INDUSTRIAL ZONE - EPISODE 5 Final

Written by Iron-K in 2008

For the third time, Jess pushed open the door to the changing room, this time holding it open to let Skye through behind her. They had showered quickly to get off the muck that the quick spray with the water hose hadn't cleaned away, and were wearing fresh swimwear once again.

"It's such a weird feeling when it hits you," Skye continued as she walked past her. While getting changed, they had been exchanging thoughts on the games they'd been in, and Jess had nervously asked her what being gunged on the Hotseat had been like. "Cause... you know it's going to turn on again, but you're already sitting there under a load of slime and you can't see anything... then the black lumpy stuff comes down and it just sits on top of what you're already covered in, and you don't even feel it until it's dribbling down over your shoulders. Ugh..." She brought her hands up to cling at her shoulders instinctively as she remembered.

"It should keep your roommates happy, at least," Jess smiled. "For that... bet you had, I mean," she added as a momentary look of confusion crossed Skye's face.

"Oh, yeah." The husky girl stretched up, standing on her tiptoes, then dropped her arms back to her sides as she paced towards the water cooler next to the door. "Yeah, I think I've done my end of the bet..."

"What did your roommates have to do?" asked Jess.

Skye paused as she raised a paper cup to her lips, holding a finger up as she took a sip. "I can't even remember. Nothing as good as this!" she grinned. "And I didn't even take the chance to put one of them down as who I wanted to get revenge on... I never thought when watching this on TV that it would ever happen to me."

Jess smiled at her back as she headed to the bench at the side of the room, slumping down and tapping her feet in turn impatiently. She knew that Skye had been more nervous than she wanted to admit, but now she was brimming with confidence again. As she sat down opposite her, the husky girl leaned in towards her, lowering her voice.

"Did he ever say what happens to me in the final?" she asked, indicating towards the door leading into the set.

Jess looked towards where she was pointing for a moment, and thought back to the conversation before the third round. "I don't think so..." she said to fill the gap. "Just that we had to let you out of something in time."

Skye nodded, and for a moment Jess thought she saw her shiver. "Sounds like I'm not safe from gunge yet!" she smiled to cover it up. "Actually I'm kind of hoping it'll be one of those tanks that fill up around you - I saw your face in that one near the start! It looked incredible."

"Yeah..." This time, Jess shuddered a little, remembering how being covered in green slop had felt the first time.

"Scary, though, am I right?" Skye interrupted her thoughts, grinning across her water cup before downing the rest of it.

Jess began to reply, then looked at the door again as a red-furred hand pushed it open. "Guess who I've got here?" Alex asked happily as he stepped around it, holding it open. Jess giggled nervously as she recognized her friend Leann step in behind him, now clean again and also wearing a fresh swimsuit. She pointed accusingly at Jess, but burst into a laugh as she did so, skipping forward and sitting down next to her.

"Sorry," Jess smiled back at her as she remembered seeing Leann being covered in gunge and foam inside the booth, accepting her hug as the canine leaned over towards her.

"Hey, don't be sorry - I think it was fair enough." Alex chuckled as she shot him a look, holding his hands up. "At least you got the private shower afterwards - though you two got cleaned up pretty quickly too, didn't you?"

"Yep." Skye answered immediately.

"Yeah, you were lucky in that last round. That other pair looked like they needed much more of a cleanup than you." He sat down on the bench next to Skye, idly fiddling with something in his pocket as he put his feet up on the table. "Just tell me they're doing it in separate shower rooms..."

Jess gave a shocked laugh at the sudden remark, and Skye just grinned over at him, nodding. When they had left the changing room Helen had still been underneath the large water sprayers, trying to clean all the gunk out of her pink fur.

"So... am I going to stay clean for long in the final?" the husky girl asked Alex directly. Jess could see just how eager she was to find out even though she had tried to act calm.

Alex read her immediately. "You remember in the last series, how we had that tank that filled up around the team if they lost?" he asked back.

"Uh-huh..." Skye confirmed, a grin spreading across her face.

"You'll basically be in a smaller one of those."

"Oh, yes!" Skye punched the air, making Leann and Jess laugh at her reaction. "That's what I wanted to hear!"

Alex smiled as he straightened up again. "And the others'll be trying to save you from that - if you even want to be saved! Leann, you'll love this, too - you're going to get to watch Jess and the others having to wallow around finding three keys in a gunge vat to let her out..."

"Great," Leann grinned, looking over at Jess, who smiled a little worriedly.

"But I'll tell you how it works once we're in there. The explanation of the rules for the viewers is actually recorded separately, so you can interrupt me any time you like."

At that moment, they all looked at the door to the male changing room as Yasa came back out, running his hands through his long hair to neaten it. He was shirtless this time, wearing just a pair of black swimming shorts. As soon as the door had closed behind him, the women's door squeaked open a little and Helen sidled in as well, her hair still a little wet.

