoulders and piling up on top of the gooey mixture she was sitting in.

The alarm sounded again, and Nicola jerked her head up to look as the slime in the smaller reservoir on the tank's ceiling bubbled. The gungy jaguar girl glanced up as well, then her hands shot to her ears and she bowed her head down as the shadow of a column of gunge fell over her. As soon as she'd closed her eyes it hit her hair and then splattered outwards in a dome shape that twitched as she squirmed around underneath the downpour. The red and green colors mingled into a sickly brown as the stuff slapped against the plastic walls of the tank and spilled outwards over its front.

The dome around Anneka came inwards as the stream from above slowed a little, and it was joined by two thin streams from the sides of the ceiling that splurged on to her shoulders, trickling down in sloppy streams over her chest and back as they played slightly backwards and forwards across her. Carefully, she leaned forward, one gungy hand sliding around to her forehead to stop the slime flowing over her face as she blinked her eyes open. She looked out at her team mates again, managing a sheepish grin as the last blobs of the gunge from above her glopped on to her messy hair, slithering down the back and sides of her head as she wiped the slime from around her eyes.

Sighing and smiling again as the two diagonal gunge streams also sputtered and slowed to drizzles beside her, the jaguar girl shook her head and then looked up at Alex as drops of red and green gunge rolled down from all over her hair and shoulders to join with the thick surface of the gunge bath. Relaxing, she dipped her arms under the surface, then weakly raised one sloppy hand out of the mixture to acknowledge the rest of the team, all whooping and cheering for her. After a moment, she shook the worst of the gunk off her hand and reached for a strand of her soaked and messy hair, picking it off her face and tucking it back behind her ear with a squeamish giggle.

Alex, smiling from ear to ear, stepped forwards from where he'd retreated when the gunging began. "I think that makes up for you staying so clean until now," he remarked.

Nicola looked at the helpless messy jaguar girl inside the tank, the half of her visible above the green slime bath covered in the same gloopy mixture of red and green that painted the tank's walls beside and behind her. A couple of blobs of foam still sputtered out of the pipes at the back and tumbled down to float on the surface. "Just about," she agreed as she watched her raise her gunge-coated hands to try and clean her head up a little again. She raised her feet through the gunk and pressed them against the front of the tank, making the pads of her toes and tips of her soles just visible behind the plastic door.

"Come on, I'll give you a hand to get out of there..." Alex came forwards again and Anneka wriggled in the gunge as she put her feet back on the floor, her arms held up in front of her for balance and drizzling the thick slime back into the pool as she tried to squirm upwards. Alex leaned in and helped tug her upwards a little, then she squeaked as he put his arms around her waist and pulled her on to his shoulder. Nicola half-grimaced, half-grinned at the muddy glooping noise the slop made as she was pulled out of it.

With a little difficulty, Alex straightened again, the soaked and slippery feline wriggling over his shoulder. Buckling down on to one knee, he deposited her on her feet on the floor, then shuffled back and stood up again. He looked at the multi-colored gunge that had soaked into his fur all down his side as he raised his arm away from himself.

"You've already got some revenge on me, anyway," he said, wiping his other hand down his gunge-coated arm and flicking the slimy stuff away. Nicola watched as the much more covered jaguar girl giggled a little, still moving her hands all over herself to brush the worst of the gunge away.

"Like I said, Anneka just earned forty points for the team," he continued as he moved around to her other side, wandering away from the tank. The jaguar girl raised her hands in the air, and Kim moved closer to her to tentatively pat her on the back in congratulation. "So you're on 140 for the round and we've got one more game to play here before we go up again."

He turned and headed back down the corridor the way they had just come. "And I'm sorry to say it, but you're not exactly out of danger yet - you're not alone, though, because in the next game you're all going to be taking a bit of a risk. We've got something along here that you might have heard of," he grinned, reaching the T-junction and this time pointing to the left. "Want to see?"

Nicola scampered to the front of the group to look round the corner, but there was just a roll-top door blocking the way. As the others watched and waited, Alex undid two bolts on the sides, and then knelt down to begin hauling it upwards.

"As you can see, it's been a while since anyone wanted to go in here," he told them as he struggled to lift it to waist height, then ducked underneath it. Nicola and the others did the same, and she straightened up to see they were in a small five-foot-wide section of corridor between the door that had just been opened and another similar one. This time, Alex headed to a wheel on the wall that was connected to a pulley system overhead. He took hold of its handle and struggled to twist it as it squeaked. "And... you might be able to tell why," he strained in between turns. As the door rolled slowly upwards, Nicola crouched down, and gasped as she recognized what was in front of them.

Alex gave one hard push on the loosened wheel and stepped away, dusting his hands off. "This is what we endearingly call the Sludgecube," he announced. The other girls gasped as the door raised the rest of the way and they saw the grimy metallic mass behind it. Getting up, Nicola nodded slowly - she remembered when it had been introduced at the start of the previous series, when she'd gaped at the TV set as somebody's teacher was gunged in muddy brown stuff from all angles inside it - it was the most over-the-top machine that she'd seen even by the show's usual standards. She could feel her fur bristle at the idea of being covered in lumpy slop inside the thing in front of her, but tried to keep up a cool appearance as Alex stepped forwards, motioning them all further through the door towards the machine.

She couldn't tell how large the room that they were entering was because of the only light being from a button on top of a small podium-like thing in front of them, but a tangle of pipes of various sizes twisted out of the darkness and converged at a large cube, about seven feet on each side. The walls and ceiling of it were made of grungy metal, with various vague panels jutting out all over it, and the side facing them was a clear panel that allowed them to see inside, where the collection of pipes connected on the sides and ceiling were slowly dribbling murky colors of gunge down the walls.

Nicola shuddered, and looked back at Alex as he moved to a panel that was connected to the cube by a metal bracket and a thick curled cord. He reached up to press his thumb on one of its buttons, and with a creaking mechanical noise, the door in front of the team slowly began to swing up and outwards towards them.

"You might be interested to know something about the dredging process that they used to use here," Alex started as he watched the rising panel. "When the extraction tubes at the bottom of the base were used, all the... mud and grease and horrible stuff they sucked up used to get pumped into the pipes around us, eventually ending up inside there, where it could be sifted through one last time before it was flushed back out on to the ocean floor." Nicola nodded vaguely as the panel reached horizontal and clunked to a halt. "And I don't think that the whole thing's been emptied in quite some time. So... want to step inside?"

The four girls looked at each other, Nicola reading their unsure expressions. Eventually, Lesley was the first to move, padding towards the machine and tentatively pointing her toes to take a step on to the inside surface. Nicola followed close behind the chipmunk girl, feeling the slightly spongy padded surface underneath her feet as she moved into the dark-colored interior, then turned around as the others stepped inside to join them.

"You should see four panels on the floor in there," Alex called from behind them. "If you could take your positions on them, then we can get started..."

Nicola looked down to the floor, and saw the marks that he was talking about - four slightly lighter pads, about a foot and a half across, that went down slightly when she put her foot on them. She moved to the one in the back right as Anneka slipped around to stand beside her, and the others took up their positions in front of them. Leaning round the curvy mouse girl to see what was happening outside, she saw Alex move to the side and press another of the buttons on the control panel, which sounded an electronic confirmation noise.

"All right, don't move!" he started, bounding back to the front of the tank and holding both his hands up in front of him. "The cube's switched on now, and thanks to a couple of alterations we made to it, if any of you step off those panels you're on, then the door's going to close and trap you inside. What you've got to do in this game is get as much of the team out as you can before it closes automatically..."

Nicola shivered again, hugging her own arms a little as she looked at the murky brown and green streaks slipping down the walls from the pipes around them. Small pools of sludgy stuff had formed underneath them.

"You're each going to have to complete a sequence to get back your freedom. If you look up above your heads just now..." Nicola did so, and saw a small grey circle right above her. She thought it was the cap of a gunge chute at first, but then saw that it was just a button with a light in it as it flashed along with the three above the others. "They're going to flash in a random sequence. If you press your button when it's lit, then you can temporarily disable the pressure plate that you're on and run out of there, then through the pipes at the side round to the back of the cube," he gestured in a wide circle with one hand. "There, you'll find another button - when you hit that, this final one's going to turn on..."

He pointed down to the dome-shaped button on top of the small mechanical podium in front of them, which started flashing on and off - usually red but sometimes a bright blue. "Then if you hit this thing when it's blue or just afterwards, then your plate will stay off and you'll have saved yourself - you can stay outside. But if you mistime it and hit it when it's red, you'll have to go back in there and start all over again."

Nicola nodded her head, bouncing on her heels and then suddenly stopping as she remembered the pad underneath her feet. Even though she was fairly sure that the door wouldn't really close if she moved off it, she breathed out and stayed still.

"We've got a random time limit - you'll have around two minutes to get yourselves out of there, but we don't know when exactly it's going to close. So just get yourselves out as fast as you can!"

The girls looked up to the buttons above their heads as Alex moved to the side of the cube again, reaching out to the panel. "All ready?" he asked. Nicola looked down to nod at him, but a mechanical noise made her jump and jerk her head back to concentrate on the light above her.

Seeing it light up, she shot her hand to the ceiling, but stopped suddenly as it darkened again. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Anneka's one light up instead, and the feline jabbed up to hit it. A buzzer sounded as she was a split-second too late, and the lights all blinked once before turning off.

"Sorry Anneka, that was a mistake - you're going to have to wait a few seconds now before they turn back on again," Alex called from his safe position outside the machine. The jaguar girl whimpered, trying not to look at any of the others as they all turned to her, then looked back at the ceiling.

The few seconds seemed to take ages, but eventually Nicola saw another light turn on above Lesley. She missed it, and Nicola instinctively jabbed her hand upwards, only just stopping herself as she saw that Kim's light had come on instead. But she'd broken her concentration and missed another opportunity to hit it when it came back to her - she growled and then turned as another buzzer noise came from her left.

"Sorry..." Anneka whispered, lowering her hand from the ceiling and drumming her toes tensely on the ground as Nicola frustratedly looked around again, counting out the excruciating wait.

She closed her eyes, then suddenly heard a confirmation noise and opened them again. Lesley was standing unsurely with her hand next to the ceiling button, which was flashing on and off.

"At last! Lesley, you've done it - now come out here and try to earn your freedom!"

The chipmunk girl dashed out of the tank, her hair flying out behind her, and turned around to the right as Alex directed her. Nicola stood tensely, listening to a couple of squeaks and spraying noises as Lesley made her way around to the back of the cube. There was a sudden beep from behind them, and she looked as the light on top of the podium began flashing like she'd seen Alex demonstrate.

Lesley eventually stumbled into view again from the left, a couple of patches of white foam visible on her fur, and Alex indicated the flashing button to her.

"There it is - just time this right and you'll escape getting very messy..."

She crouched over the button, and Nicola held her breath as she counted out the pattern of its flashes. Lesley suddenly jabbed down on it, and she screwed up her face as it responded with a low buzz.

"No! I'm sorry, Lesley, but get back in that gunge machine - we're starting again!"

The chipmunk girl sagged, but scampered back into the cube, running her hands through her hair and glancing around at the pipes as she took up her position again. Nicola looked up, saw the lights begin to flash over them, and then there was another buzz as Anneka timed it wrongly again. The three of them looked at her, and she covered her eyes with one hand, swinging her other arm back and forth tensely.

"I know you want to get out of there, Anneka, but if you keep missing then you're going to get everyone gunged..."

She nodded, whimpering, and then looked up to the ceiling again, bouncing on her toes. The sequence of flashes began once again, and this time, Nicola was ready with her thumb next to her button. She jabbed it as it turned on, and nearly whooped out loud when her press resulted in the 'correct' noise.

"Nicola, you're out this time - let's see if you have better luck than Lesley..." Alex announced as she pushed past the mouse and chipmunk girl at the front, skidding as she came out of the cube and turned around to the right. A tangle of pipes, padded on the surface, stretched through the few foot wide gap between the wall and the cube, and she made her way through them, trying to be quick but also taking care as she moved her slippery body around them, avoiding occasional sprays of white foam from the walls and nozzles in the pipes.

Eventually she reached the back, and kept her hand on the cube's wall as she turned the corner. The back of the cube was clear - she thumped on the button in the middle and then ducked down underneath another series of pipes around the other side, this time squeezing her eyes closed as foam sprayers splattered her from both sides.

She straightened up as she reached the end, and raced over to where Alex was pointing at the podium. She hovered her hands over it, panicked as it flashed blue earlier than she had expected, and mistimed her press, producing the same harsh buzzer that signaled she wasn't safe. She nearly swore out loud before stopping herself.

"Bad luck, Nicola..." She sighed, shrugged, and walked back into the Sludgecube, curling her toes as she realized they couldn't have much time left.

She took up her position again, noticing that Anneka was just standing beside her, shivering a little as she swished her tail and not even trying to hit her button any more. Almost immediately there was another bell sound. She looked around the ceiling to see that Lesley had timed another press correctly.

"Good, Lesley - come on out here and try again!"

Breathing in and out slowly, Nicola watched the long-haired chipmunk girl bound out of the cube and disappear off to the side again, listening anxiously at the noise of her making her way around. After what seemed to take forever, she completed the circuit and came back into view, this time crouching in concentration over the podium and moving her hands up and down in rhythm with it.

Nicola watched closely, wringing her hands in front of her as she watched Lesley concentrate. Suddenly she smacked her hands down on top of the button, and this time it glowed blue in response. She bounced upwards with a cheer, raising both hands in the air as Alex stepped forwards behind her.

"Yes! You're safe this time - stay here with me, and we'll see if we can get someone else out..." he congratulated her as the others looked up to the ceiling again. Nicola saw her button light up but hesitated, missing her chance and leaving Kim to stab at the ceiling instead.

The high-pitched bell noise seemed to genuinely surprise Kim, who stood tensely with her hand still up in the air before visibly relaxing and stepping towards the door. Nicola looked up at the darkened ceiling buttons again, hoping she would be next out.

There was a clank, and a siren started up as the lights in the room dimmed to red. Nicola's stomach lurched as she looked forwards to see the panel at the front of the cube began lowering, coming into view to trap them inside. After freezing unsurely for a moment, Kim took another step towards it.

"No, stay in there! Stay in there..." Alex repeated, holding out a hand as he and the excited chipmunk girl watched the door close from the outside. Kim stopped again, then turned around to face the two others, an extremely nervous grin on her face as she flicked her tail around and caught it, running it through her hands.

Nicola swallowed as the clear door in front of the three of them clunked into place, locking them in the gunge machine. She whimpered a little under her breath as she looked around at the pipes lining the walls, and the slow dribbles of dark slime that were still pouring out of them to splat against the floor. Alex knocked on the front of the door panel, making her jump and look up, then give an unsure smile back as he waved.

"I think we've definitely made up for the first round, anyway," the red wolf smiled in at them. "And I know Nicola's not having a good round, because she's already been dunked, slimed under those pipes, and now she's inside the Sludgecube..."

Nicola shrugged, then looked to her left at the jaguar girl, thinking about how they might have done better if she had had faster reactions. But her annoyance with her disappeared as she looked at Anneka's nervous expression, and instead she grinned, putting her hand up in the air and then dropping it around the feline's shoulders to keep her next to the nozzles, holding on tighter to the slippery jaguar girl as she tried to wriggle out of her grasp. As Anneka settled, still tapping her toes on the floor but putting a hand around Nicola in return, Nicola reached out to take the mouse girl's hand too and then slipped it round to her side as she spun her round to stand beside her on her right.

"Well, she doesn't seem too worried - at least, no more than the others! Lesley, how do you feel about avoiding this?"

"...Kind of good," the chipmunk girl answered, smiling edgily as she peered into the tank at them all.

"I can tell you - so would I!" Alex chuckled as he pointed to the panel that they had all seen earlier at the side of the tank. "The button to fill the Sludgecube's here, Lesley - as you're out here, do you want to start it up, or try and avoid all the blame for it later?"

"No, I'll do it," she grinned eagerly. Nicola watched her scamper over to the side of the cube, heading for the panel.

"Oh, I'm going to get her for this," Anneka giggled into Nicola's ear as she rested her head on her shoulder. Nicola nodded, smiling to herself as Kim put an arm around her, gripping her waist.

The three girls watched nervously as the small chipmunk girl put her hands up in front of her, and Nicola held her breath as Lesley looked over at Alex one last time.

"Go on, gunge them," he encouraged, pointing over at the button that she was hovering over. Anneka eeped at the word, all three girls hugging a little closer as Lesley leaned forwards and thumped on the button. There was a bass rumble from somewhere in the floor, the whine of machinery getting gradually higher and louder as the three of them waited tensely, their eyes darting around to the pipes on the ceiling and the walls.

They all flinched as there was a hissing noise from beside them, and before Nicola could react, the pipes at the sides burst into life, spewing waves of dark brown gunge into the chamber and splattering violently against Anneka and Kim's sides, slapping on to the floor with an awful splotting noise. The jaguar girl instantly sprang forwards, letting out a prolonged shriek and throwing out her hands for balance, her feet running in the air for a moment before she scurried the couple of steps to the front of the gunge machine and turned around to face the rapidly spreading puddle on the floor. She screamed again as the pool slithered towards her, putting her hands to the sides of her head as the stuff slid between her bare toes and rose around them. She turned her head from side to side, picking her feet up high to step out of the way as more pipes turned on on the ceiling beside her to fill the tank up faster.

As the muddy gunge rose around their ankles, Kim stayed still but turned her face away from the gooey deluge from the side, putting her arm and forehead on to Nicola's shoulder as the sloppy mixture played over her. Nicola felt the lumpy substance slither over her hand and arm as it dripped down the curvy mouse girl's back, and extended her other hand to reach into the wave of gunk splurging against her other side. The cold stuff domed out over her hand and then poured outwards and between her fingers to join the rising pool. She shuddered as some of it splattered against her hip and thighs, lumps of it slithering down her side.

The mouse girl stumbled forwards a couple of steps, one hand coming up to drag the gunge off the side of her face. As she sloshed her feet, kicking up small waves of the brown gunk, she turned around to face Nicola. Her eyes were wide with a shocked smile on her face as dribbles of the gunk crept down towards her chest from her shoulders, covering her gray fur.

Nicola jumped as another alarm hooted and a panel in the ceiling snicked aside, revealing a dark opening right above where Kim was standing. She jerked her head up to look at the same instant a massive torrent of green and brown slop poured down into the tank, and Nicola gasped as there was a prolonged, muffled squeak from somewhere in the middle of the muddy deluge. The downpour bulged a little at the sides as the plump mouse girl wriggled around underneath it, the shape of her head just visible poking out at the front as she ducked down under its weight.

Gaping and leaning a little on the back wall of the tank as the lukewarm muck rose above her knees, buckling and rippling outwards lazily from the main torrent in the center, Nicola watched Kim stumble forwards and out of the downpour, a dripping gungy mass as she half-fell towards her. Quickly, she braced herself and caught the mouse girl, putting her arms around her and keeping her in a hug as she closed her eyes and felt the slop play over both of them as it sprayed from the flood to her front as well as smaller pipes at the sides. Kim screamed again, her shoulders shaking in laughter as she slithered her hand up from Nicola's back to protect her face, twitching as the muck sprayed all over her head and back.

Nicola gasped as the cool gunk slithered up over her hips, shivering and shifting her weight a little as the lumps oozed around her lower body. The main downpour in the center was subsiding, and she could hear Anneka's excited screams from the front of the tank. Opening one eye, she wiped her hand across the mouse girl's back and broke off the hug, trying to clean off her face with her gungy fingers. She froze as another cold shower of muck splattered on to her, and squelched forwards, holding her heavy hair away from her face as she looked down on to the unpleasant green-brown lumpy surface that was still rising around her tummy.

Blinking, she dared to look up, holding her hands above the surface and seeing slimy rivulets dripping across her vision from her fringe as she looked around at the mucky inside of the cube. A continuous rain of gungy drizzles fell from the edges of the main pipe in the ceiling, and a few pipes around the edges were still spewing brown and green gunk into the tank, the surface buckling where it poured in and making a continuous rich glooping noise. Kim was somewhere between shrieking and laughing off to her side as she tried to wriggle through the gloop fast enough to dodge the remaining slime pouring in, and Anneka was hunched over in the front corner, her hair heavy with muck and hanging over her face, cringing and squirming as the pipes above and to her back poured thick green gunge all over her.

Eventually the pipes shut off, dribbling the last gloopy lumps of gunge on to the surface which had reached just below Nicola's chest. She coughed as she wiped at her face again, then dipped her hands under the surface and waded slowly forwards, feeling the lumps of gunk slithering around her with each step as she moved towards the front of the tank to join Anneka. Pulling her hands out of the sludge and eeping at the feeling of the muddy gunge slithering off them, she pressed them against the front panel, and stared at the chipmunk outside the tank who was trying embarrassedly to look innocent.

Nicola glanced over her shoulder as the mucky mouse girl behind her waded awkwardly forwards to join them too, her movement making the gunk ripple slowly around the tank and lap at their shoulders. She yelped as a wave sloshed up her chest, wriggling and pawing at her top to try and keep any more of the stuff from slipping into it. Meanwhile Anneka took her hands off her face, dragging them slowly through her mucky hair, and shivered, bobbing up and down with the movement of the lukewarm muck as she gave a sickly grin.

"I think there was a little more in there than I thought," Alex grinned in at them as they lined up at the window of the tank, glancing down at the churning muck they were wading through. He turned around to the shy-looking chipmunk behind him, and beckoned her over. "Lesley, you're the only one who got out, but by escaping the mudbath your friends got, you've earned twenty-five points for the team, bringing you up to 165 for the round and 525 for the whole run so far. I don't know if that's much consolation to them..."

Lesley giggled a little as he pointed into the messy tank again, Nicola making sure to give her a playful glare as she made eye contact with them all. As she looked away, Alex dropped his finger, put his hands behind his back, and looked in at them too with a smile on his face.

"I think it's time for a shower," he said.

Midgame

Alex led the team at a slower pace than usual back along the wide entrance corridor that they had come through when they'd started. Nicola carried her arms stretched to the sides, grimacing a little at the sound of her feet squelching as she walked. After being hauled out of the sludge they had all been given a brief hose down, but lumps and patches of the murky slime were still clinging coldly to her fur as they headed back to the showers.

