INDUSTRIAL ZONE S3E1 - ROUND 4

Written by Iron-K

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex was leading them towards a set of double doors in the middle of the opposite wall from where they had come in. They had the same heavy metallic look as most of the environment, and were closed by a latch that held the two halves together.

"Now, we've got someone in here that one of you already knows," he said, putting one hand on the latch and turning around to look at their faces. Jess glanced sideways at them all, too - one game for each team always involved a surprise victim that was a friend or family member of the contestants, or whoever else they had nominated. She remembered putting her friend Leann's name down on her application form when she'd applied, and looked up at the door. She was half hoping she hadn't been picked - they had made up for what inspired her to nominate her ages ago - but a part of her still wanted to see her in whatever game was beyond it.

"You all had fantastic selections, so I was just sorry that only one of your first choices agreed to do it," he continued, spinning the latch off the door and giving it a push. Jess relaxed again - Leann didn't strike her as someone who would agree to come on. But she looked up at the host's face as he turned to her.

"Want to lead us in, Jess?" he asked. Jess's heart jumped as she realized that that invitation meant that she was going to recognize whoever they had inside after all. As the door swung heavily inwards, she looked around it, caught just a glimpse of the room, jumped wildly, and scampered backwards, spinning round to face the grinning red wolf.

"I never thought you'd actually..." she exclaimed, faltering, then gave up. Looking back over her shoulder again, she swallowed and stepped fully through the door.

Right ahead of her inside the room was Leann - a light brown-furred canine girl. She was inside a six foot high clear booth like the others that they'd seen before, which was set in a slight recess on the right wall. Three large curved metal pipes stretched from the wall to the tank - one above her head and two on either side of her feet. She was sitting in a plastic armchair-like seat that was attached to the wall, raised off the ground so that her legs were dangling and her bare toes were just touching the floor.

Jess giggled nervously as Leann raised a hand off the arm of the seat in greeting, and looked up at the gunge pipe looming over her. The other three came into the room, followed by Alex, who pushed the door closed behind him.

"I know you recognize our guest, Jess - can you introduce us?" he prompted as he strolled over to the gunge tank. Its occupant watched him approach, wriggling uncomfortably in the seat.

Jess took a deep breath to get over her excitement, then swallowed. "Yeah. This is Leann, and I've known her since our first day of school together." The puppy girl nodded in agreement, her short darker brown hair bobbing around her head.

"So this is obviously a friendship that's lasted a long time - Leann, do you know why Jess wanted to put you in the gunge machine?" Alex asked, leaning on the side of the tank and talking down to her through the clear wall.

The puppy girl looked down at the pipes beside her feet, and after a moment's hesitation, slowly nodded. "Yeah, I think I have some idea..."

"Do you want to tell everyone, or will I do it?" he asked, smiling as she squirmed in the high seat.

"Go on," she said, shaking her head. The red wolf flashed a grin at her and then turned around, pacing back towards the team as he raised the palm computer up to read from it.

"The story we're about to tell happened during a summer holiday a couple of years ago. Jess, you'll know about this - want to tell us what happened?"

Jess grinned over at Leann, who wasn't looking any more comfortable now that she was the one telling everyone about it. She sat smiling tensely, drumming a couple of fingers on her bare thigh as she waited for the explanation to come. "Yeah, it was the weekend right after we'd got out of high school," she started. "Leann's parents own a cabin up in the mountains a couple of hundred miles away from us, so a group of our friends got together there to stay overnight a couple of days."

The canine cringed at the mention of the place, nodding her head.

"And that went all right, didn't it?" Alex encouraged, walking back towards Leann. The puppy girl watched him anxiously.

"Yes." Jess nodded. "The trouble was that when we left..."

"The trouble was that you left her there!" interrupted Alex, slapping his hands on the door of the gunge tank and leaning in to face Leann.

The pretty canine leaned backwards on the wall slightly, away from his smiling but still intimidating face. Uncomfortably, she stuttered a little, then nodded glumly.

"We took two cars, and both of us thought she was in the other one!" she protested. "We soon turned around to pick her up."

"That's not what it says here..." Alex answered, and she looked at him for a moment, then hid her face behind her hands embarrassedly as he turned his back on her, walking towards the others. "You got about a hundred miles before stopping off and realizing she was in neither car", he read out, getting a laugh from the other three team members at the side of the room, "and you had to rush back to wake her up after she thought she was going to be there all night!" Leann giggled awkwardly, not looking at him but instead up to the gunge chute positioned above her.

"So, for abandoning your friend, we've brought you here and put you in what we call the Mixer... have you ever seen this thing before, by the way?" Alex asked, patting the side of the tank.

"Oh, yes." Leann nodded slowly, a feeling of nervous apprehension in her voice.

"Good, so you'll know what happens to people who lose the challenge..."

She nodded her head again, shivering as she remembered seeing exactly that. Jess smiled too - the Mixer was one of the games that had been introduced in the second season, and it was still recognizable even though they'd reworked the set. She'd seen it being used on most of the episodes she'd seen on TV, and it felt strange and exciting to see someone she knew inside it.

"So we're going to get you to play a game against your friend, and if you win before the time runs out, then we'll let you out of there - otherwise you get the all-over body wash treatment complete with dynamic foaming action," he said, pointing to the pipes over Leann's head and at her feet in turn. The pretty brown canine looked where he was pointing, cringing at the thought of what might happen. "You've been watching the games that they've been in so far - are you looking forward to that happening to you?"

She tapped her fingers on the arm of the seat, curling and uncurling her dangling bare toes. "Can't say I am, no," she giggled.

"Well, here's your chance to save yourself..." Alex moved towards Jess, pointing behind her at a slanted table with a screen on the wall behind it, set up at the end of the room opposite the cubicle. He motioned to her to step behind it and she did so, looking down to see that it was divided into nine panels arranged in a grid.

"This is a memory game," Alex began. "You've got to set the challenge for Leann by hitting a sequence into these panels," - he demonstrated by pressing down on them with his fingers, each of them lighting up in red as they were touched - "and once all nine of them are on, Leann's got to copy that sequence as fast as she can on her own panel."

He strolled over towards the gunge tank again, taking his pocket computer out and concentrating on it briefly. As he reached the tank he handed it to the canine, who took it in both hands, put it on her lap and looked down at its display. He pointed over at the screen on the wall behind Jess, which was showing a similar grid layout.

"Leann, you've got thirty seconds in total - we start the timer when Jess has finished her sequence, and stop it again when you've copied it correctly. You've got to do that three times to save yourself - if the timer hits zero before you make it, then... you're going to be gunged." He raised a hand up to indicate the pipe, and Leann shivered at the sound of the word, looking up to where he was pointing. "But if you make it, then I'm sure we can find something to do to Jess instead..."

Jess raised her eyebrows as she looked up from the panel, then tried not to look too surprised. This part of the show always had the threat of turning the tables on whoever had nominated the guest, but they always found some excuse to get the guest messy whatever happened.

"She's looking worried!" Jess looked down again, concentrating hard on the panel as she tried not to let her face give away any reaction to the comment. "Go ahead, Jess - whenever you're ready," she heard him finish.

Jess breathed out and looked down at the panel. She reached forward and pressed firmly on the middle one first, then tapped out what she hoped was a sequence that was difficult to remember. When the last one was pressed, a different noise sounded, followed by the ticking of a timer.

"Hurry up, Leann, repeat what Jess just did!" Alex encouraged her as she nervously looked out at him, then to the screen behind Jess.

Jess turned around and looked up at it, too, watching as it showed Leann's hesitant button presses in a different color. She was slow but didn't make any mistakes, and quickly pressed the last couple of panels in the sequence, stopping the timer before fifteen seconds had passed.

Jess turned back to watch her friend relax again, leaning back in the seat and breathing out relievedly. She glanced upwards once again, playing with her hair as she did so. Alex stepped forward again.

"That was good, Leann, but don't look too relaxed yet - you've got to do two more of these in half the time you've already used! Jess, give her another one."