"Well, you couldn't have timed that better, you two - it looks like we're ready to finish this off!" Alex sprang up from the bench, and the others rose to their feet.

"Leann, mind staying behind for a moment?" he asked as the puppy girl began to get up as well. "The cameras are on for this next section, but we'll get you through there after we're inside."

The canine nodded, and paced back towards the other end of the room as Jess moved with the others to the door.

"All right - last time we're going through here. Ready?" their host asked, looking back over his shoulder as he put both hands on the double doors. At the cheer from the team, he flung them open and strode out into the entrance room.

"Here we are, team!" he called back to them as they moved to keep up, going right into his show persona again. "You've picked up 1250 points along the way, but this is the real challenge - you've now got to use your time to try and turn on the experimental purifier that was kept in here."

Jess glanced to the left for a moment and seeing the 'lift' that they had come in by at the very start. As they reached the wide metal door opposite the entrance to the changing room, Alex indicated for them to gather round.

"Guess what I forgot to get while we were in the processing wing?" he asked, twisting to reach into his back pocket. Jess laughed along with the others as he drew his hand out again, holding up a card key, and realized that he hadn't picked one up in the last round like he had in two of the others.

"So I had to ask ROB if I could go back to find it - that might have got me on his bad side already, so I hope he'll still let us in," the red wolf continued as he turned to the door, taking out the other two cards and sliding them all into a set of slots beside it. Jess jumped as he pounded a couple of times on the door with the side of his fist, and watched as he skipped back to look up at the projection screen that dominated the upper wall. "Open the door, will you, ROB?" he asked.

The screen crackled into life, the polygonal yellow face gradually becoming visible again.

"Got the keys this time, have you?" it sneered.

"Yep," Alex nodded, not losing his energy at all. "And they've managed to get a score of 1250, so you've got to turn the purifier controls on for..."

"...For two minutes and five, I know," the face nodded back at him witheringly. Jess heard Yasa laugh at its wearied tone from behind her. "All right. But no more than that..." With a loud click, the metallic door in front of the team swung heavily open, and Alex moved through the group again to be the first one through.

Jess took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway after him. She felt a slight letdown as she wasn't able to see much from the door's position - they were in the shadow of an overhead walkway that blocked most of the view above eye level. Something that looked like the solid back of a six-foot-high booth stood right ahead of them, placed so that its top was next to the front edge of the walkway above. To the sides, about ten feet away each, were the starts of two corridor-like sections separated from the main room by clear plastic paneling. Alex was already moving to the side out from under the walkway, beckoning her towards a rising metal stairway.

"Ready to get the first view of the new final game?" he asked as she stepped out of the dark area, blinking under the glare of the studio ceiling lights. She headed for the stairs, and looked down wide-eyed as she padded up them, eventually getting to the top and leaning on the walkway handrail as she looked around the large room.

"Oh, wow," she heard Yasa whisper as he came up the stairs behind her. Jess was thinking much the same thing - a large portion of the floor of the room was taken up by a giant vat of gunge, bordered by inflatable material on all sides, about forty feet from end to end and with only a couple of feet of floor on each side between it and the clear plastic walls. At the end of the vat opposite them, a large ramp made out of yellow inflatable material stretched at an angle up towards the end wall, where it met the curve of a cylindrical booth. A few pipes, half-set into the wall, led down to the booth from above and diagonally from the sides. Down below at the sides of the ramp, two doors led out from the enclosed side sections and into pits of white foam, with a couple of pipes on the wall curving down to open out next to them as well.

She paced down towards the other end of the walkway as Skye and Helen reached the top of the stairs, looking back for a moment at the husky girl's grinning face. The walkway ran on top of one of the line of panels she'd seen from the ground, and to her left she could look down into the corridor-like section behind them. The passageway was lined with padded obstacles that she recognized from the final game of the shows she'd seen before - each of them with at least a couple of brightly colored pressure pads that the contestants were supposed to avoid as they went through.

She looked up and along the walkway again. It formed a rectangle all the way around the main floor, with another path in the middle stretching at right-angles above the low end of the inflatable ramp. In the center of the square above the gunge vat, another large and grimy metallic tank was suspended from the ceiling, with unrecognizable lettering stenciled on it in bright red. Narrow windows set at intervals around the sides showed that it was full of the same murky liquid as the vat that took up most of the floor, and various funnel-shaped nozzles pointed down from its base.

"Now," Alex started, watching the four of them take in their surroundings. "The first thing to decide is where you're all going to be starting - there are four positions that need to be filled, but one of them's specially reserved for the team leader. I think you know where you're going, Skye..."

He pointed down the room past Jess at the cylindrical tank on the wall, making the others look up and towards it. The husky girl grinned as Alex led her down the walkway, the other three following them to the opposite corner and watching as he slid a panel aside to let her in.

