NARABI VS SALIM (Special IZ scene)
Written by Iron-K

"It's time, you two!" Alex's voice came from the door as he burst through it, striding towards the center of the room. "I hope we didn't keep you waiting too long - enjoying our guest suite so far?"

The two occupants of the room looked up at him from inside their booths nervously - on the back wall, a young pale tan lioness was seated on a plastic sofa-like seat inside a wide alcove which had a slightly curved waist-high plastic front. Next to the room's main tank, a golden lionmorph occupied a six foot high gunge cubicle, a couple of metallic pipes stretching from its top and sides to the walls behind it. Both were wearing black swimwear bearing the IZ logo.

"Let's see, who to introduce first..." The lioness in the wide booth followed Alex with her eyes as he walked past her towards the tank with the male lion on the far wall. He slapped his hand against it, and its occupant twisted up to look as he read out to the camera from his pocket device. "Here's our first guest this evening - how are you doing, Salim?"

"I'm fine, thanks," he responded, though hardly taking his eyes off the gunge chute above his head as Alex continued to introduce him.

"Salim's 21, goes to university in Anglia and he's getting towards the end of a history degree at the moment... and - most importantly for us - he wants to gunge his little sister Narabi!"

The pale lioness wriggled at the mention of her name, grinning down at her feet as Alex pointed and stepped over towards her. "Narabi's eighteen, and she's about to start college herself - what are you going to be doing there, Narabi?"

"Er, I'm going to dental college", she responded, clearing her throat. She swished her tail behind her.

Alex smirked, and shrugged. "Well, we can never have enough of those - so Salim," he called over to the other tank as he put his hand on the wall above the booth, "can you tell us why you nominated your sister to go in here?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "It's the music that she listens to in her room when I come home and try to work!"

"You're only around on weekends, though, right?" Alex asked, and he nodded his head again. "So what's this music that's so difficult to endure?"

"It's this..." he sighed, thinking, "...lovey kind of bubblegum pop. And she plays it so that I can hear it through the wall!"

"Is that true, Narabi?" Alex asked, turning back to her.

"No!" she giggled, shaking her head.

"Really? You've never turned it up just to annoy him, or anything?"

"Well..." She bit her lip, looking down at her bare feet again as she dragged them against the tank's floor, and Alex grinned.

"Anyway... just so we can get the whole picture here, what kind of stuff does he listen to when he's at home?"

"Oh, he's into really horrible heavy metal stuff," Narabi said quickly, ignoring the sounds of protest from her brother. "And it's much louder than mine!"

"Well, in the interests of fairness," Alex said, pointing upwards and pacing away, "we've got some clips here - let's play the first one and find out..."

He suddenly flinched down and instinctively put his hands to his ears, the two siblings jumping a little as well, as a guttural scream bellowed from speakers somewhere in the ceiling, quickly followed by frenzied thrashing at a heavily distorted guitar. Rapidly he waved his free hand at the ceiling, and breathed out as it was turned off.

"I... know I'm at risk of sounding old here and everything..." he said thoughtfully, "but they didn't tell me they were going to play it that loud!" He straightened and turning to look at the laughing contestants. "Well...! Is that how you like it, Salim?"

"Sort of," he admitted.

"And you're the one who put your sister in the gunge tank, not the other way round? Something's not right here..." He shook his head, turning back to call at the ceiling. "All right, play Narabi's..."

This time, the room was filled with a piano and guitar boyband ballad, a young male singing voice crooning over it. Salim put his fingers to his ears exaggeratedly, and Narabi grinned awkwardly again, tapping her foot to the rhythm for a few bars before it was turned off.

Alex tried to keep a straight face as the music cut out, bringing a hand up to rub his left ear, then shook his head as he chuckled. "You know, I was about to swap you around right then after that first one, but now I really don't know who to gunge more..."

The young lioness's shoulders shook a little as she avoided his gaze embarrassedly, then looked back at him as he paced back to her side.

"Okay, Narabi - you were the one who was nominated to be gunged, so I'm afraid you're staying in there for now. But so that nobody can accuse us of being unfair, we're going to give you a chance to save yourself and turn the tables back on your brother. Now, you've found yourself in here because of one specific band that Salim put down - can you guess what it is?"

Narabi hesitated a moment. "Wolfstar?" she asked.

Alex nodded. "That's absolutely right - is that the one you're the biggest fan of?"

"Yeah."