Jess pressed out another sequence on her panels and whipped her head round to watch as Leann's timer started up again. Faster this time, she tried to tap out the same combination, and Jess smiled as she made a mistake and had to start over. Her heart jumped, though, as the puppy girl effortlessly got the sequence right on her second try, stopping the timer just a few seconds after it had started. She looked round again to see Leann grinning back at her much more confidently.

"All right, this is the last one that you have to do, Leann! Jess, she's got just under ten seconds left, which is more than enough time, so do your best to confuse her or you know what'll happen to you..."

Jess was the one to squirm uncomfortably this time, knowing that Leann was still looking at her, and imagined being covered in foam and gunge in her place as she looked down at her panel again. She slapped her palms across the board, trying to make the sequence as awkward as possible, and paused to decide what to press next when she only had three left.

After a moment, she realized she could turn the pause to her advantage, and waited for a few more seconds. She looked up at Leann, who was looking back at her exasperatedly.

"Oh, come on..." she pleaded, trying to concentrate on the panel in front of her and counting out the sequence so far with her pointing finger, already looking unsure.

Jess stayed still for another moment before beginning to feel slightly guilty about making her wait, and pressed the last few buttons almost together. The high beep signaled that it was Leann's turn, and she started jabbing at her panel as soon as the timer started decreasing.

Getting the first one wrong immediately, she started again and paused, clicking her tongue in frustration as she hovered around, trying to remember what Jess had pressed before she'd waited. Jess curled and uncurled her toes as she watched her progress, hoping that she would make a wrong press each time as each second seemed to take ages to go past. Eventually, Leann tried hitting another space, only for it to buzz and get her to start over. Looking up to see she only had a few seconds left, she pressed frantically at the panel, concentrating hard as she tapped out a sequence only to get it wrong again twice in the same place. A moment later, she jumped as a low alarm began to blare, signaling that the timer had reached zero.

"Sorry, Leann, but you're out of time, and you know what that means - Jess, quick, come over here!" Jess, breathing out relievedly as Alex leaned in to take the pocket device back from Leann, slipped out from behind the console. She watched Leann raising her hands to cup her mouth, eyes wide, as she dashed towards the gunge tank, suddenly excited about what was about to happen.

"The Mixer's going to turn on in a moment, and you can get your own back in your own time," he finished, handing the minicomputer to her and pointing at a single flashing button on the side. Jess stepped forward and took hold of it, smiling apologetically over at Leann. Taking her hands away from her mouth, the puppy girl gripped the arms of her seat, swinging her dangling legs in front of her as she looked anxiously at the gunge chute above her head, waiting for the inevitable.

A nervous grin crossed her face as the whine of the alarm rose in pitch, then she yelped and nearly jumped out of the seat as two streams of thick yellow pie foam began spewing out of the ends of her chair's arms, falling into piles beside her feet. She drew her legs in closer, tentatively putting her hands back on the arms of the chair, and held on tighter as she watched the pipes at the sides of her feet gurgle into life as well, pushing green foam into the tank with a hissing noise and slowly beginning to fill it up. As the bubbling mixture rose around her ankles she wriggled from side to side, keeping her eyes on the stuff and shivering as it gradually oozed up her legs.

Jess saw she was distracted from the nozzle at the top, and at the same moment, jabbed her thumb down on the flashing button. The sudden hoot of the gunge tank klaxon made Leann look towards her, just before a mixture of bright green and yellow gunge splurged down from the pipe above her and hid her from view as it splashed outwards off her head.

Jess put her hand to her mouth, laughing as the heavy opaque slime flopped down on to the rising knee-deep foam, sending specks of it flying up into the air. The shape of the top of Leann's head was just about visible through the gungy downpour as it twitched and splattered all over her. Suddenly her hands broke through the dome covering her, palms upturned to catch the slime as it fell, the gunk splatting heavily off them and slipping thickly through her fingers. As the foam quickly rose above waist level, they disappeared again behind it.

The heavy flood of gunge subsided a little into a steady downpour, bringing the dome shape inwards so that the stuff slithered down Leann's head and body instead of splattering outwards after hitting her, leaving the walls of the tank painted in yellow and green. Jess watched her wriggle underneath the flow, her hands now over her eyes as the gunge oozed over her head. Slippery streaks crept around her neck and dripped from her chin to cover her chest and tummy as the green and yellow colors mingled with each other, hiding her smooth brown fur underneath a thick glistening layer. Leaning forward out of the gradually slowing downpour, she slowly took her hands away from her messy face, trying to push the foam down away from her by batting it down with her hands, and grimaced as the ooze from above slithered down her neck.

Straightening up again as the foam reached her chest, she blinked a couple of times and squinted out through the gunge covering her face, looking straight at Jess with a shocked expression as the yellow and green stuff drizzled off her muzzle and chin. The downpour had slowed to a trickle, and the runny blobs of gunge from the bottom of the reservoir splatted on her head and slithered downwards through her hair or over her face, disappearing under the neck-height bubbling green foam as she opened her mouth in a half-laugh, half-shriek. Her shoulders shook in giggles at the ticklish feeling before they were hidden by the rising foam as well.

Leann shook her head, the only part of her still visible, craning her neck up and squeaking again as the level of foam rose over the door and began to spill outwards. Jess took a step back as blobs of it broke off and landed heavily to pile up on the floor in front of the tank.

The runny stream of slime became just a few drips from the edges of the pipe above Leann, and the klaxon sounded again to signal the end of the gunging. Giggling with relief, she sagged a little in the seat and pulled her slimy arms out of the foam bath, raising them above her head and wiping them down each other to clear them off. Putting them on her head and leaning to the side to escape the continuing drips from the top of the tank, she tried to clean off her head and face but only succeeded in smearing more green foam across herself.

With a laugh, Alex stepped forward from Jess's cheering team mates and walked to the other side of the Mixer. Leann turned her face to watch as he came closer, still trying to wipe away the foam and gunge from her head. After watching her for a moment, he smiled and leaned around the back of the tank to retrieve a small face towel, which he offered to her.

"Here, I'll let you use this so I can actually talk to you... come around here, Jess!" Leann took the cloth, nodded and raised it to her face, pinching her muzzle with it then dragging it down her face. As Jess walked to the front of the tank she watched her screw it into a ball and wipe it across her forehead, getting some of the golden brown fur on her face visible again. She looked around her, saw Jess coming and dipped it into the foam bath, then gently hurled it towards her.

Jess caught the gungy towel against her chest and picked up one corner of it, letting the slime and foam on it drip to the floor before handing it back to Alex. She and Leann grinned at each other, and she allowed herself to laugh a little at the sight of her completely gunged friend sitting in the messy tank.

"Do you think you deserved that, Leann?" the host asked as she raised her fingers to her hair, flinching as she tucked the gungy stray strands back behind her ears.

Leann coughed as she opened her mouth to speak, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "No!" she said emphatically, looking down at the foam surrounding her and using both arms to try and push it away.

"You did!" The others laughed as he turned away, the doused puppy girl whimpering a little in laughing protest. She squeaked as another brief gunge stream dripped into the tank, slopping across her head and shoulders and pushing some of the green bubbles down.

Alex looked around. "Jess, how about you - do you think that justice has been served?"

"Definitely," she answered. She made eye contact with Leann again after she had wiped her eyes, and the messy canine shook her head defeatedly.

"Well, we'll let the two of you catch up later - for now I can give you seventy points for the game, because Leann nearly made it..." Leann nodded, laughing again as she looked down at her soaked and slimy fur.

"Come on - we've still got time for three more games here!" With a last wave back at the Mixer, Alex headed out the door back to the hangar area. The others followed him as Jess looked back at Leann.

"You OK?" she mouthed. She laughed as Leann nodded back at her, waving with a gungy hand, then turned to catch up with the others.

Alex closed the door behind Jess as she came through to rejoin the other three. "How'd it feel to get your own back?" he asked as she looked back over her shoulder at him.

"Brilliant," she replied, taken by surprise by the question as she was still distracted thinking about the sight of it. She hadn't really wanted to gunge her for what had happened, but seeing her reaction had been worth it.

