INDUSTRIAL ZONE 5 - Guest Game

Written by Iron-K

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"S," repeated Ginger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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