The husky girl swished her tail from side to side as she was shut inside the meter-wide circular booth. She glanced around at the wide pipes pointed in her direction, then stepped forward to look along the long ramp leading down into the vat of gunge, hands on the chest-height plastic panel in front of her. The window formed by that half-height panel was the tank's only opening.

"OK in there, Skye?" Alex called back as he passed the others again, waiting for her to nod before he turned away. "Now, you three... I don't know about you, but I don't think that Jess got gunged nearly enough in the main games..."

Jess looked at her bare feet, a little embarrassed at being the focus of attention and also waiting nervously to find out what he was planning to do to correct that.

"I think we'll put you down here," Alex said, offering a hand to her and pointing down at the end of the room where they'd come in with the other. She turned around to see where they were going, and realized he meant the cubicle that she had first seen when they came in.

She looked over at it as they headed down the stairs again, stretching up to see that the top was a basin-like hollow. Instead of a chair inside the tank, the whole base was raised a couple of feet off the ground with a padded flat seat on top. The tank had no front to it, instead opening right out above the lip of the gunge vat.

Jess watched nervously as Alex undid a catch on the side of the tank and swung the perspex panel aside, motioning to her to sit down. Carefully, she slid herself sideways on to the seat, wriggling to get into the center and gripping his hand to keep steady.

"Comfortable?" he asked. Jess bounced a little on the soft seat, and eeped as she felt the cool, wet feeling of her dangling toes dipping slightly into the vat.

"Yeah... thanks," she nodded, wriggling back to bring her feet up, and looked upwards as the panel was shut behind her. As she had expected, a wide nozzle on the ceiling opened out right above her head - and looking to her sides, she realized there was no escape apart from down into the slime below.

"As for you two..." Alex turned back towards the rabbit and catgirl, who had followed them down the stairs. Yasa put his hand on Helen's shoulder as he approached, but she caught it and brought it down to hold it at her side instead. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to separate you, because you'll be helping Jess out of there."

He pointed behind them at the corridor area behind the perspex windows, walking around the two of them to slide a thin section next to the wall aside. Jess twisted around to watch as the two of them looked at each other and Yasa came forward to step inside, waving at Helen as Alex shut the door behind him.

Jess watched as Helen walked ahead of Alex across the room to the identical corridor on the other side, and looked up eagerly as she waited to be let in. After he shut the door behind her, the red wolf dashed over to the nearby stairs and jumped up them to get up to the walkway again.

"Can you all hear me?" he asked, raising his voice as he turned to lean on the handrail.

"Yeah," Jess called back as the others also gave their acknowledgement. She put her hands on the flat seat beside her, tapping her fingers a little, and peered up the ramp towards the cylindrical tank with Skye inside.

"All right, here's what's going to happen." Jess turned her head to the right to look at him, then looked back as he pointed towards Skye's tank. A projected counter appeared with a flicker, showing the time they had available as Alex announced it. "You've earned two minutes and five seconds of time before the purifier controls shut off again, which isn't a bad time - but you're going to have to be fast. As you'll no doubt have noticed, the main part of the purifier is suspended above us, and it's loaded up with a large batch of gunge that you should be able to transform if you can activate it in time."

He looked up at the tank slightly above and in front of him and paused, making the others look towards it as well. For the first time, Jess noticed a few flat objects dangling from it by straps.

"You see those?" their host asked, gesturing towards the things she had just seen. "They're the emergency keys to activate it - but as the whole thing was left half-finished, it's a bit of a task to get to them..."

He turned around. "Yasa and Helen! You've got the first task - in front of you, you should see a set of four numbers. Some combination of those four numbers is the code to the keypad in front of you - once you find the correct code, you'll open up the way forward." Jess twisted in her seat to see, but faced forward again as she couldn't see what he meant from her position. "You've got to get all the way down to the end of your corridors - but watch out for the orange pressure pads!" He pointed again, and Jess looked to see one on the wall of the corridor directly to her right. "If you hit any of them, Jess is the one who's going to feel it, because pressing them is going to open the tank above her..."

Jess shuddered, looking up again at the black covered opening and pushing her hands under her knees nervously. She turned her attention back to the red wolf, who was dashing down the walkway away from them.

"Pulling the switches will give emergency power to most of the room," he explained. "When power gets to the purifier up there, it'll drop three of its keys - the one nearest Jess, and the ones above the foam pits that you saw from the walkway. It'll also open the doors of the corridors so that you can get into the foam pits to retrieve them." He paused. "Oh, and Jess... unfortunately it's also going to have the side effect of turning on that seat and dunking you into the gunge."

Jess nodded, trying to laugh convincingly as she looked at the muddy-looking surface in front of her, imagining sliding off the seat and dipping into it. She shivered at the thought again, watching Alex walk towards the middle of the walkway, fiddling with the computer as he took it from his pocket.

