INDUSTRIAL ZONE S3E1 - ROUND 3

Written by Iron-K

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"All right, what were the others?"

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

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

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

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

"So how many teams have won?"

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

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

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

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

"2495!" Jess said, relieved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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