She looked up as they stepped into the room with the large hatch in which they'd begun, and remembered something as Alex approached the door to the changing area. "Do we get to see someone else gunged now?" she called over to him, spitting a blob of the gunk off her lips.

Alex smiled as she staggered over. "Yep," he answered simply. "And I have to tell you, I'm pretty excited about this one."

Nicola glanced behind her as the others caught up, anticipating him saying more as he pulled the door to the changing area to hold it open for them.

"I'm not telling you anything else!" he grinned as he noticed them waiting. "If you head in there you'll get to see the whole thing as it happens. Just remember - I promise this'll make sense when you see it - the word is 'videos'. Got that?" He glanced between them as the girls nodded. "All right, enjoy your shower. I'll meet you back through there!"

Nicola, curious as to what he meant, padded through into the tiled room beyond the door - the front area of the changing rooms. The trolley with the TV set on it had been moved out of the corner to face the far bench. Dragging some remains of the gunk down off the fur on her arms, she carefully moved around to the far end of the bench and sat down. She glanced up at the screen for a moment, concentrating more on scraping the stuff off her hands, then jumped and looked back at what she had just seen.

The screen showed a view of a small room, similar in decoration to the room with the Hotseat she had seen earlier. The camera they were looking through was pointed at long cubicle set into the wall, four or five feet wide with a slightly convex plastic front. A grate ran around the side and back walls at about head height. But its occupant was what had caught most of Nicola's attention - inside, sitting on the tank's wide inflatable sofa-like seat, a mid-twenties skunk girl with a striking tiger-striped fur pattern tapped her toes against the floor anxiously.

"It's...!" Nicola indicated towards the screen excitedly as the other girls came into the room behind her. As they sat down on the bench one by one with similar reactions, the skunkette turned her head as Alex strolled into the visible frame, looking like he was trying to hold back a wide smile.

Anneka leaned forward as if to check she was really seeing what was on the screen, gaping in amazement as Alex stooped down to greet the guest, shaking her hand and then leaning into the tank for an air kiss. "How... the hell... did they get Zig Zag to agree to go in there?" she said between breaths.

Nicola was thinking exactly the same thing, but stayed quiet and leaned in closer beside her to watch. Alex was leaning up and away from the tank to address the camera again.

"As if there's anyone watching this who doesn't know, this charming striped skunkette is Zig Zag," he announced, holding a hand out towards her as she nodded in acknowledgement. "She's an actress, producer, and she's been running Double Z Studios for the last few years. Though you haven't appeared in any of the films you've produced for a while?" he asked, turning back to her.

"No. Well, a couple of minor parts, sometimes." She tossed her long white hair behind her head, combing through one side of it distractedly with her hand.

"Well, I bet you didn't expect your return to the screen to go quite like this..."

"Did you ever read what the IZ site said about this series?" Nicola whispered along the row of contestants. Kim nodded a little, turning her head to indicate she was listening but keeping her eyes on the screen as Alex continued talking to the skunkette about her work. "It said they were going to have some special guests, but..."

The mouse girl grinned and nodded. "Yeah, I never thought she'd be up for it. I was expecting them just to get people like..." She trailed off, and shrugged.

"I still can't believe it," Anneka spoke up, shaking her head, then smiled as a thought came to her. "Hey, do you ever watch Leon's Dungeon? I bet they'll get him."

"Wait, I think he's about to say why she's on." Nicola had had the same thought, but put her hand out in front of her as Alex mentioned the show's name, and leaned forwards again to listen.

"...and I was surprised, actually, that you'd never heard of the show before we..."

"Before you asked me to come on, no," she replied, finishing the tail of his sentence. "But I got a lot of encouragement from everyone at the studio, and they were very eager to show me what you do to people on it..."

Alex nodded. "That's not surprising, it was one of them that pointed us in your direction in the first place."

"What! Who?" With a start, the skunk girl slapped both hands onto the top of the tank's front as she leaned forward, her face a picture of shock.

"I think I'd better keep that a secret... for their safety and for mine!"

Zig Zag growled a little but didn't ask again as the red wolf took a couple of steps away. She slid her hands a little down the inside of the clear plastic door as she took them off its top, then wriggled back on the inflatable seat to get comfortable again, flicking her wide tail behind her. Breathing out, her eyes went up to the ceiling, staring at the round opening looming above her head.

"What do you think of the furniture?" the red wolf asked her.

"Hm?" She lowered her head again. "Oh... it's... comfortable enough in here," she said hesitantly.

"Good, well, I hope it stays that way for you..."

"Huh. Thanks," the pretty skunkette replied, more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice. She worriedly looked from one side of the booth to the other, her gaze moving along the long grate that stretched all the way round just below the ceiling.

"Anyway... as you know, you're inside it at the moment because someone you work with volunteered you to take a small challenge. You want to get it over with?" he asked, reaching around to take his minicomputer out of his pocket.

"Yeah." She turned to face the front and nodded once, running one hand down the length of her white hair and twisting it in her fingers as her eyes moved to the palmtop he was holding. "Go on."

"All right - Zig Zag, to stop the gunge tank..." Alex raised the computer up to eye level and pressed the screen as she looked worriedly at its back, hands stroking through the fur on her lap. He smirked to himself. "Actually, you're going to love this..."

"Oh, what now?" She craned her neck to see, shifting forwards onto her feet and standing up a little as he stepped back, holding it higher to stop her looking at the screen. Sulkily, she flopped down again and tapped the fingers of one hand beside her against the blowup seat.

"You've been in more films than I can remember over the last few years, so you're pretty decent at speaking on camera - wouldn't you say so?"

"Yes..." she replied apprehensively, stretching the word out. She seemed to realize what she was doing with her hand and took it off the seat, gripping her knee instead.

"Well, your task is to talk for one minute about ZZ Studios..." - the skunkette cringed, sagging down and resting her chin on her hands. "...without saying a certain trigger word that the computer's just shown me. Everyone else watching should be able to see it too..."

Nicola waited for a display on the screen to come up, but nothing happened. "Oh, they'll add it on later," she said out loud, pinching her forehead as she remembered what she was seeing was happening just a room away.

"All right - so it's 'videos'," Anneka reminded them, still picking blobs of gunk out of her hair.

"She'll never be able to manage that..." Kim remarked, shaking her head.

"I think that's the point." Nicola grinned to herself and looked back at the screen as Alex prepared to start the game.

"You ready?" they heard him ask. The skunkette watched, shoulders already shaking in a helpless defeated laugh, as he reached up to put his hand on the exaggeratedly large switch beside the booth. She put her hand up to her face, pinching her forehead.

"Yeah, as much as I'll ever be."  She straightened up, shaking out her hair, and took a deep breath.

"All right, your time starts now!" Alex hauled the switch handle down the way, and the skunkette jumped as a mechanical noise played followed by the ticking of an electronic timer.

"Well..." she began, swallowing, "ZZ studios started... five, maybe six years ago, after I left my last studio along with Tommy Jensen. We scraped together funds from our savings as well as taking out a couple of loans, and we rented out a warehouse as our studio. At that stage we could only get acting talent from people I already knew from the industry, and they worked on our first production with only the promise of royalties."

"What was its name?" Alex interjected.

"It was called..." - she hesitated before pronouncing the word carefully - "'Predators...'" She cringed and stopped halfway, expecting it to be the trigger word, but blinked and continued distractedly as nothing happened. "And, um... that was a low-budget film we released on video after..."

There was a gasp from Lesley at the other end of the bench, and Nicola jumped as she realized what had been said, but let her breath out again as nothing happened.

"They let it pass," she said, shaking her head. The show wasn't normally known for being that forgiving. She looked down the bench at the three other girls, who were watching the screen, transfixed.

"That sold about... thirty or forty thousand copies, I think, which set us up to..." She gestured in front of her agitatedly with her hands. "How much time left?" she asked instead, turning quickly to face Alex.

"I can't tell you, keep going!" The red wolf waved his hand in a circle encouragingly, pacing towards her again. The skunkette whimpered as she moved her hands up to grab her hair, looking frustrated for a moment before her shoulders shook with awkward laughter.

"What has the studio been doing recently?" the red wolf asked, leaning down to prompt her as she struggled.

"Um..." She wrung her hands, eyes darting to the sides as she thought. "We're... about to start releasing productions in high-definition - things have come a long way since the, er, tapes we used to..."

"Damn," Nicola said under her breath. She wondered how long she'd been talking, and started to think that she was going to make it, but reassured herself that the show was unlikely to let her off entirely. She tapped her fingers on the underside of the bench as Zig Zag faltered again, then thought of something else to say.

"Oh - Sabrina's been working on a redesign of the website, and you're going to be able to get some of the older videos thr..."

Nicola jolted forwards, smacking her hands together triumphantly. A loud klaxon drowned out the rest of the sentence, and Zig Zag's mouth dropped open in a wide-eyed shriek just before two wide waves of green gunge spewed from the head-height grates at the sides of the booth, enveloping her head and shoulders. Quickly, she leaned forwards out of the deluge, her eyes hidden by the green slime splattered across her face. Her mouth was still open in a frozen mixture of shock and enjoyment, slime dripping down the sides of her muzzle and off her chin as she screamed out loud.

She brought her hands up, sticky curtains of the translucent slime dripping from her arms, and wiped at her eyes, moving her head a little from side to side. The wide green curtains of ooze continued to play up and down her striped fur, soaking her white hair and coating her shoulders and sides in a glistening, gooey layer. After a few seconds they slowed, parting and gradually revealing her fully again. She lifted her head from her hands and looked to the side, her soaked hair and fur dripping the translucent green stuff with every movement. Shaking her head, she wiped her hands down her face and watched the grates continue to pour the gunge down the walls, forming a rapidly spreading pool on the floor.

Suddenly there was a click of a valve opening on the ceiling and a column of bright purple gunge dropped on to the skunkette's head. A muffled yelp emerged from underneath it as it continued, the stuff splattering outwards in a smooth dome shape that dipped down as she ducked under the weight of the falling slime.

Carefully, Zig Zag leaned slightly to her left, hunching her shoulder up as the heavy downpour spilled down on to it. The half of her face that was visible revealed an uncomfortable grin as she looked up at Alex with her one visible eye, then as the flow of gunge began twitching to the side to splatter off her head again, she leaned further away, grabbing on to the far arm of the seat to support herself as the purple gunk flowed down her back. Looking down as the level of slime in the tank rose around her ankles, she lifted her feet, watching the murky mixture pour in streams from her bare toes.

Nicola gasped, laughing to herself as the grate at the back of the tank began pouring a wave of orange stuff into the tank from behind Zig Zag, making her flinch and lean forward to get her face away from the thick streams. As the purple gunge from above became just a drizzle, the flood from behind also eased back, pouring orange stuff down the back wall and over the blowup surface of the seat as it continued to fill the tank.

With little of her striped fur pattern visible underneath the colors she was splattered with, the skunkette tentatively straightened up again, leaning on the back of the seat and twitching as she watched the orange goo slithering over her shoulders. She managed a smile at the gentleness of it, wriggling a little from side to side and letting it cover her, but then jumped as a harsh siren rang out above the continuing alarm.

With a second blare from the siren, a wide column of blue and yellow ooze poured in from the ceiling, doming out over the messy skunkette's head and hiding her completely from view for a moment before she leaned forward, stretching out of the downpour. She had put her hands up to cover her face, squirming around as the falling gunge splashed outwards in slow, sticky waves from her back and neck, splattering on the surface of the still rising knee-deep pool. Gooey streams of it slithered around her neck and crept over her chest, mingling into an off green color as they went.

Zig Zag screeched and opened her hands to look as her elbows were swallowed underneath the multi-colored liquid, her eyes on the surface as it slowly crept up towards her face. Grimacing, she leaned up a little away from it, the back of her head going underneath the torrent from the ceiling again and making the stuff slither heavily down the sides of her hair. Her soaking striped tail sagged down behind her, eventually glooping under the surface as it rose to her tummy.

Shaking her head slowly from side to side as the deluge from above subsided a little, the skunkette appeared to relax and a grin became visible through the slop on her face. The mixture of gunge poured down her neck and back, finger-shaped streams of it slithering over her shoulders and chest on its way down into the off-green pool. As she moved her gaze from the rising surface back to Alex, the sprayers at the sides gurgled back into life and sprayed her shoulders and sides with translucent goo again. Squeaking at the ticklish feeling of them, she hunched her shoulders up, leaning back just far enough for the downpour from the ceiling to slop over her head, hiding her face again and splattering streaks on the edge of the tank's door. 

After being hidden by the gungy dome splattering off her head for a few seconds, all the streams shut off together, leaving Zig Zag sitting in a chest-high pool of thick slime, her hair hanging messily over her face and shoulders. After a moment, she pulled her hands out of the gunge bath, the movement sending a wave of gooey liquid spilling over the door of the tank in front of her. Shaking them to spray the slime off them, she reached for her thickly coated hair and brushed it out of her face, then wiped at her eyes and muzzle, dragging the slop off her fur as she looked around at the slime-streaked walls.

A harsh repeating klaxon began blaring from above. Cringing as she heard it, Zig Zag shifted her hands to cover her eyes again, and hunched her shoulders back up as a spray of bright lumpy green stuff spluttered on to her head from a nozzle in the ceiling. She held her hands firmly over her face and muzzle as the lumps slithered down through her hair and off her fringe, splotting on to her shoulders and down to settle on the pool. The bright liquid colored her soaked and matted hair green again, flopping it over her face as it went.

After a few seconds, the bright downpour drizzled to a halt, a final couple of lumps dripping on to her head from above, and the alarm finally wound down. Sagging her shoulders in relief that it was over, Zig Zag slowly took her hands away and breathed out heavily, her messy face only just visible behind the hair hanging over it. She coughed, watching the chunky green mixture drip down across her vision, and a little squeamishly, pulled her hands back to pick her hair off her face again.

"That part was new?" she panted, pointing with one finger up at the pipe above her head as she tucked her drenched hair behind her ear with her other hand. She blinked as a couple of green lumps dripped from her fringe onto her muzzle, and brushed them away.

Alex came forward to see what she was pointing at. "It was, I thought I'd leave it as... oh, I know what you're thinking!" The messy skunk girl's squeamish grimace turned into a grin as she dipped her hands back into the pool, forming a cup and hauling herself unsteadily upwards with a heavy glooping noise. Colorful curtains of slime slithered thickly away from all over her fur as she stood up, hunching over slightly out of the tank and grinning evilly as the red wolf retreated back a few steps, his arm across his face to defend himself. Faking a throw to get his arm down first, she threw the collected handful of slime at him and he barked as it caught him on the side of the chest.

Laughing to herself, she looked down at her completely plastered fur, turning left and right and shaking the gunge on her hands into the waist-deep pool. Giving up, she flopped back down into the gunge bath, disappearing up to her neck again with a slurp and causing another wave of green and yellowish slime to ooze its way over the door. Slowly, she dragged her clasped hands over her hair, brushing away the lumps of gunge sitting on her head and leaving behind a glistening off-green layer.

"All right..." Alex wiped at his slippery side, flicking the slime to the floor as he stepped towards the tank again. A couple of drops from the pipe on the ceiling splattered down onto Zig Zag's head, and she blinked, leaning away to the side, as they slithered down her hair to drizzle on to the surface. She cleared her throat again and faced the red wolf as he came back to talk to her.

"You all right in there?" He smiled as she ran her hands down her messy hair again, heavy drops of gunge dripping off her arms. "If it's any consolation, I've been told that there's something in this stuff that makes it very good for the fur..."

Zig Zag scoffed, and flicked another handful of gunge in his direction, then settled back, dropping her arms back below the surface but making sure to splash as much of the thick liquid out towards him as possible with the movement.

Alex stepped back a little, watching the glutinous wave splatter on to the floor to join the spreading puddle around the front of the booth. He paced around it, back to the side of the tank with the switch. "Well, I'm sorry that you had to be gunged, but thank you so much for coming on and being our first special guest... having experienced it yourself, is there anyone you'd personally like to see inside this thing?"

The skunkette looked up as he leaned on the wall beside her, then wriggled in the slime as she thought. "Whoever volunteered me for this?" she suggested, raising her hand out of the glop and pointing down at the glutinous surface. A stream of slime dripped from the end of her finger.

Alex chuckled as he straightened up again. "We'll see what we can do. In the meantime, we're going to have to leave you in there, although we can give you a bit of your natural color back if you want it..."

He raised his voice above a loud hiss that started up as he was speaking, and Zig Zag splashed her arms out of the tank to clutch the sides of her head as two jets of foam started up from either side of the ceiling - one black, one white. She squeaked through her gritted teeth as the thick foam piled up on her hair and rolled off to splat heavily on the surface, floating outwards on the slowly rippling gunge.

"Thank you, Zig Zag!" Alex called one final time before dashing off to the side, leaving the room the same way he had come in. Struggling under the foam jets, she glanced up to watch him go, shaking her head and leaning forwards to try and get away from the last of the sputtering sprays.

The team sat in silence for a moment, watching the on-screen image of the soaked and messy skunkette trying to clear the black and white foam off herself as it mingled into a murky gray color, sighing relievedly as she wrung out her hair. Kim was standing beside the three on the bench, having jumped up in excitement when the tank had first gone off.

Anneka shook her head. "I can't believe they got her to come on. That was incredible!"

"Yeah, I know a couple of people I'd want to put in there..." Nicola smiled. She looked to her side at Lesley, who despite her quietness looked as enthusiastic as the rest of them.

"You know, I think Alex should have gone in with her if he was a real gentleman..." Kim smiled, tapping the image of the gunge-filled booth on the screen. The slippery skunkette was wiping the mixed foam away from her face, watching as a stagehand approached with a large towel. As he came near, she hauled herself upwards again, the stuff drizzling and dripping from her drenched fur as she stood hunched over slightly under the low ceiling. After pulling her hair out of her face and tossing it behind her head with one hand, she stood with her fingers outstretched, watching the gunge drip off her fingertips.

"We'll get the chance to slime him ourselves if we win the final game!" Nicola cut in. She looked around at the other two on the bench. "Did you see what happened to him at the end of the last season?"

"Yeah!" Anneka leaned towards her, a huge grin on her face, and Lesley smiled to herself too. "I'd love to see what happens to him if we win now..."

"He'll probably have to go into the tank that husky girl got gunged in," replied Kim. "The one that you're going to have to go into, Anneka..."

Together, they all looked at the jaguar girl, who glanced back around at them, an uncomfortable grin on her face.

"You're going to save me, right?" she asked, biting her lip.

"Depends if you decide to gunge the rest of us again!" Nicola teased, getting up from the bench as she spoke. The thinned slime still clinging to her fur was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. "Come on, let's get this stuff off."

Round 3

After the girls had taken half an hour to relax, clean themselves up and put on fresh swimwear, Nicola was the one that led the way out of the changing rooms again. She pushed open the swinging door as she strode out into the waiting area that they had just come from, and looked over to Alex, who was on the opposite bench waiting for them.

"You... gunged Zig Zag!" she exclaimed, pointing straight at him. He looked back along her arm to her face, chuckling as he sat up.

"Yeah... I can hardly believe it either!" he answered. "It surprised me that we got her on, too. I thought we'd have to work our way up after getting a couple of people from this studio's other shows or something at first, but someone on the production team dared to get in touch with ZZ Studios and... well, someone there got her to agree!"

The other girls crowded past Nicola towards the benches, and she took a couple of steps forward, then headed over to the space next to Alex.

"You know, we don't even have a name for that thing yet - though one of the last contestants we had on called it the 'Gunge Tank of Mega Doom'," he enthused as the four of them sat down. "I thought it was pretty appropriate."

"I'd say so." Lesley smiled a little. Anneka nodded with her, then turned to Alex.

"So who else is on the list to go in there?" she asked.

The red wolf put his hands behind his head, leaning back. "I don't know if I can tell you," he said casually, prompting a groan of disappointment from a couple of the girls. "We've got to keep the surprise guests secret, but we've got a whole stack of nominations from people who want us to gunge their high school teachers, or college professors... is there anyone you'd really like to see in there?"

"Leon," Anneka said back instantly. "You know, from Leon's Dungeon?"

"Hah. Yeah, I've seen that." Alex nodded in response, waggling a finger towards her. "I'd like to get him, too - but I'm sure if we did then he'd have me in one of his gunge tanks for revenge..."

"So what's the problem with that?" Nicola piped up with a wide grin. The other girls laughed as Alex held his hands up. "Which one do you think Leon should put him in?" she called to the three of them.

"Maybe the big one they use at the end, with the foam and stuff..." Kim smirked, the others nodding in agreement as the red wolf looked between them.

"Or - did you see the one when they were on tour?" Nicola grinned back, aware that Alex was watching her with an uncomfortable smile. "They had that massive... neck deep dunk tank, with the sprayers," she gestured.

"You'd put me in that?" Alex asked. "I'm trying to save all of you from getting messy..." He laughed at the reaction from the girls. "You don't believe me, do you? I don't think I'm going to find a lot of support here," he said, scratching the back of his neck as he shook his head amusedly. "How's the gunge been for you so far - enjoying it?"

"Great," Anneka replied. Nicola agreed quietly, looking over at the other bench - Lesley was nodding too, but was squirming a little embarrassedly and she was sure she could see her blushing.

Kim leaned forwards on her elbows. "It's... icky, but it's fun," she said.

Alex nodded. "Yeah, that sounds about right. It's weird stuff, isn't it? And I think we were testing your limits in that last round - that has to have been our messiest twenty minutes ever."

"When you put us in the cube I was worried about ever getting it out!" Anneka exclaimed. "But it just... slid off under the shower." She shuddered a little at the unpleasant image.

"That's right," Alex said. "It looks really mucky, but it's made so that it breaks up completely under water - salt water's the best for getting it off. I think it took them a while before they came up with the recipes that they use for it now..."

He grinned to himself. "I was going to tell you about that!" he remembered, and leaned forwards, the girls on the opposite bench doing the same as they listened. "I was telling the others before you came in, Anneka, that at the start they tried using food coloring in the gunge, which was fine in small amounts, but the poor crew member that volunteered for the first big test gunging got this sort of sickly yellow tinge to his black fur that he couldn't get out... he ended up getting an all-over shave, I think, and growing it out again."

