INDUSTRIAL ZONE 7 - Midgame  
Written by Iron-K, 2010

"That was incredible!" Isla hooted as she burst into the changing area, her hands in the air as Nyte hurriedly put his arm out to catch the rebounding doors. "Can you believe we're on this?" she asked as she turned around, beaming at her team mates, and stretched upwards happily on her toes.

Nyte swallowed, wincing as he glanced downwards, watching the lizard girl's slime-coated breasts bounce as she dropped back to her heels. She opened her eyes and he hurriedly tried to arrange his face into a friendly grin, looking down and scritching at the soaked back of his neck idly as the two other girls squeezed through the door past him.

"I think I got the message, yeah..." Becky replied as she took a couple of steps into the room with her arms out to her sides, the contents from the last gunge tank still drizzling from her outstretched fingers. Looking up through the drips of slime from her fringe, she clasped her hands together and dragged them over her head, then headed towards the door to the women's shower area.

"Hey, you're not going in there yet!" Isla called after the canine, dashing over after her and giving her tail a gentle tug. The brown-furred puppy squeaked as she stopped, then watched as Isla sat herself down on the bench and patted the space next to her. "Remember what Alex said - he's doing the special guest right now..." She jabbed her finger towards the TV monitor that had been set up on the table in the middle of the room, the screen facing away from Nyte. "I can't wait to hear what she's in there for..."

Nyte's ears pricked, even though he simultaneously twitched at the thought of watching another gunging with the girls beside him. Still hovering on the opposite side of the room, he took his gaze off the bikini-clad lizard and puppy and looked towards Quinne instead, trying to think of something else to say as he watched her bat uncomfortably at her slick T-shirt.

"Isn't that the thing we were all just in a couple of games ago?" Becky broke the silence as she sat down and looked at the screen.

"They got it cleaned up quickly, if it was!" Isla answered brightly. "Hey, Quinne, is this how it looked for people who didn't get gunged in it?"

The fennec laughed a little at the friendly jab. "I think I've got enough of that stuff in here..." she said with a grimace, looking down at her front and stretching her sodden T-shirt out in front of her by its waist. She let it drop back, and squeaked as it slapped heavily against her tummy, then twitched as she picked at the gungy material uncomfortably.

Nyte swallowed as the fennec girl squeamishly reached down and began tugging her slime-drenched top off, then averted his eyes as she looked towards him. Glancing between the puppy and lizard girls as Isla continued to chatter excitedly about the show so far, he distractedly wandered over to the water fountain at his side of the room, taking a cup from its underside and staring at the wall as it filled, and feeling his heart slowly returning to normal.

"Time to change shirts for the next half?" Isla asked, and he heard the fox girl snicker in response.

"Actually I think I'll stay like this!" she said back. Nyte nearly squashed the paper cup he was holding as his hand twitched, but he tried to keep his composure as he stood upright and sipped at it. Doing his best to appear nonchalant, attempting to hold his hand to block the front of his clinging shorts in a way that looked natural, he padded his way around to the bench the girls were sitting on, and smiled down at Quinne as she slipped to the side, letting him sit down between her and Isla.

As he lowered himself on to the bench, holding the cup of water steady above his lap, he looked up at the screen for the first time. He recognized the gunge booth that he and two of the girls next to him had been put in during the last round, with the multiple wide nozzles on the ceiling and the long grille that ran around the back and side walls near the top. This time, there was a dark brown-furred feline seated on the blowup couch inside, with short slightly darker hair and prominent white ear-tufts. She was wearing only a black Industrial Zone bikini like the girls beside him, and a pair of large hoop earrings.

"Tina!" The catgirl jumped, looking up from her lap at the sound of the voice and of a door bursting open from off-screen. As the team watched, Alex strolled into view of the frame, smiling in greeting. "I hope we haven't kept you too long - how are you doing?"

"Good, I guess..." Tina put her hands on the front of the seat next to her and wriggled upright, staring up into the large nozzle looming above her head.

"Great - let me just introduce you, then I'll be right back with you..." Alex turned towards the camera, pointing back over his shoulder. "This delightful feline..." - he glanced back over his shoulder to see her reaction - "...is Tina, she's twenty years old, and she's a student living with a number of housemates... who nominated her to go in here!" He turned around to face the catgirl again as she swished her tail nervously. "Can you guess which of your friends wanted to see you gunged?"

"No - why don't you tell me," she replied, leaning forwards and propping her face in her hands with her elbows on her knees. "I never got Tatiana to admit to it..."