"Well, she might be getting you a little messy in the final game, so don't celebrate too much yet... Skye!"

The husky girl looked up sharply as her name was mentioned, and Alex walked forward to take her arm.

"You haven't been in a game yourself in ages - how do you feel about testing one of our new ones?" he asked.

"All right," she grinned. Jess saw that she'd finally got over her nerves too, and was acting much more like she'd seen her before they'd started. She jogged behind them as Alex dashed towards the nearest stairs with her, slipping his hand down her arm to take her hand as they climbed the metal steps again.

"I think this is the best place to show you it..." He moved over to the door in the center of the nearby wall, which was at right angles to the one they'd come in by and the door to the Mixer room. Quickly undoing the latch with one hand and hauling it open, he stepped through and beckoned the others to follow.

Jess was the first in behind Skye. The walkway they were on continued beyond the door into the room for a couple of meters. Just beyond the railing where the walkway ended, three large red cylindrical tanks decorated with warning stripes and symbols loomed ahead of them. They were suspended from the ceiling by wide pipes, and each one of them had a large valve wheel accessible from the walkway with a digital readout beside each of them.

She turned away from the imposing tanks as Alex led Skye down a nearby ramp that stretched to the opposite corner of the room and then turned to reach the floor below. Hearing a hesitant laugh from the husky girl, she scampered down after them to look at the lower floor.

The three tanks were connected by pipes leading from their bases, converging in a half-sphere shape which was attached to the ceiling of an open metallic cubicle in the center of the floor. As Alex led Skye towards the gunge tank, she looked around the rest of the room, but didn't see an obvious game they were going to have to take part in - banks of computer terminals, keypads of various sizes, and various other controls and switches were spread around the four walls of the lower floor.

As Helen and Yasa padded down the ramp to join them, Jess watched Alex give Skye a friendly nudge into the cubicle. It was metallic gray on all sides except the one with the door, which was clear like the others they'd seen, and it had no floor, instead a few bars forming a grille over a hole in the ground. Skye turned around and sat down as Alex reached over to close the door. There was a keypad on one side of the clear plastic surface that beeped as it clunked closed, and Skye jumped as a metal rod snicked out from it to lock the tank.

"We call this one 'Time Lock'," Alex said as he turned away from the cubicle and addressed the three remaining team members. "And it's as simple as the name suggests - you're going to have to stop those things from opening and find the combination to let your team leader out."

Jess stepped back as they all looked up at the large cylinders poised above the husky girl's head. They were all about as tall as she was, and Skye was already looking a little more nervous.

"Come up, I'll show you how." Alex dashed up the ramp again, and Jess looked back at the tank before she followed. Their host was already casually leaning on one of the cylinders by the time the three of them reached the top.

"These things are timed to go off together at about three minute intervals," he said as they gathered round, and knocked sharply on the metallic surface of the one nearest him. "There is a way to stop them, but before you can turn them off, you need to get the keys for them from down there."

Jess and the others looked over the railing at the floor below, and she turned to look up as Alex approached behind them.

"To find the keys and the combination to let your team leader out, you'll each have to follow a series of clues, starting from the screen in the center," he explained as he pointed down at it. "The timers will start when I turn it on. Ready?"

"Yeah!" Yasa reached down to grab Helen's hand, and together they moved towards the ramp. Jess followed them, then looked back at Alex. She heard a beeping noise as he pressed a button on his controller, and turned to hurry down the way as the timers on the front of each tank began counting down.

The others were already in front of the large monitor in the center of the wall as she jogged towards them, and she leaned in to read them too.

"Which one do you want?" Helen asked, looking around at the two of them.

"Don't know. I'll take the first," Yasa replied, tapping beside it on the screen, then moved away, looking for something that could match the description it had given him.

"I'll take 'Look for seven buttons' if you do the last one, OK?" Jess said quickly, knowing that they couldn't waste time deciding at this stage. The catgirl nodded, read the last clue one more time and spun round.

Jess turned away too and walked along the banks of various dials, readouts and switches, occasionally leaning in to see if something could possibly be the seven buttons that the clue had mentioned. Eventually she saw them - a set of translucent red keys arranged in a hexagonal shape, next to one of the small monitors. Unsure of what to do, she hesitantly pressed one of them, and saw the one in the middle light up for a second.

She moved her finger to it and pressed down. This time, the center button and one of the outer ones flashed in sequence. She immediately realized that she was meant to copy the combination that was lit up each time, and hurriedly tapped in the sequence, waiting for the next one.

Concentrating hard on the panel in front of her, she found herself wondering how much time they'd used already as the sequence grew to six, then seven buttons. As she carefully completed the eighth one, she was relieved to see a different effect - this time, the monitor beeped and slowly drew a grid showing the letters of the alphabet in order.

Jess assumed that that was what she had to look for next, but she couldn't remember seeing anything like that while walking around at the start. She straightened up and looked round to see where the others were, seeing Yasa hurrying over to a large grid of lights on the wall. Helen still looked like she was struggling with her first task. Skye watched them intently from inside the gunge cubicle, leaning to the side in an attempt to see what Helen was doing. Suddenly Jess spotted something that looked like the diagram on the screen on a computer bank on the back wall, and glanced at the trapped husky girl for a moment as she ran past her.

The console she had seen consisted of a screen, an unusual sort of keyboard that only had letters in the left-to-right, top-to-bottom sequence she had seen on the monitor, and at the front, a hook-shaped piece of metal that had a key on a chain wrapped around it. She grabbed the key, making the chain rattle as it slipped through the lock, and realized that the task would probably free it.

She turned her attention to the monitor, which like the one she'd just come from was an ancient-looking green screen. The word "BUT" was displayed in capitals in the center, and an empty bar stretched across the bottom half.

Jess tapped the B key and saw the screen react by highlighting the first letter, then she glanced down to search for the other two keys in their unfamiliar locations. When she hit the two of them, the unit gave a confirmation noise, the bar at the bottom of the screen filled about a tenth of the way, and the word was replaced with "TRIO".

She continued tapping in words in the same way, with them increasing in length by one letter every time. Quickly finding it frustrating to have to hunt and peck for keys because of the strange layout of the keyboard, she began thinking again about how much time they'd already spent in the game. Without a visible timer, she had no idea whether they were doing well or not. Distracted, she hit a wrong key and the word she had almost completed was replaced with another.

After what seemed like ages, she finally hit the last few keys of a twelve-letter word, the computer beeped in a different way, and a mechanical clank sounded as the hook snapped out of the mechanism at the front of the unit, jingling the chain as it moved. Jess leaned down quickly to grab it.

"I've..." she started. "I've got a key!" The others looked round as she called it out, Helen quickly turning back to her puzzle and Yasa waving in acknowledgement. Gripping the chain with the key tightly, she hurried towards the ramp and padded back up to the top floor.

"Well done, you've got one!" Alex congratulated as she approached again, and pointed towards the tanks. "Turn the lock in the center of the valve and turn it to deactivate one of them!"

Jess hurriedly moved to the tank on the left hand side, her heart racing as she saw the three timers counting down past a minute and ten seconds. Standing on the jutting-out platform next to the nearest valve, she slipped the key in and twisted it around once, then tugged on the red valve handle and felt it come loose. Using both hands, she began spinning it around, then became aware of footsteps behind her.

She twisted round, still spinning the handle, and saw Yasa jogging up the last bit of the ramp holding a key up triumphantly.

"Yasa, get the -" she started, and squeaked as she felt the handle come loose. Thinking for a moment that she'd just broken off part of the set, she whipped her head around to see that a disc-shaped section of the tank's wall, complete with the still-ticking timer, had come off with the valve handle she was holding.

"That's good, you've taken out the timer mechanism!" Alex called over to her. Yasa had already hurried past and was spinning the second handle. Jess looked down at the piece she was holding, then up to the gap it had left, seeing a large button set into the back of it with the numbers "02" stamped on it. She set the device down on the floor and stepped around to Yasa, who pulled his free as she approached.