Nicola gasped, half in surprise and half in laughter. "Does he still work on the show?" she asked.

"No," Alex shook his head, prompting laughter from the other bench. "No, nothing to do with what happened to him! I think he left after the first series," he thought out loud. "Anyway, we make it with powder paint mix now, with a load of industrial food thickener. I'll show you the stirring vats that we use to make the stuff up after we finish."

He pulled his pocket computer out and looked down at it, checking something. "Speaking of which..." he started as he scrolled through it, "...want to get back in there again?"

Nicola pushed herself off the bench, looking over at the others as they all got up enthusiastically. Alex walked over to the double doors leading into the starting room and pushed both of them open, spinning round to hold one as they all came through.

"Eight more games to go," he announced, pointing down the corridor that they had first gone down when the show had started and walking towards it, the girls following behind him. "Ready to see what we've got lined up for you?" He spun round and walked backwards as he pointed at Nicola.

"Y... yeah," she swallowed, confident but taken by surprise by the question. Alex pointed at the others in turn, and got a nod or cheer out of each of them.

"Then let's go!" He jumped to turn around again and dashed away, leaving the four of them to run to keep up. Nicola was in the lead again when they reached the turning to the circular main room, and walked in to join him while trying to get her breath back, shivering a little as she looked over at the ominous black pod in the center of the room.

"We've got two more rounds to play, team, and you're doing well so far - you've got 525 points out of a possible eight hundred, giving you nearly a minute in the final challenge already. But hopefully we can more than double that in the second half - Anneka!"

The jaguar girl, who was looking around the room's walls at the blank metal doors leading into the game rooms, jerked around and stood straight as her name was mentioned.

"Are we going to go over to the processing wing or stay here?"

"Stay here," she nodded.

"Okay, let's see which rooms are open..." He turned around, pulling the computer out of his pocket as he did so, and the others followed him as he dashed around the edge of the room, counting off the doors with an outstretched finger as he passed them. Nicola looked back across the room over to where they had come in, realizing he was leading them all the way around the circle.

"This looks like the one," he announced as he reached the door they had been standing in front of. He hopped up the three steps leading to it and began pressing out a sequence of numbers on the keypad beside it. "This game's going to need all of you taking part, but we'll need Anneka to pick one volunteer, and I should warn you that as it's the start of the second half..." - he stopped with his finger over the bottom button of the keypad and turned to face them - "...it's going to be a messy one. Who's going to risk it?"

The other three team members kept their eyes on the feline as she looked between them. "Um..." she hummed as she thought. "Well, Lesley was the only one who escaped last time..."

"Picking on Lesley again?" Alex put his arm around to the brown chipmunk girl's far shoulder as Anneka sagged guiltily at the remark. She played along for a moment, pouting a little before breaking into a giggle. "All right, I can tell she's happy with it - Lesley, this is what Anneka's nominated you for!"

He pulled Lesley gently towards him, getting her up to the door before he pressed the button to open it. The door slid aside, and Nicola balanced on her toes to try and see into it as she and Alex moved inside.

On the opposite side of the room, a wide booth was set in the wall, much like the one they had seen before their shower. From her position slightly down the stairs, Nicola could see three round nozzles spaced along its ceiling, but only the middle one had a plastic chair placed beneath it. Above the recess, a row of three keyhole-like slots were bordered by black and yellow stripes, with a large round light above each of them.

As Alex led Lesley towards the booth, Nicola stepped fully into the room and looked down to the right. Emerging from the same wall as the door and spaced a couple of yards apart off to the right were three lengths of solid thick wire, twisting and turning in awkward shapes as they headed towards the wall with the booth, ending a few feet short of it. At the point where the wires connected to the wall, they each had a rod that dangled off them, hanging by a hoop of metal on their ends. Nicola grinned to herself as she recognized the idea of the game, and turned back to the gunge tank as the red wolf slid the panels of the half-height door aside.

"This is another game where your fate is in the hands of your team-mates, Lesley - are you okay with that?" he asked her as she moved in and sat down, hands next to her legs and gripping the sides of the chair.

"Hmm..." She glanced up to the round opening above her on the ceiling, then just shook her head, smiling edgily and curling her toes to drag them on the floor of the tank.

"Why not? They did it pretty well last time!" Sliding the tank's door closed behind him without waiting for an answer, he turned back to the others.

"I bet you've all seen this game before," he started, indicating the three twisted wires that emerged from the opposite wall. "But perhaps not quite like this. Come over and I'll show you..."

He took a few steps over to the one nearest the door, and picked up the straight handle of the rod attached to it. "Very simply, you've each got to get these rods off the wire by guiding them down to the other end," he said, moving it carefully along off the insulated strip it had rested on to where the exposed wire started. "Once they're off, you have to insert them into the slots just above Lesley there to turn it off and let her out of the gunge tank. But all of these are wired up to the booth, so if you slip... this happens." He brought the loop down on the wire, producing a harsh buzzer noise, and Nicola saw a flash from one of the lights above the tank out of the corner of her eye.

She looked over as the chipmunk girl yelped and clutched the sides of her head, her face screwed up as she closed her eyes and bowed her head down. But after a few seconds of nothing happening, she slowly relaxed, looking back up at the group.

"Don't worry, Lesley, I won't gunge you - it'll be this lot you have to worry about," Alex grinned. She shook her head, then straightened up again, looking up for a moment into the chute above her and bringing a hand up to fiddle anxiously with her hair.

"Get ready, everyone - take a place each," he called as he put the loop back on the plastic rest and stepped away. The three of them glanced between each other, and Nicola stayed still while the others dashed to the middle and far end of the room. "Remember, Lesley needs all three of those rods to get out. I should probably mention, by the way, that if you don't all make it in forty-five seconds, then the whole vat's going to empty on to her..."

Lesley bit her lip, nervously looking up into the opening placed above her head as she flicked her hands through her hair, tucking it behind her shoulders. She wriggled a little in the seat, squeezing her hands between her thighs as she waited for the game to begin.

"All ready?" Alex asked, retreating back to lean on the wall next to the door. Nicola nodded as the other girls replied, then grabbed the handle, pulled it up towards her and tried to hold the loop steady.

At the signal from Alex she carefully shuffled forwards on her knees to guide the loop along the wire. Moving smoothly for the first straight, she slowed down a little for a U-turn, then another one that doubled back on itself. Trying to keep herself steady, she rotated the loop along with the wire as it headed downwards, carefully bringing her other hand in to adjust her grip on the handle. As she turned it around in her hand, the edge of the loop bumped against the wire. She growled under her breath as she heard the buzzer from above the tank, and whipped her head round to look as the chipmunk girl drew her breath in.

The end of the nozzle above Lesley's head jutted down a liitle and released a thin stream of purple gunge that hit her on the side of the head as her mouth dropped open in shock. She bowed her head down as the torrent got wider, quickly covering her hair in purple and splattering off in waves as she raised her hands to her tummy to catch it on its way down. Nicola could just see her gasping at the feeling underneath the covering of ooze.

Shuddering, she turned back to the twisted wire in front of her and kept on going, trying to keep her hand steady though she was shaking with nerves and excitement. As she negotiated another tricky corner, she heard another buzzer sound and saw a flash of pink out of the corner of her eye as the chipmunk girl was covered in another wave of slime.

Concentrating hard on the wire, she tried to ignore the occasional sound of the alarm followed by a wet splattering noise punctuated with squeaks and giggles from her left as either she or another of the girls slipped up and touched the wire. Finally, she turned the last corner and whipped the rod free, then straightened up with a little difficulty and dashed for the tank.

Lesley, now painted with a mixture of slimy colors that matted her hair to her head and oozed slowly down from her shoulders, clapped her messy hands together as she saw her approach. As the nozzle in the ceiling dripped the remains of another murky-colored downpour on to her, she watched Nicola stretch up to slide the key-like rod into position at the top of the booth.

Nicola stepped aside, and stood and watched anxiously as Kim and Anneka concentrated on moving forwards. She looked around at the gunge-spattered chipmunk girl again, who had her hands behind her head to wring out her soaked hair. As the messy chipmunk girl watched their progress, she gave a little jump as two buzzers sounded close together, and closed her eyes as another cascade of murky green started up from the ceiling, pouring down over her already dripping head and shoulders.

She leaned to the side, a squeamish grin on her face and raising her hand to balance as the gunk poured on to her shoulder, staying on longer than before. Squirming as it eased off, the last drizzle slithering down from her shoulder to her back and chest, she looked out to the front again to see Kim straighten up, the key-like metal rod held out in front of her. As the mouse girl moved forwards and reached up to insert it next to Nicola's, Lesley raised one hand in the air in celebration, stroking through her sloppy hair with the other as a curtain of dark purple gunge drizzled from her outstretched arm.

"That's two! But you've only got about ten seconds left..." Alex announced, his eyes on the feline who was still struggling at the far end of the room.

"Come on, Anneka! Hurry up!" Nicola called, getting more anxious as she mentally counted the last few seconds coming off the timer. Despite Kim trying to encourage her to go faster as well, the feline only sped up a little, concentrating hard on keeping the ring from touching the wire as she reached the last S-shaped curve. At last, she whipped the key off the end and stood up triumphantly, but her face fell as a hooter blared over her cheer.

Nicola cringed and turned to Lesley, who whimpered as she realized what was going to happen. Slowly, she began bowing her head forwards into her hands, just as a wide wave of lime green gunge was released from the tank's ceiling.

The three of them watched as the bright gooey stuff spluttered down on to Lesley's head, not falling in a clean column but as a wide muddy rain that splurged off the back of her neck, thick drops of it splashing outwards onto the tank's walls and door. As streams of other colors joined the flow, she stayed still underneath it, the ooze flowing down over her hands protecting her face, the outlines of her fingers visible through the soupy liquid as it slid over them. Streams of it slopped down on either side of her neck, pouring into her lap as she drummed her feet up and down.

The gungy downpour finally began to ease off, and the chipmunk peeked out from behind her hands, her expression a mixture of laughter and shock. She eeped as the gloop continued to drip and drizzle on to her head from above, the stuff on her shoulders slithering down her fur. Sticking her tongue out in a mock disgusted expression, she looked down at her messy hands, then leaned down to wipe the front and back of them on her still reasonably clean lower legs.

"Sorry, everyone..." Alex said above the fading siren. "You didn't save Lesley from the gunge, so you start off the third round with one messy team member and only twenty points to show for it. But we can pick that up later on - let me get that for you, Lesley..."

He stepped forward through the watching girls and bent down to open the slime-splattered door, then gently took Lesley's hand as she stepped dripping out of the gunge machine. As he let her go she grinned to herself, tossing her long soaked hair behind her head before jerking her hands to flick the murky green slop on them away. Green drizzles poured on to the floor from all over her messy fur.

"Anneka, what happened?" Alex asked as he slid the door shut again, turning to face her as she looked at her feet nervously.

"I... I forgot that I still had to go over and put it in," she mumbled embarrassedly.

"Oh..." Alex seemed to genuinely sympathize, stepping forward to put a hand on her shoulder. Then he turned around to address the others. "So who's going in the next game?"

"She is," Lesley pointed at Anneka at the same time as Kim and Nicola did. The jaguar girl stuttered for a moment, then just smiled, dropping her head down.

"I love the sort of... cycle of revenge that's built up on this team," Alex chuckled to himself as he raised his hand off her shoulder and held it out towards her. She realized she was still holding the key she had finally got off the wire and put it down hurriedly. "Anneka, ready for the next game?"

"Yeah," she replied, hesitantly.

"Think you deserve it?"

Anneka squirmed again at being the center of attention, and just took his hand defeatedly, her other hand pinching her forehead. Nicola smiled as Lesley nodded enthusiastically.

"Come on, I'll show you. The good news is that we're not going far..."

The jaguar girl ran a little to keep up with Alex as he led her enthusiastically towards the door, and she bounced up and down nervously while he entered a code on its keypad with his free hand. The door slid aside, and as the dark sphere of the pod in the center of the room was revealed, the red wolf pointed towards it.

Anneka whimpered and sagged, giggling a little as she was taken down the steps. Nicola shared a grin with the others and then followed them out of the room, looking up at the softly pulsing lights on the surface of the pod as Alex helped the nervous feline up on to the slightly raised circular platform. This thing had been a feature of IZ from the very start, and she was fairly sure that she hadn't seen anyone escape it.

The jaguar girl took a seat in the plastic chair underneath the sphere, and as she wriggled to get comfortable, looked up into the visible spout inches above her head. Alex reached up to the top of the device to take hold of a large keyboard that was mounted on a metal arm, and swung it down so that it was just above her lap. Jumping down off the platform to join the others again as she glanced between the keyboard and the gunge chute, he pointed up behind them all, and Nicola turned around to see another large projection screen showing a view of the alien-looking keyboard as Anneka's hands hovered over it. It was made up of about ten rows of symbols.

"You all know this game, don't you?" Alex asked, and she nodded, looking back over her shoulder to check that the others were doing the same. "Yes, Anneka's got to find the five buttons on that keyboard that don't have a duplicate anywhere else - if they're all pressed within a minute, then the countdown stops, the Pod doesn't open up and she doesn't get covered in the gallons of gunge held inside it," he emphasized, spinning round to look at her as she shivered once again. "And you can see it up here too to help her try to escape. Lesley, you don't have to help her out if you don't want to, you could give her a couple of false ones if you like..."

"Hey!" Anneka protested from behind them, and the messy chipmunk girl giggled at her outburst, but shook her head, looking up to study the board in front of them as she reached behind her again to neaten her slimy hair. Nicola smiled over her shoulder at the jaguar girl, then turned to Alex as he spoke again.

"All right, you've got one minute - good luck!"

Nicola looked up to the screen just in time to see a timer appear, which she tried to ignore as she scanned the display of the board, leaning subconsciously to the sides a little to try and see past Anneka's hovering hands. The team was silent for a while as they all looked at it, Anneka looking like she was going to press one of the buttons a couple of times but hesitating and eventually withdrawing her finger.

"No, do that one!" Kim said, waving her finger at the screen as she called over her shoulder towards the pod. "I think that one you were just on is one of them..."

Nicola turned around too as the jaguar girl stuck her finger out again, cringing as she pushed down on the key. She jerked her finger back at the noise of a bell sound, but the key lit up to indicate that they had found one of the correct ones.

"That's one!" Alex called. "But you've used nearly half your time already, you're going to have to be faster..."

Bouncing on her heels, Nicola nervously looked over the screen from left to right, unsure of how she should even be looking for the unique keys among the many similar-looking symbols in front of them. She tried picking out one key at random in turn and looking over the board for any identical ones, and eventually saw one that she couldn't see a match for.

"Is that one of them?" she asked as she turned to Lesley, pointing up at the screen. She jumped as the bell sounded again, and glanced back at the screen - Anneka had pressed another button. "The one that looks like a backwards '2'?"

The chipmunk girl looked up at the screen, blinking as a couple of drips of slime from the last game fell across her vision. "I think so," she nodded, and brought a hand up to brush her fringe.

"Anneka! This one here!" Nicola skipped over to the screen and stood on her tiptoes to wave a pointing finger up at the button she'd picked out. She twisted up to look at the screen as the jaguar girl's hand moved towards it, guiding it with her own finger to the correct button. She pumped her fist in the air as the bell sound played again, moving back away from the screen and looking up at it.

The on-screen timer turned red as it dropped below ten seconds, and an electronic beeping noise began sounding every half-second. Anneka's hands moved off the bottom of the screen, and Nicola looked over her shoulder to see that the jaguar girl had placed her hands over her face, squirming as she listened to the sound of the last seconds ticking past.

"Giving up, Anneka?" Alex called out, and she opened her hands a little to peek out from between them. She nodded in his direction, biting her lip nervously. "Come on! Have a last try - what's the worst that could happen?"

The feline laughed a little, knowing exactly what the worst was as she moved one hand forwards again, her other hand staying at her face. The other three girls just watched her as she hovered a finger over the keyboard, picked a key at random and tentatively pressed down. At the sound of a buzzer and a rising klaxon, the jaguar girl's hand shot back to her face, and as the lights on the pod above her sped up, a wide steam of green gunge dropped from its nozzle to splurge out over her head.

Nicola grinned as there was a prolonged squeak from underneath the gooey dome, and it twitched and splattered across Anneka's shoulders, occasionally parting to give a glimpse of her green-stained hands across her face. Her toes curled as stray streaks of the gunge slopped to the floor and the tops of her feet, forming a wide splatter mark that ran towards the edges of the platform and dripped slowly down its sides.

The gunge flow twitched forwards, and Anneka squealed again as it splattered into her lap, hiding her from the watching team. Nicola watched her lean to the side, putting one hand out and rubbing her eyes with the other, the green stuff dripping to the floor from her gungy hair and muzzle. The heavy slime made a thick, rich glooping noise as it splurted down into her lap, splashing upwards to coat her tummy and chest as she waved her hand around in front of her in an attempt to defend herself.

The torrent of heavy liquid began to ease off, coming back up to Anneka's head, and defeatedly she sat up again and dropped her hands into her sodden lap, letting the goo pour on to the top of her head and roll down her hair. Occasional drips of it slumped down over her face, and she shook her head to get rid of them, specks of green stuff flying outwards in all directions. Giggling and squirming to the side as the last murky drizzles slithered from the edges of the nozzle above her, she raised her dripping hands away from her lap, and opened her eyes to watch the slop dribble from her fingers.

"It looks like the worst happened, Anneka," Alex chuckled as he moved towards the platform and watched the gungy jaguar girl brushing waves of slime off her lap, the stuff making a wet slapping noise as it hit the floor at her feet. "You gunged yourself, but at least you earned sixty points for the team - let me help you out from under there..."

He carefully stepped up on to the platform again and put his hand on Anneka's head as she wriggled and slithered forwards, guiding her out from underneath the metallic sphere so that she didn't hit her head on it. With his hand grasping hers, they stepped down together, and Alex moved away, wiping his hand on the hip of his trousers before taking the palmtop out again.

"We've still got two clean team members - who's going in the next one? Kim or Nicola?" he asked. Anneka reached round to the back of her head and dragged a hand down her sloppy hair as she looked between the two of them. Nicola stood tensely, trying to keep her expression calm and reading the team leader's face.

"I think..." She put her hand on her chin, then suddenly pointed. "Kim," she announced, turning towards the host.

Nicola breathed out, feeling the familiar strange mix of relief and disappointment as Alex stepped forward to take Kim's hand, spinning her around on his way to another of the doors leading off the circular chamber.

"All right, Kim - it's been a while since you were in a game alone, but we've got another new one for you in here!"

The rest of the team gathered behind them as he paused to open the door via the panel, the gray mouse girl bouncing on her heels and swishing her tail behind her nervously as she kept her eyes on the blank metal surface. Finishing with the code, Alex put his arm around her as it hummed aside, and she audibly gasped as he led her down a couple of steps into the room.

Nicola eagerly squeezed through the door after them to look at the game. They were in a fairly large space, featureless on the walls but with prominent large pipes jutting down from the ceiling to end a couple of feet above head height. On the ground, a set of plastic barriers and debris were arranged to form a course that twisted from one corner of the room to another, passing underneath each pipe as it went and ending at a cluster of them at the far end. Each of them had a chain dangling off the end.

She walked down the steps and followed Alex and Kim, the mouse girl looking worriedly at the pipes in the ceiling as they headed towards an odd trolley that lay near the entrance to the course, a cylindrical plastic tub that was a couple of feet high and mounted on castor wheels. She looked down at it as they gathered around, Alex waiting for them all to get there before starting his explanation.

"This is a pretty simple physical game, team - this room used to be used a lot like the Dispenser that you were under at the very start, but once again those pipes are all that are left now..."

He crouched down and grabbed the cylinder between his hands. "Your task's going to be to wheel one of these trolleys around the course, taking it under each of those pipes and dumping the gunge inside them down into it. You'll get more points depending on how much of the stuff you can collect in ninety seconds." He spun the cylinder around in his hands and pointed to indicate the graduated marks on the side. "All you have to do is get it under a pipe and pull its chain to open it up, then move on to the next one when it's been emptied."

Nicola looked to the short plastic chain that dangled off the pipe nearest them - it was looped through a handle on the cap that covered its end. Alex straightened up again, and she nodded.

"So," he said, pacing around the container, "let's have... Nicola and Anneka controlling the trolley. Lesley, you can have the task of opening up the pipes once they've got it under them..." He paused expectantly.

"And what am I going to be doing?" Kim asked hesitantly. Nicola turned to see her wringing her hands in front of her tummy, her mouth turned up at the edges in a nervous smile as she blinked a couple of times.

"Glad you asked," Alex pointed at her as he turned to dash to a sliding metal door on the wall behind him. Nicola snickered a little, fairly sure that she knew what was coming, and watched him slide it aside as Kim looked over her shoulder from behind.

"'Cause you're not going to be dragging that little tub around the course - you're going to be using this!" Alex announced, hauling on the handle of something inside the recess. Walking forwards with it as he pulled it out, he gestured with his other hand towards the much larger container, which was the shape of a large bathtub, with a couple of pads inside arranged to form a reclined seat.

Nicola turned around to look at Kim, who stood wide-eyed with her hands over her mouth, shoulders shaking with nervous laughter as she looked between the vat and the pipes. Alex swung the vat around so that it was in front of him, and kicked the smaller container he'd showed them aside as he walked around the new one to offer his hand. With a little whimper, Kim took it and carefully held on to his arm as she clambered inside the vat, turning around awkwardly to sit down on the gym mat-like pads and eventually leaning back fully on the headrest. She looked over at the looming gunge pipes, arms folded in front of her and tapping her fingers anxiously on her tummy.

Alex stepped around the vat, indicating to the others to take their positions. Nicola grabbed hold of the handles next to Kim's head, smiling down at her as she leaned her head back to look up at her upside-down. Anneka took the other end as Lesley backed away across the room to stand next to the first chain. 

"The aim of the game still applies - you three have to get that vat filled with as much gunge as possible over the next minute and a half. Are you all ready?"

"Yeah," Nicola nodded, looking over her shoulder at where Lesley was standing.

"Kim, are you ready?"

The mouse girl looked over at him, whimpering through a giggle and shaking her head.

"You'll be fine - it's only a bath," he grinned, then clapped his hands together. "Go!"