"Well, she was right to deny it, because we received an email that was signed by both Tanya and Todd..."

"Todd?" she repeated back, her eyes wide. "Oh, man, I'm gonna..."

Alex produced a piece of paper from his pocket, and she tailed off, trying to crane her neck up to see as he unfolded it with one hand. The red wolf cleared his throat as he held it up in front of him. "They say that you're always taking walks in the mud and trailing it back into the house, where they're left to clean it up while you're taking up the bathroom..." He crumpled it up and stuffed it back into his pocket. "Would you say that was true?"

"No, I..." The feline growled, and hesitated. "Well, maybe one time..." she sighed, crossing her legs as she sank back into the seat again.

"They seemed quite sure of it - and for that, you might be about to get a much messier kind of bath," Alex continued, indicating the nozzles on the ceiling of the cat girl's booth as she looked upwards. "To stop this thing from going off and giving you our unique all-over spa treatment, you're going to have to play one of our games - and your friends helped us again by providing us with a couple of photos..."

"Photos...?" she repeated back, raising an eyebrow.

Alex stopped with his handheld computer held up in front of him, and wagged a finger at her. "I'm not sure what you're thinking, but... no, you don't have anything to worry about! Well, no more than most people have when they're in that thing, anyway." With a wave of his hand, he turned and looked up to the far wall. Tina blinked and looked up as a projected screen came into view.

"During one of these walks, we got them to provide us with some photos of your shoe collection," Alex grinned as a few pictures of shoes flicked past, photographed in pairs on a bedroom floor or laid out on the bed. "Which is pretty substantial, I should say... and as you're such an aficionado, we wanted to test your knowledge of the ones you own..." Tina sighed, and slumped against the back of the plastic couch, putting her arm up along its back and tapping her fingers.

"We've got ten pictures - you're going to get one minute to give me the brand and the name of each one," he said slowly, watching the feline twitch agitatedly, her ears flattening slightly as she listened to the rules.

"Urggh..." she groaned, already clawing at her hair with her free hand, then straightened up once more. "Okay, let's get this over with..."

"All right - I'm starting the timer!" Alex skipped backwards, and the screen showed a flurry of photos, eventually settling on a picture of a pair of tall boots.

The feline ducked forwards, as if trying to look at the photo in front of her from another angle. "That's the, um..." she started, her fingers tapping on her knee, "'Journee', Jester."

"Yes!" Alex called back quickly. "Here's the next one..."

As the first photograph slid off the screen to reveal another picture, this time of a pair of very high heels, the catgirl grimaced, clicking her tongue slightly behind her teeth. "Don't know," she shook her head.

"That's okay, we can come back to them," Alex said, gesturing in the air as the picture was replaced by another. Tina smiled a little in recognition as the new photo came up.

"Uh... Mary-Jane..." Tina clicked her fingers, closing her eyes. "Demonia Concept", she said quickly after a moment's thought.

Nyte leaned back from the screen. "How the hell can anyone know so much about shoes?"  he wondered aloud, unconsciously jiggling one knee as he watched the feline's face intently, waiting for her time to run out as she struggled through the next few photos. He yelped as his question was met with a poke in the ribs from Isla's elbow, and looked to his side, meeting her eyes as she flicked her tongue out at him. Rubbing his side, he turned back to the screen as Tina got another one right, and watched her lean further forwards as she concentrated.

Alex's voice came from the side as the next photo came up. "You've just got two more, you've got about fifteen seconds..."

"Ah...!" The feline whimpered, drumming her feet on the floor as she stared up at the picture projected in front of her. "It's Demonia... um..." She tapped her fingers on the side of her head, her mouth opening as she looked for the name. "Stripe? Wedge?"

"Someone's gonna get it...!" Isla sang gleefully, her hands balled into fists as she watched Tina's expression. The catgirl shook her head as the noise of the timer got slowly more urgent, and yelped and clasped her hands to her head as a harsh buzzer rang around the room.

"Well, I'm sorry, Tina..." Alex's voice came from off camera before it swung back to face him. "You got so close, and you got all of them but two in the end - these ones are Demonia Sin..."

"Oh, c'mon, I said..." The brown catgirl leaned forwards, her hands held up in front of her in protest. She stopped as Alex shook his head.

"No, I'm sorry - you did quite well, but you ran out of time..." Alex took a couple of steps back from the tank, and the industrial siren began ringing, making the feline's hands shoot to her ears. "And that can only mean one thing!" he called above the noise of the alarm, holding his hand out towards the booth.