"When the cards are released, they should make something like this noise so you can find them more easily," he announced, holding the pocket device up for a few seconds while it sounded a rapid pattern of three beeps. "And once you've got those... you've got to head up the ramp!"

He turned towards Skye, pointing with both hands. "At the base of the tank that Skye's trapped in at the moment, there are three card slots - one for each of you. You've all got to get your keys up to the top of the ramp to release Skye from that machine, then she'll have the final task of sliding down the ramp, getting the last key which'll have then been released, then going forwards and using it to finally turn on the purifier at the panel right below where Jess is sitting just now!"

Jess leaned forwards and looked down between her dangling feet, seeing a slot and inset large green button for the first time. She looked from it to the timer, wondering what their chances were.

"Of course... if you run out of time..." he trailed off, looking towards Skye again. The trapped husky girl stared back at him, tapping her foot and putting one hand on her hip. "Well, I think she knows." He turned back towards the other three. "You all know what you have to do?" Jess nodded again, running through her part in her head. She twisted in the seat again to look as Yasa hunched forward, ready to begin.

"Good. Actually, Yasa and Helen... there is one part I didn't tell you about..."

Jess looked up at him as he turned to the back wall. Looking to her right, her view was blocked by the back of the tank, but after a moment, she gasped as she recognized the two red-haired tigresses they'd seen earlier come into view on the walkway. Helen moved against the back wall and stretched up, just able to see them from her position. Alex moved towards them, hands outstretched.

"Welcome back, Ginger and Anise!" he greeted them. "You know what you're both doing?"

"Yeah," the longer-haired of the twins nodded. Jess faced forwards again, bouncing nervously in the seat, as she heard her footsteps above her move to Yasa's side of the room.

"We got them ready to make things a little bit more difficult for you while you were getting cleaned up," Alex explained. "Normally the sprayers on the ceiling of the corridors are on automatic, but as you got to see them being gunged in the middle of the show, I thought they might like to get you back..." Yasa looked up as Ginger moved into position above him, picking up a heavy-looking bucket from the side of the walkway. Anise did the same above Helen, struggling a little with its weight as she balanced it against the handrail.

"And Jess..." Jess looked up again, but Alex had moved out of view on to the walkway behind her. "We've also got someone up here who we're giving the honor of filling your gunge tank..."

"Hi, Jess!" she heard Leann's voice giggle from the walkway. A dreadful sloshing noise sounded from above and she flinched, putting her hands to her head, but nothing came down. She looked up at the valve that was protecting her, imagining the stuff pouring thickly into the basin just above her head.

"All right, everyone ready?" Alex called again as the noise slowed and quietened. "You've got two minutes and five seconds for Helen and Yasa to get to the other end of the room, to release those three keys, to let Skye out and use the final key to activate the purifier... it sounds a lot simpler now I say it that way. Ready to start?"

Jess began to nod again, then joined in the rising cheer from the others. Her heart raced as Alex counted down from three, and a klaxon blared as the ceiling lights brightened. She looked up to see the timer begin its countdown.

She looked from side to side as Yasa and Helen both leaned forwards to stab at their keypads, a tigress sister leaning over each one of them. Ginger laughed as she tipped the bucketful of gunge she was holding down on to the rabbit boy, who shook his head as it splattered off him and flattened his ears on to his head, trying to concentrate on the keypad in front of him. On the other side, Anise still had her bucket braced against the handrail, gently drizzling its contents on to the catgirl below. With one hand placed on the top of her head to defend herself, she jabbed at the panel with her free hand.

Jess faced the front again, watching Leann walk ahead on the walkway to get to the section that went across the middle of the room. Suddenly, there was a confirmation beep from the right, and she looked round to see Helen crawling through a section in the wall in front of her that had slid aside.

"Helen's out!" Alex called, strolling along the walkway to join Leann. The catgirl disappeared into a cluster of hanging punch bags, and Jess held her breath as she remembered the danger she was in while they were going through their obstacles. Tensing as a similar noise sounded from the opposite end of the room, she saw the slimy rabbit boy freeing himself and diving forwards into the corridor, pursued by the laughing tiger girl above him.

"Now you've both got to head for the switches... you've got plenty of time..." Jess listened to Alex's commentary as she twisted to see either of her team mates, but she gasped as his last few words were drowned out by a harsh buzzer noise. As she flattened her ears and tensed, she felt the ooze smack on to her head and spill stickily outwards, slopping on to her shoulders and slithering down her head and top. The valve clicked shut and the torrent stopped as quickly as it had begun, leaving her with her eyes firmly closed and feeling the thick slop dripping from her messy hair.

She brought her hands up to clear her fringe out of her face, but moved them to clasp against her eyes as the alarm rang again. Another wave of gunge splattered heavily down on to her head and hands before she leaned forwards, squealing as it poured on to her neck and slid down her back, two streams working their way around to slip down her chest.