Nicola jumped backwards in surprise as Anneka suddenly shoved the vat forwards, and twisted over her shoulder to see where they were going as she padded rapidly backwards to keep up with the vat's movement. They turned the corner towards the first pipe, and she pushed back on the handle as they wheeled Kim underneath it. The girl in the vat raised her hands to cover her face as they stopped it so that her tummy was right underneath the pipe.

"Pull it!" Nicola encouraged the chipmunk girl standing to the side, and she reached up and yanked on the chain, stumbling back a little as it came off the end.

Their eyes all went to the cover as it fell open, releasing a cascade of thick green slime that smacked down on to the mouse girl's tummy. She shrieked from behind her hands as the fluid splurged over her, specks of it licking out to splatter on her legs and chest, most of it slithering down around her to coat her middle and sides in a layer of dark green.

Nicola looked down into the vat as she watched the flow of gunge gradually subside, Kim taking her hands off her face and squeamishly reaching down to her gungy tummy to brush the stuff off to the sides. Nicola began pulling the vat again, and the mouse girl put her hands out to the sides, smearing green stuff on the inside walls of the vat as Anneka ducked away from the last blobs of the stuff still dripping out of the pipe.

Together they manhandled the vat to the end of the room, where another pipe waited. Nicola hauled the vat around as Anneka let go of it, slamming it into the wall a little harder than she had intended. Kim yelped and put her hand out against the side as Lesley skipped over to pull the chain dangling off the pipe above her. The mouse girl's other hand shot to her face as the cover burst open.

This time, a heavier yellow downpour hit Kim right in the chest, and she turned her face away, raising both her hands into the torrent of gunk to defend herself. Nicola ducked back a little as the bright liquid spurted outwards as it splattered off the mouse girl's hands, coating the walls of the vat and most of the floor around it with a thick glooping noise.

The yellow downpour eased off, dribbling gunge over the mouse girl's tummy again, and she looked down at herself, shaking her sloppy hands as she returned them squeamishly to her tummy, sloshing her legs a little from side to side in the gunge that was beginning to collect around her. She looked up behind her again as Nicola stepped into the puddle of gunge that had formed around the vat and hauled it out of the corner, with Anneka tiptoeing over to grab the other end again.

Alex called from the side of the room as he watched them struggle around a pair of tight corners and come back towards him. "You look OK so far, Kim, but the bigger pipes are towards the end - these are just practice runs!"

Nicola heard the mouse girl whimper from below her as they sped along a straight line, stopping under each of a row of three smaller pipes that splattered her with even more gunge. By the time they reached the next corner the vat had filled up a few inches past the top side of Kim's legs, and she squeaked as they jerked the vat forwards again, making the liquid slosh up over her tummy. She brushed it off with her hands, looking up and cringing as she saw yet another pipe approaching.

Nicola panted a little as she maneuvered the tub around another awkward corner, watching Kim prop herself a little more upright, slithering against the slimy padding that she was lying on. Together, they wheeled it over so that the tank was underneath the largest pipe so far. Lesley skipped forwards and took hold of its chain, but she hesitated as Kim pushed herself off the pad she was leaning on and sat up underneath it, biting her lip in a smile before burying her face in her hands in preparation.

"Go on, pull it!" Alex encouraged. Lesley looked to the side at him, then back to the pipe, and yanked on the chain.

This time an alarm sounded from the ceiling as the bottom of the pipe burst open, spewing out a wide downpour of mixed brown and orange gunge that crashed down into the vat right on top of the hunched mouse girl, completely enveloping her. A laughing shriek came from somewhere in the middle of the sloppy torrent as it bulged to the sides a little around her, the edge of her gungy head or shoulders occasionally poking out of the falling slime as she wriggled around beneath it. Nicola looked down to the surface of the vat as it quickly glooped up the way, rippling lazily as the gunge poured in.

Slowly, the murky flood eased back, and Kim reached both hands out in front of her trying to find something to hold on to, her arms completely coated in the mixed orange and brown slop that dripped thickly from the ends of her outstretched fingers. She wriggled forwards out of the slowing downpour, her face screwed tightly up and her soaked ears hanging heavily behind her. As the gunge from the pipe slowed to a set of thick drizzles from its edges, she shook her hands again, and slowly reached to her face, using two fingers on each one to wipe across her eyes before blinking them open. Nicola couldn't help laughing as the mouse girl looked down at her completely coated fur, the whites of her eyes showing up brightly against the gunk that dripped down her face and across her shocked mouth.

"You've still got a few seconds left - it's not over yet, Kim!" At Alex's call from the side, Nicola looked over her shoulder again, stepping out the way as the jaguar girl took hold of the vat's handle again. Kim squeamishly dipped her hands into the gunge bath to steady herself as the vat trundled forwards, and Anneka struggled to the side to get it and its now heavy contents around another tight corner. Nicola ran forwards to take hold of the front of the vat again, and guided it gently around the bend, watching the sloppy mouse girl inside grimace a little as the stuff glooped from side to side around her. They got around the corner and on to a straight to head to another pipe, but as soon as they were picking up speed a klaxon blared from the ceiling.

"Sorry, you're out of time - stop there!" Alex called above the noise, and Nicola tugged on her end of the vat to gently slow it to a stop. "I bet that's a relief for you, Kim..."

As he picked his way over the barriers, Nicola looked down at the mouse girl, who struggled back into an upright sitting position. After the ride in the vat after the last pipe, she was now covered in mixed brightly colored slop and sitting in a pool of it that came up to her waist, hugging herself and rubbing her slimy hands up and down her arms. She nodded a little, twisting around to watch as he approached, and then squeaked as she wriggled to haul herself upwards. The gunge made a thick splashing noise as she dipped her hands in behind her to push herself forwards, and unsteadily she got to her feet, thick drops of gunge dripping and sliding down her coated fur.

Alex put his hands on the edge of the vat as he approached and ducked down to look at the scale on the side, and Nicola leaned around to see too. "I'd say... you were up to the sixty point mark," he decided, squinting at where the gunge surface ended and the splatter marks on the side of the vat began. "But it might go all the way up to seventy if you sit down again, Kim..."

"Oh..." The sloppy mouse girl wriggled her fingers, turning from side to side and looking down at the murky surface again. With some encouragement called from the others, she giggled and gradually eased herself down again, eeping as she lowered herself back into the bath of gunge, and leaned back squeamishly on to the pads, her lower half and tummy disappearing under the thick opaque liquid. She twisted to the side in an attempt to see the scale that Alex was looking at.

"Oh, it's almost there but you're just a fraction of an inch short - I'll give you sixty-five for it!" he eventually announced. He straightened up and offered his hands to the laughing mouse girl. "Come on, bath's over... you've been very brave in there..."

Kim raised her hands out of the gunge, gathering her messy hair and squeezing it out as she rearranged it behind her head, and then reached up to grab on to the red wolf's wrists. Nicola grinned at the awful glooping noise the gunge made as she was hauled up out of it, and moved away from the vat as Alex gently lifted their dripping team mate up and back on to the floor. She let go of him unsteadily, raising her arms to the sides to look as the multi-colored slop oozed down her legs.

"So you got Kim fairly messy," Alex chuckled as the completely coated mouse girl moved her hands over herself, dragging gunk off her fur. "And the rest of you aren't looking too clean, either, but we've got one team member who's still nice and dry... Nicola, ready for your turn?"

"Yep," she grinned, looking forward to seeing what they were going to do to her. Accepting Alex's outstretched hand, she walked with him to the door of the room and back out into the main chamber.

"Let's see..." Alex took the minicomputer out of his pocket and fumbled with it with his free hand, tilting it a little from side to side as he looked at something on it. "Hmm," he said, and Nicola craned her neck to see, just before he put it down again. "All right - it's not where I was expecting, but let's give it a look..." Nicola glanced back at her messy team mates just before Alex tugged on her arm again, leading her down the corridor a little towards the sprayers, where they stopped at a door on the right hand side.

The red wolf reached up to enter the combination on the lock, and let go of Nicola's hand as she stepped up to the blank metallic door. "Go on in..." he invited as it slid aside, stepping back to wave them all through.

Nicola put her hands on the door frame and stepped cautiously through the narrow opening to see the contents of the new room as the others came in behind her. It was simple in layout - on the wall opposite the door, ten phone-booth-like cubicles were lined up, with numbers displayed on the middle of each of their doors going from zero to nine across the room. Each one had a large covered section on the top, with areas that looked like they could light up on the front of them.

She paced over to the left, hearing Alex come in and the door humming closed behind him. There was a projection screen on the wall next to the door, but otherwise, the booths were the entire contents of the room.

"So," Alex started. "This is the final game we'll be playing before going to the processing wing, and I should have the details of how it works here..." He raised his minicomputer and looked down at it for a moment, scrolling through something with the thumbwheel on its side. After tapping at it in a couple of places, he looked up at the row of booths again, an unsure frown on his face. "No, this isn't... we're not meant to be here. I've led you into the wrong place, sorry." He waved a hand vaguely behind him. "Let's get out of here..."

Nicola raised her eyebrows and looked around at the others' expressions of confusion as the red wolf spun around and performed the usual routine of tapping out a sequence out on the panel next to the door. But she looked back over at the entrance suddenly as the keypad emitted a harsh buzz in response, and Alex jumped back from it in acted surprise.

After staying frozen for a moment, Alex dropped his hands to his sides. "ROB, where are you?"

Nicola looked to the projection screen as the yellow wireframe face that she'd seen at the start of the show pixellated into view. It appeared quietly amused for a moment before speaking. "Having trouble, are -"

"Come on, you know your directions tricked me into leading them into the wrong room," Alex cut him off, striding over from the door to face the screen and waving the pocket device at it. "Can you not be a good manic self-aware computer and let us out of here?"

Kim giggled at the remark, and even more at the expression that the computer's face made in response. "Actually I'm changing the plan," it leered. "Sure, I'll let you out... but you're going to have to find the code to do it yourselves. Just ask Alex how."

The face vanished, and Nicola and the others turned to Alex, who rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his free hand.

"Hm." He shrugged. "That's never happened before... but..." He looked down at the computer again thoughtfully, turning slowly towards the other side of the room and pacing as he concentrated on it. "Aha..." he said in realization, and it turned into a chuckle as he waved one finger in the air. "All right, I see. I've got to admit, this is a clever one..."

He turned on his heel towards the row of booths, spreading his hands out towards them. "I'm afraid Nicola's comeuppance will have to wait until later - the code to open the door's hidden in how these cubicles are set up. It has four unique digits in it, and the booths with those four numbers won't go off when someone steps into them. The other six... well, I don't need to tell you at this stage, do I?"

Nicola shook her head, smiling as she ran her fingers through her still-clean hair. She laughed inwardly at the various reactions of the others as they realized what that was going to mean for them.

"Before the booths are unlocked, though, you're going to have to answer one of the questions ROB's just given me," the red wolf went on, heading towards the screen again. If you answer wrongly, then I'll come round to you again - if you get it right, then you're going to have to pick a booth to enter, and... well, hope you're lucky in choosing one of the four that'll let you out clean."

"Aren't you going to help us out?" Nicola interrupted, grinning up at him.

She was delighted that Alex hesitated a moment. "Someone's got to stay out here and ask the questions," he smiled back eventually. "Anyway, once you've got all four, you'll have to work out the code on that keypad - those digits in some random order will open the door."

"Right." Nicola was surprised to hear Lesley's voice so confident, and looked over her shoulder at her as she nodded, tucking her still slick hair behind her head.

"The number of points you get depends on how long it takes for you to open the door of the room and let us out. So if all of that makes sense... do you want to start us off, team leader?" Alex asked the jaguar girl, who glanced at the tanks again and then looked back at him.

"Sure," she answered.

"All right - if you're all ready..." Nicola smiled over at the booths on the other side of the room, then casually spun around and joined the line than Lesley and Kim had formed behind their team leader, bouncing from foot to foot eagerly.

"Let's begin! Anneka - what's the only vowel that isn't in the top row of letters on a standard keyboard?"

Nicola leaned to see past the other two, seeing Anneka's hand on her chin and tail swishing as she thought. "A", she answered.

"Absolutely right - get over there and pick a cubicle!" Alex extended a hand to the right, and the jaguar girl dashed a couple of paces over before skidding to a halt and looking from left to right, hands hovering at her sides unsurely. After a moment's hesitation, she spun to the right and skipped over to the far end of the row.

"She's going for number nine..." Alex commented as the three other team members watched the feline. Anneka put a hand out to grab the long vertical handle on the side of the door as she reached the booth, then tugged it open a little and slipped inside. She turned around to reveal a nervous grin on her face as it swung to click closed, the movement of the door blowing her black hair a little. Nicola found herself holding her breath.

Suddenly an electronic chirp-like confirmation sound came from the tank, and the large light on its front lit up in yellow. "Yes!" Alex called over to her, and she looked back at him before letting her breath out. Nicola did the same. "You're safe, you've got one - come out of there..." A relieved smile on her face, Anneka pushed the door of the booth open and began to return to the end of the line.

"Lesley, let's try to speed this up - what's the only metal that's liquid at room temperature?"

"Mercury," she nodded immediately.

"You've got it - let's hope you're as lucky!" Before he had finished the sentence, Lesley had darted to the side, heading behind him to get to the tank labeled with a zero.

"Starting from the other end, maybe it'll pay off..." Alex said after her, then turned back to the others. "Kim, what was..." As he read out the question to the mouse girl, Nicola watched Lesley tiptoe into the gunge booth on the left, standing under the nozzle on its ceiling and curling her toes as the door clicked closed. Smiling anxiously, she looked out towards the others, and then upwards, just as an alarm hooted and a wide green downpour splurged down from the ceiling to hit her in the face. There was a yelp from underneath the gungy dome as the thick liquid splattered outwards to slop against the walls and door, hiding her from view as the tank's light glowed red.

"Oh!" Alex called over the noise of the gunge tank siren as the sloppy torrent subsided, Lesley just about becoming visible again grinning sheepishly out from behind the streaks of green on the door. He turned his attention back to the others. "Sorry Kim, but that was the wrong answer - Nicola's turn..."

Nicola sidestepped nervously towards Alex, then turned to face him as Kim moved to the back of the line and Lesley pushed the door of the gunge tank open from the inside, poking her green-coated head out before she stepped out all the way. She knew she was only a question away from possibly getting the same experience.

"Nicola, who recently brought out the single 'I Believe'?"

"Oh..." Nicola rubbed her forehead and thought, knowing that each second was costing them. "I don't know... was it Wolfstar?", she shook her head eventually, guessing the only recent pop group she knew.

"Sorry..." She growled frustratedly as he shook his head, and moved out of the way to let Anneka in, pacing along past the other two as Kim let Lesley in in front of her, and stood at the back again.

Anneka had answered her question correctly by the time Nicola turned around again, and as Lesley stepped forwards she watched the jaguar girl bound over to the cubicles again, look along the row, then head for the tank next to the one that Lesley had been in.

"She's going for booth one... is she going to get messy this time?" Alex announced after reading out the question to Lesley. Nicola watched tensely as Anneka closed the door on herself, this time squeezing her eyes closed and cupping her hands to her mouth, tapping her fingers together.

The same sound from before played, and the tank's light turned on - yellow again. "No - you're fine!" Alex called to her as she opened her eyes, looking around in surprise. "So you've got half the code already, but there are only two safe booths left out of seven..." He leaned down to Lesley as she quietly repeated her answer to him, and shook his head. The chipmunk girl turned, messy hair swinging out behind her, and dashed to get behind Nicola as the jaguar girl let herself out of the tank.

"Kim, what three flavors make up Neapolitan ice cream?"

"Er... vanilla, chocolate and strawberry?" she asked back uncertainly.

"That's right - go over and pick a booth!" Kim gasped, looking towards the line of cubicles and stepping uncertainly towards them. After a couple of paces she made a decision and jogged to the middle of the row.

"Nicola," Alex continued, making her look round to face him. "The Bloom Tower is the central landmark of which city?"

"Um." Distractedly, Nicola tossed her hair back as she looked to the side at the mouse girl, who had entered the fifth booth along and was standing tensely with her eyes closed, head bowed and her hands hovering in front of her. "Anglia", she said as she moved her eyes back to the host.

A siren and high-pitched squeal made them both jump, and Nicola whipped her head back to see a thick column of dark green stuff pouring on to Kim from the tank's ceiling. She shook her head as the stuff domed off it, slapping down on to her shoulders and dripping down her chest as she shifted her weight backwards, one hand feeling behind her for the back wall.

"Sorry, Kim..." Alex called to the mouse girl above the thick slapping sound that the remainder of the gunge made as it dripped from the nozzle above her on to the tank's floor. "You got it right, though, Nicola - get over there and hope the same thing doesn't happen to you!"

Swallowing as the red wolf pointed towards the row of booths, Nicola ran over towards them. She kept her eyes on the dripping mouse girl as she pushed the messy door of her booth open, one hand adjusting the strap of her bikini top over her slippery shoulder then reaching down to brush some of the slop off her chest fur. "Good luck," she whispered as she stepped out, grinning as Nicola put her hand on the bar to open the booth next to the one she had been in and tugged the heavy door open.

As she stepped into the enclosure, she felt her heart speed up, and looked up at the dark round opening in the middle of the ceiling, a cap halfway up being all that separated her from the slime, if there was any, above her head. She positioned herself underneath it as she turned around to look out at the others, looking at the backwards figure 6 on the door as it swung slowly closed and eventually clicked shut.

She closed her eyes. Alex's muffled words were audible through the door as he asked Anneka another question. As she strained to hear them, there was a click from the ceiling, and she gasped then closed her mouth just before the slime glooped out of the tank above and splurged on to her head.

Nicola smiled as she bowed her head down under the weight of the falling slime, feeling it slither over her head and pour off her hair as it tumbled forwards over her messy shoulders. Balling and unballing her fists as the gunk ran down the outside of her arms, she leaned back into the downpour of thick liquid and tilted her head from side to side to get totally covered, secretly enjoying the feeling of the smooth slop pouring over her.

The shower from the booth's ceiling eased off slowly, and Nicola brought her hands up to her eyes to wipe them as the last heavy blobs of the stuff splotted on to her head and shoulders. She shook her gungy head, opening her eyes to see the walls of the tank around her painted in bright green, the stuff dripping down from the dome pattern it had formed as it had splattered off her head. Shuffling carefully forwards, dragging her bare toes in the collected slime at the bottom of the tank, she pushed the door open again and stepped out again, gripping the edge of the door to keep her balance as the remains of the slimy liquid on her fur slithered over her.

As she moved away from the machine she saw Lesley dashing for the left hand side of the row of gunge tanks again, putting her hand out on to the handle for the second booth. She tugged on it, but then suddenly seemed to change her mind, letting it fall closed and instead stepping over to the one next to it. Nicola kept her eyes on her as she moved towards Kim and Anneka again, watching the chipmunk girl step into the clear box and clasp her hands behind her back as she turned to face the team.

The hooter sounded again, and the slender chipmunk girl closed her eyes and smiled, drawing in a breath as a yellow column splurged down from the ceiling to dome out over her head. As Alex read a question out to Kim, Nicola grinned as Lesley's face poked out of the gungy downpour, her hair now coated in a mixture of yellow and green that mingled together as it dripped in dollops on to the floor. Anneka giggled a little nervously at the sight, running her tail through her hands and bouncing on her heels.

Kim moved to the back of the line after getting her question wrong, and Nicola looked up at Alex again as her turn came round again.

"Nicola - what's the more common name for sodium chloride?"

"Salt," she answered, sure this time.

"Yes! Good luck, because you're going back to the booths..." Alex waved her over, and she listened to him continue as she stepped towards the row of cubicles again. "You've tried six of them now and you've got two of the numbers, so you've got 2, 4, 7 and 8 to choose from with a fifty-fifty chance of getting gunged again..."

Nicola stopped, looking along the row of booths for a second and shivering as she looked at the sixth one along that she had just been gunged in, which was still drizzling green stuff from its ceiling. Turning a little to the left, she headed for the fourth one between two similarly messy tanks, putting her hand out to catch the large handle as she ran towards it.

She pulled the door open, slipped around it and flicked it towards her as she stepped on to the metallic surface of the booth's floor, then spun round to face her team mates, hunching down instinctively as the door swung shut in front of her. As it clicked closed, she shut her eyes expectantly, and ducked down further as an electronic beep sounded.

"You're all right!" Alex called to her. Nicola looked up in surprise, realizing that she had picked one of the correct ones, and after hesitating for a moment, pushed the door open again and stepped out as Anneka answered yet another question wrongly. They reached the end of the line behind the mouse girl at the same time, and Nicola glanced to the fingers of dark green slop running over Kim's back as the chipmunk girl answered another question.

"Well, I hate to do it, Lesley," the red wolf announced, and Nicola leaned around Kim to see, "but you're right, so pick a cubicle again - you've got a one in three chance of staying clean this time..."

The chipmunk girl laughed a little as she scampered over away from the others, looking from the lone tank that hadn't been tried on the left to the two on the right. After a moment of thought, she padded over towards the pair of tanks and hesitated, her hand moving from the handle nearest her and the one further over. As she eventually decided to open tank number 7, Nicola glanced over as Kim made for tank at the other end, having answered her question correctly.

"You might want to stay out of there a moment and see if Lesley gets it right, Kim," Alex called over to the mouse girl as she put her hand on the door of the booth. The chipmunk girl was already inside, and had her hands clasped at her mouth as she waited for the door to close. "Because if she stays clean... no!" He stopped in mid-sentence as the gunge tank siren rang out again, and Lesley was engulfed in a sloppy bright green downpour, putting her hands out in front of her to catch the gunge as it domed off her head.

"Kim, whatever happens now we'll know what the last digit is - let's hope you're luckier!" As Alex quickly called out to her, the mouse girl tugged the door of her booth open and turned to take a step backwards inside it, adopting the same pose that she had stood in before, head bowed and face scrunched up in readiness for the gunge pouring on her head. Nicola gasped as the light at the top of the tank buzzed on - but it was yellow.

"Yes! Kim, you picked the right one - you've got all four of the digits now," Alex announced as the mouse girl looked up, smiling in disbelief. The door of booth 7 opened too, revealing the slippery chipmunk girl as she stepped out dripping gunge on to the floor from all over her fur. "Now, quickly, get over there and find the code to let us out!"