The catgirl screamed and flinched downwards as two wide columns of dark green gunge flooded in from the ceiling nozzles on either side of her, splattering over the edges of the seat and off the tiled floor as they tilted around in slow circles. She wriggled backwards on the seat as she looked from side to side with her mouth open in surprise, watching the ooze splatter off the edges of the couch next to her and begin to fill the tank up. Lifting her feet off the floor as the thick slimy liquid splurged over them, she hunched inwards and gave another shriek through her closed lips, ducking a little forwards as the two streams came inwards to lick over her shoulders, leaving a smooth layer of gunge slithering down her arms and sides.

A dirty klaxon blared from the ceiling, and Tina jumped at its sound, then cringed, closing her eyes as she realized what was coming next. She sat upright and wriggled a little from side to side, her hands clasped between her legs, before screwing her face up and bowing her head slightly forward. As the alarm sounded again, a nervous grin spread across her face, just before a flood of orange gunge dropped in a wide fan shape from right above her, breaking over her head and splurging on to her shoulders as the slime slumped forwards over her face.

Her hands jerked upwards before the falling orange dome hid them from view as well, and for a moment all that was visible of her was the faint outline of her head, her flicking ears poking a little out of the upturned bowl shape of the gunge. Squirming to crane her neck further forwards, the front of the dome broke away and spewed out in front of the tank, making Alex dodge backwards as the catgirl's open-mouthed shocked smile became visible again, the goo rolling down the sides of her head and dripping from her chin. Blinking as streaks of the orange gunge fell across her eyes, she watched him dash aside, then bowed her head further down and shook it, putting her hands up to the sides to catch the slime falling from her hair as the dome of gunge spewed out over her back.

The two green streams tilted inwards to join the orange stuff, hiding the squirming feline from view again as the sloppy mixture slithered down her back and around her neck, the colors mingling into each other as they glooped over her fur and dripped down into the rising gunge pool. As the fan of orange gunge began to ease back, the thick dark green slime played back and forth a little over her, slopping from her shoulders up to her head and back before parting again.

As the torrents from either side flicked back to vertical, continuing to fill up the tank, the last of the heavy orange slime sputtered over the catgirl in the middle of it. She gave out a shriek that turned into a helpless laugh, shaking with her hands held in claws in front of her as the thick colorful liquid slithered down her fur, dripping in heavy blobs off her outstretched arms and the tips of her fingers. Shaking them out in front of her, she brought her hands up to her eyes and wiped from her muzzle backward, blinking them open and then giving another yelp as the level of slime in the tank crept up to spill into the blowup seat around her.

Tina slipped backward on the slimy plastic surface, watching the drips of orange from the nozzle above her splatting down into her lap as the green stuff finally bubbled to a halt, the gunge bath now up to her tummy. As she rubbed her hands around her face, her ears flattened at another spurting noise, and two waves of translucent yellow slime began pouring from the grilles at head height on the tank's sides.

With a gasp, she flinched aside as the wave of yellow goo smacked on to her shoulder from the left, then yelped as the same happened from the right, the wide fans of gunge pouring heavily into the mixture in the tank and leaving just her head visible above the translucent slime flying at her from the sides. She poked her hands up through the slippery curtains, holding them still for a moment as blobs of good rolled down her fingers, then clasped them to her forehead to keep her messy hair out the way, revealing a squeamish half-smile through the shock on her face. She ducked once more under the weight of another green wave spewing out the grille behind her, then wriggled and sat upright against its weight, her shoulders shaking a little as the slippery stuff slithered over them and down into the chest-deep pool.

The waves of gunge sputtered and then eased back, revealing the catgirl's messy head and shoulders poking out above a deep bath of slime as the stuff continued to creep down the walls of the tank. With her eyes still closed, she wriggled upwards in the gunge, sending a wave of the stuff slopping forwards over the booth's door, and opened her mouth, speechless as she felt the ooze glooping around her. Suddenly, she yipped and hunched her shoulders up once more as there was a hissing sound from above her, and grimaced slightly as she felt two jets of thick foam spurting on to her head. As the white stuff piled up on her head, sticking to her gungy hair, it began to break off, the green-stained blobs rolling off and smacking on to the gungy surface where it was swept forwards to drip down the tank's front.