After staying in place for a moment, she parted her hands, feeling the stuff slither off them as she moved, and opened her eyes to see a mixture of bright yellow and green gunk dripping from her fringe and sliding slowly down her fur. She moved her hands up to wipe over her head, eeping as the ooze on her hair moved down to her neck. Looking ahead and to her sides, she caught a glimpse of Yasa and Helen as they neared the opposite end of the room, and tensed again as she saw Helen reach a field of the orange pads. Straining to watch her careful movements, she jumped as the alarm went off again from the opposite side of the room and cringed as she closed her eyes again, putting her hand up on the wall of the booth as she leaned to one side.

The cool gloop poured down on to her shoulder, lapping on the side of her face and slipping down her arm, chest and back. Relaxing as she realized she couldn't avoid getting completely covered, she giggled a little at the ticklish feeling of the gooey slime pouring over her, and straightened up as the downpour stopped again, brushing the stuff off her shoulder. Cringing but laughing as she heard the alarm yet again, she shuffled backwards on the seat, and leaned backwards and away, gasping as the stuff splurged down on to her lap and tummy.

As she felt the downpour in front of her easing off, she thought she heard a new noise, a loud click from the other end of the room. She dipped her head forward and leaned through the drizzle of slime, looking up and forwards to see that Helen had reached the opposite end of the room and was running back to the opening that she had revealed. Glancing to the other side of the room, she was just in time to see Yasa sprint towards the switch and slam it into the down position.

A louder siren blared, and she ducked again, squinting as flashing lights went off around the room. She squealed and leaned forwards as the catch above her head snicked open and spilled another torrent of gunge on to the back of her neck. Just after the smooth slimy liquid slopped down her already soaked back, she felt the seat lurch underneath her, and she instinctively threw her hands out in front of her as she was tipped forwards into the gunge vat.

She just had time to see her hands gloop below the surface before she closed her eyes, screwing up her face and turning it away as she smacked into the glutinous liquid, which she felt buckle strangely underneath her before she went completely under. For a moment, the cool glop surrounded her, heavy and thick. Quickly, she flailed her legs to find the bottom and pushed herself back out, spitting gunk off her lips and wiping at her face as she felt the goo slither thickly down through her fur and swimwear.

Carefully, she opened her eyes, using her forefingers to wipe away the murky yellow stuff dripping across her vision from her eyebrows. She shook her head, her hair heavy and soaked behind her, as she looked up - the card had already been released from where she'd seen it on the base of the large tank. At that moment, she recognized the sound of the three high-pitched beeps she'd heard from Alex's explanation of the game, and quickly looked back at the still rippling surface. Sticking one hand into the gloop at the place she thought she had heard the signal, she scooped around, squeaking as she slowly knelt down in the cold clinging slime. Suddenly her hand hit something solid, and she grabbed it, pulling upwards to raise the sloppy card key out of the vat by the strap.

She turned towards the ramp again and began to slog forwards through the waist-deep slime, gripping the card key in her hand and wrapping the attached strap around her wrist so that she didn't lose it. The stuff oozed slowly around her legs as she fought through it, glooping closed again behind her. Her eyes were on the timer above Skye, which had dropped below one minute while she had been regaining her bearings.

Moving towards the large ramp leading up to the husky girl's tank, she watched Yasa and Helen reach the now open doors of their tunnels almost at the same time. Yasa jumped right into the foam pit in front of him, sending specks of the airy white bubbles into the air around him, while Helen tried to step in more carefully, squeaking as she lost her footing and flopped down into it.

Jess tried to move faster as she watched blobs of the foam piles break off and slither down the inflatable barriers between the pits and the main pool, even more of the stuff being pumped in from the wide pipes at the back as the rabbit and catgirl fumbled around, vaguely visible under the mess. Yasa was the first to hold up a card triumphantly, and flopped quickly forwards on to the barrier, pushing himself with his feet face-first over the edge. Clawing at the other side with his free hand, he pulled, squeaked as he lost his balance and slid headfirst into the gunge, his feet following behind him in a half forward roll that splashed heavy dollops of the stuff all around him.

Stumbling forwards as she finally reached the ramp, Jess grabbed at one of the plastic ropes dangling off the end and got ready to haul herself up on to the sloped surface. Trying to push herself off the bottom of the vat with her feet, she braced her slippery elbows on the ramp and pulled, kicking her gunge-soaked legs against the wall as she strained to get on to the ramp. Breathlessly, she gave up, sinking back and glooping up to her waist into the vat again.

She became aware of cheers from above, and glanced upwards to see Leann and the two tigress sisters shouting encouragement from the walkway above them to the left. She smiled through the slime dripping across her face, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and moved to jump up again as Helen bobbed towards her from her left.