"All right, you've got one more to go, and fifty seconds to get it - go down and help Helen!" Jess glanced over at Yasa, and they both took off back down the ramp.

As they scampered down to the first floor, they saw Helen finally move over to her second task, another of the small consoles like Jess had had to use to get her key. She placed her hands on its sides as she leaned over, reading what was on the screen.

"How much time?" she asked as Jess came towards her, Yasa running up beside her.

"About... forty seconds?" Jess estimated. The catgirl whimpered, her tail swishing behind her as she tapped something out in answer to the puzzle on the screen. The computer answered with a harsh buzz.

Jess leaned in to see what she was doing, and at the same moment, Yasa stepped forward. He took hold of the chain at the front of the console and tugged the key, making Helen step out of the way. The lock held securely.

"How heavy is it?" he asked aloud suddenly.

"What?" Helen replied, startled at the question.

"How heavy do you think it is? We could take the whole thing up." He crouched down and wrapped his arms around the unit - it wasn't much more than a foot wide in each direction and four feet tall, and he wobbled only a little as he began to straighten up again with it in his arms.

"Yasa..." Helen started, putting a hand on top of the machine to push it back down again.

"It's fine!" He swung round away from her, shifting the weight of the unit forward and offering one end to Jess. She took it, glancing sideways at Skye, who was watching them confusedly from inside the tank.

"Go on!" He nodded towards the ramp leading up behind Jess. First glancing down at the wall to make sure the thing wasn't plugged into anything else, she looked over her shoulder and began waddling backwards along with him. Speeding up as he encouraged her, she cringed as she glanced up and saw Alex looking down confusedly from above.

They made their way up the ramp with the console, Yasa skipping his feet to avoid the key dragging along the floor on the end of the chain. Jess looked over at Alex again as they hurried to move it towards the last of the three timers, which had just passed fifteen seconds - he looked like he was unsure what to think, but didn't do anything to stop them.

"I'll lift it if you get the key," Yasa said quickly as Helen ran up the ramp to join them. "Ready?"

Jess nodded and clawed at the chain to get the key into her hands. As the rabbit boy lifted the unit up himself, she leaned over, slid the key into the slot, and turned it once to unlock the valve.

"Come on!" Helen jumped up and down a little as Jess threw the key on the floor and tugged on the last of the three handles, an alarm sounding as the timer approached zero. As Yasa put the unit down again she span the wheel as fast as she could, and tugged the disc-shaped section out as she relievedly felt it come loose.

She jumped and nearly dropped the thing as it jolted in her hands, the other two jerking slightly on the floor as well. Looking down and turning it over, she saw that a set of rods had snicked out the back of it, and realized that they would have pressed the button to activate the tank if it had still been attached. Smiling, she turned to face Alex.

"Er," he said, still acting casual and collected but obviously a little taken aback. "That's something we hadn't expected." He stepped forward and picked up the console from where Yasa had left it, hoisting it onto his shoulder. "We'll have to attach it to something next time!" he remarked as he moved down the ramp, beckoning the others to follow. Jess padded down the ramp after him, a little embarrassed at taking part in Yasa's solution even though Alex hadn't commented badly on it.

"They saved you, Skye!" he said brightly as the husky girl looked up at him, hands pressed to the front panel of the tank. She grinned and raised a fist in the air, shuffling forward to get out the way of the pipe. As Alex set the console down, she stood up on the grille below her.

"We just need to get you out of there now... if nobody's changed it since the last time, this should do it." As he strode towards the cubicle he fished a strip of paper out of his pocket, and keyed in a combination that he read off it. With a confirmation beep, the heavy lock retracted again, and he jumped out of the way as Skye pushed the door open.

"Okay, you look pleased to have stayed clean!" he continued, putting his hand on her shoulder again as she rejoined the others. "Your team didn't quite find the combination to release you in time, but they... sort of found the solutions to turn off all three tanks, so I'm giving you fifty points..."

"Hey, is that all?" Helen spoke up. Alex stopped in his tracks, then waved a finger at the discarded console at the bottom of the ramp. "Come on, that was cheating!" he said. He held his hands up at the protests from Helen and Yasa, as Jess shuffled her feet uncomfortably.

"No, I can't give you any more than that, but we can get one of you to help us make up the points," he said over them, changing the subject quickly. "We've got two games left, they've both got pretty heavy forfeits attached to them - Skye, who's going first?"

Helen and Yasa glanced sideways at each other, then before Skye could say anything, Helen was the first to point at the rabbit.

"We should gunge him for that plan of his!" she said brightly. Yasa grinned a little sheepishly, turning away.

"You know, I'd agree with you there, Helen..." Alex replied, "but if you really want to get him, I'd save him up for the last game. Want to do one yourself first?"

"Oh, all right." After just a little hesitation, she stepped forward and followed Alex as he turned around to the lower door of the room. Skye and Jess moved to join them as he unlocked it and pushed it open, leading them back into the main hangar room again.

"Let's go..." Alex drew out the word, looking in all directions as he pretended to decide where to take them. "Up here! Come on!"

He dashed around the shuttle again, Helen in tow behind him, then turned around to lift her up as he approached the stairs. She squeaked as her feet left the ground, and wriggled to watch where they were going as he stepped upwards.

Alex set her down again at the top of the staircase, and walked her over to a double sliding door directly above the large entrance for the shuttle, on the opposite wall from where they'd just come.

"You've already been in one of our new machines this series, Helen - how do you feel about trying out another?" he asked, his hand on the door lock. Yasa moved around her to the front, eager to see what was inside the room.

The catgirl nodded quietly, hands clasped at her chest as she tapped the fingers of one hand on top of the other. Jess stood on tiptoe to look as Alex undid the catch on the door and slid both halves aside, striding into the room with the others following behind.

Jess padded carefully through the doorway and looked around at the long room. The first thing she saw was at the other end about twenty or thirty yards away, where there was a section of the wall that curved outwards, forming a wide pipe-like bulge in the wall from floor to ceiling. It was divided into two parts, forming two four-foot high sections. Stretching from it towards where they were standing, a tangle of curved tracks lined the floor, branching off to join up with each other and leaving some dead ends.

Alex moved towards the other end of the room, picking his way over the rails, and Jess looked down at the floor to avoid them too as she followed. She looked back over her shoulder to see five box-like carts placed next to the door where they'd come in, arranged in a row with each attached to a different rail. She bumped her toe on one of the raised rails, and flicked her head around to the front again, lifting her feet and looking where she was going. At this end of the room, five of the rails ended with poles jutting out of the ground a couple of feet, a socket-like depression on top of each one.

As Alex reached the wall, he flicked two small switches on a panel next to the curved metal surface. Helen, close behind him, watched nervously as both the top and bottom sections split open, rotating back around away from them. The others moved around to see what was inside.

Jess peered into the gloomy interior, stepping forwards to get a better look as the panel moved back. The back of the inside was curved too, forming a complete pipe-shaped alcove in the wall that was about four feet across. The back wall was covered in small tubes and pipelines connecting vague jutting-out panels, and had a number of openings and nozzles all pointed down at a swivel chair placed in the center of its floor. Jess was reminded more than a little of the Hotseat as she looked the daunting contraption up and down.

Helen looked worriedly from the chair to the pipes and back as the metallic sections ground to a halt. Alex walked with her over the curved rail on the floor that guided the tank's door, and held her hand as she stepped up onto the seat, putting her feet on a rest at the front. After making sure she was settled, he moved away to the side and touched the panel again, making the bottom of the two sections begin to close again.

"This looks kind of familiar," Helen said as the door hummed closed in front of her, indicating the various nozzles and pipes placed around the tank.

"From when you were in the foam tank?" Alex asked, dashing over beside her. She nodded. "Don't worry. This one's far worse."

He turned around immediately as she shuddered, glancing up briefly at the machine she was inside and then concentrating on her feet, a hint of a smile on her lips.

Alex stepped back over one of the tracks in the floor, placing himself among the other three team-mates, and turned to face her again.