Nicola looked over to the door as he pointed towards it, and she dashed with Anneka over towards the panel next to it as they were joined by Kim and Lesley. She hovered her finger over the buttons for a moment before Lesley slipped past her, leaning in to quickly tap out a combination of the numbers they had worked out on the panel. A low buzzer sounded, making her jump.

"Was it one, two, four and nine?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder as she tried another.

Nicola spun round and looked at the lights on top of the messy tanks again. "Yeah," she nodded, and watched the chipmunk girl try another slightly different combination, about to give advice but stopping herself as she saw she was trying every combination in a sequence.

Alex wandered up behind them as the chipmunk girl stabbed at the panel. "You're getting warm, I think..." he said as she tapped out a four, a one, a nine and a two. "You got two right there, you're almost there..."

Lesley didn't show any signs of listening to him, instead concentrating on the sequence that she had been trying. Nicola was counting the number of tries she had made under her breath, and just as she let out a groan of frustration, the panel suddenly gave a high pitched sound and the door hummed open.

"Yes!" Lesley pumped her hands in the air as she jumped a little off the ground, the gunge she had been covered with in the booths being shaken off her hair as she moved. Nicola raised her hand and clapped it with hers in the air as she turned, then looked back at Alex as he moved to look through the door out at the corridor.

"Well done for that, Lesley - and bad luck! You got the most right answers and you just got three tankfuls of gunge to show for it..." She giggled a little as she crossed her arms and ran them down her messy shoulders. Nicola reached to the back of her own head, twitching a little as her hand touched the wet, slimy surface of her hair.

"If you'd had more right answers to the questions then you'd probably have got there a lot quicker, so I can only give you fifty points for that - but that's not bad at all for a first try at a game we weren't even expecting," Alex announced, and Nicola nodded, only half-listening as she glanced to her sides at the mouse and gunge-doused chipmunk compared to the slightly cleaner feline. "So that brings you up to 195 for the round, and 720 for the whole run so far as we head into the final area that we've got to go to... think you can make a special effort for the last few games?"

Nicola nodded again confidently, even though she hadn't been paying attention to their score throughout the game. All she could think of was how the last round was usually made even messier for the teams, and trying to imagine how they could beat what they'd done to them so far.

Alex turned to Anneka, and motioned towards the door. Smiling, she headed past him and stepped towards it. As soon as she had passed him, he suddenly swung around, scooping her up with one hand on her back and another behind her knees. She yelped and then squeaked as he continued to turn in one motion, heading towards the gunge booth that none of them had entered.

"Actually there's just one more thing to do while we're here," the red wolf called over his shoulder above the feline's protests, adjusting his grip as she waggled her legs and squirmed in his grasp. Nicola clapped her hands together and raced over to the tank, overtaking them and swinging the door open as Alex crouched down to put Anneka back down on the ground again. "Come on, Anneka, the others got messy for the good of the team, and I think it's only fair you get the same experience..." he said as the others behind him cheered, one hand still on her back as he gently but firmly nudged her inside.

"Oh..." The jaguar girl whimpered as she stepped tentatively into the gunge booth, sagging her shoulders as she defeatedly shuffled to get underneath the chute in the center of its ceiling. She put her hands gently over her eyes, staying still as Nicola gleefully let go of the door, allowing it to swing slowly closed.

Nicola scampered around to the front to join the others as Alex stepped aside, one hand out towards the cowering feline, who was looking shyly through her hands as the door clicked into place. The gunge tank hooter blared, she closed her hands again, and squeaked as the machine spewed a column of smooth dark green stuff on to her.

After letting the stuff splurge out from her head for a moment, the jaguar girl leaned a little to the side, a lick of thick green liquid across her head as the downpour slopped on to her shoulder, splatting on to her neck and flowing down the left hand side of her chest. She opened her eyes for a fraction of a second before closing them again, taking her messy hands away from her face and stretching them out in front of her as the gunge poured on to one side of her head, hiding half of her embarrassedly grinning face from view as it twitched and splattered over her.

Nicola led another cheer as the slime from the booth's ceiling subsided, Anneka clasping her hands on her head and drumming her feet on the ground as the last gungy blobs trickled out above her. With a sigh, she stepped forwards out from under the chute again, wiping one messy hand across the clear front of the tank as she looked out at the others.

"Now we're really finished here," Alex grinned back at her. As she pushed on the door, he took a step forward to open it for her, his other hand outstretched as she came out flicking the slop on her hands towards her team-mates. Nicola joined in, reaching around to her back and throwing slime back at her. "There's time to give you a quick shower at the water-sprayers, then we're heading across to get to our last area."

Round 4

The team headed across the white circular room again, Nicola keeping her eyes on the still slowly dripping nozzle of the Pod as she ran her fingers through her damp hair. The four of them followed Alex around the edge of the room, avoiding the cold puddle of green slime that had splashed outwards from its centerpiece, and he turned to face them as they reached the corridor on the opposite side.

"This is the last area of the complex we're going to visit," he said as they gathered around, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb towards a roll-top door taking up the whole width of the corridor a few yards down. "Past this door's the processing wing, which contains the pumping machines that they used to use for hauling stuff up from the sea bed, as well as the cargo transport from the shore. Let's get you in there and see which rooms are open to us..."

He beckoned as he turned to dash towards the roll-top door, and Nicola led the group at a jog after him. He ducked down to haul on two handles at the base of the door, and straightened as it squeaked and rattled upwards. Nicola ducked down a little to walk through it ahead of the others.

"Whoa," she gasped as she straightened up, pacing towards the handrail in front of her and leaning over it as she looked down at the room in front of them. It was large even compared to the rest of the IZ set, and resembled a metallic hangar. She was standing on a walkway that ran around the room about seven feet off the floor, a couple of sets of stairs leading down to ground level at the corners. In the middle of the room below was a rectangular capsule that had been done up to look like some sort of futuristic aircraft, mounted on rails that led to another larger roll-top door behind it. It was positioned so that the dark glass of the cockpit area at its front was next to the walkway on the right side of the room.

Nicola looked over her shoulder as the others moved towards the handrail as well, looking similarly surprised as they looked around the space.

"I can tell you're impressed!" Alex announced as he paced towards them from the door, looking down at his pocket computer again. "We've got four more games to play here, which are all going to be worth double points at the end of the round to give you your final score. But before we actually venture into any of the processing rooms, I've got something to show you over here..."

He headed off to the right, around towards the shuttle's nose section. Nicola took her hands off the rail and scampered after him as he led them around to a wider part of the walkway, right opposite the dark curved cockpit area. A small control panel was mounted on top of a waist-high podium in front of them.

"Do you remember when we asked you, well before you got here, who you'd most like to gunge?" Alex asked, tapping his fingers on the side of the console as they gathered round. Nicola nodded along with the others - it had been the last section on the application form, and her heart jumped as she realized what they were about to see just as Alex continued. "We got hold of one of your nominations who agreed to join you in the Industrial Zone today, and they're watching us from inside the cockpit now..." He pointed at the curved darkened glass, and Nicola strained to see into it, thinking that she could see a shadowy figure just visible through the semitransparent surface.

Alex paused for a moment before stepping backwards and turning to the panel. "Let's take a look at who we've got in there..." he announced as he pressed something on it. Nicola blinked as a set of plumes of special effect smoke hissed from the edges of the door, and the dark panel began to swing slowly upwards and outwards.

She stepped to the side and crouched down, hands on her knees, as she stared at the widening opening at the bottom of the capsule's front. She was hoping to see her nomination, her brother Nat, inside. But as she glimpsed a patch of gray fur through the gap, a scream came from her left, and she whipped her head round to see Lesley bouncing excitedly with her mouth silently open in shock.

She turned back to the shuttle as the panel lifted the rest of the way. Inside the cockpit section, behind a curved dashboard arrangement, a young gray wolf was seated, his unruly long brown hair worn loose behind him. As the panel clicked into place above him, he grinned a little embarrassedly back at the speechless chipmunk girl, his arms folded in front of his lighter chest fur and tapping the fingers of one hand against his arm.

"So, Lesley..." Alex chuckled, putting his arm around her and leading her gently over towards the panel, right opposite the wolf. "I think it's safe to say you recognize him..."

"Uh-huh." Lesley nodded, then swallowed, bouncing from foot to foot as she tried to calm down again.

"I can tell you're a little taken aback, so do you want me to do the introductions?" he asked with a smile. She nodded her head again, and he turned around, putting his arm out towards the shuttle as he addressed the others, reading off the pocket computer.

"This innocent-looking wolf," - he pointed into the capsule as its occupant nodded shyly, looking uncomfortable at being the center of attention - "goes by the initials DF, and he and Lesley met when they took a language class together. They discovered they were both IZ fans, she applied to be on without telling him - and after she's survived three rounds of games so far, I think she's justified in trying to gunge him as well!" Nicola watched the wolf boy's reaction as Alex spoke, smiling as she noticed him twitch slightly and glance upwards at the mention of the word. "Think that's fair, DF?"

"Well..." The wolf hesitated, clearing his throat as his eyes moved around the capsule he was inside, and laughing uncomfortably. "Yeah, kind of..."

Alex smiled again. "I don't think he's too sure - but don't worry, we're going to give you a chance to save yourself. I'll tell you how it's going to work." The red wolf looked down at the panel and put his hand on it, pointing over his shoulder. Nicola looked behind them, seeing only a blank wall at first, but as the lights at their end of the room dimmed, a projected green screen with a crude ship graphic at the bottom flickered into life, a couple of angular walls rapidly scrolling past.

"This... apparently... is part of the simulation that was used to help new pilots of this thing get a feel for the controls," Alex read out from his pocket computer, then looked up at it. "I think the budget must have been a bit tight at the time..."

Nicola laughed at the remark - the screen reminded her of the very first computers that she'd ever used at the start of school. She looked over to the panel as Alex turned back to the panel, spinning the chipmunk girl gently around to look down at it with him again.

"DF's going to be in control of the ship you see there - at the moment the sea looks open and clear, but you're going to be able to use this to drop obstacles in his path," he demonstrated to her, sliding one control with his hand and pressing another. The others watched as a polygonal rock scrolled down one side of the screen and disappeared off the bottom. "You're going to have one minute to cause a crash - and when your friend in there makes a mistake, you're going to get to start up the gunge tank on him. Looking forward to it?"

"Oh, yes." The chipmunk girl's long blonde hair bobbed a little behind her as she nodded.

"So you get gunged if you hit any of the obstacles that Lesley drops in your way," Alex called across to the gray wolf. "But if you do manage to survive for a full minute without crashing, I'm sure you'd quite like to see Lesley in there herself..."

"Heh heh - yeah..." He smiled enthusiastically, and Nicola glanced sideways at the chipmunk girl, who cringed a little at the thought.

"All right! If you'd like to get ready to save yourself, DF..." Nicola turned to the gunge machine again to see the young wolf lean forward and reach out to the flight joystick directly in front of him. He adjusted his grip on the finger grooves at the back a couple of times, anxiously looking to the screen, its light reflecting off his eyes in the darkness. "I should warn you that he's had some time to practice this while you were getting gunged earlier, Lesley, so... don't feel you have to hold back!"

"I won't," she grinned to herself, eyes fixed on the little screen in the panel in front of her as she watched the shuttle representation on it weave about a little.

"Time starts when you hit that button for the first time - good luck!" he gestured towards Lesley. The chipmunk girl breathed out, then jabbed at the panel.

Nicola and the others looked up to the projected screen to see a timer appear at the top, counting back from sixty. A widely spaced cluster of rocks came into view, the chipmunk girl's opponent dodging them easily. He stayed to one side, keeping away from another two of them on the other edge of the screen.

"Come on, Lesley!" Nicola encouraged.

"She can only put down a few at a time," Alex explained, eyes fixed on the screen as well, "but it's going to get faster..."

Nicola gripped the rail behind her anxiously as she watched the game, looking back and forward between the screen and the wolf's concentrated face. The pace gradually sped up, and after just a few more seconds she jumped as he dived the ship to the side and only just missed one of them.

"You nearly had him!" she called over at her, then breathed out as she realized she was practically jumping up and down. Another couple of near misses later, and with the timer dropping below thirty seconds, she glanced over to see Kim whispering something in the chipmunk girl's ear. Anneka had her eyes fixed on the screen, drumming her feet on the ground.

After another glance at the gray wolf, she turned back to the screen to see it was nearly blank again. Suddenly a pattern of five rocks sped down the screen at the now rapid pace, and she heard the noise of the joystick suddenly being thumped to the side as the wolf only just got through them. The same pattern appeared again, and he dodged them in the same way. She blinked, then looked up to see what she thought was the same pattern yet another time, but she realized just before they reached the ship graphic that they were arranged the other way round. Gasping as the wolf made to get past them in the same way again, she heard a yelp from behind her as he realized his mistake too late, and she jumped as the screen flashed white and an electronic crash noise played. With a cheer from Lesley, a repeating buzzer sounded as the ship graphic blinked along with the rock it had collided with, signaling the game was over.

She turned around to look at the wolf's reaction, and saw him slipping his hand off the control stick as he slumped back in the chair, his shoulders shaking a little as he grimaced and looked up above his head.

"Lesley... that was nearly you in the gunge tank!" Alex said as he stepped forwards, putting his arm around the grinning chipmunk girl again. "But I think it was thanks to Kim's help that you finally got him with eleven seconds to go, so DF stays in there - and I think I'll allow you to do the honors yourself..."

Looking down at the control panel, he tapped in a code and then lifted a plastic cover aside. As the others gathered to watch, Nicola leaned around to see a small red button flashing underneath it. Alex stepped back, holding his hand out towards it, and Lesley moved in front of him, reaching for the blinking trigger.

Resting her finger on top of it, she looked over the gap towards the long-haired wolf, who wriggled a little uncomfortably from side to side, smiling nervously back at her for a moment but with his eyes darting to the sides and top of the cockpit around him. Nicola looked between the two of them as Lesley dragged the moment out, and suddenly she jabbed down on the button, holding it in place.

A shrill alarm sounded from inside the tank, and the wolf jumped and tensed up in the seat, closing his eyes as he drew in his breath. Nicola, bouncing with excitement as she leaned on the rail in front of her, glanced around the edges of the capsule as she waited to see what was going to happen, and she whooped as four drizzles of thick bright yellow slop spurted into life from the sides of the tank, dribbling on to the floor behind the dashboard for a moment before strengthening. The gray wolf barked as they splurged on to his chest and shoulders, hunching up as he was coated in a soupy yellow layer that slid slowly down to cover his front.

The top two streams angled up slightly, slopping across his hair and back and making him hunch up further, just before two diagonal streams of white foam hissed into life from the top corners of the tank, splattering on the sides of his head and rolling off to slither down from his twitching shoulders as specks of the stuff flew outwards. Nicola heard Lesley cheer as yet more yellow stuff was spurted from the lower front of the cockpit, and he yelped and jerked upward as it hit him in the face, then flailed his hands in front of him in an attempt to defend himself, strings of the stuff dripping from the end of his laughing muzzle.

Nicola leaned down a little more, catching the occasional glimpse of the wolf through the air thick with sprayed foam and yellow gunge, his outline becoming gradually clearer as the jets began to ease off. As the sprays of gunge became drizzles from the pipes at the side of the tank and the foam nozzles spluttered and stopped, she heard Lesley's laughter at the sight of him - he was completely coated in the runny yellow and white mixture, slumped against the back of the chair with a single drizzle of the stuff dripping from the scruff on the end of his chin, his eyes firmly closed but his mouth still a little open in surprise. As she watched, he wriggled upwards in the chair again, raising his slimy arms to the sides and shaking them in the air to make dollops of gunge drip down from them. He moved his hands to the top of his muzzle and dragged the sloppy liquid away, and with some strands of the gray fur on his face visible again, blinked a couple of times as he opened his eyes, shaking his head and looking up at the giggling chipmunk as he wiped down his muzzle and chin. Sheepishly, he grinned and then waved over at her.

Suddenly a deeper alarm blared, and the gungy wolf dropped his hand back to his side, grimacing and hunching up again. Nicola looked at the top of the tank just in time to see a wide column of mixed dark and light gunge drop down from the middle of the ceiling. The wolf tensed as its shadow fell across him, and an instant later he was engulfed in the murky green downpour.

Nicola watched the dome of thick liquid twitching as he squirmed underneath it, the occasional outline of a flailing gungy arm visible as it played over him, the stuff making a thick slurping noise as it coated the dashboard in front of him and painted the back wall of the cockpit area. After a few moments his muzzle poked out of the downpour again, his face frozen in the same unsure grin as he let the slop slither down the back of his head, his ears flattened under its weight and with rivulets of gunge drizzling from their tips.

"What do you think of that, Lesley?" Alex asked, his arm still around the cheering chipmunk girl as they watched the slime pouring on to the utterly coated wolf's head gradually slow to a drizzle from above, gradually spattering the blobby remains of the tank's contents on to him. "Do you think you're even now?"

"Just about," she giggled, her eyes fixed on him as she watched the mixed gunge slither and drip down him, his eyes firmly closed underneath the colorful glutinous layer.

"And how about you, DF - how are you feeling in there?"

The young wolf looked up and visibly sighed, looking a lot more relaxed now that the inevitable had happened. "Awesome," he tried to deadpan, but it turned into a chuckle at the end, and more of the mingling green and yellow gunk slithered around his shoulders as he moved his hands up to his eyes again. Wiping them off one by one with the palms of his hands, he shook his head, sending specks of gunge spattering outwards, and held his arms out to the sides as he looked around at the now gunge-coated interior of the capsule.

"Good - and I'm afraid I think you deserved that, because even though you didn't manage to gunge Lesley here, you almost lasted the whole time so they're only getting twenty points for the round... can you do one last favor for us?" His ears pricked up again as Alex continued. "Somewhere among those controls there's an access card that we need to get into the final game, can we borrow it from you?"

"Sure..." The wolf hauled himself up from the back of the seat, causing a thick splattering noise from the gunge that dripped down as he moved, and looked along the dashboard in front of him, holding his hair out of his face with one hand. After a moment he reached forward and pulled out a card like the other ones that Nicola had seen Alex pick up before, and at the red wolf's signal he tossed it over the gap to him.

"All right!" Alex caught it with a flick of his arm, shaking it a little to flick the gunge off before putting it in his pocket. "We're going to have to leave you in there for now, but we'll see you again in the final, where you'll get the chance to get Lesley back again..." The younger wolf grinned and nodded, still twitching a little as blobs of the gunge slithered down him. "For now, team, let's go down to the ground floor..."

He turned and walked through the group of girls, heading towards the steep metal stairs, then propped himself up by his arms on both handrails, lifting his feet off the ground, and slid rapidly down to the floor below. Kim and Anneka clambered down after him, and Lesley gave the slimy wolf a last wave before she turned to follow them. Nicola padded behind her, taking a last glance over her shoulder at him - he was still trying to wipe his face off, squirming to get his head out of the way of a couple of spurts still raining down on him from the ceiling of the capsule. Smiling, she shuddered and looked down the way as she carefully descended the stairs to rejoin the group.

"Only twenty points from that last game, I'm afraid, but you've still got three chances to earn more before the final," Alex said to them, turning and leading them around the white shuttle. "Two of them are going to be games where one of you has to entrust your cleanliness to your team members," he continued, pointing around at the heavy industrial doors around the walls of the space, "and then we'll have a bit of a surprise for the last one."

Nicola glanced at the expressions of the others as they walked in a row behind him, trying to remember the games that she had seen before on the show that they hadn't been in yet.

"And I think that we've got two team members who haven't been in that position enough yet," Alex stopped and spun round, his finger outstretched. "Nicola," - she jumped as he pointed straight at her - "...and Anneka."

Nicola looked sideways at the jaguar girl, who was outwardly smiling, but her swishing tail and curled toes gave away her nerves. She, too, was feeling anxious about seeing what they were going to do to them.

"Kim, Lesley, I think that as these two both had a hand in getting you covered in the last round, it should be your choice this time," Alex said, stepping around the group and crouching down a little to look the short chipmunk girl in the eye. "Who do you want to see taking the risk first?"

Nicola glanced aside as Anneka moved closer to her, and she accepted her one-armed hug as the mouse and chipmunk whispered to each other. After a moment, they both nodded.

"Anneka," Kim spoke up. The jaguar girl closed her eyes, grinning defeatedly, and flopped her head forwards as Nicola patted her on the back and stepped away.

"The team leader it is! Come over here, I can't wait to show you this..." Catching the jaguar girl's hand as he walked past her, he turned her around and headed for a door that was just visible in a gloomy corner underneath the upper walkway. A set of two rails, jutting slightly out of the floor, protruded out of a plastic flap-covered hole in the wall next to it.

Nicola watched the feline bouncing on her heels nervously as Alex pulled the lock on the door aside and shouldered it open. As he stepped through, the jaguar girl padded forwards, and gave a startled squeak as she looked around the door frame.

Nicola stepped through the doorway behind her and immediately saw what had caught her attention - a circular section of the floor and left wall was cut away to form a sunken pool full of a mixture of bright orange and green gunge. Behind it, a set of rails like the ones outside came out from a tunnel in the wall, the end of the rail dangling precariously above the edge of the vat.

As the others followed them in, Nicola looked around the rest of the room, which looked like it had been done up as a security center - a bank of small monitors showing various rooms took up most of the back wall. To the left of the bank, the rail that ended above the vat came out of the wall again and ran parallel to it before disappearing around another corner.

Alex moved back through the group to close the rusty door behind them, then stepped towards the area of exposed rail. Nicola moved to follow him, noticing that Anneka was still staring down at the gloopy vat and tugging on her arm to encourage her over. As the feline stumbled behind her and they approached where Alex was standing, he looked up to a lever placed at head height on the wall.

"Now, nobody's going to be completely out of danger in this game, so you won't be alone, Anneka - but this is where you're going to be sitting..."

He reached up to the switch and pulled it down, holding it in position as something rattled in one of the walls. The team looked around to see where it was coming from, and after a few seconds Nicola spotted a rickety metallic chair turning the corner out of the covered section of wall towards them.

"Oh..." Anneka shuffled her feet and looked at the floor as the seat came closer, but Nicola could see she was smiling to herself. Alex let go of the lever and the chair stopped with a squeaking noise, making the feline look up at it, tossing her black hair behind her head again with one hand.