Determinedly, she tried to haul herself up again, straining against the rope as she wriggled upwards. She turned as Helen knelt down and caught one of her feet, pushing it up to help her on, and smiled breathlessly back at her as she struggled to move hand over hand a little up the rope. Beside her, Yasa scrabbled for the rope on the right, writhing as he slithered up the first part of the ramp.

Knowing she would have to be faster as the timer above the trapped husky girl ticked relentlessly downwards past half a minute, Jess faced ahead again and tried to push herself up onto her knees to better climb the ramp. She had nearly got upright when they slipped out from under her, and she crashed awkwardly on to the bouncy surface again, gripping the rope tighter as she fell. Shaking her head, she looked towards Skye, who was clapping her hands over her head encouragingly as Yasa passed Jess on her right, making his way slowly but steadily upwards.

Her view of Skye was suddenly hidden by a bright splash of color, and she shrank back a little as a gungy downpour from the ceiling pattered heavily on to the ramp in front of her. Shivering as the slime slithered down towards her, coating the ramp as it went, she tried to wriggle upwards again, hindered by the slime from the vat still clinging to her fur as well as the increasingly slippery surface underneath her.

As she struggled to stay in the same place, she watched the rabbit boy sliding himself upwards ahead of her, getting almost within reach of their target. Looking up, she saw another cylinder on the ceiling snick open, and breathlessly tried and failed to shout a warning to him as its contents spilled down just ahead of him. In the middle of a change of hands on the rope, the spray of thick green stuff hit him right on the head, sputtering outwards and flattening his ears quickly down on to his head. He squeaked, slipped, and flailed one arm towards the rope as he slithered helplessly downwards.

Jess whipped her head around as the rabbit boy slid down on the slimy surface, and saw Helen low down on the ramp, climbing up the same rope behind him. Keeping hold of it, she quickly rolled to the side as he passed her headfirst to fall off the end of the inflatable ramp and disappear back into the gunge vat.

Already exhausted, Jess turned back around and half-heartedly tried to pull herself up a little further, but she was distracted again by a repeating alarm noise. She hauled her head up, and her heart sank as she saw the timer was blinking red to indicate the last ten seconds coming off. Knowing now that they had no chance of making it in time, she tried to decide whether to make the effort to haul herself the last two meters to be in reach of the card slot, and with a groan, let go with one hand to move up again.

Suddenly a shadow fell across her, and she just had time to squeeze her eyes closed and huddle downwards before a thick wet downpour splurged on to her. She held tight to the rope, shrieking as the cold gooey drops spattered all over her back and legs. Shuddering as the spray slowed to a drizzle, pouring heavily on to her back just above her tail, she panted as she shook the slime off her hair and looked defeatedly at the tank ahead. As the warning sound intensified, she watched the last couple of seconds go past, and tried to look apologetic as the digits all hit zero.

The husky girl jumped, covering her ears as a loud gunge tank siren signaled their time being up. Her shocked expression slowly became a tense grin as she took her hands away, then she closed her eyes, spreading her arms up in the air and throwing her head back. A second later, Jess gasped as the three pipes leading to the tank spewed out a murky mixture of yellow and green gunge, enveloping Skye instantly.

Jess gaped as the initial spew of slime turned into a steady flow, going down past Skye's outstretched gungy arms and slapping onto her sides. She relaxed, lowering her dripping hands into them again. The shape of her head was just visible under the sloppy dome as she shook it from side to side, splattering the stuff around the enclosure. Jess's eyes dropped to the base of the tank, where the collected gunge was forming a rising pool.

The husky girl leaned forward a little, poking her muzzle out of the flood and making the gunge flow from above splash wildly out from the back of her neck as she brought her hands in to laughingly wipe at her eyes. She dragged them down her slimy muzzle, flicking them a couple of times to the floor, and hooted excitedly as the wide downpour of ooze slopped down her back, quickly filling the cylinder past her knees. Blinking her eyes open, she shook her head again and made eye contact with Jess just before the flow from above slumped down over her face. She bowed her head as the slime flowed over it, the green and yellow colors mingling as they dripped floorwards.

The siren noise that had been filling the room stopped, and Jess twitched as the only sound in the room became the continuous slurping noise as the gunge was poured into Skye's tank. As the downpour finally began to ease off, she wriggled to the side, shaking the gunge off her face and into the tummy-deep pool as she pinched and righted her soaked ears.

The side pipes spluttered, the flow getting stronger for a second and splatting on the gungy husky girl's shoulders again. She yelped as they hit her, then hunched down a little as a hissing noise began and the pipes began spraying airy white foam into the tank. Skye raised her arms out of the gunge and turned slowly around as the stuff splotted on to her, rolling off in blobs and landing thickly to spread on the top of the slowly rippling surface. Drops of the mixture in the tank began to spill over the door, forming thick fingers of murky liquid as they slithered downwards and onto the inflatable ramp.