"And how much would you say you knew about them? Own all their singles, know the... favorite colors of everyone in it, that sort of thing?"

"Oh, yes," Salim sighed from behind Alex. "And I hear about it all the time!" His sister just cringed, blushing and squirming anxiously.

"Well, Narabi, your task's going to be to prove that, because I've got a set of questions all about Wolfstar here..." - Alex held up his pocket computer as he walked back to the center of the room, turning so that he was facing both of the siblings again - "...and your task's going to be to get five right in under a minute. If you run out of time, then Salim gets to pull that lever he has up on the wall there, and - not to dress it up or anything - you're going to get totally slopped... but if you make it, then the tank above his head opens instead!"

The red wolf paused for a moment as the two contestants both looked up nervously at the nozzles placed above them. "So are you ready to try and escape?"

Narabi drew in her breath, wriggling up in the seat. "Yep," she nodded, bouncing a little nervously and glancing between her brother and Alex. A projected display faded in above the tank, showing a timer at sixty and a row of five dimmed light bulb icons.

"How do you think she'll do, Salim?" Alex called over to the other tank.

"Badly, I hope...!" he answered, though it was obvious that he had become less confident when he had heard the challenge that his sister was going to be given. Narabi shook her head, looking out at him as he glanced around the gunge tank again.

"Well, there's only one way to find out!" Alex held up the computer, and a ticking noise started playing from the ceiling, making Narabi jump, her mouth falling open a little in shock. "Narabi, Wolfstar released their first full-length album just a year ago, but can you tell me the year the current lineup was formed?"

The lioness stuttered and rubbed her lips together, gripping the material of the plastic seat on either side of her as she drummed her toes on the floor. "Er," she started. "Was it in... '04?"

"That was a guess, wasn't it?" Alex smirked, and she shrank backwards, wriggling uncomfortably. "But you were right!" A light clicked on on the display screen above the tank as the timer passed fifty, and the lioness raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"Quickly, then - who had the writing credit for the new single 'I Believe'?"

"That was... Joel."

"Absolutely right - Salim's not looking happy!" Alex chuckled as the lion anxiously watched another light turn on above his sister's tank. "Not counting different versions of the same song, how many singles have the band released to date?"

"Um..." The lioness hesitated, bouncing on the seat as she closed her eyes and counted on her fingers. Her brother leaned forward as he watched.

"You should have them all in your collection...!" Alex teased, and she nodded, putting one hand over her eyes. The seconds ticked past.

"Twelve?" she eventually hazarded.

"I'm sorry, it's thirteen...!" The pale feline whimpered as her brother smiled again, sitting up more confidently.

"Still thirty seconds - which band member's car featured in the video for 'I Love Love'?"

"Er, Danny's," she said, shaking her head.

"Correct!" A third light came on. "And in that video, what three letters are on the car's license plate?"

"Oh, it's..." She closed her eyes and thought again, clasping her hands to her head and staying silent, rocking back and forth a little as she tried to picture it in her head. The timer reached fifteen, and she gasped as a more urgent beep replaced the ticking noise.

"L-U-V?" she called out, looking out at him hopefully.

"Yes! Come on, one more!" Alex encouraged, practically jumping himself as he announced her right answer. "Extreme..." He laughed and started the question again, speaking quickly as the timer ticked towards zero, "Extreme metal band Doomchild covered which song of Wolfstar's last year?"

She looked straight at him, gasping as her mouth turned up in a delighted smile. "Fly Me Tonight," she blurted, waving a finger out at him.

"It's right!" Alex spread his arms, looking up at the screen as the fifth light turned on, and the lioness cheered out loud, raising her arms in the air. Salim sagged forwards, raising one palm up to his face. "That was the best go at a challenge in here we've ever had - you've done it, you got your five right answers with just three seconds to go - and it looks like Salim knows what that means...!"

The male lion nodded, hand still at his face, then he dropped it to his side and gave an uncomfortable grin, shifting in his seat as he turned his eyes nervously up to the nozzles in the ceiling of the tank. Alex stepped forwards towards the giggling lioness, who slid towards him on her seat as he leaned into the tank to hand her the pocket computer.

"I think you should get the chance to do this," he said, pointing at a button on its side as he let it go. She looked down at it as he stepped away. "By the way, you sounded confident of that last one - how did you know that?"

Narabi smiled, her thumb on the button. "'Cause he plays it all the time to wind me up," she said, nodding her head over at her brother.