"You might recognize this as what we call the Ride, Anneka, but fortunately for you we're only using one section of it just now," Alex said, offering a hand and turning to her. "Mind you, it's probably the section that you most want to avoid anyway..."

Anneka giggled and nodded. "Great," she said, drawing the word out sarcastically as she climbed up into the chair with his help, sitting down and placing her feet on the rest at the front.

"We'll just get you into position and meet you round there - ready?" the red wolf asked as he stepped away, putting his hand on the switch again. She shook her head, but squeaked and gave a start as he tugged it anyway, starting the chair moving along the rail again. She turned a corner into the gap in the wall and disappeared from view into the darkness.

Alex motioned for the others to gather round the vat, and Nicola followed the chipmunk and mouse girl back to where they had been standing before. As they watched, the chair with Anneka in it rounded a corner into view at the end of the tunnel that ended above the vat, and they watched her squirm uncomfortably as she got nearer, blinking as she passed under a couple of ceiling lights.

Her mouth dropped open as she neared the end of the tunnel, and she shrieked as the chair moved right to the edge. With a clank, it suddenly stopped, and she visibly breathed in and out a couple of times, holding one hand on her chest as she turned to Alex.

"Don't worry - we're going to give the team a chance to get you out of there, even though we could just dunk you in right now..." he chuckled. Anneka growled playfully, running both hands through her black hair and flicking it outwards before returning them to the arms of the seat. She lifted her feet off the footrest a little, looking down at the gungy surface below as Alex beckoned the others towards the bank of monitors.

"These screens show the views from the CCTV around the complex," he started. Nicola walked over, looking at the thirty or so small monitors that lined the panel in front of them. Each was showing a grainy top-down view of a room or corridor, as if seen through a security camera high on a wall - she recognized some of them as game rooms from the show, but most of them looked like more general shots of machinery.

"Take a good look now, because one of you..." He turned between the three of them, and Nicola jumped a little as he pointed at her, taking her hand as he walked past and turned her around towards a plastic booth set into the wall. "You're going to be shown a scene from one of those cameras, and the others are going to have to press the button next to the monitor that they think matches the description of it that you give them," he explained as the clear plastic door slid aside automatically.

Nicola stepped up on to the cross-hatched metal floor of the chamber, looking up as she did so to see a wide pipe stretching across the ceiling with a nozzle splitting off it and pointing down towards her. Hearing the hum of the door behind her, she turned around as it closed to see Alex pointing up at a screen fixed on the opposite wall next to Anneka's seat, a curtain blocking the other contestants' view of it.

"Nicola, you're going to get a view of the same room as one of those cameras for about ten seconds. You've got that time to describe it to Kim and Lesley as much as you can - your view might be from a different angle, so don't rely on directions!" He walked over to the two free team members as they looked nervously at each other. "Kim and Lesley, after ten seconds you've got to press the button next to the monitor that you think matches your friend's description - if you pick the right button then you get twenty points, and Anneka gets a little closer to being rescued. You need to get five correct in two minutes to save her from dropping into that vat of gunge in front of her." They looked over as the jaguar girl whimpered down at the gloopy surface, drumming her feet on the chair's footrest about a foot above it. "But if you get it wrong, you're going to hear this noise..."

The dirty hooting sound of the gunge tank siren blared from the ceiling, and Nicola flinched and ducked out of the way instinctively. Alex chuckled as the noise faded away, and she shot him a look.

"...And Nicola knows what's going to happen to her! Whether you get it right or wrong, she gets let out of there and somebody else goes in for the next one. All make sense?"

The girls nodded, and Nicola watched Kim and Lesley turn back to the bank of monitors as Alex pointed at the projection screen in front of her.

"Get ready, Nicola, remember to give them as much detail as you can - here it comes!"

A burst of static appeared on the screen, clearing quickly to show a view of a room, with a two-minute timer overlaid on the bottom corner. Nicola hesitated, taking it in before speaking.

"Okay, there are loads of pipes around the walls," she started, her eyes darting around the picture. "In the middle there's this... big gear thing, I think, and... three of the pipes stretch over to it..."

Suddenly, static clouded the screen again, and Nicola stopped, glancing up at the nozzle before looking at the backs of the heads of the girls at the monitors.

"There's your description, girls - any ideas?" Alex said over them as they whispered to each other.

Nicola watched worriedly, trying to see over their shoulders, as Kim reached a hand out to press on the button next to one of the screens with her palm. As she pressed it, a high-pitched bell sounded, and she looked over at Alex.

"That's right!" the red wolf confirmed, and the door of the tank slid open again. "That's twenty points already - Kim, let's have you next..."

Nicola stepped out of the booth as the mouse girl turned around quickly, looking like she was only now realizing that she was going to have to go in the tank as well. Nervously she padded forwards and took Alex's hand as she stepped up into it, shuffling around so she faced the screen and bouncing on her heels. Nicola heard the static noise from the screen again, and her eyes lit up with recognition.

"It's the room with all the booths that we were in at the end of the last round," she said confidently. "The one with the row of them that we had to go into to get the code..."

She stopped abruptly as the scene disappeared, and turned towards the others expectantly. Nicola spun around to look at the monitors, seeing the room she had described immediately as Lesley reached for a button on the other side.

"No, wait..." she put her hand on her shoulder, pointing at the screen she had been looking at. The chipmunk girl looked over her shoulder at her, surprised, and Nicola raised her eyebrows as she saw the screen she had been reaching for.

"There are two of them!" she realized. "Kim, which..."

"Sorry, she can't help you any more!" Alex cut her off. "Choose the one that you think fits what she's told you!"

Nicola glanced over at the mouse girl, who was wriggling nervously with her hands clasped over her tummy again, then looked back at Lesley as she hovered her hand over the button that she had been going to press. The chipmunk girl looked up at her hesitantly.

"Go on," Nicola shrugged, but held her breath as Lesley pushed the switch.

There was a pause, and they both looked round as the mouse girl bowed her head, closing her eyes with a nervous grin on her face. Suddenly the bell signaling a correct press sounded, and she gasped as she looked up.

"Yes! Very lucky... get out of there and let Lesley in!" Alex encouraged them as Anneka clapped her hands together.

The chipmunk girl skipped over towards the booth as Kim stepped down from it, and she put her hands out on the tank's walls to steady herself as she stepped inside. Shuffling her feet and positioning herself right under the spout, she tossed her hair behind her head as she watched the screen.

"Um," she started, shifting from foot to foot as Nicola gesticulated to encourage her to talk. "It's this kind of... round thing, there's a window in the front and it's got..." She began to draw the outline of something in the air in front of her, but stopped as the static sound played again.

Nicola and Kim looked at each other, and Nicola shrugged as she turned to the screens. At least half of them could have matched Lesley's description.

"Remember, with each second Anneka's closer to getting the plunge..." Alex said from the side, and Nicola twitched as she heard the jaguar girl eeping quietly from behind them. Kim put her hand over a button uncertainly, looking at Nicola before she carefully pressed down on it.

The alarm rang from the ceiling, and Nicola spun round just in time to see the chipmunk girl jump, her mouth falling open a little. A column of lime green foamy slime spewed out of the nozzle on the ceiling and hit her on the top of the head with a thick smacking noise. A squeak came up from underneath the torrent as Lesley bounced underneath the gunge, making the dome splatter outwards and slap on to the tank's walls.

The flow quickly shut off again, the curtain of slime falling away to reveal the slippery chipmunk girl again, laughing a little as she wrung out her green-colored hair and hunched her shoulders as the gunge dripped around them. The door of the tank hummed open and she carefully stretched a slimy foot down to the floor again, balancing herself with her arms on the corners of the booth.

"Sorry, Lesley - you got the first wrong button! You still have three to go, and just over a minute left... Nicola, get back in there!"

Nicola remembered as he spoke that she was next in, and with a glance back at the mouse girl, hurried over to the wall. Cautiously she stepped into the machine, blinking as a couple of thick green drops splotted down from the ceiling right in front of her face, then turned around to look as the screen turned on.

"It's..." she called as she looked at the scene in front of her, twitching away from the blobs of gunge still raining down from the nozzle above her. "It looks like the corridor from the first zone we were in, it's got a curved ceiling, there are two barrels on the right..."

Lesley reached forward for a button before she had even finished speaking, and she tailed off, balling her fists tensely and looking at the streaks of green gunge on the sides of the tank as she heard the button being pressed. The correct bell sounded again, and breathing out, she looked back up at the nozzle before stepping forward to slip past the opening door. Kim ran in to swap places with her, and she heard her squeak from behind her as she stepped into the shallow pool of green stuff on the tank's floor.

She was half-listening to Kim's stuttered description of the room in front of her as she dashed back towards the monitors, and looked quickly between them. Confidently, she reached forward to thump the button next to the monitor at the top left, glancing at Lesley as she pressed down on it.

This time, she cringed as the hooter blared, and turned to the tank just in time to watch a wave of yellow gunge spew out from the nozzle of the pipe and splatter on to the mouse girl's bowed head, bouncing outwards to the booth's walls and flowing over her face. Kim squealed from behind the twitching curtain of slime, her hands hovering in front before she reached through it and ran then both over her head. Her awkward smile became visible again for a second before the flow of slime slumped over her face.

"Oh... that's two of you gunged, but you've got thirty seconds left - you might still be able to save Anneka!" Alex called as Kim took a step to the side, moving her head out of the cool slimy downpour. The flow shut off, and she looked down at her yellow-splattered chest and arms, before shuffling to the front of the opening tank and stepping down from it as she clutched her hair behind her. Lesley was already there to take her place, and Nicola watched her stepping into the tank for the second time as Anneka shifted in the dunk seat tensely.

As the slime-covered mouse girl approached the monitors again, Nicola turned towards them, listening intently to Lesley's description and then leaning past Kim to jab at a button as soon as she tailed off. Smiling as the correct bell rang again, she put a hand on Kim's slippery shoulder distractedly before racing over to the booth again.

"Fifteen seconds! Nicola, it's all up to you - you've got to get this or Anneka's going in!" Alex encouraged.

"Come on, Nicola!" Lesley joined in as she stepped down, then dashed back to the screens as Nicola stepped on to the slippery floor of the gunge tank in her place. Quickly, she hopped up into the tank and spun round to the screen, peering at it closely to try and see through the fading static.

"It's the Pod!" she called out. "There's a chair under it, it's empty, but the keyboard is down in front of it..." She glanced towards Kim and Lesley, who were searching frantically over the bank of monitors. Turning back to the screen, she tried to think of anything else to help them, but faltered, shaking her head.

Alex spoke up as she hesitated. "You're going to have to guess quickly, you two, you've got... four seconds... three..." He counted down the last few seconds, and suddenly Kim leaned up to hit a button on the top row. There was a long pause, and then Nicola flinched down as a loud noise played from the ceiling. It was the bell sound again - they'd got the fifth one right.

"Yes!" Alex called, his arms raised. "That's right again, so Nicola gets away clean..." He gestured as the booth's door opened, and Nicola stepped out.

"And that heroic last-second rescue means that for the first time she's entrusted her cleanliness to you..." he announced happily, extending a hand as he walked towards the vat, "...Anneka's been saved! Impressed with their performance, Anneka?"

The jaguar girl grinned, punching the air and clapping her hands together in celebration. Alex smiled back at her, then turned to the rest of the team and continued.

"But seeing as we've got her in there, and you've been getting a little messy for her... do you want to gunge her anyway?"

"What?!" Anneka yelped, her expression suddenly changing to shock and her arms flying back down to grip the seat underneath her. Nicola looked over at Alex, who was beckoning over to the lever that controlled the chair, and with a glance back at the others, she dashed towards it, reaching up for the switch as Anneka protested hysterically.

Ignoring her, Nicola grabbed the switch and tugged it, a mechanical hissing noise signaling the machine being turned on. She whipped around to face Anneka, who turned to look at the glutinous surface in front of her again, placing her hands next to her eyes and drumming her feet on the chair's footrest. She gave out a high-pitched shriek that turned into a helpless laugh as the noise of the siren rose up around her.

Nicola dashed back to the front of the vat just in time to see a cascade of thick green slime pour in from the ceiling above the chair. Anneka squeaed again and twitched as the front of it hit her, shaking her head to make it splatter outwards on to the walls, her bare toes curling under her feet as the gunge slapped on to her lap and shoulders. Just as the smooth downpour began to thin out, a click sounded, the seat tipped forwards underneath the jaguar girl and the team got a glimpse of her screwed-up face as she flung her arms out in front of her and fell forwards into the vat.

She hit the surface and went right under with a wet smacking noise, the green and orange paint-like liquid splashing out wildly and making Kim squeak and turn away as a high wave of it hit her on the chest. The surface buckled and rippled as it closed again behind her. Nicola, shaking her feet to get rid of the gunge that had splashed out on to her toes, leaned further forward to watch, gaping awestruck as the brightly colored ooze heaved and glooped slowly from side to side, the colors swirling and mixing into each other.

After a moment, Anneka's head burst up through the surface again, barely recognizable under the coating of gunge, and she bobbed up and down with the surface as she shook from side to side, arms flailing to the sides and splashing the goo around as if treading water in the glop. As she shakily found her footing and stood up, the pool wobbling against her chest and tummy, another thick downpour of yellow gunge dropped from the nozzle above the center of the tank, and she held her hands to her forehead, ducking down a little as the stuff splattered in a dome shape off her already soaked hair.

Nicola laughed a little with the others as the flow of smooth slop from the ceiling gradually thinned out, playing over Anneka's shoulders as she held her head bowed underneath it. The jaguar girl slowly blinked her eyes open again, looking up at the rest of the team with her face an image of shock and breathing heavily as the goo rolled and dripped from all over her, her hair colored bright yellow and hanging heavily around her head. Laughing helplessly, she held her gungy arms out to the sides, skimming the surface again with her hands as she shuddered at the feeling of the slime glooping all around her.

She struggled forwards unsteadily towards them, hunching her shoulders as thick drops from the ceiling hit her on the back of her neck. She giggled as she got her breath back, scooping her hands up to splash even more of the stuff out at the others, then yelped as yet another downpour of green and orange splurged down on to her, thinner this time and spraying from side to side to spatter into the vat around her and on to the others' feet.

Alex waited for the gunge shower to run out, becoming a sputtering drizzle from the ceiling and pouring on to the back of the slime-coated jaguar girl's head. She walked another step forwards, fighting against the thick liquid to take hold of the side of the pool and trying to keep her arms above the still rippling surface as he crouched down next to the vat. "I think I know the answer to this one already, Anneka..." he began, a wide grin on his face as he watched her looking up to face him, "but just as a formality, is there anyone you'd particularly like to risk getting gunged next?"

The slime-coated jaguar girl took her hands off the edge, one slippery hand stroking up from her forehead over her heavy hair to flick it behind her. "Her!" she announced, pointing straight at Nicola, then blinked and turned away as the green and orange drizzles slopped down into her face.

Nicola tried to act casual, smiling as she stepped around the gunge vat and watched Alex reach down to haul their team leader out. But even though she had expected it, she was excited and nervous about being in a game again - especially as she knew that the fourth round was usually the harshest. She shivered as their host raised Anneka slowly out of the vat, rivulets of heavy gunge drizzling down from all over her fur and splashing back down on to the surface. She swung her legs forward, hooking her toes on to the vat's side as Alex gently hauled her over on to the ground again.

The red wolf let go of Anneka, and she held her arms out in front of her, watching the gloop drip down from all along them and smack in puddles on to the floor before raising her hands to try and clean herself off a little.

"Okay, you rescued Anneka... even though I don't think she feels rescued!" he started, putting a hand on the jaguar girl's shoulder as she ran her hands down her sides and tummy, "and only got two wrong answers, so that's eighty points for the game. Ready to try and add to that, Nicola?" He turned towards her and offered his hand, and with a nod, she took it.

Nicola gripped his hand tightly as he led them out of the door again and back through the room with the large shuttle in the center. As they crossed the tracks she leaned around, wondering if the gray wolf was still dripping with gunge in there where they had left him, but then looked over at the double doors that she was being led towards.

"You've managed to avoid being put in a game yourself for a long time, Nicola, so I think we should treat you to one of the classics..." She felt her heart speed up again as she remembered about one of the show's tanks that they hadn't seen yet.

Alex opened the door and showed her through. She took a step into the room and whimpered through a smile as she realized she had been right. On the right wall, set in a slight recess, stood a six foot high cubicle, with wide curved pipes stretching from its top and the base of its sides to the walls around it. She looked it up and down as she heard the others' gasps and giggles as they stepped into the room behind her.

Still gaping a little at it, she felt the red wolf put his arm around her and allowed herself to be walked distractedly over to the booth. "Yes, we saved the Mixer for you," he laughed at her reaction, walking around to the other side as he pulled the door open, then gently closed it behind her as she took a step inside. "Everyone else, come over here..."

Nicola turned around and pulled herself up into the chair fixed to the back wall of the gunge tank, set high so that her toes only just touched the floor. Like she'd seen everyone else do, she looked up at the ceiling, and saw a wide double nozzle that was the opening of the pipe that led through the bigger prop around it. She swung her toes nervously against the floor, shuddering as she mentally pictured the normal results of being in the tank, and leaned down to look at the wide slots next to her dangling feet.

Alex had led the others over to a slightly slanted table in an alcove opposite her booth, and as they gathered around to look down at it, a projection screen next to the alcove flicked on, showing her a view of it from above. The top surface of it was divided into fifteen tiles with a gap in the bottom right, and together they showed the IZ logo, with two pieces the wrong way round on the top and bottom rows.

"Played this before?" Alex asked them, and looked around as they nodded. "Yes, I think you know the idea of this one - you've got to rearrange these tiles so that the logo is complete," he demonstrated as he spoke, flicking the three tiles at the bottom right around with the palm of his hand. "But you've got added pressure in this game, because if you don't sort out the tiles within ninety seconds, then the Mixer's going to turn on and absolutely cover your friend in foam and gunge..."

He put his hands out towards Nicola, and she shivered, looking around at the nozzles surrounding her again. When watching the series at home she had seen a lot of people being gunged by this thing, and it seemed hardly real that she was now viewing it from the inside.

"They didn't save you last time, Nicola, but maybe they can make up for it with this - are you confident?"

Nicola hesitated, still distracted by the double nozzle looming above her, then just shrugged with a smile.

"Oh, I don't think she trusts you..." Alex grinned, leaning on the side of the tank as he turned back to the others. "Prove her wrong, everyone - your time starts now!"

A timer like the one from the last game appeared on the screen and began counting down from a minute and a half as the three of them leaned over the board, whispering to each other. Lesley put a hand forward, hesitating as she hovered between the two movable tiles.

"Come on, you're going to have to move something!" Alex called to them, and with a jump, Lesley cautiously began sliding the tiles to move the gap up towards the top left, looking like she was being careful to remember where each one came from. A couple of unsure pointing fingers from the other girls came into view of the screen.

Nicola kept her eyes on the unrelenting timer as the others whispered to each other. Lesley flicked the tiles in the top left around in unsure circles before seeming to abandon all caution and starting to move the tiles around them as well in an attempt to get the first row of the puzzle complete.

"That's it, just get as many as you can into the right place before the time runs out... it's taken you thirty seconds to get that far!" called Alex. Lesley's head came into view of the screen that Nicola was watching as she learned further over the board, looking around it as she slowed down again, trying to decide which of the remaining tiles went where.

As the timer continued, Nicola kept glancing up at the gunge chute above her head, tapping her hands on the sides of the chair as she got more and more sure that she wasn't going to be rescued in time. She swung her legs and bounced in the seat, trying to take her mind off how nervous she thought she looked, but she couldn't help thinking of the first time she'd seen the tank she was now inside, watching a squealing reptilian girl being covered in gunge from above while the booth filled up with foam around her.

The sound of an alarm made her gasp, and she looked back at the screen to see the puzzle was far from complete, the timer flashing red as it ticked down from ten seconds. She squirmed, rocking back and forth a little as she waited, watching Lesley try to speed up only to end up with even more tiles out of place. After what seemed like ages, a harsh buzzer signaled the timer reaching zero, and the three of them jumped away from the board.

Cringing and gripping the arms of the seat tightly, Nicola glanced to her side at Alex, who was looking down at her from the other side of the plastic wall.

"Sorry, Nicola..." he grinned, then slapped the ceiling of the booth as he jumped away.

Nicola gasped as she heard the familiar mechanical whining noise of the gunge tank starting up, and quickly looked downwards. She jumped at a sudden bubbly hissing noise, and the slots at her feet began pushing sprays of thick green foam into the bottom of the tank. Twitching her hands aside as she suddenly felt wetness on them, she watched as foam began spilling out of the arms of the seat as well, floating down to join the rising pool.

Screaming out loud and wriggling upwards in the seat, she gripped the arms of the chair tightly as the stuff bubbled up around her ankles, oozing between her toes. Her yelp was drowned out by a blast from a loud hooter, and she wriggled in the seat, laughing helplessly and kicking her feet through the gooey foam as she watched and felt it steadily rising up her legs. As it reached her knees the klaxon hooted again, and hovering her hands above the stuff, she watched her lower half disappear completely under the foamy layer. She looked up to the gunge nozzle that she knew was about to go off above her head, then quickly to her team mates, looking at their awestruck expressions. Swallowing, she held her breath as the thick foam crept up over her tummy, unsure where to look as she waited for what was about to happen. She glanced up, heard the klaxon for the third time, and just had time to see the pipe above her twitch as a torrent of blue and yellow liquid splurged out of it before she snapped her head back down and closed her eyes.

With a smacking noise, the cold gungy feeling instantly surrounded her head, spilling quickly on to her shoulders and sliding down her chest and back as the level of foam suddenly dropped down under its weight. Her hands instinctively flew up to clutch her ears but she stopped short of them, feeling the edges of the downpour flick across her hands and slither down her arms as she kept her head under the sloppy torrent. The foam began rising again more slowly as it went on, and after a few seconds she wriggled her bowed head upwards away from it, holding her breath as she felt the gunge from above slump over her face and drip thickly around her muzzle. When the foam reached her shoulders it stopped rising, but kept moving and rippling around her as the slime splattered heavily down into it.