As the pipes finally shut off, Skye looked down at what little of her was still visible above the near chest-deep gunge bath, and slipped her thumbs into her slimy bikini top to wriggle it a little upwards. She spread her arms out to her sides and watched the curtains of mixed green-yellow slop fall away in curtains from her fur. Blowing a blob of foam away from the end of her muzzle, she looked out at Jess with a defeated grin. Slowly, she wallowed forward to put one hand on top of the tank's door, wriggling her fingers as the stuff oozed over them, then leaned out to wave at the cheering, clapping girls on the walkway. Jess twitched as the slimy liquid flowed down the ramp and over her hands, twisting to look up to them as well.

Alex applauded along with the girls, then cleared his throat as they began to quieten down. "Well, that was an impressive effort, team, but as you all know... most of all your team leader..." he chuckled as he looked over at the wall-mounted tank again, the unrecognizably messy husky girl bringing one hand up to wipe at her eyes once more, "...you didn't get there in time."

He walked a little along the walkway towards them as he continued, a blank score board coming into view projected on the wall behind him. "But you were the very first team to take on the new Industrial Zone, and I don't think you've set a bad record to beat..." He pointed behind him at the screen, paused and looked over his shoulder. As he turned, their team's entry faded in - a list of their names and their final score. "1250!" Alex finished, clapping his hands together again.

Jess took a deep breath and joined the growing cheer, her hands beginning to hurt from clinging to the rope. As it died down, she looked back down the ramp and brought one hand up to pick strands of gungy wet hair out of her face. Helen was still holding on to the rope on the right near the bottom of the slide, her top half relatively clean compared to the others. Behind her, Yasa was watching from down in the gunge vat, his long hair and ears sodden and hanging messily around his head, slowly dripping the gooey liquid down his already covered top.

They all turned as Alex spoke again. "But even though you've got an easy first place on our leader board for now, I'm afraid there's one more thing we have to go through for you losing the game..." He pointed up to the giant tank suspended from the ceiling, and Jess smiled weakly to herself, having already guessed the consequences.

"Want to get back down there?" their host asked. Yasa looked up at it, then grinned back at the others for a moment before bouncing through the waist-deep gunge to get underneath the tank.

Helen lowered herself hand over hand down the few feet of slide again, eeping as her bare feet sank into the gunge and slowly easing herself into the pool again. Jess, tired but still eager at the thought of what was about to happen, began sliding down, too. Halfway, she lost her grip on the rope, and kicked her legs as she slid uncontrollably down the rest of the way. She splashed into the vat feet first, and nearly lost her balance as she sank into the thick liquid. Waving her arms and trying to get her breath back, she moved towards the catgirl as she reached Yasa, dipping a hand into the pool to splash him a little.

"We can let you out of there if you want to experience this as well, Skye..." Alex called over to her. She shook her head, running a hand down the back of her sloppy hair, and turned back to watch the others. Helen and Yasa took a hand of Jess's each as she approached, encouraging her to stand right under the widest pipe looming above them.

"All right - in that case I think we're all ready..." Jess looked up at the walkway as Alex beckoned to the others to follow him, taking them along to where an exaggeratedly large grimy switch was placed on the wall. "I think you should be the ones to finish us off..." He indicated towards it as they gathered around.

"Can I go in, too?" Ginger spoke up, swishing her tail and grinning eagerly up at the red wolf as her sister and Leann reached for the switch.

Alex glanced down at the vat and its occupants below. "Sure, if you want!" he answered. "Anise, Leann, how about you?" The other two girls looked at each other, then shook their heads, Leann nervously biting her lip.

"Okay, Ginger - if you go down to the seat at the end of the vat, we'll get ready to start things up..." The red-haired tiger girl nodded, and turned to dash along the walkway towards the stairs.

Jess watched her tread down the steps as Alex went through the show's ending, and glanced occasionally upwards into the cluster of wide pipes jutting down from the large tank above them. She had got used to her lower half being submerged in the cool gunge, and shifted her hips a little to get the weird sensation of it glooping around her again.

The tigress reached the floor, then waved down at the three of them as she padded over to the chair Jess had been in at the start of the game. Holding the side panel open and swinging one leg awkwardly over, she carefully wriggled down onto the still slimy seat, using her arms to prop herself up into a sitting position. Her legs dangled down over the gunge vat, and she squeaked as her swinging toes skimmed the surface.

They all looked up again to where Alex was still speaking across to an unseen camera - but at that moment, Jess flinched as he clapped his hands together. The two girls on the walkway looked at him as he turned around to speak to them.

"Now, Anise and Leann - to get your sister and your friend back for putting you on IZ," he said, pointing to each of them in turn, "...pull that switch and gunge them all one last time!"