"Okay, Helen, you're now trapped in something that we call the Gunkpipe." Jess felt herself twitch at the sound of the word, and the catgirl cringed, raising one hand to her forehead and pinching it. "As you've seen, a lot of pipes and channels from various parts of the processing wing converged here on their way out, but we've ripped out the main pipe and put you in there in its place."

Yasa was grinning from ear to ear as Helen bit her lip, drawing her arms and legs in slightly as she nodded, still understandably distracted by her situation.

"The good news is that just like the tanks you saw in the last game, that pipe operated on a timer, so you're going to be totally safe until the next rinse starts up. We don't know exactly when that is, but we know that it's between two and three minutes."

He pointed upwards, and for the first time, Jess noticed an LED display mounted near the ceiling in front of the tank. She stepped back to read it, glancing back to make sure she didn't tread on the rails, but it was flickering through random numbers.

"It's going to be up to your team mates to save you by diverting the flow. To do that, they've got to bring each of the five storage tanks down the rails from the other end of the room to one of the end points and connect them up through these." He slapped the top of one of the rods in the ground, and the pink catgirl stretched her neck to see it over the lip of the tank. "Every time they get one of them connected, the timer will stop and you'll have the choice of whether or not you want them to start it up again and try for another one. Make sense so far?"

Helen nodded. Jess looked behind her at the carts attached to the rails again, already looking down to try and work out routes for all of them to make it to the end of the room where they were standing.

"The only trouble is..." Alex continued, "you're going to be stuck in that thing and won't be able to see the timer, so you won't know whether you've got heaps of time... or it's about to splurge," he said, gesturing at the pipes around her. The catgirl shuddered at the word, looking down and drumming her feet on the floor of the cylinder. The red wolf paced around her back to the switches on the wall.

"And so that your team mates can't tell you either, I'm afraid we've got to shut you in there now..." He flicked the other switch back and Helen looked up again. With a jolt, her chair slowly began rotating to face the back wall. She raised her hands nervously to clasp them in front of her mouth as the top section began closing too, casting a shadow over her as she disappeared from view.

Jess shivered again at the sight of the smooth outer surface of the pipe, and watched Alex as he walked around it to a monitor set in the side opposite the switches. A microphone on the end of a coiled cable was resting on a hook beside it, and he picked it up as he approached.

"Can you hear me OK in there, Helen?" he called into it. The catgirl's image was displayed in a grainy green-tinged night vision, from a high angle inside the pipe.

"Yeah," came the response. The others saw her sit up a little more in the chair, looking around in front of her at nothing in particular. After her initial nervousness, she didn't seem uncomfortable.

"Your team mates are going to start bringing the first tank over here now," he continued. "You're not going to be able to hear the noise of the timer in there, but when they've got it plugged in, you'll get this..." He paused, and a high beeping sound chirped over the speakers. "Each one's worth twenty points. After they've finished with one, you can either decide to escape, or let them continue - but if they run out of time, you'll lose twenty points, and the gunk's going to go all over you instead."

"Yep." They saw the catgirl nod slowly to herself. She twisted round to look up again, but quickly returned to facing in front of her, unable to see anything in the darkness. She drummed her fingers on one arm of the chair.

"All right, she seems confident - are you three ready?" Alex asked them. Yasa turned and scampered down the room back towards the five carts, and Jess carefully followed him. "All you have to do is find a way to get each of those things in turn down to this end of the room. Moving any of them will start the timer, and you can stop it again by connecting the pipe on the front of them to any of these sockets."

Yasa had reached the leftmost of the five carts and leaned down to grasp a handle place on its back. He looked up as Jess and Skye joined him, and glanced over to Alex for confirmation.

The red wolf leaned over to speak into the microphone again. "It looks like they're ready to begin, Helen," he said, then straightened. "Start whenever you like."

Jess looked on as Yasa gingerly gave the box a push, and jumped as an electronic ticking noise started up. As he moved it along the rail, she spun round to look at the timer on the ceiling, and saw that it had started at about two minutes and ten seconds.

The rabbit boy reached a split in the track, and leaned back, scuffing his feet along the ground to slow down. Uncertainly, he looked in both directions, trying to see which way would give him the quickest route.

"Over this way," Skye called, beckoning him. She had walked ahead of Yasa and Jess, and was looking along the lines at the right hand side of the room.

Jess watched Helen's vague image on the monitor as Yasa guided the tank a little closer to their goal, then woke up as she realized he was trying to get it to turn in the other direction on a double bend section of track. She dashed over to him and pushed from the other side to help him get going again, walking with him to pull it back when he reached the next turning point. Twisting around to look forwards, she saw he had a clear line towards one of the targets, and let go, stepping aside as he sped up to a jog.

Jess ran after him and moved around to the other side after he pushed it against the barrier at the end, then moved to pick up the length of rubber tubing that extended out of its top as he took his hands away. As she uncertainly ran it through her fingers to bring up the loose end, Skye stepped forward to grab it, and she let go of it and stepped back as the husky girl concentrated on pushing the end into the socket in front of the box. Jess leaned down to help her, but at that moment she pushed it into place. Both of them jumped as a spurting, hissing noise started up, and Jess looked down to see a very thin window in the otherwise covered tank fill up with a thick beige liquid.

Alex smiled, then picked up the microphone from its hook. "Coming in loud and clear, Helen?" he asked as Jess and the others gathered round.

"I've got a light!" Helen's image on the monitor pointed forwards at something unseen.

"That's right - they've got one tank full, and twenty points for the team. Want to carry on?" He took his thumb off the microphone's send button, and put it to his ear.

"Sure," came the response.

"All right - let's do another one!" He put the microphone back, and Yasa once again led the way towards the carts.

Jess kept an eye on the timer as they repeated the process, with she and Yasa doing most of the guidance of the tank and Skye walking ahead to signal where to go. After they had connected the second one up, Helen chose to continue once again, and another tank was pulled along the rails.

Alex watched them from the corner as they drew the third cart up to the end of the rail, and Jess hurriedly shoved the connecting hose into the socket. As the gunk sprayed through the pipe, she wiped her forehead and looked up at the timer again - they had had to take a longer route with the third one, and now only had just over forty seconds remaining.

"So you should have three lights on, Helen - have you any idea how much time's gone past, by the way?"

"I don't know. About a minute?" she suggested. Jess's stomach lurched at the low number, knowing that she was more likely to try and get them to carry on.

Alex didn't acknowledge the guess. "Does that mean you'll be wanting them to try another one?" he asked back.

"Yep." The catgirl clapped her hands together then leaned back in the chair again, gripping and releasing the arms.

"You heard her - choose the fourth one you're going to bring over!" Alex called after the three of them as they began moving back towards the far end of the room. Jess looked over her shoulder at the timer again to check once again how much time they had left.

"Ready?" Yasa asked as he bent down, bracing himself against the floor ready to take off at a run. Skye held up her hand and paced forward, looking around her.

"We'll have to take it all the way over to the other side," she said, pointing down at two sets of connections. They hadn't planned ahead well when placing the previous three tanks, and Jess saw that they would have to pull it backwards across the room about halfway to get it to a free space.

"Jess, if you stand here..." Skye pointed down at where she was standing, the doubling-back bend that would lead them back across the room. "We'll do it in three stages," she continued, pointing at the route Yasa should take to get to her, then Jess's route to a matching connector at the other end of the room. In front of that, an awkward series of twists and turns led to one of the free spaces at the far end.

Jess nodded, and jogged over to her position. Skye walked back across the room, ready to catch it once Jess had reached her.

"OK." Yasa looked at the two of them so they could acknowledge they were ready, then suddenly burst forwards, trying to run as fast as possible behind its weight and only slowing down a little to get it past the splits in the track.

Jess put her hands up as he rapidly approached her, but still stepped back a little and jumped as it slammed into the end of the track. As he stepped out of the way she leaned forwards, using her shoulder to put all her weight behind it as she got it moving down her section.