As the siren rang again she felt the gunge from the pipe above her beginning to run out, splatting heavy dollops on to her head, and raised her hands out of the gooey mixture. She blew out through her nose to get the foam off the end of her muzzle, and wiped the back of her messy hands across her face to clean herself as best as she could, shivering as the blobs of gunge from above slithered around her neck and crept down her chest. Eventually she slowly opened her eyes again, holding her hands up out of the tank full of foam she was sitting in, and craned her neck forwards to let the last spurts of the gunge splat down her back as she gave a sickly grin out at the others.

"You should see yourself, Nicola - that was spectacular!" Alex called as he stepped forwards. Nicola blinked slowly as she felt more of the thick slime slither down her forehead, bowing her head forwards and shaking it a little to get the drops off her muzzle. Her hands came back to her face to wipe her eyes, but she stopped as she realized they were both completely coated in gungy foam as well. Half-closing her eyes again as the mixed green slime dripped over them, she dipped her hands back into the foam bath and flicked a couple of handfuls out of it out at Alex and at the rest of the team as they gathered around behind him.

"It does mean that we still haven't broken your streak of getting gunged, unfortunately," he said as he batted away the foam being thrown at him. "How many tiles did you get into the right place? I'd say you earned..." he pointed at the screen as he counted, "I'll give you... forty points for the game... but we've still got one last one to go."

He stepped forwards to let Nicola out, and she carefully slithered forwards in the seat, gently lowering herself down to the floor and feeling the bubbles around her burst as she moved around in the tummy deep sticky foam. He opened the door a little, and took her hand as she wriggled out through the gap, dragging some of the stuff out along with her. As he closed the tank, she raised her dripping arms to wipe her face again, holding her gungy hair out the way as she looked down at her foam-plastered legs, wriggling her toes to work some of the stuff off them. Shoulders shaking, she breathed out, half glad to be out of the spotlight again.

"Now, Kim and Lesley..." She looked up as Alex moved towards the two giggling, nervous-looking girls, holding his arms out and putting them around both their shoulders as he walked them back towards the door. "I think it's about time you two got messy again - wouldn't you say so?" he called back over his shoulder.

Gleefully, Nicola joined Anneka in a whoop, clapping her gungy hands above her head as she watched Kim flick her thin tail around behind her. The two of them followed Alex and the two girls out of the room again, and Nicola looked around the hangar area, wondering which door he was going to lead them towards as they turned the corner around the big capsule in the center of the room.

Anneka gasped from beside her. "He's putting them in the shuttle!" she whispered delightedly. Nicola raised her eyebrows and dashed a couple of steps forward around the big capsule herself, seeing that Alex had stopped them next to a wide set of seams on the side of the white surface. She turned back to Anneka with a wide grin on her face as she caught up as well.

"Now, we try to save something extra special for the last game of the show..." the red wolf began, letting go of the girls and stretching up to a complex-looking lock on the side of the doors. The mouse girl, her tail still swishing behind her, put her arm around Lesley, jiggling a little as she waited. "There's no real game to this one, we just offer a free hundred points for a team member or two to face a decently massive gunging..."

The two girls at the front looked at each other, but all four of them jumped as the beeping from Alex's keypresses stopped and a mechanical clank came from the doors. Nicola stretched up to try to see past them as they began to unfold vertically outwards, revealing a gap into the dimly-lit interior. The bottom half of the door had steps on its other side, and as it neared the floor Alex pinned it into place with his foot.

"So, you two, if you'd like to get in there and take your seats..."

Kim glanced at the chipmunk girl again and then cautiously stepped up the stairs first, ducking as she looked around at the inside of the shuttle. Nicola craned her neck to see into the darkness too, watching the mouse girl blink as a couple of dim red lights rotated over her. Cautiously, she tiptoed inside.

"Any last requests before we send you off?" Alex chuckled as Lesley climbed the stairs behind her. The chipmunk girl paused, and turned around.

"Yeah, can DF come in too?" she grinned mischievously.

Alex raised his eyebrows, mouth opening before he thought of a reply. "Ah, I'd like to, but he's - I think..."

He barked and turned away as he tripped over his words, laughing and holding his hand up. Nicola watched delightedly as she realized she was seeing him break character for the first time. She looked sideways at Anneka as he turned to look at the area under the walkway across from them.

"It was her, she threw me off!" he called as he pointed at Lesley, who shrugged, giggling embarrassedly. Trying to gather was going on as the flow of the show was broken, Nicola followed Alex's gaze towards the other side of the room, where a dark-furred canid was walking out slowly from behind a pillar, clapping his hands together with a wide grin on his face.

"The first retake of the season, Alex!" he called as he approached. "And you nearly lasted two whole shows..."

Alex sighed, shaking his head and holding his hand out towards him. "I'd like to introduce you to Cliff, everyone..." he said. Kim emerged from the shuttle again, poking her head round the door to watch as well. "He does most of the behind-the-scenes stuff while we're playing the games, so he's been the one gunging you over the last couple of hours..."

"Hey, don't try to shift the blame to me," he chuckled, looking away as Nicola jeered him.

Alex glanced over at the shuttle entrance, and pointed over his shoulder at it. "Can we actually get DF in?"

"Ah, I think he's in the showers," the canid replied.

The red wolf turned back to Lesley, who was still on the steps with one foot inside the shuttle. "Sorry, Lesley, you're going it alone..."

"Hey, I didn't say that that was a problem! Wait here, I'll go get him," Cliff turned and dashed away towards the stairs, dodging around a blue-skinned reptilian who was walking out from where he'd been standing. She turned to watch him go for a moment, then continued towards Alex, smiling as she looked down at her notepad and held the top page up to read underneath it.

"Don't you start as well, Blue..." Alex said as she opened her mouth. She sagged, laughing as she held her hands out towards him, looking round at the contestants. "All right, how much do we need to do again?" he asked her.

"Just from when you put them in. Lesley, once we get set up again can you just ask the same question again when you step inside? And don't let him get to you about asking," she grinned.

The chipmunk girl nodded, sitting down on the shuttle's stairs, and Kim stepped out to sit beside her. Nicola watched as Alex breathed out heavily, pacing towards the reptilian with his arms outstretched.

"Well, usually the team have to wait until the end before they meet the crew, but...!" He turned back to them, dropping one hand around the lizardess's shoulder. "Everyone, this is Blue, my wife of... what is it now, four years? Five years?" - he turned to her, and Nicola smirked as Blue held up five fingers, eyes raised to the ceiling - "...and she keeps me and the camera crews in check while we're recording..."

"Oh, I remember you!" Anneka exclaimed. "Weren't you on the show last season?" The reptilian smiled embarrassedly, cringing a little as she looked to her notepad again.

"Yeah..." she admitted. "So he can't put any blame on me like he did to Cliff, I've already gone through what you're doing! I felt really sorry for you when he dropped you into the vat, Anneka..."

The jaguar girl smiled, spreading her arms as she looked down at her stained and soggy fur. "So did I..." she giggled.

"How'd he rope you into going on?" Nicola asked. She sat down on the edge of the stairs, realizing how heavy the clinging foam and gunge felt on her.

"Well, I kind of got him involved in all this in the first place - didn't I?" she asked, and nodded with Alex. "So I should have guessed it was coming!"

"Couldn't you have done the show and had Alex in the games?" Lesley spoke up. Nicola joined the chorus of approval from the other girls as Alex folded his arms, smirking but looking away.

"That's not a bad idea... what do you think, Alex?" she poked him as the cheer died down.

"Yeah, I'd do it for a crew special or something. I know a couple of guys who I want to see in this thing... not least the man who started all this! He's well overdue for it..."

"I'll hold you to that," Blue smiled, and turned to the girls. "You heard - remember he agreed to it!"

Nicola grinned, but she was beginning to get a little anxious from the waiting. As the others continued talking, she looked to the right, along the rails the shuttle was mounted on towards the big rolltop door at the end of the room, and tried to picture what was behind it, remembering what she'd seen happen in the "Shuttle" game in the last season.

At that moment there was a noise from the walkway in front of them. She turned to see Cliff reappearing through the door from the rest of the set, followed by the young wolf she'd seen before, his hair wet and fur dark from the shower.

"Welcome back, DF!" Alex called over to him as the two of them came down the stairs. "I'm sorry to interrupt your shower to put you back in here again, but Lesley thought you might want to be treated to this as well..."

The gray wolf looked up at the imposing shuttle, looking both awestruck and nervous as Blue dashed over to meet them. She pointed him over towards the far end of the shuttle and followed him there as Cliff went back to the cameras underneath the walkway. 

"All right, I think we're all ready to retake..." As Kim and Lesley got up and stepped down to the floor, he peered over at the far end of the room. "We're ready!" he finished, and spun around, thrusting his hand towards the shuttle.

"So, if you'd like to step inside, Kim and Lesley - Kim, you first..."

The mouse girl went up the stairs towards the red warning lights as hesitantly as before, and Nicola didn't think that she was acting. As she disappeared inside, Lesley moved forwards. Nicola could see her counting under her breath as she stepped up into the shuttle, then she turned around.

"Hey, can DF come in too?" she asked.

This time, Alex nodded. "Yeah, I think we can get him for you - can we have DF, please?"

Nicola looked to the end of the capsule as Alex called towards it, and the reptilian appeared from around the corner, arms linked with the long-haired wolf to march him toward the team. Lesley leaned forwards, hands on her knees as she grinned towards him.

"DF, I know she just gunged you, but I'm sure you're enough of a gentleman to help her through this last challenge...!" Alex patted him on the back as Blue let him go and he stepped towards the entrance. Lesley took his hands, excitedly tugging him up the stairs to get him inside.

Alex watched them go, then turned back to the half of the team still outside the capsule. "We've still got room in there - anyone else want to join them?"

Even though she was still covered from the last game, Nicola hardly paused. "Yeah!" she exclaimed as she leapt forwards.

"Anneka, want to complete the team?" Alex asked.

"Oh..." the jaguar girl whimpered, looking up at the top of the machine and dragging her fingers through her own gunge-soaked hair. "Yeah, I guess..."

"Go on, Anneka," Blue encouraged her, barely disguising a smile. "You're going to have company - 'cause you're going in too," she announced, stepping across the entranceway to clap a hand on Alex's shoulder.

"What?!" the red wolf yelped, truly surprised. Nicola spun around from the top of the stairs and looked round the entranceway to see his expression.

"Come on, you know the deal we had - first time you screw up your lines on the last game, you've got to do it!" The reptilian grinned as she poked him. "Hand over your stuff..."

"This isn't fair, you know that?" Alex protested as he shook his head, but had a smile on his face as he looked to the floor and reached into his pockets to hand the minicomputer and the card keys over to Blue. "I was distracted!"

Nicola turned to Anneka, sharing a wide grin with her as the jaguar girl stepped up into the entranceway beside her. With the contents of Alex's pockets in her hand, Blue turned and slapped him gently from behind, pointing up towards the two of them.

"All right, all right..." Alex looked up at them as he came up the steps, and this time Nicola reached out to grab his hand, Anneka taking the other.

Nicola turned round and looked at the inside of the shuttle for the first time as she excitedly pulled him inside - it was a dark cramped space, lit by a slowly rotating red light and a few blinking panels around the walls, with two inflatable couches placed a couple of feet apart facing each other. Kim had seated herself on the one on the same side as the door, and Lesley and DF were on the one opposite, whispering excitedly to each other as Lesley clung on to the wolf's shoulder.

Alex managed to wriggle out of the girls' grasp, and ducked a little as he came fully inside, shuffling forwards as the door began to close behind them. As the strip of light cast on the opposite wall got thinner, Nicola squeezed around the first seat and sat down in the space next to the chipmunk girl. As she wriggled back to get comfortable, Anneka scampered around to sit next to Kim, and the red wolf put a hand on the back of their seat as he moved himself around it.

He waved his hands in a parting motion in front of them, and they scooted out of the way, pushing themselves up against the armrests as he eased himself down on to the seat between them. He put his hands in the air and then dropped his arms so that they were along the back of the seat. "Well, at least we're comfortable for now," he said, looking between them both.

"Okay, everybody ready in there?" the lizard girl's normally soft voice came harshly over speakers in the ceiling, making everyone look up.

"Yeah, we're -" Alex started, then barked as the capsule jolted. Nicola felt the whole thing begin to move, and pictured it from the outside, moving towards whatever was past the large rolltop door that she'd seen.

"Want to tell them how it works, Alex?" Blue asked.

Alex looked up at the source of the voice. "Well, I had thought I was going to be doing this from the outside, but...!" He cleared his throat as the girls next to him on the seat looked round to face him. "When the base was still occupied, this thing was used to transport cargo to and from the shore. Because it sometimes carried hazardous materials, there was a great big power sprayer in the ceiling of its entrance tunnel, so the top could be opened up and... well, given a good soaking... the trouble is that when the fresh water was low they often pumped in sea water instead...!"

As he finished, there was a clank from the roof, and a couple of the girls looked up as the two panels of the ceiling began to part, revealing them passing underneath the door. She squirmed from side to side anxiously as they moved under it, and then, even though she had known what was coming, gasped as two giant tanks of deep blue and bright yellow gunge on the ceiling came into view. A network of pipes jutted down from them, ending in a set of wide slots, two of them placed right over where their seats were heading.

A couple of whimpers came up from the occupants of the shuttle as they got nearer to right underneath the nozzles. Anneka and Kim wriggled away a little, and Alex shifted his arms to drop them around both their shoulders, making sure they stayed next to him. Nicola glanced to the side as Lesley put her arms around the gray wolf's waist, gripping him tightly.

She flexed and curled her toes nervously as the shuttle gave another jolt, and the grinding noise of the movement stopped. Alex looked up, the girls on either side of him wriggling down into the seat as he pulled them just a little closer.

"Get ready, everyone, here it comes...!"

The last word was drowned out by a blare from a siren on the roof, and Nicola glanced upwards just in time to see the tanks bubble as they opened. As the huge waves dropped towards them, she shrieked involuntarily and bowed her head down, clasping it with her hands.

She yelped again as the cool slop smacked on to her head and shoulders, hunching up as it began to pour down her back and slither around her neck to creep over her chest. Closing her eyes, she turned her palms up to catch the streams of it coming from her shoulders, trying to steady herself as the inflatable seat buckled with the weight of the gunge and the movement of the others as they all squirmed underneath the messy downpour. A couple of squeaks and laughs came up over the noise of the torrent crashing into the small chamber, and she wriggled her feet as she felt the level of ooze already rising to her ankles.

Stretching forward out of the flow and twitching as the slop spewed on to her lower back, she grinned to herself, shaking her head as she watched Alex and the two girls underneath the heavy curtain of yellow and blue gunk opposite them. He was still holding them in place as they wriggled, staying upright himself and with a hint of a grin on his muzzle as it poked out of the slimy downpour. The stuff mingled into green as it slid down his fur, soaking into his jogging bottoms as the stuff pooled in his lap. Next to him, Kim had her hands clasped over her face, drumming her feet in the rising slime, and Anneka was flailing her arms above her head trying unsuccessfully to deflect the stuff away from her.

Nicola glanced down the way as the brightly colored slime rose to her knees, and gasped sharply as it suddenly flowed up into the seat beneath her. There was a squeak from Kim too, and Nicola looked just in time to see her slip down the slimy surface of the chair, one gunge-covered foot poking up out of the slime bath in front of her. Shaking her head rapidly as the slime from above poured into her face, she flailed and slithered down again, the outline of her screwed up features just visible before she glooped under the surface.

Alex brought his now free hand up to the top of his muzzle and dragged it up and over his head, stretching forwards like Nicola a little out of the sloppy downpour as he made an attempt to clean his face. He blinked his eyes open just in time to see the mouse girl burst up above the gunge again between the two seats, her mouth wide open with streaks of mixed colors of slime dripping across it. Completely covered even though she was out of the downpour, she stood frozen in the middle of the chamber, her hands held in front of her with her messy fingers spread out.

Nicola put her hand on the arm of the gunge-covered seat to steady herself and looked at Alex again as Anneka shuffled forwards out of his grasp too. He was as plastered in mixed green gunge as the rest of them, the flow from above splattering out from his head and into the still rising pool as he tossed his head a little underneath it. As the level of slime neared chest height, the jaguar girl slithered forwards and unsteadily paddled her hands in the slop to stand upright, and Alex pushed himself off the back of the seat to get up as well.

As she felt herself beginning to float a little in the slime bath, Nicola gripped the seat tightly and watched the slop sliding down Alex's fur, dripping in thick rivulets into the pool as he wriggled up out of the gloop. She poked her head back under the downpour behind her as the hooter blared again, feeling the flow from the ceiling slow gradually to a drizzle. Breathing out, she ducked down a little, taking care to keep her mouth above the surface as a couple of heavy drops splatted on to her head and the surface of the gunge around her.

She coughed and shook her head, flapping her hands above the sloppy surface before wiping her face and opening her eyes. The once clean inside of the shuttle was nearly four feet deep in blue and yellow gloop that was slowly mixing into green, up to over waist height on Alex and the girls that were standing up. Nicola struggled forwards out of the gooey strings still dripping from the ceiling to try and get up too, turning to look at the others on her seat - the young wolf's head and shoulders were completely covered, with just the whites of his eyes visible behind the ooze coating his fur, and Lesley had somehow got up on to the top of the couch behind him, her slimy legs dangling around his shoulders with just her feet in the gunge.

Nicola braced herself on the chair's arm and heaved herself up the way against the heavy slime, feeling the ooze slide and pour away from her hair and shoulders as she came up out of it. Accepting Anneka's slimy hand to help her up, she looked around as the wolf next to her struggled to his feet as well. Lesley pushed herself off the back of the seat behind him, wading unsteadily forwards knee-deep on the chair, then clambering on to his shoulders again just as he stood up.

"How are you feeling in there?" Blue's voice echoed again, not even trying to disguise her laughter. Nicola whooped at the unseen speakers in the ceiling, the others following her lead, but they all yelped as the movement of the shuttle started up again, sending a gentle wave of the thick gunge lazily rippling from one end of the chamber to the other. The young wolf, who had almost overbalanced when the movement started, reached up to take Lesley's hands and wriggled her off his shoulders. She gave a high pitched squeak as she glooped into the slime up to her tummy, sending a small ripple outwards from where she had splashed in as she shivered and hugged herself.

"We're just great, Blue," Alex chuckled, running his hands down his arms to brush the bright slop off his fur and flinching as a couple of the others splashed more slime towards him. Blobs and gooey strings of the mixed green stuff slithered and dripped from all over him as he moved. "Do you want to come and join us?"

There was just laughter in response. Nicola grinned widely herself as she watched him look down at himself, raising his gungy hands up in the air before flicking them both down at the surface, then rubbing up and down his arms again.

"Well, I'd love to tell you your score, but someone took my computer - for putting everyone into this thing I think you deserve your hundred points, giving you... how many for the round, Blue?" he called to the ceiling.

"Two hundred and forty," came the reptilian's voice.

"Which doubled gives you four-eighty for the last round, bringing you up to a grand total of..." He swept his arm up towards the roof, a splash of gunge flying out from his hand.

"Twelve hundred exactly," Blue filled in.

"Yes!" he clapped his hands together, and Nicola led the cheer once again, bouncing in the slime to make it ripple around them. Alex grimaced a little as the wave splashed up on his already gunge-coated side, shuffling around to face her. "So you've broken the thousand mark, and with the keys being kept safe and clean for us outside, you're about to get the chance to use those to give you time in our last challenge, the purifier room. Are you all ready?"

He raised his hands in the air at another cheer from the girls, stumbling as the capsule stopped again and dipping his hand back into the gunge as he steadied himself. He pulled it out, looked down and watched the slime drip off it once again.

"We'll give you the chance to get cleaned up first..."

Final

"There it is!" Alex held his hand out towards the large circular door on the opposite wall as he strode out into the room that they had started in a couple of hours ago. Nicola padded behind him, leading the other girls again as the door to the entrance room swung closed behind them. As they reached the door, the red wolf stepped aside, fishing in his pocket.

"Okay, you've gone through sixteen games and you've got twelve hundred points to show for it - that's going to give us two minutes to load up the purifier and turn it on," he said, producing the three card keys and offering them with one hand. "Your final challenge is just past this door..."

Nicola stepped forwards to take one of the cards, with Lesley and Kim close behind. As the mouse girl turned her card over to look at it, Alex stepped back, motioning towards the center of the door, where there was a row of three slots. "If you can all get ready to get us in there..."

Nicola lined up alongside the other girls, putting her key up to one of the openings. "Just put them in when your team leader says the word..."

"Er... go," Anneka's voice came from behind them. The three of them made an attempt at sliding the card keys in at the same time, and Nicola couldn't help but smile as the clunk of the door unlocking played just a fraction of a second before they had finished. A moment later, a disappointingly small hatch compared to the size of the rest of the door swung a little open in its center.

"Come on!" Alex beckoned with one hand behind him as he ducked through. Nicola waited for Anneka to follow him, and hearing her gasp as she poked her head through, quickly lined up behind her to step inside. Putting her hand against the jaguar girl's leg to get her to move aside a little, she stooped through after her, straightened up and gasped a little as well.

Instead of the pool of water that she had seen when watching the last season, most of the room was taken up by a massive vat of gunge sunk into the floor, stretching towards the other end of the room where an inflatable ramp rose out of it up towards a cylindrical tank fixed on the opposite wall. As Nicola stepped forwards to get a closer look, she glanced at what was blocking the view from the door - a plastic blowup chair was fixed right on the edge of the vat, with a rusty box-like tank suspended above it. Further above, on the ceiling, was a much larger mechanical prop, with pipes and loops of tubing connected between its surfaces, and a set of nozzles pointed down at the vat below.

Alex gave them a moment to look around before speaking again. "Does it look how you were expecting?" he smiled as they turned back to face him, and paced forwards. "Seeing the plan of it doesn't really do it justice..." Nicola shook her head - they had spent a while in the changing rooms with the aim of the final game being explained to them, but Alex had definitely left some details as a surprise. She turned around again, looking at one of the corridor sections that ran down the sides of the room, which was going to be her position for the game - a set of obstacles behind a wall of plastic panels that led all the way down to a pit of foam next to the ramp at the other end of the room.