The red wolf laughed, looking at the embarrassed grin frozen on Salim's face. "Well, I can't think of a better way to get your own back for that - go on, push that button and turn it on!"

Triumphantly, the pale lioness jabbed the button and leaned forwards to watch the gunge tank her brother was inside. Hunching his shoulders up and closing his eyes as the alarm sounded, Salim froze in place for a moment, then flinched, gasping as two streams of thick white foam dropped from the ceiling of the tank and hit his shoulders with a wet smacking noise. He bowed his head a little, his face in a smiling grimace, as the streams flowed down around his neck to coat his chest and back, a rain of blobs of the shaving foam-like stuff spattering off his shoulders and smacking on the booth's floor. Two more foam sprays sputtered into life from the pipes in the middle of the tank, and he yelped as they sprayed up and down his sides, wriggling and putting his hands out to defend himself.

Narabi put her hands on the front of her tank and leaned out, giggling as she watched her brother getting covered, and the level of foam inside the tank rose as even more of it was pumped in from the bottom. She watched wide-eyed as his legs disappeared underneath the rapidly rising white mass, bouncing on her feet as the occasional glimpse of his face became visible through the foamy torrent. After rising to tummy height, the thick foam began spilling out over the tank's door, breaking off in heavy blobs and smacking to the floor, and in the same instant, the alarm hooted again, just before a wide column of blue and yellow gunge poured from the top of the tank and domed out over Salim's head.

The lioness whooped, clapping her hands together victoriously as the vague outline of Salim squirmed from side to side underneath the torrent, shaking his head occasionally to spray the colorful glop outwards towards the booth's walls. The level of foam dipped down again, stained in bright colors by the falling slime, and revealed more of his white-coated fur, the gloopy liquid mingling into green as slimy fingers of it slithered down over the foam clinging to him. He tossed his head to one side, the slime dripping from his soaked and heavy mane, then leaned back into the downpour as he felt it beginning to subside. He shook his head slowly again, raising his hands up out of the foam and holding them in front of them, letting the blobby mixture of foam and gunge drip off them as the last of the slop drizzled on to the top of his head.

Narabi grinned widely as Salim flicked his hands and brought them to his face, dragging the thick mixture away from his eyes and squirming again to get out of the flow of slimy blobs still dripping out of the pipe above him. With his mouth open in a shocked expression that turned into a smile as he opened his eyes and looked out at her, he shook himself, sending another wave of gunge spattering outwards on to the tank's sides. He brought his hands hesitantly up to brush at his soaked and messy hair, which was flattened against his head and chest, slow drizzles of gunge falling from them into his lap.

Alex stepped forwards and gently took the device out of Narabi's hands. She glanced over at him for a moment as he took it, then turned back to watching her messy brother slowly trying to brush the coating of gunge off his shoulders, front and lap. The stuff hit the tank's floor with a thick splattering noise as he dragged it off his fur. As she watched, Alex strolled over to a hatch set into the wall next to the tank and tugged it open with a rusty squeak.

"So, Narabi, you're the first who's been in that thing to receive one of these... congratulations!" He reached inside and produced a trophy in the shape of the Industrial Zone gear logo. The lioness turned around to face him, and the dripping male looked up as well as the red wolf held it out towards her. Tentatively, she reached both hands out, looking like she was expecting him to suddenly pull it away at any moment. But he handed it to her gently, and she turned it around to face her, looking down at it with a smile on her face and then holding it out to show her brother.

"Just one more question for you," Alex said casually as he pushed the hatch closed again, and the lioness looked around at him quizzically. "You weren't hoping to get away clean, were you?"

This time, it was Salim who clapped his hands together, laughing and waggling his finger as his sister's face changed from triumph all the way back to nervousness again. She stuttered ineffectually as the host continued. "'Cause we're going to start it up - goodbye!"

Narabi shrieked as the gunge tank siren hooted again, and folded her arms in to hug the plastic trophy to her chest, bending down almost double as warning lights flashed inside her tank. Two wide jets of translucent green slime spewed out at her from head height on either side of the booth and she gave another high pitched squeak, drumming her feet on the floor, as they came together and splashed on to her back, coating her in a slippy layer as the goo dripped around to her sides. After a moment, they were joined by a wave of yellow slop poured from the grate behind her, which splattered outwards on to the seat and floor, making her hunch her shoulders up, facing forwards and grimacing as it got stronger and licked up to her neck.