She moved only a little slower than Yasa had, but it seemed to take ages, and she tried not to think about the rapidly decreasing timer as she pushed it along the gently curving track. Skye was ready as she reached the end, and hauled it towards her a little to help her with the last few inches.

Yasa ran over to help Skye as she got the tank moving on the last section, and Jess stepped back, panting. As they both struggled through the corners, she softly moved forwards towards their target, worriedly watching the timer drop below twenty seconds. She leaned forward on the top of the post, gripping it tightly as she looked from the other two team members to the large counter and back.

"You're nearly there!" Alex called from behind her as the two of them slowly approached.

"Come on!" Jess joined in. She realized she was actually jumping with the tension, and tried to calm down, drumming her feet on the ground instead. As the rabbit and husky finally manhandled it into place, she stepped forward to grab the hose, fumbling to push it into the socket on top of the pole. After a couple of seconds, it finally slid into place, and she stepped back relievedly as the familiar spraying noise started up and the window on the side of the tank filled up.

"You know, I think that they've got the hang of it now, Helen," Alex remarked as Jess turned around, exhaustedly glancing up at the ceiling timer once more. Only five seconds were left. "Now, not to encourage you or anything, but there's one last one to go if you want the full possible score for the game... do you want them to go for it?"

"Don't say 'yes', don't say 'yes'..." Jess whispered to herself, wringing her hands together in front of her. She knew they'd have had nowhere near enough time even if the timer hadn't started so low, and her heart was pounding as there was a silence from Helen. She watched her grainy image on the monitor, looking around at all the nozzles and pipes around her.

"Hmm..." They heard the catgirl sigh to herself as she thought. "I think you've probably still got enough time, so... no, wait..." She hesitated for a moment, but then Jess cringed as she confidently raised her head. "Yeah," she concluded with a nod. "Go on!"

"All right, that's the last decision you need to make, so I'm going to open this up to let you see if they make it..." Alex, not reacting to the disastrous decision at all, dashed around to the other side of the pipe. He flicked one of the switches then stepped back as the sliding section moved away, and they watched Helen's chair rotate back round to face them. Smiling at first, she glanced between the three other team members, reading each of their faces.

"What?" she asked apprehensively, turning towards the presenter.

He sucked air in through his teeth, and paced around towards the front as she squirmed. "Helen..." he began as he leaned on the top of the front section. "You've only got five seconds left!"

"Oh..." The catgirl sank down in the chair, looking around once again at the grimy pipes pointed in her direction.

"Want us to give you a countdown?" Alex suddenly stood up enthusiastically, holding up the trigger and jabbing it with his thumb. A series of warning beeps began as the timer started. "Five..."

Helen shrieked, looking around frantically at the inside of the gunge machine as Skye and Yasa joined in the countdown. Jess looked worriedly back at the pink catgirl as she glanced around in a panic. Just before the timer reached zero, she hunched down a little on the seat, her hands clasped together on top of her head and her arms protecting her ears. With an exaggerated clank, a set of green lights turned on inside the tank and she squealed, dropping her arms down again to grab the sides of her chair as she felt it slowly begin to rotate.

Jess watched, wide-eyed, as the pipe at the back left of the tank dribbled slightly, then began spewing a stream of smooth dark brown gunk that hit the catgirl in the middle of her chest as she came round, splashing outwards into her face and down her lap as her hands shot out in front of her to defend herself. She tilted her head to the side as she was turned around past it, another translucent stream above it turning on and splattering off her hair, quickly soaking it and matting it to her head.

A gurgling sound from behind them made the team look round, and they watched as a fountain of beige gunge began spurting out of the last rod in front of the tank. The murky slime splashed on the floor as another thin spurt directed at them from the top of the main tank made Skye duck out of the way.

Just after the chair reached the halfway point, a cream-colored downpour started from a pipe high up on the wall on the right, the strength of the flow varying to make the gunge slop back and forward across Helen's head and right hand side. Squeaking as the smooth slime played up and down her, the chair turning so that it poured across her chest, tummy and into her lap, she returned one hand to her hair and felt around in front of her with the other one, trying her best to keep her face clean and spitting out slime as she shook her head.

Yasa, looking as awestruck as Jess felt, excitedly crept closer to the gunge-spewing machine as the catgirl struggled, leaning away from the gooey flow as she felt herself being turned past it. Another stream started up from a pipe high up on the left, and the rabbit boy squeaked and ducked as some of it flew out towards him and dribbled over his head and shoulder.

As Helen was rotated to face the front again, hunching her neck as the streams she had been facing slithered up and down her neck and back, the team got a glimpse of her face. The brown and cream colors of gunk were mingling together into a sickly orangeish mixture as they slid down from the top of her head, across her firmly closed eyes and mouth, and dripped stickily off her chin. She shook her slippery hands, sending globs of light and dark gunge to the floor as the chair continued to turn.

Whooping and screaming as she wiped at her eyes, she felt herself being turned to face the first gunge stream again and placed her hands firmly over her face, shaking her head defeatedly as the brown slime slopped over her. Another few dark and light streams sputtered and slapped over her from the ceiling, not lasting for more than a couple of seconds, and Jess looked up into the darkness wondering if a few bucketfuls were actually being thrown into the tank from above.

Helen was turned through the cream-colored stream again, and she flicked her head to get her face out of the way. She faced the team with her eyes squeezed shut, a grin breaking through the grimace on her face as the ooze splashed onto the side of her head and dribbled down her front. As the chair turned back to its starting point it slowed down, then stopped with a jolt. The thick streams of cream and brown from behind the catgirl continued, lapping up and down her shoulders and making her wriggle and squirm around as they dripped down her back, around her neck and mingled with the gunge coating her slimy chest.

Leaning forward and twisting to the side as the slippery streams glooped on to her shoulders, Helen raised her hands up to her eyes and tried to wipe at them a little. She only succeeded in mixing the thick coating of gunge on her hands across the rest of her face. Sighing as she felt the two streams behind her sputter and drizzle to a halt, she sagged down a little in the chair and shivered as the globs of dark and light gunk slithered through her fur and soaked swimwear.

A low siren noise started up, rising slowly in pitch as the dripping catgirl's shoulders shook in defeated laughter. Suddenly a loud klaxon joined it, and Jess and the others jumped back a little as a huge downpour of heavy brown and green slime slopped down from the middle of the tank's ceiling. Helen disappeared under it with a muffled squeak, slow waves of gunk slapping outwards from her head and shoulders as the team watched her outline wriggling through the massive deluge.

As suddenly as it began, the downpour stopped, revealing Helen sitting slouched halfway down the seat, covered in a thick mixture of murky gunge like most of the inside of the tank. Slowly, she put her hands on the arms of the chair, using them as leverage to haul herself back upright and shaking her head as a stream of heavy drops splatted onto her hair from above.

Opening her eyes and blinking a couple of times as the gunk dripped across them, she looked down at herself, arms out at her sides with her fingers outstretched, and her shoulders shook as she gave a high-pitched helpless shrieking laugh. Her pretty hair had been plastered to her head, and she was a murky dark brown and green all over. Small streaks of cream gunge highlighted the thick slimy mess, dripping from her hair and fur in gooey strings with beads of slime at the ends. Suddenly she looked up at the team again, making some of the clinging drops break off and splatter to the floor.

"Would it help if I said 'sorry', Helen?" Alex asked, returning to the front of the tank. The catgirl, looking completely unrecognizable under the glistening messy layer with none of her soft pink fur visible, folded her arms and looked at him in pretend annoyance, shaking her head and stroking one hand up and down her gunge-caked arm.

"Come on out..." The red wolf tapped the panel on the wall again and the curved bottom section at the front of the tank slowly hummed away, revealing Helen's equally messy legs. Wriggling her slippery dangling toes to try and get the gunk off them before she stepped down, she pushed herself off the seat and caught Alex's hand, hauling herself upright and stepping heavily out to rejoin the team.

Jess shivered at the slop-coated floor and back wall of the gunge machine as Helen stood dripping gunk beside her. Yasa moved forward to ruffle her hair, but she ducked out of the way and smeared her slimy hand across his chest instead.