Jess's heart raced as she looked into the pipe she was standing under again. Leann and Anise looked at each other, then simultaneously reached up with a hand each and tugged the large switch down. Spark effects flew from the wall around it as alarms rang around the entire room.

A noise from Jess's left made her whip her head round, and she looked over at the chair just in time to see Ginger jerk her feet up as she was enveloped by a flood of murky slime from the tank suspended above. She squealed as she slipped her hands off the arms of the seat, flicking them once to the floor and then bringing them up to push her heavy hair behind her head. The flow of gunge slopped down over her face, and she looked up into it for just a moment before snapping her head down again, shaking the dripping goo off her muzzle. The stuff continued to pour down the sides of her head, dripping stickily on to her bare shoulders and flowing down her chest.

Another click sounded, and the slippery tigress gave another squeak as the team watched the back of the seat rise up behind her. She straightened her legs as she began to slip off the slimy surface, coming out of the slowing deluge from above and making her face visible for just a moment before she splashed down to be completely submerged in the muddy pool below. Drops of gunk splotted back on to the slowly buckling surface behind her.

Jess heard a loud mechanical noise from above, and her hands flew to cover her ears and head as she ducked down instinctively. She was aware of the deluge from above blocking out the light just before it hit her with a heavy smack, pushing her further down under its weight and making her gasp at the cold runny feeling again. She felt the stuff pour off the strands of fur on her back and into the pool she was standing in, making a thick glooping noise as it hit the surface. Her hair quickly became heavy and spilled stickily down over her shoulders - she raised her hands just a little and clung more tightly to stop her mucky fringe going into her eyes.

Caught off balance as the gunge flow twitched to pour on to her head, she unsteadily took a step to the side and coughed as her face came out from under the flow. Her eyes still closed, she could feel the thick liquid oozing its way down through her fur and dripping off her muzzle and chin. Smiling a little as she breathed out, she tugged herself out of the continuing torrent and left just one arm underneath it, feeling the goo slop over and around it as it crashed into the vat. She felt the surface gloop up and down from her hips to her tummy as it rippled around her.

Hearing excited screams and squeaks from the others, she flicked her free hand a couple of times and then brought it up to her eyes, tentatively wiping them before slowly opening them again. Many thick streams of the gooey liquid were spurting down from the tank above them, some being slowly tilted back and forward. To her right she could just make out Yasa and Helen standing side by side underneath a cluster of them, a sloppy curtain of gunge splattering off their heads and shoulders. Wiping at her forehead, she looked around at where Ginger had gone in, and saw the green gunge-plastered tiger girl standing in the slop a few feet from the dunk chair. Her disheveled long hair was hanging stickily over her face, just her wide smiling muzzle visible poking through it, and her hands were held stretched out in front of her, the stuff dripping off her fingers into the vat. She walked slowly and unsteadily forward, squeaking as each sloppy downpour splattered on to her.

Jess stepped forwards nearer the center of the tank too, wriggling around a dark green column of slime as they began to shut off. She stepped sideways and allowed herself to giggle a little as the gunge slopped across her shoulders and head. It turned into a laugh as she looked down at herself, completely coated in a mixture of dark and light greens and yellows, and watched the last thick drops of the gunge slither down away from her and settle on the surface.

The stunned tiger girl's shoulders shook as she tried to compose herself again, raising her hands back to her gunge-coated hair and wriggling her shoulders in turn as she tried to gather it up and place it behind them. Her messy face became visible again and she spat gunge from her lips, wiping her eyes with both hands and then flicking the collected slime to the floor. She looked up, blinking as thick drops of gunk continued to fall from above them, and whooped, raising a thickly coated hand as she spotted her sister watching them from the walkway.

Jess joined in along with Yasa and Helen, wading slowly forwards to make eye contact with Leann again. The puppy girl shook her head, a slightly embarrassed grin on her face as she looked at the mess below.

She turned back to look at the others for a moment. Ginger was wringing her soaked hair out, her stripe pattern and color completely hidden under the clinging gungy layer. On the opposite side, Yasa and Helen were busily splashing each other with the gooey stuff, and beyond them, up the ramp, Skye watched them all from the tank above, her hands gripping the chest-height door of the tank as the gunk continued to drip and drizzle down her soaked fur.

There was a noise from the other end of the room as the door opened again, and Jess turned to see a few black-clothed stagehands emerging from the entrance. Looking up again, she watched Alex talking with Anise and Leann as he led them towards the walkway stairs.

As the bright ceiling lights came up to normal room lighting again and she felt the atmosphere of the show fade, Jess breathed out happily. Feeling a strange sort of relief at the same time as disappointment that it was over, she imagined the end titles of the show rolling over the scene of them all being covered for the last time.

Slowly, she began to follow Ginger over to the cluster of IZ crew to be helped out of the vat. She had enjoyed herself, but she was definitely also going to enjoy her fourth shower of the day.