Alex clapped his hands together as the feline slowly blinked her eyes open, straightening herself up and batting at the blobs of foam sliding down her face and head. "Tina, I hope it's some consolation if I say that was probably the best set of reactions we've ever had from anyone in there..." He lifted his feet high as he stepped through the foam and slime on the floor, watching more of the stuff slither and drizzle down the door of the gunge tank. The cat girl, only just visible underneath the layer of glop coating her hair and fur, shook her head in response, then pulled her arms out of the gunk to try to clear her face. The gunge around her rippled slowly from side to side as she moved. "Are you all right?"

"...God," she started as she took her hands off her face, holding them awkwardly above the bath of gunge and looking to her left and right at her arms as the glutinous mixture dripped thickly from her slippery fur. "I think I preferred the mud..." She flicked her arms to send a cascade of gunge slapping on to the surface of the chest-deep gloop.

"Well, I haven't seen mud get quite that deep, I'll give it that..." the red wolf smiled back at her.

"You should see some of my spots..." Tina ducked her head down as a pile of foam slumped down into her face from her plastered hair, and drew her hands up from her muzzle over her head, leaving finger-shaped furrows in the gungy mixture. "I'd sure show you them up close, after this..."

Opening her eyes again, she wriggled upwards, sending more of the gungy mixture sloshing over the top of the tank's door as she put her hands out as if to hug him, with curtains of slime dripping from all along her arms. The red wolf smiled and retreated a couple of steps from the spreading slimy pool on the floor.

"Well, I'd take you up on that offer, but I'm going to have to go back to the team now," he said. "I left them in the showers, so if you're lucky, they'll be nearly out of there and we can give you the chance to get yourself cleaned up, too..."

"Great..." The catgirl sighed as she carefully sat down, putting her hands under the surface and squeaking as the glop swallowed her up to her chest again. She twitched as another streak of orange slop sputtered out of the ceiling nozzle on to her head, dipping once more as the thick goo rolled down over her face.

"Okay, we'll leave you in there until then, and I think it's bound to run out eventually..." the red wolf chuckled, slapping at the wall above the booth and watching the thin green drizzles slither down from the ceiling nozzles on either side of her. "Thanks for coming on, Tina!"

Nyte swallowed silently as Alex left the room with a wave, leaving the catgirl to roll her eyes and then laugh slightly to herself as she pulled her gungy hands up again and looked down at the slime dripping down them. He jumped as the silence in the room was broken by a whoop from Isla.

"You think that'll happen to one of us next?" the lizardess asked with a mischievous grin, and turned to look at the other two girls as Becky winced, covering her smile with both hands.

"Oh, yeah," Quinne nodded. "The show always just got messier from here on..."

"Yeah, and I know another kitten that needs to get more gunge..." the lizard girl continued. Nyte twitched as he realized who she meant, but tried to laugh it off as she put her hand on his matted hair, scruffing it around to rub the slime around his head.

"Do you want to get cleaned up first?" Becky's voice came from beside them, and he turned his head to see her already halfway to the door of the women's shower area, flicking at the slime in her own hair. Quinne nodded and got up to walk around the other side of the low table, her drenched T-shirt draped over her arm.

"Yeah, I suppose," the lizardess answered, and hauled herself up from the bench, shaking her hands and flicking specks of slime to the floor as she turned around to face Nyte. "Want to join us?"

Nyte's hands gripped the bench tightly as he looked at the slime-slicked tummy of the curvy blue reptilian next to him. He forced his eyes up to her face to see her grinning down at him as she brushed some of the goo away from her forehead, and tried to find any words at all as he opened his mouth.

"Hey..." Quinne called after her before Nyte could speak.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding..." Isla put her hands up and turned away, stepping after the fennec as she scampered through the door after Becky. Nyte let his eyes drop to Isla's slippery hips again as he watched her walk away from him, taking the swinging door as Quinne held it out for her.

As the changing room door flapped closed after her, he breathed out heavily, closing his eyes and slumping back to rest his head on the wall behind him. As he leaned back, he felt the slime on the back of his hair squish against his head and jerked forwards again, wincing and then laughing a little to himself as he combed his fingers up through his slippery hair. The stuff didn't dry at all, and still felt like a heavy wet blanket coating his fur, slowly trickling down through it.

He heard a laugh that he thought he recognized as Isla's voice from somewhere beyond the wall behind him, along with the spray of water hitting tiles. He half-turned towards it, wondering if he was being talked about in there and getting a sudden mental image of her under the shower. With a shudder, he took another deep breath, then slowly hauled himself up from the bench and stumbled towards the opposite changing room.