As the yellow wave eased back again, the lioness slowly sat back upright, wriggling and squeaking as the green stuff splattered on her sides. She slithered backwards on the now slippery inflatable seat and relaxed her hands to the sides, sweeping her feet through the rising gunge at the bottom of the tank. She shook her head as the yellow stuff glooped around her shaking shoulders, a couple of streaks of it splashing on to her head. Gradually, the green streams slowed, parting until they were flowing down the side walls.

Another alarm sounded, and Narabi gasped as she looked up into the nozzle above her head for a moment before facing the front and squeezing her eyes shut as a torrent of orange gunge poured out of it. The front of the downpour engulfed her head for a moment before billowing out into a wide sloppy dome, her mouth open in a shrieking laugh before it was hidden behind the heavy curtain. As two more overhead nozzles to either side of her began pouring out slowly tilting streams of green slime to fill the tank up faster, she leaned forwards a little out of the orange flow and put her free hand up to her forehead, shielding her eyes from above. Her messy face was visible for a moment, then the falling gunge twitched forward and she slid her hand down to cover her eyes as she vanished behind the gloop again.

Salim ran both his hands back over his head a couple of times as he amusedly watched the gunge tank filling up around his sister, the sickly smooth mixture rising up her legs. She squeaked as it got up to her waist and poured into the seat around her, only her bowed and dripping head visible in front of the continuing orange deluge as she craned her neck out of it and allowed it to splash on to her shoulders and run down her back. Finally, she felt the torrent easing off, and panting, she slowly leaned backwards again, stretching her head to the side to avoid the drizzle and then catching the last dripping dollops from above in her hand up against her chest.

Hauling her right hand out of the still rising gunge, she used her palm to wipe at both her eyes in turn and hesitantly opened them, shaking the worst of the orange slop off her head. Her upper half was almost completely covered in the thick orange liquid, her ears flattened by the weight of the gunge. She looked from side to side at the wide green streams, reaching her hand out to catch some of one as it tilted towards her, as they continued to fill up the tank to her chest.

The rising mixture of orange and green slime reached the height of the tank's door and began to spill over it to the floor, and Narabi visibly breathed out as the waves of slop surrounding her shut off, leaving only a few heavy drips splotting on to the slowly rippling surface. Relievedly, she grinned over at her brother, but jumped and clasped her arm around her head as she heard a new, faster siren.

With a hissing noise, a lumpy bright green downpour dropped from the ceiling, splurging on to Narabi's already messy head and the blobs of it rolling down her cheeks to smack on to her shoulders. She squeaked from underneath it but kept her mouth firmly closed as two bright yellow foam sprays joined it from nozzles just to its side, the airy mixture splattering off her and floating outwards on the surface of the glop she was sitting in. As the green gunge finally eased off, she straightened up underneath it, looking up just for a moment before the three streams spluttered and dripped to a halt.

Alex watched her for a moment as she cleared her eyes again, blinking and shaking her head before looking down at herself. "Well, Narabi..." he started with a laugh, "how are you feeling in there?"

"Really... icky," she concluded, shaking the hand that was above the surface and turning her face away as slime sprayed off it. She ran it over her head again, clearing the worst of the piled up foam and chunks of gunge off.

"Still got your prize?" he asked, stepping up beside the tank. The green-covered lioness nodded her head, sending specks of slime dripping down from her coated face, and pulled her left hand out of the gunge bath. Curtains of the viscous liquid fell away from it as she raised it up, revealing the shape of the slop-coated trophy.

"Good! That's yours to keep, if you can get it recognizable again, and I hope you've both enjoyed yourselves..." He looked between the two of them. "I think the lesson to take away from here is that arguing over music always just ends in a mess - wouldn't you say so?"

Narabi laughed to herself, and Alex looked down at his feet, making an act of lifting them high as he walked through the spreading gunge puddle in front of her booth towards her brother.

"I've got to get back to the team now," the red wolf said as he reached the other gunge booth again. "Salim, sorry you didn't get the chance to do it yourself, but we did get her covered in gunge at a price - do you think you've had a fair result today?"

Salim, his lower legs still hidden by the mass of sagging multi-colored foam in the booth, just smiled. "Yeah, it's fair enough," he replied.

"All right - thanks for coming on!" Alex waved, turned and left by the door he had come in, leaving the two of them to wait to be released by the stage crew.