"Well, we've managed to make an incredible mess of this place..." Alex said, looking round at the splatter of mixed colors of gunge on the floor that had been sprayed outwards from the tank and the rod that hadn't been connected to anything. "Helen definitely got the worst of it, though, so you lost twenty points - but that's still sixty for the other three tanks you got connected up."

He turned to Yasa, who looked him in the eye confidently. "Now..." he began as the rabbit boy bit his lip, knowing he was the center of attention. "We've got one team member who hasn't taken a risk yet this round, and one last game left... remember I said we were going to get you?"

Helen pumped her hands in the air and whooped as Yasa stepped forward to take Alex's outstretched hand. He looked a little uneasy about what they had prepared for him, but it didn't stop him grinning at Helen's reaction.

"Come on, I'll show you how it's going to happen." Alex took off at a jog across the room with Yasa, skipping over the rails on the floor as the others ran after them both. Jess slowed down a little to run alongside Helen as the soaked and heavy catgirl struggled to keep up with them.

Their host passed the open doors of the room and darted to the side, the rabbit boy yelping and sliding to keep up as he tugged on his arm. When they reached the top of the steep metal stairs Alex let go of him, put his hands on the slanted handrails, and Jess shook her head as she watched him lift himself off the ground and slide downwards on his hands.

She leaned over the rail to watch as he landed with a slight stumble and turned round, arms outstretched happily. "Takes practice to do that," he said as he waited for the rest of them to walk down the slower way. "Come on, you're going to love this..."

When they were all on the ground level again, Alex pointed past the stairs they'd just come down, moving around them into a gloomy corner of the hangar area. Jess paced with the group over towards it, and as she came closer she could make out a thin raised strip on the floor - the end of a sectioned conveyor belt that led through an opening on the wall, covered by plastic curtaining. Next to it there was the faint outline of a door, its rough cross-hatched metal surface covered in cobwebs.

"Now, let's see if this thing still works..." The red wolf let go of Yasa and stepped over the conveyor to reach the wall. He pulled upwards on a large wall-mounted switch and a klaxon sounded, making Skye jump back from the edge of the belt.

With a clattering, grinding noise, the conveyor started up, and Jess watched for a moment as its hard sections disappeared one by one into the floor. Suddenly she jumped as the curtaining bulged, and it flapped aside as a dusty chair came through, bolted to one of the sections. Alex returned the lever to its center position again, and the belt ground to a halt.

"I think you can see where this is going, Yasa - or rather, where you're going," Alex said as he stepped forward, using his hands to brush the gray strands of dust and grime off the chair's tough padded surface. "Want to take a seat?"

"Okay!" Yasa stepped forward, spun around, reached behind him to put his hands on the ends of the chair's arms, and eagerly hoisted himself up into the seat. It was a couple of inches too high for his feet to touch the floor, and he swung his bare toes back and forward a little as he twisted to look at the opening that was now behind him.

"Now, when I did this a couple of years ago you might remember that I offered people some protection round about now," the red wolf started. Jess watched him pace back and forward in front of the chair as Yasa nodded. "But seeing as nobody ever took any I didn't bother to bring anything this time around - are you OK with that?"

The rabbit boy chuckled a little as he nodded. "I'm fine." He shook his head, bouncing excitedly in the seat as he waited for it to be started up. Alex leaned over him, taking a seatbelt-like strap from one side of the chair, placing it across his lap and clipping it in place.

"All right, just be aware that when your friends pull the switch for you, you're going to get the ride of your life!" He turned towards the rest of the team. "You three - get ready to gunge Yasa for a hundred point bonus..."

Helen was the first to react, scampering forwards eagerly to reach up and put her hand on the end of the red lever. Jess smiled, moving to the switch too and placing her hand over the catgirl's, turning over her shoulder to Skye as she clasped her hand on top.

"Any last requests, Yasa?" the red wolf smiled. The rabbit boy looked Helen in the eye and pointed at her, making her giggle a little as she tensed her hand to tug the switch down.

"What about Helen coming along with me?" he asked with a mischievous grin.

Jess turned her head to the catgirl, whose expression went from an evil grin to one more of surprise. She brought up one finger and tucked a strand of messy hair behind her ear as she looked over at Alex.

"Don't you think she's messy enough already?" Alex asked back. The rabbit and catgirl looked at each other again, and Helen's shoulders sagged as she giggled.

"Go on, send him off!" encouraged Alex.

"No, I'll do it," she said.

"Team leader, what's your decision?" the host asked again as Helen wriggled her hand free of the others, moving around the two of them towards Yasa.

"Yeah, get up there," Skye pointed up to the chair. Alex nodded, and undid Yasa's strap. The pink catgirl put one foot on top of Yasa's as she climbed up into the chair, and turned around to wriggle down onto his lap. The rabbit boy happily hugged his arms around her waist and slippery tummy as Alex adjusted the belt and strapped them both in again.

"All right, let's get this over with - Jess and Skye... gunge the pair of them." Alex held his hands out towards them, and Jess turned back to the lever. She tugged along with Skye as she felt her begin to pull down, and quickly let go of the lever as the conveyor started up again in the other direction. Helen squeaked, looking nervously at the black curtain as they moved slowly forwards towards it.

"Come through here!" Alex beckoned Skye and Jess, and they both hurried round the end of the conveyor as Alex walked over to the door. Undoing its catch, he thumped it with his shoulder a couple of times to get it to squeak open, and held it open for them as they came through.

Jess squeezed around Alex and took a couple of steps into the dimly-lit room. It looked almost like a security station of some sort, with monitors of varying sizes set into banks on the walls or suspended on metal brackets from the ceiling. A large control console stood opposite them on the wall a few feet away. On her right, the conveyor continued from outside in a straight line briefly, a row of three box-like protrusions pointing down at it from the ceiling, before turning to head through a set of flaps in the wall. A clear perspex window made up one patch of the wall slightly further on. Jess followed the route she imagined the conveyor taking anticlockwise around the room, seeing another patch of exposed belt at the back left, and suddenly gasped as she glanced down beside her.

A section out of the floor next to the left wall was taken up by a sunken gunge vat, its murky green and dull yellow surface bordered with bright warning stripes. As she shuffled away from it, she saw a stretch of conveyor emerging from underneath a third set of black plastic curtaining, which ended right above it. A little further forward, a wide pipe was set into the ceiling.

"Here they come," Alex said, tapping her on the shoulder. She turned around again to see the rabbit and catgirl being carried into the room, looking around as they entered for the first time. Before they had had time to take it in, there was a clicking noise from the ceiling, the circular catch at the bottom of one of the boxes fell open, and a wave of watery green slime spewed onto them.

They both yelped as it hit them, the translucent liquid splashing out and hitting the nearby wall and floor. Helen held her hands out to her sides as the slime loosened the stuff she was already covered in, shaking herself off. Yasa stayed still, eyes closed but smiling, as the second box burst open and covered them again.

Helen squealed a second time, hunching up as the drizzly remains of the brief deluge slopped over her back. The rabbit boy leaned his head out of the way as he felt himself being carried underneath it. The catgirl put her slippery hands over her eyes, ready for the third green wave. As they moved under the last box, it opened slightly later to hit Yasa on the head, the gooey green stuff splattering out wildly and making Jess jump back a little.

As he moved forwards out of the falling gunge, Yasa shook his head, his hair already slick with slime and dripping heavily behind him. As Helen straightened up, the chair reached the corner, turned, and pushed the flaps out of the way as it went into the darkness. Shortly afterwards, Skye laughed as they heard a high-pitched squeak from Helen at something unseen.

Jess tilted her head around, trying to catch a glimpse on them on the monitors or follow the mechanical noise and work out where they were, but at that moment the flaps at the back of the clear section of the wall opened, and the chair with the two of them moved into view. As it came forward and slowed down, Yasa returned his hands to Helen's sides. He was just visible behind her, shaking his head to stop the green slime dripping into his eyes.