"So... Lesley, let's put you in place first..." Alex stepped forwards through the group and slapped the top of the blowup seat. Biting her lip, the slender chipmunk girl padded forward with some encouragement from the others, looking up at the spout of the tank suspended above the chair as she took Alex's hand and slipped around into it. As she flopped down into it she put her hands on the chair's arms to hoist herself upright, and looked down at her feet dangling above the surface of the gunge vat.

"Anneka, team leader..." the red wolf started as he came back to the group. "Can you see where we're putting you?" he asked, turning around to point up at the large cylindrical tank at the top of the ramp on the far side of the room. "Nicola and Kim, if you want to get into your positions inside the cubicles at the sides, then we can get started!"

Nicola glanced over at the jaguar girl's face, which was still a picture of surprise from when she had first seen the room. A little dazed, she reached her hand slowly in his direction, not taking her eyes off the tank he'd just pointed at.

"Come on, you agreed to this at the very start!"

The jaguar girl whimpered a little, but nodded as he led her up the metal stairs to the walkway running a couple of feet above their heads - it circled the room, with a thin connecting bridge across the center of the vat. Nicola and Kim shared a glance before heading to opposite sides of the room, and Nicola stepped carefully into the little space beyond the sliding door on the right hand side.

She turned around to slide the panel closed behind her as she looked up to the ceiling - attached to the bottom of the walkway above was a device about a foot across that looked like a very large shower head. Guessing that she knew what it was going to do, she faced the front to see a keypad with ten numbered buttons on the side of the cubicle that blocked her way forwards, and a set of inflatable obstacles beyond that. She looked up to the left, watching their team leader hesitantly stepping into the big cylindrical tank, encouraged by a gentle push on the back from Alex.

The red wolf closed the door as the jaguar girl crept into the center of the meter-wide booth, looking around her at the pipes pointed down in her direction. A card key dangled by a strap from the middle of the ceiling, and she glanced up at the handle it was looped round as she stepped in front of it.

"We've got one last surprise for you..." Alex announced as he paced away from her, back along the walkway towards the others, then called towards the front wall. "You can come in now..."

Nicola twisted up to look at the sound of a door opening on the upper floor, and shuffled to the side of the tank to see past the walkway as the gray wolf from before came into view. He started towards Alex, who pointed over behind him, and Lesley turned in the chair and gasped as she saw they were headed towards a large lever at her end of the room.

"You got him twice in the last round, Lesley, so I think it's fair that he gets to start you off now..." Nicola couldn't see what was happening on the walkway, but she heard a mechanical clunk followed by a heavy pouring noise from the tank above Lesley's head, and turned to see a column of dark gunge splatting down into the tank.

She turned and watched the chipmunk girl duck down as the noise started, then slowly wriggle back upright in the chair as she looked hesitantly up at the tank. After a few seconds, the glop from the ceiling began to ease off, and as it thinned out, fingers of the murky slime spilled over the tank's brim, dripping stickily from its edges around Lesley's chair. She looked up at the drizzles, shivered and faced the front again, watching Alex move around to the central part of the walkway.

"Okay, do you remember what I told you earlier?" he called down to them. "Like I said, we do the bit for the viewers later on, so if you have any questions, stop me!"

He turned around to point to the ends of the room. "When we turn the room's power on, Nicola and Kim have to find the combination to let themselves out of their cubicles, then race to the other end, hopefully avoiding the pressure pads for Lesley's sake, to the switches. Pulling both of those at the same time will drop the keys from the ceiling - the two of you have then got to search in the foam vats for them, and Lesley's going to have to have a swim in the gunge to retrieve hers. They're going to make a noise like this..." He produced one from his pocket and held it up, a faint triple beep sounding from it.

Anneka looked up again as the red wolf pointed over at her. "Once you've got them, you've got to climb the ramp to your team leader to free her by putting those three keys into the slots on the tank - and if you free her before she's gunged, then she's just got to slide down and get back to where Lesley's sitting now to put that last key in!"

He paused for a moment again, looking between the three girls. Nicola went over what he'd just said again, looking along the corridor then up the ramp.

"And DF, I'm going to give you this..." Alex dashed back over to him and gave him the pocket computer. Nicola tried to lean over to look again as he pointed at something on it. "Just so you can make life a little more difficult down there for Kim and Nicola..."

As the gray wolf nodded, saying something back to him that Nicola couldn't hear, the host sprang back towards the middle walkway again. "Everyone know what they're doing?" she heard him call.

"Yeah," she shouted back, and looked over at the others as they gave their confirmations as well.

 "All right! So Anneka, whenever you're ready... just yank on that cord and start us off!" he gestured. "Once it's turned on, you're going to have exactly two minutes to get the key down to where Lesley is now."

With a nervous grin, the jaguar girl looked at the key dangling above her, and reached up to wrap her hand around it. Closing her eyes and cringing down a little, she waited for a second, then tugged it downwards.

Nicola watched the feline jump as a grinding noise played, and the lights on the ceiling swung around to fill the room with harsher blue-white light. A red projected timer appeared on the wall above Anneka, counting down from two minutes. Nicola glanced down as the panel lit up in front of her, and a moment later there was a slurping noise from the ceiling as the sprayer above her head turned on.

She shivered as the translucent green stuff splattered down gently on to her head and shoulders, leaning over forwards so that it sprayed on her back - it felt weirdly like being under a normal shower, but with the stuff clinging and running down her instead of spraying off like water. Trying her best to ignore the way she was getting increasingly coated in slippery slime, she glanced up at the three numbers that had lit on the panel and began tapping them in to the keypad in any order she could think of.

Frustratedly gritting her teeth as she moved her left hand up to her forehead to stop the stuff dripping into her face, she shot a glance sideways at Kim, who hadn't escaped either. Curling her toes in the puddle of translucent slime at the bottom of the tank, she turned back to the gungy panel and stabbed at it with her slippery fingers again, trying to remember to do it in sequence but being met by no reaction each time.

As she bowed her head down more against the shower from above, looking at the firmly closed panel in front of her, she finally heard a confirmation beep and sighed relievedly as the door slid upwards to let her through. Ducking down and yelping as the movement dislodged a curtain of slime from her fur, she crawled messily through to the main passage.

She looked up immediately to check where the gunge nozzles on the ceiling were, then tried to look up to the walkway to see if the wolf boy was watching before she took off through the cluster of hanging punchbags in front of her. Passing quickly under the first nozzle without it going off, she smiled as she slipped easily between the soft but heavy weights.

Parting the last row of them, she jumped as there was a sudden loud buzz, followed by a high pitched squeal from Lesley somewhere behind her. She looked out to her left to see the drizzly remains of a downpour of slime slop on to the chipmunk girl, then glanced back as she ran ahead to see one of the bright orange touch pads stuck on the far side of the punchbag she had touched.

Running with difficulty against the soft floor, she yelped as a wave of thin slippery slime spewed down on her from the ceiling, making her collapse to her knees. Panting, she hauled herself forwards out of the slime puddle, her legs and arms slithering against the lubricated surface, and making for the safety of the covered inflatable tunnel in front of her.

She quickly crawled through, ignoring the orange pads she was sliding over even though she was picturing what was happening to Lesley in the gunge chair. Hauling herself to her feet as she reached the end, she stumbled forwards and finally reached the switch on the wall.

Grasping the handle, ready to tug it down, she looked over to see where Kim was. The gray wolf was walking along the walkway above her, cheerfully hitting a button on the controller each time she moved underneath one of the gunge nozzles as she fought her way through a maze of clear plastic inflatable material. Nicola moved her eyes to Lesley, who was now dripping with murky slop and holding her heavy hair out of the way as she watched the increasingly slippery mouse girl's progress. Nicola bounced on her feet agitatedly, knowing that she couldn't do anything but wait for her as their time gradually ran down.

Finally, Kim made it out of the maze and ran to her switch, nodding at Nicola as she reached it. Together, they pulled their switches down, and as the alarm rang, Nicola immediately sprang back to run to the passageway's exit as a panel slid quickly away slightly back the way she had come. She jumped through, looked up as the card on the ceiling fell into the foam pit in front of her, and out of the corner of her eye saw the chipmunk girl being enveloped once again by a downpour of murky gunk from the top of her chair before she was tipped forwards out of it to splurge into the gunge vat.

Nicola shivered and dove down into the airy white foam, closing her eyes and squeaking as she went down further than she had expected. Getting to her feet, she breathed out heavily to get the blobs of foam off her nose, wiping at her muzzle as she kicked her feet forwards. As she tried to wipe the foam away from her eyes with her slippery hands without getting gunge on her face, she winced as her toe hit against the card underneath the foam, then bent down again to crawl forwards, trying to feel where it might have gone with her hands.

As the card gave the high pitched beep signal she'd heard Alex demonstrate, she dived for it and picked it up in one motion, then continued forwards to the inflatable barrier separating the foam from the room's main vat. She pushed herself off the soft surface underneath her, kicking her legs as she slithered over the two foot high wall, then closed her eyes, turning her face away as she went head first towards the murky surface.

For a moment she felt a chill as the cool heavy gunk surrounded her head. She kicked her feet off the wall behind her as she fell fully in, and moved her legs underneath her as the thick liquid glooped around them. Pushing off from the bottom, she broke through the gungy surface again and coughed to get her breath back as she felt rivulets of the thick goo pour away from her soaked fur.

Doing her best to clean her upper half up as she fought determinedly forwards, she looked up to see where the timer was. At the same moment, she heard Alex announcing from above that they had a minute left, and as she moved round to the front of the ramp leading up to Anneka's tank, saw it count down past it.

Trying to move as quickly as she could against the glutinous liquid, she made sure she had the card's strap firmly around her arm, then took hold of the nearest rope dangling off the end of the ramp. She looked to the side to see the mouse girl still searching in the foam pit, only just visible through the white mass clinging to her, then quickly glanced over her shoulder as she heard Lesley glooping through the slime behind her. With her head and upper body completely coated in thick purple and green gunge that was dripping from her in dollops with each step she took, she shambled slowly forwards, her hands at her head to keep her long heavy hair out of the way.

Nicola turned back to the ramp. Putting one foot on the step below it, she hauled on the rope she was holding, the stuff tugging on her bikini bottoms as she wriggled herself upwards out of it. After she had got far enough forwards to rest her hips on the ramp it became much easier, and she hauled herself up on the rope, soggy tail dragging behind her, her arms beginning to throb as she flailed her legs to find the footholds.

Eventually she found a notch with her foot, and wriggled her toes into it as she tried to get her breath back. Looking up at the relentlessly ticking timer once again, she took a breath and hauled herself upwards as the jaguar girl cheered her on in front of her. As she moved towards her, she was dimly aware of one of the others collapsing on to the ramp behind her.

She pulled herself up the knotted plastic rope in a strange motion of throwing herself forwards and up the ramp, slipping easily against it with the slime coating her fur. Nicola panted for breath as the movement quickly tired her out, and tried to struggle forwards hand over hand instead. She gasped as another siren rang from the ceiling, then looked up and immediately closed her eyes as she saw a dark curtain of slime falling from above and in front of her. Clinging tightly to the rope, she held her breath as specks of the downpour spattered off the inflatable ramp and landed on her face.

As soon as she was sure it was over, she opened her eyes and began moving up again, sliding through the spreading green puddle of gunge that had been dropped from the ceiling. Slipping madly against the slime underneath her, she had to use all her arms' strength to keep going and not let go, eventually collapsing face down on to the slick surface.

Dimly, she felt around with one foot as she slipped it up the ramp, and relievedly found another notch. She buried her toes into it and pushed, slithering herself another couple of inches and finally getting within reach of the three slots at the front of Anneka's tank. The feline shouted encouragement as she slowly moved her hand over and slid the card she was holding into the rightmost slot, smiling breathlessly as a confirmation beep played.

"That's one!" Alex shouted from above, and she twisted back to see him standing with DF on the nearby walkway. "Lesley and Kim, you just have to get your cards up to Nicola..."

Nicola looked down the ramp at the other two girls, who were sliding themselves slowly upwards, then struggled to see the timer above the tank next to her. She was pretty sure that they only had about thirty seconds left, and cheered as enthusiastically as she could with her short breath to encourage them onwards. Lesley, making good progress as she crawled hand over hand up the slippery surface, wriggling her hips from side to side to slither her legs up behind her, kept a steady climbing motion even as more downpours of slime fell from the ceiling around her, splashing off her back and Nicola's toes.

Nicola let go of the rope with one hand and reached down as Lesley approached. Weakly, the chipmunk girl extended her hand upwards in a throwing motion, getting the card just far up enough for Nicola to grab it. Unsteadily, she turned back around with the strap in her hand, wriggling her fingers to grab the actual card and grinning as she slid it into the second slot.

Anneka bounced up and down, hands in the air but looking nervously at the looming diagonal gunge pipes to her sides as Kim slowly moved up towards her. She had given up on the rope and was crawling up, carefully digging her hands and feet into the notches on the ramp before every movement. Heart pounding with excitement and exhaustion, Nicola glanced up at the timer again to see they had fifteen seconds remaining.

Suddenly, Lesley slithered down a little on her rope so that she was in line with the mouse girl, and gestured to her to hand the card over. Kim carefully pulled one hand free of the ramp and picked the strap off from around her neck, staying still to keep her balance as she passed the card to the chipmunk girl. Making eye contact with Nicola and tossing her heavy hair out the way, Lesley slowly threw her arm up from behind her and sent the card flying up towards her.

A look of shock crossed Lesley's face as Nicola braced herself to catch the flying card key's strap, and she realized the throw had made the chipmunk girl lose her grip on the rope. As she slid away from her, flipping herself over on to her back and squeaking as she slithered back down towards the pool, Nicola caught the strap and turned around. As she heard a thick gloop from the bottom of the ramp as Lesley fell into the gunge, she jammed the final card into the third slot and heard a high pitched confirmation beep as the doors of the tank Anneka was trapped in slid aside.

"Come on!" She joined in Kim's exhausted cheer even though she knew they had nowhere near enough time, and the jaguar girl stepped forwards, hesitating at the edge where the floor of the cylindrical tank jutted out above the inflatable ramp. She crouched down to swing her legs out in front of her and got into a sitting position, then carefully pushed herself forwards with her hands.

As she gingerly slipped on to the ramp, she squeaked as she slid on the slimy surface, trying to grab at the rope next to her as she began to slither uncontrollably down towards the gunge. When she was halfway down, Nicola flinched as she finally heard the time-up buzzer ring, and at the same moment, a downpour of thick red slop was released from the ceiling in front of the helpless jaguar girl. She raised her hands up to her face as she slid through it at the same moment it smacked on to the ramp, and Nicola heard her shriek from behind it as she dropped into the vat of gunge at the bottom.

The curtain of slime stopped after a few seconds, becoming a dripping shower from the ceiling as Nicola leaned around to see the surface below swell and part as Anneka slowly picked herself up again. Gradually, her head rose out of the gunk, the stuff pouring off her hair and bowed muzzle as she shook it a little. As she got her arms above the surface again she held them out to her sides, waiting for the gunge to slide and drizzle off her fur, then brought her hands to her face to part her green soaked hair.

Nicola smiled to herself, trying to calm herself down as the rush of the game faded away. She was disappointed that they had come so close to winning, but knew that it didn't really matter either way. Turning and allowing herself to slip slowly back down the ramp, lowering herself hand over hand, she smiled exhaustedly as she remembered what the show always did to losing teams.

She heard Alex laughing to himself from above, and faced upwards, bracing her feet against a foothold inches from the bottom of the ramp. He was leaning on the walkway beside the other wolf, and both of them were amusedly watching the dripping chipmunk and jaguar girls sloshing in the gunge vat. "Well, team..." he began, "...you came really close to finishing, and you saved your team leader from her slimy fate in there - but I don't think the alternative she experienced was much better!"

They looked at Anneka again, who was wiping her eyes with her forefingers. She dragged her dripping hands across her brow before flicking them downwards and tilting her head up, blinking a little against the lights, to look at the walkway. Her hands dropped down again, and she rested the tips of her fingers on the surface of the gunge before relaxing further and hesitantly allowing them to gloop underneath.

"I'm afraid that means we've got one last thing to do to you - you didn't quite manage to turn this thing on," - he slapped the side of the big tank suspended at the other end of the room - "so we're going to have to empty it out - if you'd all like to come down to this end of the vat...!"

Nicola grinned up at it, watching the other girls' heads turn to look at the massive tank and then glance excitedly or nervously back at each other. Slowly, feeling behind her for the rope, she lowered herself down the slimy ramp a little more, dangling her feet into the cool glop and eeping as she gradually let herself sink to her waist. Suddenly there was a yelp from beside her as Kim lost her grip while trying to do the same, and she slithered down the last couple of inches of the ramp and plunged into the pool, bouncing up as her feet touched the bottom and holding her dripping hands out in front of her, squeaking at the sudden coldness as the surface heaved up and down lazily from where she'd fallen in.

With Anneka leading the group, the four of them slogged through the gunge as Alex paced over to a projection screen on the wall. Nicola twisted up to look behind her at it, wading backwards in the stuff as she watched.

"If it's any consolation..." he started as a scoreboard came into view, and their team's entry faded into place just below the single other entry on it, "...your score of twelve hundred puts you in second place on our scoreboard, although that's not exactly a difficult achievement right now..."

Nicola half laughed, sloshing a handful of gunge up in his direction as she turned away again, joining the huddle that the other three girls had formed below the widest nozzle of the tank above them. Slipping her arms around the two girls next to her, she twisted up to watch as Alex led the other wolf over to a large switch on the wall.

"This going to be the last time this happens to us?" Kim whispered, keeping her head bowed but her eyes looking up towards the spout as Alex faced out towards the room, delivering his last piece to the camera.

"Think so," Anneka laughed, clapping a slimy hand on to the mouse girl's back and pushing her just a little more towards the center, the others forming a group hug around her as she whimpered nervously. She looked up sharply as she saw the wolf boy reach up towards the lever, then she ducked back down again, putting her gungy hands hesitantly to her face.

Nicola bounced eagerly as the wolf tugged the giant switch down, triggering an alarm and a shower of sparks from the wall. Glancing up for a moment at the multiple nozzles looming over them, she saw the whole machine twitch as its chutes opened and wide fingers of dark green gunk spewed down towards them.

Hunching down and closing her eyes, she joined in the whoop from the other girls which rapidly turned into shrieks as the massive wave of slop crashed down over them. Nicola wriggled her shoulders upwards, grinning through her screwed up face as the wave settled into a steady downpour that she could feel sliding off the top of her head, against her shoulders and creeping down her chest and back to gloop on to the surface of the pool she was standing in.

The others around her slithered out of her grasp, and she stepped back a little, clasping her hands against her forehead to shield her eyes as the gunge continued to spray over her. For a few seconds, all she could hear was the splattering noise it made around her as it slapped on to the surface of the vat, and then she felt the stuff gradually begin to ease off.

She sensed the lights in the room coming up again as she dragged both her hands down her face, wiping her forehead a few times before opening her eyes and blinking in the sudden light. She laughed as she saw the others slowly recovering as well - Kim, who had been right in the middle of the deluge, was standing frozen in place, her hands clasped to her head, and plastered from head to toe in dark and light green gunge. The others, who had both drifted away a little from the center, were in nearly the same state, with just their eyes and patches of their faces visible through the slimy covering.

Raising her dripping arms to the sides, Nicola smiled as she looked down at herself and saw she was as covered in the green stuff as the rest of them, and she circled her hips a little in the gunge, watching it gloop and ripple against her as she realized that this was going to be the last time she felt it. She glanced around the room again at the slime-covered ramp, the dunk chair and the still dripping gunge tank overhead, then over to the side of the vat in front of her - Alex and DF were standing watching them from the pool's edge, with a few crew members coming out of their positions to join them. Slowly and just a little reluctantly, she began wading through the glop towards them.

"How are you feeling - enjoyed yourselves?" Alex asked with a grin as the girls approached. Nicola gave a tired attempt at a whoop, pumping one arm in the air, as the others nodded exhaustedly. "You've been a great team - let's get you out of there..."

She glanced sideways as the gray wolf grinned down towards Lesley, who had reached the side of the vat and put her hands on the edge for support. She gasped as the tired-looking chipmunk girl suddenly sprang forwards and wrapped her slippery arms around his legs, pulling him towards her - his arms flailed for a moment, then with a yelp he toppled forwards, hitting the surface of the gunge vat face first with a heavy smacking noise.

Nicola raised one hand instinctively against the wide splash of colorful slime, ducking to look under her own arm as the wolf's gunge-coated head poked a little above the surface. Slowly, he began to stand upright, shaking his head rapidly and wiping his eyes, mixed gunge oozing from all over his fur as he hauled himself into a standing position again.

"You're not showing him any mercy, Lesley - he only signed up for that happening to him once!" Alex said above the laughter of the others behind him. Nicola looked over to see him crouch down at the side of the vat, his hands stretched out towards her. Glancing over her shoulder at the slop-coated wolf, who was defending himself against a further barrage of gunge sloshed at him by Lesley, she grinned to herself and reached up to Alex's hands, ready to tug down.

"Oh, I can see that coming a mile off..." Alex stepped backwards suddenly, holding a finger up as he smiled knowingly. "Come on, you already got me in the last game!"

Nicola dropped her hands back into the pool of gunge and settled for splashing a couple of armfuls of the stuff out towards his feet instead, before wading a little closer and letting him gently take hold of her wrists. She eeped as she was lifted out of the pool, kicking her legs against the wall as she felt the thick liquid slither down her legs and drip off her toes.

As Alex put her carefully down on the poolside, she looked up to see Blue approaching with a large towel. Gratefully, she took it and wrapped it around her shoulders, picking up the corner to wipe at her face and looking down as Anneka was pulled out as well.

"He's learned to look out for that trick," the reptilian laughed as she watched the jaguar girl wriggle in Alex's grasp, the gunge sliding down from all over her as he turned to set her down on the floor. "You already got your own back on him more than most people do!" Grinning as she remembered the shuttle, Nicola stepped out of the way as Blue turned to pass another towel on to the soaked feline.

"And we're going to make sure we get him again soon," she added, smiling sweetly at the red wolf as he glanced over at her, hands still stretched down towards the pool as Kim approached. Nicola cheered with the others, surprised but happy to see a little bit of nervousness on his face. "You're just going to have to wait to find out how!"