The seat clicked into place, and a hooter blared from somewhere on the ceiling. As it sounded again, Helen slowly looked upwards, taking her hands away from her cheeks. Suddenly they flew back to her face as she hunched down, and as lights flashed inside the tank, a wide column of bright yellow gunge poured in from the ceiling.

Helen vanished under the sloppy dome, the top of her head visible as the stuff splashed outwards in the weird slow thick waves that Jess had seen so many times over the last couple of hours. A couple of licks of slime hit the perspex wall at the front, forming dome-shaped splatter marks as it slid downwards.

The catgirl leaned to the side to escape the continuing downpour, and Yasa was visible for a moment before the slime sploshed out from her shoulder and into his face. Spluttering, he took his hand off her side and raised it to his eyes, turning away and holding his palm up to protect himself.

The brightly colored downpour was tilted back and forward a little, the shape of the dome twitching as it was moved to hit both their heads in turn, the yellow custard-like liquid slithering and dripping from their fur. Slowly it began to run out, the two struggling victims slipping against each other as they tried to stay upright.

The chair began moving backwards again, and Helen sat up, her hair and most of her top half now coated in the bright yellow gunge. Behind her, Yasa wiped off his face, flicked his hand to throw a handful of slime to the floor, and returned his hands to clasp them in front of her. The flaps at the back of the tank closed again, hiding them from view as the last of the gunge from the top of the box drizzled down onto its slippery floor.

Alex looked back at Jess and Skye with a smile, then pointed over to the bank of monitors on the wall. Jess padded over to it, Skye following close behind, and looked up at the top right one as she saw movement. The screen was showing a view from above of the chair slowly moving through a passage, with its two slimy occupants cautiously looking around them to see where the next onslaught would come from. Helen has placed her hands on top of Yasa's and was gripping between his fingers.

Suddenly a huge spray of white covered almost the entire screen, and Jess heard herself yelp at the same time as Helen and Yasa. She watched the monitor open-mouthed as the jets of white pie foam continued from the sprayers in the walls, then they shut off as quickly as they had started. The two of them were visible only as a vague white blob that dripped clumps and dollops of gooey foam as Helen wriggled on top of the rabbit boy. She screamed in laughter again, the noise audible through the wall as well as over the speakers.

Yasa's arm came up to his face to drag off the pie foam, and he blinked his eyes open again just as they were carried through a set of slowly tilting jets of watery gunge sprayed from the walls and ceiling. The two clean team members watched as the slime stained the clinging foam in multiple colors as the chair moved through the sprays.

Jess looked down to another monitor as they appeared on it - they were heading away from the camera, nearing an archway that led out of the enclosed space. The colorful sprays shown on the other monitors died down, and nothing happened for a few moments. But as the chair approached the archway, Jess noticed a movement above it in front of them, and smiled as a large tank that had been hidden from view tipped towards them.

Helen gave another squeak and shrank down again, Yasa leaning into her back and putting his hands over her eyes as the contents of the tank slopped towards them - a mixture of yellow foam and thick gunge that flopped heavily down onto Helen's front and lap, continuing as Yasa's head went under the downpour and splashing out to coat them both. As they dripped through the archway, Jess looked to her left to see them emerge onto the exposed conveyor. The red wolf moved towards the wall next to it and flicked a large switch, gradually slowing the belt down.

Alex clasped his hands behind his back and strolled towards them as they stopped, the mechanical noise grinding to a halt. Helen's shoulders were shaking as she spread her arms and looked down at herself, Yasa laughingly wiping his hands on her outstretched arms from behind her. Letting go, he moved his hands up to his head and dragged the yellow mixture down off his ears, flicking his hands to the floor.

The three others watched them for a moment, and Alex eventually stepped forwards. "What did you think of that?" he asked with a smile as the messy pair wiped their eyes to look at him.

As they whooped in response, he leaned down to the button to release their seat belt, clearing the gungy muck away with one finger before tentatively pressing it. With a click, the end of the strap came out, and Alex moved his arms up to take the end up and around the chair.

"You've just experienced the new version of the Ride..." he explained as he clipped the belt back into place, this time behind the chair so they weren't strapped in. Helen sighed and slithered forwards, ready to get up, but Alex stopped her with a hand on her tummy. "...where are you going? We're not finished yet!"

Shocked, Helen looked up at him as he darted to the side to pull the lever again. The catgirl wriggled backwards to a comfortable sitting position, watching them all as the belt started up again, and a little faster this time, they disappeared into another tunnel ahead of them.

Jess grinned to herself, realizing exactly where they were going to end up, and skipped around to the edge of the gunge vat. As the others joined her, the chair came through the black curtaining over at the other side. Helen wiped at her eyes as they came through, and only Yasa's hands were visible clasping her gungy hips as she looked down and gaped at what they were heading into. He squirmed to the side so that he could see forwards, blinking and shaking the remains of the foamy slime off his head, and whooped as they rattled rapidly towards the end.

Helen joined in the cheer, raising one hand in the air but with the other flying to her nose to hold it closed. As the chair reached the end of the rail it clicked and tipped forwards, making Helen scream as the two of them slid together feet first into the gunge vat.

Jess couldn't help laughing out loud as they disappeared underneath the surface with a thick, rich glooping noise, the yellow and green mixture rippling wildly outwards from where they'd fallen in. After a moment, two heads broke through the surface a couple of feet apart, hair heavy with brightly colored gunge and their faces barely visible through the glop. Helen, visibly trying to tread water in the glutinous liquid, hooted with helpless laughter again as the overhead pipe splurged a wide deluge of yellow stuff down between them. The gooey column crashed noisily into the center of the vat, catching Yasa on the shoulder but spraying them both as the giggling catgirl turned her head away.

Yasa slowly turned his drenched head up from its bowed position and blinked his eyes open, bobbing a little in the tank as the stuff rippled around him. He pulled his hands out of the gloop, shaking them in the air to get some of the gunge off, then brought them to his ears and wiped firmly down them, shaking his head again to clear them a little.

Alex approached the edge of the vat, looking down at them and laughing a little as Jess and Skye walked up behind him. The completely covered catgirl was holding her hands in front of her to defend herself as the rabbit boy splashed some of the gloop in her direction, advancing towards him in a slow bouncing motion against the weight of the gunge. Suddenly she lunged forwards in a rough hug, putting her arms around him and scrubbing the slime on her hands into his head and down his ears. With a yelp, he stumbled, lost his footing and fell backwards, submerging the pair of them completely again.

The red wolf looked on, his shoulders now shaking as the cat and rabbit bobbed to the surface separately. "You know, I don't really think they want to be let out of there..." he chuckled, crouching down as he watched the messy pair move together again, wrestling in the gunge vat. "Tell you what, Jess and Skye can try the final themselves!" He straightened up and stepped away, making the others laugh, then walked back to the edge of the tank as they let go of each other and both waded to the side.

"Ladies first," he said as he stretched his arms down towards Helen. "Come on - we'll get you out of there, get you cleaned up, and let you have a go at the final game - and hopefully, the exact same thing won't happen to you at the end," he grinned. Jess felt her heart jump as she watched Alex carefully set the gooey catgirl down on dry land again - she remembered what Alex had told them about the new final.

"So that's an automatic hundred points for doing that to Yasa and Helen..." their host said as he grabbed both Yasa's hands and helped him out too. "And as soon as I get my hands free again, I can tell you what that means for your total score..."

Jess smiled as he let go of the rabbit boy, who ran his hand over his head, through his hair and down his ears, grimacing at the splatting noise that the dislodged wave of slime made as it hit the floor. Alex reached for his pocket again.

"That brings you up to 280 for the last round, making it your best round yet," he said, hitting the screen with the stylus, "and we double that to give you 560 - so that puts you at one thousand, two hundred and fifty for the whole game!"

Skye raised her fists in the air, turning around, and Helen and Skye cheered a little too, clearly tired from their messy ride. Jess smiled a little, still thinking about what they might have ready for them in the final game - but as she walked behind the gooey rabbit and catgirl as they followed Alex out of the room, she realized that even though she was nervous she was definitely looking forward to it.